This is a good one, but I think the most impressive is the cornfield bomber.
The pilot ejected due to a flat spin (just like what happened in Top Gun, RIP Goose). Now a flat spin is a kind of spin and stall that tends to happen when the center of mass and center of lift are in the same place. This can make planes very unstable. So the pilot can't recover and ejects. But this changes the center of mass on the plane, and the plane recovers on its own, and eventually lands itself in a corn field.
The plane was eventually returned to service after repairs.
Also fun fact: the F-104 Starfighter also had dart in the nick name here in Europe. It was called the lawn dart because so many of them crashed. This was due to the lesser pilot experience but also the change in role from interceptor to multirole fighter + ground support for which it was uniquely unsuited with its tiny wings. So low and slow was not a good role for it.
Actually, the F-104 aerodynamics were quite well-suited to the low-level strike mission. Small, highly-loaded wings reduce the effects of low-level turbulence. A dedicated low-level strike airframe like the TSR-2 has similarly tiny wings.
What led to the high crash rate for some operators (other operators had much lower losses) was the jump in aircraft complexity and performance combined with an inherently challenging and dangerous low-level strike mission.
>Starting in the late twentieth century, the safety of metal-tipped lawn darts was called into question in several countries. After thousands of injuries and at least three children's deaths were attributed to lawn darts, the sharp-pointed darts were banned for sale in the United States and Canada.
I love this part: One of the other pilots on the mission was reported to have radioed Foust during his descent by parachute that "you'd better get back in it!"
That level of silliness belongs in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Thank you for sharing!
Is this a common outcome of flat spins? That is, to return to a recoverable state after ejection? I’d think this would be exceedingly rare. And what’s the stability profile on this make of plane?
"In a million-to-one chance the brake failed to hold and although pilot Thrower grabbed a wing strut to check the plane he was quickly forced to jump clear, just avoiding the tail"
Parking brakes in light training aircraft of that vintage, if they were even equipped with one, were typically a hole drilled through a metal plate, that was placed on the actuator rod for the brake master cylinder, so that the metal plate would jam on the actuator rod and hold the brakes down when you pulled on a piece of string that was tied to the metal plate. They worked similar to the tab of metal to hold open the damper of a crappy old aluminum-framed screen door.
Parking brake failure in aircraft of that era is not a million-to-one scenario, it is the default operating condition. Go down to your local general aviation airfield and peek in the window at the parking brake knob on every Cessna 150 you see, I guarantee that many of them will be placarded INOP, and many of the un-placarded ones are also actually be INOP if you tried to use them.
Here's one for sale on eBay. $300 for that bit of junk! No wonder people leave them INOP.
One of the funniest things I've read in awhile — not least, that it took two young pilots from the British Royal Navy, on temporary duty with the Aussie navy under an exchange program, to shoot down the errant aircraft after failures to do so by Aussie navy and air force. I'm sure the RN didn't gloat about that one at all; oh, no, that'd never happen .... (Their attitude would likely have been a dismissive, "Of course — what'd you expect?")
It doesn't take all that much wind to cause modern light aircraft to take off on their own. The gusts in this video were 55 knots, but I've heard that some STOLs are susceptible to 20 knot winds.
There's a regional airport near me, which I drive past often, and the smaller planes are all tethered to their "parking spaces" (taut cables between the tips of the wings and mounting points on the ground). It always seemed a bit silly and I've had the thought "what, like they're going to run away?". It doesn't seem so silly anymore.
Yup - this looks like it's at the Air Force academy north of Colorado Springs - spent a summer there and was really cool to drive by and see the gliders getting towed up for practice pilots almost daily.
Wow, 208 rockets fired and all of them missed. That is way more than I would have thought. Also, I hope those pilots got some training, or maybe they quickly reevaluated the battle worthiness of those rockets. I imagine there are much harder targets to hit than an unmanned drone.
> The Mighty Mouse was to prove a poor aerial weapon. Although it was powerful enough to destroy a bomber with a single hit, its accuracy was abysmal. The rockets dispersed widely on launch: a volley of 24 rockets would cover an area the size of a football field.
If the Mk 14 Torpedo had worked for the US submariners off the Philippines in December, 1941 the Japanese would have probably failed to take those islands.
IIRC, the US subs put torpedoes into more than half the Japanese ships, but did almost no damage due to defective torpedo exploders.
Imagine if the US had stayed with the reasonably reliable Mk 10 Torpedo and had adopted the British Fairey Swordfish instead of the TBD Avenger.
Just deploying Swordfish along the US East Coast would have saved thousands of lives lost in the Battle of the Atlantic. Instead Admiral Nimitz relegated the existing Swordfish to ferrying personnel after they chased Japanese subs away from the American West Coast. He did not believe the reports of then damaging so many Japanese subs. After the war, he learned those reports were correct.
You are confusing the TBD Devastator with the TBF/TBM Avenger. The Avenger was a very capable aircraft, certainly the best carrier-borne torpedo bomber and antisubmarine platform of the war.
The Swordfish did OK in the Atlantic solely because it never faced any meaningful fighter opposition (having been quickly relegated to "safer" roles), and the distances were low enough that its low speed was not a hindrance. It would have been utterly unsurvivable in the Pacific theater against Japanese opposition.
Additionally, short-range ASW aircraft were never really the problem in the Atlantic, the problem was always how to provide long-range cover, which was only solved by the use of land-based B-24s and carrier-borne Avengers.
> Additionally, short-range ASW aircraft were never really the problem in the Atlantic, the problem was always how to provide long-range cover, which was only solved by the use of land-based B-24s and carrier-borne Avengers.
If the US had large numbers of Fairey Swordfish guarding the US East Coast in 1941, they could have deployed aircraft carriers to win the Battle of the Atlantic. I imagine the US converting many surface combatants that were in production to aircraft carriers for their Europe-First plan.
These mythical carriers did not exist in 1941 and could not have. An absolutely immense number of escort carriers were built by the US during the war, and contributed heavily to the outcome in the outcome in the Atlantic, but there's no way they could have been ready in quantity before superior ASW aircraft were also ready in quantity.
Fundamentally, winning the Battle of the Atlantic relied on other technical means than mere aircraft alone: HF-DF, much better (and smaller) airborne radar, improved sonar, codebreaking, and improved ASW weapons. No single aircraft platform earlier in the war would meaningfully have changed the situation without these other improvements as well.
> These mythical carriers did not exist in 1941 and could not have.
Here is my alternate history scenario:
IF the US had Fairey Swordfish that had proven effective in combating Japanese submarines on the West Coast, Which they had but Admiral Nimitz did not believe the reports. The Fiarey Swordfish were superior ASW aircraft in 1934. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Swordfish
And IF the US had hundreds or thousands more Fairey Swordfish they had built. This is the alternate history part. The US had the tools to set up an assembly line in storage and forgot to tell anyone after Prime Minister Churchill told President Roosevelt how important they were.
And IF the US had used those newly American-made Swordfish to drive the German U-boats away from the US East Coast, moving the Battle of the Atlantic farther out to sea,
And IF the US then wanted to convert any ship in production to be a light carrier designed to carry Fairey Swordfish and escort convoys,
I am not talking about magically building more Hornet or Essex class fleet carriers. I'm talking about changing history so that light cruisers were converted into escort carriers and Fairey Swordfish hunted U-boats in the Atlantic long before this really happened.
I contend 2 changes would have shortened World War 2 massively:
1. The US should have never mass-produced the Mark 14 torpedo and instead tested the heck out of the Mark 10.
2. The US should have mass-produced a variant of the Swordfish, instead of mass-producing the TBD as a torpedo plane.
I would love to move up the production of Kaiser's Escort Carriers, but that would be too risky. The magic of Kaiser's escort carriers could be sabotaged by a butterfly flapping its wings. I would only supply them with a bunch of Swordfish when they were available to go with their F4F Wildcats and SBD Dauntlesses.
I think you're giving the TBD a bad rap. Both were fundamentally obsolete aircraft at the start of the war for their primary role, and both were unsurvivable when used in that role.
The Swordfish acquired a somewhat mythic representation from performance early in the war, but that performance was a result of FAA doctrine rather than any particular characteristics of the Swordfish - the FAA was really the only service to take night carrier operations seriously pre-war, and most of the successful Swordfish operations were conducted at night. When operated in daylight against competent air defense they were just as vulnerable as the TBD.
Where the two also differ is that the TBD was soon retired completely following the slaughter at Midway and replaced by a much superior platform (the TBF/TBM), while the Swordfish was moved to other roles (e.g. ASW) as it was also replaced (also by the TBF/TBM in many cases). In no small part that was because the FAA needed everything it could get, and the failure of the intended successor (the Fairey Albacore) left them with no other domestic alternative.
the engine failed 10 feet from the ground. Landing the plane in the middle of the strip he climbed out, swung the propellor by hand (there was no self-starter) and the engine immediately roared into life.
Deformation professionelle probably but what this makes me think of is how easy it is for a vehicle to enter Accidental Full Self Driving mode, without having any specialised equipment. For cars, just put a brick on the gas pedal and point the car in the right direction, and in some situations the car will "drive itself" for a while; even a long while. For planes or boats it's probably easier to find circumstances where this can go on until they run out of fuel.
Once, in another life time, I owned an ancient Horex Regina II 400 cc., a 1953 model and it came with Full Self Driving. To activate it, I simply had to take my hands off the wheel and rest them on the tank. It would keep going straight on its own, without intervention. If the road turned, all I had to do was turn my hips a bit and it would follow along.
> The incident did not quickly subside here. Embarrassing questions were directed in Federal Parliament to. the Government of the day by both Mr C Chambers (Member for Adelaide) and Mr F Daly (Grayndler) during the Budget debate the following month. They asked why was so much money being spent on defence to an Air Force and Navy that took over two hours to shoot down an unarmed light aircraft?
...
> The harsh criticism against the Services was unfounded though and despite some initial bad luck the Navy and Air Force had performed creditably on a difficult and elusive “ENEMY”.
That was a suspiciously unconvincing conclusion. It made me check check the domain, and sure enough, "navyhistory.au". I wonder if it was even written by the same author.
Er... I mean, what were they supposed to do?! They couldn't just shoot it down and let it crash in an inhabited area, then they could have just as well done nothing and let it crash when it eventually ran out of fuel (less risk of fire). So they had to wait until it was in an area where it could crash without causing too much damage (over the sea) and shoot it down there.
I was surprised when I first took a flight lesson how easy it is to takeoff and go. You push the throttle all the way in and it takes off on its own. I believe there have been incidents of them flying themselves for hours after a pilot died or was incapacitated.
They are built to fly, so they do unless something interferes.
Once it was over the ocean there was no need to shoot it down. It had already been in the air for 3 hours and probably only had ~4 hours endurance. And it was heading further away from the city. It would have run out of fuel and ended up in the water soon anyway.
No mention on how expensive that rental was for Thrower. Did he take out insurance on the plane, or was he personally responsible for covering the loss? Did any of the planes that came in for the assist send a bill for their time as well? Everyone seems to be focused on the plane itself, but I want to know about Thrower! That's the part missing to make this a good movie
> was he personally responsible for covering the loss? Did any of the planes that came in for the assist send a bill for their time as well?
I doubt it. People in 1955 had a different (and, IMHO, more balanced) outlook on things like this. Sometimes weird flukes happen. I imagine their default mindset was "Thank goodness no one was hurt" and not "who can we place the blame on and hold legally liable." The plane rental company probably had insurance which covered the loss of the plane and everyone moved on.
In case you missed it, at the bottom of the article, there is a link to a 10 minute documentary about the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ehAQVhOL3k The documentary is quite interesting too!
The pilot ejected due to a flat spin (just like what happened in Top Gun, RIP Goose). Now a flat spin is a kind of spin and stall that tends to happen when the center of mass and center of lift are in the same place. This can make planes very unstable. So the pilot can't recover and ejects. But this changes the center of mass on the plane, and the plane recovers on its own, and eventually lands itself in a corn field.
The plane was eventually returned to service after repairs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber