I don't know a lot about Aeronautics so I have to ask this ?
Could the P63 had been the victim of a Slipstream? Could the pilot had flown to close and into the Bombers wake and got sucked it, or just lost control in the bad air and then the inertia just carried him into the bomber?

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Neal Miller
Master Blaster NAR# 58296

I concur with the description given by George above.
I have over 40 years of R/C pilot experience and somewhat less in full scale
A fighter-type (or aerobatic) type aircraft with little to no dihedral would continue to be banked but nose dropping in a decreasing radius turn if the stick was released if a "medical" event happened. This was not the case here. It appeared under pilot control until impact.
I agree also that the formation of flying seemed seriously "out of whack".
Whether that was due to lack of planning or pilot error appears unknown.
Once all is said and done, I think the cause will be due to accumulation of multiple contributing factors.
I will say though that once the P-63 got far behind the other fighters in the formation he should have pulled up and away from the entire show formation.

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, and HAVOC !

That was excellent. Thanks for posting it.

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The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

The comment about the P-63's wing obstructing downward vision in this otherwise excellent video:

https://youtu.be/Sceufd1Xutc?t=420

is directly contradicted in a clip from the video I've previously posted of a walkaround the P-63 involved in the incident:

https://youtu.be/ruoDK2MlAlg?t=400

The long nose of the P-63 obstructing the view is still a valid point and at certain approach attitudes I suspect even the P-63's wing could obstruct the view. He mentions the cockpit framing blocking the view and says that visibility isn't as good as in a P-51.

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The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

No, look at the first clip of the video I posted. You can see two different paths that converge as the P-63 is in that banked turn. Also, a B-17 isn't big enough to cause such a vortex event that would matter much to a plane the size/mass of the P-63 (it ain't like a Piper Cub).

This was a "classic" Mid-air scenario of planes not seeing each other (Don't even try to fault the B-17, the gunners only looked out the side for fighters during actual war missions, not pilots).

No medical issues, no "bad air", no mumbo-jumbo, no Space Lasers.

Seems like whatever the organizers planned for all those planes to do, either they planned it very badly, or the P-63 pilot was out of position according to "the plan" (or both: bad planning with no margin for error).

I mean, Bombers flying one course, and the fighters flying a different course that converged, at the same altitude? Mid-air waiting to happen.

ALSO, the possibility that the lead pilot of the fighters may have started the whole chain of events. He may have been out of the planned course, got it wrong, then all the rest of the fighters were stuck with following the same path.

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I know it's out of the ordinary for me, but I totally agree with and support George's conclusions above.
The whole scenario looked like an accident waiting to happen.

__________________
When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, and HAVOC !

Video to watch:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C342dfNPCyg

This guy does a pretty good job of covering air accidents with a serious focus on what and why, without trying to be macabre or hyping things for views. For those of you who follow Scott Manley's reporting on rockets/space events, I'd say this guy is equally credible for his civil aviation expertise.

His insights into the courses they flew is quite illuminating. Also, he begins with a previous year's show, where the fighters flew in tight formation with each other (classic triad for 3 aircraft), at a MUCH higher altitude than the bombers.

He also demonstrates how/why it would be so hard for the P-63 pilot to see the B-17 until it was too late.

He refers to the "dead line", that NO pilot is allowed to cross for air shows. The dead line is almost always the main runway (spectators on one side away from the runway, aircraft on the other or right down the runway).

Now that I'm more aware of that, and the video footage he uses for most of the video, it seems like the P-63 pilot was likely to blow past the Dead line, and end up crossing over the runway, at least a bit. I mean, this could possibly have been more tragic... if the P-63 had not been shattered, but too damaged to control and "simply" traveled a ballistic path after impact, it would likely have impacted close to the crowd and slid along the ground into the crowd (look at the P-63 pointed at the camera at impact).

Notably, the B-17 seemed to be about parallel to the runway, and crashed only about 300 feet or so parallel to the runway, while that camera angle shows the P-63 coming straight at the camera at the time of the collision, but even at his high bank angle he did not seem to be yanking that tight on the elevator to turn sharply enough to not go past the runway.

Stlll though, I wonder about the first P-51, that the other fighters were following, did it lead the rest astray?

And the mystery of why they changed from the patterns they had used the previous year, different altitudes and fighters in tight formation where they could see each other, not a stretched in-line-chasing-tail hundreds of feet apart , at the SAME altitude as the bombers.

It is often said it is easy to put the blame on a dead pilot (who can't fight back). I hope there's not any sweeping under the rug like that in this case, as the more I think of it, and the more I learn of it, someone else in charge (on the ground, or in the air, or both), led to that P-63 pilot being a bad place where he ought not to have been.

#1 being not flying at different altitudes as before - who changed that?

I expect the NTSB to totally ream a few (living) people for allowing/causing that set-up to happen.

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Contest flying, Sport flying, it's all good.....
NAR# 18723 NAR.org
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The guy who conducted the P-63 walkaround video wasn't one of them.

Officials on Monday identified the six men killed in a deadly collision between two vintage military aircraft at a Dallas air show

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/...rash-in-dallas/

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The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

Yeah I started driving a school bus again after a 10+ year hiatus... I don't know if it's just this more rural area here at Shiner, or if it's just the times and the way people drive now, but I've had more people run my bus loading lights since school started in September than I had in probably the entire 9 years I drove for Needville... Granted Needville is closer to Houston, and a lot more traffic and more cops/troopers, and Shiner is a more rural community and area and basically the troopers only seem to care about speeders if you see them at all, and the local cops are only worried about nailing speeders in the school zone out on the main highway a half-mile from the school. NONE of the kids walk to school here, so that's not even an issue. More money making enforcement than anything.

What's bad is the sheer number of commercial motor vehicles I have had running my lights-- semi's, dump trucks, service trucks for various oilfield operations, etc. Most don't even slow down, though I put my lights on a good quarter mile from the stop so they have at least 15-20 seconds to slow down and stop. Given the rural location, it's pretty obvious when I'm driving down the highway and there's ONE DRIVEWAY in the middle of a half-mile long fenceline, that THAT is where the bus is going to stop... if they're buzzing along and can get past me before I stop, I'm fine with that, go ahead... I'm not going to pop the door open and have it switch to red lights just trying to "nail" somebody if a cop SHOULD happen to be following me (we've requested it and basically the cops don't care-- nobody has shown up yet! Which I don't understand, because it's EASY MONEY and BIG MONEY... it's like a $500 fine for the first offense and over a grand for a second offense within 3 years IIRC. It was also 10 points on a CDL, so a commercial driver passing a bus with red loading lights would basically put you out of a job for a year. Course I read now that I think they repealed the points system in Texas.

The main thing is how UNSAFE it is... and the consequences are just too terrible to contemplate. I had some guys running my lights IN TOWN because they were going a half-block past the bus to turn into the wire works plant... I told my boss to inform the cops to be there between 7 and 7:05, since I worked VERY hard to arrive at precisely 7:02 AM for the pickup every day, and usually am spot on. I saw one cop arrive after I'd left, circle around, and take off again for the local coffee shop. Big deal...

A few years back I was in Indiana helping my BIL with corn and soybean harvest. We'd finished up a few days before Halloween and so I took a rest and helped finish off a few mechanical things before heading back to Texas. That morning (Halloween IIRC or day before) I loaded a big dog cage in the back of my truck and my SIL and I loaded up a couple goats she sold to Betty's best friend in Nashville... I was hauling the goats down to her there. After we loaded up I made a final check of everything and hit the road. They live about a mile and a half down a snaking country road from the main highway, just across the Tippecanoe River (yeah, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too-- that one) which comes out on SH 25 from Rochester to Mentone, Indiana, next town over. When I crossed the bridge and stopped, I looked up the hill to my left and it looked like the end of the world. Looked like every cop and trooper and deputy for 50 miles was there, surrounding a school bus. Never a good sign.

Turns out that 4 kids were crossing the highway to get on a bus stopped for them in front of a trailer park just above the river. A 25 year old young woman on her way to work at the daycare at a church in Rochester, who had just dropped her own toddlers/baby off at her mother's house near Mentone a few miles away, was coming through the S-curve in the dark toward the bus. She apparently saw the red lights, but "thought it was farm equipment". She rounded the curve at about 50-55 mph and never hit the brake until it was too late. She struck and killed a 9 year old girl and her two 6 year old twin brothers, and a 14 year old boy who got tossed down the road by her truck. He survived but had severe internal injuries and many broken bones. He wasn't related to the other kids, just lived in one of the mobile homes in the park. The driver only had time to hit the horn when she realized that the woman wasn't going to stop, but it was too late.

Now what's INCREDIBLY STUPID is, the girl ASSUMED that it was "just farm equipment". It was dark at the time, and she couldn't clearly see that it was a bus and not some big tractor. Now, I drove my BIL's 4-wheel drive articulated 4890 Case tractor through there, it's 13 feet wide from outside dual tire to outside dual tire, and I was pulling either an auger cart the size of a small building behind it, or usually a folded up 23 foot disk with a folded up 25 foot crumbler/roller behind the disk in a train... and lemme tell you a road with 12 foot lanes and guardrails on either side, due to a steep narrow ditch to the south and a steep high cliff down into the river on the left, means I had to put the edge of my LH outer dual tire on the line and my RH outer dual tire was about a foot from the guardrail in order to make the curves without hanging up anything... the disk and crumbler is actually wider yet, so I literally have INCHES to play with to keep the disk from hanging the guardrail and the outside blades on the disk on the other side are literally directly over the line... SO EVEN IF IT WAS "farm equipment", in the dark she should have SLOWED DOWN and BE READY TO STOP before getting there-- after all, 'sh!t happens' and you don't know WHY that "farm equipment" might be sitting in the road with the flashers on... maybe a hydraulic hose busted and dropped half a wing into your lane-- crashing into chisel plow shanks and points and having one come through the windshield and having it stuck through your face like an over ripe melon is NOT going to be a good day for you... maybe the hitch pin broke or fell out, or a wheel fell off because the bearing went out... all kinds of things can happen! But she just ASSUMED that "it's farm equipment, all is well" and continued on full speed, and she was MISTAKEN, and killed 3 kids and destroyed the life of another kid... She was ultimately tried and convicted a year later, and spent a couple years in the joint, years where her own little ones have grown and she can NEVER get that time with her babies back, but neither can the parents of the kids she killed ever get to see their kids graduate, or get married or go to college, or go to prom... no more Christmas mornings, no more Halloween trick-or-treats, no nothing. All because of STUPIDITY and being in too big a rush! That and just tearing headlong at full speed into a situation she didn't understand that, even if it HAD been farm equipment, still could have resulted in a wreck that killed her or the farmer...

BUT people are in SUCH a hurry to get to work or get to the coffee or donut shop before work, that they just keep ripping along never thinking about the consequences... it's stupid... it's reckless, and it's ILLEGAL. It's unsafe and the consequences aren't worth a YEAR of being late to work... and if the worst happens, you won't have to worry about being late to work when you're behind bars. It's not worth the lifetime of regret and mental anguish from it either-- for the year she was on bail awaiting trial, reportedly she was basically on suicide watch, she had a mental breakdown, and she refused to allow ANY of her family to travel anyplace that they couldn't be home before dark... it will be with her the rest of her life. Is that worth being a little late to work, or having to skip the coffee shop on the way there, or is that load of sand you're hauling out to a fracking site being a minute or two late worth a kid's life??

Think about it... OL J R

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Ya know maybe it's my old age setting in, my 51 year old eyes are more sensitive to bright lights than they used to be, but I'll say this-- these d@mn fire trucks and cop cars are putting WAY WAY too many friggin' "twinkle lights" on their vehicles now... I mean most of these cop cars and fire trucks and ambulances now have at least a half dozen HIGH INTENSITY STROBES firing off in EVERY DIRECTION on the car or truck now... it's ridiculous. It's also becoming more of a hazard than a help IMHO, and here's why...

Yeah I know it's not 1974 anymore and the rotating metal reflector and light bulb "cherries" lights on the emergency vehicles were probably inadequate, and the strobes really get people's attention-- BUT when you have SO MANY super-bright strobing flashing lights popping like FLASH BULBS in the eyes of oncoming drivers, TOTALLY BLINDING THEM (unless they're in their teens or 20's and have fighter pilot vision) then it's more of a hazard than benefit...

I know one night I was driving home after supper in Rosenberg back to Needville, and we came up on a wreck on SH 36, which is a heavily travelled road. As I approached I slowed to about 15-20 and was waved on around by the cop on the north end of the wreck site... I slowed down further as I went past, because there were SO many fire trucks and cop cars, and an ambulance, ALL with their strobes going FULL BLAST, and I was COMPLETELY flash-dazzle blinded by it all and couldn't see a thing. I didn't even see this one fire fighter, even in his yellow safety coat with the reflectorized safety stripes, who was about a foot from my bumper and side fender, until he was right outside my wife's passenger side window and his silhouette blocked some of the flashing strobes... scared the sh!t out of me, honestly, because I could have hit him and never even SEEN HIM because I was flash blinded!

At least on the site of an accident, a cop car needs to be placed on either end of the site with their strobes on facing up the road either way to alert oncoming motorists, but the ones in the middle shouldn't have their strobes on, or at least only minimal ones, not ever single one on the friggin' unit... takedown lights or work lights/safety lights, that ILLUMINATE but don't STROBE and BLIND people, should all be used instead... steady lights... or at least they should be parked so they're NOT blinding oncoming drivers trying to negotiate safely around a wreck site...

Just my observation-- I fully understand and endorse the need to keep our first responders safe, but at the same time, this is just an increasing problem as it seems every year the cars and trucks get more twinkle lights on them...

Later! OL J R

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