Analyzing The Fatal Torque Roll Corsair Crash Of WW2

This is Sad to Watch

This crash happened on May 12, 1945, when the pilots of VMF-513 were practicing for carrier qualifications off the coast of California. The young pilot on the video attempted to get carrier qualified in the Corsair and the video gives us an interesting analysis of a sad event.

We guess that even those early catapults gave a strong shove when let go. Looks like he got surprised acceleration and didn’t maintain control position. It’s definitely short but terrifying for this rookie pilot.

While the crash looked survivable, sadly it was not. Based on incident reports, the pilot hit his head on the instrument panel knocking him unconscious, then the plane sank pretty quickly.