Unusual engine
"Maxwell" wrote in
:
"Peter Dohm" wrote in message
...
I heard of a similar and long ago case in which the engine came off
of a "bathtub" Aeronca and the pilot managed to land it safely.
I suppose that the Aeronca would have been the easiest of them, but
it's still high up on the list of places and times that I am glad to
have been absent. I don't even want to think about the other two!
I remember a story, long ago, I believe in Flying magazine. Where I
think a training flight was involved in a mid-air. IIRC, it was a
Cessna that lost a very large amount of the left wing. I'm thinking to
the strut, but maybe just to the end of the aileron.
At any rate, the instructor immediately dove the aircraft for airspeed
and returned a short distance to the airport maintaining an airspeed
of 140 knots plus, and full control deflection, and managed to land
the aircraft.
Been a very long time, so I probably have many of the details wrong,
but perhaps someone else will remember as well. Anyone?
Probably happened a few times, but it happened to a guy I used to work for,
in Detroit City. His name was Chuck Weldon and he collided with a police
helicopter over the detroit river while he was on the ILS and in IMC. the
chopper was scud running up the river and it went in killing both cops.
Chuck lost the left wing outside of the left nacelle, the left fin and much
of the left stab. He firewalled the left engine and brought the right one
back and managed to do a skewed sort of approach and crash onto the
airport. they both walked away from it, but were arrested for manslaughter
and it actually went to trial! He got off, obviously ( the way he told it
it was just a rabid reaction by the Detroit Police, which is believable)
and he spent the next six months in court suing them for the loss of his
airplane, which he also won.
While this was going on, two of his other airplanes crashed on the same
night! One in Cleveland and one in Detroit. I think it was the one in
detroit where they accidentally switched off both mags with the crash
switch instead of turning on the heater at rotation. They went through two
houses but survived. The captain even went back to flying again after being
in a coma for six weeks.
They;re gone now, but they were known as Flight Express Cargo Chuck had
been one of the original FedEx pilots way back and had gone off on his own
to make his fortune with Flight Express. I think we had eight accidents,
Three of which were Chucks.
They were all in rhe mid to late 70s for thos morbid sorts that like to
look up stuff in databases.
Bertie
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