The Day The Wing Fell Off

Introduction

This is a famous story from 1970, witnessed by two other pilots. I was one of them. The other, Carl Schofield, was a part owner, and would have made a practice flight next. Makes you think.

A Triumph of Cockpit Resource Management - Decision Making Under Difficult Conditions

The Williams story ended nine years after this event with a call from the Rothmans aerobatic team manager. “Have you heard from Neil?” This was a surprise because I had not spoken to Neil for many months and had no idea what he might have been doing at the time. Why should this man phone me out of the blue?

It transpired that Neil had failed to show up to give a lecture and had last been heard of ferrying an old bomber from Spain: albeit in bad weather - but that should not have been a problem to one so expert in the techniques needed to get across Britain; any time, any conditions. It wasn’t that legal, but it wasn’t public transport either. Don’t talk to anyone (can they fly the aeroplane for you?); always see the ground (from whatever height); know where you are (to the yard); give the job your undivided attention; have room to throw a 180. There weren’t many 180s.

When the wreck was found my only answer to the question ‘What did he do?’ was: ‘I don’t know, but he hasn’t done it before.’ Then, it did not seem significant that he was not alone in the aircraft - ok, so he got it wrong.

Fourteen years later, and, of course, as an expert in the human factors curriculum that the airlines are now keen on, I think I understand more about the difference between the right stuff pilot and the ideal airline profile. That’s why they sell us so many gadgets to do the clever bits - so that we have time to be nice to everyone. Driving the thing - forget it; too difficult.

Of course a lot of people do all of it very well. Some of them are good aerobatic pilots. They practise the difficult stuff (by themselves) over the box, and arrange to use different skills at work; it’s the easiest way when you have other people to deal with. It’s transport - not aviating. It works - and it’s a nice job.

Neil Williams was a right stuff pilot - 100% black in the get-the-job-done sector of the personality pie chart. To accompany his hobby of military experimental test pilot he really got dug deep into contest aerobatics, and it was his no-limits determination that dragged our national involvement from sportsman to respectable world championship within a very few years. Of course several things got broken on the way. The wing of the second Zlin was not the first or last by any means: but it was the most famous.

It broke in 1970 while practising for the world championships at Hullavington. The newsworthy story is well enough known, a masterpiece of incomprehension - you know the sort of thing . . . ‘While flying his Zlin Akrobat plane top pilot Neil Williams noticed that his wing was folding (goodness me, the wing is folding) and decided to fly upside down (what a brilliant idea, I think I’ll try the amazing upside down flying) until he was ready to land. Williams was unhurt . . . ‘

The reality was much hairier than the press interpretation: a severe case of poetic restraint: and I have his own report here:

‘ . . height of 1000 ft and pulling 5g, there was a loud bang accompanied by a severe jolt and the aircraft started to roll to the left. A visual check was made on the airframe and it was seen that the left wing was folding steadily upwards. The roll to the left persisted, in spite of full right aileron, and the aircraft started turning left with the nose dropping. Full right rudder was applied, but, although a high degree of sideslip was achieved, the roll to the left continued and the wing continued to fold upwards. Power was varied from idle to full power with no effect. At about 300 ft the aircraft was banked vertically to the left and control was about to be lost.’

That’s all exactly as it looked from outside. At this point I observed to myself that he would be dead in five seconds; behind the houses across the airfield. It looked hopeless. The report continues:

‘Aileron was, therefore, reversed and negative g applied as the nose dropped. As the aircraft became inverted, the wing snapped back into its correct position with a loud bang. It was found that the aircraft could be flown quite normally in inverted flight.’

The snapping back into position with a loud bang was a scary moment (for us). The bottom wing bolt (or something adjacent) had obviously failed and, conscious of the Zlin’s top spar attachment (a vertical, not horizontal taper pin) we were also aware that the wing, in folding, was progressively bending the structure - when would it break? When it snapped back into its original position and stopped with brick wall abruptness (with a few negative gs behind it) my mind’s eye saw it come off, before words could form. It didn’t, and he climbed away, leaving us stunned. If he bends it again it’ll come off, I thought. ‘What can he do?’ It was a cruelly ironic prospect that, having just avoided death by a few seconds he would meet it again in a few minutes. I knew he would think of something: but I could not guess what it would be.

“He’s got eight minutes of inverted fuel left,” said nice-type captain Carl Schofield, creditably taking charge and pressing all the emergency buttons in the control tower. Up in the air things were desperate. Williams talked about it afterwards.

“As soon as I rolled inverted the engine stopped - I had turned the fuel off when I thought I would crash. I switched it on again and climbed away, forcing my knees against the sides of the cockpit to stop my legs shaking. “Idiot! Think, damn you! Think!!” told myself. My first decision was to climb as high as possible until the collector tank ran out, so as to give myself the full eight minutes of life that I had left.”

Chilling, isn’t it?

On our cockpit resource management course we learn about the mental arousal curve and the best place on it for effective crew members. It’s in the middle, between unconsciousness and total panic. Often, the problem lies in getting off the sleep end (Concordes excepted). Faced with unsurvivable structural failure Williams was temporarily off the other end - into brain-numbing shock; an automatic defence mechanism - ‘ give up, you’ve no chance, it won’t hurt.’ It takes self-obsessed, task-orientated right stuff courage to come back from here.

The return to life started with a roll to the left, inverted to inverted, k factor not a lot - the first quarter slow, then a fast, negative barrel; score maybe 6.5. As I saw him start I thought ‘if he tries that the wing will come off.’ It looked like an attempt to prove that the last couple of minutes had been an awful dream - ‘this can’t be real; if I roll back upright everything will be normal.’

The report is more test-pilot-like:

. . to 1000 ft where experiments were carried out to determine whether the aircraft could be rolled out to normal flight and, if so, to establish the optimum direction. A roll out to the left was attempted, but the wing started to fold, so inverted flight was quickly re-established.’

Afterwards he told me “It was very difficult trying to make a decision as to which way I should roll when I got to the crash landing.” As it happened he rolled right, the Zlin pilot’s contest direction. You know the story anyway: inverted circuit and approach, down to half a wingspan plus six inches (we checked the marks in the long grass), a half roll and thump into the ground as the wing folded again; sliding along with divots and bits of aeroplane flying into the air, including a last vertical wave of the applauding left wing: Captain Ahab’s arm - just like a film crash. But finishing right way up - amazing.

Nothing happened for a few, fate-laden seconds, then Williams exploded out of the jammed cockpit canopy, ran twenty yards and collapsed on to the June grass, powerless with relief; obviously unharmed - incredible. I stood in a state of shock, transfixed by the high drama of it all - I never had thought of the answer.

The test pilot report mentions that when it was obvious that there was no fire he returned to the aircraft to make the switches safe, and adds that the emergency services (on the scene very quickly indeed) were fortunately not required. I was not injured, he concludes. I don’t think he remembered what actually had happened in between. 100% Keystone cops.

The ambulance men, galvanised by having witnessed a rare but real crash, drove furiously to the wreck, grabbed Williams off the grass, threw him into the back of the wagon, slammed the doors and roared away towards their antiseptic lair, vanishing from sight and sound between the hangars. For a few moments time stood still: in the tower nobody moved or spoke; except for the skylarks there was silence. Within a minute the projector started to run backwards, the ambulance reappeared from the camp and roared back towards the wreckage, skidding to a halt as Williams jumped back out to do his making safe. A victory of the individual over the system. Twenty two years later you could almost persuade me that I had imagined it - but I was there.

Did he roll the best way? Left would enable the left wing to carry more download for longer during the roll, perhaps? . . . Does it matter? . . . Who would dispute that these were difficult conditions? He proved that the manoeuvre was possible, and got away with it. So what about the fatal cross-country eight years later? It’s a completely different scenario. We experts know that with a crew you have to back off the clever pilot stuff . . . and he did fly best by himself - don’t we all?

‘Oh, and what about the parachute?’ I hear you ask. We didn’t believe in them then - waste of weight - probably too low to jump anyway, see. His report includes

‘ . . had a parachute have been carried, the aircraft would most definitely have been abandoned at this point.

Postscript 2020

The above version of the story was written in 1994, for a magazine. I’d written about it before, and in the late 70s, in my estimation - possibly after Williams’ fatal accident - a BBC man with tape recorder came to my house to get the story. I think he went to see Carl Schofield as well. For some reason I did not expect the tape recorder: a fireside chat, perhaps, like the in depth television interview. But to switch on the recorder and say “Talk” seems a much easier way to do it. However, people ask for all sorts of details so here are some more.

Apart from Williams there were three relevant others present as well as myself: Carl Schofield, his girlfriend, and my wife. All four were in the control tower at the time of the structural failure; Carl at the window with tape recorder, myself looking at some paperwork, and the girls offering support in a caring and non-judgmental way.

“Blah, blah, blah” I heard Carl’s voice commentary in the background . . “pulling out . . you’re breaking off”, with a hint of surprise in the voice, then “Oh, my God!” or something to that effect.

I rushed to the window. The Zlin was flying past us, just starting to roll slowly left, but the left wing angle and crumpled leading edge at the attachment line very clear. People ask “How did you know something was wrong?” Carl and myself did not need to discuss this and he pressed the appropriate control tower buttons, informing Lyneham that we had an emergency and alerting our domestic fire brigade. People might raise the subject of radio. “Why did you not have radio contact?“ General aviation and the press and public's notion that radio contact with air traffic control is the universal answer to problems is sadly flawed. Nobody has yet asked “Did he disappear from the radar?”

The subsequent upside down climbing lasted a few minutes as we tried to second guess what might happen next, without addressing the uncomfortable inevitable. Then the aircraft descended and approached our grass from the east. Carl disappeared down the control tower steps. As the Zlin approached us the fire engine drew up on the apron and the fire chief wandered towards us, puzzled at the panic alarm. The Zlin was flying perfectly normally upside down, perhaps at 250 feet now. What was wrong with that? That’s what you do all the time. I leant out of the window and shouted down that it was going to crash. He seemed to get the message and I watched as he got back in the cab.

At that instant there was as shriek of shock from inside the room. I looked up at the airfield to see the Zlin having just hit the ground - the right way up! Amazing. Divots were flying as it skidded along, rotating to the left with its left wing pointing into the air. It came to rest pointing back the way it had come, and the left wing subsided. It was Carl’s girlfriend who had shrieked at the unexpected manoeuvre. She was too shocked to describe what she had seen. “What did he do?” I asked my wife. “I don’t know, I couldn’t look,” she said, so Williams was the only witness who could describe the actual contact with the grass. Based on the runout I can’t disagree with any of it.