Plane crash in Düsseldorf
| Plane crash in Düsseldorf | |
|---|---|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | CFIT after simulated engine failures |
| place | Dusseldorf , Germany |
| date | 3rd November 1957 |
| Fatalities | 7th |
| Survivors | 3 |
| Injured | 3 |
| Fatalities on the ground | 1 |
| Injured on the ground | 2 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type |
Douglas DC-4 (converted Douglas C-54 ) |
| operator | Karl Herfurtner air shipping company |
| Mark | D-ALAF |
| Departure airport | Dusseldorf |
| Destination airport | New York via Reykjavík |
| Passengers | 5 |
| crew | 5 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
In the plane crash in Düsseldorf on November 3, 1957, a Douglas DC-4 of the air shipping company Karl Herfurtner (KHD) sagged shortly after taking off from Düsseldorf Airport with two stationary engines and two running engines as well as landing flaps that were retracted too early , hit the roof of a building and shattered in an allotment garden . In the process, 12,000 liters of gasoline poured out of the tanks and partially ignited. Seven of the ten inmates and one person on the ground died.
the accident
The Douglas DC-4 was to be transferred to New York with a stopover in Reykjavík ( Iceland ) in order to accommodate a tour group. The commander in charge on the first flight segment was the KHD's chief pilot , Captain Karl-Heinz Stahnke. For the start in Düsseldorf he took the place of the co-pilot (right) and took on the role of “ pilot not flying ”, while the co-pilot in the actual seat of the captain (left) was assigned to control the aircraft. The crew also included a flight engineer and two flight attendants .
A second captain and co-pilot each, who were off duty on the first leg to Iceland, traveled in the cabin. In addition, an official from the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Transport was on board, who, according to Karl Herfurtner, should routinely check the crew and the Douglas DC-4 as a representative of the aviation authority. According to the Ministry of Transport, this clerk was not in an official capacity, but on board as a guest of the airline. The only paying passengers were a couple from Wuppertal.
The aircraft took off at 7 a.m. from runway 15 (now out of service) heading south. After the machine had gained around 50 meters in height, it suddenly lost around half of its flight altitude over the north cemetery with the same angle of attack . The Douglas DC-4 then went into a continuous descent and flew through the roof of the former tax office building on Roßstrasse in Derendorf about three minutes after take-off . After the collision, in which, among other things, the wing tanks were damaged, the aircraft crashed burning into an adjacent allotment garden. The right wing was completely torn off on impact. In front of and behind the wing root, the fuselage broke into three main parts. The front and middle trunk areas burned out completely. The six inmates who were in these sections were instantly killed on impact and / or by the fire. This also included the pilot's daughter Stahnke, who was on board as a flight attendant. The second flight attendant, the 17-year-old daughter of the company's founder Karl Herfurtner, succumbed to her injuries the next day. The captain on duty and the couple survived the accident, seriously injured. They sat in the torn back section of the fuselage, which was spared from the fire. A woman who lived in the allotment garden was also killed in the crash; two other residents of the facility were injured. The building hit by the plane burned down completely.
Cause of accident
On impact, the propeller blades of the two left aircraft engines (engine no. 1 and 2) were in the sail position . In addition, the landing flaps had been completely retracted. The examination of the engines in Hamburg revealed no evidence of a technical defect before the collision with the building. The crew had neither sent an emergency call nor informed the air traffic controller about the engine failures. The investigators of the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt assumed that Captain Stahnke switched off the fuel supply of the two left piston engines while climbing and brought their propellers into the sail position in order to test the reaction of the copilot in such an emergency. This brought the aircraft into a situation that he could no longer control himself.
The airline's employees described Captain Stahnke as a daredevil with deficits in understanding aerodynamics . Even before the accident, he had carelessly carried out similar emergency exercises, not only on training flights, but also on scheduled missions with passengers on board. This had led to conflicts with other KHD pilots who, like Stahnke, had received their briefing on the Douglas DC-4 in the United States. There, the German crews were explicitly advised by the US instructors that an engine to simulate an engine failure must not be switched off, but only throttled so that its performance could be increased again if necessary. At the urging of other KHD pilots, Karl Herfurtner had warned Stahnke several times to change his risky behavior and also threatened him three weeks before the accident that he would otherwise fill the position of KHD chief pilot and dismiss him.
Two days before the accident, Stahnke had informed some colleagues at a KHD staff meeting that he thought a start with only two engines was technically possible and that he would try it out in the future without giving a specific date. He also announced that he would be examining his co-pilot on the long-haul flight on November 3rd.
KHD pilots informed the accident investigators that the flight engineer on duty enjoyed numerous freedoms under Stahnke. On previous flights, for example, this flight engineer had retracted the flaps on his own initiative after take-off without the chief pilot criticizing his behavior. The exact processes in the cockpit could not be clarified. However, the investigators considered it certain that Captain Stahnke first interrupted the fuel supply to the outer left engine and brought its propeller into sail position. Before he switched off the second engine shortly afterwards, the landing flaps were either retracted by himself or by the flight engineer. The retraction of the flaps caused a sudden loss of lift, causing the machine to lose half of its flight altitude. With the remaining two engines, it was impossible to climb again.
consequences
In the same month, Karl Herfurtner ended his involvement in aviation and sold his airline to the Wuppertal travel company Dr. Tigges rides . The flight operations were then continued under the changed name Trans-Avia until the beginning of 1959.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h ICAO Aircraft Accident Digest No. 9, Circular 56-AN / 51 , Montreal 1959, pp. 206-210
- ↑ a b Der Spiegel , issue 48/1957 Die Piloten-Probe , accessed on February 25, 2017
Coordinates: 51 ° 14 ′ 45 ″ N , 6 ° 46 ′ 36 ″ E