NZFF

About 5mins ago... I heard a nasty sound, then the airfield siren...

Jogged down to the end of the taxiway and saw Doug Brookers 2 Seat Spitfire nose down in the grass

Not sure how badly damaged it is at this point, fingers crossed

OMG ...its jinxed! Hopefully its not too damaged..maybe we will see it at a public display in 2011???!

Naki wrote:

QUOTE (Naki @ Dec 3 2009, 12:03 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OMG ...its jinxed! Hopefully its not too damaged..maybe we will see it at a public display in 2011???!

NOOOOOOOOO!!!

I'll never get to see the damn thing at this rate. I hope he is ok, except of course his ego is looking a little battered at the moment.

I hope both on board are ok. that is terrible news!

GO run get your CAMERA find a camera lol

Bugger. Not much more to say; I'm glad I've had the chance to see it flying a few times so far, and I hope the damage this time isn't too severe.

creator2003 wrote:

QUOTE (creator2003 @ Dec 3 2009, 12:27 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

GO run get your CAMERA find a camera lol

Who would witness this without a camera I ask you!!! I don't go to the shops without one in the glovebox these days!!!

Here's the (brief) story: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3123771/WW...ter-plane-crash

Syncop8r wrote:

QUOTE (Syncop8r @ Dec 3 2009, 12:31 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Here's the (brief) story: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3123771/WW...ter-plane-crash

The stuff article has a pic now....not a great one, but a pic nonetheless...

Not to prejudge anything, but the aircraft looks exactly like it did after the Masterton incident...

I think perhaps he should take the hint.

This is just so incredibly sad. Poor Doug ... he must feel absolutely shattered.

Adamski wrote:

QUOTE (Adamski @ Dec 3 2009, 01:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is just so incredibly sad. Poor Doug ... he must feel absolutely shattered.

Yeah... The article on stuff says:

"Just after today's crash Mr Brooker told Stuff.co.nz: "I don't feel like talking right now"."

Kind of says it all really...

I was walking down the ramp to preflight my aircraft when I saw the Spit joining overhead, seconds later, the siren starts whaling and everyone begins running down to the 21 end.

Got a few photos on my point-and-shoot, terrible quality sorry- but you can see that it came to rest on the grass between the sealed and mowed runways- although the whole aerodrome was shut down temperamentally before grass runway 07/25 became the active (first time I've witnessed this in all the years I've been at AR). Feel sorry for any students who were on their first solos- and for Doug of course, the Spitfire was going to be the highlight of the weekends show!





According to an eye witness, it came in with "came in with quartering tailwind, touched the left wingtip over corrected and hooked right onto the centre grass and collapsed the main undercarriage." There was quite a strong crosswind blowing from the north around 11.45, with 21 active by default- but by the time I left it had swung around to 03. Tricky day for a delicate piece of machinery like this

Very unfortunate.

But then again, it has me questioning why? After previous incidents, taking the AC up on a less than perfect day, landing with a tailwind and too quickly.

Trolly wrote:

QUOTE (Trolly @ Dec 3 2009, 03:08 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

According to an eye witness, it came in with "came in with quartering tailwind, touched the left wingtip over corrected and hooked right onto the centre grass and collapsed the main undercarriage." There was quite a strong crosswind blowing from the north around 11.45, with 21 active by default- but by the time I left it had swung around to 03. Tricky day for a delicate piece of machinery like this

And if we look at the smoke in the background on the left hand side of the picture we can see that it is indeed quite a tailwind.

Bugger

Kind of pitiful really when you consider half a century ago 17 year olds with bare double digit flying hours were flying these on a routine basis and into combat no less.
It is tragic to see such a rare airframe abused in this way. Twice in a year is just unacceptable.

Famous is the Spitfire with its narrow tracked gear , i do have the percentages here in the early days with off operations , guess more rushing , almost like this but recall a figure close to the twenties , and was mention the turn around of a belly flop , but today , well 1988 the late Colin 'Col' Paye chipped the blades on his Spitty , bill was something like $38,000 .. ironic part is the propellers , not sure now but then were made in Germany , .. each blade spruce handles 400HP and weigh in each just over 100Lb's , readying for a show puts some squeeze in time but to bugger it like that , ..... Its is a very high preformance type , Col Paye did it , Sir Tim Wallis did it .

Majorly Gutted! :-( Hope shes hasnt got too much damage.

cowpatz wrote:

QUOTE (cowpatz @ Dec 3 2009, 09:27 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Kind of pitiful really when you consider half a century ago 17 year olds with bare double digit flying hours were flying these on a routine basis and into combat no less.
It is tragic to see such a rare airframe abused in this way. Twice in a year is just unacceptable.

Not really getting at you, but I wonder a bit about that comparison . It's well known that in WWI, more pilots were killed in non-combat operations than in actual combat. I don't know about WWII, but I suspect the statistics are there ... somewhere ... and there may have been a pretty high accident rate with Spitfires - but because they may not have ended up in a death, many incidents may not have been recorded. Again - if you look at the statistics (there's a thread here on NZFF about it somewhere) very few pilots were that young. Many already had flying experience with other Air Forces.

What *is* well recorded is the widely accepted view (held by pilots at the time and since) that the Spit's narrowly spaced undercarriage wasn't a totally brilliant design - particularly for an aircraft operating off rough (grass) airstrips. The Me109 is slightly better - but look at the FW190.

I also thought (after the Masterton incident) that maybe there's an art to flying these idiosyncratic old aircraft that somehow just hasn't been passed down from WWII - but having seen how Doug flies everything else, I just can't make myself believe he couldn't fly a Spit "properly".