I was having a great time at the Radcliffe Warbird Fly-in last weekend. On my second takeoff, I was dismayed to note that my nose wheel stayed on the runway as I became airborne. Rolled about 30 feet and stopped.

OK, so I'm in the air, otherwise unharmed. I've got two splendid engines, 20, maybe 30 minutes of fuel and batteries, 600 feet of good grass runway, acres of tall green soybeans, a 10-15 mph headwind, 6-10 cycles worth of air in the tanks, dozens of helpful advisors, of whom a handful are truly brilliant warbird pilots, none of whom have more P-38 experience than I do (3 planes, 3 years).

What is my best course of action??

I will accept suggestions and advice from anyone with P-38 experience. I will respond, critique, and discuss......possibly even eat my heart out if somebody comes up with a better solution than mine.

Then I'll tell what I did and how it turned out.

No fair commenting if you were there!!

mt

1. kill both engines and belly land it on the grass

2. try to do a landing on the mains and hold the nose off as long as you can

3. hover or tork roll it and have someone grab it out of the air

I have no P38 experience, but no nose wheel is no nose wheel.

Do tell how it ends!

Also depends on the size, A Giant Scale the beans will do little, but a little one the beans would have cushioned the landing some.
I'm with JohnVH, no wheel = no wheel regardless of what plane it is. You still only have 2 choices gear up or gear down.

No P-38 experience but:
I would enjoy a good 15 to 18 minute flight then I would instruct one of those talented war bird pilots to lower main gear kill engines on approach and catch it

Size would be a factor, but if the grass was good, I'd opt for the dead stick belly landing.

I would belly land it. Maybe if there's some tall grass you could try to ditch it in at the lowest airspeed possible.

About catching it, would love to see a video of that one. Personally I wouldn't catch it, too dangerous IMO.

Don't keep u waiting any longer, tell what happened.



Bart

I do fly a P38, I would burn off as much fuel as possible, set up the approach , flaps down, wheels up , kill the engines and belly it in on the grass, the main pod should take most of the landing, Mike

I fly a "Z" B-25......haven't had that one happen .........but does present an interesting scenario......definitely fly for awhile and think about what options there would be.........landing on mains and holding off nose would be an option if on pavement......but grass probably would shear out nose gear...............I have engine kill switches that I can operate inflight......so the more safe bet for me would use use enough flaps thats possible without damaging them on a belly landing......set-up a routine landing approach......when the plane gets into ground effect .....hit engine kill switches and float it in with gear still retracted.........and hopefully go out....pick the plane up extend the gear and reinstalln the departed nose gear tire ......put some fuel in.....air up retracts.....and go fly again..............sounds easy......but can be done......Bill........

...put a skateboard on the runway.....

It doesn't matter. You probably ran out of gas by now.

Bob

Kram,
The suspense is killing me! What was the outcome.
Edwin

Me too. Come on don't keep us waiting any longer



Bart

Yeah, no kidding about the suspense.

I´ll guess this is the "Acme" P-38, and when it ran out of fuel, coughed, sputtered, shuddered and came to a stop, he simply went over and picked it out of the air where it stopped.

Best wishes,
Dave Olson

Sorry about the delay. Am traveling without password.

Most of the emergency advice I requested and received at the time came from non-P38 pilots and involved belly-landing.

I have one experience with bellying-in a P38, and it wasn't good. If you look at the side profile of the plane, you see why: the rudders hang well below the fuse, and the booms aft are quite small, hence fragile. Three years ago, it took me weeks to repair the empennage after going in gear-up.

Secondly, this is a large, fast, heavy plane. In order to have good elevator authority, my landings usually involve about 1/3 throttle till about 10 feet off the ground. Roll-outs without brakes are typically 3-400 feet. Full flaps can cut 10 mph or so off this speed, but unfortunately gives me much less elevator authority, leaving me with whatever attitude I had set up on approach.

So, while "coming in on the mains and letting the nose down after slowing" is a nice fantasy, my feeling (as I flew round and round) was that the square of the speed at which my nose gear touched the ground in a gear-down landing would be proportional to the kinetic energy of the decelleration (damage), since E=m(c)(c). And since my ability to keep the nose off was almost purely dependent on speed....well, you get the picture.

I do have complete throttle control, ie the engines die quickly at lowest trim, so I planned to shut them down right before landing to save engines and props.

After the incident, I received advice from a legendary RC warbird pilot who wasn't there: get close with the gear up, then hit the down switch 12 inches off the ground so the gear is coming up and trailing at a backwards angle as ground is contacted. I must say I would have tried that if I'd thought of it, but again, this is a very fast, heavy bird, and I'm not sure unlocked (although fully pressurized) gear would have been able to keep the tail off the ground.

Anyway, not finding any deep sandpits or foam trucks, or even enough slick tarps or cardboard to cover a 600' runway, I decided to try a flaps-down, gear-down, "low-speed", steep-approach technique and I did several go-arounds to try perfecting it (like I said, the engines are splendid and trustworthy).

Boy, one must never underestimate the value of a nice, round wheel (or a tight set screw).

mt

So what was the total outcome after you did what you did????????????????

I was there. Here's what I would have done: Exactly what Kram did. End of story. You can't set it up for landing any better than he did. Unless you've seen this plane up close, you don't have any idea how massive it is. For reference, it is proportionately larger than a Yellow P-38 on the same order that a Yellow is bigger than a KMP.

As a fellow warbird flyer and I watched this unfold (with a sickening feel in the pit of our stomachs), we discussed Kram's options (quietly and from a distance, he had plenty of help). Yes, the beans seemed inviting, but you also have to realize this field is very wide. To put it in the beans would have required almost a 45 degree approach relative to the runway centerline to hit the "sweet" spot in the beans. This would have put Kram a LONG way from his pilot station and in my opinion, it would have been impossible to accurately judge the flare.

While the "dropping the gear just above the ground" thing sounds intriguing, I really don't think it is practical. Fiddling with the retract switch a few feet above flare will likely result in something more awful than just driving it in, either gear up or down.

As we drove home that afternoon, my friend (a fabulous warbird builder and pilot who has flown virtually every warbird with wings over the last 20 years) and I rehashed this. He has a saying "Sometimes, it be that way." He believes you make the best decision you can at the time and not worry about it. This is the same guy who intentionally strained a 100 inch Royal Corsair with a stuck wide open throttle through a tree and a chain link fence after he flew it for 20 minutes and realized the battery was going to die before the fuel would run out. Rather than take a chance trying to impact the runway (he was in front of a couple of thousand people at the time), he pointed it into the trees and fence at far end of the field and let events run their course. He said it was an easy decision. Years later, he said "I don't want any of my planes to out live me."

All alternatives in this kind of situation are the "lesser of evils" sort. Kram did the "least evil" in my opinion and did it as well as it could be done.


LarryS

Excellent, Larry, and Kram, I'm sure you've thought and talked about this until you've had your fill. However, you haven't told us "The plane was undamaged" (which is what we all want to hear) or "The damage was limited to...."

So, you see, we're still sort of waiting. Please share the results.

Best wishes,
Dave Olson

In our warbird group....we have a number of multi-engine warbirds......and @ one time had 2 "Ziroli" P-38's.....notice I said ....had........Mike had several instances of "Gear" difficulties...and if the grass is pretty nice....and that can change significantly from field to field.......a belly landing can be done.....but the rudders/vertical fins do become an issue.....it seemed that it was better to land alittle hotter without flaring to keep from damaging the tail.......I saw him do it a couple of times and there still was some repair work to do.....although minor in scope........one field in particular in Ocala, Fla.....has the nicest/smoothest grass that i've seen.along the paved portion of the runway.....I pinched a extend line on my P-51 gear and couldn't get gear to extend and did a belly landing and you could only see several grass stains along the radiator inlet.........OK....now......so give us the end of the story......already.............[sm=spinnyeyes.gif][sm=spinnyeyes.gif][sm=spinnyeyes.gif]

Well, I set up my flap-down, gear-down approach pretty much as I wanted on the third pass. Still, the sink rate and poor elevator response of this bird at slow speed was dramatic. Deceleration was violent and loud. The nose gear collapsed aft instantly, faster than I could kill the props, so they both shattered. Because the nose gear broke at the rotator cam, no damage to the upper units, servo, or support formers. Linkage to one of the flaps pulled off, dowels connecting aft wing to right boom snapped, and fiberglass of left boom cracked where it had been repaired from a previous single-engine landing. I've already sent the nose gear off to a talented machinist. The rest shouldn't be more than a night's work in the shop, unless I find more.

I've been kind of second-guessing myself ever since for not bellying in, but my previous experience with tail damage was a strong factor.

Thanks for playing,

mt

Kram,
Tough call either way. Hope the repairs are minimal.

Great past post's on you and your Bro's planes...

Forgot to add... BELLY WOP IT. My experiance with gear loss is they tear more up being down.

In any given "Emergency"....lets say....In a full scale airplane....you have a checklist for most of the "Unusual" problems that may arise...most....not all........but for us.....we don't have that luxury........its more of a think on your feet situation.....in your case you did have some time to mull over different options......that doesn't happen most of the time..........but you tried one way and didn't like the results so you tried another..........now you can compare and see which is better.........or your might come up with some compromise to both.....or come up with something alltogether different.........If the situation does come up again......you have a better handle on what to do...........but most of all.....you have your plane back with some damage to repair............and that isn't all that bad after all........should be back flying in no time..........Bill.......