Originally Posted by
Lima Juliet
Quite a few ‘loss of control’ were suspected in these accidents too so the C really doesn’t belong in CFIT! I recall watching a T bird video where the student was flying simulated breaks against a bounce at low level - I think the aircraft departed around 15-16 AOA and the instructor yelled “I have control” as it did a crazy whiffadil at not many feet having bled off a lot of speed quickly. Lots of heavy breathing on the video with the student afterwards asking a somewhat quizzical “did I do that?” type question. Incredible that they did not crash.
Indeed why the advanced trainer lark was removed completely by 1970. The unpredictable departure characteristics were well known by 1967/8 by model testing and that similar aircraft designs had the same pitfalls. 65 airframes lost and 28 aircrew killed in RAF and I didn't have to look that up. The first Jaguar loss was a Boscombe T Bird doing high alpha testing. Stuff that BAC had already proved as do not attempt. AOA limits we all know were very shallow and even more so with certain role fits. 17, 14 and 12 are from my engineering memory, sure BV will correct me if I am wrong. The guys were lucky, the T Bird was worse than the GR once departed in unpredictable behaviour. The lack of FDR or CVR of course made investigations a lot harder. A lot of assumptions and guesswork in any crash investigation without hard data. I saw only one crash site in my time. A Type 9B Mk3 seat pan bereaved from the rest of the seat, sitting on its rocket pack on the middle of a road I can remember vividly.