쉐도잉 연습: “I Hope Your Old Plane Crashes” | The Day The Music Died - 영상으로 영어 말하기 배우기

It was an event that shocked the music industry and would come to shape it for decades to come.

These names, if you're unfamiliar, refer to true pioneers of the mid to late 1950s music and rock and roll era.

Music fans would mourn what happened to them for years to come,

so much so that singer and songwriter Don McLean was even inspired to create the iconic song American Pie,

immortalizing this incident in the first and fifth verses if you'd want to take a listen yourself.

So this is the story of the night when the stars fell from the sky, the night of the 3rd of February 1959.

Now as we look closer at this flight you will come to see

that there is much more to this story than the fame of the passengers in the back.

This is actually a story where poor decisions came face to

face with a particularly odd mix of challenges including some

that would be unthinkable today and some that we are still struggling with.

If for example the young pilot at the controls of this aircraft had been flying in the same conditions

but with different instruments like the ones

that he had actually been trained on there is a good chance that this story would have ended very differently.

But I'll get to that.

Let's instead start with how this flight came to happen in the first place

because to start with as far as the three musicians involved

were concerned flying to their destination had not been part of their original plan.

And to understand why we need to have a look at

what they had done during the preceding three weeks before the 3rd of February.

The Winter Dance Party was a 24-day tour across the American Midwest

which was taking place from January through to February of 1959.

Taking part in it was Buddy Holly, Richard Valens, JP, the big bopper Richardson as well as Dion

and the Belmonts who were all real industry heavy hitters at the time.

Now the American Midwest this time of year is and was characterized by deep winter which often means brutal weather conditions,

frequent snowstorms and periods of extreme sub-zero cold.

Which was not ideal conditions for a music tour using any mode of transport to be honest,

but the main way that the members of this tour moved from one tour venue to the next was by using buses.

Repurposed school buses to be precise, which were all old and unreliable and mostly had non-functional heating.

A drummer, Carl Bunch, was actually hospitalized due to developing frostbite in his feet during one of the stretches.

And as it turns out, these buses also broke down a lot.

So much so that the musicians reported having to change buses several times during one single stretch.

So by the time they reached Clear Lake, Iowa, which was the 15th stop on the list, Holly had had enough.

This venue was called the Surf Ballroom

and from there he reportedly phoned his wife Maria Elina

and complained about how he was absolutely exhausted and needed to wash his clothes.

He therefore wanted to get ahead of the tour in order to arrive at the next stop in Moorhead, Minnesota early enough to rest,

do some laundry and just feel normal for a few hours before the next show.

And the way he wanted to do this was by chartering an aeroplane.

So hearing this the surf ballroom's owner actually contacted an aircraft charter company on Holly's behalf,

the Dwyer Flying Service, which was a small fixed base operation out of Mason City Municipal Airport

which was located only a 15 minute drive away from the venue.

It was soon confirmed that a four-seater Bonanza could be charted for $36 per passenger or $108 total

which would be equivalent to a bit over $1,200 today

and since Holly was so fed up with the current conditions he decided to take the deal.

Now besides the pilot the aircraft had space for three passengers

so Holly could pick two more people with him for the trip

and his original plan was to take his fellow musicians Tommy Alsop and Waylon Jennings but the plan then quickly changed.

You see JP Richardson the big bopper was sick.

He had gotten the flu probably due to those harsh conditions on the tour buses

so he desperately wanted to rest properly and therefore asked Waylon Jennings for his seat to which Jennings agreed.

As for the remaining seat besides Tommy Alsop, Holly's guitarist, there was Richie Valens,

a 17-year-old who had never flown on a small aircraft before.

And those two now decided to settle who was going to get the remaining seat by flipping a coin.

And ultimately, Richie Valens ended up winning that coin flip.

And another detail here that's also worth mentioning was that when this was all settled, Holly turned over to Waylon Jennings, who had just given up his seat and jokingly said,

I hope your old bus freezes up.

To which Jennings replied, well I hope your old plane crashes.

Just a joke obviously, the kind of thing that friends say to each other in situations like this

but Waylon Jennings would carry the weight of those words for the rest of his life.

Anyway, the Surf Ballroom show ended around midnight and shortly after that Holly, Richardson and Valens left for the airport.

They got there relatively quickly and found their pilot who was already there waiting for them.

So who was this young man that was going to be behind the controls of the Bonanza that night then?

Well, Roger Arthur Peterson was from Alta, Iowa and was 21 years old, meaning just a few months younger than Buddy Holly himself.

Press accounts described him as having had a passion for aviation from a young age, noting that he had built his whole life around it.

And that meant

that he had obtained his private pilot license straight out of high school in October of 1955

and three years after that he then also got his commercial license

and was subsequently hired by Dwyer Flying Services in Mason City.

Which like I mentioned before was a small charter operation owned by a man named Hubert Dwyer.

By the time of this flight he had been with with Dwyer for about a year

and Peterson was by all accounts dedicated and enthusiastic about his job.

His colleagues described him as a young man who had married his young high school sweetheart, Diane Lenz, in September of 1958,

only four and a half months before this night's events.

But as we start looking at his qualifications and training, we actually find the first hole in Dr. Riesen's Swiss cheese model.

You see, Peterson had a total of 711 flying hours, which wasn't that bad for a 21-year-old general aviation pilot.

And 128 of those had then been flown in the Beechcraft Bonanza, which was the type that he was now going to fly.

He also held, like I mentioned, a commercial pilot license, as well as a newly issued limited flight instructor certificate from January of 1959.

he had passed his instrument rating written exam

and had approximately 52 hours of dual instrument training but he didn't actually have an instrument rating.

You see nine months before this flight Peterson had taken the instrument flight check

but he had failed that exam and then had yet to try and re-attempt it.

So on the night of this flight Peterson was still officially a VFR pilot

meaning that he could only fly legally under visual flight rules.

And that meant

that he would need to be able to see where he was going with all ground references

and visibility requirements for a VFR flight.

And not only that, Dwyer Flying Services, the company Peterson worked for, had an operational certificate that was VFR only.

So that meant that this allowed the company to operate during day and night under the right conditions.

but they were absolutely not permitted to operate in instrument meteorological conditions or IMC.

So keep that in mind as we get to the weather forecast later on.

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Now, let's take a look at the aircraft that Pattison was now about to use.

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This was a Beechcraft Bonanza Model 35 with registration November 3794 November

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and it was manufactured in 1947 making it 12 years old at the night of this flight.

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Now, this aircraft was similar to other low-wing single-engine piston aircraft of

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that era like the Piper Cherokee for example but it had one very unique feature, its iconic V or butterfly tail.

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Now Beechcraft would later stop making Bonanzas with that configuration.

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The last V-tail variant ended up leaving the factory in 1982 and there were many reasons for that change.

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You see this unique design used two angled tail surfaces to combine the functions of conventional rudder,

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the horizontal stabilizer and elevators into a single pair,

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dubbed the rudder-vaders, with each surface sitting at about a 30 to 45 degree angle.

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Now when they moved together up and down they controlled pitch like the elevators would and

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when they moved opposite to each other they controlled yaw with

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a simple mechanical linkage mixing the pilot's inputs from the yoke and rudder pedals to make this happen.

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Now in theory going from three tail surfaces down to two meant having less drag

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and a bit less weight and of course it also made for a very futuristic design for the 1950s.

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But it also came with some specific handling traits

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which aren't really unique to the Bonanza but could be more noticeable in it especially during turbulent weather conditions.

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One of those was something known as Dutch roll

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which is a coupled motion where the aircraft jaws and rolls from side to side, almost like a tail wag combined with a rocking motion like a pendulum.

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And in the V-tail Bonanza, this Dutch roll tendency was more lightly damped than in other similar aircraft, which meant that once this type of motion started,

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it would take some time to settle down without pilot input.

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This was partly due to the V-tail design providing slightly weaker directional stability compared to a conventional vertical stabilizer

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while still remaining a strong lateral stability, an imbalance that naturally promotes structural behavior.

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Separately from this, if the controls were left completely neutral, this aircraft also didn't simply fly straight indefinitely.

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Like many other light single-engine piston aircrafts, the Bonanza had a relatively weak spiral stability,

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meaning that a small disturbance could slowly develop into a gentle, tightening turn and descent over time unless a pilot would notice it and provide inputs to correct it.

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And what all of this meant was that in just the right

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or wrong conditions this aircraft could need a lot of attention to aviate,

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navigate and communicate correctly, especially in turbulent weather flying on instruments at night which is also worth keeping in mind.

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Now on a complete side node.

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Going forward a couple of decades in time by the late

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1970s more than 200 Bonanzas were also known to have come

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apart mid-air due to aerodynamic forces usually after entering a dive or flying too fast in turbulent weather.

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And that meant

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that the Bonanza eventually would earn the nickname the doctor killer

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due to the wealthy nature of many of the private owners who were killed flying it.

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That's a bit of trivia here and not really a factor in this accident but still a bit interesting.

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Now this aircraft's engine,

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a Continental E-185-8 producing a nifty 185 horsepower had been overhauled just 40 hours before this flight

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so all in all mechanically this aircraft was in a very good shape.

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On top of that it was also state-of-the-art equipped for its time.

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On the instrument panel, the avionics included high and low frequency radio transmitters

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and receivers and there was also a narco-omnegator

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which was an early VOR navigation receiver which could help track a heading along a radio beam.

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And more importantly, the aircraft had a Lear autopilot

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which had been installed quite recently before this flight but at the time wasn't yet functional.

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And had it been, this story might have ended quite differently.

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Now last but not least, the aircraft was also equipped with an attitude indicator, but known as an artificial horizon.

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And this is a really important instrument for pilots

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when flying in instrument conditions as it gives us information about the aircraft's pitch and roll, meaning whether it has a nose up or nose down attitude and whether or not the wings are level.

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But even when not in full IMC, when flying in an area where it is completely dark outside,

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like over a featureless eye of our farmland in the dead of winter, the artificial horizon becomes the pilot's connection to reality since trying

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to rely on your own senses in these conditions has proven fatal to many many pilots in the past.

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But this is also where we come to a big twist in this story

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and I need you to pay attention here because it's going to get a little bit technical.

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You see back in 1959 there were two mechanically different ways to build an artificial horizon.

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Both of which were in wide use in the general aviation aircraft industry at the time

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and that was a little bit of a problem since they also presented two different pictures to their pilots.

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First we had the standard western type artificial horizon

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which is the type found in aircraft to this day

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and the one Peterson had also trained on during his 52 hours of instrument training.

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In that one there is a miniature aircraft symbol fixed in the center of the instrument

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and behind it a horizon bar shifts driven by a gyroscope that keeps it aligned with the real horizon outside.

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This means that

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when you pitch the nose up the horizon bar moves down

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below the miniature aircraft symbol leaving it sitting above the horizon line exactly as it would look

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if you were looking outside of the aircraft when you're flying.

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So this type would mirror reality.

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Simple and intuitive and with enough training you would come to interpret it almost automatically.

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But what's the other type then?

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Well this is the one that was actually installed on this aircraft.

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The Sperry F3 Attitude Gyro.

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And if you would see one of those today without knowing anything about it you might think that it is upside down.

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You see Instead of a moving horizon bar,

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it uses a stabilized sphere which floats freely and with a miniature aircraft symbol mounted in front of it.

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And the coloring of this instrument really matters here.

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The upper half of the F3 sphere was painted black and the lower half was white.

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Now just try to visualize looking at this from a pilot's perspective.

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Other old artificial horizons used black and white instead of blue

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and brown but either way pilots are conditioned to understand blue

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or white to be the sky and brown

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or black to be the ground with Peterson the pilot in this story being conditioned this way as well.

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But the F3 had reversed these colors entirely and critically you know what else they had reversed?

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The pitch presentation.

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On the conventional artificial horizon.

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When you pitch the nose up the display moves up on the instrument face.

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But on the Sperry F3 when you pitch the nose up the display shifted down.

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Pitching up in reality meant down on the instrument and pitching down meant up.

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So why had Sperry made the instrument this way?

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Well as I already said this was a gyro-stabilized sphere

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which meant that it always sat at the the same attitude with relation to the ground both in pitch and roll.

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So when the aircraft pitched up

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and the sphere stayed put well then from the pilot's perspective

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you'd be looking at the bottom side of the sphere and

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when the aircraft pitched down again the sphere stayed at the same attitude as before.

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So the pilot would be looking at the upper side of the sphere with the same principle working in roll as well.

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Now in roll this could make a little bit more sense since it basically

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looked like the display was showing the aircraft as seen from behind but I cannot wrap my head around the pitch display.

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The only way my team and I have been able to explain this is

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that mechanically this might have been a simpler system to make

213

and maintain but it's definitely not as intuitive and the simple fact

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that it coexisted with other very similar looking artificial horizons

215

but appeared to have been working in reverse was far from ideal to put it mildly.

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And this was apparently as obvious to people back then as it would be now.

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The Civil Aeronautics Board, CAB, which is the predecessor to the NTSB, described the Sperry F3 in the report noting

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that this device presents a pitch information which is sensing exactly opposite from that depicted by a conventional artificial horizon.

219

And again, Peterson had never trained on this particular instrument.

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But on the night of this flight, the F3 attitude gyro would soon become the only primary attitude reference he had.

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And as we discussed a while ago,

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the Bonanza already had the potential to be a real handful to fly in turbulence even before taking this instrument into account.

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Now having said all that let's move on to the next issue on this evening which was the weather.

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Now Peterson actually checked the weather a total of four times before the flight which must be considered more than thorough.

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The first check he made at 1730 when he accepted the flight and at that time things looked pretty promising.

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There were ceilings of at least 5,000 feet at every station

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along the route he was going to fly with visibility of 10 miles or more.

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In other words, ideal VFR conditions for a flight like this.

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Now Fargo, their destination, did have a possibility of light snow showers after two o'clock

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in the morning with a cold frontal passage around 4 a.m but still nothing really alarming.

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He then made his second weather check at 10 in the evening at

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which point it still looked pretty good which it also did around 2300 when he checked a third time.

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But then at 2335, just over an hour before takeoff, the owner of Dwyer Flying Services,

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Hubert Dwyer, accompanied Peterson to the air traffic communication station for a last check.

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And at that point, the local Mason City weather had gotten slightly worse with the cloud ceiling down to 5000 feet,

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light snow falling and slightly lower altimeter settings but everything was still within limits.

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Now I want to give Peterson credit for something here

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because at this point at least he was genuinely trying to do this by the book.

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But according to the final report the weather information

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that he received came only from reports on current weather on route and terminal forecast for the destination.

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But there was another critical information that he never received which was this.

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At time 2335 the U.S.

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Weather Bureau office in Minneapolis issued something known as Flash Advisory Number 5

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and it described a band of snowfall approximately 100 miles wide extending from northwestern Minnesota down through North Dakota,

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South Dakota and into the Black Hills.

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Now visibility inside of that band was below

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two miles and the system was moving southeast at roughly 25 knots meaning

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that it was now moving directly towards the route that Peterson was about to fly.

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At time 15 minutes past midnight, now February the 3rd, 40 minutes before their takeoff,

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the weather bureau in Kansas City then issued flash advisory number one.

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You see these advisories were numbered in rising order from the start of the day

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and it contained moderate to heavy icing in clouds below 10 000 feet over eastern Nebraska,

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Kansas, northwestern Missouri and much of Iowa.

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And of course Iowa was the state they were now departing from.

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Now Peterson had gotten his weather briefing from the air traffic communication station or ATCS and there the communicator,

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the person responsible for providing this information could have also brought these flash advisories to Peterson's attention but unfortunately he didn't.

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So why was that then?

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Well this is actually an interesting comparison to how responsibilities have evolved into what we have today.

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You see the investigation determined that the pilot spoke to two communicators at the ATCS

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and that the briefing supplied to him was determined to be in the words of the investigators, seriously inadequate.

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And they also noted something else.

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The communicator's job in that era was to provide requested weather data.

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Not to advise pilots on whether to go or even interpret it, just supply the requested data.

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But the responsibility to request all of the available information and then correctly interpret what they saw all rested with the pilot.

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But of But of course, you cannot interpret information that you don't get.

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Today, that boundary of responsibility has really changed.

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Flight service specialists and dispatch systems are now not just expected to pass along raw data.

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They are expected to actively highlight hazards such as icing low ceilings and deteriorating trends.

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In many commercial operations, dispatchers, especially in the United States, now also share legal responsibility for the flight,

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working alongside with the pilots to assess whether conditions will be safe for dispatch.

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But even beyond these flash advisories that Peterson never got,

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the meteorological conditions along his route were now starting to turn quite serious.

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The surface weather chart from midnight showed a cold front extending from northwestern Minnesota

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through central Nebraska with a secondary cold front then cutting across North Dakota.

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And the entire route from Mason City over to Fargo was now below freezing at all altitudes.

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And on top of that something known as a temperature inversion was also present.

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Now an inversion is where a layer of warmer air sits above a layer of cold air

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and that inversion was situated between 3,000 and 4,000 feet along the flight route during that entire night.

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And these type of inversions often trap moisture, creating ideal conditions for icing to occur.

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On top of that, winds along the route was also now starting to pick up between 30 and 50 knots.

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And together, all of these conditions would be serious considerations, even for a small airliner equipped with anti-icing systems.

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But for a single-engine piston aircraft, which can't simply fly above the weather, and with a pilot who had only 52 hours of instrument time and no rating,

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this was turning potentially deadly.

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But in any case, his passengers soon arrived

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and were shown how to get in and strap themselves into the seats of this tiny aircraft

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and Peterson then went through the checklist and started his engine up.

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After that, he started taxiing out towards Rambi 17 and when he did so,

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he made one final radio call requesting the latest local weather and he was told the following.

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Precipitation, ceiling 3,000 feet, sky obscured, visibility 6 miles, light snow,

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wind south 20 knots, gust to 30, altimeter 29.85.

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And this meant that the cloud ceiling had now dropped 2,000 feet since this last check.

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And sky obscured meant that he couldn't see through it into the sky above

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so there would be no moonlight reflecting on the ground.

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Remember VFR means flying with visual reference to the ground

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which would now become much harder and on top of

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that it was also actively snowing and the winds were both strong and gusty.

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Now the right thing to do here should have been pretty clear.

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This was no longer good VFR weather and with an aircraft without de-icing equipment this is downright dangerous.

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So Peterson should have just taxed back to the terminal and called it a night.

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But obviously that's not what now happened.

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And this is where we once again have to talk about the destructive power of perceived pressure.

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Now the report didn't go into this specifically

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but there is just no question in my mind that if Peterson would have been

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going out just flying for his own pleasure he would have given up this flight at this point.

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But the combination of his relatively low experience, his loyalty to his employer and the pressure of, you know, having passengers on board,

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who would no doubt have been very disappointed

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if they would have to return back to their hotels and take the bus instead,

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probably was enough for this young pilot to make his life's single biggest mistake.

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And I want this to be a lesson for every one of you young, new pilots out there.

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never put yourself in a situation like this.

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And if you for whatever reason end up there anyway and you feel that pressure of obligation weighing down on you

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just ask yourself

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would your employer and your passengers really prefer you to risk your life

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and the lives of them as well as the aircraft?

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Now the answer to that will obviously be no.

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And you can therefore with good conscience just cancel the flight and wait for better conditions.

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But in this specific case Peterson likely succumbed to his inner voice which was now pushing him to just go.

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So the Bonanza ended up taking off from runway 17 around five minutes to one in the morning with Hubert Dwyer,

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the charter company's owner, watching it depart from the airport's tower.

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The initial climb was then nice and smooth followed by a left 180 degree turn to face northwest

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and Dwyer in the tower could see the aircraft's taillight clearly tracking it as it pushed forward out into the darkness.

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And then when it was about five miles out, the taillight looked like it started descending.

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Gradually at first, almost gently, as if Peterson had decided to just come back. But he didn't.

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The light just disappeared.

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Now the tower controller was at this point trying to contact

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Peterson by radio since just before takeoff he had radioed in

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and said that he would file his flight plan once he was airborne but that call had never come.

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Multiple calls were therefore made but with no response back.

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The time was approximately one in the morning.

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So what had happened then?

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Well the investigators would later discover even more problems with this flight, particularly with the state of the aircraft's instrumentation who told their own story.

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Because what they found was that the directional gyro, better known as the heading indicator, had been left caged and this meant that it wasn't operational

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and might have never really been activated for the flight in the first place.

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So had Peterson simply forgot to uncage it before departure and if so why?

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Well remember that he was a solo pilot

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and this was not a commercial airliner with two flight crew members

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or even three helping each other cross-check the instrumentation controls and indications.

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So no one was helping Peterson manage the workload here or assist him with a go or no-go decision.

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Instead all aeronautical and command decision making basically rested solely on him

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and on a light like this the workload would have likely quickly built up which can lead to omissions.

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In any case with this inoperative directional gyro we can now

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add the lack of a reliable heading reference to the night's growing list of challenges.

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There was a magnetic compass on board of course but in conditions like these,

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super turbulent, it would have fluctuated wildly and therefore wouldn't have been much of a help.

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So let's now recap what Peterson had to deal with.

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He had a non-functional autopilot.

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He had an attitude gyro showing him pitch information in exactly

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the opposite direction to the artificial horizon he had been trained on.

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His heading indicator was caged and was therefore providing no information

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and he had a magnetic compass along with other instruments like a rate of climb indicator

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and turn coordinator that would have been fluctuating wildly in the turbulence.

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And with that he had entered an area of complete darkness shortly after taking off.

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There would have been nothing on the ground

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that could give him any horizontal reference and again back in 1959 the surrounding area was rural farmland.

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Flat, sparsely populated with little to no city lights and above snow conditions and low clouds obscured any visible sky.

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And this meant that he could likely see well very little if anything.

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But without the cockpit voice or flight data recorder we can only speculate on exactly what happened next.

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And on top of all of this remember

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that Peterson also had three passengers on board

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and with no cabin crew it was also his job to reassure them that everything was fine as much as possible.

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All of this meant

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that probably within minutes perhaps even seconds after leaving the airport

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lights behind Roger Peterson had lost all of his external visual references

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and he therefore had to rely entirely on his instruments and his 52 hours of instrument flying experience.

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Now developing the necessary skills including an effective instrument scan which is a continuous disciplined movement of ice across the instrument panel,

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takes months and sometimes hundreds of hours to do.

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And that's when you're looking at the instruments that you are familiar with.

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In an unfamiliar cockpit, in turbulence at night, the challenges would have been on a very different level.

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And remember, this Bonanza was also an aircraft which was known to have some control tendencies that demanded constant attention.

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In those kind of situations, sensory illusions such as the leans and somatographic illusion also come into play

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and those happen when our inner ear starts sending us information about our orientation

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which is not actually true at the same time as we can't confirm it with the help of our eyes.

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Now these illusions are very real killers

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so in conditions where a pilot can't orient himself using outside

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visual cues his instrument scan will inevitably center on the artificial horizon,

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the attitude indicator and that's why it is placed dead center on the instrument panel.

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That should be used as the primary reference

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that every other instrument is cross-checked against

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and again without black boxes on this aircraft we can't know for sure how important

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that unfamiliar attitude gyro was in the confusing situation

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that Peterson now found himself in but the reason we think he probably read it wrong is because

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instead of putting his aircraft into a climbing turn, he now actually put it into a descending turn instead.

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Now I also want to highlight another thing before I continue here

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and that is a problem that the aviation world is still dealing with today.

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You see this accident is another example of transition from VFR into sudden IMC, meaning a flight that started in visual flight rules

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and then mistakenly went into instrument metrological conditions without the pilot having been mentally prepared or trained for it.

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This is one of the most dangerous situations you can ever encounter as it comes with an extremely high risk of disorientation.

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Without visual context as I mentioned before the human vestibular system just cannot reliably distinguish between gravity

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and acceleration and you might think that the solution to

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that would be as simple as just looking at your instruments but it is not.

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Before we pilots get our instrument rating we undergo rigorous training specifically to teach us to ignore those vestibular cues

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and instead to focus on maintaining a strict instrument scan and

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that will ultimately allow us to rebuild our mental picture of

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how we are oriented in space purely from what the instruments are telling us.

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Now doing this is something that takes many hours of training to hone

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and it's also a perishable skill that requires continuous practice to maintain.

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Without that a pilot who enters the clouds will often struggle to keep the aircraft on course

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and upright even if they know that they have to trust their instruments

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and that's because the moment

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that they glance away from the attitude indicator for any reason those powerful vestibular cues

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and the plane's own slight tendencies to roll can take over completely

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and make the pilot unconsciously allowing the aircraft to enter into a spiral dive.

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This is due to the same reason why it's really hard to walk in a straight line with your eyes closed.

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Virtually every time you'll end up walking in a circle instead.

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Try it if you don't believe me.

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This effect is so dangerous

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that VFR into IMC accidents are among the leading causes of fatalities in private

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and general aviation pretty much everywhere in the world to this day.

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So the video that I made a few months ago about the crash

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that claimed the lives of Kobe Bryant

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and everyone else on board his helicopter was another example of a flight going from VFR into IMC.

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And studies have shown that in VFR into IMC situations,

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the average time between a pilot entering IMC and losing control or striking terrain is just 178 seconds,

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three minutes, which fits pretty well into what happened here. And

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that brings us back to the Bonanza as it was now in its last descending turn down towards the rural countryside below.

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The aircraft finally hit the ground at high speed approximately five miles northwest of Mason City Municipal Airport

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and when it impacted it did

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so in a steep right bank of almost 90 degrees and with the nose only slightly below the horizon.

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This meant

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that the right wing tip struck first carving a deep groove

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into the frozen ground before it was ultimately torn off

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and with that wing gone the fuselage then rolled inverted slammed the nose into the ground

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and begun tumbling over

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which it continued to do for over 500 feet before it finally came to a stop against a barbed wired fence.

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Now the force of the impact would have been immense

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and all four occupants therefore immediately perished with some of them

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being thrown out of the main wreckage before it came to a stop.

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The crash site was then found on the following morning after an air search at first light

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and by then the field was already covered by four inches of snow.

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There had been no fire and the investigators later determined

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that the engine had still been producing power on impact

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because the tachometer showed around 2200 rpm the fuel pressure oil temperature

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and oil pressure had all been within the normal range during the crash.

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It was also concluded that there had been no structural failure in flight

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or any other mechanical faults so this was basically the very definition of a controlled flight into terrain accident.

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The civil aeronautics board's investigation therefore soon presented a clear probable cause for the accident

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which was the pilot's unwise decision to embark on a flight

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which would necessitate flying solely by instruments when he was not properly certified or qualified to do so.

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But contributing factors included serious efficiencies in the weather briefing and the pilot some familiarity with his artificial horizon.

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And the report wasn't kind to the Sperry F3 attitude gyro either,

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with this accident likely being part of why this instrument is virtually unknown to many pilots today.

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Because it was phased out of general aviation use over the years and decades that followed.

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By the 1970s, with the exception of aircraft in the Soviet Union which typically used yet another style of attitude indicator,

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instrument presentation in general aviation had been standardized.

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The artificial horizon that we know today, blue for sky, brown for earth and a pitch presentation matching reality became the industry norm.

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And there was also new rules for charted flights with much more stringent demands on pilot ratings

447

and flight experience

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and crucially today the go no-go decision for such a charter flight doesn't just rest on the shoulders of the pilot.

449

Now Don McLean called February the 3rd 1959 the day the music died,

450

referring to Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper and what their loss meant to music at the time.

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But there were actually four people on board that aircraft.

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Roger Peterson, the 21 year old pilot, received far less attention after the crash and he had,

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like I mentioned, recently been married with his widow, Diane, being only 20 years old at the time.

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He was buried on February the 6th in Storm Lake, Iowa and in 2009, 50 years after this accident,

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a monument dedicated specifically to him was unveiled at the crash site.

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Which I actually think you should also stand as a monument

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to all of the thousands of anonymous private pilots out there

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who have met their fate as a result of unwillingly flying into instrument conditions.

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Now this was a slightly shorter video in our series about famous people who lost their lives in aviation accidents

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and if you have another suggestion of something

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that we should cover then please let us know in the comments below

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or if you scan this QR code or use the link below

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So you can tell me yourself in a message on Patreon or face to face on our next Zoom hangout.

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I would love to see you there.

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My name is Peter Hörnfeld and you're watching Mentor Pilot.

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Have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time.

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Bye-bye.

쉐도잉이란? 영어 실력을 빠르게 키우는 과학적 방법

쉐도잉(Shadowing)은 원래 전문 통역사 훈련을 위해 개발된 언어 학습 기법으로, 다언어 학자인 Dr. Alexander Arguelles에 의해 대중화된 방법입니다. 핵심 원리는 간단하지만 매우 강력합니다: 원어민의 영어를 들으면서 1~2초의 짧은 지연으로 즉시 소리 내어 따라 말하는 것——마치 '그림자(shadow)'처럼 화자를 따라가는 것입니다. 문법 공부나 수동적인 청취와 달리, 쉐도잉은 뇌와 입 근육이 동시에 실시간으로 영어를 처리하고 재현하도록 훈련합니다. 연구에 따르면 이 방법은 발음 정확도, 억양, 리듬, 연음, 청취력, 말하기 유창성을 크게 향상시킵니다. IELTS 스피킹 준비와 자연스러운 영어 소통을 원하는 분들에게 특히 효과적입니다.

쉐도잉 연습: “I Hope Your Old Plane Crashes” | The Day The Music Died - 영상으로 영어 말하기 배우기

이 레슨에 대해

쉐도잉이란? 영어 실력을 빠르게 키우는 과학적 방법