Phantom down at Greek air show

[Austin Prefect]

One of the few remaining Greek F4s has crashed, apparently killing the crew.

[Eric Mc]

Video now on You Tube (I won't post a link).

It looks like the aicraft is in a fairly low G descending right hand turn and just descends into the ground.

It reminds me of a US Navy/Marines Phantom crash that happened at a US air show over a couple of decades ago.

[BrettMRC]

It did look odd...

[havoc]

BrettMRC said:

It did look odd...

Flying Brick indeed!

Something went wrong - whether pilot, controls or power we don't know and will have to wait for the report. But that's a stty way to end the career of Old Smokey.

[dr_gn]

havoc said:

BrettMRC said:

It did look odd...

Flying Brick indeed!

Something went wrong - whether pilot, controls or power we don't know and will have to wait for the report. But that's a stty way to end the career of Old Smokey.

G-loc? I’d have thought by the look of it things were going wrong for quite a few seconds before the point of no return.

[Caterhamfan]

Some reports that "The aircraft had just taken off when it suddenly lost altitude and crashed, said a journalist from public broadcaster ERT who was at the scene."

[dr_gn]

Caterhamfan said:

Some reports that "The aircraft had just taken off when it suddenly lost altitude and crashed, said a journalist from public broadcaster ERT who was at the scene."

From what I saw it was gradually losing altitude in a right turn.

[Eric Mc]

Exactly.

My first impressions is that it might be, as mentioned above, a G-Loc incident. The aircraft took off and then banked to the right and carried out a 180 degree turn. It then just descended into the ground with no apparent attempt at recovery.

Very sad for everyone involved.

[Arnold Cunningham]

The F4 Phantom is also not a forgiving aircraft if you push it, for example adverse yaw / roll reversal at high AoA. In other words, there comes a point where you put left aileron in and it rolls right, amongst other quirks.

[Eric Mc]

The Phantom was designed at a time when the behaviour of airflow across the various speed ranges from subsonic through transonic to supersonic was still not fully understood.

You only have to look at what the original design looked like compared to how the actual production models looked -

Phantom mock up 1957 -

[WH16]

Arnold Cunningham said:

The F4 Phantom is also not a forgiving aircraft if you push it, for example adverse yaw / roll reversal at high AoA. In other words, there comes a point where you put left aileron in and it rolls right, amongst other quirks.

That's certainly not unique to the Phantom. Roll reversal isn't really a quirk, it happens in lots of aircraft when the wing is at the critical AoA. If you think about how an aileron works - it increases the AoA of the upgoing wing by moving down. If the wing is already at the critical AoA, moving the aileron down will stall that wing, which is why you get the reversal. It's no different to your average GA aircraft in that regard, and a reason why stall recovery in a turn is always 'reduce AoA before rolling level', otherwise you will be pushing the stalled wing further into the stall by trying to pick it up.

Anyway, I don't think any of that is relevant to the crash footage I've seen. Flat break GLOC possibly similar to John Egging in 2011 but I'm sure well find out in due course.