I’ve been playing a lot with Tiger Moths in the past, the friends who owned them decided to install drum brakes and to add tailwheels, so the brake system check was added in the hour inspection list. I remember passing hours laying under the Tiger in order to have all the air out of the plant,with a relevant brake fluid drinking too 😉 but despite our careful checks we had in a couple of occasions a wheel braking more than the other or a ferod sticking to the drum with the understandable consequences.. We have the brake fluid tank inside the cockpit, so it’s not really hard to check, u just open it (carefully, so u can’t eat yr muffin while checking the oil 😉 )Our techie down at the hangar used to tell me that the best ways to spot a braking fluid leak in the walkaround are:
1) checking the tyre: if it looks “clean” or “semigloss” it might be an oil leakage in the brake area.
2) following with a finger the tube and checking yr finger: hydraulic fluids tend to follow the tubing lines when the plane is parked.
3) look for paint chipping around the wheel and wheel bay area: brake fluid is an incredible paint stripper!
All in all what happened to Janie is an inconvenience that unfortunately is not that rare.. Anybody can have a failure for any reason at any time, this happens even when driving yr car, it’s just a matter of bad luck sometimes. Of course careful and recurrent checks can minimalize the problem, but there are some troubles that can’t be predicted sometimes. A friend of mine, who’s attending the Italian Air Force Flight Academy, was making his first flying hours in the SF.260 and the instructors hammered them with all the emergency procedures. He had a tyre burst on landing and was able to manage it easily, but he said it was mostly due to the fact that there were no aeroplanes parked near to the runway. Accidents can be avoided with a careful airport managing, and above all with a serious attitude of the pilots, who must respects the ground indications, the ground control calls and always look around. This works well with military airports (and nonetheless they have accidents too), but in a civilian airport or airfield it can be difficult to be obtained. The best thing to do is thinking twice, and above all being sure to have enough room around u.

Cheers

Alex