[ARC5] 909 airplane accident

[Tom Bridgers]

Dave,
Thanks for sending us this update on the crash of the 9-0-9. Tragic and very sad. And worse, probably preventable if people had done the right thing and maintaining the plane.

Wow...  What a disaster in terms of poor maintenance.

And apparently while the pilots were well qualified to fly the aircraft, it sounds as if the crew was not.

I am reminded of a B 29 or B 25, I can’t remember which, that was meticulously restored after crashing in Alaska during World War II. After at least one or two years work on the aircraft to get it airworthy, it failed to take off due to a fire in one of the generators. Located I believe in the rear of the plane.

I don’t know beans about preflight checks, or who should have been monitoring the status of the generators, but I would suspect that the crew or pilots didn’t do their jobs properly. Otherwise they would have detected that the generator was improperly configured and not ready for takeoff and flight.

Your timely post, plus the circumstances of the Alaska WWII airplane restoration, leads me to conclude:
1.These old World War II planes, and any airplane, need to be meticulously maintained. It’s very expensive to do that, and therefore there are sadly misguided reasons why it may not be done. And that often, if not always, leads to a deadly crash.

2. Pilots and crew must be well trained and at the top of their game.  Anything less puts everyone on board the plane at risk.

3. It’s much too risky to fly in one of these old planes.  So, I personally will not fly except by commercial airlines.

Even though in the past I’ve wanted to take a ride in one of these vintage WWII airplanes, I have not, and never will. I’ll strike that item off of my bucket list for sure.

Thanks,
Tom KE4RHH 

   On Tuesday, March 31, 2020, 6:58:08 PM EDT, arc5 at ix.netcom.com<arc5 at ix.netcom.com> wrote:  

 If anyone still wonders why I hesitate to cooperate with some restoration groups, you need to listen to this.73 Dave S.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkxVSnx1Utg
Sent from my iPhone
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/arc5/attachments/20200402/52214cbf/attachment.html>