Neil,
No photographs of the accident in Flypast I’m afraid. I’ve looked through a few of the issues up to about November.
There is a a couple of paragraphs on P.6 of the news section (July 2001), though. Tried to scan the text but it is not very legible.
Anyway, here is what it says:
Patsy Dawn, the South African Air Force Museum’s NA P-51D Mustang ‘325’ (44-72202) made a forced landing at Waterkloof air base, near Pretoria, on May 6. OC SAAF Museum Lt Col Neil Thomas was at the controls and was unhurt. The aircraft suffered damage to the propeller and the starboard wing.
The Mustang had got airborne with the SAAF Museum’s NA Harvard for a flypast over the nearby Bays Hill Memorial. It was noticed that the P-51’s port mainwheel was ‘down’ while the starboard one was up. Thomas spent two hours trying several ways to bring the gear either all down or all up.
Operations at Waterkloof praised Thomas for his coolness during the forced landing. Just over a year ago, Thomas was lucky to escape when the SAAF Museum’s Spitfire IX ‘5553’ (TE213) crashed at Swartkop on April 15.
Regards,
Paul
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