Pretty much a carbon copy of an accident at Enstone, U.K. 20 years ago.
In both cases:-
1. A large, twin engined tailwheel vintage aircraft.
2 En route to an air display, with passengers on board.
3. Light winds.
4.Less experienced pilot handling, from right hand seat.
5. A swing developed, not controlled.
6.PIC took control, failed to correct swing.
7. Aircraft about to depart runway, pilot elected to pull it off the ground.
8. Stalled, wing dropped, wingtip struck ground, cartwheeled.
9. No fatalities, aircraft written off.

In the Enstone accident, the aircraft written off was the last flying example worldwide.

https://aviation-safety.net/database...?id=19960718-0

As the aircraft gets abeam of the guy filming, there is a puff of dirt from the tail wheel as it comes off the ground and back down. Is he off the side of the runway at that point?

Also, there is no deflection in the elevators at that point. I realize they are drooping in the post fire pictures.

Has there been any publication or interview with the guy filming. He sees something early in the take off and seems to know something is wrong.

That's been asked and answered twice already.

Sorry. Did not see an interview with him. Can you supply a link, or a post Number?

Thanks.

EDIT: I looked through all the posts, and see a few with mentions of being off the runway, but nothing definitive. A few gust lock comments, too. I still don't see anyone quoting the person filming as to what he saw early in the roll.

OBD, to save you actually having to read what has gone before try this: More info on what happened

Hi ehwat,

This discussion about the use of aileron to help counter a swing - rather than helping prevent one happening in the first place - has been most interesting and enlightening for me, but I doubt it has much relevance in this particular case. I'm sure you'd agree that the primary means of directional control on take-off and landing remains the rudder. Judging from the information in the video linked above, the conditions were such that secondary techniques - such as aileron, asymmetric power, differential brake or the locked tail-wheel - would have been unnecessary to keep the a/c straight above taxiing speed.

Several posters with more (and more recent) experience of the type than I have experienced difficulty in getting the tail up, which would normally be at 40 kt IAS or soon after - well before flying speed. The public-transport, C-47 operation I was involved with consisted of five freighters and one passenger a/c, using a MTOW of 28,000 lb. A load and trim sheet was prepared for each take-off and, in my limited experience (500 hrs), I never experienced a take-off where the tail was reluctant to fly.

Yes, it goes without saying that the tail must be lifted well before the a/c reaches flying speed to avoid getting airborne prematurely. In any case, to state the obvious: if the tail remains on the ground, no pilot-commanded rotation in the nose-up sense is possible, so I don't understand your final point. The poor outcome is likely to happen because the a/c then flies itself off in a semi-stalled condition, which is what may have happened here.

I'm not able to post the link but the guy who trained the pilots posted a video on Facebook explaining what happened. Look up "Dan Gryder" on Facebook.

MM. Thanks. I have watched that, and his description is probably accurate. I have also read a lot of the expert posts here. Lots of guys with great experience.

I was just asking about what the guy who was filming saw that caused him to get excited. I would have thought some news outlet would have interviewed him by now.

Thanks for your response. I'll wait and see what turns up.

Have a great evening.

It appears that aircraft begins to fish tail with increasing amplitude as it accelerates. Perhaps this is what alarms video man.
The tail wheel is castoring type and the last item on Take Off checklist is to ensure it is locked straight.
I wonder if initial swing was caused by application of take off power and unlocked tail wheel?

Thanks
 

I think you may be right. I looked at the video several more times and it does appear to fish tail early in the takeoff. There are are several comments above from some very experienced DC-3/C47 pilots, which discuss the tail wheel issue.

Thanks for noticing that and posting.

Some of the speculation seems to have been off target.

https://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.a...20180721X41413

The tailwheel locking pin can also be sheared during careless ground handling with a tow bar. In such a case, it is possible that the pilot could select it to the locked position, and be unaware that the tailwheel was not effectively locked. It's certainly nice to have a locked tailwheel, though a safe takeoff is still possible with it unlocked, the rudder will steer the plane if used with purpose.

If that is the case you would have noticed during taxi.
Take off without a locking pin is possible if you would know it. If not the moment you add power the aircraft would turn due p-factor.
(About my experience. 1.500 hours in it's little brother the BE-18 including as an instructor and a couple of hours in the DC-3)

Just a question and nothing more. Could overzealous application/correction of the rudder with an unlocked tail wheel easily lead to a loss of control?

No.not enough airflow over the rudder at that speed. Plus most of the rudder is behind the wing.
Problem doing a take-off with a low wing taildragger is that there are 3 phases in the take-off roll:

1. All the time the tailwheel is on the ground.
2. The transition fase between lifting the tailwheel and rolling with the fuselage level.
3. From that time until lift off.

In Phase 1 the tailwheel will do most of the tracking of the aircraft. Also correct use of the aileron and differential power if needed helps. The rudder is mostly in the shadow of the wing so there will be almost NO clean airflow over it. Only the top part will experience clean airflow.

In Phase 3 The rudder is completely exposed to the airflow so it is at that time your primary runway tracking device.

The most difficult part is the transition Phase 2. Your tailwheel is lifting off the ground so you will loose its tracking capability. The rudder is still in the wing shadow. So the only means of keeping the aircraft straight is differential power, aileron and a little-bit of rudder.

The BE-18 was in that respect a b!tch. It had a very small rudder and a very short fuselage.

So what was the reason for the crash. I can not say. But I can say that what I see in the video is that the aircraft is not ready to fly jet.

Like other people say if there was any kind off problem (flight control, engine) they should have aborted the take-off.

I hope the investigation come with e definite answer.

OK, thank you for that D-OCHO

Don't agree with what D-OCHO has written.

There is plenty of airflow over the rudder with the engines running - the rudder is effective when taxiing the aircraft,

@Hotel Tango - the answer to your question is yes. The correct thing to do in this situation is to get the tailwheel off the ground ASAP.

Agreed. D-OCHO is right, however, to point out that the transition from tail down to tail up (and vice-versa) is when direction control is normally the most tricky on any tail-dragger, and the DC-3/C-47 is no exception. In this case, though, the tail seems to have been up only briefly, and by a small amount.

At a first reading, the captain's account seems to contradict the co-pilot's. But my GUESS is that the swing to the right that the co-pilot reports may have been relatively minor and that he may have over-corrected it, which would explain the captain's assertion that the a/c swung to the left. It is only too easy to over-correct a swing, sometimes even leading to PIO (pilot-induced oscillation). We've all done it, and it can be seen happening in the video I posted earlier, of a Dakota taking off on a wide grass airfield at White Waltham (England):
[scroll forward to time 12:22]

However, in the case of the Burnet accident, it seems that the swing to the left took the aircraft off the edge of the 75-foot-wide, paved runway before the captain could take control. Question remains; why was the take-off not aborted immediately?

Get-there-itis. Lot of pressure to get the plane to KOSH to join in the large tribute to the type during the airshow. Also, had a lot of pax who were excited and looking forward to getting to KOSH. The left seat took control, further contributing to the mind-set that; 'I got, I got it, I got it, I got it,,,, I don't got it.'

This is directly from my speculation, and has no basis in fact, knowledge, evidence, or proof. But - is a rational human process for all pilots, and even those with many hours in a special plane.

NTSB Preliminary Report published:

https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/Re...=HTML&IType=FA

Thanks Treaders. We'd already seen the narrative of the report, courtesy of a link provided by Super VC-10 above, and that's what I was referring to in my previous post.

But that version didn't include the supplementary information in yours. The latter includes the actual weather observation. I see the wind was reported as 20009KT (i.e., from 200 deg at 9 kt), with no reported gust. The runway in use was 19, so there's no suggestion of any significant crosswind.

Another minor point of interest is that the aircraft type is listed as "DC3 B". The "B" presumably refers to its P&W engines. I wonder if it was manufactured as such, or if it was a C-47.

EDIT
Other points:
1) OAT +29C (ISA +17)
2) Is there any significance in the US that there was no operating certificate? Do private operations need one in the US?
3) No ATC flight-plan had been filed. Would that normally have been done after take-off by R/T?
4) There's no report of a load sheet or trim sheet, and no record or retrospective estimate of the all-up weight.

It was built in Oklahoma City in late 1944 as a C-47B serial number 43-49942; then flown to Montreal, Canada where it was transferred to Great Britain under the Lend-Lease program. The aircraft was ferried to England and served with the RAF. In 1945 it was assigned to the No. 435 Transport Squadron, a Canadian unit as KN270.

RR-NDB, thanks for the NACA archive. Interesting stall series. It would not meet Part 25 today, given the aileron losing effectiveness so early in the stall progression with power on. video shows as well the amount of out of turn aileron that is needed to stop the steepening of the bank angle, the wing sweep was really not helping that, as it didn't help the tip stall. Watching a Dak take off 3 point is pretty worrisome. It is possibly technique related but I would be certainly looking closely at loading, and control integrity/jam etc.

On the upside, the old lady still kept it all together in the event, and people got out with more stories to tell.

Years ago, one of our support Daks went off piste on takeoff with young pilots at the reigns. The party goers, all older and not so much wiser war/post war pilots were laughing their heads off once the dust settled, they recalled being there and doing that in their earlier careers too.

1) Possibly contributing? Although a very minor issue, the takeoff run would have been a bit longer of course, but there was plenty of runway left for a rejected TO.
2. In terms of the accident no, in terms of the registration/ownership/legal entity, yes. It will reflect poorly on whomever is the responsible party for the plane.
3) For a VFR flight, it's hit or miss. Usually if they are going to file a VFR flight plan, they would do it on the ground, and activate it after TO. It would be unusual to file it while in the air, but it's possible. More likely, they would not file at all.
4) That's baaaaaad. Or maybe it was done, but not in the report. If the pilots did not do a W/B and or trim sheet for this flight would reflect poorly on their airmanship.

One man's opinion, YMMV, objects in mirror, contents have settled, and may cause anal leakage.

All this drama was technique related. It will eventually all fall down to lack of proper training.
A link already posted, explaining a few things about this accident.
Dan G. should blame CAF's accounting department instead of the FAA.

Nothing, besides money, could have prevented more "appropriate" training.

1) Welcome to Texas in the summertime
2) In the US an operating certificate is for commercial operations, parts 121/125/135. As this aircraft was privately owned and not operated for hire there would not be an operating certificate.
3) As pointed out above, there's no requirement for a FP for VFR flights in the US. It's main purpose would be to alert search and rescue services if the aircraft was overdue at its destination if the flight plan was not closed.
4) There are some general rules about preflight actions and the catch all "careless and reckless" but no specific requirement to generate a W&B sheet for private aircraft. You'd have to work to overgross even a lightweight DC-3 with people. Real DC-3s had a Max TO weight of 25,200 if I recall correctly and make the BOW around 20,000. For 15 people that would be 346 pounds each for a person and their baggage. C-47s went up to 26,900. CG would be another issue. A simple load plan like "If there are 5 people or less, seat them over the wing in rows x, xx and xxx. Up to 10 people seat them in rows y, x, xx, xxx and yy. More than 10 people, load them front to back". Don't know where this aircraft stowed baggage. A few hundred pounds in the aft end would make a difference in raising the tail.

Thanks for the welcome to Texas in the summertime, MarkerInbound (used to do it a bit in a somewhat later product of the Douglas Aircraft Company, but that was public transport) and thanks for responding to my points..

1) Yes, I was tempted earlier to respond to ethicalconundrum (above) regarding big-piston take-off performance in hot and/or high conditions, not that ISA +17 at 1284 ft amsl is remarkable. As ethicalconundrum probably knows, but others may not, the big piston will typically get airborne in much less runway than a jet, but once airborne will perform much worse. (Poor WAT-performance.) The jet will use a lot of runway to reach a high TAS, but then climb at a much steeper angle. Hence, at places like Khartoum, most departures of big-piston airliners in the 1950s, such as DC-6s and Connies, used to be in the early hours.

2) Thanks for the clarification.

3) Remain a bit surprised that no ATC flight-plan was filed for the leg to Sedalia - a cross-country flight of about 500 nm, taking about three-and-a-half hours?

4) Yeah, any trim calculation is essentially a fairly crude matter, but seating the 10 pax as close to over-wing as possible would have made sense. On our C-47 operation - either front-to-back cargo or about 30 pax - we may have divided the cabin into three sections for trim purposes, and - as you point out - the aft baggage bay definitely needs to be taken into account. Stowing baggage and other equipment over-wing or at the front of the cabin seems impracticable.
MTOW was 28,000 lb for us, as we were in north-west Europe.

If you're going VFR, why would you file an ATC flight plan? Even if you were intending to receive radar flight following and traffic advisories with ATC, filing a flight plan isn't necessary and doesn't do anything. A VFR flight plan has no ATC function*, it's simply a request for Search and Rescue if you don't arrive at your appointed time.


*within an ADIZ, aircraft are required to file a DVFR flight plan for identification purposes, which is forwarded to ATC ... but I don't think they were going anywhere near an ADIZ

Chris; I have no jet time, plenty of piston operating time in TX/AZ/NM/CA.. For operating cert, I mistakenly thought Airworthiness, and my mistake.

Flight plan. I don't want to put on my tin foil hat for this, but it's been my experience that when operating within about 2-300 miles of the southern border, filing a flight plan is counter-productive. I fly a lot in and around S TX, NM, and AZ. Most of the time, I don't even have a TXP because I don't want to have the feds watching my every move in the air. Again, that's just my conspiracy talking, but trust me - there are plenty of private pilots down here who think as I do. I've had the feds call my destination and ask for my landing time, I've had them call me in the air on guard, and once the narcs decided to call the local sheriff where I was landing in Nowhere NM and ask that they go check that I am on the ground where I said I was. So, I've had it with that spit. If they want to find me, no reason to make it easier.

As I said before. The DC3 required the weight over the wings. Passengers always sit down the back as the last 3 windows have a view without the wing obstructing it. If there were 20 passengers guaranteed 10-12 down the back, plus the cargo pit may have been full down near the tailwheel. The crew have to have the weight and passengers over the wing for takeoff and the tail up by 40 knots end of story. This is pilot error failed to push the tail up by 40 knots ( some days full forward on the yoke to get the tail flying ) with or without the weight in the correct or incorrect CG position. They did not reject the takeoff at 40 knots after the tail did not come up thus taking to the sky at say 60-65 knots well below the DC3s lowest speed of 81 knots . Stall to the left as the two 1830 engines torque it that way... Simple stuff DC3 class 101.

Read Ernest Gann's description of a take off in a tail heavy Dak!

After an excellent landing etc...

3) I used to launch from DFW to Detroit on good days and just hold a heading for six hours. If you saw Indianapolis go by you knew you were on course. Company operations would know to look for us after 7 hours. You can still call center for flight following.

4) Dug out a copy of the FAA DC-3 flight manual (amazing what you can find on the shelf when an operation shuts down.) The 26,900 came from a CAR 4 performance limitation. Above that you would have to calculate performance numbers. At or below that weight you would meet the required performance numbers up to 7500 MSL. I can't imagine weight would be an issue with 11 additional people and fuel for Sedalia. CG could be interesting

That's interesting about performance limitations (lack of), MarkerInbound - thanks.

Thanks also to A Squared, ethicalconundrum, and MarkerInbound for explaining the common practice of not filing ATC flight-plans for long, VFR cross-country flights in the southern US. Despite the popularity of private flying in America, no doubt the airspace in that vast continent is far less congested than in north-western Europe.

So the absence of an ATC flight-plan on this accident flight does not suggest any lack of routine flight preparation by the crew.

I think the lack(if there was none) of a W/B and trim setting point will be in the final report, but not as a definitive cause, and will only be one of the contributing factors. Given the swings which seem to introduce the left seat taking control, I can't help but also consider the polar moment of inertia of the mass(meatsacks, baggage) behind the main gear. Much of this seems to contribute to reasons why the tail was not up by the apparently prescribed 40kts, as others have indicated(I have no time in the C7, but plenty of TW time in other smaller stuff).

Some possible reasons: FF is a workload based service and may be unavailable (unlikely but possible). You may not want to be on the radio as much as you would with FF but still might want the S&R backup of having filed a VFR flight plan.