I've sat in on a few briefings and as MudEagle says, it is  well thought out, planned and briefed. Hard to comment on what actually happened without knowing what actually led to this accident.

I hear you 100%.  But I just can't seem to wrap my head around what I'm seeing in the videos.

I think this video does a good job of informed speculation given the publicly available information at the time:

Terrible.  

Thank you

Next though you know someone will be postulating about melting canopies

Same.  


I have sat in on a couple.  The latest was the show at Granite Falls.  There is a lot of thought put into it.  

Same when I sat in at the Arsenal Of Democracy flight and some of the warbird tours.  


They arent a willy nilly clusterfuck.

A ton of stuff to parse out here. Retired fighter guy and current warbird pilot here, too.

No, the P-63 pilot was not former military.  He was, however, a long-time warbird pilot who has been FAST qualified for years. The FAA requires everyone flying warbirds inside waivered airspace (that FAA Order 8900 that I've posted about in this thread) at an airshow has to be formation qualified.  FAST, just like the military, has a syllabus to check pilots out as a wingman, and separate syllabus to check pilots out as flight leads. These syllabi look very similar to undergraduate training wingman and lead qual courses. NATA (North American Trainer Association) is the primary sanctioning body for the warbird fighters and most of the US-trainers (T-6, T-28, etc). The training materials and syllabus are available for you to check out on the internet if you desire, I think you'll see a lot of similarities to the training military pilots get. Guys with FAST quals are perfectly aware of the potential dangers, dangerous positions, dangerous maneuvers, and all of the "musts" like keeping sight, keeping wingtip clearance, keeping nose-to-tail clearance, etc.  These are not newbies playing adult games without training or experience.

That being said, the P-63 and the B-17 were not "in formation" together.

In these shows, the bomber flight is a separate flight from the fighters.  They are operating in two, separate, deconflicted circuits along the show line: either altitude deconfliction, or lateral deconfliction with a be-no line. It appears that this show was altitude deconflicted, so generally that's going to mean the bombers are at or below 500' (min alt 250'), and the fighters are up at 1000'. They're both flying the same basic general ground track entering and exiting the show line, but at very different speeds and at different lateral spacings on the downwind leg.

When using this deconfliction plan, the airboss reserves the right to allow the fighters to descend into the bomber airspace block. This is usually when the bombers have completed their passes, and because they're slow, it takes them much longer to either make it around the pattern for the next pass, or perform the dogbone course reversal to return back for an opposite-direction pass. This allows the fighters to temporarily get lower and closer to the show line when there is a lull in the activity for the spectators.

Based on the reports I'm hearing today (again, unconfirmed and secondhand), the air boss cleared the fighters down into the bomber altitude block down the show line just before the bombers entered the show line in their block....but seemingly the timing of that call by the airboss was errant and given when the P-63 was too close to the lead bomber, the B-17. Because the P-63 was the only fighter behind the B-17, reports say that he cleared the P-63 to "overtake" the 17 in the low altitude block.

Don't get me wrong: it is everyone's responsibility to clear their flight path, and the P-63 pilot was obviously responsible for that, too. But, if the airboss clears the fighters down into the bomber altitude block, there's an implication that goes with that call that the bombers aren't currently occupying that block. Thus, the fighters aren't expecting to see anyone there, and have their attention at avoiding the rocks and keeping their fellow formation members in sight.  Right now we have no idea what altitude the B-17 and P-63 were at when the collision occurred, so we can't even say if it was in the low block or the high block.

That being said, the air boss has a reasonable expectation that guys in the circuit are doing their part to clear their flight path and keep their own formation members in sight. I'm certain that, if this is indeed what occurred, he had a reasonable expectation that the P-63 pilot had the lead bomber in sight...which we can assume based on all the evidence we currently have, he did not.

So, lots of potential swiss-cheese compound errors here, and too little information to place blame anywhere yet.

Not a clusterfuck.  Two separate altitude-deconflicted/vertically separated flights, which at the moment the videos start, the fighters were apparently cleared down into the lower altitude block of the bombers.

They're not all "converging toward a narrow path".

The fighters are in a trail formation flying the lateral path down the showline at 1000'.

The bombers are in a separate trail formation flying the lateral path down the showline below 500'.

When the bombers aren't occupying that physical location and altitude, the air boss can clear the fighters into the lower bomber block temporarily.

I'm about an hour and 20 away..., I decided it's worth it even if I can contribute a little to helping maintain the memories and machines from WW2. Finding that info about my pap has really motivated me to contribute in some way.

The names are out this morning.

https://www.toratoratora.com/pilots-bio/craig-hutain

Thank you for taking the time to explain that.

If they are, it won't be because of accidents or safety.

It will be because the insurance underwriters will no longer want to accept the risk.

Yes, B-17 B-24, and B-25 in trail formation.  The B-29 was supposed to be in there, too, but in the videos you can see Fifi holding short waiting to take off.

Right on.  Thank you for coming out and supporting, and glad you enjoyed the experience.

You're literally the reason we do it.

Yes, we do know.  Look at the flight track images I posted.  For this pass all the planes were in the low block vs 1300-1500 for the fighters in previous passes.


This is the last data before the crash.

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100% agree.

You have to picture that the P-63 pilot was in a turn, looking left to the inside of the turn at the other fighters whom he is following, as well as avoiding overbanking and hitting the ground in the turn.

He's not expecting to see the B-17 at his altitude, so he's not "belly checking" to see if there's anyone down below him.

He probably had zero idea the 17 was even there, even at impact.

I highly doubt that, the P-63  pilot was banking and if it was intentional he would have been going straight at the B-17.

"Going straight at the B-17" *is* a turn at that aspect angle.

He was literally flying a pure-pursuit curve as if he were intentionally trying to hit the 17. In fact, if he *were* trying to hit the other airplane, it would have been incredibly difficult to hit it center of mass like he did.

But, no, it was not intentional.

Just a series of very unfortunate factors unintentionally occurring at the same place at the same time.

My condolences to everyone here that knew the pilots that were lost



Did you happen to fly either Fifi or Diamond Lil up to Kentucky this past September?

Yes, I was flying the B-29 at Lexington.

This is one of the only pics I took there, in the morning before the ride flights.
Attached File

Spent a few trips in that aircraft. Its home base is in Mesa Az so I would go out to see her weekly. They used to have a HE111 out there.
She crashed will all hands as well.
Sad day for us CAF guys. The lives lost, the history of the aircraft. Horrible.

Attached File


I greatly enjoyed hearing and seeing you fly over the shop I work in

Excellent!

Thanks for the pic.

Always happy to make some noise for those who appreciate it.  On the ride flights we went out to the northeast and flew over the capitol building.

I said it earlier that this event is a unaffornate series of timing and position errors that all added up to the perfect storm. One poster said it best with the position of one aircraft being just a little too far behind and another being a little too far ahead but adding in what MudEagle said about the flight boss giving clearance for the fighters to start making their passes over the runway.

Watching the different angle videos where one of the angles you didn't even see the King Cobra hit until it had already went through the fuselage and then the other angle where he was banking and him not knowing that the B-17 was in his blind spot right until it wasn't.

Crawled through both when we had a hanger out there, losing the 111 and crew was tough.

The unfortunate truth is that the "Confederate" Air Force had a not-so-good safety record.  When you drill down into the root causes of many of the accidents, they were entirely preventable.

The modern history of the org, the last 20-25 years, has been a constant tightening of the training, maintenance, and operational requirements and procedures.  As the airplanes have become more and more rare and expensive, the safety record has improved dramatically.

Hank Coates and Jim Lasche both have military aviation backgrounds and have brought/implemented regulated safety programs to CAF operations.  The organization today hardly even resembles the organization that had the accidents decades ago.

Yup, 1000% correct. I was meaning that the way way he was flying he would have to know where the B-17 was and based off one video that shows him banking and the B-17 being in his blind spot the whole time during the turn is why I say no way was this intentional.

Wow.

I operated primarily in the CAS environment, and did FAC-A stuff too, so altitude deconfliction is YUGE when operating a stack (or deconflicting fires).  Not surprising that they set blocks for aircraft of differing performance parameters.

I am loosely aware of the FAST qualification, as I have buddies that do this type of stuff in warbirds...but I have never personally been involved on the civilian side.  My airshow 'performances' were either just flying jet(s) in for static display or performing VERY choreographed 'airpower' demos where we flew basically a box pattern and the pyrotechnics guys would call out what they were going to 'simulate' when we called 'in dry' on final so we could replicate the delivery or strafe run.

Thanks for the insight into what goes into the training and deconfliction on the civilian side.  Last time I personally witnessed an airshow accident was in 2000 at Willow Grove, PA, when an F-14 departed in an accelerated stall and neither dude got out.

It was horrific, as is this.  

I may not have personally known the crews involved, but may God have Mercy on them and welcome them into His Kingdom.  Hat's off to those of you who still fly these warbirds so the public can truly appreciate them doing what they were designed to do...but honestly, it's stuff like this that keeps me from pursuing flying warbirds as a hobby.  I'll stick to being a bus driver, enjoying my family and dogs, and shooting in my off time.

Ever fly Diamond into MSN?

Aforementioned event with sharing the pattern with it in a 152, was in 2013.  I was still a student pilot and doing some pattern practice.  

In any case, I've seen Fifi fly over more times than I can count at various airshows and during Oshkosh in the last couple decades.

I was wondering why there were two distinct flight paths. In hindsight, I wish I would have brought my DSLR to work that day instead of just taking pictures with my phone. The quality would have been a little better

I used to visit her as well. In fact the first date with a girl at ASU that later became my wife was a tour of that aircraft. Sad day when it crashed as well. Good men were lost.

We usually fly two bomber rides per day, and split the "pilot flying" duties between the two guys up front. Each guy gets to choose where they go when it is their turn to fly.

I usually try to pick a route that will give the riders something interesting to look at, or a route that flies right down main street in the center of town to make noise and let people see us out there flying the flag.

Not Madison, but next door in Appleton numerous times.

I'm bummed I haven't gotten to go on a flight yet. Seems every time they come into one of the HSV airports I'm traveling for work or something else conflicts. I want to get on a B-17G so bad. I always found the prices very reasonable for the trips.

I think the P-63 pilot had the bomber in sight but lost it when he turned off to give way.  The bomber is on his right, and this is probably VFR.  Looks like the turn dropped altitude more than he thought which caused his plane to occupy the same space as the top fuselage of the bomber.

I still think he was making a faux gun run on the bomber for the crowd, and horrendously miscalculated.  There was no other reason for him to be there and approach the bomber like that.  There's no way he didn't see the bomber sometime before the collision unless he was texting.  Not on that approach and altitude.  A B-17 is not exactly an ultralight.

I've taken my sons to see FIFI in Mesa AZ..
Amazing people gave us detailed information while walking around FIFI..
Thank you guys for what y'all do..!!!

Thank you very much for your input MudEagle.

You really need to stop.

You really need to stop quoting people I have on ignore.

Sorry! please don't scoff; help me understand.  Not coining anything.  what would you call it?  high energy hit?  what would the NTSB call it?  But trying big werds.    The little plane hit the big big plane really hard and bounced off.  Better for you?   Kinetic transfer.   Kinetic transfer. Ffs

eta:  63 had how many more knots air speed?  it appeared to hit the core of the inner wing sections and deflect upwards,  there's vaporizing fuel in the air?  The bottom turret to top turret were struck by the 63.  the energy released was highly catastrophic in that the crew deck was fully involved (I'm wondering if debris entered the cockpit as well) and tail section was severed.

Understanding the calamity is a form of recovery I think, as someone else mentioned.

thoughts and prayers for the entire community.

   

 

Going up in a WWII bomber is on my bucket list, but I can just imagine trying to convince my wife that we should spend that much money for me to go on a half hour plane ride



And also this

Try being a low time guy looking for Model 12 coverage.

Looks like I'll be self insuring...

This 10000%

I did a B17 flight many years ago, and can only say the cost of the flight will be quickly forgotten once it starts.  If you get the chance and don't, it will be one of those lifetime regrets.

What does a ride normally cost?

Without being too rude, are you not reading any of the discussion in this thread?

No, the P-63 was not “making a gun run” on the B-17.

These are highly planned and scripted performances.

Do you know of many Airshows where US fighters pretend to shoot down US bombers?