plane mike
I went on a camping safari with him whilst I was flying the death cruiser ..dc10..we left Wilson field on the dc3 then went back with an engine problem. waited an hour or so whilst they thought they had fixed it but it didn't sound great on the pre take off engine run up..got airborne but couldn't climb up high enough to get out of the cumulous tops..crew decided to return but he persuaded them to continue and land in the massi mara where the aircraft stayed a day until they flew in some carb spares.
Around the camp fire he told me the story after I asked him what the GM stood for..seemed shocked that as a Brit I didn't know but I thought he was swedish as in the accident he had mangled his face. talked about bader who was a regular visitor in east grinsted. told me that it was a spiral dive where it had been overstressed the night before and he hadn't done an outside check and how they found him still straped in the seat 100 yards from the wreckage. he had an eight freight in his garden ..my father was on the footplate and I was into steam locos. Took his biography out of the library when I got back to UK.
Would give you Lincoln's but still remember the story he told.
Had another friend survive a wing coming loose but that was on a luscombe that had been restored in southern England but the guys had forgotten to lock the clevis pin in the rear turn buckle which adjusted the angle of attack. he tried a high speed pass low over the runway hopeing that some one could see the fault..when he put Aileron in it twisted the wing like a servo tab and the aircraft rolled in the opposite direction..rudder had helped but not in the pass..survived but later died in a Christian eagle.