Reno Air Race Crash

What if your 200lb body suddenly weighs 2400lbs (200 * 12g) and your 10lb head now weighs 120lbs. You can't move a muscle even if you still had blood in your brain to be awake.

12G's is about what you feel for an instant in a car crash. Imagine it sustained for several seconds!

 

I feel extremely lucky that I wasnt closer. Seeing it from the Valley of Speed was tough enough. I had grandstand tickets for Saturday and Sunday. The seats were directly above where the plane hit the ground.
My brother talked to a person who was in the grandstand. The guy said that he saw stuff he didnt even want to talk about.
I am still in shock about seeing that even unfold. I have been going for several years now, but after seeing that happen, I am debating on if I will go back again. I know a couple of the guys I was with are saying they never want to go again.

 

in the 1998 Reno Air Races the left elevator trim tab came off P-51 Voodoo Chile at speed,
causing the plane to abruptly pitch up, subjecting pilot Bob Hannah to over 10 G's of deceleration forces, and causing him to lose
conciousness...he recovered....

 

Yes, it is survivable to go into that range but duration and force direction are important, you just might be sleeping which is not a good idea in a single pilot airplane. There was a person that conducted G tests on his own body many years ago, and got as high as around 40G and lived. But, there are a lot of factors that go into it. That guy doing the testing had fillings come out, broke ribs etc...

I'll have to check what his name is:
John Stapp

From Wiki-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp

"Early experiments showed that untrained humans were able to tolerate 17 g eyeballs-in (compared to 12 g eyeballs-out) for several minutes without loss of consciousness or apparent long-term harm.[14] The record for peak experimental horizontal g-force tolerance is held by acceleration pioneer John Stapp, in a series of rocket sled deceleration experiments culminating in a late 1954 test in which he was stopped in a little over a second from a land speed of Mach 0.9. He survived a peak "eyeballs-out" force of 46.2 times the force of gravity, and more than 25 g for 1.1 sec, proving that the human body is capable of this. Stapp lived another 45 years to age 89, but suffered lifelong damage to his vision from this last test.[15]"

 

Here goes my big mouth again. Forgive me for being so wordy.i know what that huge G force is all about. In 1949 I was a passenger in the front seat of a '49 Dodge that was involved in a head on collision at 55 MPH .We were hit by a "49 Packard sedan that was traveling at 60 MPH. I had just finished driving and was slumped down in the front seat almost snoozing. I felt the driver apply some brake and then saw nothing but headlights when I opened my eyes.I had no time to do anything when we hit and my upper body went through the windshield after it caved-in the glove box and dash. I was pinned there by the front seat that broke loose and they had to pull me out under the steering wheel after the seat was pulled back enough. There is no way to describe the force that enwrapped me and I felt nothing but the feeling of being totally crushed and consumed by something very big and that I couldn't breathe. The pain came after the shock abated and I felt the damage to my chest, right leg, and right arm. Unbelievably I had no broken bones except in my chest. My head had a bump on the front and though it was full of broken glass, it had no cuts. My leg had a ruptured blood vessel that had to be drained and my arm had a deep gash in it. I will never know how I escaped death or serious injury in that incident but I do remember what the high G impact was like and I can imagine what Leeward felt or didn't feel when that jolt came up through his spine and stayed there until he was unconscious and crushed down in the seat. I have been as high as 6 G in an airplane and it is damn tough even when you are prepared. I don't think that Jim Leeward felt anything after the initial pitch up and that is merciful. The whole thing is really sad.

 

He was lucky that airplane shot straight up to 9000 feet allowing time for him to recover consciousness and then control of his airplane...

 

Well said.

RIP to all lost in this event.
Thoughts and prayers to their families.

 

40G is just huge...of course, rocket sled Gs are on the X axis. Y axis Gs are a whole 'nother ballgame.

I'm skeptical that even a fair amount of extra youth (as has been hinted at in the media) would have saved Mr. Leeward and the crowd. As a lot of you guys know, sometimes reduced cardiovascular efficiency can increase G tolerance. Short fat guys who smoke very often have few problems to a certain point, whereas some professional athletes can start to go night night at 4 Gs. Sure, if there are any health problems they can be exacerbated, but I just don't think that was the case here. I could be wrong about all of that, but I'm tired of the press insinuating that Mr. Leeward was careless because he chose to race at an advanced age. There simply isn't enough evidence to damn him.

I think the media and the average joe are having trouble understanding this accident because we see things like the Red Bull air races where pilots are pulling 10-11Gs coming out of the track without issue (usually). The average air show plane is not going anywhere near 400+ MPH!

At any rate, it is a horrible, horrible tragedy.

 

I doubt any pilot at any age could have pulled out. When the servo tab fails, the control goes full to the stop. The control is much stronger than the pilot. When the servo tab then breaks off fully, the surface goes back to neutral and then the pilot can apply forces to the stick to fly out of wherever he is at. BUT there is no longer the servo tab to assist.

Car analogy is you are hot going into a high speed corner. Your power steering fails and goes full lock left and your car goes into a spin... the power steering then comes free but you now have very, very heavy manual steering to try to arrest the spin before you hit something hard.

 

Gee, Bob, I think we're lucky to still have you around! Cars of that era were far less survivable in a crash than today's cars.

 

Also a woman from here in San Angelo who attended every year with her husband... schrapnel flew over his head and hit her. Tragic.

 

Thanks, Jim. I am still amazed that I not only survived but did it without any lasting damage except my family jokers who have told me that I didn't when it comes to my head. We didn't have seat belts and the driver and I turned into short range missiles. Thankfully there was safety glass or we would have been sliced and diced(I have seen that after effect too). During that time in college I also had a motorcycle and I did my best to terminate my existence on that a couple of times, too. Then there were airplanes and I still had that Irish luck. That is why I believe that we should never try to restrict those who feel the need to stretch the envelope because it will ever be thus and there will always be those who will meet their fate in their quest to exceed the norm. The human race would never be where it is now without that need in some of us to push ahead and explore things beyond the the daily boredom or the last achievement. We can go back to the chariot races in the Coliseum where the horses were bred to run faster or examine Leeward's modifications to his P-51 with its evaporative cooling radiator and aerodynamic improvements and see the same thinking, " I know how to get more out of my steed and beat the other guy." Then ,maybe not immediately, the ideas become something that all can use. Of course, in this process some run out of the luck that others continue to enjoy.

 

Thank you Bob, so lets leave it at that yeah guys?

 

It's still very early in what will no doubt be a very detailed investigation.

 

+1

The only problem is the spectators.
Pete

 

If the crash had occurred anywhere else along the race course, the story would have been barely a footnote in the news. This was pretty much a worst-case scenario.

 

Ironically, one other Mustang that had had the belly scoop removed was Bill Odom's "Beguine", which crashed in the '49 Cleveland race and ended that event. Maybe the moral is, don't remove the P-51's belly scoop!

 

I have read too many analyses that dispel the drag savings by removing the scoop from a Mustang. It has been given more credit for drag reduction than the laminar wing section. The hot expanded air behind the radiator in the plenum was ejected out of the exit with enough force to add some horsepower in thrust. All of the successful Mustang racers have the scoop.

 

Death toll up to 11.

New theory on what might have caused the crash.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039871/Reno-air-crash-2011-Pilots-chair-broken-moments-impact.html

 

I think it's just the angle of the picture, you can see the bottom of the wing. Before they make that claim they should take a picture from the same angle showing the seat, to prove the point.

 

They blew up the wrong part of the airplane in the picture in that article. It looks an awful lot like the pilot is slumped forward in that pic. Not sure, but that's what it looks like.

As Bob has said, it matters not, at 12g it was "lights out" pretty quickly.

 

If the seat did break, it was probably due to the 12g pitchup after the trim tab failed, and would not have been the initial cause.

 

IIRC Bob Hannah in he recollection of the trim tab failure on "Voodoo" he stated that when he came through that his torso was on the floor of the cockpit. I don't have time to look up the article as I need to get back to work.

 

One of my friends was within 250' of the crash. His description was that he thought he was back in viet nam. Threw his wife to the ground, and jumped on top of her when he saw what was happening. Fortunately, neither got hurt, but he felt the heat, and some of the debris go by him while on the ground. She still shaken up after seeing what happened.

Art

 

That is the stuff of nightmares