wrote:
On 14 Oct 2005 17:34:46 -0700, wrote:

I vaguely remember reading in the FAA/NTSB archive about such an
incident. It was a while ago, so I may be a bit off. What I remember
was that the pilot was killed on impact and apparently he was aware of
some minor seperation and continued to fly the aircraft until it failed
catastrophically. Might have been another bird, but I think it was a
celebrity. I'm not 100% sure though. You might try searching the
accident database for the celebrity if you haven't already.


That sounds pretty much like what happened to Steve Wittman.
He put off fixing the problem until after he got to Oshkosh.

I spoke with a pilot recently who is from Florida. Somehow Wittman's
accident came up and this pilot opined that while it's true that the
fabric appears to have delaminated from the wing thus causing the
catastrophic flutter that seperated the wing from the fuselage, he
thinks the Air Force had a hand in the accident. He, and some others
from his area, feel that wake turbulence may have jolted the wing into
flutter. There were military aircraft flying low level practice
missions in the area where he went down, according to this guy.

Prior to the release of the FAA report there was speculation about
that in the rec.aviation newsgroups:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...e=source&hl=en

And that an improper bolt may have been used in the horizontal
stabilizer:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...e=source&hl=en

The FAA accident report (link appears earlier in this thread) refers
to both issues. They ruled out B1 turbulence and do not appear to
have drawn any conclusions as to the latter.


He didn't think the fabric would have delaminated without some kind of
jolt.

Respecfully, did he personally see the O & O special, ever?


I don't know, it was an old airplane that had been sitting around for
a long time and it was a relatively fast cruiser. It may have been
possible for the fabric to rip loose without any help from close
passing B1's.


--

FF