P51 crashes at Reno Air Races

[SectorNine50]

Interesting, thanks for the info.

It's so surreal watching those videos...

[Shuffler]

The planes are awe inspiring in flight and when things go wrong.

It's hard to fathom just what might have went through all those folks heads as they saw what was transpiring.

It's a damn shame.

[W7LPNRICK]

I'm gratful that at least one pwerson who died was probably unconscious.   

[LEADPIG]

I believe that plane was heavily modified. Control surface areas were decreased. Size of the wings decreased. I feel as if aerodynamic changes caused elevator control flutter issues at the high speed. I wonder if the elevators were balanced properly. This dislodged the trim tab causing an extreme pitchup moment. Mr. Leeward was not anticipating this and Glock'ed. I would imagine the Reno aircraft fly around that course with a considerable amount of nose down trim. Which was relieved when his trim tab broke. I feel Mr Leeward was passed out slumped over foward in his seat when he impacted. This may explain why it appears the engine was still at race throttle setting when it hit.

[Infidelz]

I can't imagine a man or women of any age withstanding that much G in that instant. There will be more information forthcoming, just not as soon as we would wish.

God bless all of the enthusiast's and their families.

Infidelz.

[ntrudr]

Here are some facts, in an interview before the accident the pilot said they had removed ten feet from the wing span and had done some other mods to get up to "jet" speed, around 500 mph, he said he thought the "systems" could handle the stress but they weren't postive. I saw a video of the interview.  The elevator trim tab did separate in flight, there is one video where you can see it come off.  In another video you can see the plane go into a tight violent verticle loop right after the trim tab leaves and go into the ground.  Those are the facts that I have seen in videos.

My opinion is that when the trim tab came off the plane pitched up violently and went up, over and into the ground, I think the pilot was then unconsious or pinned forward and unable to control the plane.  It could be a while before the NTSB releases a finding.

It is sad.  In the United States much is done to make airshows safe, but bad things still can happen.

[HB555]

Unofficial comment from an unnamed source who claims to have seen the telemetry system report says there was a slight engine slowdown at top, as if by fuel starvation, then coming back to full power. Also got a spike of 11 G's.

[Yeager]

they had done some other mods to get up to "jet" speed, around 500 mph, he said he thought the "systems" could handle the stress but they weren't postive.

New video supposedly.  Doesn't show much that hasn't already been seen, but what is telling is the response heard from people as they realized something was not going right.  I counted off 6 seconds between the first indications of danger and the actual impact.  So fast, so tragic.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/09/20/ac-reno-brent-wilson.cnn?iref=allsearch

Also,

http://www.airrace.org/