VFR into IMC

Aerobatics or Medical Mystery: What Brought the RV-4 Down?

By Barbara S. Marx

Once again, it was my turn on the NTSB duty rotation. Sometimes it would feel like you had duty for months at a time with modest activity, while other times your office could experience an active weekend and it was suddenly your turn again before you could blink. I have to admit, it was somewhat exciting to be sitting at my desk knowing that at any moment I could be racing out the door, traveling to some unknown destination and having my mental capacity and investigative skills put to the test.

But at the same time, the unfortunate circumstances of what I was about to face could be overwhelming. A sense of adventure, excitement, fear and woe all rolled into one. Being a tremendous aviation enthusiast, it was never easy to feel as if the aviation community had lost one of its own. But the belief that our efforts were contributing toward making aviation safer made it possible to keep moving forward.

So the call inevitably came in: An aircraft crashed in Bayfield, Colo. The airplane was reportedly destroyed when it collided with terrain while maneuvering six miles northeast of town. I had experienced several accidents within the past six months that were weather related events in the mountainous Colorado terrain, and I couldn’t help but think that perhaps a similar story was about to unfold.

But this one was different. Several witnesses were present at the time the aircraft crashed, which was rare given that most accidents I had investigated were in extremely remote areas with no one around to hear it, let alone actually see it. There were preliminary reports that the aircraft was seen performing aerobatics moments before the crash. There wouldn’t be any radar data to document the flight path, but the witness accounts were a promising second best.

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