Posted by:
East Coast Exmo
(
)
Date: April 04, 2019 05:02PM
Nelson is pretty old so the story might be old as well.
Claims from the video:
1. Small plane
2. Engine on the wing
3. Engine caught fire
4. Engine exploded
5. Burning oil all over the right side of the airplane
6. Started to dive toward the earth
7. "We were spinning down to our death."
8. Spiral dive extinguished the flame
9. Pilot got control and started the other engine up
10. Made an emergency landing out in a field
Taking the story at face value, I would surmise a few things. This was probably a propeller driven aircraft, not a jet. A jet engine exploding would be unlikely to spray the fuselage with burning oil because the plane would be moving too fast and the burning detritus would end up behind the plane.
Diving and spinning after an engine failure might happen to a smaller twin propeller plane, especially while it's climbing. Losing the right engine would cause the aircraft to lose speed, and the loss of thrust on that side would cause the aircraft to yaw to the right, possibly stalling the right wing and causing the aircraft to go into a spin. This is a dangerous condition, but pilots are trained to handle it.
The pilots may have cut fuel to both engines to ensure that the fire did not spread. Or they may have just pulled the throttles back on both engines, because that is one of the steps in recovering from a spin condition. In any event, the passengers would have seen the aircraft recover to a normal attitude and then the left engine start back up to full speed.
The fact that the airplane made an emergency landing in a field is also indicative of a small propeller aircraft. A jet would have "crashed" in the field, due to its higher landing speed.
I'm wondering if this didn't happen in something like a DC-3, either back in the 1940s or 50s in the US, or in some other country. Perhaps in an incident similar to this one:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19740223-1Nelson may not be a liar, but he's certainly an ass for criticizing some poor lady who got upset during a life threatening situation.