T-34 losing wings

[Ollie]

Hello guys.

This is getting ridiculous. 3 crashes due to wing separation in 5 years. Numerous ADs and AMOCs. The fact is that the three Mentors were used as mock-dogfighters and thus were not handled as carefully as they should have. Those planes are pretty rugged, but like anything, it'll break at some point if it's being abused.

We check our T-34 this summer, removed the wings and all and we found nothing worht of mentionning in there. I'm sure it's the same with loads of operators throughout the world. Julie Clark and the Lima Limas do airbatics, yet they don't shed wings.

Shouldn't the FAA cut the crap and just say that you can't engage in mock dogfights with tis airplane?

I'm getting tired of hearing about them losing parts...

[stumac]

I would think that if all the outstanding wing AD's were properly complied with on this lattest T-34 accident, The T-34 community better brace themselves for another heavy duty AD to come out.
Have there been any changes to the AFM about opperating limitations?
If not I am willing to bet there will be.

[Ollie]

Before we inspected the wings on ours, we had a 152KIAS Vne and a +2/-0 limit.

Now we have the manufacturer's limits as ours is the sole T-34 flying in Canada.

But apparently the one which crashed this week had a modified Baron spar...

[TimAPNY]

When I was in the Navy the pilots would often overstress the airframes during dog fights (pop strain gauges codes, They had a large safety factor built in I assume). That was a huge pain in the butt for us, not as much as a hard landing on the deck but a pain.
That seems to be part of the game when you start to play hard and put yourself in the “live or die” mindset. OR maybe it is the Save Your Ego thing?

[Paul Draper]

Ollie,

We did the AD on my friend's T-34B this spring. We did the AD and not any of the AMOC's based on what happened the when the 2nd T-34A lost a wing (i.e. the FAA revoked all the AMOC's). I guess we'll have to wait and see what the failure was on this latest one, and see what the FAA decides to do.

My personal belief is that these Air Combat operators need to stop using the T-34. There is a pattern here...three T-34A's lost wings...all three were operated by ACM operator...two were from the same operator.

My condolences go out to the families and friends of the two men who were lost in the latest accident.

[srpatterson]

Shouldn't the FAA cut the crap and just say that you can't engage in mock dogfights with tis airplane?

The FAA will have to deal in numbers...Vne limitations and G limitations. There have also been T-28 crashes as a result of horizontal stab failures (the tail fails down and the wings fold up over the canopy, so you can't get out). This resulted in lower G limits on the fleet, and a mod to the tail.

It's a good airplane, but it's not a Sukhoi or F-15.

[Ollie]

That's my point Paul, there's definitly a pattern emerging...

Steve, my uncle's T-28 as the small tail where as my Dad's Fennec had the more solid one as fitted to fighter-bombers. I remember that when the T-28 was at last ready to fly, my Dad told my uncle "Don't you go do a turning pull up with that thing and watch your climbs after a fly-by."

[stumac]

Here is what is being posted in the AIN Alerts today.

Upset Recovery School Loses Another T-34
Just over a year after founder and president of Aviation Safety Training and Texas Air Aces Don Wylie and his passenger, Airborne Express pilot William Eisenhauer, died in the crash of a Beech T-34 after a wing came off, another company pilot and his passenger were killed Tuesday when their T-34 (N141SW) crashed after a wing fell off. The accident—in Conroe, Texas, just a few miles from where the Nov. 19, 2003 crash occurred—killed pilot Richard Gillenwwaters, 51, and passenger Tietro Migliori of Venezuela. A 1999 crash in Georgia in which a wing separated from a T-34 during simulated combat was attributed to stress-related cracks in the wing spar, a weakness that led to the grounding of T-34s used for such flying pending inspections and modifications. Soon after last year's crash, Gillenwwaters told AIN Alerts that the airplane in which Wylie was killed (N44KK) was one of the AST airplanes that had not yet been modified with strengthened wing spars, but it had been inspected and deemed fit for upset recovery training pending modifications. Texas Air Aces conducts simulated combat flights; Aviation Safety Training teaches experienced private, corporate and airline pilots how to recover from aircraft upsets.

[Ollie]

So it wasn't modified... Hmmmm...

What's an AST plane?

And it would be useful to know how many such flights the aircraft had undertaken before. The enquiry will probably tell us about it.

My thoughts are with the pilots' families...

[HarvardIV]

Ollie wrote:

+2/-0 limit

That's pretty soft for an aerobatic plane. It sounds like it needs to be flown kind of like a Cessna.

[Ollie]

That was the limit imposed by the AD after the first accident.

The normal limits must be around +5-6/-2 or 3. I don't know the figures since I'm not checked on the Mentor. It's not based at our place right now so I can't check the numbers.

But I'll give a look in the hangar next Saturday and if she's there, I'll update you.

[Scott Rose]

Ollie wrote:

+2/-0 limit

That's pretty soft for an aerobatic plane. It sounds like it needs to be flown kind of like a Cessna.

I would assume thats probably intentional, Ollie said those were pre-inspection limits. I would think they would be uber-conservative until the status of the wing structure could be established. I'm sure the manufacturer's specs, which Ollie said was what the current limit, are much more broad.

[Randy Haskin]

The fact is that the three Mentors were used as mock-dogfighters and thus were not handled as carefully as they should have. Those planes are pretty rugged, but like anything, it'll break at some point if it's being abused.

That in itself is no reason. The USAF has been flying T-38s as fighter lead-in aircraft for the better part of 30 years. We teach dogfighting day in and day out in them -- in an airplane that was designed to teach the same type of training that the T-34 did back in the day.

We absolutely beat the crap out of these jets -- snatching the stick full aft to the seat-pan at 320 knots, 7G sustained turns for minutes on end, BFM turns which are just sort of an accelerated stall with the airframe and wings buffetting heavily. On top of all of that, the jets have to deal with poor student landings, etc. We Over G the airplanes every once in a while, too (not intentionally, of course).

I don't see wings falling off our jets, and we fly these things literally hundreds and hundreds of rough hours per year.

If an airplane has established G limits, and the operators are abiding by those limits, there should not be catastrophic in-flight failures of major airframe components.

If the operators are either a) exceeding operating limits and not performing the following inspections afterward, or b) not performing the inspections properly, this is an operator issue and NOT an FAA issue.

[Paul Draper]

After the second accident the FAA limited the T-34's to 80 hours of flying (I think), +2/-0 G's, and Vne of 152 Knots until the AD or AMOC was complied with.

After the AD/AMOC was complied with, the limits went back up to the original limits of +6/-3 G's, and Vne of 219 Knots.

The T-34 is very nice flying airplane. I enjoy every second flying it. It pains me to see a few ruin it for the entire community.

[Paul Draper]

If an airplane has established G limits, and the operators are abiding by those limits, there should not be catastrophic in-flight failures of major airframe components.

If the operators are either a) exceeding operating limits and not performing the following inspections afterward, or b) not performing the inspections properly, this is an operator issue and NOT an FAA issue.

That is EXACTLY right!