A major aircraft crash with the corresponding loss of life and property is truly a tragedy of epic proportions. Even if the passengers are all lawyers, there is still the tragic loss of an aircraft and the non-lawyer crew members. Fortunately aviation has an excellent safety record and these horrendous events are rare. Not as rare are the many minor aviation accidents that are analogous to a fender-bender in the automobile world. In between these extremes are the incidents where the aircraft and property are destroyed or severely damaged but there are no fatalities or serious injuries.
When these major damage incidents or the fender-bender type occur with a non-professional pilot, the worse damage is usually to the pilot's pride or ego. If a legitimate mechanical failure or extreme act of nature can be blamed, the pilot can spin the story to make him/herself a hero. If the cause was strictly a lapse of judgment or piloting error, it is helpful to try and create an illusion of mechanical failure before the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) or FAA get involved. Weather phenomena are more difficult to create although wind shear is a good one if the terrain favors it and no accurate measurements are available for the moment the incident occurred. I know firsthand of an incident where a Cessna 182 wheel barrowed (nose wheel hit the ground before the main landing gear wheels) when landing on a very short grass runway. The prop contacted the ground and was damaged. There is an 80 foot hill at the approach end of the runway. The airport sages witnessing the incident immediately began discussing the severe wind shear that was caused by the hill at the end of the runway. The FAA and the insurance adjuster bought the story so I er I mean the pilot involved wasn't going to argue with them. They didn't seem interested in the fact the CG was at the forward limit (or just a tad out of the legal envelope) and the nose gear oleo strut was completely flat.
Most military aircraft are designed to operate in a hostile environment where they can literally be shot out of the air. Because of this, military air crew always have parachutes or the aircraft is equipped with some type of ejection seat or capsule. In peacetime operations, these escape devices are used when the aircraft encounters some type of situation where the crew cannot safely remain in the aircraft. Of course the aircraft eventually has to hit the ground somewhere. The military is usually very quick to find and secure these crash sites. The Department of Defense has admitted a few instances where the aircraft was actually carrying nuclear bombs or warheads. Almost all military aircraft, even cargo haulers, have some classified equipment on board that shouldn't show up in a local pawn shop after souvenir hunters have processed the crash site. Even if there were no National Security concerns, the military and it's vendors are very concerned about finding the cause of the crash.
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| C-54 Skymaster in flight. |
Sometimes humor is the best medicine to offset the complex emotions that a pilot deals with after escaping a situation that could easily have been fatal. I was working part time for a large freight airline. One morning the base agent called before dawn to inform me that one of our C-54's had crashed in the trees about two miles short of the runway. I lived very close to the crash site and he wanted me to meet him there as quickly as I could. Then he made a strange request. He wanted to know if I had any dark colored house paint. My father was a building contractor and I assured him that I could obtain some quickly since the stores were closed at this hour of the morning. He told me to get the paint and a big brush and meet him at the crash site as quickly as I could. It only took me about ten minutes to get dressed and get some dark blue paint and a brush out of my Dad's storage shed in the backyard.
Five minutes later I was driving on a farm path up towards the flat top of a plateau of about two or three acres area. About the same time I saw the State Trooper car blocking my path I saw through the morning mist the vertical tail section of the C-54 sitting at an odd angle. The base agent came running up to the car and beckoned for me to follow him with the bucket of paint and the brush. He just ignored the cop asking him what he was going to do. There was already a short section of ladder leaning against the tail. While I watched in disbelief, he took the paint and brush and climbed up the ladder and quickly painted over the company name of the freight airline. The cop was shouting at him that he was going to have to arrest him but didn't do anything to stop him from moving the ladder to the other side of tail and painting over the name on that side also. Then the base agent walked up to the cop and said, "Thanks, you can put on the handcuffs now".
It was then that I realized that the pilot and copilot were sitting in the company van that he had used to bring the ladder to the crash scene. From the back seat of the cop car, he instructed me to take the crew to the emergency room to be checked over and then bring them to the base office at the airport. He seemed confident that he would be there and not in jail. I later learned that obscuring the company name was the highest priority the base agent had in a crash if there were no injuries. It must be done before the news people showed up and started taking pictures. Those pictures got saved as file photos and could come back and create bad PR for the airline years after the incident.
The crew was in great shape and suggested we get breakfast instead of going to the emergency room. I was afraid of getting into trouble so we agreed to do both. After breakfast and several hours in the emergency room, we arrived back at the airport about noon. By this time, the airline owners and the various representatives of the government had all arrived at the airport and were sitting around a long makeshift table hastily set up in a corner of the cargo building. I had gotten acquainted with the crew during our time together. The pilot was a jolly, heavy set guy with a bushy mustache and had logged thousands of hours in the left seat of a C-54 including participating in the famous Berlin Airlift. The copilot was on his first C-54 flight for the airline. The pilot was completely calm and the copilot was as fidgety as a woman of the evening at a Woman's Temperance League meeting.
An airport fireman was waiting to meet us when we arrived. He escorted us to the area where the conference table was set up. The pilot stopped and surveyed the situation for a moment. All the dignitaries' eyes were fixed upon him. He cleared his throat, looked at the trembling copilot and spoke in a loud stentorian voice. "I told you to wake me up when it was time to land!"
And that's the truth!
Bowinkle T. Propwash
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