Forced Landing - Grumman Style

[Music] well good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to growing pilots channel directly supporting girl impulse Association and today our topic is a forced landing we're looking at a grumman a1b that had a 24 and a half G hit as part of a forced landing when the engine quit on takeoff and there weren't a whole lot of options of where to put the airplane the options were crashed into a Pepsi plant a trailer park a busy road or make the impossible turn back to the field get it into the grass and put it down where there'd be airplane people to help you now again it was a 24 and a half G hit and as you can see it pretty much print called the airplane pretty well a couple things to note the propeller hit and got all kind of bent up it hit so hard it actually tore the flange bolts out of the prop flange as you can see it didn't do the rest of the airplane that much good either our landing gear our 20 G landing phase Sabre fiberglass gear legs and as you can see this one is shattered and completely sheared off not pretty but completely delaminated it even tore off the wing from this side now but cutting the hole that's in the side of the fuselage is where the fire department cut the pilot out of the rig to put them into a helicopter and get them to the ICU and then we have a few other pieces that did not fare very well there's a custom spinner here as you can see the cowling the wing about the only pieces that are good the vertical stabilizer the rudder the rudder cap and the right side horizontal stabilizer and elevate okay and as you can see on this side the wing is all bent up the fuselage is all bent up the pilot hit his head on the windshield bow three times shattered the windshield none of that's worth anything the motor mount is completely torn up now all the pieces that have been taken off the airplane these are all from the FAA as part of their examination back in May from the accident they completely tore all the pieces off to make sure the fuel was fuel the fuel pump work the carburetors worked the carburetor just been overhauled it had a new exhaust system on it and they had the engine out here they've drained all the oil out of it Matt is pointing out the prop flange where all the bolts have been pulled out no smoking gun has been found on the why this quit on takeoff I can tell you that it's not something that you want to do and as you can see the fuselage pretty well tore away from the impact again twenty four and a half G's so a 200-pound person would await 4900 pounds during the impact and wing that tore off doesn't look much better so all these were registration marks from the FAA determining what was straight it wasn't straight and believe it or not the ELT did go off as you would expect so that's what happens with a forced landing gone wrong and you do the best you can and you put it down okay now for we're looking into the panel and you can see that the panel suffered a quite a hit a lot of the instruments throat and pulled out there's not much padding in us to seat when you land hard it completely breaks away and you take the hard hit which explains the damage to the spine and stuff like that a four-seater would give you a little bit more padding because you're on brackets that might have bent and landing this hard but this is what the inside looks like and here's a little bit more looking at the fuselage so definitely not recommended okay all right we are recording okay so now we're coming to part two we've talked about the forced landing we've talked about how strong our grummons are the honeycomb as you can see is hardly distorted the sheet metal tore in the fuselage on the optin eyes we broke the 20 G landing gear that's how we know was more than a 20 G yet it still had enough energy to tear the wing off and do damage to the panel but now let's talk about what it does to you the pilot taking a hit like that not every case is going to be the same but I'll go through my injuries for you very quickly I broke ten ribs now they've all healed since then I I broke my pelvis it was fused I tore teeth t12 in my back and it will all brace got a heck of a scar down the middle of my back from all the work they did I've got a few other little Nick's and things nothing south of my belly button works so I'm in a wheelchair right now into the should they ever do that but I was a very lucky pilot I landed right by the fuel farm where there was a fuel guy who was showing the fire department the procedures they use for loading fuel how they handle spills and leakages he used to be an EMT until week before so he came over to the aircraft put his hands on me and told me to stay calm the fire department was gonna cut me out in just a second the fire department cut me out will move me onto a stretcher the captain got on the radio and called air care which is on this field and they brought the chopper to the fuel farm and landed right near my stretcher pushed me in and within 12 minutes of me hitting the ground I was in the ICU in downtown Cincinnati that instituted a lot of what saved my life now I don't recommend I don't recommend doing a forced landing but as you'll talk to the FAA and they will tell you door slamming is a bunch of choices landing in the Pepsi plant probably would have been fatal landing in the trailer park I had a couple of trailers some poor point could have been eating breakfast I could have killed him the road power lines power poles too closed choosing the grass was the best of all the options I had available now things that will happen to you I don't remember the entire day of the wreck I don't remember starting the airplane I don't remember flying it I don't remember going to ICU it's a matter of fact for the next eight weeks I was in and out of consciousness for very small periods and I woke up with various different personalities every day matter of fact one of my customers came to see me he was raised in Germany he's an American citizen he spoke German as a small boy and that particular day I was speaking to German that I used to speak for my father before I was six and we can our families changed over to so I was in the hospital for eight weeks before I came consciousness luckily I came back as me I passed all my cognitive tests I went into life rehab learning how to handle the wheelchair how to do port transfers in and out of vehicles in the bed I've still got work to do this is an ongoing thing I also like to thank you GPA members and groom and gang members thank you for your phone calls and the letters you sent I'm only sorry that I missed chem passing when he passed away on Memorial Day on the 27th I didn't find about it out until July so we thought we would cover the forest landing show you the airplane show you what you can expect from you and again I don't recommend this don't do this keep your airplane in good mechanical shape and have a great day flying your grumman [Music]

Channel: Grumman Pilots

Views: 121,384

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Id: pQktd6vJIwo

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 30 2018