Excellent moves by both pilots after the midair.
As we all have seen they both had very little time to do what they had to do.

Agreed. Brave of the Skyraider pilot too. He couldn’t have been criticised by anyone had he decided to climb to height and abandon ship with the extent of his damage.

My question….Watching in real life, and looking at the V Formation diagrams in the accident report it seems that the first aircraft (Mustang) crosses in front of the second aircraft (Skyraider) during the break.

Would it not be better for the outside aircraft to break first?
In my military formation flying (which incl a war zone) before a break we went from a “V” to an “Echelon Left or Right” or “Trail”.

Indeed, and my immediate thoughts on seeing the video reports of the accident were the same – it’s difficult to do a perfectly safe run in and break in anything other than echelon (unless you are doing an opposition break, and in which the middle aircraft will break last). Breaking from vic with the leader first requires significant vertical displacement before any bank can be applied to gain lateral separation. Do a break in echelon, and the subsequent aircraft in the break shouldn’t really have to worry too much about the positioning of the previous aircraft in the formation until getting their spacing on finals (unless the leader has a brain fart and tries to break the wrong way!).

It’ll be interesting to see the format for this years balbo. TBH, it doubt it would make any difference to the spectacle if the final run ins were made in echelon as opposed to vic.