spinex my understanding from eyewitness reports of the Victor 1 accident was that the plane dived in an intact condition. Please ignore my comment if that is not what you meant.

Yeah I understood that it was a stall/spin scenario on Victor 1 - are you saying what I think you're saying ie. this (Batemans Bay) aircraft had disintegrated before it hit the surface? I know there was talk about something flying off beforehand, maybe even something fairly significant, but that poor plane looks as though it's been fed through a threshing machine.

The Lightwing on Victa 1 was an engine failure and subsequent ditching, so quite different to this one. This one is rumored to have lost a very large component that is required in order to maintain flight.

I don't think it spun, just plunged without lift according to everyone I know who witnessed the dive into the ocean. Stalled...communicating, not flying the aircraft. I thought your implication re Batemans was something structural.

OT re Victor 1. I recall seeing aftermath C172 after landing (flipped in surf) in 1985 not 200m from other V1 accident as a result of carb icing. Pilot made a decent attempt at landing on beach flying the a/c down but flipped in the surf along shoreline. All 4 occupants were able to walk away.

:ok: bloody forums, we'd have gotten that straight in a few words over a beer. Still, from all the rustling in the undergrowth, I have a sneaking suspicion that there could be something nasty lurking out there.

Good on the RA-Aus for what they have just done.

Aircraft is lost on 5/7/14, recovered a week or so later, the wreckage investigated and the following Service Bulletin has just been released:

https://www.raa.asn.au/documents/air...2021072014.pdf

Nobody had definitively said that this is what happened on the crashed aircraft, however anecdotal evidence suggests that the the release of this SB is in response to this crash.

Joining the dots, elevator control is lost and the aircraft nose dives whilst losing major components on the way down.

The crucial part regarding worst consequence is this -

Failure to secure attachment points correctly
could potentially induce aerodynamic control
flutter of a primary flight control.