Is the ditching pilot damage a little bit on the harsh side?

[Cpt_Siddy]

I made a perfect belly landing on airfield's grass patch in hurricane at low speed and as soon as i touched ground my pilot died. 

What gives that some planes can crash in to forest at high speed, like 110 with pilot surviving ....and some planes kill pilot if they hit a blade of grass that looks at it wrong way.

I had a MC 202 literally explode on bally landing once, and hurri killing me on perfect texts book belly landing. This is now happened way too often for it to be a just a coincidence. 

[LukeFF]

 

[Vortice]

I was killed by a tree after recently bailing out at 2000 feet and successfully deploying my parachute over a wooded area.

 

That has never happened to me before. I must have annoyed the Ents, or something.

[Guster]

49 minutes ago, Vortice said:

I was killed by a tree after recently bailing out at 2000 feet and successfully deploying my parachute over a wooded area.

 

That has never happened to me before. I must have annoyed the Ents, or something.

 

Ents can be a bit hot-headed, can't they? I mean we're not even flying Mossies yet.

[Diggun]

20 minutes ago, Guster said:

Ents can be a bit hot-headed, can't they? I mean we're not even flying Mossies yet.

This made me snort tea out my nose. Good show, old chap!

[PatrickAWlson]

At a minimum the damage to the plane does not visually correspond to the damage to the meat puppet inside of it.  I made a wheels down emergency landing.  Flaps deployed.  Broke the gear and spun a bit.  Plane was visually intact.  Didn't flip, cartwheel, lose large chunks, etc.  Meat puppet was kaput.

 

Not sure which is right: the computer calculating the harm done or the visuals that represent the harm, but they do not seem to bein sync.

[oc2209]

4 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

At a minimum the damage to the plane does not visually correspond to the damage to the meat puppet inside of it.  I made a wheels down emergency landing.  Flaps deployed.  Broke the gear and spun a bit.  Plane was visually intact.  Didn't flip, cartwheel, lose large chunks, etc.  Meat puppet was kaput.

 

Not sure which is right: the computer calculating the harm done or the visuals that represent the harm, but they do not seem to bein sync.

 

If your gear broke, that takes quite a bit of force. Collapsing is one thing, breaking is another.

 

I've been trying to kill my pilot in some tests, and I can't without going at least 180 MPH at contact with the ground (wheels up).

 

To test with the plane the OP mentioned, I bellied the Hurricane into a slightly hilly area (to complicate things), and still had no issues. I also landed it next to an airfield.

 

Here's one landing:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Then I decided to try a plane that, we can assume, would have a high sink rate and be a relatively poor glider.

 

I've read that the Fw-190 was a poor glider, but instead of trying that I went with a P-47 with an 80% fuel load. Multiple landings on different terrain slopes, no issues until I intentionally went too fast. Here's one successful landing:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Same as above, in external view:

 

Spoiler

 

 

You'll notice that with the 47, I chose not to lower flaps. I also touched down much faster than I did with the Hurricane. My reasoning was that the 47 would drop like a stone if it got too slow, while the Hurricane would probably settle down like a literal kite.

 

If people aren't going in too fast horizontally, then it must be either sink rate or the angle they're touching the ground.

 

In many sloppy/lazy landings since the physics changes, I can say I've only had one seemingly implausible fatality. All in all, I don't really see a problem. The only thing I don't like about the new system is that it eliminates the possibility for miraculous high-speed crash landings without a pilot scratch--the kind I've read about anecdotally pretty often. You know, the ones where the plane looks like it was hit by a tornado, and the pilot's standing next to the wreckage with a dumb grin on his face.

 

I used to be able to pull those off in the sim, but I doubt I can anymore. I don't even try now.

[[APAF]VR_Spartan85]

4 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

At a minimum the damage to the plane does not visually correspond to the damage to the meat puppet inside of it.  I made a wheels down emergency landing.  Flaps deployed.  Broke the gear and spun a bit.  Plane was visually intact.  Didn't flip, cartwheel, lose large chunks, etc.  Meat puppet was kaput.

 

Not sure which is right: the computer calculating the harm done or the visuals that represent the harm, but they do not seem to bein sync.

In a 109, Engine leaked oil all over the windscreen and engine died, punched off the canopy then made a three point landing  in a field… soon as I touched, pilot dead, plane rolled to a safe stop… 

felt confused and robbed…then just agreed to myself rather just bail…. If there’s no forest…

if forest, take out as many trees as possible.

[ITAF_Airone1989]

3 minutes ago, [APAF]VR_Spartan85 said:

made a three point landing  in a field…

The field was and airfield field or a field field?
Cause in the second case you should keep your gear up

[oc2209]

22 minutes ago, ITAF_Airone1989 said:

The field was and airfield field or a field field?
Cause in the second case you should keep your gear up

 

In real life, very much so.

 

The sim, however, doesn't punish us for making wheels-down landings on rough terrain.

 

Since the physics changes, it is possible to injure/kill your pilot if you flip over on the plane's back, whereas before it wasn't an issue. So it's getting closer to the reality of why you shouldn't do wheels-down landings on uneven ground. But the greatest danger in reality is something that can't be replicated here, and that's soft/muddy ground. Wheels lock into it, the plane will flip violently/suddenly, and you get a dead pilot. It's much worse than just the ground not being flat enough.

 

As long as mud or deep snow isn't simulated, we can pretty much land anywhere, wheels-down, with impunity:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited February 7, 2022 by oc2209

[Yogiflight]

Today I got in trouble during takeoff with the Hs 129 at 8m/s crosswind. As soon as I lifted the tail off the ground, I lost control. The duck broke out to the right started spinning, the left gear broke, the wing ditched and broke and it didn't even take half a turn and my pilot was dead.

Apart from the fact, that it doesn't make sense, that the aircraft brakes to the right as soon as it lifts the tail, while I was able to hold it straight with left rudder when the tail was down (it shouldn't have more rudder authority with the tail down than with lifted tail), there wasn't even a crash, which could kill the pilot. If humans would die that easy, Formula 1 drivers would die faster than the AI in career mode.

[[APAF]VR_Spartan85]

16 hours ago, ITAF_Airone1989 said:

The field was and airfield field or a field field?
Cause in the second case you should keep your gear up

It was not an aerodrome…Tried wheels up another time, dead…. Two wheels, dead…  ironically… landing inverted.. lived

Edited February 8, 2022 by [APAF]VR_Spartan85

[TheSNAFU]

This is the 3rd thread going about the problem of pilots dying when they shouldn’t have. See the technical and bug section for the other two. I have experienced this several times, a very frustrating event when you’ve invested a lot of time in a campaign. Something has definitely changed in an update but I can’t say which one. I’ve also seen some suggest it’s not a problem which I completely disagree with.
 

Hope the devs get a look at it. 

Edited February 7, 2022 by TheSNAFU

[Denum]

Yup it is. 

 

Even with extreme care I've been getting killed. 

 

It's starting to really sour the multiplayer experience. 

 

Try to land damaged with gear down, I die. Try to land while heavily wounded. Definitely die.

 

I try to land with my gear up and engine off, prop taps the ground and I die. 

 

It's so random. 

 

I screwed up and compressed in a dive with my Jug, skidded across the ground at 300mph side ways and backwards and lived. 

How do we explain that? 

[FuriousMeow]

I bet the sink rate is more what's doing it than speed. Slam into the ground, even if you don't think you are slamming - if you're flaring to ditch you are hitting the ground hard, pilot gets severely hurt or dead. Come in low, level and skim the ground, pilot lives. At least that's been my experience.

 

There was at least 1 Me163 pilot that broke his back landing, that thing had a skid (maybe with suspension?). Coming down just a little hard without gear should do quite a bit of damage.

Edited February 7, 2022 by FuriousMeow
stuff

[oc2209]

10 minutes ago, TheSNAFU said:

I’ve also seen some suggest it’s not a problem which I completely disagree with.

 

Not a major problem, anyway. It must be an issue specific to a set of circumstances that can't be easily replicated.

 

I took a 190A-8, the fattest one possible, and gave it a 500L fuel load. Put it down roughly because I thought I was going to hit a tree. Still couldn't kill the pilot.

 

Spoiler

 

 

External view:

 

Spoiler

 

 

I dug the wing in to try to stop faster. 

 

4 minutes ago, FuriousMeow said:

I bet the sink rate is more what's doing it than speed. Slam into the ground, even if you don't think you are slamming - if you're flaring to ditch you are hitting the ground hard, pilot gets severely hurt or dead. Come in low, level and skim the ground, pilot lives. At least that's been my experience.

 

Ditto.

Edited February 7, 2022 by oc2209

[=420=Syphen]

Something is causing it to act manic. Repeat a proper ditching procedure on a road or open field while flying online and you're dead half the time.  The devs should take a peek into it and ensure we have consistency and not a dice roll.

[oc2209]

18 minutes ago, =420=Syphen said:

Something is causing it to act manic. Repeat a proper ditching procedure on a road or open field while flying online and you're dead half the time.  The devs should take a peek into it and ensure we have consistency and not a dice roll.

 

Is it possible that online factors are making it much worse than it appears to be in single player? I'm not saying the issue can't happen in single player, I'm saying it's less frequent.

 

If the landing sensitivity is as extreme as you and others say, then it should be easily recreated in single player. Yet, in my experience, it's not.

[=420=Syphen]

2 minutes ago, oc2209 said:

 

Is it possible that online factors are making it much worse than it appears to be in single player? I'm not saying the issue can't happen in single player, I'm saying it's less frequent.

 

If the landing sensitivity is as extreme as you and others say, then it should be easily recreated in single player. Yet, in my experience, it's not.

 

Yes, I postulated exactly that in the post in complaints. 

[BlitzPig_EL]

Multiplayer definitely has something to do with it.  Since the last hotfix, the BlitzPigs are noticing more air to air collisions that shouldn't have happened, and a staggering increase in deaths on landings that previously would have been survived, all online.  I was waiting on a field for one of my guys to land so we could go back up together, his plane was damaged, he was not wounded.  Was watching his approach.  All looked perfectly normal but before his wheels even touched the ground, his plane exploded as if he dove straight in.

 

Something is going on here, and it's not pilot error.

[TheSNAFU]

Where there’s smoke there is usually fire. Numbers

of players are noticing something has changed and that our pilots are getting killed in situations they shouldn’t have and that they would not have been in the past. I don’t fly MP and it has happened to me enough to make me think something is off. P51D in each case. 

[Denum]

2 hours ago, FuriousMeow said:

I bet the sink rate is more what's doing it than speed. Slam into the ground, even if you don't think you are slamming - if you're flaring to ditch you are hitting the ground hard, pilot gets severely hurt or dead. Come in low, level and skim the ground, pilot lives. At least that's been my experience.

 

There was at least 1 Me163 pilot that broke his back landing, that thing had a skid (maybe with suspension?). Coming down just a little hard without gear should do quite a bit of damage.

I think its deeper then that. I've seen guys touch down very gently, the nose dipped a tiny bit and it kills them. 

The PE-2 is down right irritating to land with any damage right now. Usually ends up killing most of the crew. I can understand if it was a bad landing but when it kills 4 out 5 of us after a bombing run. 

Needs a longer sniff.

[oc2209]

1 hour ago, TheSNAFU said:

Where there’s smoke there is usually fire. Numbers

of players are noticing something has changed and that our pilots are getting killed in situations they shouldn’t have and that they would not have been in the past. I don’t fly MP and it has happened to me enough to make me think something is off. P51D in each case. 

 

I'm posting these for comparison purposes; not to argue that what's happening to you isn't a problem. As I see it, the more we can figure out on our own, the less legwork the devs have to do to isolate the issue.

 

P-51D landing with gear down:

 

Spoiler

 

 

P-51D landing with gear up:

 

Spoiler

 

 

So what I'd like you to do (because I can't), is try to recreate the times you die while landing, and record it. Then compare it to my recordings. My touchdown speeds are between 90-100 MPH. I also had a nearly full tank of gas in both clips.

 

I know the devs would want the actual game tracks for technical accuracy, but just for amateur sleuthing, I'm curious what your results will be.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Try it on a summer map, and turn your HUD on so we can the indicated air speed.

[oc2209]

7 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

If humans would die that easy, Formula 1 drivers would die faster than the AI in career mode.

 

Speaking of car racing, if I had to guess, I'd say WWII pilots' lack of neck support would probably be the greatest contribution to serious and fatal injuries.

 

Whenever I think of injuries like this, I recall Dale Earnhardt's death. You probably don't know of any NASCAR drivers, but that's when I first became aware of the fragility of the human head when it whips around unsupported. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device

 

1 hour ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Try it on a summer map, and turn your HUD on so we can the indicated air speed.

I'm uploading some funny Kuban recordings to YouTube right now.

 

But is there a way I can show HUD during recordings?

 

I mean, in a track recording. I guess I could just skip the track and record the sortie directly to the Nvidia software, but I typically don't because it makes a lot of extraneous multi-gig clips I need to delete later. It's much easier to save a track in-game, and then record the track as it's being replayed. That's my method; I'm sure there are better ones.

 

Okay, here goes.

 

Here's a P-47 high-speed belly landing that resulted in a serious injury. It was one of three attempts, the other two were completely successful (no injury); all done at speeds over 150 MPH, on or near the runway.

 

Spoiler

 

 

I'm probably reaching my daily YouTube upload limit (if it's still 10 a day), so I'll show pertinent screenshots of the above replay:

 

Exact moment, external view, when my pilot's vision turns to injured:

 

Spoiler

 

Airspeed at moment of injury:

 

Spoiler

 

Actual touchdown speed was approximately 160 MPH.

 

Here's some Kuban landings:

 

This was the successful one:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

And this was the unsuccessful one (fatal):

 

Spoiler

 

 

In both Yak landings, my HUD airspeed was between 100-110 MPH. To be honest, I wasn't looking closely at my speed at the moment of impact, but more concerned with navigating the terrain properly.

 

I feel like the fatal landing is reasonably fair. The suddenness of the tail drop, the fact that the tail broke, etc.

 

Odd how the successful landing resulted in no injury at all though.

Edited February 8, 2022 by oc2209

[oc2209]

Okay, last one for the day.

 

Spoiler

 

 

I wanted to make this a much cleaner and more impressive mountaintop landing, but I was going too fast. In a last act of desperation, I decided to fully plow into the hillside when I realized that clearing the hill crest would probably be fatal (I'd come down in a stall in the trees).

 

109s are actually better for these kinds of implausible stunts, because they're very tail-heavy and unlikely to flip over as easily as the Yak did. Yaks really were badly nose-heavy in real life.

 

Also in real life, of course, there's no way the 109's landing gear would survive in the above scenario.

 

Anyway, the end result of my testing is that, aside from the P-47 belly landing where I suddenly became seriously injured, I haven't experienced anything blatantly unfair or unreasonable (aside from surviving multiple landings on a mountain ridge).

 

So I'm calling this predominantly a multiplayer issue. It's not impossible for oddities to occur in single, but it's seemingly hard to kill my pilot even when I do really stupid things.

[Aurora_Stealth]

21 hours ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Multiplayer definitely has something to do with it.  Since the last hotfix, the BlitzPigs are noticing more air to air collisions that shouldn't have happened, and a staggering increase in deaths on landings that previously would have been survived, all online.  I was waiting on a field for one of my guys to land so we could go back up together, his plane was damaged, he was not wounded.  Was watching his approach.  All looked perfectly normal but before his wheels even touched the ground, his plane exploded as if he dove straight in.

 

Something is going on here, and it's not pilot error.

 

Hopefully this can be explained / investigated by dev's at some point.

 

Just my two cents to offer here having had some experience with aircraft passenger seating and the effect on ATD / test dummies and head injury performance through dynamic 16g (horizontal) and 14g (vertical) sled testing...

 

I agree with people here it could be that somehow the netcode / server performance is affecting how long the peak loads (especially vertical loads - from momentary high sink rates or interactions, collisions etc) on the player/pilot are being recorded by the online servers which is leading to inconsistency. It could be that in some cases the server is recording the peak loads as being sustained for too long (several seconds), when in actual fact it may have only occurred for a fraction of this to the user / player (locally).

 

There is a really, really sensitive link here between how much time (we're talking an accuracy of ~0.1 second) the peak loading is sustained for which is going to be difficult for any game to process in a busy online server while trying to maintain reasonable bandwidth/latency and not causing server performance to be affected.

 

I don't know all the details of netcode and how the game processes it, but in terms of the human body.. it can overall (not directly to the head obviously) sustain briefly as much as 18 - 20 g's in an air crash situation in fairly modern passenger seating (severe life changing injuries the higher up the scale) but in a lot of cases we're talking not much more than fractions of a second you can sustain where head injury, spinal fracture and neck injuries would quickly occur in an enclosed cockpit or with objects that could cause you damage in close proximity. Theoretically, modern high safety systems may mean this diverges but most people won't survive 21 g's on an airliner - it may be different in others types of cockpit and arrangement though. If you're interested I'd recommend the programme 'The Plane Crash'... should be online somewhere, maybe youtube... its absolutely fascinating and is a real life test showing how crashing an old Boeing 727 works out in reality... with all the test equipment inside recording it. The pilots jump out a few minutes before pitching the aircraft into a descent, its wicid but also disturbing to see afterwards the effect.

 

The other question is how head injury is being compensated for (does it include a probability/dice roll?), which is potentially the most serious issue here ... we're not going to see visualised accurately the pilots head in the cockpit hitting the dash/instrument panel/gunsight (unless dead or knocked out) but it could be part of a background calculation.

 

Anyway, yes agreed - vertical loads will be much more sensitive for the pilot/player and harder to protect from and dissipate the energy out of... which is why helicopter crashes tend to have a relatively high probability of fatality.

 

So if there is a delay in processing this data or recording it as too long ... even fractions of a second, it could drastically affect the end result - then again... I can't say for sure how efficient the netcode is but its been a source of hassle before on other time/frequency sensitive issues.

 

Final note: I'm just referring to G-forces as a measure, ultimately its going to be the ability of the aircraft, cockpit design etc to protect the player/pilot from it that will matter on crunch time. This will vary between different vehicles and types but above is a rough reference for aircraft passenger seat design. It may vary slightly for pilot seating however.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Aurora_Stealth

[Guster]

I did a google search on the subject of 'tolerable instant G-loads', and it seems the average male can survive up to 70 Gs. The 50-70 range is considered critical, and statistically very few people have survived more than 80 Gs. I suppose modern day race drivers fall in the latter category given the nature of the cockpit that doesn't allow much body movement and because of the type of seatbelts used, but they are an exception. Normally 50-70 Gs means broken bones, damaged organs, severe concussion and blood vessels ripped apart, and the neck is particularly fragile given the weight of the human head.

 

Time is a deadly factor: If you decelerate from 20 mph to 0 in a second you'll pull just under one G, but if you do the same in 1/10 of a second you'll be exposed to about 9 Gs, and so forth, and at any higher speed it's really going to start hurting.

 

Now, I can't claim to hold a PhD in physics and I'm not a physician either, but I suppose there are a lot of other factors than just the G-load. Intuitively I'm guessing the angle at which the plane makes contact with the ground is crucial, as is which part of the plane that touches the surface first, and if there's a sudden change in the direction of travel, how well the pilot is strapped in, where his head is going, how 'crash safe' the cockpit is etc., etc.. I have no idea how much of this is simulated in the game or if it's just a simple G-calculator (like in many racing titles), and if you're above this or that value you're dead.

[TheSNAFU]

Ok I have run a bunch of tests today and as a result am revising my view on this. While I have experienced being killed in wrecks in which I felt I should have easily survived some of them at least, may have been caused by my error(s). In my testing today (all SP) I found I could pretty consistently survive when I reduced speed to 120- ~100 MPH and kept the nose up for as long as possible. All tests were performed with gear up. In the tests in which I came in more flatly and/or faster I was far more likely to be killed. I do think it is more likely to be killed in a belly landing than it once was, but I can't say it is as far off as I originally thought. Again, my experience is strictly SP as I do not play MP.    

Edited February 8, 2022 by TheSNAFU

[SCG_Wulfe]

33 minutes ago, TheSNAFU said:

Ok I have run a bunch of tests today and as a result am revising my view on this. While I have experienced being killed in wrecks in which I felt I should have easily survived some of them at least, may have been caused by my error(s). In my testing today (all SP) I found I could pretty consistently survive when I reduced speed to 120- ~100 MPH and kept the nose up for as long as possible. All tests were performed with gear up. In the tests in which I came in more flatly and/or faster I was far more likely to be killed. I do think it is more likely to be killed in a belly landing than it once was, but I can't say it is as far off as I originally thought. Again, my experience is strictly SP as I do not play MP.    

 

Honestly, this was my impression when I first started reading and hearing reports of how often people were dying on ditching. I expected it was just due to ditching at too high of a sink rate at too high of a speed. I almost always ditch quite slowly and gently and was finding that while you couldn't pull off the highspeed crashes and skids that you could before, it all seemed within the realm of reality with the new system. However, something happened to me on TAW last night that has made me rethink my position. A squamate had mentioned that ditching was extremely dangerous now and that he would only do it now on a road with gear down if he did it at all. (He suggested it's better to bail than take the risk.) Given I had successfully completed a bunch of belly landings without any issue, I waved him off. However it turned out that I ended up in a situation where I lost power close to home and had a choice to ditch in a forest or on a road. I chose the road of course and flared my 109e7 perfectly into a nice 3 point touch down at 180 km/h after having lowered my gear knowing I was landing on a road. I began braking and my speed must have been near 150km/h when all of the sudden came upon a small rise and subsequent dip in the road. My wings briefly caught the air over the bump and I lifted off again, maybe 8 feet high. It then landed again in a 3 point attitude and my pilot was instantly killed. My gear didn't collapse, there was no damage and I was treated to the visual of my perfectly intact aircraft coasting to a stop on the road with my dead pilot inside. This was gentle enough that at best it would have left my pilot with a sore neck. I expect that whatever calculation is deriving the Gs exerted on the pilot is not sufficiently taking into account crumple, deformation and absorption of g forces from the airframe, gear, seat cushioning (chute), ground compression, etc. Even if its a workaround of a static modifier on the pilots survivability. This needs to be solved. 

[oc2209]

6 hours ago, TheSNAFU said:

Ok I have run a bunch of tests today and as a result am revising my view on this. While I have experienced being killed in wrecks in which I felt I should have easily survived some of them at least, may have been caused by my error(s). In my testing today (all SP) I found I could pretty consistently survive when I reduced speed to 120- ~100 MPH and kept the nose up for as long as possible. All tests were performed with gear up. In the tests in which I came in more flatly and/or faster I was far more likely to be killed. I do think it is more likely to be killed in a belly landing than it once was, but I can't say it is as far off as I originally thought. Again, my experience is strictly SP as I do not play MP.    

 

Thanks for this report, and taking the time to test things.

 

5 hours ago, SCG_Wulfe said:

However, something happened to me on TAW last night that has made me rethink my position.

 

Just to be clear (I don't know what TAW is an abbreviation of), this means you were online, right?

 

Your story definitely sounds like it shouldn't have been fatal. I do think the 109's gear is too robust in the sim overall, so in reality probably at least one gear would fold and/or you'd loop after the big bounce. But since you settled down squarely, no, there's pretty much no way a bump like that should be fatal. Taking a hop in a 109 is more a question of how badly it could've ripped up the plane (again, in real life).

[oc2209]

6 hours ago, SCG_Wulfe said:

I chose the road of course and flared my 109e7 perfectly into a nice 3 point touch down at 180 km/h after having lowered my gear knowing I was landing on a road. I began braking and my speed must have been near 150km/h when all of the sudden came upon a small rise and subsequent dip in the road.

 

Okay, wait a minute. Sorry to nitpick, but when you spoke in KPH my mind blanked because I only think in MPH. I thought 180 sounded high, but I didn't realize how excessive that is until I just landed a 109E now. I don't fly the E much, mostly the F and G. You can, and should, land the E at around 90 MPH or less (144 KPH).

 

Watch my speed here:

 

Spoiler

 

 

It looks like I touch down pretty hard from the cockpit view. It felt like I did.

 

Here's the external view:

 

Spoiler

 

 

I get down to around 100 KPH very quickly after landing. Granted, the rough terrain/snow slows me down faster than a road would, but the point is, there's no way you should be rolling out at 150 KPH, since that's higher than the highest recommended touchdown speed.

 

I'm not saying it's 100% justification for pilot death, but nevertheless, those speeds are far higher than they should be.

[--[---MAILMAN----]

I came in for a landing with a P-51D, misjudged my speed and stalled short of the runway.  I came down on all three wheels and had a short bounce.  I touched the brakes too much and nosed over bending the prop.  No other damage to the aircraft other than the bent prop and probable seizing of the engine.  My pilot died.  A bit of an over correction for those crash landings where the airplane is heavily damaged and the pilot doesn't suffer a scratch.

[oc2209]

19 minutes ago, --[---MAILMAN---- said:

I came in for a landing with a P-51D, misjudged my speed and stalled short of the runway.  I came down on all three wheels and had a short bounce.  I touched the brakes too much and nosed over bending the prop.  No other damage to the aircraft other than the bent prop and probable seizing of the engine.  My pilot died.  A bit of an over correction for those crash landings where the airplane is heavily damaged and the pilot doesn't suffer a scratch.

 

Online or offline?

 

I have a theory about sudden pitch changes regarding belly landings, but it would only partially apply in your case.

 

I was thinking about the belly shapes of certain planes; the P-47 and P-51, for instance. The 51 has that intake in the belly, which is indestructible as far as the damage model is concerned. When that makes contact with the ground, it doesn't deform, rip off, etc. It just acts as a solid fulcrum, which in some cases might cause the plane to pitch over suddenly during a belly landing. That spike in force is possibly what kills pilots. Compound the issue with online lag making the indicated force last a few fractions of a second longer than it actually did, and a rare event in single player becomes commonplace in multiplayer.

 

Or it could be another issue related to an intake 'catching' on some terrain bump, which again registers a force spike.

 

It seems like the flat-bellied Focke Wulf does better in these kinds of tests:

 

Spoiler

 

 

As for catastrophic landings with gear down, that could be something as simple as one landing gear touching down before the other, coupled with a high sink rate; the force of the touchdown is all channeled through the one gear for a fraction of a second, the pilot physiology registers a sudden spike, etc.

 

Ultimately it would still mean that there's a flaw in the system that interprets certain physics forces; and this flaw is compounded by internet lag. But I don't believe the issue is as simple as the pilot being too squishy; because if that were the case, I couldn't get away with the things I do, under any circumstances.

[oc2209]

As the last part of my experiments, I attempted to stall during landing to drop as hard as I could into the ground.

 

I never managed to kill the pilot on touchdown. I did cause one death out of multiple attempts by flipping around and landing hard on my tail, which is the same way my earlier Yak landing killed the pilot.

 

What's interesting (sort of) about this P-47 landing, is that I managed to touchdown very hard on just one gear leg. That impact did nothing to the pilot, or even the gear strut. It was only the tail-snapping impact that did him in.

 

Cockpit view:

 

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External view:

 

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[messsucher]

I have not got pilot killed in crash landings, only injured. So far this looks like an improvement, all this talk about deaths has made me careful with landings, which is good. It used to be so that you could crash your plane down where ever except forest without any problems, which was bad.

[=420=Syphen]

25 minutes ago, messsucher said:

I have not got pilot killed in crash landings, only injured. So far this looks like an improvement, all this talk about deaths has made me careful with landings, which is good. It used to be so that you could crash your plane down where ever except forest without any problems, which was bad.

 

Yes, the model was seriously flawed previously. But there is currently some strange random seeming occurrence where pilots are dying on safe, good ditchings. It will be nice to figure out what is causing this. 

[messsucher]

Yeah.

[MikhaVT]

I had a landing the other day in a MiG-3 that killed the pilot. was already wounded, then came in for a belly landing at 200kph. Sink rate was down to less than two on the indicator on touch-down and as soon as the belly hit pilot was dead. 

 

Just days before that i had an La-5 belly landing that went flawlessly without pilot injury. 

[SCG_Wulfe]

16 hours ago, oc2209 said:

 

Okay, wait a minute. Sorry to nitpick, but when you spoke in KPH my mind blanked because I only think in MPH. I thought 180 sounded high, but I didn't realize how excessive that is until I just landed a 109E now. I don't fly the E much, mostly the F and G. You can, and should, land the E at around 90 MPH or less (144 KPH).

 

Watch my speed here:

 

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It looks like I touch down pretty hard from the cockpit view. It felt like I did.

 

Here's the external view:

 

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I get down to around 100 KPH very quickly after landing. Granted, the rough terrain/snow slows me down faster than a road would, but the point is, there's no way you should be rolling out at 150 KPH, since that's higher than the highest recommended touchdown speed.

 

I'm not saying it's 100% justification for pilot death, but nevertheless, those speeds are far higher than they should be.

 

Fair enough. Keep in mind I'm working off my memory of glimpses at the speedometer on the way down and into final. The 150km/h was a rough guestimate of the speed I assumed I must have been travelling in order for my plane to lift off so readily off that hop in the road. It sure felt slower to me, but was trying to be liberal in my speed estimates. Also keep in mind I was landing on a road in the woods with engine out and therefore was trying to keep my speed up until the flare to avoid a power off low alt stall. I did not have flaps deployed. Finally, I was well down and had been rolling down the road for at least a 100-200 meters. I had begun light braking in the last 100 meters before it lifted off the bump in the road. I wish I had a recording, but I do not. However I can assure you that all of this was very gentle and at very low sink rates. I have no doubt that bad things may have happened to the gear on the last hop, but the pilot would have been fine. I'm absolutely certain. 

 

That said, I know the exact grid location of the spot this happened. I may just give it a shot offline to recreate and get a recording of what happened to settle this. 

Edited February 9, 2022 by SCG_Wulfe