DrW wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 10:09 pm
Dr. Moore,
Agreed that the inflight fire and overdue aircraft aspects of the story would have resulted in NTSB notifications. Rather than comment further, allow me to provide some context regarding the likelihood of a notification of such as flight event or chain of events being made, or of supporting supporting documentation existing. What follows is a point by point look at Russell M. Nelson’s story from a pilot’s perspective. I will describe the pilot’s role in the events, as Russell M. Nelson claimed they happened, except in the cases where he described events that are highly improbable or impossible.
Please keep in mind that it took me a lot longer to write it than it will for you to read it. When you are finished, please ask yourself how probable you think it is that this could have happened and not been reported to the NTSB. More importantly, after reading this response, how likely do you think it is that the flight as described by Russell M. Nelson really happened?
I was flying in 1976, so the following descriptions of the air traffic communications environment should be pretty accurate for that time period in question. Here goes:
1. Pilot arrives for work at (e.g. SkyWest) operations in SLC, checks weather, files a flight plan, pre-flights the aircraft.
2. He loads passengers, secures the doors, clears the aircraft, starts the engines, checks ATIS for departure information, contacts tower, and gets clearance to taxi. Gets clearance to the runway, takes off and opens his flight plan.
Now the FAA knows about the flight and will pay attention until the flight plan is closed.
3. Pilot departs as advised and is handed off to Salt Lake Center Air Traffic Control (ATC), receives clearance to his cruising altitude, gets traffic (if any), sets the code on his transponder as instructed by ATC and squawks for ident. (The aircraft transponder responds to ATC with a numeric code that is set in the cockpit when interrogated (swept) by ATC radar. This code shows up on the ATC screens and allows ATC to track the aircraft. “Squawk for ident” is an instruction to the pilot to press a button on the transponder that lights up his aircraft on the ATC radar screen to confirm identification).
Now ATC is responsible for the aircraft until it is handed off to the tower in Cedar City.
4. 100 miles out, and about 25 miles from Delta Municipal airport, the right engine “explodes” (unlikely) and catches fire (fair enough). Pilot jumps on the left rudder to control the aircraft, and takes appropriate action to close right engine throttle, mixture to idle / off, fuel pump switch off, and feathers the prop.
5. Pilot declares and emergency (might even make a May Day call to clear a radio channel), advises Salt Lake Center of the engine fire, and asks for clearance to nearest airport (which is Delta Municipal). He may or may not need to dive to extinguish the fire. Fuels fires will extinguish when there is no more fuel to burn. Oil fires may persist because oil may continue to leak from a damaged line even after the engine stops. However, they are normally not as dangerous as avgas fires.
(Normally in such a situation, the pilot would get his ATC clearance and proceed on one engine to Delta Municipal. Delta has no tower so the pilot would use the local airport Unicom network to advise any local traffic of his emergency and his priority intent for a straight in approach and landing without a normal pattern entry. Other pilots on Unicom, if any, would acknowledge and stay clear of the runway and needed airspace. Once on the ground, the pilot would then contact Cedar City FSS by landline, report the aircraft landed safely with no injuries, close his flight plan to prevent an unnecessary missing aircraft search, and wait for instructions from SkyWest operations.)FF]
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.
Sorry, but the spiral death dive in the Russell M. Nelson version is pure BS. The left engine would still be operational and there is no reason whatsoever for the pilot to enter a “death spiral”. Navajo Chieftains are not certified for spins (spinning the aircraft is prohibited). So if the pilot did somehow lose control and spun the aircraft, he would have about half a rotation to recover, after which the saga would end in an uncontrolled crash landing. So no spiral. This image is from movies or WWI air battle footage. If the pilot wanted to dump altitude, he would not do so in a spiral with a dead engine in a twin. There would be no reason for such a dangerous maneuver. He would enter a straight line descent or a gentle turning descent that would head him in the direction of the Delta Municipal airport.
7. Back to the RNM version: the pilot has somehow become disoriented after his death spiral episode. He is also lost. He has narrowly avoided certain death and just wants to get back on the ground. Looking for a place to land, the pilot follows a road. Why not just land on it? With his 40 foot wingspan, he wisely decides not to try to land on the road because of wooden power poles along the right of way. Instead, he puts the aircraft down in an open field. Chances are great that his nose gear would have dug into the soil and severely damaged the undercarriage or even flipped the plane. The plane does not flip.
More BS. If the pilot had one good engine and could control the aircraft well enough to follow a road in broad daylight, why would he not proceed to nearby Delta Municipal which has a Unicom radio network, and where he was cleared to land on a perfectly good runway.
9. With the aircraft on the ground in a farmer’s field, the passengers deplane and - what? Walk to the road to hitch a ride with a passing farmer? Where would they go?
10. Well, they would go to Delta Municipal so the pilot could call St. George and a plane could be dispatched from St. George to come and pick up the passengers. The pilot is required to remove and secure all logbooks, certificates, and other records from the wreckage of the aircraft. He would have taken them with him to go to Delta Municipal with the person who gave them a lift from the crash site. Knowing all this, why had the pilot of the Navajo not simply landed at Delta Municipal? He was able to "re-start" the good engine in time to fly along the road looking for who knows what, why not just fly to Delta Municipal in the first place?
So, why does no one seem to know about the event in 1976 except from Russell M. Nelson's books and speeches? Here is a list of the contemporary communications, notifications and noteworthy public perceptions and observations that would have been associated with this event as Russell M. Nelson tells it had it actually occurred.
1. Pilot reports in-flight engine fire to ATC and declares and emergency. ATC consults the pilots flight plan, sees that the destination is Cedar City and advises Cedar City FSS to prepare and stand by for a possible emergency landing.
Now FSS staff, (SkyWest) operations (half a dozen staff?) at Cedar City airport now know about the emergency.
2. When the aircraft dropped below a certain altitude floor (not sure what it would be in mountainous Utah - a few thousand feet or less) it would have disappeared from radar and the pilot would have lost radio contact with ATC. Delta has no tower and Cedar City tower is out of range.
3. (SkyWest) operations is further notified that one of their aircraft had declared an emergency with an engine fire and had subsequently disappeared from radar somewhere in the vicinity of Delta, Utah.
ATC would record the last known radar position of the Navajo in order to assist in the subsequent search for a downed aircraft. SkyWest operation may have even checked the flight manifest to see how many next of kin might need notification if worse came to worse.
Best case scenario would be Cedar City FSS monitors Delta Unicom and would know if the Navajo pilot had made a Unicom call advising intent to land, or when he was on the ground and clear of the runway.
If Cedar City FSS does not monitor Delta Unicom, then ATC would have no way of knowing what had happened to the aircraft and it would be presumed down. It is possible that ATC would have tried to contact any pilots in the airspace near Delta Utah to see if anyone had heard any communications from the Navajo or seen a smoke plume. Light aircraft crashes give rise to unmistakable black smoke plumes from burning avgas as it burns fabric and plastic interiors and oxidizes aluminum. These plumes rise to high altitudes on clear cold says. They are visible for miles and miles.
By now we have ATC, two flight service stations, SkyWest operations in SLC and Cedar City, and any pilots tuned to the ATC frequency on which this all came down, who know about the downed plane. This is before someone calls St. George and asks Sky West to dispatch a second aircraft to fly to Delta and pick up the passengers to continue their journey to Cedar City or St. George. Now let folks waiting to greet the passengers from the SkyWest flight in Cedar City and St. George know that the flight experienced a forced landing and their passengers will be delayed. Then there is the matter of that downed aircraft in a field beside a road near Delta Utah.
Since this was a "commuter" aircraft, it would have been owned by a company with legal obligation to record and report the events to the NTSB. An in-flight engine fire is an event that requires immediate notification by the operator.
There is a low winged aircraft, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, setting in a farmer’s field with a burned out engine. The landing gear was probably damaged but even if it were not, the plane could not be flown out. The choices are to set up shop and replace the engine in the field (possible depending on damage not confined to the engine, but highly unlikely), or recover the aircraft and take it to SLC or St. George for repair and replacement of the engine. The Piper Navajo (most likely aircraft involved here and pretty much the smallest commuter of the era) is 33 feet long and has a wingspan of 40 feet.
No wide load hauling permit for the intact would be possible. In order to truck the Navajo to the nearest repair facility, the wings would need to be removed. The disassembled plane would be loaded onto a long flatbed trailer and driven most likely to SLC.
-How many people would have driven by the operation in the field and stopped to have a look during the many days it would have taken to arrange for disassembly and transport?
-How many passengers would have brought their families back to see the airplane that almost killed them?
-How many fast Sunday testimonies by the passengers and their families would have described the vivid details to how many congregations?
- How many people will have contemporary first had or second hand knowledge of this incident within a week? Hundreds?
-What are the chances that such a story, with all the subsequent events described, would not appear in every paper in the state of Utah?
- Who believes that these events would not have been a candidate for Southern Utah top 10 news story of the year?
- Who believes that it would not have given rise to faith promoting stories that would have been repeated far and wide in Utah?
- Who believes that the legally required, FAA, NTSB, company flight operations, and aircraft maintenance shop records of such an event would have not been created in the first place or would have all been destroyed without a trace?
