Originally Posted by
Pace
Oh boy, that reminds me of the F-18 crash in Bethalto, IL by Jeffrey Crutchfield in June 1996. He was practicing for an air show in the Czech Republic, and his boss and family were there.
He also had a Pitts Special that he did exhibition flying in on weekends. He went into a reverse half Cuban-8 maneuver and came over the top WAY too low. He had briefed with his boss to come over the top at 3500', but on this one he did it at 1500', way too low to recover. Due to rigging, the aircraft limited him to +4 G. He might have survived the crash, but hit a cinderblock garage and a large tree.
After a squabble over who would investigate (the Air Force owned the aircraft, but it was a civil flight on leaseback to McDonnell-Douglas from the Air Force) and so eventually the NTSB took over the investigation. I was fascinated with how such a massively experienced pilot could screw this up, so bought the NTSB report. Fascinating reading, not even a hint of a real explanation. (Crutchfield was a Navy top gun graduate, Navy test pilot, and then McDonnell-Douglas test pilot.)