'2. Notwithstanding 1. above, as far as I know 100
percent of UK tug upset fatal accidents in the last
30 years happened with belly hooks. We changed our
procedures and recommendations before we could gather
more data and satisfy statistical pedants with some
more fatalities which might have improved the correlation
calculations. Since the changes, fatal tug upsets have
almost entirely disappeared from the UK fatal accident
reports.

Interesting thread! The only Accident that I have personal
knowledge of is one that happened at Turf Soaring in
95 and that particular one involved a SGS-2-33 and
a Pawnee 235 tow plane. The Student Gilder pilot saw
the tow plane go through a dust devil at about a 100-200
feet and when it hit him he was not prepared for it.
They were using a 200 foot rope and the tow plane was
fitted with SGS hook. Niether the tow pilot or the
glider pilot released and the rope broke 4 feet behind
the tow plane. But not before the tow plane was upset
enough not to be able to recover and he 'pancaked'
in to the ground killing himself. The glider pilot
was able to return to the field and land safely. Afterwards
they summarized that the towpilot could not have released
do to the forces on the release. Since then they have
redesigned andgotten FAA aproval to invert the SGS
hook and eliminate this problem. This happened with
a Nose hook and student pilot. I believe that the most
important factor in this disscussion is the lack of
experience not wether or not it is a nose or belly
or cg hook!