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No offence but the report suggests the cooling flaps rotary selector valve could have been in the wrong position. Quote:

This is apparently a known issue with this particular type of valve & I've always felt the pilot should have been aware of it. The photos seem to have been removed but I saw a copy of the original report showing the position of the selector as it was after the incident.

PS. You know far more about this than me & I could have been wrong all this time. If so, my apologies to the pilot concerned. Engineers tend to be a tad suspicious of pilots at the best of times.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. The main thing is that he was unhurt & this was to have been its last flight anyway.

I found this very interesting article by the late lamented Mark Hanna on flying the Bf 109J Buchon. About half-way down the page. http://www.bf109.com/flying.html
Ironically Mark was tragically killed in a landing accident in the same aircraft (Sabadell, near Barcelona, Sept. 26 1999).
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Every article I've read on landing the Me 109 recommends a 3-point touchdown. Unlike the Spitfire & similar fighters, all versions of the Me 109 are tail-heavy & once the tailwheel is on the ground the brakes can be safely applied without fear of nosing over. A 'wheeled' landing on that narrow-track undercarriage makes it very easy to bounce & touch a wing with the inevitable ground-loop. I suspect this is exactly what happened in the case of Red 7.

Hi Springer. It depends what you call an experienced  pilot. The Me 109 has the reputation of being tricky to handle, especially during take-off & landing. A great many Luftwaffe pilots were lost in accidents with the 109 during WWII. If it turned over they were invariably killed or seriously injured. Mark Hanna was one of the most experienced & repected warbird display pilots in the world & it caught him out. I don't remember seeing the accident investigation report but I assume there was no fault with the aircraft.

I've also seen some criticism of the way Red 7 has been flown recently (although this was by a different pilot & not Sigi Knoll who was flying it when it crashed). I don't know how many hours he has on type. He might well be a highly experienced pilot - but not on the 109.

The Me 109 undercarriage is further forward of the CoG compared with similar fighters. This is possible as it's attached to the fuselage instead of the wings as on the Spitfire. This simplified production as the whole fuselage could be moved around on its U/C without the wings being attached. It's also the reason for one of its biggest drawbacks, the narrow tracked stalky undercarriage that caused all those accidents & is apparently still causing them. The Spitfire can be tricky to handle on the ground for the same reason but seems to be more forgiving as the track is a little wider. It's more likely to nose over than touch a wing on the ground.

Pilots of taildraggers seem to have a preference for 3-pointers or wheelies. I suspect this is mainly due to their experiences while training & what they're used to flying. I've noticed many modern display pilots seem to prefer wheelies. Most pilots these days learn to fly on aircraft with a nosewheel & many of them fly modern types more than taildraggers. This also depends on the type & size of aircraft & where it's operated from. Fighters like the Me 109 & Spitfire were designed to operate from grass fields which makes it easier to take off & land directly into wind. It doesn't matter much whether you keep it straight after touching down as you can't see where you're going anyway. The benefit of a 3-pointer is the short landing run. The 109 apparently doesn't like crosswinds at all which isn't surprising.

Larger multi-engined taildraggers like the Lancaster are usually operated from a hard runway. This & the height of the cockpit above the ground makes it impractical to do 3-point landings. A wheelie with the tail up makes it much easier to see where you're going on the approach & also keep it straight once the wheels touch the runway.

I spend a lot of time watching landings. Been doing it since I worked at the Southern Aero Club in the early 60s. All training was done on taildraggers in those days & the chief flying instructor insisted on 3-point landings. I still remember his remarks on first seeing one of them new-fangled Cessnas with tricycle gear.

You can usually tell how good a pilot is by their landings. I often wonder how taildragger training/conversion is done these days as I see even Tiger Moths doing wheelie landings now. This would have been frowned on in my day. I always thought of a wheelie as an arrival & a 3-pointer an art form. A thing of beauty. I found these shots I took at Flying Legends a few weeks ago. Now look at that. Beautiful.




This is the BBMF Lanc at the same show. Not a very good shot but you can see the tail is almost down after a very short run, even though it's on the hard runway. Very nicely done indeed.


PS. Shame there's none of a Bf 109. My chances of that seem almost non-existent now. I heard a rumour that Red 7 was originally booked for Legends.

Silly me, I just realised the problem with the 109 undercarriage. I've often wondered why the Spitfire didn't suffer in the same way as the track can't be that much wider, if at all. Just look at the angle of those main legs & wheels. It's all wrong & the slightest bounce on one wheel will throw it sideways. Landing crosswind would have the same effect.



PS. This is the rebuilt Black 6 now on static display at Hendon.

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Not only the narrow tyres but the alignment of the wheels themselves. It's so blindingly obvious I can't think why I haven't noticed this before. The main wheels on most aircraft have a positive camber, that is the top of the wheels angled out from the centre as viewed from the front. This illustration is of a car front suspension but the principle is exactly the same.


Any experienced aeromodeller will tell you that positive camber plus a few degrees of toe-in on the main wheels will make a taildragger run true during take-off/landing & easier to steer on the ground. It might have been easier for mass production but the Bf 109 undercarriage seems to defy all the basic principles. Considering the problems it caused, especially on later versions when more powerful engines were fitted, I'm surprised it wasn't redesigned at some point.