What is meant by a plane "mushing".

I finally received the army air force crash report for my great uncle that died in WWII. Two different eyewitness statements talk about the plane mushing during takeoff before it turned and crashed..
I did find a couple references to "mushing" on a descent before landing, but im not seeing any refernces to what is means during a takeoff

I have read that the C-87s were often loaded improperly, and had control issues if any icing occoured, but a few of the witness staments point to a loss of power on takeoff and possibly an angine coming off

 

I think it's when you pull the nose up too high and the aircraft begins to stall. You get a loss of feedback through the flight controls that requires more aggressive pilot input to the point the pilot overcompensates and crashes.

 

That makes a lot of sense. Most of the witnessess agree the plane was very low, 25 to 75 feet up. Some say it was very tail heavy, some say the engines sounded good, some say the engines were crackling and surging...but they all argree it did get airbone, and turned hard left, nearly 180 degrees and exploded on impact not in the air....

The report shows the pilot had 335 hours of time in this plane type, 144 hours in the last 90 days, and 1003 total hours fyling time

It is interesting to me how different accounts come from people seeing all the same event.

 

Mushing is when your angle of attack has caused the airflow to create more drag than lift. You still have enough lift to hold the nose up, but the airplane is sinking. Improper loading could cause the C.G. to move aft and increase stall speed or cause the wing to stall.
Icing is a whole other issue which can change the shape of the wing or decrease the airflow over the wing which decreases lift or causes you to increase back pressure which brings the wing to exceed the critical angle of attack and cause a stall.

 

Scrappie... I think i can visulize what you are saying about the angle, with nose up but the plane still sinking. I mentioned the loading and icing as it is mentioned many times with these planes. The C-87 was a B-24 conversion and from what i read, mostly, had a bad reputation with its crews, unlike the B-24 which was highly regarded.

Ive ordered a couple of books from amazon that are personal histories of india air command and flying "the hump" etc....

He was our family ghost kinda, We knew very little of him, and my grand father would not speak of it. We have been waiting a long time for his military records, so on a whim, I started researching the planes that were flown for the cargo route into china, We knew the day he died, so I was able to narrow it down to 4 or 5 tailnumbers that crashed in India that day. I found a group the does aviation archelogy, and they were able to find his name based on one of those 5 tail numbers.... So this photocopied crash report is the first concrete thing we have of him other than a name on the census..

sorry for my rambling

 

Not rambling, good luck in your search for answers.

 

Not rambling at all, Matt. Very interesting. Your uncle was a hero, no doubt.

 

There is also the question of the density altitude at the location on the day in question. Even today passenger jets can land at certain airports but cannot take back off with the required fuel load until the density altitude comes down and allows for takeoff on the aircraft performance chart. I can tell you from personal experience that a high density altitude can result in an extended take off run. The aircraft will fly but it does not want to leave ground effect. If you force it out of ground effect before it gains enough airspeed, it can mush right back to the runway. There may not be enough runway left to get it stopped.

Back in the war there were no computers to do your weight, balance and take off performance calculations like today. They did it by feel based on experience. Just one mistake is all it took.

Another consideration is runway length and surface composition. Even today the general public thinks of runways as long with a concrete surface. As a percentage of the total, very few are, even in the USA. Most runways are dirt, gravel or grass. When these surfaces receive rainfall, they get soft, resulting in degraded take off performance. I once took off from a dirt runway in the outback of Australia after a very rare rainfall. It was like taking off in glue. You could not taxi the aircraft without several men lifting and walking under each wing strut while you gunned the throttle. During the takeoff run, the idea was just to get the aircraft to lift off of the gumbo surface into ground effect so you could milk the flaps up until you gained enough airspeed to fly out of ground effect. When you milk up flaps, you are trading lift for airspeed. If you are not careful, the aircraft will settle back into the gumbo and trip over the landing gear.

Dealing with conditions like this was a frequent occurrence for WWII pilots flying over the Hump from India to Burma. As a result, many crashed while heroically doing their jobs.

From flying multi engine piston aircraft, let me assure you that loss of power on one engine during take off while loaded is a life or death emergency. In contrast, even if you lose one on a 737 you can still power out of there. Losing one on piston aircraft results in asymmetrical thrust which is consistent with your description of the aircraft turning around during the crash.

 

thanks all for the details and information..... it really makes it seem so much more real, and based on his location, job and equipment much too common
Im putting together a book for my dad and aunt to surprise them for the holidays...

There is still some confusion which I hope to clear up once his military records arrive.
I first found an obituary from 1944 on "find a grave" but it had his middle name wrong, it did however list his correct thigh school, survivng wife, sister and three other enlisted brothers, their branches of service and their location... so I feel 100 percent the it is the correct person. it also listed him as station 4 India china air wing and a T/sgt....

The one or two sentences that were ever spoken about him by my grandfather was something like. .... Jack was something the called a flying sergeant and flew cargo planes over the Himalayas for the war and never came back..... that's it.

We knew his wifes name and where they lived etc so it all matched up except for a middle name but same initial...

His obituary shows him as receiving the army distinguished unit badge and the distinguished flying cross... this is what confuses me... and seems perhaps unlikely...
The distinguished unit award I know was given...

anyhow I Wonder if there was some sort of mixup due to the middle name maybe there were two jack s kings flying. seems likely enough.

edit: another thing I am hoping for is that the military records will show if his actual remains were sent back to Honolulu of if it is just a headstone, the crash was at his departing airbase in Jorhort India so im perhaps hopefull here


again thanks for all you help

 

C-87

 

^^^ I’m gonna look for one in a Museuem hopefully nearby. There’s an aviation museum in Georgia and I think the big one in pensicola. Which are both doable from memphis

 

The C-87 was a converted B-24. There is some rich history regarding C-87 pilots - referred to as "hump drivers". The "hump" refers to the Himalayan Mountains. Hump drivers and their C-87 war birds were stationed in India @ Tezpur in the Assam Valley. You'll find numerous stories of hump drivers associated with the C-87 via Google. Here is an interview w/ George Tate - a C-87 hump driver of WWII.

http://www.oshkoshmuseum.org/virtual...t6/e60042a.htm

 

I have seen one of a C-87’s cousin’s flying and this one static at the Air Force Museum in Dayton.

 

Flying the Hump took brass *****

 

At altitude those would be frozen brass *****.

 

^^ too true

my wife and I have been to the d day and wwii museum in New Orleans twice and we would like to go again

if y’all ever get a chance I would plan an entire day there

the museum is setup to tell the Atlantic story and then the pacific. You can start in either theater the second time we went we started w the pacific because we had rushed it on our first trip.

also the science and technology museum in chicago has a captured u boat and with the extra 5$ ticket you get to actually walk through it Pretty cool stuff

 

I will also add that depending on which variant was the common one for that group, if it was as the inserted picture, it would have added to the difficulties to get into the air. That is an early bird with no superchargers. Combine higher altitude and hot ambient air temps, and you have robbed a lot of horsepower from those engines. The B-24/C-87 was already known to be a pig to get into the air needing a lot of runway. They were not the most liked aircraft by airmen. They had yaw stability issues and wagged obnoxiously in flight. Not so bad for the pilots, but the tail gunner was much farther from the yaw axis. An iconic aircraft, but not one of our best designs.

 

The beginning of the report mentions that the plane had a sucsessful test flight after the replacement of the wastegate motor on the #4 engine, and that the accident board beleives there was a loss of power on the port side which caused the accident.

Further on, there is a worksheet in the accident report called "Weight and Balance Clearance"

It shows a takeoff weight 58,141 lbs, and has a "Max normal gross weight" of 58,750 lbs....

So they tookoff at near maximum gross weight. When I google C-87 max gross weight now every source I read says 56,000lbs.

 

The Civil Aeronautics Act (established 1938) was the predecessor to the FAA (established 1958). NOTE: Both of these agencies are "civil" agencies. There are two forms of Airworthiness Certificates (Standard & Special) issued for "commercial" and "civil" (national) aircraft - most likely neither the Standard nor the Special were applicable to a military aircraft based upon commercial and/or civil aviation during the time of WWII. The only valid certificate(s) would have been issued by either the United States military and/or the manufacturer (Consolidated). The military would have employed the manufacturer's (Consolidated) Airworthiness Certificate at the time the aircraft was released for flight operations. Obviously, this was a time of war and amendments might have been issued. Even without special amendments (to an Airworthiness Certificate) it isn't difficult to imagine certain limitations may have been exceeded based upon extenuating circumstances. It's unfortunate the aircraft crashed. Apparently (based upon your research) it was near maximum gross weight.

My only point here is this. While the 56K lbs. maximum gross weight is stated on the Internet, do keep in mind these are probably generally aviation (both commercial and/or civil) agencies and were most likely not applicable to the original certificate issued by Consolidated (as stipulated for release to flight operations) and it would take a whirlwind of research to validate any changes to the original configuration(s) of the specific aircraft under wartime conditions of flight operations. Obviously (based upon your research) they were at the threshold of normal maximum gross weight configuration parameters.

It's enjoyable to read your research efforts - nice job.

 

The wastegate could also have stuck closed. This would give the aircraft maybe 3600 hp on one side and 2400 hp on the other. I once had this happen on a boosted 400 Cessna twin on take off. We smoked a then 25k engine by pulling twice the manifold pressure than it was rated to handle. The effect was asymmetrical thrust and yaw similar to the loss of power. There is supposed to be a blow off valve to protect against this. The take off was wild but we got it out of a short field and immediately landed after declaring an emergency. The circumstances were better than the total loss of power on one side.

If he completely lost power on one engine, then he had 2400 hp on the fully operational side and 1200 on the engine out side. At gross weight taking off would have been a handful on the controls.

 

Again guys,
Thanks for all the insight. I know we cant sit here, nearly 80 years later, and determine cuases from a few reports and staments, and that was never really the goal. It Just highlights for me all of the things that could go wrong, even on a good day, even in good weather, even with maintained good equipment all of the things that they had to overcome daily (and often didn't) to get it done. The more I read about these guys the more amazed I am. Its equally amazing that any of them made it through.

There are several books out there of different pilots' experiences, I just picked a couple at random to start with, but it did make me notice how many of the guys that made it through ended up writing about it... maybe having to write about it.

 

I have read many books from the WW2 era. Maybe more than 100. These include books written by Russian, German, British and American participants.

Peter Spoden just passed a couple of days ago at 100.

https://funeralnearme.com/peter-spod...eath-obituary/

Spoden wrote one of the best. It is the kind of book that makes you feel like you were their too.

“Enemy In The Dark” I recall is the name. It will make your hair stand at attention.

Another like that is “Duel Under the Stars” written by another night fighter pilot, Wilhelm Johnen.

Both books are sold on Amazon.

 

I will check those out.

Have you read Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II or With the old breed at Peleliu and Okinawa? Those are both next for me
We had watched a mini series called The Pacific, and loved it, was tellign my friend about it and he mentioned it was based on With the old breed...

 

Death Traps yes and the other No.

 

Max weight is also local outside air temp and humidity sensitive at the time of takeoff.

 

Wow. This is a really interesting thread. Thanks for sharing the information.

Speaking of death traps, my wife used to work for General Tom Stafford, the former Air Force Officer, Test Pilot, and NASA Astronaut. After he retired from NASA, he would only fly on commercial airlines and not small planes since he did not trust the safety records. So here is a guy that flew around the moon in a tin can with less computing power than a modern calculator that refused to fly in anything other than commercial airlines.

He is still alive and stayed fit well into his 70s when she worked for him, and I think that he passed the astronaut fitness test every year. He really wanted to go back to space, and he was upset when John Glenn got to go in 1995.

 

It has been a long time since I checked the risks for general aviation. My memory is that it is in the ballpark with riding a motorcycle.

Low time general aviation pilots do ill advised things like flying into icing conditions and rising cumulus, qualified for VFR only, flying into IFR conditions, like JFK, Jr., etc. I have a good story or two about this while flying in Africa. Accordingly, I even avoid flying third world commercial airlines whenever possible. Their equipment is not maintained like in the USA airlines and often their pilots, especially copilots, would not be in the right seat here.

 

That sounds exactly right to me. I used to travel internationally all the time prior to Covid, and I avoided a lot of those local carriers as well.

 

I used the term “low time pilots” above because there is well known saying among aircraft pilots. It goes something like this: “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.”