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B-17 bomber collides with smaller plane at Dallas airshow
- salad-fan 4y agoLooks more like the smaller aircraft collided with the B17, given how the B17 got cut in half behind the wing roots.
- lordnacho 4y agoCollides and people probably died. Maybe worth letting people know before they watch it. I genuinely thought it would just be a scrape.
- superfrank 4y agoDo airplanes regularly collide where it doesn't end in death? I can't remember many midair collisions where the planes continued flying with minor damage. I see where you're coming from asking for a warning, but I also feel like people should just assume airplane collision = death.
- scarier 4y agoOften enough that it isn't good practice to assume one outcome or the other.
- superfrank 4y agoWhy? If something happens X happens 90% of the time and Y happens 10% of the time, I think it's safe to assume X, especially where there's little downside to a false positive.
- eesmith 4y agoNothing in the link description said it was mid-air. My first thought on reading was it was on the ground, like in "East Midlands Airport: Taxiing planes collide in morning fog" at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-48104527 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-48104527 or "Two planes collide at Lagos International Airport" at https://dailypost.ng/2020/07/30/two-planes-collide-at-lagos-international-airport/ https://dailypost.ng/2020/07/30/two-planes-collide-at-lagos-... . Both during taxiing. I suspect most airplane collisions occur on the ground, but that's a wild-ass guess.
- SoftTalker 4y agoProbably rare but it happens. I remember this was pretty big news when it happened: https://nypost.com/2021/05/13/two-planes-collide-midair-in-colorado-killing-no-one/ https://nypost.com/2021/05/13/two-planes-collide-midair-in-c... Edit: above link reports on midair collision of a Cirrus SR22 and a Swearingen Metroliner in May 2021.
- WalterBright 4y agoB-17s collided and died in WW2 a lot because of the close formations, often in poor visibility.
- fivefifty 4y agoWhile you are mostly correct there have been some infamous ones such as the 1983 Negev incident where an F-15 and A-4 Skyhawk collided and the F-15 landed without a wing https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/that-time-an-f-15-landed-without-a-wing/ https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/that-time-an-f-15-landed-withou... or that time a couple of F/A-18 Hornets collided and both managed to land with substantial damage https://theaviationgeekclub.com/u-s-naval-aviator-explains-how-he-and-his-wingman-were-able-to-rtb-after-their-f-a-18-fighters-collided-during-air-combat-training/ https://theaviationgeekclub.com/u-s-naval-aviator-explains-h...
- ransom1538 4y ago"Collides and people probably died" They all died. People don't survive plane collisions.
- scarier 4y agoYou'd be surprised at how often they do--especially at how often the planes involved land safely despite the damage.
- ransom1538 4y agoMaybe their ejector seat from 1943 didn't work then.
- lostlogin 4y agoHow does that happen, the smaller plane would appear to be almost perfectly placed to see the B-17?
- jmclnx 4y agoThat is my thing, how can this happen. I had to google to see if this was true: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/12/1136307205/dallas-airshow-bomber-collision-faa-ntsb https://www.npr.org/2022/11/12/1136307205/dallas-airshow-bom... I feel bad about the pilots, does not look good any survivors.
- Enginerrrd 4y agoSeems the opposite to me, but I'm no pilot. The smaller plane was making a banking left turn. Even if the B17 we're visible on the lower right side of the cocokput, the pilot was probably looking to the left where they were headed.
- tyingq 4y agoPilot's eye level view: https://www.flickr.com/photos/20087013@N02/26600648661 https://www.flickr.com/photos/20087013@N02/26600648661 Though you can't see much below you.
- phkahler 4y agoOr not? It's in a banked left turn, and since it was a collision course, the B17 would have been "under" him out of view. I would not complete the maneuver if I couldn't see it though, so who knows.
- scarier 4y agoMy best guess based on the video is that the P-63 pilot had been high and out of position in formation, and tried to get back in position using both geometry and speed. He may have recognized that he had too much closure and wasn't in position to safely underrun the B-17, and tried to bank and pull to get safe lateral separation, inadvertently putting himself into a blind lead turn where he wouldn't be able to see the B-17 through his wing or fuselage. The blind lead turn is an incredibly dangerous maneuver in formation flight--typically prohibited in military air combat training--for obvious reasons.
- lostlogin 4y agoI can't believe I'm linking to the Daily Mail, but it seems to have the most detail, and is more informative than the video alone. The smaller plane is stated to be a Bell P-63 Kingcobra. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11420933/Planes-crash-mid-air-Wings-Dallas-event-sending-debris-flying.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11420933/Planes-cra...
- the_third_wave 4y ago
- rspoerri 4y agoYou do know that people all around the world read HN? Being familiar with US-Newspapers and/or Newschannels apart from nyt, (infamously) fox and maybe msnbc isnt that likely.
- the_third_wave 4y agoDaily Mail is not a US newspaper (it is from the UK) and I'm not from the US. And yes, I "know" the sort of people who frequent HN and I can only assume most others here do so as well given that this is one of the places where we discuss our ideas. Also, HN is a US site and tends to have a fairly strong US bias given that it is - or at least was - targeted at the Silly Valley startup crowd.
- croutonwagon 4y agoThis thread has a lot of good info https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/yth3g7/plane_crashes_into_b17_texas_raider_at_dallas_tx/ https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/yth3g7/plane_cras...
- Animats 4y agoThe smaller aircraft was reportedly a Bell P-63 Kingcobra from WWII, and part of the air show.
- edderly 4y agoThis has no place on HN
- phkahler 4y agoAirplane crashes provide an excellent opportunity for failure analysis. IMHO its kind of a decent fit, but the final report will be a better fit.
- edderly 4y agoThis is quite ghoulish and fits into the latter category IMO. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
- solardev 4y agoIt's the kind of thing you probably wouldn't hear about on TV news unless you were in that same geographical area. It's interesting not because it's a disaster but because of the engineering and (presumed) avoidability involved... the "what went wrong?" angle.
- serf 4y agotragic loss of life and history -- I hope this incident furthers understanding about how to avoid these kind of recurrences in future air-shows.
- warbler73 4y ago1000% the fault of the small plane and a terrible loss to a historical treasure.
- worewood 4y agoNeeds a viewer discretion warning. Man it almost looks intentional from the footage, but I don't think the small plane could get such a precise hit if he tried.
- mindracer 4y ago6 feared dead in the collision https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/12/dallas-airsh https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/12/dallas-airsh...