Meteor at Kirkcaldy
Dear John (if I may be so bold)
I am not familiar with Cummings. I happily accept your view that he is an authority. I read your excerpt from his writings and responded at first with the response I attributed to you. You left it at that, while I realised that what he said was incompatible with what had already been said on this thread. So off I go on a stream of conjecture - which I enjoy by myself, which I offer for others to work on and which I expect to be greatly improved by those who know more than I do.
I am used to contributors who would (slightly sanctimoniously I think) stop people speculating about the latest accident. I on the other hand, at the sight of fresh blood on the tarmac, become very inquisitive and would share that response with other aviators and ex-aviators. One might have stopped flying, but one need not stop learning.
Kirkcaldy was over fifty years ago. I am puzzled that you are interested enough to read and write about this incident but would yet withhold your own knowledge and opinion. Is there a measurable quantity of Meteor experience which, if I had asserted it, would have gained enough of your respect for you to open up ? Three marks would perhaps not be enough, even though the T7 is the lowest common factor in everyone’s Meteor experience anyway. Have you pranged one ? - aha! Mine was Cat 5. Would my last Meteor sortie be more recent than yours – quite possibly.
I may even be ready for some of the points that you would have made if you had been less scrupulous. If I could remember the (surely very simple) fuel management system, I might have known there would have been no question of finding more fuel behind the dead engine. I may be overdoing the foot load arising from full rudder trim acting on the centralised rudders when both engines are quiet, especially as the airspeed is decaying. Indeed full trim had perhaps not been needed for the single-engine cruise. Perhaps, sadly, we should swap an image of the one-armed paper-hanger in his last moments for that of the pilot “with nothing on the clock but a vacant expression”.
We would no doubt be discussing the accident in a much more informed manner if the official accident report were to hand. Yet I expect that would start me off on a new line of thought - probably “I wonder what they meant by that” – and I would be glad to know what others thought as a result.