Reno Air Show Crash

"Mass casualties" were reported at an air show after a plane crashed Friday into the box seat area in front of a grandstand at the National Championship Air Races and Air Show in Reno, Nevada.

The pilot, identified as Jimmy Leeward, a real estate developer from Ocala, Florida, was likely killed in the crash, the show said in a statement. He was flying a P-51 Mustang.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/16/nevada.plane.crash/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

15 fatalities currently reported.

Link to Reno PD/ FD scanner:

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?action=wp&feedId=7364

60+ injuries

I was listening to that for a bit. It sounds really bad.

Fatality reports have been revised - 3 dead but a large number of critically and seriously injured.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AIR_SHOW_CRASH?SITE=7219&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-09-16-21-13-11

Jimmy Leeward in the Galloping Ghost P-51

I understand vintage racing and getting these old war birds out and stretching their wings, but fences can stop race cars, out of control planes are much more dangerous IMO.

Not to mention we lost another WWII plane.

Link to video of aftermath - beware at about 39:00

Also video of crash: Video of crash

Very bad juju. Me sad.

The cbs video of the crash was preceded by an ad for boneless chicken wings. Wow.

"Wingstop boneless bargain days"

BoostedBrandon wrote: Not to mention we lost another WWII plane.

There wasn't a lot of WWII left in it. The engine's output is doubled, the radiator's been moved up into the body, the cockpit is cut down and the wings are shortened as well. All to provide more speed and less control surface. Looks like he may have experienced a control surface failure which, given the cut-down nature of the plane, made it almost impossible to correct. This guy was as good as a pilot gets, too.

Berkley the plane. We lost a good pilot and good people on the ground.

The morning news showed that the elevator trim tab was missing. It was supposed that the sudden loss of the tab cause the plane to suddenly gain altitude creating higher g-forces than the pilot could withstand causing a blackout. The pilot was 74 years old.

As you can see, the trim tab is missing. The same thing happened to Bob Hanna (former motoX racer) a few years ago. When it happened to him, the plane violently pitched up, at around 500 mph, blacking him out (probably 8 plus g's) and pushing him into the foot well. He recovered and landed.

As you can see in the final decent, the pilot appears to be pushed down, likely unconscious. The tail gear being down is likely the result of the high g's.

The crazy part is that there was no fire after the crash. The plane would likely have carried the minimum fuel needed (to keep weight down) but there are reports of avgas being sprayed around the crash scene. One thing that might of helped is that the plane had a boil off radiator which was likely located behind the pilot. The radiator sits in a bath of water, perhaps the water shot forward and killed any flame in the engine.

My sister was there and knew Jimmy casually. She was on the far end of the runway at the time, so fortunately see did not have to witness the actual crass. I was there a few years ago when Miss Ashely II broke up in flight right in front of me, not something you really want to experience.

Some indication that there may have been more at play then just the trim tab. Skin deformation like that is not good, indicates that the fuselage structure is bending or twisting. At least an indication of the amount of force the tail was dealing with.

So do you think he was conscious or unconscious when he went down?

aircooled wrote: .... likely unconscious.

witnesses reported a change in trajectory while it was plumetting.

if it gives people comfort to say one way or the other, I say leave it in Schroedeger's hands... -_-

That's why I asked, they said it jerked at the last second.

Joshua wrote: So do you think he was conscious or unconscious when he went down?

It's hard to say because g-force loss of consciousness takes a bit more time than what elapsed in this accident.

I watched a video last (since deleted from YouTube) that filmed the plane from the moment it broke out of the race pattern and started to climb out. At the top of its' climb, the plane stopped, flopped and fell while still under power. Even then, it seemed the pilot still had some control as the plane veered slightly away from its' path and impacted the tarmac further away from the grandstands than was likely. Tragically, where it hit was still a spectator area, but with far fewer people.

The video I watched was a good quality hi-def piece and the sequence showing the initial problem to the crash portion wasn't longer than three seconds. I also have a strong feeling it was pulled at the request/demand of investigators because it contains some valuable information.

The whole thing is in the hands of the NTSB now.............

I wonder if this will be the end of the event. I would not be surprised if it was. I don't necessarily think that it should be, but I don't think that the country will accept entertainment being that dangerous anymore, just like group b rally, 1970s formula one racing, etc.

More confirmed fatalities......

http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/Update_130021093.html

Godspeed to the victims, their families and friends.

Thanks for publishing the photos, aircooled. Gives a lot of insight into what happened. I worked all day so I didn't get to see any of the new developments in the story. Seeing the aircraft plummeting straight down with no pilot apparent in the cockpit is chilling. I compared the pic to the one fasted58 posted. It looks to me like we should be able to see the pilot from the angle in your pic were he conscious.

The freaky part is that with GLOC, you can come out of it fairly quickly when the g load goes down, but you have greatly reduced motor control for a few seconds. Hopefully he never came out of it.

I found some info on the Bob Hanna incident in 1998:

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.

It's a bit scary that its the same tab. Maybe some sort of prop wash artifact.

So just for us non-aviation folk, we can guess that the trim tab is the rear section of the tail wing. Now what I don't understand is that the disappearance of such would cause a sudden upward climb. In my logic, a rear wing should be fairly neutral in terms of lift, as I imagine the forward wings would handle that. Shouldn't a failure of such a small piece; in my non-aviating mind, that looks extremely insignificant, only disturb a small amount of elevation control, not causing a catastrophic event?

Again, I am approaching this from a very simple view, and only wish to have my knowledge expanded, so be gentle.

Trim tabs work in the opposite way the tail works. It moves up to shove the elevator down and vise versa. Its like power steering for planes.

As I understand it, race pilots keep their planes trimmed up, so if they loose consciousness, the plane climbs, possibly giving them time to recover and react. They must maintain forward pressure on the stick just to stay at a level attitude.

When the tap separated the elevator, the force was now uncontrollable (remember, trimmed up, forward stick). Thus a climb, chandelle and the dive toward the ground.