C-47 Crash on Take-Off in Burnet, Tx

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sleddriver

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This is a tragic loss of a C-47 historic airplane "The Bluebonnet Belle". Fully fueled, carrying 14 passengers, headed to Oshkosh. A couple were injured, one with serious burns. The aircraft is a total loss.

From the video, it looks like the pilot attempted take-off before the wings were flying. Looks like he had plenty of unused runway. The tailwheel was still on the ground. It's been very, very hot in Burnet. Pulled up too soon, banked right,entered a stall, propeller torque rolled the plane left, left wing hit the ground and crashed & burned.

I'm amazed all managed to get out....

https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=confederate+air+force+crash+burnet+tx&FORM=NWRFSH
 
"The tailwheel was still on the ground."


WOW! Just watched that video! That plane was way to slow to fly. Only lifted off due to ground effect.


I have a taildragger. Never took off with the tailwheel down. Get speed, forward stick, and right rudder for torque as the tailwheel comes up, get lots more speed on the main front gear. Then pull back on stick and fly.
 
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Originally Posted By: billt460
... the pilots, for whatever reason, are allergic to airspeed.


Fuel economy?
 
Originally Posted By: billt460
This just seems to fall into place with all of these other recent accidents. Where the pilots, for whatever reason, are allergic to airspeed.


Don't need airspeed with the kind of propulsion of today's aircraft. Strap a engine to a refrigerator and you can make it fly.
 
Originally Posted By: Vern_in_IL


Strap a engine to a refrigerator and you can make it fly.


True... General Dynamics strapped two engines to a refrigerator and called it the Aardvark... but no amount of power could satisfy the Navy...

The US Department of defense headed by McNamara wanted an all purpose
fighter with a long production run to lower cost and decreed that this
new wonder plane should be a front line fighter for both the Navy and
the Air Force. The result four years and a half billion dollars later
was the General Dynamics F111 a 50 ton monster that was promptly
dubbed the Aardvark...

During the congressional hearings for the aircraft, Vice Admiral
Thomas F. Connolly, then Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air
Warfare, responded to a question from Senator John C. Stennis as to
whether a more powerful engine would cure the aircraft's woes, saying,
"There isn't enough power in all Christendom to make that airplane
what we want!"

 
First the pilot (and I use that term loosely) almost lost it wandering off to the right...




Then over corrects and is wandering off to the left... (note right rudder correction)



Mercy the whole mess comes to rest and burns... did all the passengers run to the tail??? or did the Pilot just fail to maintain basic control??? and were qualifications current???

 
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Originally Posted By: Greggy_D
Hot day, fully loaded, [censored] "gotta get to Oshkosh" pilot.


C47 wasn't fully loaded... however it was fully fueled with 14 souls not a problem for 987 sq ft wing...

Empty weight is 18,190 lbs
Max take off weight is 29,300 lbs
Max fuel 804 US gal 4,832 lbs
Cargo load up to 10,000 lb, or 28 troops, or 14 litters plus a crew of 3...

 
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It’s not yet clear what happened on this. “Too slow” is a specious Internet oversimplification.

There was a great deal of rudder input as the airplane first lifted the tail wheel. The tail wheel was lowered quickly as the crew rotated. The timing of the takeoff looks wrong to me; different than the usual DC-3. Lower speed, yes. Too quick rotation. Almost no climb rate.

Makes me wonder if perhaps an engine failure was happening, and the loss of power (guessing left engine) led to a hasty rotation without enough speed...
 
What ever happened to cause this accident it doesn’t discourage my
life long dream of Logging time in the iconic Gooney Bird... like
flying the P51 its definitely on my bucket list... however I've be up
in the FAA's Gooney and Lodi Parachutist Gooney and from that
perspective this 1935 Donald Douglas design is slow but docile
requiring a big effort to lower the nose on takeoff to prevent the
wing from lifting off before reaching minimum flying speed Vmc of
78knots (88mph)...

 
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Wonder how well qualified the pilot flying was to operate the DC-3?
FWIR, these planes are very heavy on the controls although pretty benign overall. Old DD apparently knew what he was doing when he designed airliners.
Engine failure is certainly a possibility, in which case a properly trained pilot would have pulled both engines all the way back and landed straight ahead if below VMCse, maybe even if a little above that airspeed unless he was super sharp.
Would have been fewer if any injuries that way and the aircraft would have survived.
 
We know the DC3 seats a crew of 3... Pilot CoPilot and Flight
Engineer... the level of skill of each crew member is still a mystery
but ideally the most qualified is going to your Pilot and Engineer...
CoPilot could be anything between equally qualified with the Pilot or
a Newb... so if the least qualified was at the controls then ideally
most qualified should have called "my airplane" and save the day...

Antony of a successful Gooney Bird takeoff...
 
Sorry to be a Johnny come lately...and with a hard to believe input but many years ago I recall another similar DC-3 incident where the PIC's seat either broke or slid out of track. The story was that he put a death grip on the wheel trying to get back up to where he could regain control and the copilot had no chance against that weight. Seeing the tail never leave the ground brought this to mind. Too early to guess reasons but it's going to be interesting to hear when the investigation runs its course. Darn shame.

Cheers

Larry
 
With the low lead av gas would the derated power have something to do with the lack of the gain of speed?
 
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