I'll never understand what happened related to the John F. Kennedy Jr, plane crash.
These planes carry an impressive load and much of it is smart. You are right that the days of old style saturation bombing are largely over,
The NTSB ruled the cause of the accident to "Spatial Disorientation." For example in John's case, he was flying out over the water (the Atlantic Ocean) and had no visual references due to the overcast evening and could not see the stars, so he did not know or understand which way was up. Basically, it's like if you went into a closet and closed the door. He lost his sense of where the ground was. Instead of trusting his instruments, which he was not IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) certified (rated), he decided to make flight adjustments based on what his brain was telling him.
| The National Transportation Safety Board today released its final report on the crash of a Piper Saratoga II aircraft last summer that killed the pilot, John F. Kennedy, Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy; and her sister, Lauren Bessette. The airplane crashed about 9:41 p.m., on July 16, 1999, near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The probable cause of the accident, as stated in the accident report, is: "The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze and the dark night." The accident report may be accessed through the aviation synopses page on the NTSB website.. The NTSB accident number is NYC99MA178. |
Except for the fact that when a bomb is dropped it not only destroys what it hit, but also sends out thousands of fragments that can also kill anyone that is within its reach.
Thank you kindly for weighing-in on this for me, Oldman.
So spooky to think about, flying at night, with a pilot that had no idea where he was, where he was going, or what the plane was doing.
Well, yes and no. In Alaska there are many amateur pilots that use a small plane for transportation. They use their plane like most people use their car. I remember reading in a journal not too long ago that there is an average of one airplane crash per day in Alaska. These amateur pilots will mostly only fly in daylight hours. I have no idea what they do when they don't see daylight for several months.
Just sounds so utterly crazy, doesn't it?
I can't even imagine how he must have felt and those young ladies sitting in the back must have been tragically terrified when they knew that they were about to die.
In you mentioning hypoxia, it reminded me of the Payne Stewart, 1999 South Dakota Learjet crash.
I would think that careening to the earth's surface at a high rate of speed in a plane, one would feel an odd gravitational feeling, unlike when flying straight and horizontally.
Oh, yes, I also remember this terrible ending to a great golfer's life. He was flying with a few business partners for a new golf course that he was planning. They climbed into a Learjet and shortly after takeoff, the plane experienced a decompression problem. Is that right?
Yes, that's the incident, though I don't recall what went wrong.
Yes, if I remember correctly, the plane flew on autopilot for several hours before running out of fuel and crashing in a field.
I only had hypoxia one time, which was when I was actually an untrained scuba diver and did it just for fun. I was not a serious diver and never did any cave diving or anything like that. I had read about hypoxia and not coming to the surface too quickly, but when I was in San Diego and scuba diving off the coast, we were only down about thirty feet when I felt something bump me. When I turned around, I saw it was a Hammerhead and I panicked and wanted to get to the top and back in the boat quickly. I came up too fast and I could feel myself starting to fade, so I immediately just stopped until the feeling passed. But, I kept a lookout for that shark.
It actually did for me. I did dive once more, but it was something that I did not enjoy. Too much time in preparation and then on the boat, there is more preparation as the leader of the dive goes over what we will be doing and "Be sure we stay together down there." So, we did our dive and I turn around and I'm the only one there. I was like "where did everyone go?" No one did what we were told.
Yeah, no thanks to that, mind you I have never really enjoyed swimming in open water, even at locations where there was no fear of sharks, etc. Just was never for me. I was never able to get out of my head... the things that lurk below.
I believe one difference is that if the plane is loaded with laser guided bombs, the put the bomb where or what they want to hit. The pilot or if necessary, the navigator or a weapons systems officer (WSO) could guide the bombs. It’s pretty neat to eat h. The WSO watches the bomb as it descends to its target and guides it with a dial he controls by turning it and watches the bomb through a monitor. This almost guarantees a direct hit.
