Terriable P-51 crash at Reno air race earlier today.

[Emil]

Crashed into some of the grandstands. http://youtu.be/rCNePeKn3Tg

[soonercruiser]

74 year old flying a 68 year old prop driven aircraft. :chargrined:

A recipe for an eventual disaster.
Even I know when to quit before I hurt someone.
Prayers for the whole mess!

[nighttrain12]

Well, he must have been a great pilot to have lasted that long in life!

[Veritas]

74 year old flying a 68 year old prop driven aircraft. :chargrined:

A recipe for an eventual disaster.
Even I know when to quit before I hurt someone.
Prayers for the whole mess!
James Leeward held a second class medical certificate. He held commercial, single engine land and sea, multi-engine land, instrument airplane, rotorcraft, and glider rankings.

He held type ratings in B-17s, B-25s, B-26s, DC-3s, DC-4s and a host of other aircraft. To get a type rating you have to undergo a bunch of training and then demonstrate competency to an FAA examiner.

Most significantly, he held an "all makes/models certificate" for single and multi-engine piston aircraft. This is extraordinarily difficult to get; there are probably more active NFL quarterbacks than pilots that have this rating.

Photo evidence shows that a trim tab or something similar departed the left elevator. At 500mph this is going to be real bad regardless of the pilot. Airplane controls are delicately balanced, so much so that when you get an airplane repainted, even a slow Cessna has to be fine tuned so that the weight of the paint doesn't screw things up.

If you were once a pilot you'll know that as a piston a/c gains speed you typically have to trim down pretty aggressively to maintain level flight without constant forward pressure on the stick/yoke. So at 500mph the down-trim would have been very heavy. Now remove that at once and you're looking at an aggressive nose up that is likely to lead to G-LOC real quick.

[OutlandTrophy]

http://www.ksl.com/emedia/apimage/00986ffa-6f00-4d1d-bdbb-27b4a927fe90.jpg

http://www.ksl.com/emedia/apimage/96254e80-3f4b-447f-98f5-3e82491e8a7f.jpg

Photos are online now.

The first shows clearly the trim tab missing, and the second shows the pilot missing from view when diving in. He was most likely passed out from the G's. About 10 years ago this happened to motocross legend Bob Hannah in Voodoo Chile and he blanked out, but survived somehow. I think he quit air racing after his event. Here is a picture of his airplane after it took him on a ride to 9,000' while he was blacked out, but he had a little altitude to work with when he came to. Of course this is speculation which others encourage not to do here, but it seems like this is the cause to me. Looks exactly the same as Hurricane Hannah's wild ride only with a horrible outcome.

Edit... Here is a description from Voodoo's owner regarding the incident with the trim tab at Reno 98.

"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/voodoo3.jpg