Thank you both for that info. It begs a question, however; should any plane with that kind of visual limitation be used for precision maneuvers like that?
My belief is that if you are going to be doing precision flying with multiple airplanes involved that external cameras should be required to eliminate these blind spots.
Every Aircraft has blind spots, no different from driving a car. You mitigate that with good planning and Situational Awareness. Sometimes you can even do that and still make mistakes. Formation flying unfortunately can be very unforgiving of mistakes.
When you are doing precision formation flying sticking your head inside the cockpit to look at a camera screen is going to make things worse, not better.
The pilot of pretty much any plane, when in a bank (as this one appeared to be from when it first appears in the video shot from the B-17’s 2’oclock), is going to be blind to what is now under his nose/wing/belly. I fly a glider which has some of the best visibility of any aircraft. Until you bank over, that is. Then, you can’t see anything that your belly is “looking” at. I get antsy when flying in thermals with other gliders for just that reason. Perhaps, the P-36 pilot saw the bomber before he began his turn but thought that he was turning tight enough that he was confident that it was safe. But - a little too fast or not enough bank or not enough up elevator or some combination of those things proved him wrong. Unless there is surviving GoPro footage of where that pilot was looking, we will never know for sure. Cameras might help a bit but the idea is to be looking out of the canopy, not at your widgets. RIP to all involved.
I’m curious. At these airshows, do they ever have a coordinator orbiting well above the formations giving directions to the participants?
All aircraft have limitations in visibility. If nothing else, you can’t see through the floor. I have flown in aircraft that have no windshields, walls, or even floors, but there you still have the limitation that you can’t see what’s behind you.
Far more likely the real issue is the pilot was not looking at wherever the B-17 was. If he had reason to think it was even remotely near where it actually was, he could have ameliorated any blind areas by maneuvering to see that place. That’s standard fighter pilot stuff from WW-I on.
In a mass gaggle like that every pilot needs a comprehensive mental model of where everybody else is and is going. If that model differs materially from reality, shit’s gonna go wrong. Maybe only mildly, maybe disastrously.
We’ll never know exactly what the P-63 pilot was thinking. But it’s a good bet he was looking at, and maneuvering in reference to, something other than the B-17. Which he believed, mistakenly it turns out, to be elsewhere than where it really was.
Have you ever been driving on a multilane highway with an empty space in the lane alongside you? Then begun to change lanes into that space only to be surprised that another car has slid at least partly into the same space, forcing you, them, or both of you to swerve to avoid a crunch? Of course you have; we’ve all done it.
That’s a trivial example of you making a maneuvering decision based on a mental model that was no longer accurate enough.
Apologies for the hijack, but… I have my side-view mirrors adjusted so that I can (just) see the rear corners of my car, and the lanes to either side. I have a rear-view mirror to see what’s behind me in my lane. The way the mirrors are adjusted, a car’s image disappears from the mirror at virtually the front of the car becomes visible out the window. My wife doesn’t believe me because she doesn’t set her mirrors that way, but this is how it is.
Back on-subject: When turning in an aircraft, you look where you’re going. i.e., you look inside the turn. Visibility in that direction is great in a low-wing airplane. In a high-wing airplane, such as a Cessna, I was taught to raise the inboard wing before turning so as to see any traffic. (And we always made clearing turns – 360º – in the airplanes and helicopters during training.)
Today’s NTSB update. They have the Airshow CTAF recordings so we will get the air-to-air, air-to-ground chatter. No black boxes, they have the GPS and electronic displays from both aircraft and hoping to get data from them.
The P63 has been recovered, B17 recovery hampered by today’s rain.
Most of the questions are answered “we don’t know at this time”
Preliminary report due in 4-6 weeks.
Yes, I have mine set the same way.
Another example of a blind spot is that the windscreen pillar nearest to me on my Subaru Outback can completely obscure a car approaching perpendicular until we are very close. You have to be travelling at the right speed and angle etc, but there are times when you won’t see the other car unless you consciously look around the pillar seeking to find something.
The A pillars in cars are bigger now. It’s for better rollover protection. They make for a bigger blind spot in front on the driver side.
I use rectangular blinds spot mirrors. All the rear blind spots are eliminated, and I never have to turn my head. My eyes are always on the road in front, albeit sometimes with peripheral vision when checking the blind spot mirrors
I’d like to hear what it looked like to the B-25 pilot.
Same here. No blind spots left or right. Only blind spots are behind windshield pillar, as above, like @Richard_Pearse.
Some analysis by Juan Brown on the blancolirio youtube channel:
Mine complete obscures pedestrians to my left stepping into the crosswalk. It’s scary.
His conclusion is what I’d call the inevitable one: You can’t have a bunch of aircraft operating at the same altitude & substantially different speeds.
I know nothing about airplanes and piloting, but I had the same thought, watching the videos, pre-crash. Isn’t what they’re doing really dangerous?
A lot of aviation involves the Big Sky scenario. It’s a big sky, so you probably won’t hit anyone. Only the sky gets smaller around airports.
It would be a sad irony if the P-63 pilot was taking a wider turn so that the Mustangs he was following wouldn’t go into the blind spot below his nose.
The same applies to artillery, when firing SEAD missions: suppression of enemy air defense. We in the FDC are given an ACA, airspace coordination area, basically an air corridor that the fighters will fly through. We then calculate artillery fires so that the trajectory does not pass through the ACA.
But we in artillery like to jokingly say, “big sky, little bullet”, basically meaning who gives a f@©k about ACAs, there’s no way a 155mm projectile would hit a fast moving fighter.
And then we proceed with calculating safe trajectories outside of the ACAs.