I "Googled" Doug Rozendaal, after being intrigued by Steins reference, and found this on a Warbird Forum from 2005 - very apt for all pilots.
"All,
You are receiving this because you are in my address book and you have some affiliation with Warbirds, or someone else forwarded it to you because are in the Warbird community. (Please pass this on to your friends in our
business.)
I have spoke about Warbird accidents at NWOC, CAF, EAA, ICAS and just about anywhere I could get Warbird pilots to listen. I have shown informal data that says over the last 10 years, an average of 10 people die each year in Warbird accidents and 2 of those deaths are in CAF airplanes.
Most of you know by now that Art Vance was killed last weekend. Art's accident started me thinking about our losses this year so I looked up the fatal NTSB reports. Guess what? Arts accident is a sad milestone. We have now made our 2006 numbers. 10 deaths, two of them in the CAF. Let's use Arts death to cause us to pause and look in the mirror for a moment.
Why is this so predictable? Why do we keep doing this? None of these people planned to die. Can any of us say that we haven't done any low altitude maneuvering this year? Can any of us say that we haven't missed a checklist item, or just skipped the checklist completely, this year? Can any of us say that we haven't pushed the weather this year? Can any of us say that we haven't done a show off zoom climb on take-off this year? Have any of us flown when we were "rusty" in a particular type of airplane, maybe we didn't read the book as well as we should have the night before? My hand is not up.
Anyone who responds to this information by thinking about the other people who need to fix what they do wrong, is missing the point. Because we fly these airplanes, we are all part of the problem and the pilot we have the most control over is the one in the mirror. Figuring out what the "other"
pilots need to do, is not what is needed here.
There are three historic common themes among warbird accidents, judgment, proficiency and recurrent training. Maintenance is an issue, but flying a broken airplane is really just poor judgment. Mechanical failure not related to poor maintenance does occur, but very seldom.
My apologies to anyone who was offended because they are so good, they can be no better. That should be a pretty small group. The rest of us have to figure out how to do better. What has the pilot in the mirror done, to improve, especially the contributing factors, judgment, proficiency, and recurrent training, this year?
Lets put this in Warbird pilot language. "If ya always do what ya always
done, you'll always get what ya always got." We got 10 dead friends every
year, and that ain't cuttin' it.
Tailwinds,
Doug Rozendaal
5-9-05 T-6 Kissimmee FL, Structural Failure, 2 Fatal
5-28-05 Stearman Taylor TX, Power Line, 1 Fatal
6-16-05 PT-26 Williamson GA, Downwind T/O, 2 Fatal
7-23-05 Yak 52 Claremore OK, Airshow Roll on T/O 1 Fatal
7-26-05 P-51 Malone WI, Maneuvering Flight, 1 Fatal
8-3-05 BT-13 Lyme NH, Stall on T/O 2 Fatal
10-8-05 F-6F Cookville TN, Unknown 1 Fatal"