heads up BBC2 tonight Lancaster crash in Scotland

Creaking Door, you are quite right the tail did come off in flight, it landed in the bog not far from the main site. It failed between frames 35 and 36 a couple of inchs forward of the spar to the tailplanes. It lost the tail planes and the turret on the way down but the tail oleo was on until impact.

The aircraft was not recognisable as a Lancaster after the ground had finished with it, the state of the engines was almost purely down to the ground conditions being extremely soft allowing a comparatively slow decel. Think of the Hurricane remains at the RAFM in the BoB hall.

I have not yet watched the program since I was in Scotland last night and stupidly BBC Scotland didn’t show the program (they had Landward, Contury File for Scotland, and much better than Country File to be honest) but I had it recorded at home so will watch it soon.

I think the National Archives might be interested in that collection of reports since they have a not against the whole of 1944 saying they are missing and since they are a public record they are meant to be deposited with the National Archives after a maximum or 30 years though if Brune’s latest idea gets through ti may only be a decade or so.

Could it have been that in the process of recovering from a high speed dive, on levelling out, the load on the wing tips was sufficient to tear them off, at which point the A/C crashed, at a more horizontal angle, and a much reduced velocity?

I thought that the complete tail came off the aircraft in the air.

Wouldn’t that cause a sudden pitch-down and load the wingtips sufficiently to tear them off?

The program did show some analysis of the mode of wingtip failure but I can’t remember if it was a tension-failure of the top surface and pivot around the bottom surface, as in a sudden pitch-down, or vice versa, as would be likely in over-stressing in pulling out of a dive.

Without wingtips and tail (and with throttles cut) wouldn’t the aircraft descend relatively slowly in a ‘stalled’ mode?

As to why the tail should catastrophically fail in the first place? :confused:

p.s. Would the FOI Act apply to Atcham Tower’s comment on accident reports?

I was thinking the same thing, here is what the act says.

The FOI gives you the right to ask any public body for all the information they have on any subject you choose. Also, unless there’s a good reason, the organisation must provide the information within a month. You can also ask for all the personal information they hold on you.

Scotland has its own Freedom of Information Act, which is very similar to the England, Wales and Northern Ireland Act. If the public authority you want to make a request to operates only in Scotland then your request will be handled under the Scottish Act instead.

[I]Public sector bodies covered by the Act

The Freedom of Information Act applies to all ‘public authorities’ including:

• government departments and local assemblies
• local authorities and councils
• heath trusts, hospitals and doctors’ surgeries
• schools, colleges and universities
• publicly funded museums
• the police
• lots of other non-departmental public bodies, committees and advisory bodies[/I]

Here is the link to the act in full

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/RightsAndResponsibilities/DG_4003239

Did I sense a veiled criticism of the recovery group by the accident investigator? He seemed to imply there was no way of knowing where on the crash site previously recovered debris had come from?

Roger Smith.

He might just have been using that as mitigation for any inaccuracies in his deliberance; as 682al has said you would have thought that a dive at speed sufficient to tear the wing tips off, would have resulted in a higher impact speed, not consistent with the condition of the recovered engines.

Could it have been that in the process of recovering from a high speed dive, on levelling out, the load on the wing tips was sufficient to tear them off, at which point the A/C crashed, at a more horizontal angle, and a much reduced velocity?

Did I sense a veiled criticism of the recovery group by the accident investigator? He seemed to imply there was no way of knowing where on the crash site previously recovered debris had come from?

Roger Smith.

Perhaps its just me , but I thought the cause of the accident was “determined” as being pilot disorientation, but earlier on in the program,the investigator said that at least 1 engine wasn’t under power at the point of impact, that and the fact that there was a steady deviation to port from the flight plan, could that not point to something mechanical , like 1 or more engine failures?

I think that if I followed the programme properly the wording on the accident card ran along the lines of “possible pilot disorientation” and was fairly early on in the piece. The AAIB bit only came out later. Very interesting what they manage to discover in view of the barest data they have to begin with on some of these things.

I found it all a bit confusing.

For example, why, if the aircraft came “more or less straight down” (as the AAIB man suggested, and having lost its wingtips), was the wreckage so intact and apparently recovered from what looked like a small depth?

Surely, wreckage in that kind of condition suggests a more horizontal impact, rather than a vertical one?

Or did i just mis-interpret his comments? :confused:

p.s. Would the FOI Act apply to Atcham Tower’s comment on accident reports?

Perhaps its just me , but I thought the cause of the accident was “determined” as being pilot disorientation, but earlier on in the program,the investigator said that at least 1 engine wasn’t under power at the point of impact, that and the fact that there was a steady deviation to port from the flight plan, could that not point to something mechanical , like 1 or more engine failures?

I think the most intriguing part of this programme was the fact that AAIB came up with the original accident report when these were supposedly all destroyed in the 1970s. They were held at the so-called Hayes archive in Middlesex. Rumour had it that the existence of this archive was denied by officialdom in the 1980s and a researcher who enquired about it was threatened with legal action or worse! So then, do the reports still exist in the hands of today’s AAIB (Air Accident Investigation Branch)?

It was a bit shorter than I expected, as I thought originally the whole “History Detectives” programme would be on the one topic, but then I haven’t caught many of the previous shows, so didn’t know the format – I did think they managed to cram quite a lot into the time though and felt the treatment and respect accorded to the crew was well handled.

It was a shame though that they hadn’t filmed the actual recovery (though the group involved may not agree!) as the amateur video footage did not reproduce well at all and there was little of it seemed – Such an epic recovery really deserved to have been recorded professionally IMO.

The producer – Brendan Hughes also did our Time Team project and I could see he had listened to a few of our comments – though they still couldn’t seem to get away from the old TT “mystery to solve” element theme. I thought Steve Moss came over well and certainly in a more professional light than he got on our TT project – though to be fair he was thrown in at the deep end on our project and was given little background before they started filming on that one – This time he seemed to have been much better informed and someone had clearly done their homework – Dumfries and Galloway group probably!!!;)

As for the MOD being “pinned down by paperwork” on the issue of 4000 crash sites in the UK – why would they be? They don’t know where most of them are now and it certainly doesn’t seem to concern them – it is up to groups to research and prove they have the right crash site before they get a permit – it is the Aviation Archaeologists that are doing all the work and filling in the gaps in their records!

it was abit short to be fair, was hoping for something a bit longer but you cant have everything i suppose but the 4000 uk crash sites was an eye opener, i bet the raf are pinned down by paperwork on this issue. anyone in the raf care to give comment on this?

And ?

(I missed it) 🙁

Just caught it thanks to the ‘heads-up’! 🙂

Pretty routine ‘light’ entertainment treatment of the investigation into the crash of a Lancaster on a wartime training flight. Enjoyable enough but I don’t think you missed much.

There was a thread on this forum recently detailing the recovery of the engines. Anybody?

Edit – Here it is:

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=65284&highlight=lancaster+engines+recovered

And ?

(I missed it) 🙁

Yes thanks, I have a reminder set now 🙂

Thanks for letting us know, looking forward to watching it!! 😀