Aftermath: The Reno Air Race Crash

Peter Garrison

Friday, December 30, 2011 at 08:14 PM ET

Verified

** The P-51 known as The Galloping Ghost
that crashed at the Reno Air Races, killing
11 and injuring more than 70.**

Key Takeaways:

The 2011 Reno Air Races crash of "The Galloping Ghost," a highly modified P-51, which killed 10 people, was theorized to be caused by a catastrophic trim tab failure.
This failure, occurring at high speeds, resulted in an 11-G pitch-up that likely rendered the pilot unconscious before the aircraft plunged into spectator areas.
The extreme aerodynamic forces at race speeds and the aircraft's extensive modifications likely exacerbated the pitch-up, leading to a different outcome compared to a similar trim tab failure in 1998 where the pilot recovered.
Investigators were analyzing recovered telemetry, flight data, and fracture surfaces to determine the precise cause of the trim system failure and the subsequent loss of control.

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(December 2011) It will be a while before the NTSB issues its findings about the crash of The Galloping Ghost at the Reno Air Races this year. There were so many witnesses, however, and photographic and video coverage of the disastrous accident was so clear, that it did not take long for theorizing about the cause to converge on a single scenario.

The extensively modified P-51 had been involved in racing on and off, with various pilots and under different names, since 1946, but news reports referring to it as a “vintage” airplane, with their suggestion of overall wear and decay, were misleading. It had been crashed, repaired and modified a number of times and was barely recognizable as a P-51. Ten feet had been clipped from its wings and the iconic belly scoop and radiator had been removed altogether, replaced by a tank of water that boiled off during flight and left behind a telltale trail of steam. It was owned and flown by 74-year-old Jimmy Leeward, an Ocala, Florida, real estate developer and an experienced race and stunt pilot.