There was a previous incident a few years ago when during fast level flight, the trim tab of another P-51 (Voodoo Chile) broke off and the aircraft pulled into a 10G pitch-up. The pilot at the time was Bob Hannah. He immediately lost conciousness, and woke up having gained almost 9000 feet.
And Hannah was 42 when that happened, so clearly he was too old as well........
I think it's highly likely that the outcome of this event would have been the same had the pilot been 74 or 24.
Sad day for aviation and air racing.
Hats off as well to the civvie owned static 'vintage' Huey crew for immediately putting the a/c to use for casevac.
