CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[oz rb fan]

after all the good news on the local historic front yesterday......to wake up and learn the the RN historic flight DH Seavixen has performed a wheels up landing over night ...the crew are all ok and damage doent look too bad...thank god for drop tanks.
https://www.facebook.com/scott.dabinett ... cation=ufi

hopefully she can return to the air in the future.

[tor lives]

Bugger!!!!
Thank god for drop tanks indeed, (how many aircraft have they saved).
TOR

[Adam the Akrodude]

Ouch! Glad all on board OK.

[BradG]

...and another demonstration why old aircraft shouldn't be flying.

[Cap'n Wannabe]

...and another demonstration why old aircraft shouldn't be flying.

Really?

[BradG]

...and another demonstration why old aircraft shouldn't be flying.

Really?

Yeh, pretty much. Not sure how many aircraft need to be lost or damaged (very often with fatalities) before more people start agreeing with that position, but sadly, I don't think the anoraks care much, so long as they have aircraft flying to take pictures of. In the last decade, we've lost at least 1 Mustang a year, that's less than ideal attrition rate and that's just Mustangs.

[Cap'n Wannabe]

Out of interest, Brad....how many were lost to pilot error vs mechanical failure?

[tor lives]

Aircraft are meant to fly.
TOR

[BradG]

Of the Mustangs; 2 definitely, another 4 or 5 being 'loss of control' or 'undetermined', not sure what factors led to loss of control, could be pilot error or mechanical. What you're about to argue is that it's not the airframes themselves failing, it's the pilots, however, I would contend that the age of the aircraft leads to them being flown sparingly, thus pilots simply do not get enough experience on the type and therefore make errors and die. At least one of the machines lost was to a torque roll on a go-around, that's inexperience right there. Look at the Bf109G 'black 6', that's another example of an aircraft being seriously damaged due to pilot inexperience. Old, high performance aircraft and inexperienced pilots in the cockpit is just asking for more deaths.

Those are just in recent years too, if you go back 30 or more years, probably around half of losses were mechanical failure.

As I asked; just how many aircraft need to be lost before more people think that continuing to fly these things is not a great idea.

[VH-WAL]

fly the buggers!