Hello Jim,
I witnessed Bud's 1973 Mojave accident and I think you may have been confusing the earlier Bearcat accident involving N5005 flown by owner Mike Geren at San Diego in 1971. I actually witnessed both.
Bud's Bearcat finished the Saturday heat race at Mojave and started a climb towards the east. He was in a shallow climb away from the runway and and my position. The airplane burst into flame after a short period of emitting dense black smoke. The airplane shortly thereafter arced abruptly nose down in an outside push-over and continued almost vertically into the ground. There was no pull up or change in downline after the push-over. My Dad theorized that Bud was trying to blow the fire out with a high speed power off dive to the deck where he might land. Frank Sanders disagreed and thought that the prop regulator oversped and that the prop ran away and oversped the engine to a catastrophic failure, inducing the fire.
In any case the Bearcat doesn't have a comprehensive firewall, and has many places for fire to penetrate the cockpit. In both the 1971 Geren accident and the 1973 Fountain accident the pilots lung tissue was found to contain soot or burns. In both of these cases the pilots were wearing masks and breathing oxygen, so the fires were very fast developing and severe. Lyle Shelton held a theory that the fire exploded the oxygen in their masks by penetrating some part of the system.
The racing Bearcat of Lyle Shelton has a highly mofified firewall with a layer of protective fireproofing material over the entire face of the structural former that makes up the front wing spar and forward fuselage former. This has also reduced fumes and heat entering to a degree.
The Bearcat and Tigercat are a departure from the Grumman "Ironworks" design philosophy made so famous by the Wildcat and Hellcat. They are designed with low empty weight as the first order of importance. The Bearcat is a very flexible airframe and the wing is lightly built, to the point of using much lighter materials towards the tips to ensure they would shed before the an overall failure would occur. Later in the airplanes life span it's strength would be questioned by the Navy and Grumman added a spar strap installed on airplanes over a certain flight time accumulation.
The Tigercat is also built very lightly for it's size and several inflight airframe failures caused it's retirement from aerial firefighting in the late 60's.
I have always wanted to fly both, and still want to. The Bearcat is always described as a delight. Now, how to make the two mil in desposable income.
Chris...
Topic: Anyone need a BearCat? F8F-1 (Read 5055 times)