Warbird Information Exchange

Randy Haskin wrote:

Randy,

Sometimes you just don't know, what you don't know. There are many people in the warbird community that are keenly interested in safety. Doug is vocal and does a tremendous service to the warbird community, but if by the "one of a kind" comment, you mean the only one, then this is as miguided and stereotypical as some of the comments that have been made about the Military on this forum. I'm sure that you made the comment simply because of lack of perspective of the scope of the warbird community in general, but it's not very accurate. I've been involved with owning and operating multiple warbirds for 10 years now, and I find that in general it breaks into 3 distinct groups, those that are very interested in furthering an active safety culture and programs, for the broader warbird community ( Doug Rozendahl), those that want to be safe and follow safety guidlines and practice personally, but not be public speakers or leaders, and a small group that gives safety lip service and breaks the rules and guidelines when it suits them.

I also observed these exact same groups during my military flying. It is no doubt more difficult to have a "safety culture" in the warbird community because it really requires one to create a "personal safety culture" and practice it without any outside forces. It can be done and is done by many, many of the people you see operating safely year in and year out with warbirds. Ask Vlado, Steve Hinton, John Lane etc, etc, etc. We're out there, you just aren't in a position to know us all.

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Eric

"I spent most of my money on alcohol, women and skyraiders....and the rest of it I just wasted."

You're right, Eric, that was meant to be hyperbole and not literal.

My objective, like yours, is to keep warbird enthusiasts alive and well and the airplanes we love in the air. It's not to point fingers, call people out, or say that things are being done wrong.

I'm actually more than happy when I make such a statement and it is met with people responding that there ARE robust safety programs out there that I'm not aware of.

Unfortunately, in the limited experience I've had in the community I haven't really seen it personally. Unfortunately I've seen too many in the third category you mention...I can only hope you're right that there's a silent majority out there in the second category.



I think that's the laser-guided root cause of the whole issue. There really isn't a "warbird community", per se, but more a collection of people with widely diverging skills, experience, attitudes, and interest who just happen to share one common interest in warbirds.

Getting a group like that to all think and act a particular way is very, very challenging.

Randy wrote:



Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to call the warbird community's safety program "robust". I would say it present, inadequate and struggling to take a stronger presence.

You can never be too rich, too good looking, have too many warbirds or be too safe. But if I had to pick just one, well, the other three don't matter if you can't embrace the last one.

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Eric

"I spent most of my money on alcohol, women and skyraiders....and the rest of it I just wasted."

Eric wrote " a personal safety culture" as if it was a bad thing. To me it is the basis of safe flying. If one doesn't care personally about how safe he or she flys, are they likely to care only because of some outside agency, be it the FAA or a military safety officer? Can this oversight group be there all the time, can it know how well we slept or how we feel, how we are focused? Does an honest golfer count all his strokes, or only when his partner is watching?
It is true that much safety information in warbird flying is passed in informal ways,either through meetings or pilot to pilot or crew chief to other crew. I, and I think many others care about safety. I am going to continue to try to focus on it.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

While you're correct and I agree with your point (that was Eric's quote BTW, not mine...), you might be surprised how much an organizational culture can influence an individual's behavior.

I've seen a couple fighter guys who stretched the limits of what was acceptable flying have their attitudes caged by some healthy harassment from squadronmates. It started off good natured, but when they weren't getting the clue, it slowly ratcheted up in seriousness until the offenders figured it out.

Who knows if they ever internalized the lesson, but they sure didn't pull any of their crap in the airplane anymore, and were no longer jepoardizing their buddies' health and Uncle Sam's equipment.

Randy, as to your Point one; I fully agree with you on. If one sees another pilot do something he thinks is unsafe, we should speak to them and try to resolve it.. It is really hard to do with many or most of our peers. A year or two ago a miltiary guy( F16?) almost stalled in right there at GLS, pulling max G's. I doubt he would be receptive to any suggestions. Many of our guys are not either. It is human nature, sometimes. More on this later.
Point two; I strongly disagree with. The accident at Galveston did not happen because we were pulling any "crap". I certainly was trying to fly safely, thought I was flying safely, and certainly didn't make a conscious decision to do any "crap". If I was going to intentionally run into another plane it sure would not have been the Hurricane, perhaps the coolest plane there. I was drooling over it, had even asked if there was anyway to get to fly it. And I would not have intentionly used my plane as the one to do the ramming. I thought I was flying as standard airshow procedure, not during anything dangerous. I made a normal landing, and normal AIRSHOW rollout, to leave runway for the bombers. I could have landed 5 knots slower, jamned on the brakes and stopped before the Hurricane, if I had know he was 3000 feet down and having difficulty. I doubt if the Hurricane pilot went flying that day with the idea of pulling any "crap ", or not clearing the runway.
There are at least two things I don't like about your military approach. First, it may not get to the heart of a problem, not just what happened, but why, and how to prevent it in the future? By saying a pilot pulled some "crap" , it is ignoring how the larger framework affected the situation. Last, the military attitude of how much better they are than everybody else, and the negative approach to every problem is not very convincing. I don't know statistics from military,(bet they don't publisize it so much) but with all your advantages, such a lot's of tax money to pay for everything, there are still accidents. How many helicopter accidents, how many non combat fatals? The ONLY group I know of that has an super safety record is major airlines over the last few years.
Finally, I was taught to fly the Spitfire by a miltary combat jet pilot. The pilot that made the mistake leading to the takeoff collision at Oskosh was also an ex mil jet guy, as were most of those in that flight.
Confidence is a great thing, probably needed in your job. But almost every modern military pilot I see seems really impressed when they look in the mirror. Maybe I am old fashioned, I don't see these guys as the anointed ones. When I went to fly that morning, my thought was confidence that I would fly carefully as needed, not that I was so good I could get away with or even wanted a lower standard, ie "crap".
y

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

You'll note that my post discussed organizational safety culture and how it contributed to changing the actions of pilots I knew who pushed limits unnecessarily. The "crap" in my post refered to those instances of unnecessary limit-pushing by military pilots in military fighters.

I neither mentioned nor implied nor intended any link to your incident in any way whatsoever.



Actually, military accident rates are not only published, but they are also put into nice statistics, graphs, historical data, and all kinds of other presentations for public consumption.

For example, here's that helicopter data:

http://www.vtol.org/safety/USAF_3a.pdf

Yes, with all that money and training there are still accidents. Twice you've stated that, trying to imply that because there ARE accidents that military flight safety programs are somehow a failure.

I'll repeat what I all ready have said: the US military has tens of thousands of accident free high performance flying hours every year. It is impossible to eliminate accidents because high performance flying has inherent danger to it.



Interesting perception, Bill. Especially the part about us being impressed with ourselves when we look in the mirror. Ad hominem is always a good direction to take a discussion.

Eric wrote:



In medicine, if you don't write it in an order, it didn't happen. In safety, if you aren't verbal and leading the effort, it doesn't work and is not a good program. I perceive a true good safety culture as being a very verbal exercise. If you are practicing safe measures and not talking about it, then you have a personal approach to safety. A personal approach to safety is one thing, a good safety program is much bigger. In many, many accidents, lack of communication can always be listed as an indirect cause of an untoward event. But in almost every case, if somebody was watching, and talking before or during an event with the principals involved (Gerry Beck's death comes to mind), the problem would have been completely averted.

Now for military safety. I have to agree to an extent with Bill on this one. The US Army and other services safety programs are totally driven by the leadersip in place. If you don't have a good leader, you don't have a good safety program.

When I left my last unit, the commander in place was totally disconnected from the troops. He had a safety program in place, but because junior people were picking up the leadership slack due to his disconnection, there was a wide disparity between the safety program in writing, and the one in practice. The commander knew about this, but let it continue, even after I told him about it with specific examples. I was uncomfortable with what was going on, and went up the chain of command, being assured that it was being looked after. When nothing was done about the issues, and I had an ETS coming up, I just left. There were other factors involved, but the bad safety culture was a very big push for me. My team sergeant at the time, a person who I really respected, tried to keep me from leaving. He said that things would blow over, as they always did when commanders changed. But I had seen too many limits being pushed, including a poorly run demolition range with a load of safety violations (I was a medic cross-trained as an engineer) and a really seat of the pants parachute drop that got a bunch of people hurt. My first son was on the way, so I left. My team sergeant, who really wanted me to stay in, was killed in a parachute jump three months after I left. It was a totally preventable accident. The SGM who was with him had been one of the people who was pretty pissed at me for going up the chain of command about safety, and had basically told me to shut up.

With any true warrior, and especially those who are good at what they do, there is always a spirit of "it can't happen to me." Depending on the personality, that can lead to a true arrogance and, at best, a casual attitude to safety. I didn't find it extensively in the military, but I found it enough that I remember it well, and not just as regards the death of my team sergeant.

RIP, DH...

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REMEMBER THE SERGEANT PILOTS!

Ok I'll bite. I've flown on the USAF and warbird/airshow side of the fence and am currently an airline weinie. Y'all have some valid points. First off, the military's safety culture and operational risk management program is akin to mandatory religion with the unit commanders being the high priests and the pilots being the converted followers. Before every sortie we were required to fill out a risk management survey to quantify or measure the risk. We came up with a score and if too high, we had to get commander approval to fly. This was handed in the supervisor of flying for review--the survey asked great questions Bill mentioned like: how much rest have I gotten? how current am I and the crew? is it a complex mission? in unfamiliar territory? night NVG? crew experience? weather? It was a tool to help us measure all the risk factors and after going through this exercise over and over, it eventually seeped into your way of thinking and colored the way you approach a sortie and left no factor out, no stone unturned in the equation. No religion, playbook or program is effective at meeting it's goals if participants don't buy off on it and execute. The vast majority of warbird operators I fly with are safety conscious and thinking to various degrees along these risk mgmt lines and yes there are bad apples everywhere but it isn't as consistent in their ranks as the military and not because mil guys are better, just force-fed it. With airshow and warbird ops being voluntary and not as tightly controlled and the audience not as captive, it's more difficult to ingrain/convert everyone and bring along anyone lagging or complacent. Sure the miitary still has accidents but compare the stats for preventable military accidents today to those from 40, 50, 60 years ago and the difference is jaw dropping when you see the huge drop in accidents per 100,000 flying hours. I'd be curious to know what the warbird accident rate is in a comparable ratio to the military, general aviation, and the airlines. I know it's abysmal for current jet warbirds. In my dad's early 1950s USAF all-weather interceptor squadron there was frequent, regular as*-shining and screwing around in the jets that wouldn't happen with such regularity in today's USAF and it cost lives and airframes unnecessarily. The military has a great safety playbook it lives by and does a competent job practicing what it preaches or executing the playbook, but yes, accidents still happen occasionally since we are dealing with machines with humans operating them. There are bad apples in the military but usually their careers don't last long if they don't get with the program. I saw it in my own squadron and that's all I'm gonna say there. Most individual warbird operators and air bosses have a firm grasp on safety awareness and practice but Randy's point is spot-on that a standardized institutional safety program by it's nature is profoundly effective and again not cuz military guys are better than everyone else but because the institutions have learned the hard way what causes accidents and what methods positively influence behavior and operational practices to make them fewer. Bill, most military pilots are professionals and don't think they're superior, and yes, some like to look in the mirror but so do some warbird guys, even some airlines guys (why, I don't know). As for the airlines, well...they're not doing complex tactical stuff unless it involves sweet-talkin flight attendants out of the leftover first class meals...so it's easier for them to be near the top in safety. I think we mostly agree here.

I wrote:



Bill Greenwood wrote:

Bill,

How do you get that I think "a personal safety culture" is a "bad thing" out of what I wrote? I am simply stating a fact, it's harder to develop a personal safety discipline than it is to follow the guidelines of a formal program. A combination of both works best. If being self policing with regard to safety were easy, there would be little need for formal structured programs.

T33driver wrote:


Yeah! What he said. I couldn't agree more.

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Eric

"I spent most of my money on alcohol, women and skyraiders....and the rest of it I just wasted."

OK Eric I wrote that wrong, Sorry. I thought it was Randy saying that one lack in warbirds is we don't have formal safety programs to the extent the military does. You answered him that we have "personal safety" approach. When I wrote about it I quoted Randy, he pointed out those were your words, so I edited mine, from Randy to Eric and it got off kilter.
So now: I think personal safety, in other words caring about how safe you fly is the basis of all. If not, one might fly safely in an airshow, then go off the next day with a passenger, no shoulder harness, no chute, and do low altitude acro., when no one is dictating safety.
A more formal approach to safety may be valuable, the devil is in the details. Who is going to be the central and final authority? Who's going to decide if all Spitfires must make wheel landings? Is it going to be red tape and BS? A few years back a whole lot of time and manpower was spent taking away my piece of paper that said, "LOA" and giving me one that said "Type Rating". Is it going to be real safety like higher ceiling and vis for VMC in a fast plane like a fighter, or safer acro minimums with a passenger, or better training for hot spots like L-39s etc? Are groups like some formation teams going to use regs to promote themselves and restrict others? Will it be like FAST? That is, lot's of new regs and paperwork, lot's of new bureaucrats and bosses, but not much added safety, in some cases I think less safety. I don't think you are going to get Steve or Howard into some office issuing edicts, rather it is going to be some figurehead who looks good on paper, maybe some ICAS acro guy who'd like to get all those old planes out of his way, or some modern military guy to tell us how to fly T-6s, Spits and B-17s. Most of all, is there going to be any education, any positive leadership, or more likely a bunch of "Thou Shall Nots?" There may be a chance for good, but there's lot's of risk of a mess.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Anyway, Who's flying to Oshkosh?