Fri Nov 04, 2011 11:27 am
IMHO the answer is balance, like almost anything else in the universe. We do need to accept responsibility for our actions. But "we" equally includes Jimmy Leeward, RARA, each and every one of the spectators, the mechanic who built the airplane, the race safety inspector who let him take off with a trim tab not good enough for 500 MPH (if that is indeed one of the root causes), etc.
Some of these arguments center on one side taking responsibility or another. Why does that have to be?
It is reasonable to assume that an air race fan has to understand that the racers are experimental to the bone, things do happen, and even an experienced pilot can indeed lose control. It is reasonable to assume the spectators must understand that sitting less than three seconds away from an experimental racing airplane going that fast greatly increases their risk of getting hurt. it is also reasonable to assume a spectator did not go to the race thinking he would be killed. But that spectator cannot escape the fact they willingly went to be up close and personal with something involving that much kinetic energy.
It is likewise equally reasonable to ask that RARA take responsibility for having taken reasonable precautions. Being negligent by turning the other cheek at some glaring safety problem is bad faith. But by the nature of air racing there are limits as to what they can do regardless of how hard they try. The crucial point here is that IMHO a freak accident like this could happen if RARA put the spectators half a mile away, or inside the course, or moved the grandstands over to the other side of the field.
About the only thing that RARA might have done differently is had stricter safety requirements on the aircraft. If all these rumors are true about the trim tab and/or flutter of the tab being the central point of this tragedy, and if it is true that the trim tab problem was known in advance because of Hanna's previous incident, then RARA as the governing body had an opportunity to do something that might have prevented this tragedy.
I can only speak for the Formula One racing at Reno, because that's the only type of Reno racing I did. But there were very clear safety requirements. When I had a new composite wing built for the airplane, I had to go out and put 6G on a recording G meter in front of the race safety committee. I had to dive test the airplane to 10% over Vne, again in full view of the committee. They had the authority to tell me to go do it again if it "didn't look fast enough" to them. (This was very memorable to me now, even 25 years later, because there was no room in the cockpit for a parachute) We had to demonstrate several low altitude aileron rolls, stopping inverted and rolling out the other way to simulate a wake turbulence upset. My good friend Roger Sturgess, a quirky Englishman who was a graduate of the old school engineering apprenticeship system at DeHavilland aircraft (think David Copperfield with a slide rule) had absolute authority to inspect, poke, pull, bend and shake anything in the airplane, and a simple shake of his head for any reason meant I would not be flying my aircraft in front of the spectators. At least three others (a Northrop aero engineer Stu Luce, another English aero engineer named Bill Rogers, and Dean Carrier an old B-17 driver ) could also stop me from flying at any time.
I wonder if the unlimited racers had or have that level of safety oversight. I knew a couple of UL racers, and it would be very difficult for some engineer to tell them they couldn't race that year because something on the airplane didn't meet the engineer's opinion of adequate safety. You don't get to be a multi-millionaire by being compliant with anyone else's rules... you get that way by breaking everyone else's rules, working around the rules, or sabotaging/destroying/sandbagging the people who are trying to regulate you and keep you from becoming a millionaire. So imagine some aero engineer with his pocket protector and little round glasses walking up to Alan Preston (successful businessman, 3 tours Viet Nam special forces, testosterone meter pegged 24/7) and saying that Alan couldn't fly that day because the engineer wanted more beef on the trim tab control horn.
F-1 had a history of updating and strengthening their safety requirements after any incident. Roger Sturgess warned the group that the clipped metal race propellers were going to break at 4000 RPM. Sure enough, a couple of them did. One incident was caught on film, a Cassutt racer glided back safely with the engine hanging two feet under the airplane by the safety cable. So they changed the rules to ban metal props. Guess what... no more engines have been torn off the mounts in F-1.
So if there had been an incident where a trim tab broke and put 9G on an airplane, and only luck sent the airplane up instead of down... you can bet your ass that the F-1 organization would have instituted some safety parameters for the trim tab.
Now all that (and more not mentioned) was for the little F-1 airplanes that were going half the speed of the unlimiteds, with 1/10 of the weight. That's many many times less "destructive force" than an unlimited Mustang.
So there is at least one scenario where RARA, or whatever safety inspection team they use, could have prevented this tragedy, and the racers' egos, or some other factor, was allowed to prevail and they just let the Mustangs fly with a known safety issue. That is something that the average spectator didn't bargain for.
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