Kyleb wrote:
martin_sam_2000 wrote:
Interestingly, I think his major error was also putting the gear down to early. It must be something pilots are worried about forgetting so they drop them early. Be a neat angle to study in power loss situations in any retractable wheel type.
Sean
You have a point. I can see where as a pilot, I might want to get through certain parts of the checklist early in the emergency so I have more bandwidth to fly the (troubled) aircraft to a safe landing at the end. Unfortunately, there are examples where that thought process lead directly to the accident. I would argue that the Dover C-5 crash was <partially> a result of the pilots prepping for the emergency landing (dirtying up the airplane) before they had the field made.
The Miss Velma one was interesting one it that the engine could not really decide if it was going to kill itself or not. It kept sputtering. If the engine had suddenly died and he dropped the gear and landed in a nice field he would be credited with a great save. I don't think he thought he could ever make a return to the field when the engine first starting to fail, but then power came back and he thought, maybe.... I can just pull it off, then nope.
The C-5B at Dover had lots of thing going on (poorly) with poor CRM, with the configuration for an overweight landing, but the real bigggie- pulling back on a perfectly good engine.