Pilot of P51 Plane Crashed During Air Race at Reno was 80 Years Old (Update: actual age: 74)
Sep 17th, 2011 | 34 responses
Update and correction: Jimmy Leeward, the pilot of the Mustang P51 that crashed in Reno was first reported by media to be 80 years old. He is actually one month shy of being 75. TMV regrets carrying the error forward. Dr.E, M.Ed.
Being closer to 80 than to 20 years of age, I bristle when people say ‘old people’ cant, shouldnt, ought not to (fill in the blank with any number of harmless, funny, serious endeavors)
But/And, though I know firsthand as an USAF wife for two decades, the pride and long-lasting love military pilots and miltary admirers’ of old WWII planes …have for the skies and the machines that lift like metal birds…
However, one has to be in excellent health to fly no matter what age, excellent eyesight, excellent hearing, excellent spatial perception, no health problems like heart and diabetes, epilepsy or ms. The pilot has to have excellent reaction times. There will no doubt in coming days be journos on all sides of the age issue. Some ‘agin, some for… the elders of the tribes retaining full rights to fullest life choices, for Jimmy Leeward and his primo P51 both went down today. Jimmy Leeward the pilot in the air race being 80 years old.
You can see more picture of the fall from the sky, here.
All of us have driven maddeningly behind or been nearly sideswiped by some car driven by a little ancient guy or gal behind a steering wheel they can hardly see over any more…. One would swear they are driving with a blanket over the windshield and never got a driver’s license for all their wavering over double yellow lines and creeping along in the passing lane like leaves turning yellow in the autumn.
It is true that people of all ages and conditions drive… while loaded one way or the other, while not paying attention, while paying too much attention and being in a frightful state of anxiety, while screeching on the telephone, whilst read a book for schist’s sake…
Curtailing people who have ‘bad habits’ while driving… a car or a plane… well, there are a legionof stories about people who do all manner of things on the ground and in the air, that endanger themselves and others.
As they say back to home: “Gov’mint’s job aint to ‘pertect everyones.”
But maybe some of the time, it is the lawmakers job to protect not the individual exactly, but those the individual might harm.
Jimmy Leeward died today. And those on the scene say “equipment failure.” And others say they could see the effort the pilot made to try to pull away from the stands filled with spectators as he was going nose down.
As it was, there are many injuries, and 3 deaths total is the tally at the moment, with 25 in hospital with critical injuries.
All the way around and for many reasons, the Reno Air Race, turned into what the P51 was made for… the early ones [were later made to fly at high altitudes] were rattle bags at high altitudes, thus [that first prototype] was used for part ofWWII to create mayhem on the ground and to lend troop support. Today, it was mayhem. Now, many many will need other kinds of support in the coming days.
May all be comforted and held in every way possible, the mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, young lovers, friends… may all find solace and peace in the coming days.
34 Responses to “Pilot of P51 Plane Crashed During Air Race at Reno was 80 Years Old (Update: actual age: 74)”
It may be insensitive, but people go to air races, NASCAR, Formula 1, Rally races, etc. as spectators for thrills-and those come with risks. You can’t eliminate all risk, and with sports like air-racing, the risk of one of those aircraft becoming one-with-the-stands MUST be assumed. (just as, getting on an airliner and subjecting yourself to TSA doesn’t mean that plane is actually going to make it to the destination-things that kill aircraft while in flight are legion).
This aviator was eighty years old-there are twenty-year-olds who can’t pass a flight physical. The crash is tragic, and it’s sad that some folks were hurt and some were killed, but that’s part of the whole thing, government can’t make you safe from EVERY hazard, especially when you choose to put yourself in danger, and it shouldn’t, more rules won’t prevent another one of these from happening, unless those rules come down to “No more Racing.” You start making your rules like that, and pretty soon, it’s no more a LOT of things, even mundane things.
Dr. E-
Thank You for your overall analogy. May God protect these souls freed so suddenly, without warning and all souls I pray.
Most of us whom frequent air shows can probably remember the FAA yanking Bob Hoover’s license for nothing other than age. They did this for his safety and the safety of the general public. A popular uprising forced the FAA to give it back for a short time, before a final ultimatum was given dear old Bob, for which he had to retire. Bob Hoover was a hell-of-a pilot. He is also dearly loved as a human being as much as his past flying skills, but flying skills pass with age.
There have been horrific air show accidents over the years. Air show accidents will probably always be with us such is the nature of the beast. Though I am dubious of the public’s real understanding. Air show spectators are generally safe, but they are in close proximity of people on the very edge of control of their aircraft. I don’t know if age played a part in this horrible accident, but I do know that we have medical people whom are supposed to determine these things at physical. Every six months for 1st class, every year for 2nd class and every 2 years for 3rd class pilot medical certificates. I must point out, that for some strange reason, one medical examiner will say you are not fit, when another will say you are, and that every older pilot knows whom to got to and whom not to go too. For another strange reason, the medical examiner sought out by older pilots is generally and older doctor.
I have to correct you on the P-51. It was our premier high altitude bomber escort fighter for WWII. In fact it’s introduction changed the air war in Europe dramatically.
Also it is interesting that there was no crash fireball. Could fuel starvation have played a part?
First, my condolences to the families of those who perished, including the 80-year-old pilot and my prayers for those injured.
Dr.E said:
“However, one has to be in excellent health to fly no matter what age, excellent eyesight, excellent hearing, excellent spatial perception, no health problems like heart and diabetes, epilepsy or ms. The pilot has to have excellent reaction times.”
Amen!
I have no idea if age/reaction time/health conditions, or whatever were contributing causes to the tragedy.
But….even 50 years ago (when I was a young, healthy, 21-year-old) the military already had some very stringent health and physical requirements for those who wished to “fly” and—although at the time I griped about it—for good reasons. My lifetime wish when I joined the U.S. Air Force was to become a pilot. Alas, I was one lousy inch too short. My consolation prize was to go to navigator training. Alas, after two months training, my eyesight–that had already been marginal—caused me to seek another career.
I would imagine, the military has restrictions on age, too, for flying jobs—and perhaps for good reasons.
Dorian-
I would be against arbitrarily adopting military regulation for just about anything. I didn’t become a civilian just to be yanked around by more military sock inspections, or 4PM jogs in the country. I don’t think the Air Force height restriction had anything to do with being a pilot, they just wanted taller officers for the goon effect. Have you seen some of those gorillas they stuff into fighter cockpits? I think that’s why they walk around with forty pounds of flight suit up the arse. Dorian you should be thankful about the vision rules. Kind of hard to land a plane in Braille. Might take an awful long pole to probe for the runway and no telling whom you might schiscobob trying.
Thanks for your comments, Allen.
A couple of corrections/comments
1. I did not say nor imply that military regulations should be imposed on “civilians.” I was just commenting on what kind of requirements, restrictions the U.S. Air Force had for its pilots. navigators. crew members—then. (As a matter of fact, today, I believe one can become a military pilot for certain aircraft with certain kinds of corrective contact lenses)
2. The height requirement in those days was in order for the pilot to be able to easily reach such things as pedals, controls, overhead buttons, etc.,in certain large aircraft. (Of course, in some of the new tight jet fighters, being small can sometimes be an advantage, it was not, and is not, that “they just wanted taller officers for the goon effect”). I had no problem becoming an officer because of my height, and I have met several officers even shorter than I am.
You are just no fun today Dorian.
Sorry, Allen.
I should know better by now that your comments are always made in a sincere, well-meant, spontaneous way—unlike some others.
Now off to have some real fun with my grandson
I have to research that again Allen… the Mustangs as I understand were used in lower altitude forays… Mr. Leeward’s Mustang was that< I think. I’ll look/ ask ‘the boss’ again.
thanks Dorian… the old fellas who I know who flew WWII who are now in their 80s say they had to be sort of ‘right sized’ to be pilots back then, as you say, bodily configured enough to easily reach various, but also not so big so as to have to be stuffed into the cockpit.
@cannonshop, we do go to airshows, have taken the grandson many times, and I am always impressed with the knowledge of many who go to airshows as spectators: their knowing of all the versions of every p51, for instance, their knowing who made the engines, how many gun ports, etc. It reminds me of the afficianados of the Civil War in the US, or the Woodturners, or the HO railroad people. They just have kept alot of data and a lot of the old stories about men and women and their machines, alive.
Dr. Estes:
I live very close to Arlington Airport in Washington STATE, where we have the EAA fly-ins every year. If you’ve never gone, you wouldn’t be doing yourself a disservice to bring them at least once-the static displays, and the aerial displays, are quite good most years, and there are always old Warbird flights (usually Heritage of Flight birds, but the Conf-I mean “Commemorative” air force usually has a pretty strong presence too.)
Dr. E: You are correct, the P-51 did have poor performance at high altitudes, but that was only for the “A” versions and due almost entirely to the Allison engine that was only designed for low altitude use. All subsequent versions used the Packard Merlin engine with far superior performance at high altitude. In WWII the P-51 was the US’s best high altitude/long range fighter, with performance on par with the British Spitfire and the German Bf109 & FW-190, and far longer range than any of them. After WWII the P-51 was relegated to low altitude/ground attack roles as jet fighters took over the high altitude interception role.
Cannonshop: I hope I’m misinterpreting you when you use the term “thrill” in conjunction with auto racing and air shows. Every time I’ve heard someone state they like auto racing for “the thrill” what they really mean is they want to see crashes and carnage. Sort of the same crowd that goes to the fights and gets disappointed when a hockey game breaks out. Those that go to air shows or auto races wanting to see carnage are not fans but are sick individuals only interested in satisfying their blood lust. I have a particularly sensitive hot button in this area as I have been involved in motorsports for quite a while and have had 2 acquaintances killed in racing accidents. (My level of involvement was high enough that I was in talks to join a professional race team as their paid race engineer after doing the same for them as a volunteer at a few races, but decided I didn’t want to be a professional nomad. If I had joined them I most likely would be in Japan this weekend.)
thank you ST for the info and tips … appreciate it.
Thank you Cannon for telling me about the flyins. I hope all is well in WVa today after the other crash. My goodness, this is so sad.
I am sorry for the loss of your two friends ST… may they drive on forever
From Letzgetreal.com:
“… It appears that the 1940?s-model P-51 Mustang lost part of its tail before it slammed into the crowded tarmac, specifically into one set of the VIP box seats…It disintegrated into a ball of dust, debris and bodies.
… NTSB spokesman Mark Rosekind stated in a news conference “Pictures and video appear to show a piece of the plane was coming off. A component has been recovered. We have not identified the component or if it even came from the airplane … We are going to focus on that.”
…Some have credited the pilot, Leeward, with preventing the crash from being far more deadly by his last-minute climb, but it is impossible right now to know if that is accurate.”
Looks like an elevator trim tab that came off, Dorian. If the pilot was trying to force the elevator down or up he may have rotated the elevator trim to it’s limit for assisting him to do so.
A trim tab is secondary flight control. It is a small tab on the trailing edge of a primary flight control, i.e. the elevator, aileron, rudder or rudder-vator that is moved in the opposite direction that you want the primary flight control to move. This unloads much of the force required to move the primary flight control by the pilot. The airflow then pushes on the tab assisting the pilot to push the primary flight control in the desired direction.
If the air flow force is too great, it’s attachment may structurally fail, then it could come off entirely. It can also cause problems by something called “trim runaway” in electrically operated trim systems, but I doubt that this airplane had electric trim, (but I don’t know for sure). I don’t think that an elevator trim failure caused this accident, but arm chair investigations are not that accurate or we would not have the NTSB. However it does seem that a flight control problem of some sort caused the crash. Or maybe a painful heart attack. It’s all yet to be determined.
That’s a good possibility, Allen. Also, I read more and more about a “flutter-induced trim tab separation,” something that can happen in more modern aircraft, too.
What I’m wondering about is why is the tail gear down but there is no evidence of the main gear coming down. Hydraulic issue perhaps?
Don’t know much about the P-51, except that the rear gear IS retractable in flight and that the plane can fly fine with it down.
Here are a couple of comments from hopefully knowledgeable people about the gear being down during the aircraft’s plunge:
“I don’t believe that this would seriously aggravate the planes dynamics.
It is more than likely a reaction by the pilot to try to determine why the elevator was not responding to input (i.e. put the gear down to make sure that it is not binding any control cables)”
“I know the plane can fly just fine with the rear wheel down, it’s just not supposed to be down. A malfunction of some kind may have caused it to lower was my thought. I realize the pilot may have lowered it intentionally like you said and I guess he could have done it by accident in his frantic attempt to recover.”
we’ll await the investigative report… I dont know Dorian, sometimes I wonder if old planes–or new– are like the great raptors, who even though perfect in flight, can be dragged from the sky in a sudden downdraft, just enough to fall and be hit and… we find them dead along the roads here… wondering how in G-d’s name such expert fliers could ever have fallen. But, we see it is so. Sadly so. Yet, there are the days and years before, when they so elegantly soared with such power, inspiring any who saw them.
Also, next week is the airshow here in Colo Springs… and today there are many practice flights over us here in the Rocky Mountains… it is still alarming to wake early in the morning to hearing high powered engines flying close overhead… from 9-11 and the weeks after when the F-16s launched from here.
On another note: There are still debates going on here about why NORAD, which is just over the ridge from here, seemed to not send escorts immediately on 9-11. The conspiracy ideas have continued to muddle about in various media
Wow, Dr. E, when I read “raptors” falling out of the sky, you scared me. I thought you were talking about the F-22 “Raptor” stealth jet fighter.
Anyway, interesting to read about the other raptors.
You also got my interest when you mentioned NORAD “just over the ridge,” as I worked in Cheyenne Mountain (what an amazing feat of engineering and construction!) for a couple of years in the mid 60s.Have heard those rumors…will try to look into them.
that’d be great Dorian if you’d look into the 9-11 NORAD stories. I know the truths are in there somewhere in the tangle. Let us know what you find.
Cheyenne mountain truly amazing, one of the remarkable feats of engineering and planning and welders and diggers and the Sciences of science … I’ve often thought of its interiors when I see the latest sci fi film whose ‘control rooms’ seem like little versions of parts of NORAD, at least in imagination.
sorry to give you a startle. I meant raptors as in hawks, eagles, tiercels, owls. Although, one can certainly see why the namers of military air ships borrow their names… they are SO incredibly lithe in flight and swoop down in a blink and then whooosh, away again.
It’s interesting. When one Googles “NORAD failures on 9/11” one gets about 1,730,000 results in 0.09 seconds.
When one Googles, “NORAD 9/11 conspiracy,” it is about 428,000 results in 0.24 seconds.
I am afraid it is going to take a little longer than 0.9 seconds to sort this one out
Military airships “whooosh”…?
I’d describe them moving more like three old housewives rowing a buoy.
Bird names like: Akron, Macon, Shenandoah, Graf Zeppelin, Los Angeles, Hindenburg??
Cheyenne Mountain
I was under the impression that NORAD was not the center of the air defense apparatus anymore or Cheyenne Mountain is not the center of NORAD…or something or other. I would suspect that the Military cannot launch attacks against civilians without orders directly from elected government.
NORAD, along with USNORTHCOM, have as their primary missions defending the North American continent and the United States, respectively, against attacks from space, by ICBMs and by air (the old “air-breathing” threat.)
They still peer 200 miles “out into the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) encircling North America to help assess, within two minutes, if each of the 7,000 incoming aircraft every day is friend or foe” and to scramble our fighter jets — normally on 15-minute alert — within minutes to intercept, and if necessary, destroy an incoming threat.
The air breathing threat which was handled in my time separately by the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment System—reporting to NORAD) is now also part of the job in Cheyenne Mountain.
Of course, on September 11, when the threat came from within our borders , NORAD’s reaction is the subject of Dr. E’s question and something over which there are over one million entries according to Google.
Read more about the missions of NORAD and USNORTHCOM here:
http://www.norad.mil/about/vision.html
I am laughing Allen, I write on ms word first and transfer to online… I’d written ‘aircraft’ and prob misspelled it first time through… and my spellcheck did change it. I didnt mean dirigible going whoosh for heaven’s sakes. Although the hot air balloons that sail by my porch often sound like dragon whoosh. lol
STinMn: I wasn’t referring to the crashghouls, if that’s what you’re worried about, yeah, there are a lot of them around, but I was referencing something else. that rush you get in your heart when you hear 12 or more cylinders through unmuffled exhaust as it goes past you (or above you), that distinctive roar that you can’t get anywhere else.
Those thrills.
Dr. E-
You were laughing!
That was my goal. Glad I could help.
Dorian-
Just skip the million hit search. I suddenly don’t want to know anymore.
Airbreather threats? Man that was back when Hap Arnold was a corporal, right?
“Airbreather threats? Man that was back when Hap Arnold was a corporal, right?”
Those aircraft that crashed into the twin towers, the Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania only a decade ago were part of the “air-breathing threat.”
“Just skip the million hit search. I suddenly don’t want to know anymore.”
I believe I am doing/will be doing it for Dr. E.and because I am curious myself, Allen.
When I do write it, just ignore it.
Everything I have read says that the pilot was 74. In my mind there is a big difference between reaction time and risks at 74 versus those at 80.
Dorian-
Ok…ignorance departing….gate 23B….
“‘Air-breathing threats’ include aircraft, missiles and rockets that travel through the earth’s atmosphere. NORAD uses a network of satellites, ground-based and airborne radar, and jet fighters to detect, intercept and, if necessary, engage any air-breathing threat to North America.”
http://www.norad.mil/news/2007/042507.html
came from first MSM reports Teena. I’ll check it out and revise if need be. Thanks for keeping the faith.
ok, back… just tripled checked latest MSM, and corrected headline and content. Thank you for pointing out the error.
I think Allen you can trust Dorian to say something useful about NORAD that day as he used to be there. Let’s wait and see. NORAD to some is a little science fictionlike re air cover, but also very down to earth regarding the souls who are on site there. Personally, I’m researching Mohammed Atta and his family. I’ve just read his last will and testament which he left behind, and will move on now to reading his ‘terrorism manifesto.’ I can say this as early report. He was ill as can be. I talked to several people in NY today about the 9-11 remembrance for year 10 and they echo what one of our TMV writers wrote about last week, about the circus it had turned into. Should be about the families, the survivors. I think of the old guys I know who stillspeak of Pearl. It will prob always be trickling up from the collective unconscious in many many kinds of stories.
and thank y ou allen for making me laugh earlier. appreciate it