That’s a great vid! The big thing to note about the exhaust trail is that you’re looking at the rocket at very high altitude, a couple hundred thousand feet and climbing quickly. Up there there is very little atmosphere to slow the dispersion of the exhaust. The individual particles come out of the engine’s bellmouth with radial velocity in addition to the axial velocity that’s doing the thrusting. And the plume just keeps spreading from there.
The fact it’s a weird thing seen at a weird distance from a weird perspective with no nearby points of reference makes a lot our earthly image interpretation skillz pretty misleading.
I grew up on the beach in SoCal in the era when Vandenberg AFB launched a lot of missiles/satellites into polar orbits or west/south towards the Kwajalein Atoll test range. Or even shorter-range shots just out into the nearby Pacific. VAFB is/was about 200 miles from our house.
At any rate, we saw lots of launches and stagings & such, generally from the side or more end-on once the rocket had gotten some altitude then pitched over to generate horizontal speed. Saw lots and lots of really “what the heck is it” events. Until you learn the pattern then the mystery evaporates.
Assuming a shallow look angle, you’re looking through a lot of atmosphere. I’d bet that more than winds, you’re seeing the effect of temperature gradients. And also, being right on the shore, the sea haze/salt gradient. The atmosphere is always boiling slowly and as regions of relative high and low density move around, they have different refractive indexes. As you know, where you see the light depends on exactly what refraction is present along the path the light took. Which path is constantly changing not only as to the atmosphere, but due to the airplanes’ motions too. Since they’re moving at a decent clip, they’re constantly moving their line of sight into new hunks of atmosphere.
Or at least that’s my explanation. We often watch Venus rise or set from altitude. And the other planets, but the effect is most obvious with Venus. As it gets real low on the horizon, it starts scintillating between, red, blue, and white and moving around a lot. All of which are just path effects though a thick enough slice of non-homogenous atmosphere.
The big issue regarding plausibility of flying past is whether the ME-109 can fly as slow as a C-47.
In cruise, no problem, A C-47 cruises in the mid-200 mph range. The ME-109 cruises around 300 at low altitude, and has a maximum airspeed at low altitude of about 320. So actually not all that far apart - the 109 wasn’t particularly fast at low altitudes.
However, the 109 stalled at a pretty high airspeed - 102 mph with flaps down, 112 mph clean. The C-47 with flaps down was around 80 mph. So if they were flying low and slow, the ME-109 would be forced to fly past the C-47. And if he was near stalling speed trying to stay behind, if he tried any sudden manoevering he could easily stall out and crash.
So thumbs up for plausibility, except that if the 109 had its wesponry intact it should have chewed apart a C-47 without having to get all that slow. That’s a big fat, ungainly target.
Beech Bonanza accident on 3/15/21 at North Perry Airport (KHWO) here in Greater Miami.
Seems to be a pretty standard “attempted return to takeoff runway forced landing” scenario that ran out of altitude and ideas before getting back to the runway. They clipped an SUV on impact, killing a kid in the car in addition to the two people on board the Bonanza. The other car occupant was hospitalized but is now out.
And like all the fighters of WW-II the 109 was upgraded in firepower as time went on. So I guess it matters which model we’re talking about.
Another consideration is the leading edge slats that Messerschmitt was fond of for low speed handling. They used the same concept with the 262 as the early 109. guns in the nose and leading edge slats on thin wings.
I’m wondering if they shouldn’t add engine failure power management to the training hrs. If you trim for best airspeed and the landing spot is rising in your forward view then you’re not going to make it. If you start to pull back it just makes the speed drop faster. The plane was probably 300 ft from the field when it stalled. The runway was never going to happen.
The pilot could have landed on 13th street and walked away. There was a fair amount of lawns to work with if a car was in the road.
For sure forced landing training is part of the private license curriculum. What’s lacking is frequent reinforcement. Not a lot of pilots will want to yank the throttle to idle during their max power climb-out, settle into a best-speed glide, calibrate their eyeballs for what their radius of landing spots is, then reapply full power and keep going about their day. Kinda hard on expensive engines, and kinda risky as well.
Also, it’s a good bet the last time this pilot did their engine failure training it was in a trainer, not a Bonanza. Definitely a faster & more complicated airplane and probably not as good a glide ratio as a C150, a Cherokee, or a Diamond. Folks also GROSSLY underestimate how much extra energy gets burned in a turn. The runway arrangement an HWO facilitates a 270 degree return from any runway to some other runway. But only if you’ve thought about it beforehand.
Certainly your point is spot-on that he was literally surrounded by decent landing areas on all the roads. It was at 3pm, so the boulevards would have had bunches of cars. But all the minor streets would have been clear. Although between trees and wires, there’s not a lot of places where you’ll make it all the way to the ground without maybe clipping something with a wingtip. Which is what killed that CAP guy at Whiteman upthread and also what killed these folks. The uncontrolled fall from 30 feet plus ensuing fire is almost certain death.
Rommel’s Asparagus is about as effective as a 1960s suburbia with a power pole line running along all the backyards, crossing all the cross streets and wires between each streetlight. Plus mature trees.
That jet is a 727-100. I bet it was trucked in and is a police/fire dept trainer. There are similar 727s at most of the local airports. The paintjob even resembles the one they have on the jet at Miami Intl = KMIA. See the far NE corner ramp, in the far SE corner of that ramp facing SW. Blue tail, white fuselage, and some orange on the nose. That’s a 727-200 though. All the other airplanes on that ramp in the Google pic are live cargo jets that come and go.
Actually, their orders (in the book, at least; maybe it was different in the movie) were to kidnap Churchill, who was thought to then be at a lightly-guarded British country house.
The thing is, I don’t think it matters what you’re flying as far as the technique goes. Sure the glide ratio may be different but once you’ve trimmed it for best glide your decision is based on what is in in your view and not your best guess on how far it glides.
Unless Niagara falls is in front of you the best course of action is to land in a relatively straight line from where the engine quite. If you have a lot of altitude you can be picky. If not you have to play the cards that are dealt. In this case it was a residential street…
Somebody whose gut feel at the outset is that they’ve got e.g. 1 mile of gliding range because of familiarity with a Diamond who actually has 1/2 mile of glide range in a Bonanza will start making decisions, such as turning back versus landing straight ahead, long before they’ve settled down to a trimmed best glide speed and are looking only +/- 10 degrees of the nose for the flattest softest thing in that arc.
Ref that Ring from the house across the street, they stalled into the ground; that was not a simple “ran out of altitude under control but just short of the fence” situation. How high they were when they stalled is unknowable from the evidence we have so far. They could have lost it due to overbanking to tighten the turn while at 200 feet AGL. Or just as they got down near the treetops.
Overall your big point is correct. Pilots who’ve decided years ago to always land straight ahead when they finally get their engine failure usually survive.
Pilots who haven’t thought about it in years will almost always make an overly aggressive maneuver towards a runway, because airplanes “belong” on runways, and anywhere else is simply unthinkable as a landing area. Those folks usually die from their ill advised ad libbing. By they time they realize they’re committed to an off airport landing, they’ve foreclosed about 90% of their options and they’re left deliberately steering into the crash or unconsciously / inadvertently stalling into the crash. Neither is a great choice, but the former beats the heck out of the latter.
The Dreamlifter isn’t that much bigger than an A380, or a regular 747 for that matter. So are those planes similarly expensive to deice?
I’m pretty sure the Dreamlifter’s cargo hold is actually unpressurized, and there’s a pressure bulkhead aft of the crew rest area. So I’m guessing said lap joints don’t need to be able to take the forces a pressurized aircraft would be subjected to.
Deicing is silly expensive. Between fluid at $10 gallon, equipment, labor, and the operating time of the airplane & crew, I’d actually wag that we spend about that to deice a smaller passenger jet.
@MAgiver: High speed airflow is interesting. That area at the leading edge of the swell for the over-size cargo compartment may well be in stagnation where there’s essentially zero airspeed within 1" of the skin. I’ve seen some amazingly crude patches on big jets at various corners or crotches.
