The Good Old Days (not so)
 

Air Force Safety Center > Divisions > Aviation Safety Division > Aviation Statistics

Some amazing stats found the the above website:

1951 124 F-80s destroyed
1953 180 F-84s destroyed
1955 274 F-86s destroyed (1000 over a 4 year window)
1956 a mere 32 F-89s destroyed - but there were not many of them in the first place
1958 116 F-100s destroyed (between 56-59 it averaged 100/year)

Make yourself a coffee and prepare to be enthralled

T

The RAF lost 879 Meteors in post-war accidents up until the end of the '50s.....

Good old days? Survivors seemed to think so!!

I survived the Meteors without any dual in the late fifties, so I must be a survivor! Good old days? NO.

The unforgettable Alex Tarwid once described to me the time that he arrived at the local railway station in Yorkshire for his Meteor conversion. Whilst waiting for MT, he saw a meatbox do a death-dive around finals and crash in the undershoot. The other two aircraft in the circuit came to have a butchers and had a mid-air.

interesting days!

Mog

One of my old QFIs described arriving for his Meteor (possibly Vampire) course at Worksop & seeing the Stn display pilot wipe himself out during a practice. A tannoy that afternoon asked for volunteers to be the new Stn display pilot.

Wasn't there a day in the 50's where something like five aircraft were lost at air displays across the country.
All fatal and one which landed on a house killing the occupants.
I had read somewhere (source exscapes me) that a likely cause was ex wartime crews pushing the envelope, making mistakes.
PTSD perhaps?

Five different air display in one day......not much chance of that happening again is there?

I remember reading a piece by a WW2 pilot who said that he knew he was part of a peacetime Air Force post war when he couldn’t find anyone on his Sqn prepared to do night formation aeros with him...

The RAF lost 6 fighters in 45 minutes.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ust-45-minutes

In terms of the number of displays sadly no. I think those days are long gone. If we are talking accidents I hope so.

Wow. That wasn't the holes in the cheese lining up, we decided to buy the entire cheese factory at that point.

I seem to have a vague recollection that during the mid 50's there were some 55 x Battle of Britain At Home Day base displays....which even if were taking about spread over 2 or even 3 consecutive September is still an astonishing number.

Its been 2 decades odd now since there has been one!!

Old days
 

Just finished reading ‘Meteor Boys’ - makes the 10% Harrier fatalities we had at one stage in the ‘80s seem rather tame.

It was either a day or the cumulative total from two weekends of Battle of Britain days at various stations; I remember encountering this while looking for something else - either in Flight (when their archive was accessible), the Times archive or possibly a question in Hansard.

As an aside, from the written answers in Hansard in December 1951

Jet Aircraft (Fatal Accidents)

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air in how many fatal accidents jet fighters have been involved in the last six months; and how many of these have occurred in Lincolnshire.


Mr. Birch. Between 1st June and 30th November of this year there were 45 fatal Royal Air Force jet aircraft accidents; two of these were in Lincolnshire.


And January 1954:

Jet Aircraft (Accidents)

Sir L. Ropner asked the Under-secretary of State for Air the number of fatal accidents to jet aircraft in the United Kingdom for the 12 months ended 31st December, 1953; and what was the number of personnel who were killed as a result of these accidents.

Mr. Ward In the United Kingdom during 1953 there were 91 fatal accidents to Royal Air Force jet aircraft in which 112 members of the Royal Air Force lost their lives. These figures are slightly lower than the comparable figures for 1952, although the number of hours flown during the year was about one third greater.

I arrived at Linton on Ouse in 1977, to begin BFTS very shortly after the station display pilot had crashed his Jet Provost on the airfield. He survived, but only just and he never flew again. A QFI crashed his JP3 into Gouthwaite Reservoir a few months later, losing his life. Sobering stuff to a young chap about to embark on a flying career.

Two years later I joined my first squadron at Odiham. Six weeks later we lost an aircraft, killing the three crew.

The following year I arrived at the main gate at Gutersloh to begin my Germany tour only to see an ominous pall of black smoke rising from the airfield. One of the QFIs I flew with at Linton had just ejected from his crashing Harrier. Tragically, he didn’t survive.

Before I left Gutersloh a Harrier Squadron Boss lost his life in a deployed site takeoff accident. About an hour later I was tasked to fly the station photographer over the crash site for the Board of Inquiry. Not nice, the wreckage was still smouldering.

My best friend was killed in a Northern Ireland aircraft accident some years later.

Sad times.

In my time on the C130 we lost 6 ac, half to hostile action, including 2 with all on board killed. Military flying is a hazardous business but fortunately not as bad as it used to be.

When I first went to Biggin Hill I recall being told that there was a roughly 20% chance that we wouldn’t get to collect our pensions. The odds have clearly improved considerably since then and even they were presumably based on past trends.

When I went through flying training in 1960 if there wasn't three pillars of smoke in the sky by Monday lunchtime the week hadn't really got started.

The numbers quoted were not considered unusual for that era.
We were operating aircraft lacking Perf A performace and using training methods which were part of the problem - asymmetric practice with full shut-downs, rather than idle, being a classic example.

I knew a National Service pilot who couldn't get out quick enough. He was fed up with having to formate on his boss in Meteor 7 with an iced up canopy, while his boss was enjoying the clear canopy of the pressurised Mk 8.

These stories reminded me thatmy father told me of collecting bits of Sabre (f86)
all over East Anglia. I counted 20 in 1955. by 1956 the Hunter arrived.
I was an Air Force brat aged 13&11/12ths at West Raynham when the 6 were
lost. I remember being told that the Wig Commander Flying (?) was off the station that day.