Scott Crossfield's C210 missing

[DaveJ]

His C210 broke up in mid-air

I talked to the CAP ground team leader that found the wreckage yesterday and he mentioned that parts of the 210 were found 2 miles from the main site. He also talked to an eye witness that saw the aircraft "tumbling out of the air". The eye witness didn't bother to call 911 after seeing what was obviously an aircraft crash!

Someone in another thread mentioned that he was pretty certain that the aircraft failed Scott and not the other way around. Sounds like he was right.

 

[AngelKing]

The 210 he was in was a 1960 model which had been in an accident before.
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=39641&key=0#
Not infering anything from that, just FYI. And there were a lot of thundersorms in that area.

RIP

 

[mcjohn]

Is there anyway to see what the radar returns looked like in the area when he dropped of the radar screen? Does flightaware have that capability? Just curious. Not trying to be an investigator.

 

[banned username 2]

Someone in another thread mentioned that he was pretty certain that the aircraft failed Scott and not the other way around. Sounds like he was right.

Well if you think about it, if he flew into thunderstorms then he in fact failed the airplane... I don't think anyone here would or should expect a C-210 to hold together in the face of a severe thunderstorm...

Just my $0.02...

 

[SiuDude]

Doesn't look good. Level 5's within 10 miles of his ground track:
http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/rad...=black&endDate=20060419&endTime=16&duration=0

 

[mcjohn]

Doesn't look good. Level 5's within 10 miles of his ground track:
http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/rada...=16&duration=0

So you take that and mix it with this:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N6579X

Considering he was filed to fly 11 thousand, and the direction that I remember the storm moving follows the direction of that southeasterly hook at the end of the line, you maybe can see how quickly and where the plane might have broken up.

 

[User546]

I've heard so much mentioned the last few days about Crossfield and him breaking the Mach 2 barrier.

Lets not forget as well, that he also had 14 flights in the awesome X-15 aircraft. That's worth some recognition in my opinion!

EDITED: Removed inaccurate statement. Thanks mzaharis for the correction!
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[User546]

Here's a photo currently posted on Chuck Yeager's website of Scott taken two days before his final flight.

"This photo was taken Monday afternoon at the Prattville, AL, airport just after he'd landed. He had come down to Maxwell AFB to speak to the new 2nd Lts. on Tuesday. He took off Wednesday morning to go home."

http://www.chuckyeager.com/

 

[mzaharis]

I've heard so much mentioned the last few days about Crossfield and him breaking the Mach 2 barrier.

Lets not forget as well, that he also had 14 flights in the awesome X-15 aircraft, where he repeatedly flew past Mach 4 and 5 on several occasions. That's worth soem recognition in my opinion!

No - he never got above Mach 3 in the X-15. He was a test pilot for North American, and his job was to qualify the aircraft for delivery to NASA. They didn't want a contractor pilot to get all the glory (although landing with a full tank that broke its back, and his surviving the explosion on the ground test, qualified him as a steely eyed test pilot in my eyes!).

I especially like that first story - one of the engines exploded at the beginning of a flight, and he had to land the thing with a considerable amount of rocket fuel still on board. It was so heavy, it split in half on landing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_X-15_flights

 

[FN FAL]

Any FI members ever broken the sound barrier?

Hell yea...I've been known to make 32-40 sonic booms within the span of seconds.