The ground is hard

Low flying is dangerous

The sound of the aircraft engine, low and loud, brought the people out of the house to see the aircraft banking steeply above them. As they watched the upper wing of the banked aircraft stalled and the machine rolled into a spin before it impacted nose down a few hundred metres away. The noise of the impact was like a cargo net of dropped empty beer cans.

The accident was a classic example of a pilot doing a steep turn over the property of someone that the occupants of the aircraft knew. The aircraft was low. The bank excessive. The speed was slow. The pilot inexperienced. The aircraft had overshot the ground object and the pilot pulled back on the control wheel and banked at the same time. The upper wing aileron exceeded the stall angle and the machine then rolled in that direction as the wing stalled. The pilot did not recognise what had happened until it was too late to recover from the ensuring rapid descent.