This is a good one, but I think the most impressive is the cornfield bomber.<p>The pilot ejected due to a flat spin (just like what happened in Top Gun, RIP Goose). Now a flat spin is a kind of spin and stall that tends to happen when the center of mass and center of lift are in the same place. This can make planes very unstable. So the pilot can't recover and ejects. But this changes the center of mass on the plane, and the plane recovers on its own, and eventually lands itself in a corn field.<p>The plane was eventually returned to service after repairs.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber</a>
"In a million-to-one chance the brake failed to hold and although pilot Thrower grabbed a wing strut to check the plane he was quickly forced to jump clear, just avoiding the tail"<p>Parking brakes in light training aircraft of that vintage, if they were even equipped with one, were typically a hole drilled through a metal plate, that was placed on the actuator rod for the brake master cylinder, so that the metal plate would jam on the actuator rod and hold the brakes down when you pulled on a piece of string that was tied to the metal plate. They worked similar to the tab of metal to hold open the damper of a crappy old aluminum-framed screen door.<p>Parking brake failure in aircraft of that era is not a million-to-one scenario, it is the default operating condition. Go down to your local general aviation airfield and peek in the window at the parking brake knob on every Cessna 150 you see, I guarantee that many of them will be placarded INOP, and many of the un-placarded ones are also actually be INOP if you tried to use them.<p>Here's one for sale on eBay. $300 for that bit of junk! No wonder people leave them INOP.<p><a href="https://www.ebay.com/itm/134695710339" rel="nofollow">https://www.ebay.com/itm/134695710339</a>
One of the funniest things I've read in awhile — not least, that it took two young pilots from the <i>British</i> Royal Navy, on temporary duty with the Aussie navy under an exchange program, to shoot down the errant aircraft after failures to do so by Aussie navy and air force. I'm sure the RN didn't gloat about that one <i>at all</i>; oh, no, that'd <i>never</i> happen .... (Their attitude would likely have been a dismissive, "Of course — what'd you expect?")
It doesn't take all that much wind to cause modern light aircraft to take off on their own. The gusts in this video were 55 knots, but I've heard that some STOLs are susceptible to 20 knot winds.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_WmjWAGkLI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_WmjWAGkLI</a>
One year later, the USAF fared an even worse against a runaway drone. It took two days to put out all of the fires caused by the rockets that missed.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Palmdale" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Palmdale</a>
<i>the engine failed 10 feet from the ground. Landing the plane in the middle of the strip he climbed out, swung the propellor by hand (there was no self-starter) and the engine immediately roared into life.</i><p>Early software developer?
Deformation professionelle probably but what this makes me think of is how easy it is for a vehicle to enter Accidental Full Self Driving mode, without having any specialised equipment. For cars, just put a brick on the gas pedal and point the car in the right direction, and in some situations the car will "drive itself" for a while; even a long while. For planes or boats it's probably easier to find circumstances where this can go on until they run out of fuel.<p>Once, in another life time, I owned an ancient Horex Regina II 400 cc., a 1953 model and it came with Full Self Driving. To activate it, I simply had to take my hands off the wheel and rest them on the tank. It would keep going straight on its own, without intervention. If the road turned, all I had to do was turn my hips a bit and it would follow along.
> The incident did not quickly subside here. Embarrassing questions were directed in Federal Parliament to. the Government of the day by both Mr C Chambers (Member for Adelaide) and Mr F Daly (Grayndler) during the Budget debate the following month. They asked why was so much money being spent on defence to an Air Force and Navy that took over two hours to shoot down an unarmed light aircraft?<p>...<p>> The harsh criticism against the Services was unfounded though and despite some initial bad luck the Navy and Air Force had performed creditably on a difficult and elusive “ENEMY”.<p>That was a suspiciously unconvincing conclusion. It made me check check the domain, and sure enough, "navyhistory.au". I wonder if it was even written by the same author.
I was surprised when I first took a flight lesson how easy it is to takeoff and go. You push the throttle all the way in and it takes off on its own. I believe there have been incidents of them flying themselves for hours after a pilot died or was incapacitated.<p>They are built to fly, so they do unless something interferes.
Once it was over the ocean there was no need to shoot it down. It had already been in the air for 3 hours and probably only had ~4 hours endurance. And it was heading further away from the city. It would have run out of fuel and ended up in the water soon anyway.
No mention on how expensive that rental was for Thrower. Did he take out insurance on the plane, or was he personally responsible for covering the loss? Did any of the planes that came in for the assist send a bill for their time as well? Everyone seems to be focused on the plane itself, but I want to know about Thrower! That's the part missing to make this a good movie
In case you missed it, at the bottom of the article, there is a link to a 10 minute documentary about the incident: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ehAQVhOL3k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ehAQVhOL3k</a> The documentary is quite interesting too!