https://planecrashmap.com/plane/ca/N122B/ This accident has always intrigued me since, the day it happened, I was driving from Las Vegas home to San Diego. March, 2011. I had stopped for gas in Barstow and while looking at the cold, green sky that windy, winter day I remember saying to myself, "I'm glad I'm driving today and not flying." The sky that day was literally green.
The FAA called Steve G. into their investigation and I've privately asked Steve to comment on what he learned but he's a busy guy and has never mentioned it. I once was fond of saying things like, "There's never been a record of structural failure of a KR." This incident puts paid to saying things like that. The wings came off at the wing roots, not at the attachment fittings. It's hard to imagine the force it took to do that. The wings were barely damaged yet the cockpit and instrument panel were shredded. After coming off, the wings obviously just fluttered down to earth, leading edges undamaged. The truly awesome violence the fuselage suffered is evident in how the heads were torn off the cylinders and the cylinders off the case. The report calls the Revmaster "fragmented". The first pieces to leave the plane were the vertical stabilizer & rudder. A piece of rudder skin found half a mile away was the furthest item away from the main impact site. Following the primary impact, the engine core continued to fly for another 185 feet while the pilot flew another 74 feet before leaving "bone and tissue fragments in a plot of disturbed earth". Radar returns show the wild ride that followed the pilot's encounter with turbulence. **************************** I've been in mild convective storms with the KR and, as with any plane, I slow way down and turn the autopilot off. I've been lucky, in the way that Scott Crossfield (C-210) was not, to never suffer more than a few scary, solid bumps (and sometimes the fear of hail coming through the windscreen or canopy . . . no small concern). Small prices to pay for not having to deviate, for keeping the course. Poke the bear enough and some unlucky day we'll hit a shear that tears the tail off, followed immediately by the wings. Followed by the wildest ride of our lives. The Commercially-rated pilot on this ferry flight was not familiar with KR's and may have tried to fight the turbulence. One doesn't fight desert thunderstorms. Our convective activity in the Mojave and mid-west is the most violent on the planet. For one reason or another though, we sometimes find ourselves in the teeth of something we didn't expect. The only way to come out the other side when this happens is to just relax. Surrender. Become a wind-tossed leaf. Sometimes though, as with Crossfield and with this unfortunate KR-2 pilot, the storm wins no matter what we do. What has become of the Muses, father and son? There's still another Muse KR-2 out there somewhere. Mike Stirewalt KSEE
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