Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Widewing on April 06, 2009, 05:34:25 PM
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Yesterday, we lost a pilot and warbird in a tragic accident here on Long Island. Robert Baranackas was killed when he spun his P-40 into the ocean off of Smith's Point Beach while practicing an air show routine.
Bob's son Chris (who flies their P-51D at shows) was spotting for his dad and was in radio communication at the time of the accident. Chris had the horror of watching the crash, just a few hundred yards off the beach. Several surfer quickly paddled to the location, but there was no one alive to rescue.
I met Bob in October of 2007 at a local air show. We chatted about his P-51 and P-40. He was a very pleasant gentleman.
He will be missed in the community.
(http://www.newsday.com/images/covers/lli.jpg)
The Newsday story]http://www.newsday.com/news/local/suffolk/ny-licras0712625373apr06,0,879642.story (http://www.newsday.com/news/local/suffolk/ny-licras0712625373apr06,0,879642.story)
(http://moose135.smugmug.com/photos/303076511_RoqUD-L-2.jpg)
Bob Baranaskas
(http://moose135.smugmug.com/photos/300888503_2AYmh-L-2.jpg)
Bob's favorite...
(http://moose135.smugmug.com/photos/190916365_mVRnf-L-1.jpg)
Chris Baranaskas flying the P-51D, Bob flying the P-40E.
My regards,
Widewing
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I have seen them both fly before. I was very saddened when I read that :cry
:salute
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:( Very sad story. Beautiful old Warbirds. :salute Bob, may you rest in peace.
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Amen Rest in peace. :salute
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:salute
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Wow, first I heard... sorry to hear of this.
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I hope he rests in peace, by the looks of it, small pieces equals the p40 became a bowl of legos.
-FYB
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Very Sorry to hear of another pilot and old warbird lost.
A tragedy for all of us who love the old war horses and who admire those pilots that keep those wonderful machines in the air.
I only wish there was a way to prevent such losses but that is the nature of it.
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My condolences.
At least he died doing what he loved. It's a shame that the impact was so hard as to kill him.
:salute
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From what his son said (shrugs), it was a nose down flat spin after climbing, one wing dipped and it stayed that way till impact, no control no pull out.
If this is the case there was absolutely no way out, crushing G's and alt loss rapidly cockpit still closed probably, a 18-21 year old fighter pilot would have had a hard time forcing himself out of the seat with all those g's, doubly hard for a older man like himself. Shame to have happen.
:salute
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:salute
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:salute Bob, may you rest in peace.
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:salute Rest in Peace.
Hey Widewing where did you take that picture? Look like Long Island Jewish Hospital in the backround? I have see both planes at Republic Airfield before. Sad Very Sad
Crims
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:salute RIP we will never forget
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:salute
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I thank Both Men for taking the time out of their days to Rebuild/Restore the Aircraft that so few realized were slowly fading away to the past. Not many Warbirds are left flying today.
:salute Rest in peace. May you fly again, Waving to the Angels Above the clouds.
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Not many Warbirds are left flying today.
Thanks to folks like them and others there are more flying today than there were 5 years ago. :salute
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What a tragedy. Shows how dangerous these old war planes can be doing airshow routines, something they were never designed for. Can kill even the best of pilots.
Rest in peace Robert Baranackas. Thank you for the wonderful displays.
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What a tragedy. Shows how dangerous these old war planes can be doing airshow routines, something they were never designed for. Can kill even the best of pilots.
Rest in peace Robert Baranackas. Thank you for the wonderful displays.
Bob was practicing over water, which some believe makes it even more dangerous. I was talking with Dudley Henriques about this accident. Dudley piloted his P-51D in air shows for many years. His take, based upon what we know, is that Bob suffered from momentary spatial disorientation, when the ocean and sky are difficult to delineate. Dudley thinks that this delayed Bob's reaction to his predicament, which resulted in his not having enough altitude remaining to recover.
Dudley discussed this in an e-mail as well. He wrote:
"Not being LOA in the P-40, my opinion is somewhat restricted, but if indeed the scenario involved a high speed stall out of a nose high turn, the situation could easily have been exacerbated by the over water issue. An accelerated stall in a nose high turn could easily have introduced a yaw input into the stall break equation. This would indeed, considering that there was at least a high cruise or METO power involved at the break, pull the wing down quickly as Chris has noted.
I wouldn't say flat spin per se from this scenario but rather a quick nose down PSG going into auto-rotation in whatever spin axis was being formed by the cg location at the time of the stall break.
Recovery from such a situation at 2000 feet in any prop fighter would require instant power reduction and instant anti-spin control inputs simultaneously married to a reduction in angle of attack.
My understanding is that Baranaskas held an ACES waiver for loops only and that he was an extremely competent pilot in prop fighters. With this in mind, I would be taking a long serious look into the possibility that the over water flight scenario at the stall break caused enough disorientation through the break that it caused his recovery control input to lag just enough that he ran out of air.
I believe strongly, future NTSB report notwithstanding, that had the stall occurred over land, he might have recovered the airplane in the room provided."
My regards,
Widewing
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Thank you for posting that. Seems like circumstances conspired to rob him of any chance of recovering. War bird display pilots have my utmost respect; when I see a Pitts Special or a Su-31 do their hair-raising routines I'm never really as impressed as when I see a war bird do a much simpler loop and wing-over. To put it in AH terms: The Su-31 is a noob-ride UFO compared to a war bird, even a Spitfire.