The P-63 is following pilot input immediately before the impact, I doubt that there was a control issue prior to impact.
- GLOC is unlikely but not impossible.
- A medical event is always possible but that would tend to result in lowering g loads, and that would cause the flight path to degrade in a high bank turn, there is no onset of a descent part way through the turn. Keeping a high bank and reducing g reduces the rate of turn and that is not obviously evident, so the plane is likely to be under closed loop pilotage up to impact.
- assuming that this was accidental, then the P-63 seems to be working towards a rejoin of the P-51 and other preceding little friends, and that puts the line of sight for the pilot of the P-63 above his head, and to the left, well away from Texas Raider's. I would think that target fixation on the rejoin of relatively hard to see aircraft against the ground background may have distracted the P-63 pilot from his basic requirement to keep clear of what should be obvious traffic that he/she is overtaking.
This hints to a bad set up of flight paths, whether preflight or inflight variation from plan. Would be interesting to know the pilots experience in flying mixed formations and in formation flying, rejoins etc.
A brutally bad day. It is part of the heritage to keep the memory alive of what prior generations did, these airshows are worthy of respect and continuation. Lets not do this particular evolution again.
2's In, you are correct. I assumed the P63 was faster than the B-17, there is not much difference in speed, and post #37 shows that the P63 was belly up to the B17 for at least the last 5-6 seconds. To see the traffic, the speed difference would need to be higher.
My comment is now somewhat out of context after merging with this thread (i.e. replying to the previous post). I don't think there was a problem with the aircraft, so, calls to ground old types due to this accident seem somewhat baseless.