Serious Spitfire crash in France.

Agreed, simply add the date of the crash to the title.

Editing the title is not a facility available to me, the original poster. My understanding is that only a moderator can do that.

The incident when reported was only a couple hours old.

The time and date of the post is surely clear to all and the first paragraph gives the basic facts as known at that time.

Mark

You look at the thread title, check the number of replies, number of views and the light should go on that this is not ‘new’ !

Agreed, simply add the date of the crash to the title.

Title needs to be changed to stop us thinking it’s a new incident. Gotta look after my heart, it getting old.

They could have chosen their words better, nose-over instead of nosedive :stupid:

Ended up on its roof?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/spitfire-nosedives-airshow-injuring-spectator-10608538

The Mirror reviving this story possibly with some new photos.

Be careful, the Daily Mail will be quoting you two when they learn of this latest ‘jet’ disaster.

There is a real risk of an explosion, are you saying that every single person in line of sight should immediately run towards the fuelled powered machine that has has had a catastrophic accident? When there are a few people running to assist, who are capable of asking for further assistance if required? I didn’t notice any available ‘slots’ when it came to spectators helping lift it.

I think its quite impressive that the public are willing to help recover the pilot. All those people helping, in this day and age over here if that type of thing hapened everyone would just get their phones out and video it!

Just in case you missed it the first time:

This guy is very much not helping the pilot to get out, and takes photographs the second the clods of soil cease falling from the sky.

Yes I agree lots of things COULD of happened including flights to and from airfields which again are extremely rare. your more than likely to get hurt crossing the road or in a car crash than being hurt at an airshow/fly in etc.

Well the ‘could’ didn’t happen ! It’s a massively rare occurance and thankfully the injuries seem thankfully to have been
minor.

The airfield where the accident happened has (according to Wikipedia) a 900 x 50 m grass runway (10/28) extending fairly close and substantially parallel to a road on the northern side, from which the airfield is accessed. If, as the videos and photos indicate, the spectators were on the northern side of the runway, a close-up on Google Maps suggests that the distance between the runway centerline and the crowd line would be around 60 m.

In September 2010, at a small airshow in Lauf-Lillinghof in South Germany, 1 person was killed, 5 severely injured and 33 people received minor injuries, when a Tiger Moth lost directional control during take-off, and went straight into the spectators. The distance between the runway and the crowd barrier was about the same.

I see no difference between the event having been labelled an informal open day or an airshow; there were apparently many people very close to the runway.

I shudder to think what could have happened.

,are there any `blow-ups` of the start of the t/o run…?

Nope. Nothing surfaced as yet.

Mark

Mk12,as with #43,are there any `blow-ups` of the start of the t/o run…?

Ruet has been the Rafale solo display pilot and only just left the Armée de l’Air a few months ago. According to crash-aerien.news this would have been his first flight in this machine. He arrived at the airfield in Jacquard’s Sea Fury. He displayed a T-6 at last week’s Ferté.

I do confirm that it was not a meeting or airshow. It was a open day by the local club, that Christophe Jacquard’s Sea Fury and Spitfire visited. Cedric Ruet was taking off to fly back to CJ’s homebase, Dijon-Darois. Cedric is back home with only a bruised rib. As for the Spitfire, time will tell what it will become, but we all know for sure that it will fly again.

Looking at the videos it appears that the Spitfire was running for quite a while on the ground before take off so perhaps the pilot wanted to get her airborne as quickly as possible to avoid boiling and that’s why he fed in the power so quickly and got the tail up early then it all went a bit **** up.

With the crowd line being so close to the active runway and seeing as he kept the power on till the end , it’s a good job the aircraft didn’t swing on takeoff , the results could have been unthinkable.
Just as well the crowd did help though by the sounds of it.
Rarely see a griffon powered Spit operated from the grass , and 99% of the time the pilot feeds the power on gradually .

On another forum it was said that the event was not a formal air show, rather a flying club open day.
That would explain the lack of crowd control and emergency services on standby.

If true, it’s another case of forum members jumping to conclusions without knowing the facts.

Better yet, ask the CAA to make it a requirement that whenever a Spitfire flies, there should be police for cloud control and full emergency services in attendance…to be paid for by the aircraft owner. 🙂