Super Corsair Engine Fire and Bailout

[304065]

This has been around for a while but I had never seen it before and thought you fellas might like it. It's from 1994.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9161106816384837258
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc3InHWB1es

As the attached video indicates Kevin Eldridge blew the engine in his Super Corsair at an air race, yet had the presence of mind to steer it away from the crowd before bailing out. Needless to say a few seconds later a smoking divot.

A "Super" Corsair has a 4360, the baddest, meanest piston driven engine of ALL TIME. Contrast that with the regular Corsair.

Here is a clip of Kevin's account of the accident in which he sustained serious injury.

Eldridge followed Pardue onto the course and caught up easily. "I was only running 62 inches or something like that," Eldridge says. "I wasn't running that much power. I paced him and was looking for a good spot to make my move." The first sign of any trouble came on the third lap.

"Coming around, it just started vibrating a little bit," Eldridge says. He radioed the crew and told them of the vibration while bringing the power back to about 10 inches, but the vibration remained. "I figured I'd started to burn a piston, so I called a mayday at that point and started to pull off the course."

That is exactly when all Hell broke loose.

"When I was in the climb, the engine just let go. I pulled the throttle back and started to shut it down," he says. The race site at Williams Gateway Airport features three ex-Air Force runways with ample room for a mayday racer. Getting to one of them didn't seem to present a problem at this point. "I just pulled up, made a big downwind, and said to myself, 'Oh, I've got it made...' I'll be able to shut it down and glide right in - no problem."

"The next thing I know, is that they tell me it's on fire, and to bail out..."

He takes a second to relive those moments. "Actually, they told me it was on fire, and I looked at everything and then they said the fire was out. I thought, 'Ok, the fire is out,' and I'm going to glide in. Then there is fire again, and they said it was just blazing. They said I better bail out. I didn't even hesitate; it's something you have with your crew. You trust them. They're not going to tell you to bail out unless you really have to bail out. And with 150 gallons of fuel between me and the fire, you know...?" he chuckles. But in an instant he is somber. "I'd just lost my friend Rick Brickert before then in Reno, and the last thing I wanted to do was burn up."

Overhead, Patterson and Hoover were joining up as best they could and also advising Eldridge to exit the aircraft. As he recounts the event, Eldridge makes movements like he's in the cockpit going through his procedures. "I didn't even hesitate to do what I had to do to get out," he says. "It's pretty tough getting out... I was still at 250 mph and 2,500 feet AGL, by the time I got out I was probably a couple of thousand feet above the ground."

The loss of altitude during this time had to do with the aircraft being trimmed for basically straight and level flight at 450 mph. Since the aircraft had lost power and was in a climb, the trim forces were unable to hold the aircraft level. Eldridge continues, "The first time I let go of the stick, the airplane pitched down, so I grabbed it and leveled it. The problem the Corsair had was it had a ground adjustable trim tab. You could adjust it for cruise to go to the race, and once you got there, we'd adjust it for fast flying. So when I pulled up, I pulled up to about 2,500 feet above the ground and I was down to about 250 mph. Even though that's pretty fast, it's slow for that thing. When you let go of it, it wants to roll over, so I had to get everything undone and let go of the stick to open the canopy."

The first time Eldridge let go of the stick to open the canopy, the burning racer rolled over to the right and began to pitch down. He again corrected and rolled in all of the nose up trim. He also tried to adjust with rudder to keep it straight, but it just wouldn't work. At this point, Eldridge was thinking to himself that he has to get out now. While rolling in the trim, Eldridge used his free hand to finally open the canopy. The racer was again rolling to the right and pitching for the desert. He had decided he was going out the left side.

With his long legs and the geometry of the Super Corsair's cockpit, Eldridge had to fly with the seat in the fully raised position, a fact that made bailing out more difficult. "You've got to kind of hop up on the seat to get out, so when I did this, the wind grabbed my helmet, so I ducked back in real quick, turned to the side, and proceeded to jump out," he says.

In the mean time, with flames streaming from the bottom cowling, the Super Corsair had begun it's final return to Earth. With precious few seconds to go before it dug into the ground, fans, pilots, crewmembers and emergency crews all joined in the chorus of, "Bail out! Get out!" Nobody was breathing.

As Eldridge leapt over the side, he explains, "My left leg got stuck between the seat and the canopy railing. I was just stuck in there and I was pushing to get out of the cockpit. You really want to get a good jump, but I just flopped over the left hand side. The last thing I remember seeing is the greasy side of the airplane; I kind of slid down the side of the fuselage and then 'wam-bam,' I'm kind of spinning in the air."

"Now I'm thinking I've got to pull the D-ring," he says as he goes through the motion of trying to located the parachute's ripcord handle. "I'm looking for the D-ring, spinning through the air thinking, 'Oh man... Where's the D-ring at?' Then I find the tube that the D-ring is connected to but the D-ring is gone."

About the time Eldridge realized the D-ring was missing, his parachute popped open. In reviewing video of the accident, the time frame this all occurred in was just a few quick seconds. When he realized his chute had opened, Eldridge remembers thinking, "Wow!!! OK!!!" It might be argued that at this point, things were looking up for Eldridge, but the drama wasn't over yet.

* * *
Back in the air, Eldridge took stock of the situation. His helmet and oxygen mask had been ripped off his head either from the slipstream or contact with the tail of the aircraft. When he looked down, he saw his left leg was pointed off at a 50 degree angle. "That's gonna hurt," he thought. He didn't watch the aircraft hit the ground. "I saw it on the news in the hospital. That was tough to watch," he says.


With the adrenalin still pumping, Eldridge had yet to feel any pain from his leg. Unfortunately, that was the least of his problems. All he knew was that his leg was pointing in a rather unique direction, and his arm had began to hurt. There was a large lump in it. "Then it hit me," Eldridge says. "To be blunt, I thought, 'This can't be f&*$ing happening to me! It hits you that it actually happened."

At this point, Eldridge tried to look up at his canopy, but could not get his head to tilt back enough to see. Knowing something was wrong with his neck, he began feeling a lot more pain in his arm. Things turn almost comical at this point. "It was just taking forever to come down. I'm over a double highway and all I see is this white diesel truck coming down the road, and I'm thinking, 'I'm going to get hit by the truck,' so I hold my arms out and wind kind of blows me past the road," he says.

"I was looking good at that point, going out over the sagebrush," he remembers. "But that last fifteen feet, man, you just haul ass. I hit and held up my left leg as high as I could because I knew it was broken. I tucked, rolled, and landed on my side and thought I would get up. I couldn't; I just laid on my side with my parachute for like - forever. It might have been ten minutes before they came out and got me."

In the distance, Eldridge could hear a helicopter that was part of the airshow. It had taken off and was flying back and forth searching for the fallen race pilot. He raised his good arm to make himself easier to see. Upon seeing him and landing nearby, a passenger came over and stayed with Eldridge until the paramedics arrived. "That was a comedy of errors," he says. "I was just dying of thirst; I wanted a Gatorade, but they wouldn't give me anything for fear of me going into shock."

After arriving at the hospital, the tally sheet for Eldridge's injuries included a broken C2 vertebrae, a broken right arm, a compound fracture in both bones in his left leg, and various minor injuries.
By all accounts, the neck injury alone should have paralyzed or killed him. Upon examination, his parachute was within a hair of falling apart. Due to the speed at the time the chute opened, three panels blew out, and the bottom skirt had one-eighth of an inch of nylon left before it would have torn. At every step, it seemed Eldridge had used up every ounce of luck in the world.

Link to full article here: http://www.warbirdaeropress.com/articles/bail_out.html

The Super Corsair in better days.



Enjoy

[pwd72s]

Just watched the video...She-yet!!!!

[304065]

Yep, my ears would be ringing for the rest of my days after a deal like that.

[onewhippedpuppy]

That's a nice pucker moment. I like his nonchalant recounting of the story, I'd expect nothing less from an air-show pilot.

[svandamme]

looks like the flames went out as it picked up speed on the final nose dive...
Didn't B17's do dives to put out flames after getting shot-up over Deutschland?

[sand_man]

YIKES!!! Somebody hand me the asswashing hose!!!! That was crazy!

[t6dpilot]

Yeah, pretty unbelieveable. Those dudes are cool as cucumbers. Gettin' out is the toughest thing when deciding to bail. Hard to avoid the horizontal stabilizer. The trick to that is to dive to the trailing edge of the right side wing - and that is in a perfect scenario. But when do you have time to think about that - you just need to get the fuch out, NOW.

Just got done reading Fly Low, Fly Fast about the Reno Air Races. Great book for you pilots out there. These guys got balls let me tellya. I have friends who race with RARA and I actually considered doing the T6 class back in the late 90's when they were hurting for 'sixes. Cool stuff...

[Superman]

I'm not a pilot but I do love airplanes and engines, and that video is hard to watch. I assume this was a radial engine with more than one row of cylinders.

[Dantilla]

Originally Posted by Superman

I assume this was a radial engine with more than one row of cylinders.

Four rows of cylinders. Four times seven is 28 cylinders, 56 spark plugs. 4360 cubic inches, or 71.5 litres. Same displacement as 22 Carreras. That was the entire Porsche dealer's lot back in the late '80's.

[xlr8]

4360

[svandamme]

soooo...
who's up for it... somebody needs to drop that puppy in a 911.

[xlr8]

[sand_man]

WOW, that's a crazy piece of machinery!

[varmint]

i was maybe ten years old. i watched bob hoover land a burning P-51 at an airshow. hell of a thing.

but that corsair was way too low to try that "diving to put the fire out" trick.

[sand_man]

Here's a sectional. Man, that is a fascinating engine!

[Jim Garfield]

Amazing engine.

When I lived in Westport, CT back in the 70's there was a guy who augered in in his newly acquired Corsair. He was taking off from the Bridgeport airport, on his first flight iirc, the engine torque spun the plane over and he went down in the salt marsh across from the airport.

As Clint Eastwood says, "A man's got to know his limitations".

[Dantilla]

I talked to an old pilot yesterday at the airport that flew Corsairs.

He said they limited the throttle on initial take-off to prevent the torque from making the airplane uncontrollable. Full throttle was used only above minimum airspeeds.

[Gene-o]

They don't call the R-4360 a corncob radial for nothin'!

[targa911S]

Holy crap how many cylinders is that thing?

[onewhippedpuppy]

Impressive engineering on a radial engine. They're still being made today, particularly in Russia. Lots of power from a fairly compact design. I'd like one of these:http://www.radialrocket.com/ (made in KC).