The most dangerous warbird to operate?

For all who fly or fly in, what would you suggest would be the most difficult, most dangerous and/or has the toughest handling characteristics of all CURRENT WARBIRDS flying? Is there one particular warbird that most here wouldn't want to fly? Is there one warbird that stands out as a very difficult airplane to learn to fly? is there a warbird today that if the owner offered to teach you to fly it for free you would still say no?

[Iclo]

Hum
Me-109 ? lot of incident and accidents, sometimes involving very skilled pilots (Mark Hanna of Old flying Machine Company died in an crash in Spain)
Automatic slats who create turbulences are at the origin of his stall and lost of control.
Other point the landing gear not very wide who is responsible of lot of landing, take-off or taxing accidents.

[Taylor Stevenson]

P-82? Engine out on takeoff = toast

[flyingheritage]

Any warbird that is a single or twin is dangerous. Once you loose your engine on any type of those engined warbirds your in deep deep trouble... and going down regardless unless saved fast.

I have seen how bad a civil twin loosing a engine on take off is... when its a warbird , that just raises the stakes alot more as the rarity issue is playing fiddle.

More worrying i feel and i know others i speak with agree, is when pilots in their old age fly a warbird and die from sudden or various age related causes while flying. There goes 1 pilot and plane and untold damage potentially on ground.

That is where i feel warbird need to be flown by people younger as under 50 is less heart attacks etc and better fitness levels.

Age of the pilot... has caused a A-20 Boston to be lost in 1980s as most will know.

But where do you draw line.. owners should be able to fly their assets as they wish to. Historians and museums alined people would rather younger people flew them i get the feeling.

[Jack Cook]

Any warbird that is a single or twin is dangerous. Once you loose your engine on any type of those engined warbirds your in deep deep trouble.

What sets a warbirds apart from any single engine aircraft??

That is where I feel warbird need to be flown by people younger as under 50 is less heart attacks etc and better fitness levels.

Oh come on that's crazy Ego and inexperience are 100 times worse. John Dimmer didn't leave to fly until he was in his 50s and flew his 450 Stearman, SNJ and Wildcats well into his 70s. Same with Crash Williams and his T-28 and TBM. No easy climb after hip replacement surgery. One of our local Stearman pilots is 70 and has has a triple by-pass and flys great. Even the 60 year old airline reg was stupid!

Age of the pilot... has caused a A-20 Boston to be lost in 1980s as most will know.

Yeah but he had a valid medical. age is no factor.

[EDowning]

Flyingheritage wrote:

Any warbird that is a single or twin is dangerous. Once you loose your engine on any type of those engined warbirds your in deep deep trouble... and going down regardless unless saved fast.

I have seen how bad a civil twin loosing a engine on take off is... when its a warbird , that just raises the stakes alot more as the rarity issue is playing fiddle.

More worrying i feel and i know others i speak with agree, is when pilots in their old age fly a warbird and die from sudden or various age related causes while flying. There goes 1 pilot and plane and untold damage potentially on ground.

That is where i feel warbird need to be flown by people younger as under 50 is less heart attacks etc and better fitness levels.

Age of the pilot... has caused a A-20 Boston to be lost in 1980s as most will know.

But where do you draw line.. owners should be able to fly their assets as they wish to. Historians and museums alined people would rather younger people flew them i get the feeling.

Drivel. Also look up the difference between lose and loose.

Well answers like the one from Wxlova makes me think twice about posting anything interesting. My dad flew until he was 84 or so years old. he had no problems at all. Dad came to visit me one year well into his late 60's. I took him to Chino and the good folks there asked him if he would like to sit in the POF Corsair. He declined at first out of respect for someone else's airplane, but POF insisted he sit in the cockpit. he climbed right up like he was 22 years old again. old age and not flying is ..... b*llsh*t!!!! .... Makes you want to have Greenwood back, at least he wasn't stupid ....

Last edited by Hellcat on Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Matt Gunsch]

F-8 Crusader, too many single point failures, Lose any of those and all you can do is punch out.

I worked on the Thunderbird Aviation F-8s, and it was the only plane I would not want to fly in.

[k5083]

Back on topic, thinking about different types. The 109/Buchon was mentioned, it is true that nobody seems to be able to keep these in one piece for long, but with the one exception of Hanna, the accidents tend to be low-energy landing prangs where the pilot walks away and the plane ultimately is rebuilt. I would tend to define dangerous statistically in terms of fatalities per 1000 flying hours, and there the good old P-51 probably ranks right up there. The L-39 would be another contender. Not that the source of the problem necessarily lies in the plane itself. Some of the most inherently dangerous planes probably appear safe to us because they are rare and in the hands of very skilled operators, like the P-26 could be a death trap for all we know but as long as Hinton is the only guy flying one, it will look easy.

August

[Steve T]

Yeah, the age thing can be a problem, or it can be no problem at all...witness Oscar Boesch's sailplane routines which he was still performing in his late 70s, or Jerry Billing who did not quit wringing out the Robertson Spitfire until he was about 75. Or Tommy Williams, former test pilot for Fleet Aircraft, who turned in his licence at age 87...immediately after flying one last aerobatic display in his Fleet 21M at St.Catharines.

Per flyable example, probably statistically the unluckiest Warbird type is the Fairey Firefly; I don't think there's even one recently-flyable example of that type that has not suffered some sort of major incident (Eddie Kurdziel's may be an exception?)...but all those incidents were different from each other; it could be a statistical fluke.

This is a fraught topic, isn't it...

S.

[T33driver]

Any warbird that is a single or twin is dangerous.

--Great news for the guys flying the tri-motors, JU-52s, B-17s and B-24s.

Once you loose your engine on any type of those engined warbirds your in deep deep trouble... and going down regardless unless saved fast.

--I keep my engines tight so I avoid danger, even though "danger" is my middle name.

I have seen how bad a civil twin loosing a engine on take off is... when its a warbird , that just raises the stakes alot more as the rarity issue is playing fiddle.

--Oh faddle then...

More worrying i feel and i know others i speak with agree, is when pilots in their old age fly a warbird and die from sudden or various age related causes while flying. There goes 1 pilot and plane and untold damage potentially on ground. That is where i feel warbird need to be flown by people younger as under 50 is less heart attacks etc and better fitness levels. Age of the pilot... has caused a A-20 Boston to be lost in 1980s as most will know.

--Stupidity and incompetence kills many times more pilots and infects wayyy more threads than old age and ill health.


But where do you draw line.. owners should be able to fly their assets as they wish to. Historians and museums alined people would rather younger people flew them i get the feeling.

--The line should be drawn at stupidity, ignorance and incompetence. Your feeling is wrong, lose it (not loose it). Youth is far from being a guarantee of pilot health, competence, and judgement. Let's not forget quality training and experience for which youth is no substitute.

Last edited by T33driver on Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[JDK]

This is a fraught topic, isn't it...

Interesting though, provided people are sensible. Let's keep it so.

I'd not thought about the Firefly, good point, and I'd agree with August's analysis overall.

Age isn't an issue, is it? Fitness and health are - and as we age that's harder to maintain; but I've met 90s year olds who are very fit, and 50 year olds ready to shuffle off.

A certain N American demo pilot called 'Bob' comes to mind.

[EDowning]

The PT-22 and the NA-64 Yale both have stall characteristics that are abrupt and severe. Not the end of the world, but it adds an element that dramatically raises the danger bar. Looks and complexity can be very deceiving and complacency in a real killer in the warbird realm.

[T33driver]

Mark,

A couple buds of mine who've checked out in the MiG-21 say it's a real sonuvab1tch and not a machine that gives you any slack or for that matter, time to enjoy the ride. They described it more like crisis management. Another friend of mine got checked out in the L-39 by a former Soviet Air Force pilot who said he had no desire to ever fly the MiG-21 again and considered it a dangerous airplane to fly both from a handling and reliability standpoint. Don't know if the reliability aspect was more a reflection of the airplane design/engineering or the maintenance.

[bdk]

The PT-22 and the NA-64 Yale both have stall characteristics that are abrupt and severe.

And to think they were used to train beginners! I suspect many were washed out fatally during the big one.