Fact Checking Nelson's "Doors Of Death" light aircraft near death experience

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

2. His schedule for the day it supposedly happened appears to have been entirely unaffected, despite making an emergency landing in a field in the days without mobile communication.

This right there should put to bed any thought that this story is accurate. Not only would the day have been shot, but what happened would've spread like wildfire here in Utah.

- Doc

[DrW]

RI,

Suppose someone stood up in Sacrament meeting in Utah and related events that they claimed happened some 40 years ago in a court in London, England. This individual claimed to have been accused of illegally building and testing small electromagnetic weapons in violation of the Official Secrets Act. Even though she knew she was breaking the law, she was moved by the spirit and believed she was doing what was best for the greater good.

As a result, she said that she was hauled before a magistrate at the Old Bailey on November 14, 1976. Not able to afford a barrister, she was obliged to plead her own case. She presented her summation, explaining how her work had helped develop EMP weapon countermeasures. These could have saved the lives of countless western Europeans in the case of unforeseen hostilities by the Russians. When she was finished, the magistrate was so impressed that he threw off his peruke, came down off the bench smiling, gave her a high five, and shook her hand.

Based on your professional knowledge of the law and UK jurisprudence, you had misgivings about her story. Nonetheless, as an attorney, you felt an obligation to fairness, especially when others began to mock the story as fantasy. You were able to access UK court records online, only to find out that the court transcripts from the Old Bailey in national security cases were not publicly available.

You found that November 14, 1976 fell on a Sunday. You searched for 1976 newspaper articles in the UK about an American female who was charged with violation of the Official Secrets Act and found nothing. You consulted a technologist who assured you that, while it would have been possible for the woman to build small electromagnetic weapons at the time, they were unknown outside of Russia in 1976. They only became a factor in national security after 1991.

You contacted a colleague in the UK. He advised you that this kind of case in the UK would never be heard by a mere magistrate, and that such behavior by a real judge was unheard of there and quite possibly illegal. Besides, he observed, the Old Bailey does not conduct business on Sunday. He stated that there was no need to wonder about the story, it was absolute BS on its face.

This woman held an important calling in the Church. You did not feel comfortable confronting her directly, even though she continued to relate the story. She even had it published in a memoir, claiming credit for a Hedy Lamarr like contribution to western national security. You felt that she was a good person and had good reasons to do what she did. And besides, a male member confronting a female member in the current cultural climate would not play well.

Would you then, in a quest for fairness, apply your lawyerly criteria to her claims and continue to search for evidence to support her story?

How much time would you spend on this quest? How much money would you be willing to bet that her story was true?

You may say that my analogy is ridiculous - that while her story may be believable to many in Utah, anyone with relevant knowledge, especially of the UK legal system, would discount it in a heartbeat.

That's the point.

[Res Ipsa]

DrW,

Your analogy is completely irrelevant to my criticism of what you are doing in this thread. I’m not challenging your education, training, and experience as a pilot. You’ve made it abundantly clear that your expertise does not extend to:

1. What is required in order to draw a justifiable conclusion from the absence of evidence;

2. Records retention policies, including those of the FAA and the NTSB;

3. How to describe the contents of a database in a straightforward and non-misleading manner.

Your last database post is Joseph Smith Best Guesser Bad. You gave it a glowing description and treated it as if it were a comprehensive worldwide database. It’s not. After being burned by not finding out what a database does and does not contain before you run a search art least three other times on this thread, one might think you have learned something. That database is so incomplete that you wasted your time in writing the post, others time in reading your post, and my time to, once again, prevent the fine folks here from being misled.

That you imply that my participation here is a matter of “fairness” to Nelson confirms that you aren’t reading my posts. I have lots of concerns in general about “fairness,” none of which include an old whites dude who heads a multi-billion dollar corporation and claims he talks to a supernatural being. I’ve posted in detail what I’m interested and why.

If you are going to purport to reason from the absence of evidence, take the time to do it properly. That you continue to make the same basic mistake in reasoning over and over again, after your error has been pointed out to you repeatedly tells me you with don’t understand what you’re doing or you don’t care about being accurate.

From reading this thread, it’s clear that a number of people are relying on your posts and taking them at face value. And they should be able to do that. But you have been and continue to mislead them in the area of basic reasoning. And they deserve better.

[Gadianton]

For me, what's material to minimal truth of the story is that the plane had an engine fire, and to put the fire out, the pilot nosed-dived and pulled up seconds or less before vaporizing into the earth. The nose-dive is the only thing that can drive a justifiable fear for his life. Justifiable fear is material for me: if the engine was on fire and they landed in a field (which I don't accept either) then it's a lie. Rusty wasn't scared. He had a rational belief that he was about to die. If the objective facts didn't support that, the story is a lie. And at its best it's a stretch, because the pilot most likely would have explained to the passengers that he was going to dive the plane to put out the flames, and "hold on folks!". Rusty, in a rational frame of mind, would have given the pilot reasonable odds that he knew what he was doing. Experiencing a real possibility that he would die and experiencing near certain death are two different things when it comes to proving absolute trust in the Savior. Therefore, the pilot would need to pull the stunt without informing the crew, such that it seemed as if the plane was going down without hope, and Rusty would have learned about the plan only after the fact. But, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on his justifiable fear so that it only comes down to the dive.

The databases are interesting but aren't the lynchpin for me, at least. Way up thread, I asked Dr. W about diving. He didn't respond -- maybe didn't see the question. Then, much later, he explained the diving issue anyway. So, my "dive" research was pretty much without Dr. W's influence. I didn't see anything that would indicate diving a Piper Navajo with passengers to put out a fire was either a good idea or something that was ever done. Dr. W's explanation only added reasons to what I'd already concluded. But, I'm totally open on this one: If there's a credible report out there about a pilot doing just such a thing, then that would make it plausible. As it stands, I'm ruling the story out on plausibility of the dive.

Life issues had manifest themselves and my search was cut short, and then I lost steam, but I did get far enough downloading the raw text files used to load that heap of a database from 1997 to get some solid preliminary results. I got some basic search scripts going, and was able to view dozens of results at a time on terms such as "fire" "nose dive" "nose" "dive" and so on. save an incident of stunt flying, no intentional nose dives. most if not all ending in death. Now, those reports aren't super detailed, but some of them do have detail, and there are mentions here and there about how the pilot managed the situation. So doesn't totally rule out nose-diving to put out fires, but yet another viable source fails to support it as something that ever happens.

[DrW]

Way up thread, I asked Dr. W about diving. He didn't respond -- maybe didn't see the question.

Dean Robbers,

The response to your question about diving was given upthread. In the post describing the pilot's view on page 60, I mentioned that the Piper Navajo Chieftain Owners Manual recommended an increase of airspeed as a possible means of extinguishing an engine fire. While increased power may be used, increased airspeed is best accomplished in a straight ahead dive if altitude and weather conditions permit. The airspeed that should not be exceeded in doing so was listed 180 - 190 knots indicated airspeed (KIAS).

6. In the Russell M. Nelson story the fire persists, fueled by both avgas and engine oil. The pilot decides to try putting out the fire by increasing airspeed as recommended in the Navajo Operating Manual. He enters a shallow straight ahead dive, while watching that his airspeed does not exceed a safe 180 - 190 kts. The fire is extinguished.

The problem with Russell M. Nelson's story is the "death spiral" dive. Tight turns, as in a spiral, require a high bank angle. At high bank angles the wings lose lift, making a twin engine aircraft with one operating engine difficult to control.

The Piper Twin Comanche, as discussed up thread, has been known to flip upside down at high bank angles with an engine out. My multi-engine flight instructor made certain that his students knew well the then-current stories of the Twin Comanche's nasty engine-out tendencies. We agreed to do our multi-engine work in an Twin Apache.

[honorentheos]

For me, what's material to minimal truth of the story is that the plane had an engine fire, and to put the fire out, the pilot nosed-dived and pulled up seconds or less before vaporizing into the earth.

I am assuming we are only talking about the plausibility of some actual event occuring in which Nelson was on a plane and came away believing he was about to die compared to his making up the story from whole cloth.

The minimum truth in this scenario is that Nelson believed that the pilot nose-dived the plane to put out an engine fire. The degree of actual danger involved or actual mechanical issues involved are unknown.

Consider: https://www.aviationpros.com/home/artic ... s-incident

I came across the above whenever it was I engaged the thread originally. In addition to the explanation regarding what differentiates accidents from incidents, I thought this reflected the jaded attitude of a pilot compared to passengers that may be worth taking into consideration when trying to use Nelsons account as a passenger to extract details that a pilot might enter into a report were one required to be filed for whatever may have happened.

My playfully introducing my grandson into the article demonstrates the general news media’s childish ignorance of our industry and what they write about. A captain dies of a heart attack, and the First Officer ‘miraculously’ lands the plane at the next airport. An engine fails in flight and the entire cabin finds religion for a ‘harrowing’ 15 minutes. An airliner blows a main tire on rotation and the passengers scream for a Congressional hearing into tire ply safety.

Naturally the first officer lands the plane; he/she has been trained; the event is called an accident only because someone died during the flight. A tire failure or a contained engine failure – both considered incidents – are unfortunate, but they happen. There’s no call for panic.

[Lem]

Your last database post is Joseph Smith Best Guesser Bad.

No, it's not. I would venture to say that not one single opinion on this entire thread is as outrageously untrue as that paper. Such hyperbole is almost as meaningless as their final probability calculation.

[Physics Guy]

Yeah, the odds of anyone coming up with something as wrong as the Dales just by chance are 1 in 10^80.

Wait. Doh!

[Morley]

Setting aside any lost database.

The point of no return announcement, the engine fire, the dive to extinguish the flames, the landing in a field, the subsequent tag-team flight, the miracle of arriving on time in spite of everything--all together, packed into one narrative, probably didn't happen.

What we're discussing is not whether this all occurred. We can guess that the story, in all its parts, most likely isn't true. But we're trying to determine what portions might be true.

We can speculate that Nelson is probably not telling the truth, or at the very least not correcting falsehoods told on his behalf--we just don't know whether or not Nelson is intentionally lying.

Do I have that right?

.

[DrW]

Your last database post is Joseph Smith Best Guesser Bad.

No, it's not. I would venture to say that not one single opinion on this entire thread is as outrageously untrue as that paper. Such hyperbole is almost as meaningless as their final probability calculation.

Yeah, the odds of anyone coming up with something as wrong as the Dales just by chance are 1 in 10^80.
Wait. Doh!

RI,
Anyone with the understanding of statistics and probability reflected in your posts on this thread should consider avoiding the use of those terms in a public forum. The point of the analogy, which you clearly missed, was that the events described by the woman in her sacrament meeting story made it ridiculous on its face to the point that one need not worry about the absence of information contained in the unavailable national security data base in deciding to discount it.

To those familiar with aviation, including air traffic control procedures, aviation communications and aircraft performance, Russell M. Nelson’s story is ridiculous on its face. The reasons why have been described in excruciating detail.

Checking the accident and incident data bases for evidence that supports the story should be done, of course. However, the absence of any mention of the events described by Russell M. Nelson in the aviation accidents and incidents data base should not be of concern in deciding to discount the story. Lack of contradictory evidence is to be expected if the story was pure fantasy.

That said, if you believe that one needs to comb through thousands of reported incidents such as cabin pressurization issues, bird strikes, blown tire on landing, landing gear deployment issues, temporary engine failure, loud bang when the landing gear was deployed, (false) in flight engine fire indication in the cockpit, lavatory smoke indication, wingtip strike on landing, landing gear indicator disagreement, flaps deployment issue, indication of thrust reverser deployment in flight, runway excursion on landing, deployment of air driven generator in flight, overheated brakes, etc., have at it.

Here is a URL address where you can find incident reports for SkyWest: https://www.aeroinside.com/airline/skywest-airlines. It may not go back as far as 1976. However, it does include the kinds of routine incidents that you would find should you get access to the incident records from that year. Let us know if you make it past the first 100 reports.