Collins Foundation B-17 crashed at Bradley

I heard about this earlier -- I wasn't sure what kind of aircraft it was, but I had suspected it was a WWII aircraft: I was worried it was that guy who planned to fly a Spitfire around the world through several stops.

This is actually way worse.

There is no sound but shows a lot of what is left and how much damage done in first video. Second video shows preliminary investigation with NTSB team investigating so far. Again condolences to all involved and those family members lost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO8HdzYa6f4&fbclid=IwAR2ipzEs2YO5v3LWjyhu6h1U75woRWt8H56lKVgjnm0EVrMXBFqJ0jUjS_I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoLU-I6C4Uo

This is tragic indeed. Condolences to the families.

The NTSB is seeking additional witness reports, and several witnesses told local media that the aircraft was flying low and appeared to have difficulty gaining altitude. The pilot requested a return to land very soon after takeoff, according to radio transmissions reported by local media including the Hartford Courant, and the tower diverted inbound flights to clear a path. The bomber's crew reported trouble with the "number four engine" and had requested a return to the airport to "blow it out."

Homendy said October 3 that NTSB investigators plan to follow up on emailed witness statements that one or two of the bomber's four engines were seen being worked on prior to the flight.

The B–17 landed short of Runway 6 and struck an approach light stanchion and veered right. Momentum carried it across the grass and into a final impact with a truck and a storage tank in the airport's deicing fluid storage facility, where two workers were present and one of them was injured.

The pilot, Ernest "Mac" McCauley, 75, of Long Beach, California, was the most experienced B–17 pilot in the country, with 7,300 hours in the aircraft, Homendy reported at an October 3 press conference. McCauley also served as the organization's safety officer, and was eulogized on Facebook by his friend and fellow Collings Foundation pilot Eric Whyte as a former football player "who took pride in being a curmudgeon" and loved dogs enough to sneak away to animal shelters during tour stops and walk the dogs "since being on the road he couldn't have one of his own."

Co-pilot Michael Foster, 71, of Jacksonville, Florida, also died in the crash. The third crewmember, Mitchell Melton of Dalhart, Texas, was injured and hospitalized after the accident.

Thank you for the details. This is a real tragedy in every way.

Been kinda unplugged from the outside world for a couple days, and just found out. Tragic. Shocking. How could this happen?? CF has always seemed so competent, professional, and safety conscious. My thoughts, prayers, and condolences to those who've gone west, the injured, and their loved ones, as well as the entire Foundation and the warbird community as a whole. There WILL be unpleasant repercussions from this as a result of ignorant public pressure.
Pure speculation, but what could cause Mac to touch down 1000 feet short of the threshold and right wing low? #4 was reputed to have had an in-flight problem. Runaway? Windmilling prop on the low pitch stop and unfeatherable? Loss of oil pressure or a blown prop shaft seal could cause that. A "barn door" out there would be a major control challenge, especially with the remaining three 115/145 engines running on 100LL, thus power limited. As airspeed drops off, so does rudder authority, but that barn door is still out there, making a directionally controlled landing a real problem.
Sorry, disasters like this bring out my inner tin kicker. Hats off to the NTSB.
Sorrowfully,
Wes

Saying they wanted to return to the airport to "blow it out" sounds like they had a fire. What else could "Blow It Out" mean?

Perhaps 'blow out' a fuel line or oil line constriction ?
I have the distinct feeling that the 'media' will 'pick up' on the number of incidents, disregarding their very small overall percentage over many years, and ignorance and sensationalism will possibly lead to pressure to review such operations. The same media people would be the first to 'latch on' to, and publicise, for example, a B-17 attending a veteran's event, and state how great it was etc etc.

Let's keep the speculation to a minimum but with that said "fuel" is a good place to start but I'm sure the NTSB is already on that horse.

This has really saddened me. To make matters worse the day prior I found out that a close childhood friend passed away.

Condolences to the families.

MIflyer said:

Saying they wanted to return to the airport to "blow it out" sounds like they had a fire. What else could "Blow It Out" mean?

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One metallic chip lodged in the prop governor can put you in a world of hurt.

Sorta been through this before- 30 Sept. 1985, a Cessna Caravan with 16 skydivers and the pilot lost power on the climb out. The pilot tried to turn around and stalled it, no survivors. Way too low for anyone to get out. The press went wild with rumors about drug deals, drug smuggling, etc. Turned out to be bad fuel, a clogged fuel filter and an inexperienced pilot. I think about those friends of mine often, especially since the B-17 crashed just a few days post Caravan anniversary.

The press and the masses will keep making stuff up regarding cause. At a memorial we had at that drop zone a reporter showed up. He got ran off when someone brandished a BBQ fork. Opportunistic politicians will want to stop anyone from giving/receiving rides because they know better even though they know nothing. But interest will peter out and something else will happen in the near future that the politicians will run to. The NTSB will present the report and it will be on page 5 or 6. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is what I experienced.

Found out yeasterday that the Wings of Freedom tour is now cancelled for the rest of the year. All the remaining birds are now down in Florida getting full inspections. The Houston Vietnam birds as well are grounded.

They normally hold an open house in the Jan - Mar timeframe at the New Smyrna Beach airport as they are doing the annual inspections of the aircraft prior to the start of the airshow season.

I'd guess that is where the airplanes are now.

MIflyer said:

Saying they wanted to return to the airport to "blow it out" sounds like they had a fire. What else could "Blow It Out" mean?

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Probably something similar to this procedure.

Brandon

Deuelly said:

Probably something similar to this procedure.

Brandon

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For those of you not familiar with the fine points of octane rated fuels, it goes like this. Any engine running on a higher lead content fuel than it's designed for is likely to have a tendency toward lead deposits in various inconvenient spots in the cylinders, such as intake valves and sparkplugs. This is much more likely in aircooled engines, as they experience much wider fluctuations of cylinder temperatures, and it's the cooler temperatures in the combustion cycle that invite deposits.
This B17 was reportedly certified to run on the old 80/87 octane avgas, which is no longer available. The 100 Low Lead gas it was burning, while having less lead than the old 100/130, has four times the lead of the old 80/87, making lead fouling a point to watch out for. 87 octane engines generally operate at lower temperatures and BMEPs than 100 octane ones, thus making it hard to maintain high enough temps to keep the lead in suspension through the combustion process. This is an issue that operators of older aircraft deal with every day, and there are practices and procedures to handle it. (See above) This "blowing it out" is just a technique of heating up the cylinders by leaning the mixture to redissolve the lead and flush it out the exhaust before it cools and hardens. The first indication of fouling is usually misfiring sparkplugs. These big recips generally have a flight engineer station with an oscilloscope which can help pinpoint misfires. Needless to say misfiring plugs can lead to raw unburned fuel being dumped into the exhaust stream, which can get kind of spectacular when it hits the turbocharger. This can lead uninformed eyewitnesses to observe "an engine on fire, backfiring and exploding".
Cheers,
Wes

Wow, I had no idea Avgas still had lead in it.

The engine in my airplane was certified to run on the standard fuel of the time, 73 octane. 80/87 octane came out not long before WWII. The Douglas DC-4 has a special version of the R-1830 engine, the R-2000, which has larger displacement. The additional 170 cubic inches was intended to enable the airliner's engines to perform adequately in case it had to operate from an airport that only had the more common 73 octane fuel.

When the USAAF hung some P-38 drop tanks on a captured Ju88 and flew it across the Atlantic to the US they made sure that there was 90 octane gas put in the tanks before takeoff and that the mid-ocean fuel stop at Ascension Island had that grade of fuel available. They got to Ascension and discovered that the 90 octane drums of fuel there were empty and fueled the airplane with 100 octane. They lost an engine on the way to Brazil and assumed they would soon be in the water, so upped the power on the other engine to try to get closer to land. That eventually concluded that higher power level probably kept the good engine from quitting.

Operating my engine on the only avgas available now, 100LL, results in lead balls possibly shorting out the spark plugs as well as stuck rings and valves. I normally use unleaded ethanol-free automobile gasoline, which is 92 octane and is at least $1.00 a gallon cheaper than 100LL avgas. The best combination would be to mix a gallon of 100LL with three gallons of auto fuel to give about the correct amount of lead per gallon, but that's a lot more trouble to do as well as more costly. We've seen no negative effects from using the unleaded auto fuel and there are no lead balls in the spark plugs. When it is cool out I have seen that the engine takes longer to warm up if I'm using a mixture of 100LL and auto fuel.

Trilisser said:

2 points:

1. Wartime standard fuel for the B-17G was 100/130, NOT 115/145.
2. Per test reports and pilot reports, the B-17 was quite easy to handle even with 2 engines out on the same wing, so having 1 out even with wind milling prop should not be too difficult to handle, especially for highly experienced pilots like now.

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1.) You're right about wartime fuel, but postwar, 115/145 became available allowing hardworking recips (this one was a firetanker) to get a little more detonation margin and gain some additional HP. When the "purple brew" went away, all these big radials had to be recertified for lower octanes, reducing their available HP and the takeoff and go-around performance of their host airframes. By this time 909 was a museum piece, not a tanker, and working at much lower weights.
2.) There's a difference between a windmilling prop that results from a power reduction and one that results from a failed feathering attempt. In the latter case there is usually no hydraulic control of pitch and aerodynamic and centrifugal forces drive the blades against the low pitch stops, causing the prop to try to turn the engine faster (against compression), and generating huge amounts of drag. If this happens at high airspeeds, it becomes your classic "runaway prop" (think Boeing Stratocruiser and midocean ditchings). 909 never got going that fast. Those wartime "two engines on one side" landings were accomplished with the dead engines feathered, a much more benign scenario. Even so, a go around or climb up to glidepath situation would be problematical. I guarantee you that any B17s with failed feather windmilling dead engines never made it home.
If you've undergone multi engine training, you've experienced an "engine failure" when your instructor pulled an engine to idle and you did your engine shutdown thing. The assymetric thrust you experience in that scenario is nothing like what you get in the "stuck at low pitch" event, and no instructor is going to put his/her hide (and yours) on the line just to let you have that thrill. There's been many a smoking crater to prove that point.
If that is what happened to 909's #4, it would be a sticky wicket. Rudder authority decreases as airspeed decreases, and #1 would have to be idled to maintain control. If the extra drag from gear extension caused a settle below glide path , you'd have to thrash the pee out of #3 and judiciously add power to #2 and you'd be walking a fine line between controllability and adequate power available, and probably be on the back side of the power curve. That's when gravity sets in.
Hope this makes sense to you.
Wes