Interesting follow up to this thread today. I was at the Airport Viewing park between a Nimrod tour and Concorde tour when a gentleman I won't identify introduced himself. He'd read this thread, and was a witness to the entire flight, from start up to crash. And his account fits the 'loss of control after engine failure' scenario I'd always though this tragedy was.
He saw Jean LB and the photographers with their equipment board through the rear clamshell doors, watched the take off and left turn, and heard the engine fail, followed by a classic stall-spin. The aircraft went in vertically on the boundary of the airfield near a house that used to stand on the old Styal road not too far from the brick works. The Aerovan was destroyed on impact as you'd expect of a wooden structure, with no fire. There were no recognisable bits of aeroplane left after the ground collision.
One can surmise that the Aerovan, powered by two Gipy Majors, would not have much of a single engine safety speed. One can imagine both Gipsys would be at full power at the time of the failure, so there are two possibilities:
The engine failed and the aeroplane immediately stalled and rolled into an incipient spin into the ground.
Or
The engine failed, Jean LB tried to make a return to the cross runway, and then there was a stall/spin into the ground (classic 'don't turn back').
Tragic, in any event.
Last edited by Shaggy Sheep Driver; 2nd Mar 2013 at 18:40.