RNHF Firefly crash
Guys,
I was at DX today and saw the whole sorry tale unfold. The long and short of it was 'too low, too slow ...... far to little power'. Having executed an E->W 'run-in' pass the Firefly pulled up from this relatively slow run by and performed a barrel roll. Significant height was lost during this manoeuvre, plus airspeed. The pilot turned back on to the display centreline, in a relatively flat attitude and commenced his W->E pass. The lack of energy gained as a result of the prevous low altitude manoeuvre meant that this second pass was very slow, but with similar (low) RPM to the initial pass. After this run-by the pilot pulled the a/c nose up, approximately South Easterly and began to barrel roll. Having just rolled inverted, the lack of airspeed cause the aeroplane's nose to drop, resulting in an approximate 80deg. 'nose-down' attitude. Some lateral oscillation was evidenced in the attempts to recover, but insufficient height remained to facilitate recovery and although a probably 30deg attitude had been acheived the Firefly impacted rising farmland some 1 mile south of the A505 junction ........ the impact resulted in a huge cloud of earth, chalk and cereal crop ...... there was no evidence of fuel ignition on impact. A tragic event to witness, resulting in the loss of two lives and a very rare airframe. My condolences to the families of the two crewmen. On a closing note guys........ be careful in quoting particular aircraft types involved in accidents and making an inference that indicates that the type of A/C was responsible in some part. Remember the facts ....... pilot error is the No.1 killer, mechanical or associated failures are far behind in percentage terms. The papers will be full of this incident tomorrow, and more individuals will see that bad news than 'we' will see the facts in the aviation press. Duxford is just coming off the back of bad press following the publishing of the L-39 accident report ...... if we want to see these superb aircraft flying long into the future, we need to get right behind the organisations and private individuals who go to so much trouble to bring this history to life.