I received this from a pilot buddy and thought it would interest several here.
The attached pics are at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/6774349...7627592884885/
If that doesn't work let me know a better way/site to post them at.
Art


----- Original Message -----

Thought you may be interested in seeing this. My senior partner is David Price Sr.
who raced in the Reno gold and silver classes in a P-51 for 6-7 years. He had two
P-51s, a hot modified racer with one seat, (he has since sold that as he does not
race due to age) and the second a two seater, basically stock exterior but with a hot
motor, that he still flies. He owned the company Supermarine (a aircraft fuel and
lease company) and currently owns American Airports which manages public airports
across the US and some Pacific Island. He also is the benefactor and owner of Museum
of Flying here in Santa Monica.
This version of what happened is probably what happened, mechanical failure,
tremendous & violent yaw causing death or unconsciousness immediately, and the crash.
Gary


From another friend that has known Jimmy and Erik for many years, below you can see
what he learned today, when he spoke to Erik, the crew chief of Jimmy Leeward's
flight crew




HI Dave;

My response was on my Iphone and a few mis spelling...pretty tough break..my guess
that is the end of the reno air races.....

Erik Hokuff who is Jimmys crew chief and I had a short chat yesterday , and he
confirmed the tail wheel was deployed from massive G load and tab effect as follows.

Similar event happened to Voodoo Mustang years ago...Bob Hannah was flying and was
put to sleep for a bit..woke up with head forward of control stick and hands by
feet...sat up and had several hundred feet to recover..

Everything changes when the angle of incidence is modified both tail plane and
wing....and probably didn't help that Jimmy was mid seventies regarding G-LOC....my
guess is he could well have snapped his neck on a 12 to 15G instantaneous pull like
that....you can see in the pic below that Jim is nowhere to be seen..my guess is he
was out cold for the whole event starting at trim tab separation...I believe his
mayday was from flutter response as he was passing Stu in the Rare Bear just prior to
tab departure.

Jeff

pic 1-3 moved to above link



On Sep 18, 2011, at 8:43 AM, DK Gorrell wrote:

....DkG


Subject: Two Questions
We have all seen the pictures of this tragedy at Reno, but I have two questions.

1. Would losing the trim tab on one side of the elevator really cause this type of
loss of control?

2. Why is the tail wheel extended in this photo, on a plane where everything is done
to reduce drag and increase speed?