I just got home from Oshkosh and am in a pretty somber state as a pilot was killed today during the air show. “Precious Metal 57″ crashed while landing and its pilot killed after the simulated Reno air race. The photo at left was taken as Precious Metal 57 taxied by before taking off for the demonstration. Precious Metal 57 was landing with a P-51D when the accident occurred. I was about 1/3rd down the runway (runway 36) and had sat back down in my chair as the show was in between acts and the racers were coming in to land. I heard the crowd gasp and caught a glimpse of the fireball out of the corner of my eye. I stood up in time to see the P-51D nosing over (photo below right) . At the time, I didn’t even realize there was another airplane involved beside the P-51D. The smoke in the right side of the photo is Precious Metal 57. The guy sitting in front of me recorded the whole incident so it wasn’t until he replayed it that I saw what happened. At first, I thought the pilot of 57 might be OK, but after seeing the video I realized that was unlikely. It wasn’t until just a few minutes ago that I got confirmation from the news. I’m still not really sure what happened. Initially, I thought that it looked like the pilot of 57 realized he was way too close to the P-51D right before touchdown, pulled up hard and winged over. He hit the grass beside the runway inverted and hard. However, the FAA seems to be confirming that the two Mustangs did, in fact, collide, and if you look at the big version of the picture there appears to be some large gashes in the fuselage of the P-51D that seem to indicate a prop strike.

The runway was obviously shut down immediately and rescue vehicles were on scene pretty quickly. The pilot of the P-51D was out of his plane just a few seconds after I took that photo and he ran strait over to 57. I can’t imagine that they were strangers. A forklift was on scene within a few minutes to get under the overturned aircraft but apparently to no avail. The ambulance turned around and drove lazily back across the airfield empty handed.

I was sickened by the accident, then subsequently a bit disturbed by the crowd as a mass of people headed to the south end of the runway and everyone around me instantly became an subject matter expert on everything from airport management to fire fighting. Human nature, I guess. Saddened, I collected my things and wandered my up to the north end of the field and took shelter under the shade provided by the wing of a B-17G. Amazingly, EAA got permission to continue the air show. Traffic was shifted to runway 9. The accident occurred close enough to the end of runway 36 (an 8,000 foot runway) that the powers-that-be deemed it safe to continue, which I guess is almost unheard of.

Sad day. My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected. I’ll make another post later about the more pleasant aspects of the show.

Update 7/28: CNN.com has a few pictures of the accident here.