Amazing (and slightly frightening) DC-4 flying display

[Hal Bryan]

Watch for the simultaneous restart of engines 3 & 4. Oh, and the roll. Or is it two half-rolls?

Anyway, this video, shot in 1990 at the South African Air Force's 50th anniversary of the Harvard, is making the rounds, and shared here if you haven't seen it elsewhere:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrziTee4b2c

[Chad Jensen]

Good title to the post Hal! My hands were a bit clammy while watching that!! Wow...

[Jim Hann]

I saw this a couple hours ago on my union message board. It is really cool until he becomes a statistic. The B-52 crash from 1993-4 was mentioned in that thread.

[mazdaP5]

Glad to watch the video, would hate to have seen it in person

[Hal Bryan]

Glad to watch the video, would hate to have seen it in person

Well put.

And, as Jim noted, there were a couple of moments when that B-52 crash at Fairchild was very much on my mind as well. It's a luxury to watch this clip knowing that there was a positive outcome.

[Kyle Boatright]

I wouldn't be so fast to judge the display in a negative light. It looks like a very well rehearsed routine and reminds me of Bob Hoover's act in the Shrike. Everything in that display could have been done at 2-2.5 G's.

[Jim Hann]

I wouldn't be so fast to judge the display in a negative light. It looks like a very well rehearsed routine and reminds me of Bob Hoover's act in the Shrike. Everything in that display could have been done at 2-2.5 G's.

Kyle, I agree with what you said because that crossed my mind too. However, I also saw Wes Winter do his P68 act back in the 80s the year before he pulled the wings off it. It looked really cool until he overstressed it (one too many times?)

If the engineering is sound, and the pilot always respects the limits (as Mr. Hoover obviously did) then it should be fine. It just raises the hair on my neck when someone does something like that with an aircraft that large. They just don't have the tolerances built into them the way more agile aircraft do.

Jim