Blueskies wrote:
"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message ...
With nose wheel airplanes, stacked laterally at co-speed through the landing with no stack down for the trailer on
final I never had a problem with section landings. Of course there was always the ever present potential for a tire
blowout on the lead at touchdown. (hopefully the tire away from me :-)
Never did section landings in prop fighters and never recommended them either. Bad juju, especially in Mustangs. Much
better to have at least several thousand feet between touchdowns in these airplanes.
Dudley Henriques


The latest pictures to crop up do seem to show that they were not planning a section landing...


I wouldn't go by the pictures. They tell a lot, but wouldn't indicate
that assumption to me at all.
The ATC or the tape from the com trailer will tell that story. My gut
tells me that Gerry Beck was WAY to good a stick to have been that close
in on the D unless he wanted to be that close in with the D on final,
but as with all speculation, I could be way off base.
I do know there would be no way in hell that I would have been that
close on final behind the D unless I had planned to be that close. There
is just way too much time through an approach like this one was to make
any spacing adjustments necessary to maintain nose to tail separation.
Again, my gut tells me that if Beck wanted to space wider longitudinally
he could have done that easily.
It's all a guessing game at this point, even for me. Having flown these
airplanes myself, I naturally have gut feelings about what Beck was
seeing at different points during his approach, but I can't be certain
what was planned and what wasn't.
I can say with some degree of certainty that I would be absolutely
amazed to find out that Gerry Beck allowed his airplane to close on the
D the way it did had he been planning a normally spaced approach and
landing. I just think he was too good to have allowed that to happen.
Something obviously went terribly wrong with whatever it was that was
happening.
I learned a long time ago that what seems obvious initially in a crash
like this one sometimes turns out to be way off base.
Dudley Henriques