Yes, several aircraft have been flown TO the Air Force Museum, but once in their possession, they are grounded. Then director Col Upstrum told us this personaly.

As long as there are mechanics/technicians that can understand and work with mechanical machines they will continue to be maintained (if the money is available). If it was once made by man, it can be remade by man, if someone can pay for it.

My personal 'toy' is a 1979 Triumph TR7 roadster. Recently had a carburation problem with the Stromberg CD175 carbs. No shops in my local area trusted themselves in dealing with the carbs. Had to tow the car to a shop about 50 miles away that specializes in English cars of the 1940-80's, before the age of computer controlled everything.

I'm sure this is true. The US Air Force Museum is all about preserving historic fabric in their restorations right down to things like wiring type and procedures that no one will ever see. If I had to guess, a lot of those planes are probably technically operable but would never meet modern aviation standards. That form of preservation is their mission, very impressive and very important. I'd still argue that experiencing similar planes in operation is equally, if not more important to spurring interest. How many people doing the restoration work in Dayton would have ever developed their interest had they never seen one in operation? How much of an attendance uptick does the museum see during the very large annual Dayton air show?

A lot of this is all just a matter of philosophy that will be debated until the end of time. In my mind operating=alive, not operating=dead. End of story.

It is one thing to see a steam locomotive gathering dust in a park/museum. It is an entirely different experience to see, hear, and smells a hot one, especially at track speed. We have been going to the US Air Force Museum since the '70s. Looking at them, going thru them, but when a B-24 or B-17 flies overhead, and the sounds of four radial engines are in your ears, and the sight of the plane in the air, it is an entirely different experence.

Of all the warbirds to go down in the 30 years or so, very few harmed anyone on the ground. Imagine that B-17 landing on a school bus on the highway...
I have a friend at FAA HQ and he's told me they're having 'big picture' meeting about warbird operations right now.
In my mind, 'dead' is what "Texas Raiders," and "909" are today; incomplete pieces of melted and twisted metal with very little recognizable as an aircraft.
As long as there are a decent number preserved in museums, I'm just fine with people flying them. But don't forget that although only CAF aircrew died in the Dallas incident, that hasn't been the case in many warbird crashes. There's often a few civilians who got a 'volunteer' or paid ride that went down.
But in a preservation standpoint, some shouldn't be flown due to their historical nature.
If you do something stupid with a steam locomotive, you've probably put her on the ground, rolled her, or hit something like N&W 475 did recently. Imagine if most incidents with a steam engine left her strewn all over the landscape as a scattered mess of random twisted bits. Would people be as keen to run them as they are now?

A question you might want to consider more frequently. in this case it wasn't built to be displayed in a museum, either.

Some historic aircraft perhaps should not be flown because of their performance characteristics; One might be the F-14A Tomcat; prone to compressor stalls.

It looks to me as though the P-63 was out of position, trying to turn back into line with the P-51 that preceded it....
At the angle of turn he was at, the B-17 would not have been easily or at all visible to him...and , likely, the B-17 crew never saw the fighter....

CAF has had a number of accidents in the past...but also has probably been the largest group operator of such aircraft in the US, thus giving them a higher accident rate, etc....

A good number of those airframes are little more than reproductions....commonly called "data plate rebuilds"....the airframes are new material, with little to no reused or refurbished
structural components....and a minimum of refurbed mechanical components....

Periodic maintenance cycles....provided they follow various requirements correctly...generally result in cracked, worn structure and parts being replaced...

The danger here is primarily in gov't deciding they must add regulations and or ground old aircraft because of mistakes, etc by operators.....operators who often failed to simply follow accepted standard practice and instead gave in to complacency....
The govt often enacts knee jerk responses because the "public" gets stirred up into panic by unscrupulous news media, driving an agenda of "change" to protect the "public" from themselves....

In this case, it's pretty obvious there was no mechanical breakdown....it was probably pilot error....tragic, but not something that truly requires govt intervention, permanent grounding, etc....

As to the AF Museum "grounding" theirs.....this has come about due to the fear of "liability" ....they fear being sued in event of a crash and this is a primary "real" reason for the changes to surplus rules and demilling requirements since the mid/late 80's....
They recently had an Army variant of the SBD Helldiver and a YC-125 available for sale or donation/deaccession....they specified the aircraft were not flyable and had no records, making them more difficult to make operable....

Once sold to a new owner, they can be made flyable, if you can get their records, etc and meet FAA requirements....but, if they crashed, the Gov't would presumably have at least some protection from liability suits.....

I think this collision puts the aviation reenactors in the same place the steam operators were after the Gettysburg RR incident. It's notable the FAA held a meeting shortly after. I hope they form a team including operators of historic aitcraft to develop reasonable safety rules for these shows.

Remember, trains can only go back and forth where the rails take them. They can't go sideways or up and down but they can stop. In the air, fixed wing aircraft can go forward only but can do so in three dimensions. They cannot stop. Visibility is limited by cockpit location. As the CAF video pointed out, the P-63 pilot could not see the B-17 nor could the B-17 pilot see the P-63.

Makes you think of the dangers a Hurricane pilot faced racing into a formation of Luftwaffe bombers over England.

Phil Mulligan

NOTE: Exception to "They cannot stop" VTOL fixed wing aircraft, such as a Harrier, can stop in mid-flight. It was a tactic used in the Falklands,

Sadly, it was far more than just bad maintenance. There were a lot of really bad piloting decisions, not the least of which was the decision to take off with known deficiencies, failure to properly perform engine failure checklists, failure to declare an emergency to ATC, a decision to lower landing gear on the downwind when the aircraft was struggling to maintain altitude, failure to take advantage of potential landing sites other than RW6, and inexplicably adding power after the aircraft impacted the localizer antenna, instead of simply trying to stop the thing.

As with any aviation accident, it is rarely just one factor that brings us to a smoking hole in the ground. It's more often a long chain of problems and bad decisions that get us there.

/Kevin Madore

Cockpit visibility is the new talking point right now. I know for a fact, that CAF bombers utilize at least two crew members in waist gunner locations to serve as scanners. They look for other traffic as well as visually monitor engines, landing gear, flaps, and control surfaces that the pilot and co-pilot cannot see otherwise. Food for thought.

But with only one set of eyes in the P-63, the pilot had lost sight of the B-17.

In all likelihood, the pilot of the P-63 never saw the Flying Fortress during the last few seconds of his pass. He was in a fast, descending left turn and the bomber was basically beneath his nose the entire time. Both the P-63 and the B-17 were converging on the same point in space, but a different rates of speed and vastly different flight paths. As others have noted, the B-17 would likely have had observers on board to watch the blind spots, but by the time they recognized the P-63 as a possible threat, it would have been far too late. They would barely have had time to blurt out a warning, and the pilots would have had no time at all to react. Even with several seconds warning, the pilots would never have been able to ascertain their most favorable course change, and of course, the lumbering B-17 would be slow to respond to any control inputs. During WWII, they were basically strafe targets that could shoot back at marauding fighters. The onus was on the faster, more agile aircraft that was overtaking them to avoid a collision, and sadly, it is likely that pilot never even saw them.

Although we all love to see these airplanes fly, it may be time to think about limiting the complexity of the operations in which they are used. Having low-speed traffic in the same airspace with high-speed traffic that is maneuvering in 3-dimensions is a set-up for this kind of accident. The spectators may love it, but just like real air combat, it brings with the serious risk of mid-air collision.

/Kevin Madore

That would explain the five people on board, as there would have to be a pilot, co-pilot and a flight engineer. I was wondering about the other two and this seems to explain that.
But it all happened so fast, anyone even looking that direction in the waist gun position might not have even had time to open their mouth, let along issue any kind of warning that would have prevented this in any way.

I can't understand why the Air Boss would have the bombers and fighters flying at the same relative elevations considering the differences in speeds between the two types of aircraft.

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