Sherm Smoot and "Czech Mate" are no more:

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Very sad. Seized the engine and tried to save the airplane.

Miles and miles of flat farm land in every direction.

A number of years ago a P51 being test flown in LA with a fresh engine had an engine failure not long after take off, bellied it in on an empty field 1 week prior to Reno. The plane got fixed and made the event. Czech Mate wont be making it to Reno.

 

I have seen several of these things and they are always bad because you know what's going to happen when the airplane starts to turn. High speed stalls with a spin are quick but power-off turns in a climb out seem to go in slow motion. All that I have witnessed were at the hands of fairly high time pilots who, I suppose, thought that they were good enough to pull it off. My instructor was the only one who I ever saw successfully make a 180 deg. turn after the engine failed on take off. He had it filed away in his head because of all of the structural clutter and power poles ahead. The engine started to run rough when he and his student were climbing out. At maybe 300 -400 feet the engine popped and quit. The airplane looked like it tripped on a wire and went straight down, starting a turn back on the way down. After an almost 180 deg. change of direction , it was near the the ground and flared to land in the tall grass beside the runway. It went out of sight but we heard a loud bang and we could see the tail come up. They had hit the only log that had been left when the government cleared the land for the airbase in 1942. But they were safe and uninjured . When we got there it was almost laughable because Bobby, the instructor, had the student sitting in the grass and he was yelling at him, " Don't you ever do what I just did !" Bobby had been flying for 16 years at the time and he had experienced 16 engine failures.