RV-4 wings folded
 

I was talking to an older gentleman this week and was kicking the idea of buying his kit unbuilt rv4. We got to talking and he said that a rv4 was being tested down in the imperial county ca and when big daddy van was present and a few others , the plane was flying and did a maneuver and folded the wings! Is there any truth here? Circa 1985,6 7,8 or 9

I don?t think so, maybe an RV-3 but I don?t think we have lost any -4s to any sort of wing failure.

Perhaps the RV-8?
 

This story sounds remarkably like the RV-8 that folded a wing during a demo ride due to a maneuver that exceeded ultimate load. I sort of recall that it was in southern CA but I don't remember for sure. That event triggered an enormous investigation effort by Vans' with extensive testing that proved that the maneuver must have exceeded ultimate load.

My bet is that the gentleman simply confused which model it was.

He mentioned the 1980s when he got his kit was around that time. I will pick him again on this matter. It's my understanding that the rv6 and 4 can go to 11g to yield point. I suspect rv3 may be the bird in question. Any clues brought to light here will help me interview him further

My RV-6 has been flying 18.5 years and took 8.5 years to build. Have every RVator back to the 1st one and have followed the RV Accidents over the years. 14 people I have met with RVs have been in fatal crashes. :(

I have heard of one RV-4 that had two pilots on board that both pulled back on the stick and wrinkled some skins. Do not remember what skins. I also know of an RV-4 with two pilots on board where the back seat pilot was flying and asked about a Split-S. When builder in front seat said that it could the back seat pilot did a Split-S. The airspeed indicator was pegged during the Split-S. Yes they went well over REDLINE. After a safe landing, the elevators were found wrinkled. The owner built new elevators and inspected the rest of the airplane. The airplane few safely for many years following repairs after the incident.

As per the conversation I had he did mention that' two persons were on board and they perished as a result of a wing failure.

That would have had to have been the RV-8 crash. IIRC, it only suffered catastrophic failure on one wing before the crash. I don't think any RV-4 has ever had an in flight wing failure. There is on record an Australian RV-4 that suffered in flight structural failure on the empenage and crashed with fatalities after severely out-of-envelope acro operations but that was pure pilot error.

If it was in the 80's it could not have been the RV-8 crash. That accident occured May 1998.

So either the time line is wrong, or other details of the story are wrong.

There has never been a catastrophic wing failure of an RV-4 (as mentioned, there is at least a couple incidents of extreme over speed that caused some damage).

There you have it, from someone who knows.

The only known catastrophic wing failures earlier than the RV-8 crash were in RV-3 early models which were single seat airplanes and thus would have been only single fatalities. Right?

Which was the inflight failure from dogfighting a retied AF general?