Miami Airline accident (1951)
| Miami Airline aircraft accident | |
|---|---|
.jpg) An identical machine from another company |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Stall after engine fire |
| place | Elizabeth , New Jersey , United States |
| date | December 16, 1951 |
| Fatalities | 56 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Injured on the ground | 1 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Curtis C-46F |
| operator | Miami Airline |
| Mark | N1678M |
| Departure airport | Newark Metropolitan Airport , New Jersey, United States |
| Destination airport | Drew Field Municipal Airport , Tampa , Florida , United States |
| Passengers | 53 |
| crew | 3 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
The Aircraft Accident Miami Airline occurred on December 16, 1951, when a -46 C Curtiss after taking off from Newark Metropolitan Airport due to a stall crashed. This was preceded by an engine fire . All 56 inmates were killed in the accident. Another person on the ground was seriously injured. At the time, it was the second worst aircraft accident in the United States .
the accident
The Curtiss C-46 ( license plate : N1678M) of the charter airline Miami Airline Inc. started at 15:03 local time in Newark to a non-scheduled flight to Tampa ( Florida ). Shortly after taking off from runway 28, the air traffic controllers in the control tower saw that the slowly rising machine was trailing a bright plume of smoke that emanated from the right side of the aircraft. The controllers informed the pilots and gave them clearance to land on all runways without any response. The smoke was also noticed by a company flight captain who followed the take-off from the ground. Because this assumed that the brake was overheating , he contacted the control tower by phone and asked to inform the crew that they should not retract the landing gear . The instructions were passed on by the air traffic controllers, whereupon the pilots extended the landing gear that had already been retracted. At that time, the machine was approximately 6.5 kilometers (4 miles ) from the airport at an altitude of no more than 100 meters (300 feet ).
After the landing gear was extended, the smoke became increasingly dark and intense. The pilots in the control tower and people on the ground observed that flames came out of the open landing gear shaft below the right engine. The pilots probably only tried to fight the fire at this point in time by cutting off the fuel supply to the right engine and activating its fire extinguishing device. Because the fire had destroyed the engine's oil lines, they were not able to bring the propeller of the engine completely into the sail position . While the Curtiss C-46 was losing speed and altitude with only one working engine, it turned into a wide left turn. It remained unclear whether the pilots deliberately initiated this curve in order to head for runway 06 in Newark. At an altitude of about 60 meters (200 feet), the speed had dropped so low that a stall began. The machine rolled 90 degrees around its longitudinal axis to the left, fell into a nosedive and brushed the roof of a house with its left wing pointing downwards. Following the aircraft collided with another building and finally struck in the back attitude on the banks of the Elizabeth River.
The crash occurred at 3:09 p.m. local time, six minutes after the machine started. Rescue workers managed to extinguish the burning wreckage within seventeen minutes. They did not find any surviving inmates. An uninvolved person on the ground was seriously injured. According to other information, this person also died at a later date.
Cause of accident
The right engine had been replaced a few days before the accident. Investigators found that fifteen cylinder # 10 retaining bolts in this engine had broken as a result of material fatigue. The cause was the use of the wrong fastening nuts . Most of the bolts probably broke while the machine was accelerating on the runway and the engines were running at take-off power . The cylinder became partially detached from the engine block, possibly causing engine oil and / or fuel to leak and ignite. Because the pilots retracted the landing gear shortly after take-off, the fire was initially limited to the front engine area. The damaged engine delivered only a reduced performance, so that the climb had to be carried out flatter than usual.
A number of pieces of evidence indicated that individual bolts had already broken and the cylinder was leaking when the machine was being prepared for the flight to Tampa. Witnesses reported fresh traces of oil on the cooling air flaps (cowl flaps) as well as a slight smoke development from the right engine when the engines were warming up. It was also noticeable that this engine consumed significantly more oil and had to be refilled with twice the amount before departure, although it had significantly fewer operating hours than the left engine .
Opening the landing gear bays made the situation much worse. The inflowing air led to a sudden spread of the fire below the engine cowling, which destroyed the lines running in this area and flames hit the rear of the shaft. In addition, the air flow canceled the effect of the fire extinguishers filled with carbon dioxide , so that the fire fighting was unsuccessful. Eyewitnesses said the flames disappeared for a brief moment before becoming visible again. In the event of an engine fire, the manufacturer Curtiss had expressly stated that the landing gear had to be retracted before the fire extinguishing system was triggered.
The extended landing gear and the rotating propeller of the defective engine increased the air resistance of the aircraft and caused an increasing loss of speed at low altitude, which ultimately led to a stall. It was also found that the machine exceeded its maximum take-off weight by approximately 53 kg (117 lb ). There was an additional person on board, a copilot on duty, who was not on the passenger list.
A review of Miami Airline's company documents revealed that the weight limits had not been complied with on other flights. In addition, the investigators criticized the company's pilot training. The training programs for possible emergencies were rated as inadequate.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Civil Aeronautics Board, Miami Airline, Inc. - Elizabeth, New Jersey, December 16, 1951
- ↑ a b c ICAO Aircraft Accident Digest 3, Circular 31-AN / 26, pp. 84–89 (PDF)
- ^ Aircraft disasters , David Gero, Stuttgart 1994
Coordinates: 40 ° 40 ′ 0 ″ N , 74 ° 13 ′ 8 ″ W.