Topic: Air Race Disaster In Reno Looks VERY Bad

[trapeze]

Three confirmed dead so far. There will probably be more. LINK

HotAir has a quote posted that said there were body parts everywhere. This will be very, very bad.

[trapeze]

Maureen Higgins of Alabama, who has been coming to the show for 16 years, said the pilot was on his third lap when he lost control.

She was sitting about 30 yards away from the crash and watched in horror as the man in front of her started bleeding after a piece of debris hit him in the head.

"I saw body parts and gore like you wouldn't believe it. I'm talking an arm, a leg," Higgins said "The alive people were missing body parts. I am not kidding you. It was gore. Unbelievable gore."

[trapeze]

Stephanie Kruse, a spokeswoman for the Regional Emergency Medical Service Authority, told The Associated Press that emergency crews took a total of 56 injury victims to three hospitals. She said they also observed a number of people being transported by private vehicle, which they are not including in their count.

Kruse said of the total 56, at the time of transport, 15 were considered in critical condition, 13 were serious condition with potentially life-threatening injuries and 28 were non-serious or non-life threatening.

The P-51 Mustang crashed into a box-seat area in front of the grandstand at about 4:30 p.m., race spokesman Mike Draper said. Houghton said Leeward appeared to have "lost control of the aircraft," though details on why that happened weren't immediately known.

KRNV-TV weatherman Jeff Martinez, who was just outside the air race grounds at the time, said the plane veered to the right and then "it just augered straight into the ground."

"You saw pieces and parts going everywhere," he said. "Everyone is in disbelief."

Tanya Breining, off Hayward, Calif., told KTVU-TV in San Francisco: "It was absolute carnage ... It looked like more than a bomb exploded."

Another witness, Ronald Sargis, said he was sitting in the box seat area near the finish line.

"We could see the plane coming around the far turn — it was in trouble," Sargis told KCRA-TV in Sacramento. "About six or seven boxes down from us, it impacted into the front row.

Among the dead was pilot Jimmy Leeward, 80, of Ocala, Fla., who flew the P-51 Mustang named the "Galloping Ghost," according to Mike Houghton, president and CEO of Reno Air Races.

I never would have guessed that 80-year-olds would be flying in an air race.

[Pandora]

trap, your link is wrong; it goes here:

"Brutal: Obama’s job approval — and favorable rating — hit new lows in NYT poll".

[trapeze]

trap, your link is wrong; it goes here:

"Brutal: Obama’s job approval — and favorable rating — hit new lows in NYT poll".

Sorry, will fix...it's on television.

400 mph right into the spectators. Missed the grandstand or it would have been much worse.

UPDATE: Pilot was 74 years old.

[trapeze]

Air Races Pres. Mike Houghton says 54 people total were hurt in Friday's and doesn't have a final count on the number of deaths.

Authorities tell us that three people, two spectators and race pilot Jimmy Leeward died in Friday's crash. 21 people were admitted to Renown Regional Medical Center.

Northern Nevada Medical Center says they currently have 8 patients: 5 in serious, 3 in good condition.

The plane crashed in front of boxseat rows A & B. Spectators were most likely hit by flying debris from the initial crash impact.

Houghton says it's too early to know for sure what caused the wreck, but said there appeared to be a "problem with the aircraft that caused it to go out of control."

LINK

[rickl]

trap, your link is wrong; it goes here:

"Brutal: Obama’s job approval — and favorable rating — hit new lows in NYT poll".

That looks VERY bad too.  For him, at least.

[trapeze]

trap, your link is wrong; it goes here:

"Brutal: Obama’s job approval — and favorable rating — hit new lows in NYT poll".

That looks VERY bad too.  For him, at least.

Yeah, that was from a post I made to the "Presidential Election 2012: Democrat Edition" thread. I goofed. Sorry.

[charlesoakwood]

It's one of the last remnants of the free society we once had.
You pass the test and the physical, which is and annual, and you
can fly.

Fly Like An Eagle Steve Miller Band

[rickl]

Air races were very popular in the 1920s and 1930s.  They were held all over the country.  Aircraft manufacturers used them to demonstrate cutting-edge technology.  The Supermarine seaplane racer eventually evolved into the Spitfire fighter plane of WWII.  Jimmy Doolittle first became famous as a pilot in air races.  New world speed records were regularly set at races.

And there were lots and lots of spectacular crashes, too.

After WWII, the Reno races started up again, but by that time, planes with cutting edge technology were setting new speed records in secrecy at Edwards Air Force Base in the middle of the desert.  Air racing was never the same after that.

[trapeze]

This stuff happens at air shows, too. Usually,though, the disaster is limited to the pilot or, in this case, the daredevil. Warning: disturbing images.

[rickl]

It was apparently a mechanical failure.

Close-up photographs of the aircraft in flight moments before the crash, shown by Reno television station KOLO, appear to show that a left-hand elevator trim tab partly separated from the P-51.

[rickl]

I just saw a comment at Gateway Pundit which said the plane's tail wheel had also deployed.  So something must have happened to cause both the tail wheel to deploy and the elevator trim tab to come loose, but I don't know what.  I'd guess that it was something internal in the tail section of the plane.

(I also left a couple of comments there this morning that expanded on my comment here last night.  Scroll down near the end.)

[trapeze]

I was hoping to be wrong about the death toll rising. It seemed to me at the time that there was just no way that only three had perished (the eyewitness accounts of limbs everywhere was particularly chilling) and now that seems to have been borne out...

RENO, Nev. –  The death toll in the crash of a World War II-era plane during a Reno air race rose to nine people Saturday as investigators combed through wreckage and scoured amateur video clips to determine why the aircraft suddenly spiraled out of control and plummeted to the ground near hundreds of spectators.

The deaths include seven who were killed on the tarmac, including the 74-year-old pilot, and two others who died at hospitals, Reno Deputy Police Chief Dave Evans said.

LINK

On Friday, as thousands watched in horror, the P-51 Mustang suddenly pitched upward, rolled and nose-dived toward the crowded grandstand. It then slammed into the tarmac and blew to pieces in front the pilot's family and a tight-knit group of friends who attend the annual event.

"It came down directly at us. As I looked down, I saw the spinner, the wings, the canopy just coming right at us. It hit directly in front of us, probably 50 to 75 feet," Ryan Harris, of Round Mountain, Nev., told the AP.

"The next thing I saw was a wall of debris going up in the air. That's what I got splashed with. In the wall of debris I noticed there were pieces of flesh."

Bloodied bodies spread across the area as people tended to the victims and ambulances rushed to the scene. Video and photos of the crash were captured by several people in the stands, and the horrific images of the wreckage were transmitted around the world within minutes.

"Normally when you see an air crash, you see recognizable wreckage. There was nothing, just little bits of metal," said John Townes, a Reno pilot.

Ugh.

Aircraft crash at Reno Air Races September 16, 2011 (HD) - Age restricted

Caution: This one shows close up images of the crash site:

Reno Air Race Airplane Crash - 9/16/2011

This one is very close to the crash site. The amateur camera man understandably fears for his life and isn't able to keep it on the plane at the moment of impact...

Eyewitness video from Reno Air Race disaster

[Glock32]

Now there has been another vintage plane crash at an air show in WV:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/17/national/main20107788.shtml

[BigAlSouth]

Why was there no fire? As bad as this was, aviation fuel exploding would have caused many more casualties.