Not good but they were not pylon racing That requires a closed air space and the Dallas Airport was open to outside aircraft so no way were they pylon racing besides I'm pretty sure B-17's don't race anything I've ridden in a B-17 three times and a B-24 probably a dozen or more actually rode in the co pilot seat on two flights Helps that I've been flying since I was 12 or so makes it about 60 years now
Watching a couple videos I think either a malfunction in the P-63 or the pilot had a medical problem I'm leaning to the pilot
Here's a pict of the B-24
No, B-17's don't race anything, and if I suggested that somehow, my bad. Give a B-17 a three minute head start and it would still lose an air race against three WWII fighters...and lose it in the first three feet. I meant the possibility that the three fighters might have been racing one another, and the outer two had bled off speed, and, unfortunately, had widened their turns. With disastrous consequences for the outermost of the three, and for the crew of the B-17.
The reason I was pondering this possibily was because I had seen a configuration like that at an airshow many years ago. All of us, the spectators, were on the south side of the fence looking north across the east-west runway (which presumably accounted for one of the two long pattern legs--the other paralleling the runway again, but behind us to the south), and beyond that a small valley running west-to-east, and a bit further still to the north. The ridge behind that was high, but to the west end it dropped down a bit...which is where the pack of fighters showed up again before the last pylon.
The fighter race that day ran through this little valley, parallel to the runway pattern, the pack of fighters moving flat out--full throttle from west to east. After they passed us by, they ran off east about eight miles to "first" pylon, then north around (the invisible--hidden over the crest of the ridge) pylon number two, and then back SSW to round pylon number three. As they came visible again about two miles off from behind the ridge, and before they reached pylon #3, they were flying across our view (moving R to L), then they rounded the last pylon and came toward the spectators before pulling still further around to pass us by about...1/4 of a mile away or a bit more. So they ran hard around the third pylon, full left bank--4G turns or more in all cases--and coming toward us and then continued further around their turns to pass in front of us moving from our L-to-R. Sooo...as they passed us, they were paralleling the runway, but only about 1/8th of a mile off the runway traffic pattern to the north. A quarter of a mile from us.
They kept well away from one another, and the stragglers were furthest out and away from the pylons. Meaning...closer to us, but also moving slower, as they had dropped out and been left behind. But they had also separated from the faster planes above and inside them too. So they were the closest to us...but they were, therefore, also closest to the runway pattern loop too. Whether running the same direction or opposite to one another.
In Texas, that might have brought the "outer loop" fighters just too close to the planes flying a traffic loop outside them. In this case the B-17.
So, and having seen it organized that way myself, I do have to wonder if the three fighters, all three inside the flightpath of the B-17 were finishing or had just finished such a pylon race. As with the way the traffic lanes were organized thirty years back was that it had the racers INSIDE the outer loop traffic, and that's almost what I see here.
Which leads to the following conclusion: In this case, and for whatever reasons, the converging aircraft were at, or too close to the same altitude for safety's sake. I know it will all be part of many reviews yet to come, so I'll wonder until I hear more, I suppose.
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Further developments: It seems someone on the local control VFR airspace radio net network told/ordered the P-63 pilot to pass ahead of the B-17. Presumably this voice would be that of the "Air Boss," also known as the flight show controller. So the fighter pilot knew the B-17 was there, but, and until it showed up so suddenly from underneath (big blindspot below on the P-63 Kingcobra, I'm hearing), he may not have been sure whether he had already passed ahead of it, or would need to throttle up to do it...until the bomber suddenly showed up as large as life, coming up from that blind spot underneath.
Another of the clips shows what is, to my mind, a very subtle interruption in the fighter's flight path. Was he throttling up to avoid the collision? Or throttling back down...fast? Was he trying to dump airspeed by bringing in the flaps as quickly as he could? We'll never really know, but I don't buy the "suicide" theory some [*elsewhere. Not here*] have speculated about for even one moment.
I can see the fighter pilot instinctively pull back on the stick, to yank his aircraft back up and away from the bomber, only to have it mush out in a high-speed stall. I can see him--in a mere instant--think about and then discard the idea of diving below the B-17 because he wouldn't have had enough altitude after the dive to pull back up and avoid the ground. So many possibilities, a very short time to decide, and almost all of the choices bad...at best....