On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:36:57 -0500, Richard
wrote:


From Coleen
Sport Class Race 8 Crew

*Subject: : Galloping Ghost crash
*
Ok... here's the skinny on the accident.... A P-51 normally has two trim
tabs.. one on each elevator... this one had one and other one was fixed
in place.. He was warned about the forces being put on that one tab. It
failed.. He had at least a 10G load when the plane pitched up from the
loss of the trim tab and he went "nighty night" and probably never woke
up.

Here's the “theory” of the crash from experienced racers.
*In 1989 this type of thing happened to another pilot but he lived to
tell the story*. *When flying a P-51 at 450+mph you need to have full
nose down trim to keep the plane level.* The *elevator trim tab broke
off and the aircraft im ediately went in to a 10G climb, confirmed by
the G-meter.

*The *pilot came to, from the sudden blackout and realized he had
slipped through the shoulder harness and was looking at the floor of the
airplane*. He was able to reach the throttle and pull it back to slow
down and was able to recover and land.

*Photo one is the airplane taxiing, note the pilots head in the canopy*.

*Fast forward to 2011 Photo two is typical oil canning as a result of
the tremendous torque these engines put out at high power*.

*Photo three* is a *photo of GG upside down with a missing elevator trim
tab. Note all you see is the back of the pilots head indicating he is
being forced down in the cockpit*.

*Photo four* is a *view of the left side nose down with the tail wheel
extended and no view of the pilot*. The *tail wheel is held up by
hydraulics only with no mechanical uplock, thus indicating a high
G-force causing it to extend*.

*Photos five and six* are *from the left side prior to impact*, note *no
view of the pilot *and the *tail wheel extended*.

*Photo seven is the debris just after the crash*. *To the right of
center above the crowd it appears to be the wing with the leading edge down.

*A friend of mine was supposed to be there but didn't go and he has
several friends in the hospital right now. The*people were mostly hit by
chunks of concrete, asphalt and aircraft debris*. They were *also hurt
by the trampling of people getting out of the way*.


I give. I've flown

Ercoupe
Tri-Pacer
J-3
Luscombe
Stinson 108
150 Aerobat
152
172
182
207
Grumman Tiger
Aztec
Queen Air
King Air
Beech- 18
DC-3

Lived on three airports.
Soloed on 16th birthday.
VIP pass for CAF
And have heard countless flying stories from;

WW-l
Barnstorming
Small home built race pilots
WW-ll
Korea
Nam
Crop dusting
Fire fighting
Smuggler Pilots

We use to modify aircraft including

Painting
crash repair
long range
high loads
gear conversions
Speed
Navigation
Camera pods

& I've use to grind cranks for a FAA repair station.

Also have flown in bad weather, fogged in, running on fumes and lost
(Dad was cheap and used road maps or just water tower names.),
aerobatics (day & night), flown under power lines, engine failure, and
even snuck-in to an international airport at night without radio,
instrument panel lights, or navigation lights (electrical failure and
runway light down at our airport (typical).).


So, most if not all planes have a metal tab on each control surface
that is bent so that the controls are neutral in flight. Some aircraft
have adjustable trim controls in the cockpit which are adjusted for
load, prop settings, RPM, navigation, weather, ect. The most I've ever
seen is in a Staggerwing Beech. The trim is used mainly to get the
plane to fly straight without any input from the controls, because all
airplanes pull to some direction due to imperfections in construction
or modifications down to as simple as new antennas to unlimited race
plane mods.

I tryed to back out of this conversation cause I just don't know the
P-51 and the over powering of one. Matter of fact I don't think I've
ever seen the cockpit of one, I'm guessing it has a yoke instead of a
stick. Anyhow, you quote that the plane was (jacked-up my terminology)
trimmed, one permanent and one adjustable for the elevator and the
adjustable took a flight.

In my experience all simi-stable aircraft should fly straight and not
trimmed so hard that it causes black-out G-forces if a tab takes off.
Also, this type of plane took 20mm hits in the war. I would venture a
speculation (after your info.) that all the planes in the race are
trimmed hard so that during the straightaways the stick is pushed hard
forward, because it is easier to push against the back of the seat
than to stand on the rudder and pull back around the pylons and thus
the plane would be in the controls neutral position in the turns.

I'm also not sure if the unstableness of loosing that part would
exponentially increase or it got jerked out of his hands or the cable
for that trim could have broke in the cockpit and the cable got
violently stripped through the fuselage and by all the cables for the
control surfaces...

BTW, prop wash from these planes must be very violent.


SW