The 1963 BAC One-Eleven test crash was a fatal accident of a British Aircraft Corporation prototype aircraft on 22 October 1963, near

Chicklade Chicklade is a small village and civil parish in Wiltshire, South West England. The village is on the A303 road, about south of Warminster. The parish includes the hamlet of Upper Pertwood. The Great Ridge Wood, formerly also known as Chickla ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England while it was undertaking a

test flight Flight testing is a branch of aeronautical engineering that develops specialist equipment required for testing aircraft behaviour and systems. Instrumentation systems are developed using proprietary transducers and data acquisition systems. D ...

. All seven crew members on board the

BAC One-Eleven The BAC One-Eleven (or BAC-111/BAC 1-11) was an early jet airliner produced by the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Originally conceived by Hunting Aircraft as a 30-seat jet, before its merger into BAC in 1960, it was launched as an 80-se ...

were killed.

Accident

The accident occurred during a test flight of the first prototype

(registration G-ASHG) which had taken off from

Wisley Airfield Wisley Airfield is a former wartime airfield located in the Parish of Ockham near Wisley in Surrey, England. Originally a grass airstrip, the runway was converted to tarmac in 1952 and used to test aircraft built at Weybridge by Vickers. Flying ...

with seven crew on board, piloted by

Mike Lithgow Michael John Lithgow, OBE (30 August 1920 – 22 October 1963) was a British aviator and chief test pilot for Vickers Supermarine who became the holder of the World Absolute Air Speed Record in 1953 flying a Supermarine Swift. He died when th ...

. The aircraft was on its fifth test flight to assess stability and handling characteristics during the approach to—and recovery from—a stall with the centre of gravity in varying positions. From an altitude of and with the flaps extended 8°, the aircraft entered a stable stall and descended at a high rate in a horizontal attitude, eventually striking the ground with very little forward speed. The aircraft broke up on impact at Cratt Hill, near

, a small village in southern

and caught fire, killing all seven crew on board. The aircraft was on its fifth stalling test of the day, and the crash occurred 23 minutes after takeoff from Wisley. The crew were Lt. Cdr. M J Lithgow OBE, Chief Test Pilot; Capt. R Rymer (Test Pilot); B J Prior (Aerodynamicist); C J Webb (Designer); R A F Wright (Senior Observer); G R Poulter (Observer) and D J Clark (Observer).

Cause

The cause of the accident was the aircraft entering a stable stalled condition, recovery from which was impossible due to the wings blocking the airflow over the elevators on the tail. This was the first accident to be attributed to the phenomenon known as

deep stall In fluid dynamics, a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by a foil as angle of attack increases.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', p. 486. Aviation Supplies & Academics, 1997. This occurs when t ...

, peculiar to rear engine T-tailed aircraft.

Aftermath

Once the condition of deep stall was recognised, relatively simple preventative measures were introduced, including stick-shakers indicating an approaching stall and

stick-pusher A stick pusher is a device installed in some fixed-wing aircraft to prevent the aircraft from entering an aerodynamic stall. Some large fixed-wing aircraft display poor post-stall handling characteristics or are vulnerable to deep stall. To preve ...

s which automatically operate the elevators and physically lower the nose before the stall is reached, while the tailplane and pitch controls are still effective.

Memorial

In October 2013 a stone memorial was dedicated at the crash site, listing the seven victims. The ceremony was attended by the CO of the Royal Navy Historic Flight; Lord Margadale (the owner of the land); and families of the crew members.Chris von Patzelt, 'BAC ONE-ELEVEN G-ASHG REMEMBERED', Hindon and Chicklade Parish magazine, December 2013, p. 4. The memorial bears a quotation from the

annotation An annotation is extra information associated with a particular point in a document or other piece of information. It can be a note that includes a comment or explanation. Annotations are sometimes presented in the margin of book pages. For anno ...

of the 1817 edition of ''

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' (originally ''The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere'') is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition of ''Lyrical Ballad ...

'', a poem by

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poe ...

: '...and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them and is their appointed rest and their native country.'

References

External links

* https://www.baaa-acro.com/sites/default/files/2017-12/G-ASHG.pdf * http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19631022-0 * http://www.planecrashinfo.com/1963/1963-52.htm * https://web.archive.org/web/20120402184556/http://www.baaa-acro.com/photos/BAc111-BAC-Bournemouth.jpg * 1963 Pathe film 'The Price of Progress' of the crash site and BAC 111 prototype G-ASHG in British United livery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdw9TcHGTZI {{DEFAULTSORT:BAC One-Eleven test crash Aviation accidents and incidents in 1963 Aviation accidents and incidents in England Accidents and incidents involving the BAC One-Eleven 1963 disasters in the United Kingdom 1963 in England October 1963 events in the United Kingdom Airliner accidents and incidents caused by stalls

Accident

Cause

Aftermath

Memorial

See also

References

External links