Sad news out of Durango. Beautiful dual P-51D down on takeoff, two souls lost.

http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Dual-Mustang-Crash-Kills-Pilot-Instructor222298-1.html

Here's an article and video the Durango Herald did last year on this bird and its owner.

http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20 ... kes-flight

Condolences to all affected, and doubly sad for the loss of a beautiful aircraft.

crap

Sad deal.

Mike Schlarb was the instructor. I was lucky enough to get some instruction from him a few times. He was an accomplished pilot, a natural stick, and a great guy. He was also so careful, all I can think is that things in the Mustang must happen so fast that he could not react in time.

He will be sorely missed around Durango.

I thought I had deja vu when I read this. A 2-place P51 was lost off Galveston last October.

Durango Skywagon wrote:Mike Schlarb was the instructor. I was lucky enough to get some instruction from him a few times. He was an accomplished pilot, a natural stick, and a great guy. He was also so careful, all I can think is that things in the Mustang must happen so fast that he could not react in time.

He will be sorely missed around Durango.

Just finished the book "Unbroken". The B 24 they were in when it went into the Pacific went down cus of an engine failure and feathering the wrong engine. Did not go down due to enemy fire. I read the statistic once on the percentage of casualties that were from enemy fire in WW2. I forgot the amount but I remember how shocked I was at how many were from training and mechanical failure. Are these planes any safer now than when they were new.

Also I am a pretty slow guy both mentally and physically. I like the 182 cus it will fly real slow for a slow guy.

Tim

Slow is good Tim,

Charlie Bush, down in Fabens, Texas, had a P-51. Fabens is 4,000 MSL with a fairly short runway. He had to squirt water into the cylinders of that big engine, small wing airplane to get off with just him and a little fuel. It was built for speed, not safety.

Jim

If you were an aspiring aviator in World War II you most likely started your primary training in a 220/225hp 2-blade propellor Stearman where, among other things, you learned how to take off and land with zero forward visibilty.

For your advanced training you most likely flew the 600hp 2-blade propellor AT-6 (or SNJ) where, among other things, you learned about things like constant speed props, flaps, and retractable landing gear.

Once you completed your training and became an aviator you moved to the aircraft you'd fly in the war, perhaps the P-51 Mustang. Up to this point everything you'd flown was big and slow. Not so with the P-51 and its 1,700hp to 2,000hp (depending on installed engine), its 10 foot 4-blade propellor, relatively stubby wing and small tail surfaces. The P-51 was made to go fast, 450mph fast.

A huge gotcha with high horsepower single engine fighters of the day occurred if you poured the coals to them while at a relatively slow air speed. The engine instantly produces an enormous amount of horsepower and torque which the large 4-blade propellor can't react to quick enough. That torque has to go somewhere so its transferred to the fuselage which reacts by rolling on its longitudinal axis, referred to as a "torque roll".

Neither the rudder, nor ailerons, nor elevators have enough force to counter the torque roll so the pilot ends up with an accelerated stall/spin that is not recoverable.

I'm not saying this is what happened in this instance, but if I was speculating (and I guess I am) I'd say this is a high probability to what happened on takeoff.

I was sitting in a tree swing at my home airport a few months ago, enjoying the quiet, warm, windy day when our semi-resident P-51 came in for a landing. I should tell you that our paved strip is just 30' wide and none of the other P-51 drivers I know will land on anything less then 50'. Anyway, when it's windy we have a sinker at the north end of the runway. Here's the video (my iPhone didn't focus but you can still see what happens), I'll comment a bit after it:


As you can see, he didn't expect the sinker and bounced the landing, when he landed again he was at the edge of the runway and the right wheel went off into the dirt (about a 3" drop). I would imagine most of us might remember our training and pour the coals to it, get back in the air, and try the landing again. That technique would work fine in my Stearman, SQ-2, or C185 - but not in a P-51. Doing that would put it into a torque roll into the ground, destroying pilot and plane. He did a fantastic job riding it out, one wheel on the runway and one wheel in the dirt, plus encountering a taxiway halfway down (3" higher then the dirt). He back taxied to the tie down area, shut down, and sat in the cockpit for a full fifteen minutes until he quit shaking and regained his color. He made an outstanding save.

I guess my main interest in sharing this is to point out that some aircraft, by design, have significantly different flight characteristics then the "normal" aircraft we fly day to day. At one end it's a high performance warbird like the Mustang, at another end it's a high performance STOL aircraft like the SQ-2. Both can bite if their flight characteristics aren't understood and respected.

My condolences go out to the friends and family of the two pilots for the loss of their loved one, to the warbird community for the loss of an irreplaceable piece of history, and to all of us for the loss of some fellow pilots.

God Speed, Gone West.

i'm glad he kept the 51 straight with that speed

Anybody else find it curious that there was no fire?

Thanks for the post Phil.
Learned something new

Phil-

I totally agree with most of what you said... but you can go around in a Mustang... you just don't use full power to do it. In fact you don't need full power to go around, contrary to the FAA PTS you just need to add enough power to stop the sink, clean-up, then accelerate to climb out speed. The FAA and current training leads one to believe that you MUST go to full power to go around. A go around needs to be in your skill bag, there are times when you need to do it. Most of the fatal Mustang accidents in the last 10 years have been due to going around, cobbling full power and torque rolling as you described.

The problem is applying a procedure by rote memory that it can be extremely inappropriate for the airplane you are actually in. Fly the airplane you are in and if you need instruction, get it. I don't know what happened in this particular accident, but apparently the owner needed to log dual time before being allowed to go solo or take passengers. He had an Instructor in the back. A TF-51 is a fine dual control airplane.... a P-51D with dual controls is NOT. I cannot see how you could adequately instruct from the backseat of a P-51D with dual controls... begin able to see and react to what is going on is critical... and you cannot do that effectively from the back of a P-51D.

My nickel,
gunny

Update on the accident.

The Preliminary report is out and eyewitnesses say that after takeoff the airplane rolled left into a 90 degree bank, the nose pitched up slightly and then the airplane connoted to inverted, the nose pitched down approximately 45 degrees and impacted the terrain.

Sounds very much like a stall, followed by a torque roll until terrain impact. Very sad.

gunny

Gunny put the fine points in print... which I have been waiting for.
Having enough money to get to the stick in a P51 is rare I suppose.
Getting instruction should be the cheapest part of all of flying. What does a guy get? $50.... $100 maybe.
When I flew a student in a turbine (walter) powered Lance air 4..... it would torque right around if you spun it up on go around.
So why the F would you do that?
Even a super cub... or any old plane with a bigger engine has too much power most days. The old manual for a super cub... said if you learned in a Luscombe.... just use partial throttle till you get used to it.
It was found in the chapter titled: common sense.