Amazing Video Of The Skyraider And P-51 Collision At Duxford Yesterday

 You can see very easily in this video how the Skyraider and P-51 (known as Big Beautiful Doll) wound up making contact after breaking formation on Sunday at Duxford. It's interesting that the P-51 remained somewhat under control for as long as it did, which surely contributed to pilot Rob Davies having the time needed to get out. Still, this is a great example of very quick thinking in the middle of a low altitude emergency! He landed safely under the parachute, and the Skyraider was able to regain control and land without any further damage.  

 There are a lot of images of the incident at this page of the DailyMail website, and you can also see some great images of the damaged Skyraider at this page of the BritModeller website. Ultimately, the airplanes are just airplanes... I'm really happy to see that both pilots survived what could have easily wound up being a very different story had the contact been more direct.

 Let's be careful out there!

Comments

[rcpylon]

never seen a full scale accident like that and i'm glad all got out okay, I used to race model airplanes and i've seen plenty hits like that and they usually cost both airframes.

[FTYD]

I remember reading a book quite a long time ago about the AD-1 Skyraider operations in Korea and Vietnam. It was always described as an extremely tough aircraft. Kudos to the pilot for getting it back on the ground safely after that though.

I hope the eventual accident investigation will find what was hit on the P-51D to cause the final loss of control. Very glad the pilot made it out though. It's always sad to read about the loss of a classic aircraft, but far sadder to read about the loss of an irreplaceable pilot.