Deadly mid-air collision at the Wings over Dallas airshow - B-17 "Texas Raider" lost

 

Screen shots of the mid-air at the Wings over Dallas airshow involving the B-17 "Texas Raider" (44-83872) and P-63 "TEST" (42-68941), both of the Commemorative Air Force. Unfortunately the B17 was in the Kingcobra's blind spot under its nose and appears to hit the B17 around the waist gunner's position severing the tail off. 

" ..Just got back home from Dallas and the Wings Over Dallas put on by the CAF. It is their largest show. It was shut down due to one of their B-17s colliding with a P-63 King Cobra at the south end of the airport just before the runway area. The information as to how many people on board the B-17 has not been released nor has their status. The crash occurred during their flying routine with several B-17s, some B-25s, some P-51s, a B-24 and a P-63. At first, it was thought to be some pyro technics going off at the wrong time, but when the fire went out of control for the two airport firetrucks to contain, most people realized it was something else. The airshow was shut down and all spectators were ordered to leave the airport. When I left there were about 40 different first responder vehicles at the scene, along with a Med-Vac helicopter and a few news helicopters. The explanation as to what happened has not been released, but the bombers were lining up to portray a bomber sweep with fighter aircraft flying cover that would pass at a low level parallel to one of the runways running north and south where the air show crowd was gathered. It happened as the group was turning to approach the runway from the south..." georgeusa on BM

"... the P-63 banked pointing his belly at the B-17 ..[and].. he completely lost situational awareness doing this. He could no longer see the B-17. The P-63 already has terrible blind spots. An aircraft overtaking a slower aircraft is responsible to keep view of that aircraft. This was totally preventable, from the planning, controlling, and the flying. And yes, I trained and I am qualified in Human Factors facilitation in military aviation. There are far too many warbird owners who should not be in the cockpit. The aviation safety net is supposed to prevent these types of accidents..." scooby on BM

 

Vulcan XM 665 overshoots runway on 'live' taxi run

 

 ...currently all over social media -  Vulcan XM 665 overshot the runway on a 'live' taxi run following an air-speed indicator fault according to the official XM 665 FB page. XM655 was the third to last Vulcan produced and delivered to 9 Squadron at RAF Cottesmore in November 1964. One of only three 'taxiable' Vulcans, she is based at Wellesbourne near Warwick.

Photo credit; Dave Coton

From XM 665's FB page;

" ..As many of you will have already seen, XM655 suffered a runway excursion earlier today during our trial run for the event which was planned for Sunday 18th. That event has been cancelled, all ticket holders have been informed by email and full refunds have been processed via Eventbrite. As far as we can see, the aircraft is largely undamaged, but in addition to the ongoing recovery work, we also have a lot of inspection work to carry out before we can consider any further live activity.

In an attempt to reduce uninformed speculation, we will explain what happened. After satisfactorily completing low speed steering and braking tests on runway 05/23, the aircraft was taken onto runway 18/36 for a trial high speed run. Due to a malfunction of a piece of equipment in the cockpit, the aircraft remained at full power for approximately two seconds longer than intended. This resulted in excessive speed and less distance in which to stop, and the aircraft passed beyond the end of the runway on to the agricultural area, stopping just before the airfield perimeter. The failed equipment was an air speed indicator which had been tested and found satisfactory six days ago, and which started working normally before the end of the run. The aircraft brakes worked properly but were unable to bring things to a halt within the reduced space available. We will provide further updates when XM655 has been recovered and we have had chance to assess any damage...."

Chaos at Kabul airport - Afghans climb onto taxying C-17

 

ویدیو - هجوم مردم به سوی یک هواپیمای نیروهای امریکایی در میدان هوایی کابل pic.twitter.com/7qdpHXi9Qu

— TOLOnews (@TOLOnews) August 16, 2021

No words can describe these scenespic.twitter.com/NTBX38n5wA

— Ali Folladwand | علی فولادوند (@drfolladwand) August 16, 2021

US Air Force personnel are seen dangling their legs out the back of a C-130 ....

"....the extraordinary moment two US Air Force personnel are seen dangling their legs out the back of a C-130 as it soars over the picturesque Welsh valleys..." The man and woman were spotted hanging their legs out the back of a C-130 Hercules as it soared at around 300mph just 250ft from the ground...

DC 10 firefighting tanker dropping retardant -aeronautical insanity (4)

Tanker 911 seen in action over a Californian fire a few days ago. '911' is a DC 10 firefighting tanker - a converted airliner carrying an external tank- used to drop fire retardant over high ridges in southern California. The DC 10 carries some 11,600 gallons per load. The company operating the DC 10s - 10 Tanker Air Carrier - claims the DC 10 can carry up to four times more retardant than any other firefighting aircraft. The 'tank' itself is positioned along the centre line, is V-shaped and gravity fed. 10 Tanker recently began an exclusive use contract with CalFire for the remainder of the 2016 fire season. Tanker 910 will be flying on the contract, and will be based near Sacramento at McClellan Air Park

Piper almost lands on sunbather or 'idiot sunbathing at the end of an active runway' -aeronautical insanity (3)

A man stretched out on the sand in northern Germany had a lucky escape when a light aircraft came in to land almost right on top of him. Video footage obtained by German tabloid newspaper Bild showed the small plane, a Piper PA-28-181 Archer II, coming in to land on the airstrip at Dune – a touristic islet off Heligoland. The pilot descended towards the airstrip, but got increasingly close to the white sands – and the man lying face down beneath him. "I was watching the planes come into land," said Rainer Schmidt, 52, who shot the video. "I had seen five planes land before this one came in. I instantly realised that this one was coming in to land far too low. "The others were at least six metres high. It was so close to the man on the beach. The man was very lucky."

Landung auf dem Rotem Platz - Cessna to Red Square, the notorious flight of Mathias Rust

German Mathias Rust made headlines in May 1987 as a 19-year-old when he flew a Cessna 172 all the way to Moscow via Iceland and Helsinki, a flight that appears on at least one listing of the Top Ten most remarkable flights in the history of aviation. Although he was shadowed for part of the trip by a Russia MiG 23, since the shootdown of the Korean B747 the Soviet air defences required high level authorisations to intercept civilian 'intruders' and the assumption must be that this incursion was not felt to warrant such measures - until it was too late. Rust was sentenced to four years in a Soviet labour camp and served 432 days before returning to Hamburg in 1988. Rust described his motives for undertaking the flight in a later interview with the Guardian newspaper;

".. I was 19 and very political. I was interested in relations between East and West, particularly the Reykjavik meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan. I realised that the aircraft was the key to peace. I could use it to build an imaginary bridge between East and West. I didn't tell anybody about my plan because I was convinced my family or friends would stop me. I didn't think much about what would happen afterwards. My main focus was on my mission to get there and land. I believed that something would work out..."

" For Rust, the flight was going flawlessly. He had no problem identifying the landmarks he had chosen as waypoints, and he was confident that his goal was within reach. “I had a sense of peace,” he says. “Everything was calm and in order.” He passed the outermost belt of Moscow’s vaunted “Ring of Steel,” an elaborate network of anti-aircraft defenses that since the 1950s had been built up as a response to the threat of U.S. bombers. The rings of missile placements circled the city at distances of about 10, 25, and 45 nautical miles, but were not designed to fend off a single, slow-flying Cessna. At just after 6 p.m., Rust reached the outskirts of Moscow. The city’s airspace was restricted, with all overflights—both military and civilian—prohibited. At about this time, Soviet investigators would later tell Rust, radar controllers realized something was terribly wrong, but it was too late for them to act..."   (Tom Lecompte - The notorious flight of Mathias Rust)

“At first, I thought maybe I should land inside the Kremlin wall, but then I realized that although there was plenty of space, I wasn’t sure what the KGB might do with me,” he remembers. “If I landed inside the wall, only a few people would see me, and they could just take me away and deny the whole thing. But if I landed in the square, plenty of people would see me, and the KGB couldn’t just arrest me and lie about it. So it was for my own security that I dropped that idea.”.

Rust flew a few cicuits around  Red Square before putting down on a wide bridge.

"..As he circled, Rust noticed that between the Kremlin wall and the Hotel Russia, a bridge with a road crossed the Moscow River and led into Red Square. The bridge was about six lanes wide and traffic was light. The only obstacles were wires strung over each end of the bridge and at its middle. Rust figured there was enough space to come in over the first set of wires, drop down, land, and then taxi under the other wires and into the square. Rust came in steeply, with full flaps, his engine idling. As planned, he came in over the first set of wires, dropped down, and flared for landing. As he rolled out under the middle set of wires, Rust noticed an old Volga automobile in front of him. “I moved to the left to pass him,” Rust says, “and as I did I looked and saw this old man with this look on his face like he could not believe what he was seeing. I just hoped he wouldn’t panic and lose control of the car and hit me.”  (Tom Lecompte - The notorious flight of Mathias Rust)

Rust in his red flying overalls handed out autographs and chatted to passers-by in Red Square - before being arrested !

Der Kreml-Flug von Mathias Rust sorgte weltweit für Schlagzeilen   - Mathias Rust's Kremlin flight  resulted in headlines worldwide (screen grab from NDR Fernsehen Tageschau of 29 May 1987)

http://www.ndr.de/land_leute/norddeutsche_geschichte/rustchronologie100.html

Rust returned to Hamburg the following summer having been pardoned by the Russians and released on 3 August 1988, a benevolent action hailed by the then West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Rust's aircraft had been flown back to Germany as early as October 1987 having been bought by a businessman for DM160,000. Cessna D-ECJB is currently on display at the Deutches Technik Museum in Berlin. (photo credit Skyhawk)

The best account of Rust's flight that I have read was written by Tom Lecompte and published on the Air & Space Smithsonian web site

Disclaimer - images used on this private non-commercial blog are reproduced here solely for the purposes of depicting an historic event, the incursion of Mathias Rust's airplane into Soviet restricted airspace and his landing in Red Square, and as such may fall into the category of fair-use under copyright law. If such is deemed necessary, they can be removed by simple request.

A hundred feet over Hell by Jim Hooper - Recommended Aviation books (1)

A military adaptation of a 1950s design that first saw service during the Korean War, the Cessna Bird Dog was already rather long in the tooth by the time of the Vietnam war. However in the Forward Air Control role the Bird Dog managed to get into far more scrapes than many other far more glamorous combat machines. Although it was a flimsy parasol-winged light aircraft barely capable of 100 mph, the Bird Dog over Vietnam spent most of its time in the early years of the conflict in the air stooging around over the jungle, spotting and sighting within range of every enemy weapon on the battlefield. Author Jim Hooper's brother flew one and this is his story and that of his unit, the 220th Reconnaissance Airplane Company, the 'Catkillers'. It is the tale of a handful of young pilots who put their lives on the line virtually every time they got airborne. They operated over the northern-most part of South Vietnam, along the so-called DMZ or demilitarized zone, either alone or with a second crewman, often, amazingly enough, venturing into North Vietnam searching out targets and directing artillery or air strikes against them. The only Army Bird Dog company to bear the Marine designation of Tactical Air Coordinator (Airborne), they supported both Army and Marine infantry, often spelling survival for embattled American or Vietnamese troops. They went to war the hard way, with nothing more than 217 hp, a radio and a map. With the exception of a handgun and a M16, they were unarmed. But as the Vietcong learned, once the Catkillers had located their target and marked it with their smoke rockets, they could bring a formidable arsenal to bear. From rolling artillery barrages to successive flights of Phantoms or Skyhawks, all the FAC had to say was "Hit my smoke," and a carpet of destruction would descend upon enemy troops, sometimes within tens of metres of friendly positions.
A handful of aviation memoirs from the Vietnam War truly stand out - 'Thud Ridge' and 'Chickenhawk' to name just two. Jim Hooper’s 'history' of the 220th Reconnaissance Airplane Company will become another classic, packed as it is with accounts of rare heroism and thrilling flying action. In these days of unmanned drones, it almost beggars belief that the Catkiller FACs flew low and slow in some of the most heavily defended airspace in the history of aerial warfare. 'A Hundred Feet Over Hell' is a must read for all with an interest in military aviation.