The accident airplane had been based at my field, I'd seen it several times.
Its hangar was right down the row from that of a friend of mine.

Thanks for the info, Ron.

A fellow pilot who initially went to the accident scene reported that
the first impact zone had ruts 8 to 10 inches deep in the (frozen
solid, at 10 below zero) field where the landing gear hit.

Anything that could punch a hole that deep in frozen Iowa farmland was
coming down extremely fast. You can't dig the ground here with a
bulldozer right now, it's frozen so hard.

The next impact was hundreds of feet down the field.

None of this makes any sense, of course. What could cause an aircraft
to come down so hard, so fast, but still with that much flying
speed? With that kind of energy, they could easily have flown on
quite a ways, and the terrain was not an issue.

This has been a tough one to take. We all like to believe that fatal
accidents only happen to bad pilots, but in this case the pilot was
arguably our *best* pilot. Understanding and studying what happened
in this bizarre crash will go a long ways toward improving flight
safety, IMHO, simply because it proves that it can happen to any of
us.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"