WW 2 Avenger ditched off Florida beach

[First_Principal]

Originally Posted by Waltzer

So the fact that an aircraft going into display trailing enough smoke to make the guy on the ground think that it has a smoke system fitted isn’t worth consideration.
Also the fact that the pilot carried on with his display after being told on more than one occasion and in the full knowledge that he was trailing a lot of smoke from somewhere at the front.
Any pilot worth his salt would have been looking to land asap whilst it was still producing power.
Ignorance at best, dangerous to the point of deadly at worst.

If the above turns out to be fact, and in the absence of other reasonable circumstances that may have affected the PIC's decisions etc, then you may well be justified in your opinion.

However what I heard in the youtube link seemed to be based on hearsay, with a fair degree of political comment and meandering from the subject thrown in. To me if there were any facts amongst it they were difficult to extract and - at this point - unsubstantiated as to source and evidence.

I make no comment on the accident itself because I wasn't there, I don't see a lot of actual fact or background, and I'm not sure opinion based on vague hearsay is all that helpful?

[Waltzer]

Originally Posted by First_Principal

If the above turns out to be fact, and in the absence of other reasonable circumstances that may have affected the PIC's decisions etc, then you may well be justified in your opinion.

However what I heard in the youtube link seemed to be based on hearsay, with a fair degree of political comment and meandering from the subject thrown in. To me if there were any facts amongst it they were difficult to extract and - at this point - unsubstantiated as to source and evidence.

I make no comment on the accident itself because I wasn't there, I don't see a lot of actual fact or background, and I'm not sure opinion based on vague hearsay is all that helpful?

Totally agree about hearsay. In this case there is photo taken from the B-25 over the actual area in question, showing the Avenger trailing significant smoke. Ok the photo ‘could’ have been taken sometime in the past. If that were the case then doubt would have been cast on the authenticity of that picture.
Personal beefs and slurs I have zero interest in but it seems in this case the facts may well speak for themselves.
I’ll wait for the NTSB report with interest.

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by First_Principal

I suppose it's possible there are 'a few facts' in that rambling diatribe but, if so, they'd be hard to pluck out from the noise.

There is certainly a lot of Dan's opinion in that piece.

But there are also plenty of facts, many of which should be able to be verified. If only 10% of what he says is true, there are still a whole bunch of holes in the cheese. The air-to-air photo of the TBM trailing smoke speaks for itself.

[B2N2]

Not showing up for a mandatory pre show pilot briefing should have gotten them banned from flying the display.
Thats something for the Orlando FSDO to look into.
Every airshow has at least one if not multiple FAA inspectors assigned to it to provide oversight. Why wasn’t a procedure in place to verify if all pilots attended the briefing ?

[GeeRam]

Originally Posted by First_Principal

If the above turns out to be fact, and in the absence of other reasonable circumstances that may have affected the PIC's decisions etc, then you may well be justified in your opinion.

However what I heard in the youtube link seemed to be based on hearsay, with a fair degree of political comment and meandering from the subject thrown in. To me if there were any facts amongst it they were difficult to extract and - at this point - unsubstantiated as to source and evidence.

Well, its clearly a fact that it was trailing smoke from the photos taken by a crew member of the VAC B-25 of the formation on its way to the show, which have been posted elsewhere, and were mentioned in that video...hence the 20+ minutes mentioned from the plots between that point and the point it ditched.
What isn't ;'fact' is what level of comms there was or wasn't between the various VAC aircraft in the formation or via ATC until the point the show boss asked about the smoke system fitted, and even then, the PIC still continued with the 'show'......(and the inference of the PIC having a 'show must go on' mentality is based on previous incident when same pilot ended up having to do a wheels up landing, after u/c issues but at least he did the show before crash landing!)