Whoops-a-daisy!!

Yes ideed Charles, that’s quite right. Many young men lost their lives in training, it is really sad. If you ever get the opportunity to look at the books “For Your Tomorrow” by Errol Martyn (there are two volumes with a third being written now), they list every New Zealander who died in Air Force service from 1915-1998. The books detail the circumstances, and it’s so sad reading about the many training accidents that took lives. One that stunned me was an instructor pulled a loop in a Tiger Moth, and his pupil’s harness snapped. The forces threw him from the aircraft to his death. Awful. Another similar case was the cowl flew off mid flight and took the head off the pupil,in the front seat. The poor instructor had to return with the corpse and then go out with a search party to find the poor boy’s head.

It is also sad to read how many wartime pilots and aircrew were killed on the ground in things like car accidents – one even died falling off a swing in the park!! And many, many people in the wartime RNZAF personnel died from disease – particularly those who served in the Pacific. We see the cenotaphs and assume they were all killed in combat. Not so.

Not sure if both were but at least one of those Anson sandwiches in Aussie that James mentioned was fatal – the crew in the bottom plane were decapitated.

So true Dave,
I remember my Grandfather telling me he was watching a Tiger Moth doing loops over Wigram just after the war and all of a sudden both wings folded back. Apparently, someone hadn’t put the locks in properly.
Just spun into the ground with the consequences you’d expect. 🙁

TNZ

Found a picture of the U.S. sandwich landing 😮 .
Cheers,
Herbert

I recall seeing a “from the cockpit” photo, possibly in one of Eddie Doylerushe’s books, of one wing tip of a Dakota. The aircraft in question had flown – in cloud – into the Berwyns in mid/North Wales and had scraped between two peaks. The gap between the two was about 12 feet less than the Dak’s wingspan, with the result that six feet of each wingtip was turned up like those winglets you get nowadays.

Has anyone else seen it, or even one of both wingtips, or have I been out in the sun too long?

Adrian

I know at least of two sandwich landings with Cessnas and Pipers. One in Austria in the early 80ties and one in the U.S.
Both without casualties.
Well, Cessnas have a bad view upwards, Pipers downwards and if the tower only uses “landing at your own discretion” it might be understandable.
Cheers,
Herbert

Yes ideed Charles, that’s quite right. Many young men lost their lives in training, it is really sad. If you ever get the opportunity to look at the books “For Your Tomorrow” by Errol Martyn (there are two volumes with a third being written now), they list every New Zealander who died in Air Force service from 1915-1998. The books detail the circumstances, and it’s so sad reading about the many training accidents that took lives. One that stunned me was an instructor pulled a loop in a Tiger Moth, and his pupil’s harness snapped. The forces threw him from the aircraft to his death. Awful. Another similar case was the cowl flew off mid flight and took the head off the pupil,in the front seat. The poor instructor had to return with the corpse and then go out with a search party to find the poor boy’s head.

It is also sad to read how many wartime pilots and aircrew were killed on the ground in things like car accidents – one even died falling off a swing in the park!! And many, many people in the wartime RNZAF personnel died from disease – particularly those who served in the Pacific. We see the cenotaphs and assume they were all killed in combat. Not so.

Not sure if both were but at least one of those Anson sandwiches in Aussie that James mentioned was fatal – the crew in the bottom plane were decapitated.

Postscript:

The sad reality if that while some of these may look funny, and the pilots walked away from at least some of these incidents, many pilots did not.

We remember those who died in combat, but it is easy to forget that many pilots and aircrew died in training, here in Canada and elsewhere, before ever getting their wings, and before ever getting to operational status. We must honour their memory too.

Lest we forget.

Charles

Yet another interesting Tiger Moth landing:

Someone wasn’t looking where they were going:

Were these guys flying in formation, or was this weather related, I wonder:

some more from my HDD:

Martin / Swiss Mustangs

Interesting Tiger Moth landing:

The Anson “farmer”:

The Anson sandwich happened at least twice in Australia, and at least once in Canada. Amazing they didn’t just spin in in each case!

And from the front:

Anson sandwich again:

In the days of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan here in Canada, there were plenty of “interesting” landings. The one that I immediately recalled was a picture I have seen of two Ansons, one on top of the other. I went looking for that picture and actually could not find it. But I found another picture of an Anson “sandwich”. Looks like it happened more than once! Apparently these aircraft collided somewhere above the ground, and landed attached. Amazing!

Also attached is a picture of an Anson whose pilot just might have missed being down on the farm.

These, and the following Tiger Moth pictures, are all from the Canada Aviation Museum website. They have a very good online collection, thought the accuracy of their captions often leaves something to be desired.

Can’t quite recall the story behind the Harvard crash, (I scanned this from a book) I’ll have to recheck into it, but I think it might actually be Wodbourne. The hills look rather similar from certain angles. I’ll have a look when i get a chance.

That shot of the two dinged up Harvards looks like Wigram

I think the two guys standing on the Dak’s tailplane are debating whether or not they should tell the pilot it’s not a flying boat or the fact that the runway ended 200 yards back