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It was the "909"Is that the same one that was here at Salem this summer?
Is that the same one that was here at Salem this summer?
Made it through WW11. And now goes down on a pleasure ride
Prayers x 7
I'm not surprised at this news. I live not too far from Paine Field, which is the home of several flying heritage-type organizations. It's not rare to have B-25's taking off under full power over our place. Too many times to count I've thought that it's only a matter of time before one of these 74 plus year old planes augers into the ground. It's like driving a vintage car, you never know when something is gonna fail but with aircraft, you have the extra dimension involved and you can't just pull over to the side of the road when something goes wrong.
People have to remember that when these planes were flying actively every day during WW2, crashes were common. Daily, somewhere, I would guess, there were so many flying at the time. Pilot error and mechanical failure, many weather situations, etc. I'm talking strictly non-combat crashes. Many involved training flights, after all, things go wrong often in that process. Before my dad went overseas, he was training Lockheed P-38 fighter aircraft. Those were fairly high performance aircraft and didn't suffer fools gladly. One of his friends from training lost power on takeoff, crashed and was badly burned. He was lucky to live but his flying days were over permanently. Before that, they trained on Bell P-39's that had been sent to Russia, used in combat, then flown back by ferry pilots who were picking up new ones for the outbound trip back to Russia. The used-up P-39's were turned over to the USAAF to train our pilots. They had many fatal splash-downs due to mechanical failure.
Our boys flying these things in WW2 were young, had to start somewhere but flying airplanes has its hazards. Some personnel losses were to be expected. The more they flew, the more experienced they got at it. But what I wonder at now is, the guys flying these elderly warbirds today, how's their experience factor? I'm sure some have many hours, likely not all that many in warbirds simply because of age. And I wonder how many hot-rods like to get their turn, get checked out in one to acquire bragging rights. Experience counts big when something goes wrong. And then there was the active duty colonel at Fairchild who flew a B-52 into the ground. He had tons of experience yet he just couldn't keep from showing off. Yes, flying (and riding in) aircraft can be very unforgiving for a number of reasons.