TF-51 Crashes

Bird strike. Big bird strike. Straight ahead on front windscreen.

 

A tragic loss. Very sad. RIP

 

Source?

 

Reliable

 

Very sad. Prayers for the aircrew and their famies.

 

+1

 

Man what are the odds that it would get thru a 4 blade prop and not get sliced and diced... I guess those big props aren't moving all that fast and the airplane is moving pretty fast... I'm sure it's possible, but that's just a freak accident...

 

^exactly, get through with enough velocity to break the windshield and incapacitate the pilot. There are lots of birds on my home field.

 

If it's something like a goose even 1/2 of it can do damage at high speed.

 

Heck, a swan once destroyed a Vickers Viscount airliner when it hit the horizontal stabilizer and caused it to fail.

United Airlines Flight 297 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Flying at low altitude along the caprivi strip in bostwana about 500 ft there were lots of birds of all shapes and sizes about. Our pilot said when see sees birds he loses altitude as the inclination of abrd before a strike is to try go up.

 

odd - I've been told exactly the opposite, that birds dive when threatened so pull up.

 

I struck a circling red-tailed hawk while private pilot training in a Cessna 152 years ago. It did indeed go up and to the left (of the bird) - striking the right wing right on the leading edge about where the spar brace attaches. You cannot out-maneuver a bird unless you see it pretty far off - they can just change direction too fast.

It made a dent in the leading edge which looked about like half a medium-sized grapefruit.

 

Sad.. R.I.P....

 

When I was trying t dogfight with the buzzards with a Cub in Florida when I got a bit closer they always pulled up and to the right or left. Low wing loading and a watchful eye looking back over their shoulder let them outmaneuver me every time. The only way a bird can truly dive is to fold their wings. I don't know if they have a " down elevator" . I don't believe they do because their evasive maneuver was always up. Did a few stalls and spins during these games trying to keep up with them. I will always remember the big damage to the cowling and engine on a P-47 that ingested a buzzard down in Texas. A big bird can be a solid dense mass at 100-250mph and they will do great damage.

 

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We breathed a sigh of relief when they finally put bird proof windscreens in the F-111. Took a lot of testing to get it right.

 

General Dynamics used to use a compressed air cannon to fire dead chickens at test canopies to simulate bird strikes.

 

As did 'MythBusters'... but they were shooting at a Bonanza (I think) windshield. (Kari Byron was NOT there for that one.)



Also, flew in a Cessna 210 in Kenya to Lake Victoria. There were buzzards absolutely everywhere at altitude.

The pilot regaled us of stories about a friend who hit one, was injured (face, shoulder) but managed to get down and recovered. Less than two years later, he hit one again. Killed him. He was alone in the plane.

So, we're all sitting there, watching buzzards all the way there... and back.

 

Boeing did the same thing and I remember that a company in England did the same test and were shocked that their test vehicle failed miserably until someone figured out that the bird wasn't thawed.

 

Another airline crash caused by birds:

Eastern Air Lines Flight 375 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

F1- AF Research Lab had a chicken cannon they used to develop bird proof windscreens. Could fire a chicken out at about 800 fps. The RAF tried a similar machine and on the first test the bird went through the windscreen and out through the back wall of the test facility. They called AFRL and asked what the problem was. AFRL sent back a three word reply: Defrost the chicken.

A joke, of course.

 

When bird strike testing was being done on engines at P&W in Fla, they did all of their setup and loaded the "chicken gun" and then broke for lunch. When they came back they performed the test (this particular test was with a number of "small" birds)..

Much to the chagrin of the design department the damage to the fan was much more extensive than was originally thought to be possible... In those days you only had high speed film and it took days to get it developed so the engineers were left scratching their heads as to how a number of small starlings could have caused this much damage. Tools in those days were "empirical" and based on history and previous testing, there wasn't any way to simulate it and computer stress analysis didn't exist at the time...

Only after review of the slo mo film did they realize that a cat had climbed up into the gun and was having "lunch" too, and became part of the projectile load when the trigger was pulled.. P&W had "bird ingestion parameter" for the design of fans at the time, but the system wasn't calibrated for cats apparently...

Supposedly true story from the "annals of the swamp" (stories of P&W FRDC) repeated often but I'm sure we will never see the film..

 

Years ago, a Nebraska ANG RF-4C GIB landed the airplane at Hill AFB, after the pilot was struck from pieces of the canopy and knocked unconscious after a bird-strike.