wrote:
Dudley and anyone else,
I was listening with my scanner and heard the P-51A call "Precious Metal,
one mile final", but no further radio calls. I glanced to the south and saw
the P-51A, but not the D, still a good ways out. I then focused on watching
the Sea Fury and Tigercat rolling out until I heard the crowd gasp at which
point I looked south and saw the P-51A pitch up and roll inverted and the
P-51D pitch over on its nose. From the video it seems to me that they
weren't necessarily landing as a section or in formation, that it's
possible that the P-51D cut into the pattern and Beck in the P-51A never
saw the P-51D until too late. The video begins showing the P-51A higher and
hotter and well behind the D, and it seems to me that right at the start of
the video there was pretty good separation between the two which the P-51A
closed quickly. Is it possible in your experience and knowing the
visibility over the nose of a Mustang that Beck in the P-51A didn't see the
P-51D, and never knew he was there until too late, and that Odegaard maybe
turned in front of him in the pattern? I'd love to see a video showing
them from further out in the approach, but I'm interested in your opinion.
Scott Wilson

This is of course a possibility that the investigation team will have
verified or discounted by now from the ATC interviews. If the D was an
incursion I'd have looked for something having been released to that
effect by now....but I could be wrong.
My gut feeling is that they were just too close and had overtake.
To answer your question about not seeing the D; the Mustang with flaps
down has fairly good runway visuals over the nose on final. I would
guess that Beck had the D visually until he flared.
Dudley Henriques