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The Staff of SOH
Latest info on the crash
- Thread starter LouP
- Start date
Well said.
Thoe6969
Charter Member
Guess you didn't read the article about Bob Hannah ,same thing happened to him,he was lucky enough to wake up at 9,000 feet and managed to land.Trim tabs only help deflect the elevator. If there was sudden loss of the tab, the pilot would be able to feel it and correct quickly. Also, black-outs are not instant, no matter HOW many G's you pull. It takes a few secons for the blood to rush down, and a few more to starve the brain to blackout. Anyone can survive 22+ G's as long as its not SUSTAINED G's. Thats why I am sure that if the trim snapped, the pilot would of accounted for it quick enough before the G's took him out. Also, trim tabs cant apply more force on a control surface then the pilots. They only help with pilots fatique, not control the aircraft.
P.S. Mig-15 only has 1 trim tab on the elevator. It had a max speed of 668MPH. The Mig-17 was a much more improved Mig-15 to remove some of its high speed handling drawbacks, and it too had 1 trim tab on the elevator.
Prowler1111
Charter Member 2011
I took the pic, and studied it in photoshop, as you can see, A is just a light effect over the windscreen, giving the illusion of a rounded object bellow it.
But what really intrigued me, is B, if you look closely at it, you can see a round object, leaning to one side, and IMHO matches the idea of the pilot being squashed into and back of the cockpit.
Best regards
Prowler
Rudder tabs are used to counter the torque, and to a smaller extent the aileron tab. Fast planes of WWII era often used two types of tab, a trim tab and a spring tab. The spring tab was arranged to move in the opposite direction as the control surface to reduce stick pressures. Some aircraft such as the F4U used this technique to achive effective roll rates at speed. The spring part, if fitted reduces the control effectivness at speed to attempt to prevent overcontrolling and a constant G per pound of pull.
No one has mentioned the possibility of the pilots age as a contributory factor. One we will not ever have an answer to.
Possible solution to the danger to the spectators? Put the crowd in the infield, crashes, dead airplanes etc tend to fly outward. Hoping the lawyers and ambulance chasers don't shut it down.
T
No one has mentioned the possibility of the pilots age as a contributory factor. One we will not ever have an answer to.
Possible solution to the danger to the spectators? Put the crowd in the infield, crashes, dead airplanes etc tend to fly outward. Hoping the lawyers and ambulance chasers don't shut it down.
T
I've heard of deserting your post but deleting it is a new one!
Well I tried to delete it but it wouldn't let me delete and save, so the only other alternative was to backspace everything out and then it wouldn't simply take a completely blank post because of too few words, so I had no other option but to type in something!
I could have put, "Desserted My Post" but then someone would probably have said I spelled desert wrong
Then again the delete button probably works but I just don't no how to use it correctly. ........It is what it is!
Terry
SOH-CM-2016
Well I tried to delete it but it wouldn't let me delete and save, so the only other alternative was to backspace everything out and then it wouldn't simply take a completely blank post because of too few words, so I had no other option but to type in something!
I could have put, "Desserted My Post" but then someone would probably have said I spelled desert wrong
Then again the delete button probably works but I just don't no how to use it correctly. ........It is what it is!
This website requires that you say "please disregard".
Smashing Time
Charter Member 2014
A very interesting video has just been released. This is a HD recording of the actual pitch up an roll in slow motion. A lot of things can be seen happening. The crash is not part of the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoncG_j5AdI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoncG_j5AdI
magoo
SOH-CM-2013
....Well....that's probably the greatest risk to the Reno Air Races as an entity. There will be law suits....guaranteed. After that, the insurances companies will probably come down hard.
The Reno Races are a brilliant example of human spirit pushing hard for excellence and the artistry of speed, and flight. The whole episode leaves me very sad, and has me wondering, wondering...wondering.....
Watching that video Smashing Time posted, it is pretty clear that something broke back in the tail area of the plane. Note that the tail wheel is extended very early into the climb and that the trim tab comes off nearly at the top of the climb. I'm not a pilot and I'm not an aircraft mechanic, so can not make any assumptions about what may have happened, but I know enough about flying to say that there was a BIG mechanic breakage that caused this crash and the resultant loss of life.
OBIO
OBIO
flaminghotsauce
Charter Member
That's what it looked like to me Obio. It looked like something snapped that caused the trim tab to get ripped off, not the trim tab being the causal factor. There was a sudden jerk like he lost elevator control altogether.
GT182
Charter Member
My previous thoughts were confirmed this morning by an ex Air Force pilot. Mr. Leeward was blacked out and there was no way he could come too to control the a/c at that altitude. It was his silver helmet in the photo that was in the panel and the reason no one could see him in the cockpit. Pulling that many Gs would put him out and he'd just slump over the stick with the panel stopping any more forward movement once he came out of the loop and was headed towards the ground.
Another thought was the seat collapsed from the G load.
'If' he weighed 170 pounds his body weight would have been 3,842 pounds at the surmised 22.6Gs. Do the math. No time to come too at that altitude. And possibly he was dead from the G load. Tho there's no way to ever confirm or deny that, I was told. The on board video was probably totally ruined from the crash, but hopefully the black box survived.
I was also told that there is no torq tube for the trim tab on a P-51. And there was no way to control the elevators once the tab's cable or mechanism broke and was full up. You could call it the Loop of Death seeing he was so low and out cold.
Does anyone have the article about Bob Hannah and how many Gs he pulled? And did he pull as many Gs is my question?
Another thought was the seat collapsed from the G load.
'If' he weighed 170 pounds his body weight would have been 3,842 pounds at the surmised 22.6Gs. Do the math. No time to come too at that altitude. And possibly he was dead from the G load. Tho there's no way to ever confirm or deny that, I was told. The on board video was probably totally ruined from the crash, but hopefully the black box survived.
I was also told that there is no torq tube for the trim tab on a P-51. And there was no way to control the elevators once the tab's cable or mechanism broke and was full up. You could call it the Loop of Death seeing he was so low and out cold.
Does anyone have the article about Bob Hannah and how many Gs he pulled? And did he pull as many Gs is my question?
At 22G's, I think (think only as I am not a flight surgeon or a doctor) that the human body would simply shut down. The lungs would collapse, the heart would be unable to pump blood, quite likely that massive skeletal damage would result (ie...rib cage crushing, long bones snapping like twigs). The human body is an amazing contraption for sure, but it has a limit to what it can withstand....and going from 170 pounds to 3,800 pounds in an eye blink or two would definitely be outside of the design limits of the human body.
Can you imagine what it would be like to weight 3,800 pounds? I'll have to ask my mother-in-law....I'm sure she's close to that weight.
OBIO
Can you imagine what it would be like to weight 3,800 pounds? I'll have to ask my mother-in-law....I'm sure she's close to that weight.
OBIO
For those of you that are following this, here is an experience by another race pilot in a modified mustang that loss a trim tab. The pilot was Bob Hannah and the owner of the aircraft was Bob Button.
Button describes what happened to his airplane in Saturday's heat race. Apparently, the left elevator trim tab came off the airplane at speed, causing the bird to abruptly pitch up, subjecting driver Hannah to over 10 G's of deceleration forces, and causing him to lose conciousness! When he came to, the raceplane had climbed to over 9,000 feet of altitude. A shaken Hannah regained control and brought Voodoo in for a safe landing. Suspected structural damage kept the sleek raceplane out of Sunday's championship competition.
http://www.warbird.com/voodoo.html
Button describes what happened to his airplane in Saturday's heat race. Apparently, the left elevator trim tab came off the airplane at speed, causing the bird to abruptly pitch up, subjecting driver Hannah to over 10 G's of deceleration forces, and causing him to lose conciousness! When he came to, the raceplane had climbed to over 9,000 feet of altitude. A shaken Hannah regained control and brought Voodoo in for a safe landing. Suspected structural damage kept the sleek raceplane out of Sunday's championship competition.
http://www.warbird.com/voodoo.html
GT182
Charter Member
Thanks for that link TJ. 10Gs will knock you out but won't kill you..... unless you're at low altitude.
My thinking is the same as OBIO's. 22G is more than the body can stand, and Leeward was dead at the controls. My Air Force friend didn't say it but you could tell he was thinking the same thing. I'm going to email an ex Air Force F-4 pilot friend of mine and I'll be asking him the same questions about pulling 22Gs. I'll let you know what he says.
My thinking is the same as OBIO's. 22G is more than the body can stand, and Leeward was dead at the controls. My Air Force friend didn't say it but you could tell he was thinking the same thing. I'm going to email an ex Air Force F-4 pilot friend of mine and I'll be asking him the same questions about pulling 22Gs. I'll let you know what he says.
I saw a post somewhere or other that said the on-board telemetry system was sending real-time data down to the ground during the race and it recorded 22.6G at the instant of pitch up. Now that probably wasn't sustained for very long but it could have been long enough to knock him out and break things.
Sundog
SOH-CM-2025
Yeah, when I saw that video when it get's to the slow motion part, it looks like you could see the entire tail rotating in torsion. I don't know if that was something breaking, or if it was flutter that induced something to break in the tail, but it looks like the tail was actually slightly bent after that. I know all of the people who work on these planes are quite smart, but I wonder if they didn't beef it up enough after removing the standard radiator configuration. I say that, because removing it makes the cross section shallower and the loads in that area higher as there is less leverage from the neutral plane to resist the bending moment. I know we won't possibly know until we see the NTSB report, if they have enough info to figure it out. I hope they can, just to make air racing that much safer in the future.
The video of the racing is amazing. It's such a shame the tragedy it turned into.
The video of the racing is amazing. It's such a shame the tragedy it turned into.
Smashing Time
Charter Member 2014
Yes I saw the same thing. There is quite a bit of distortion in the whole tail assembly looking at it head on and it appears the left horz. stabilizer is tweaked as it comes into view from under the wings. Leeward is not visible before the full pitch up.