Passing the Buck: The story of the 2022 Wings Over Dallas air show collision
On the 12th of November 2022, thousands of spectators at the Wings Over Dallas air show in Dallas, Texas bore witness to a sudden tragedy, as two WWII-era warplanes collided in midair during a performance, killing 6 crewmembers. In numerous spectator photographs and videos, a single-pilot Bell P-63 fighter could be seen arcing toward the Boeing B-17 “Texas Raiders,” its belly up in a steep left turn, until the two aircraft crossed paths, and in the blink of an eye the P-63 cleaved the larger bomber in two. Shaken by the loss inflicted on their tight-knit community, the air show’s volunteer-led organizers, the Commemorative Air Force, were left wondering whether the procedures used to prevent collisions during large formation flights might have some flaw that placed the two planes on a collision course. But the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report, and interviews with those involved, make clear that the problem was not so much that the procedures were flawed, but that no procedures existed.
At Wings Over Dallas, the pilots of eight airborne aircraft, flying in close proximity to one another, were placed under the control of a so-called “air boss,” a role requiring only the bare minimum of qualifications, without prior knowledge of the maneuvers that the air boss would ask them to perform. Even worse, almost everyone involved seemed to think that this was normal — a remarkable example of what sociologist Diane Vaughan termed “normalization of deviance.” What follows is therefore not only the story of the disaster at Wings Over Dallas, but also the story of how the Commemorative Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the International Council of Air Shows created the circumstances for it to occur, all without recognizing that anything was amiss.
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Note: I am an outsider who has written a detailed story that is personal to many people. Several people are mentioned by name and I am aware of the possibility that they or their families might read this article. If you were involved or knew someone who was, and you notice incorrect biographical information, please send corrections to my publicly available email address. Thank you!
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During the Second World War, American factories produced tens of thousands of warplanes to fuel the ferocious air battles over Europe and the Pacific, mass producing fighters, bombers, and transports on a scale matched neither before nor since. Untold thousands of these aircraft fell in battle, spiraling aflame from hostile skies, and an equal or even greater number were lost in accidents — destroyed in hard landings, smashed against Himalayan mountaintops, or lost at sea, never to be found. And after the war was won, even more of these aircraft met an unceremonious end at boneyards around the world, torn apart for scrap just as quickly as they were put together. But a precious few survived long enough to fall into the hands of people who saw them as more than merely machines. Among those who dedicate their time to salvaging, restoring, maintaining, and flying the relics of WWII, these aircraft came to be known as warbirds. Not every historic military plane was considered a warbird, because not every war was the war, the one nobody needed to name because it was obvious. In the decades since, that definition has slipped, but the association remains.
Although the number of true warbirds, in the original sense, can only ever go down, a surprising number remain airworthy thanks to the efforts of private individuals and non-profit organizations. The largest such organization is the Commemorative Air Force, or CAF, which today operates over 180 historic military aircraft distributed between 75 local units in 6 different countries. But the CAF wasn’t always so large. It got its start in 1957 when a small group of former US Air Force pilots purchased a single P-51 Mustang for fun, only to discover that no one else was trying to preserve decommissioned warbirds for future generations. The group then set out to acquire at least one example of every American warbird, and the rest is history.
At first, the Texas-based CAF branded itself the “Confederate Air Force” as a joke, but later changed its name when the tainted association with the Confederate States of America started to interfere with its loftier goals and more serious outlook. At the same time, the CAF grew from a small, ad-hoc group into a larger organization with its own operations manuals, pilot training programs, and more.
As a registered non-profit run mostly by volunteers, the CAF sustains its operations by charging membership fees in exchange for the opportunity to fly its airworthy warbirds, and by collecting 9% of the revenue from events put on by each of its local chapters, known as “wings.” Each aircraft is assigned to a wing that shoulders responsibility for operating that aircraft and training new members of fly or maintain it, with day-to-day use largely left at the local unit’s discretion, as long as CAF policies and procedures are followed. For accuracy’s sake, it should be noted that the warbirds are officially owned by the American Airpower Heritage Flying Museum — a legally separate entity from the CAF, which merely operates the aircraft — but the CEO of the CAF and the CEO of the AAHFM are the same person.
Although CAF units and individual aircraft frequently participate in air shows hosted by third parties, the Commemorative Air Force itself also organizes several air shows each year, typically in the fall. As part of the CAF’s 2022 event roster, the group hosted two back-to-back air shows in Texas that will become relevant to this story, starting with Wings Over Houston on October 29–30, and Wings Over Dallas on November 11–12, both of which featured many of the same performances, aircraft, and pilots.
Among the types of activities that took place at these two air shows, three merit further discussion — namely, revenue ride flights; approved maneuvers packages; and air boss-directed performances.
Revenue ride flights are pretty much what they sound like, in that members of the public pay a specified amount of money in exchange for the opportunity to ride in a warbird, usually under the Federal Aviation Administration’s Living History Flight Exemption, which allows such flights as long as the “ticket” price is structured as a charitable donation. Such flights are an important source of revenue for the CAF and are critical to its financial stability. Normally they take place during gaps between other types of performances.
Next, an approved maneuvers package refers to a scripted, choreographed performance usually involving close formation flying. The pilots who participate in an approved maneuvers package have practiced every move, every turn, and every power adjustment dozens or even hundreds of times, relying on strict timing and precisely defined flight paths. The participants in such a package are able to fly the entire performance in close proximity to other aircraft without receiving continuous instructions. When most people think of an air show performance involving multiple airplanes, this is usually what they imagine — for my American readers, the Blue Angels are a great example of a group that uses maneuvers packages; or for Canadians, the Snowbirds.
The third and final type of activity, and the most important one for this story, is an air boss-directed performance. An air boss is a person who gives instructions to aircraft during an air show, such as who is cleared for takeoff, who is cleared to land, who should fly where, and so on, using a common frequency for all aircraft within the air show airspace. The air boss isn’t an air traffic controller and doesn’t need to have any air traffic control background — more on that later — but the job is similar in some respects. The most difficult part of an air boss’s job, however, is directing an unscripted performance. In an air boss-directed performance, the air boss develops a desired flight path for the aircraft involved in the performance and then instructs those aircraft and pilots to follow that flight path, without the use of an approved maneuvers package. The performance is usually constructed by stringing together basic maneuvers like low passes and course reversals that are familiar to the pilots, but the exact sequence of maneuvers is not practiced beforehand, and the positioning of each aircraft relies on the air boss’s directions rather than pre-arranged timings, bank angles, and power settings. The air boss’s role in a directed performance has been compared to that of an orchestra conductor.
To understand this type of performance, it’s also important to clarify the exact definition of “formation flying” and its implications. In its report, the NTSB describes a formation flight as “two or more aircraft under the command of a flight lead that are flown solely with reference to another aircraft in the formation.” Under US regulations, if the aircraft are less than 500 feet apart, the pilots must possess a special formation flying certification. Conversely, aircraft that are not part of a formation must remain more than 500 feet apart, and while a string of aircraft each separated by this distance may appear to be a formation, it is not. This distinction will become important when analyzing what went wrong at Wings Over Dallas.
With all of that having been said, let’s jump forward in time to November 12th, 2022, the second day of the Wings Over Dallas air show at Dallas Executive Airport, a general aviation field located 12 kilometers southwest of downtown Dallas. We’ll go back and look at Wings Over Houston later.
The performers in the November 12th activities started their day by attending a morning briefing held by air boss Russell Royce. Under the conditions imposed by the FAA waiver authorizing the air show, the briefing was a required item, and at least one member of every flight crew had to receive the briefing or face being cut from the roster. Also in attendance were an FAA inspector assigned to monitor the air show; another inspector being trained on air show operations; and a second air boss observing Royce in order to gain warbird experience. Using a PowerPoint presentation, Royce explained the boundaries of the air show airspace, landmarks that could be used to find the boundaries, where to go in the event of an emergency, and most importantly for this story, the location of the two “show lines.”
Dallas Executive Airport has two crossing runways designated 17/35 and 13/31 respectively. Runway 13/31 has a northwest-southeast orientation and is the longer of the two runways, as a result of which it was selected as the axis along which the air show demonstrations would take place. The crowd was positioned on bleachers on the apron adjacent to the east side of runway 13/31, near the intersection with 17/35. To give the crowd the best view, aircraft would make passes down runway 13/31 along one of two designated “show lines” located at 500 feet (150m) and 1,000 feet (300m) in front of the crowd, respectively, with the 500-foot show line running down the eastern, inside edge of the runway and the 1,000-foot show line running along the tree line at the western edge of the airport’s clear area, as shown above. Which show line would be used by which aircraft, and when, was outside the scope of the briefing and would be assigned by the air boss during the performance. However, the briefing did cover techniques that could be used to identify and align with the show lines.
At the briefing, the air boss also distributed a schedule listing the expected start times for each act. One of the acts that day was the CAF’s Tora! Tora! Tora! performance, an approved maneuvers package reenacting the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the American counterattack, featuring multiple warbirds that were used in filming the 1970 movie of the same name, as well as coordinated pyrotechnics. As far as I have been able to tell, this is the only approved maneuvers package used by the CAF, and they perform it at numerous air shows every year.
Following Tora! Tora! Tora!, the schedule called for a “warbird parade” featuring five American bombers and three American fighters, which would make passes back and forth in front of the crowd in a series of simulated bombing runs. At the finale of the performance, the warbirds would be joined by a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, one of only two remaining airworthy examples.
The five bombers taking part in the parade were to be led by the B-17 Flying Fortress “Texas Raiders,” followed by the Consolidated B-24 Liberator “Diamond Lil,” a Curtiss-Wright SB2C Helldiver, and two North American B-25s named “Devil Dog” and “Yellow Rose.” The plan was for the bombers to fly “in trail,” with the B-17 receiving instructions from the air boss while the other four aircraft followed its lead, maintaining at least 500 feet of separation because the group was not officially a formation and the pilots were not required to be formation rated.
At the same time, the three fighters were led by a North American P-51 Mustang, followed by a second Mustang and a Bell P-63F Kingcobra. The fighters would fly in close formation and all three pilots were formation-rated. Effectively, this divided the parade into two groups that not only had greatly different performance characteristics, but also different rules governing minimum separation distances and pilot qualifications.
Because the accident involved the B-17 and the P-63F, we’re going to take a closer look at those aircraft and their crews before continuing.
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engine piston powered bomber designed to drop large amounts of unguided ordnance onto enemy targets. The model entered service with the US Army Air Corps, the predecessor to the Air Force, in 1936 and saw widespread action in WWII, as over 12,000 B-17s dropped 640,000 tons of explosives over Nazi Germany. At the time of the accident, there were approximately seven airworthy B-17s remaining, including the airframe nicknamed “Texas Raiders.” This B-17 was license-built by Douglas in Long Beach, California in 1944 and was delivered to the US Army Air Forces in July 1945 before being transferred to the Navy, where it served as an Airborne Warning and Command System (AWACS) platform in the Korean War. The aircraft was retired from the Navy in 1957 and spent ten years flying aerial surveying missions in Alaska until the CAF acquired it in 1967.
The B-17 could be flown with a bare crew compliment of three, but for Wings Over Dallas, five crewmembers had been rostered.
In command was 66-year-old Leonard “Len” Root, a longtime CAF member and recently retired American Airlines pilot with over 28,000 flight hours and type ratings in 12 different airplanes, including 500 hours on the B-17. He was also the former leader of his CAF wing and was responsible for training new members.
The second in command was 67-year-old Terry Barker, also a former airline pilot, with over 25,300 flight hours and experience in everything from gliders to helicopters to large passenger jets. He had 90 hours in the B-17 and was the chief maintenance officer in the same CAF wing as Len Root.
The other three crewmembers consisted of 64-year-old flight engineer Curt Rowe, a 30-year veteran of the Ohio Civil Air Patrol, and two “scanners.” The purpose of the scanners was to stand by the B-17’s rear doors and keep lookout for other aircraft, but there was no requirement that the scanners have a pilot’s license, or indeed any qualification at all. Normally only one scanner would be used, but apparently Len Root requested a second one. The first scanner in this case was 42-year-old Kevin “K5” Michels, a CAF historian and tour supervisor, while the second scanner was identified as 88-year-old Dan Ragan, a former US Navy radio operator who served on Texas Raiders during the Korean War. It’s not apparent from the available evidence whether giving him the scanner role was a pretext to allow him to keep flying on his former aircraft, but it if it was, it’s kind of hard to begrudge him.
The second aircraft involved in the accident was the Bell P-63F. The P-63 Kingcobra family of single piston-engine fighters was developed originally for the US Army Air Forces around 1943, but the type never saw combat for the United States. Instead, around 3,300 were built mainly for the Soviet Air Force. Numerous variants were also developed, many of which did not see widespread use, including the P-63F, which was distinguished from the base model by its enlarged tail and modified engine. The P-63F project was abandoned after just two aircraft had been built, and the CAF operated the only surviving example.
The pilot of the P-63F was 63-year-old United Airlines pilot Craig Hutain, a veteran aviator who flew his first airplane at 10 years old and had since accumulated a jaw-dropping 34,000 flying hours, including 108 in the P-63. He was also a member of and operations officer for the Tora! Tora! Tora! demonstration team, a fighter check pilot for the CAF, and an approved formation flyer with an endorsement for aerobatics. The CAF’s chief aviation officer summed him up with just six words: “That guy knew how to fly.”
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The B-17 crew and the P-63 pilot were to play different roles in that day’s performance, and not only because they were flying different aircraft with different performance characteristics. Because the B-17 was the lead aircraft in the group of five bombers, its crew was responsible for the real-time interpretation of the air boss’s commands, while the other four bombers simply followed the B-17 at a safe distance. On the other hand, Craig Hutain in the P-63 was not the leader of his formation and would be focused primarily on staying close to the two P-51s ahead of him. The air boss’s instructions were relevant to him only if Royce commanded a change in the shape of the formation.
Having said that, we also need meet air boss Russell Royce, the last major character in this story, before we continue. Royce’s age isn’t listed in any of the available documents but based on other statements he was probably about 38 years old at the time of the accident and held a day job working at an auto body repair shop. His father was Ralph Royce, a veteran air boss widely known throughout the American air show industry, and he grew up hopping from one air show to the next, shadowing his dad. Ralph first allowed Russell to issue instructions to aircraft at the age of 14 — albeit under close supervision — and by 18 years old he was directing entire air shows by himself. That’s not to say he was a child prodigy; in fact, in his interviews Royce denies that he was born with any particular talent, but he was undeniably very experienced.
At this point you might be asking how it was legal for a teenager to direct an air show, and the answer is that there was absolutely no law saying he couldn’t. At the time that the younger Royce began air bossing, there were no formal requirements for the position at all, other than those imposed by the air show organizers. Over the years, Royce did acquire a private pilot’s license, and he briefly worked in an air traffic control tower at a general aviation airport from 2008 to 2009, but his aviation experience paled in comparison to that of the pilots he was directing. Unlike them, he had never flown for an airline, for the military, or in an air show; he wasn’t rated to fly multi-engine planes; and he had no formation or aerobatics experience. He had, however, air bossed over 300 air shows.
Later in his career, new regulations began requiring air bosses to receive a letter of authorization (LOA) from the FAA in order to perform the role. To receive an LOA, an air boss had to complete the air boss recognition program run by the International Council of Air Shows Inc., or ICAS, an industry standardization and advocacy body. The LOA would remain valid for three years but could be renewed by meeting a minimum experience requirement and submitting letters of recommendation. To renew the highest level of LOA — “recognized air boss, multiple venues” — he was required to have directed 8 air shows in the last three years, submitted four letters of recommendation from other air bosses or credentialed air show performers, and attended at least one ICAS Air Boss Academy workshop. There was no requirement for recurrent training or a performance evaluation. Russell Royce held the highest level of LOA, but at the time of the accident the requirement was still so new that he had yet to receive his first renewal.
Although Russell Royce wasn’t a member of the CAF, his father was previously CAF chairman and many CAF members were familiar with him. For Wings Over Dallas, he was hired by the Air Show Chairman, the CAF’s Gena Linebarger, who said she always hired Ralph and/or Russell Royce if they were available. The working relationship between the two dated back about 10 years and the younger Royce had air bossed Wings Over Dallas numerous times during that period. In fact, the CAF had also hired Ralph Royce to air boss Wings Over Houston two weeks before the incident, and according to the Wings Over Houston performers, Russell was present there, too.
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Back at the morning briefing on November 12th, Royce wrapped up the proceedings after about 45 minutes, then asked the audience if they had any questions. Although Len Root wasn’t personally present, witnesses recalled that some other members of the B-17 crew asked clarifying questions, but no one could remember what they were. Subsequently, Royce went out to the air boss station, where he would guide the air show from atop a set of air stairs on a taxiway near runway 17/35. He was joined on the air stairs by the air boss observer, while the FAA inspector and trainee inspector stood nearby.
After the start of the air show at 10:50, six acts flew before it came time for the warbird parade shortly after 13:00. The five bombers took off one after another from runway 31, followed by the fighters, with the B-17 departing at 13:10 and the P-63 at 13:15. After takeoff, each aircraft was given initial maneuvering instructions while waiting for the remaining aircraft to join them in the formation or group; in the B-17’s case, the air boss instructed, “It will be a right turn. You’re looking for a thousand feet to enter from over the crowd.” The B-17 crew acknowledged and complied, making a sweeping 270-degree right turn after takeoff to come back over the field from the east, from behind the crowd. By this point the two B-25s were already in the air finishing up the previous act, so the air boss instructed them to fall in behind the B-17 and the SB2C helldiver, which was also airborne.
At 13:12, the fighters reported ready to go. Royce instructed the B-17 to come over the crowd then make another right 270 onto the 1,000 foot show line, then cleared three fighters for takeoff, followed by a right turn. At the same time, Royce shot instructions to the pyrotechnic team and to the pilot of a Beechcraft T-34B Mentor that was conducting a revenue ride flight during the performance. Moments later at 13:14, with the B-17 completing the right 270 to line up for its first pass down the runway, Royce instructed them to follow that pass with a right 90 degree turn, followed by a left 270 degree turn — a course reversal technique known as a “dog bone” or “duster turn.” This maneuver would be used several times during the performance in order to reverse the direction of each consecutive pass down the show lines.
Turning to the fighters, Royce instructed them to “get formed up behind the crowd and I’ll bring you overhead in just a moment.” Following the lead P-51, the three fighters entered into a close formation, completing a right 180-degree turn followed by a left 270, rolling out heading west toward the back side of the crowd just as the B-17 had done a few minutes earlier. Meanwhile, the B-17 completed its first pass in front of the crowd and started the dog bone course reversal, to which Royce commented, “Perfect, and then you can come right down the runway and the fighters are going to pick you up.” He then instructed the bomber group, which was now fully in trail, to enter a left racetrack pattern — that is, flying in circles with left turns — after completing their current pass, in order to wait for the fighters, who he said would join them “overhead,” without specifying an altitude. By this point the bombers were distributed between 500 and 800 feet, while the fighters were staggered from about 900 to 1,300 feet, with the lead P-51 on top and the P-63 on the bottom.
If that all sounded complicated, that’s because it was, but so far all communications were working as intended. You can use the flight path maps above and below to follow along.
After confirming that the lead P-51 had the bomber group in sight, Royce instructed them to join the bombers in the racetrack, then told the bombers that after their current circuit they would complete make a second “dog bone” turn with a “left 90 and right 270.” The fighters then caught up to the bombers, made a right 270 to follow them through the racetrack, and then both groups proceeded together toward the dog bone described by the air boss.
At 13:19, as the bombers and fighters were completing the dog bone, preparing for a north-south pass in front of the crowd, Royce set them up for yet another course reversal at the other end, instructing, “B-17, after this pass, right 90 left 270.”
“Raiders, right dog bone,” the B-17 replied.
Turning to the fighter group, Royce then said, “Fighters, walk your way up to the B-17, I’m going to break y’all out after this — um, you’re going to end up breaking left.”
In formation flying, a “break” occurs when each aircraft successively makes a sharp turn to exit the formation. In hindsight, what Royce wanted the fighters to do was to cut short the left 270 in the next dog bone turn by breaking hard to the left, cutting inside the bombers to get out in front. What he meant by “walk your way up” is unclear.
Without waiting for a response from the fighters, Royce continued, “So you’re going to follow the bombers to the right 90 out and then you’re going to roll back in left and be on the 500 foot line if y’all want to set up an echelon for a break so y’all can get in trail.”
The first part of this crucial transmission was an attempt to clarify what I already explained — that after making the right 90 portion of the dog bone turn, the fighters would make a sharp left. He also added that after making the left turn, they would align with the 500 foot show line, closest to the crowd. However, the last part of the transmission might have been unclear in the moment. In formation flying, an echelon refers to a staggered formation where each aircraft is offset from the next to either the left or right, like migrating geese. An echelon formation is an ideal starting point for a break. After the break, Royce wanted the aircraft to get in trail, one behind the other. But that was a lot of information to take in at once.
Clearly confused by the lengthy transmission, the lead P-51 pilot radioed, “Okay, uh — say again for the fighters. That was not clear.”
But instead of repeating his instructions, Royce responded with something totally different: “Uh fighters, go uh — right, go to echelon right.”
But this transmission only made matters worse, because the fighters hadn’t even straightened out for the pass in front of the crowd yet, let alone begun the next dog bone. The next turn was a hard right, but making a hard right turn while in a right echelon formation, with each aircraft offset right from the aircraft ahead of it, is risky because the lead aircraft has to turn across the face of the aircraft behind it. In hindsight, Royce was a step ahead; he wanted them to assume the right echelon in preparation for the left break after the right 90 had already been completed. But in the heat of the moment, this would have been difficult for the fighter pilots to understand, and indeed the fighters responded not by forming an echelon, but by getting in trail, one behind the other.
Meanwhile, as the lead bomber proceeded southbound past the crowd, Royce noticed that the gap between the B-17 and the B-24 behind it was larger than he would like, so he said, “Okay B-24, if you could give me a couple of mi — uh, inches and close the gap I’d appreciate it. B-17, let’s keep a little flat for me.” It wasn’t entirely clear what Royce meant when he asked to keep the turn a little flat, but he probably wanted the B-17 to lead the bomber formation out wide, using shallow bank angles to extend the distance traveled. This would give the fighters more time to cut the corner. However, this is known only in hindsight, because Royce had not yet explained that he wanted the fighters to move in front of the bombers, and it’s doubtful that any of the pilots had so far guessed that that was his intention.
In response to the transmission, one of the bombers made an unintelligible reply, and then Royce added, “Just a little bit. When you come back through you’re coming through on the thousand foot line.”
This was another crucial moment in the sequence of events — perhaps even the most crucial. Royce had now set up the next pass with the bombers on the 1,000 foot show line and the fighters on the 500 foot show line. If the fighters completed the dog bone by flying outside the bombers, that would be fine, but if they made a tight turn inside the bombers, the two formations would cross paths. At this point, the bombers were distributed between 550 and 680 feet altitude, with the B-17 occupying the highest position, while the fighter formation was distributed from 960 feet to 1,100 feet, with the P-63 in the lowest position.
Then, at 13:20 and 37 seconds, Royce hammered another nail into the coffin: “American fighters should be in a right turn,” he said. “You’re gonna follow the bombers out on a right 90 and then I’m going to roll you back in front of them.”
Finally, Royce had articulated his intention for the fighters to undertake the bombers. As I just explained, compliance required the fighters to turn inside the bombers, which would cause the two groups’ flight paths to cross as they lined up with their assigned show lines.
To make matters worse, the way the dog bone turns were typically flown was that every aircraft would climb during the right 90, level off on the outside of the turn, then descend in toward the show lines to simulate a diving run from the crowd’s perspective. This meant that the altitudes of all the aircraft were variable during the dog bone, and just because the lowest fighter was above the highest bomber at the time the instruction was given didn’t mean that that would necessarily remain the case. Furthermore, if the fighters were to overtake the bombers, then the B-17 was the primary obstacle that they needed to pass — but the older, less powerful B-17 was slower than the other bombers and thus made tighter turns in order to prevent the bombers behind from catching up. That would make it harder for the fighters to overtake the bombers on the inside, because the B-17 was already cutting inside on every turn anyway.
At this point, the stage was nearly set for disaster. All that remained was for the deadly dance to play out.
As the fighters and bombers proceeded into the dog bone maneuver, Royce turned his attention to another aircraft entirely: a Boeing-Stearman PT-17 operating a revenue ride flight. The two-seater, WWII-era training biplane, commonly referred to as the “Stearman,” was carrying one pilot and one paying passenger on approach to runway 31, the very same runway along which the warbirds were to make their next pass. But Royce judged that no conflict existed, so he transmitted, using the Stearman’s callsign, “Quebec, I need you to drop it down to the deck. Runway three one clear to land.”
“Down to the deck, five eight Quebec,” the Stearman pilot acknowledged.
Watching the B-17 lead the bombers through the dog bone, Royce said, “There ya go B-17, yup, gentle flat roll it around thousand foot line.”
“Thousand foot line for raiders,” said the B-17.
“Fighters, roll it back to the left,” Royce then added. “Lead, fighter lead, roll it back to the left and get y’all in trail.”
“Okay, fighters in trail,” the P-51 acknowledged.
At this point the fighters had completed the right 90 and had caught up with most of the bombers. The formation was positioned directly overhead the B-24, the second aircraft in the bomber group, but had not yet caught up with the B-17, which had already started the left 270 and was turning inbound.
“Yeah, and gunfighter, look out your left side and find the B-17,” Royce instructed, using an alternate callsign for the lead P-51. Although the fighters were turning inside the bombers, the B-17 was in the left hemisphere from the fighters’ perspective because it was already inbound and the fighters were still flying outbound.
“We see the 17,” said the P-51.
As the fighters started a sharp left turn, Royce repeated, “Yeah there you go. Roll it back to the left. I want you to get in front of the bombers. I want you to come through on the outside edge of the runway.”
This instruction might have caused yet more confusion because the outside edge of the runway, from the crowd’s perspective, was the west edge, which was in between the 500 and 1,000 foot show lines. The 500 foot show line, which was where he wanted the fighters to fly, should have been referred to as the inside edge because it was closer to the crowd.
In any case, without asking for clarification, the lead P-51 replied, “Okay.”
The altitudes of the two groups now overlapped, with the fighters at 700, 340, and 520 feet respectively, while the first four bombers were at 430, 600, 450, and 670 feet respectively.
Watching from the apron, Royce said, “Nice job fighters, you’re coming through first. That will work out. B-17 and all the bombers on the thousand foot line.”
While the two P-51s had passed the B-17 at the time of the transmission and were indeed in front of the bombers, the P-63 was not. And at its controls, Craig Hutain was running out of time to overtake the B-17 before they were forced to cross paths to align with their respective show lines. Nor did anyone know for sure that Hutain had the B-17 in sight, because Royce never asked him — he only asked the formation lead.
Just to double check, Royce asked, “B-17, you got the fighters in front of you off your left?”
The B-17’s reply is described as “unintelligible” in the transcript but it appears to have been an affirmative statement. However, at the time of that transmission, only two of the three fighters were actually “in front of” the B-17; the P-63 was still technically behind. From the captain’s seat, Len Root would have had to look back over his left shoulder into his 7 or 8 o’clock position to see it.
Watching the maneuver play out, Royce said, “Nice job fighters, come on through.” Moving on to the next maneuver after the current pass was complete, he then added, “Fighters will be a big pull up and to the right.”
But back in the fighter formation, confusion was evident. The two lead P-51s didn’t proceed onto the 500 foot show line as instructed, but lined up with the 1,000 foot show line instead. At the same time, however, Craig Hutain’s P-63 swung farther out to the right, heading toward the 500 foot show line — and directly into the path of the B-17.
With his low-wing fighter banked in excess of 45 degrees to the left, and with the B-17 below him and to his right, there was no way for Hutain to see it coming. Moving left-to-right across the bomber’s path from behind and above, the P-63 plowed into the B-17 amidships, cleaving it in two. As hundreds of people watched in shock and alarm, the P-63 disappeared into a chaotic hail of metal while the bomber broke in half just aft of the wings, ripping away the roof and cabin walls all the way forward to the cockpit. The crew of the B-17 barely had time to brace before what remained of their aircraft pitched forward into the ground and exploded in flames. More burning pieces of both aircraft strafed the grass next to the threshold of runway 31, narrowly missing the Stearman, which had touched down just seconds earlier.
Instantly, Russell Royce activated the pre-briefed emergency procedure by shouting, “Knock it off, knock it off! Roll the trucks, roll the trucks, roll the trucks, knock it off, roll the trucks!”
Emergency crews on standby near the runway rushed to the scene and began spraying down the burning wreckage, but little remained of either aircraft. It was clear that everyone on both airplanes had perished.
In the air, the remaining aircraft proceeded to their pre-planned holding points, where they waited while deciding where to divert. Not all of the pilots had seen the crash, and many of those who did were left confused by what they had witnessed, but everyone knew that a tragedy had taken place. Many of the surviving pilots had been friends with the victims for years, even decades. But only after getting their own planes back on the ground could they allow the shock to set in. Len Root, Terry Barker, Craig Hutain, Curt Rowe, Kevin Michels, and Dan Fagan — in the CAF, almost everyone knew their names. Some were lifelong pilots, airline captains, war veterans; others just wanted to teach military aviation history, but all had dedicated a portion of their lives to the warbird community, and that their lives were taken by the very objects of their passion did not provide comfort, and in fact only heightened the sense of loss. And after the victims were mourned and buried, the warbird community would also quietly mourn the aircraft themselves, saying goodbye to the shattered remnants of the only extant P-63F, and ticking one more name off the short and shrinking list of airworthy B-17s. So what was it all for? What was the reason for such a waste of life and history?
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In search of the answer to that question, the National Transportation Safety Board conducted numerous interviews, pored over countless pages of documentation, reviewed dozens of photos and videos, and conducted multiple studies. In addition to their final report, the NTSB assembled a docket of evidence 1,896 pages long, which you don’t have to read, because I’ve read it for you.
On its most fundamental level, any mid-air collision is the result of a breakdown in the methods used to keep aircraft separated. Those methods can be visual — in other words, pilots keeping each other in sight — and they can be procedural, such as when an air traffic controller assigns two planes to different altitudes. In general, procedural separation is safer because it relies less on human perception; that is to say, the probability that a pilot will incorrectly follow directions, or that bad directions will be issued, is lower than the probability that two pilots will not see each other, especially in conditions of restricted visibility. However, if the pilots already have each other in sight, then maintaining visual separation is perfectly adequate. You’ll hear a lot more from me about the minutia of these distinctions in a couple years when I write about the Potomac River midair collision, but for today’s story, this is enough.
One of the key elements required to understand the Wings Over Dallas disaster was the type of separation in use. In an approved maneuvers package, separation was ensured by following a rigorously practiced choreography, but in an air boss directed performance, that wasn’t the case. So, the NTSB did the logical thing and asked air boss Russell Royce how he normally kept airplanes apart and what tools were available for him to do so.
Royce explained that he didn’t have radar or any other flight tracking software and that he judged the position of each airplane visually and based on experience. He added that as in all modes of aviation, “visual is the rule of the road,” meaning that he expected pilots to see and avoid each other if a conflict were to develop. However, he also listed three other types of separation; namely, vertical, lateral, and time-based. These are fundamental techniques for procedural separation known to every air traffic controller. But after reviewing the sequence of events, a glaring question arose: did Royce actually use them?
After interviewing numerous people who were present at the briefing led by Royce on the morning of the accident, it was evident that there was no discussion of assigned altitudes or show lines prior to the start of the performance. In fact, the only altitude anyone could recall being mentioned was the height that would give the crowd the best photo opportunities during the photo pass at the end of the performance. Instead, interviewees stated that for an air boss directed performance, the exact choreography to be used would not normally be decided at the briefing, but would be determined by the air boss during the performance. Agreement on this matter was nearly universal among attendees, who all said that the briefing was standard, resembled other briefings, and did not appear to be missing any information that they expected to hear. Furthermore, while FAA guidance for air shows stated that a briefing had to take place, the NTSB could find no official document specifying what means of separation were to be used in an air boss directed performance, nor any document requiring that such means be discussed in the briefing. In fact, the FAA inspector in charge of monitoring the air show was at the briefing and reported nothing unusual about it.
Once the performance was underway, Russell Royce could have assigned the bombers and fighters to different altitudes, but the transcript of the air boss frequency revealed that he never did so. While he did assign an altitude to the bombers during one particular pass, the assignment was intended to achieve the desired visual effect for the crowd, and not to provide separation from the fighters, which hadn’t taken off yet at the time. Throughout the remainder of the performance, the bombers generally flew at 200 to 500 feet and then climbed to altitudes generally lower than 1,000 feet; while at the same time, the fighters generally flew between 800 and 1,300 feet, except during the accident pass, where they descended to between 100 and 600 feet. However, these altitudes appeared to be chosen by each individual crew without coordinating with other crews or with the air boss. In fact, when the NTSB asked whether there were any limits on how high or low the performers could climb or descend, Royce replied that the maximum altitude was the ceiling of the air show airspace and the minimum altitude was the ground.
However, Royce didn’t stop there. Despite listing altitude as a means of separation at his disposal, in his interviews he stated that as a matter of practice he rarely assigned altitudes because he wanted the pilots to look outside and maintain awareness of other aircraft rather than looking inside at their altimeters. In fact, he asserted that assigning altitudes is actively dangerous and only serves as a distraction. Nevertheless, he professed a belief that the fighters had an obligation to be “on top of the bombers” and that he expected the fighters to remain above the bombers as they maneuvered to the 500 foot show line during the accident dog bone. He did not appear to show any awareness of the fact that the lowest fighter was below the highest bomber at numerous points throughout the entire performance, nor did he explain why, if such an obligation existed, it was neither reviewed in the briefing nor specified in any regulation. Furthermore, in a separate interview he expressed an expectation that the bombers would be at 200 feet on the 1,000 foot show line, and that the fighters would be at about the same altitude on the 500 foot show line — which is exactly what both groups actually did — without explaining how this was supposed to be reconciled with his expectation that the fighters would cross over the top of the bombers. Nor did he explain how the pilots were supposed to know his intentions with regard to altitudes when he never mentioned altitudes on the radio.
The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from this mess of answers is that altitude separation was not being used. But what about other types?
The next type of separation listed by Royce was lateral separation. In the context of an air boss directed performance, lateral separation could mean assigning the bombers to the 1,000 foot show line and the fighters to the 500 foot show line prior to the start of the performance as part of a racetrack pattern in which the faster fighters would fly a longer circuit around the outside of the bombers. However, Royce only assigned show lines on the fly, based on his assessment of where the two groups were. As a result, while he did send the bombers to the 1,000 foot show line and the fighters to the 500 foot show line on every pass, he did so without putting in place any means to ensure that the fighters flew outside the bombers’ circuit. If the fighters were cutting inside the circuit, then they would have to cross paths with the bombers to reach the 500 foot show line. The fact that Royce not only didn’t ensure that the fighters were orbiting outside the bombers, but actually ordered the fighters to cut inside the bombers’ orbit to reach their show line, indicates that he was not considering the use of different show lines as a means of lateral separation.
Bizarrely, in his interview Royce denied that he told the two groups to cross paths, arguing that he told the fighters to go up and to the right while the bombers were flying down and to the left, and thus away from each other. But not only did he not actually tell either group to fly “up” or “down,” it should be self-evident that telling the fighters to fly right and the bombers to fly left when the fighters are left of the bombers requires them to cross paths!
When confronted further on this matter, he placed all responsibility for avoiding cross-track maneuvers onto the lead pilots, simply stating, “I don’t put constraints on them.” But while it was true that the fighters were located outside the bombers’ circuit at the time he first instructed the fighters to “get in front of the bombers,” he then told the fighters to cut the corner, forcing them to cross inside the bombers’ flight path. It is unclear how the fighter pilots were supposed to comply with this directive without crossing paths with the bombers. So much for “not putting constraints on them!”
Elaborating on his views, Royce went on to explain that keeping the airplanes a certain distance apart wasn’t really his job at all, because the minimum safe separation between aircraft would depend on pilot experience, aircraft capabilities, and the moment-to-moment operating environment. However, this response was factually incorrect, because for aircraft not part of a formation, there was a legally imposed minimum separation distance of 500 feet. Any closer and a formation flying certificate would be required. In his interviews, Royce did not appear to understand that the bomber group was not a formation and that the bomber pilots were not necessarily required to have a formation rating, and thus that there was an obligation to keep the fighter formation at least 500 feet away from the bomber group at all times. In fact, throughout his interviews Royce repeatedly referred to the fighters and bombers together as a single formation, or as separate formations, even though neither was the case.
At this point it should be clear that Royce didn’t view separation as his responsibility, even when a certain amount of separation was required by regulations. That’s why the NTSB pointedly asked who he thought was responsible for separation, if not the air boss?
In one instance, Royce replied that the answer was “everyone.” Describing his own role, he explained that he assisted in separation “from the perspective of the crowd,” but it sounds like he meant keeping aircraft separate in the crowd’s field of view so that no aircraft was hidden behind another. Later, he explained that official documentation doesn’t address deconfliction, so any obligation to separate aircraft would depend on whether the pilots’ contract says separation has to be done a certain way, or based on common sense — “I’m in front of you, I shall go first,” as he put it. And in another instance, he said that avoiding each other was the pilots’ job — “I do a lot of assignment of responsibility.” So in essence, no systematic deconfliction practices existed; the air boss gave little thought to separation in his commands; and pilots were expected to utilize the principle of “see and avoid” when complying with his instructions.
This conclusion necessarily raises two more questions: were the aircraft complying with Royce’s instructions when they collided, and was it possible for them to have seen each other?
Regarding the first question, Royce seemed to think that the answer was no. During one interview, he said that crossing one group over another wasn’t an issue — “we do it all the time… it’s never a problem” — but that the P-63 wasn’t where it was supposed to be. However, in a separate interview, when asked whether he perceived the P-63 to be in the correct position before the crash, he complained that that was “not a valid question.”
With no way of knowing what Craig Hutain was actually thinking as he executed the final maneuver, it isn’t possible to say whether he understood the instructions correctly or not. In general, the air boss only issued instructions to the lead aircraft in each group or formation, and the other aircraft were expected to follow them. But in interviews with the NTSB, the pilots of both P-51s stated that they believed the air boss had told them to go to the 1,000 foot show line — which is what they did — even though this was incorrect. Then, as the P-51s maneuvered to align with the 1,000 foot show line, the P-63 did not follow them, but rather swung wider, apparently toward the 500 foot show line, which is where Royce had actually told them to go.
Most pilots in the performance stated that when flying in trail, their focus was on following the aircraft ahead of them, not on the air boss’s instructions, which would appear to cast doubt on the notion that Hutain broke out of the formation on purpose. But those who knew Hutain believed otherwise. When asked about Craig, his longtime friend and colleague Jim Lasche said, “I can just imagine him, he’s told ‘be at the 500 foot line now,’ that’s where he’s going to go.”
It’s also worth noting that around the time Hutain moved toward the 500 foot show line, Royce said, “Nice job fighters, you’re coming through first, that will work out.” However, because at that moment both the B-17 and the fighters were headed directly toward him, Royce wasn’t actually in a position to judge whether the P-63 was ahead of or behind the B-17. If Hutain didn’t have the B-17 in sight, then this unfounded comment by Royce could have added to his belief that he was clear to cut over to the 500 foot show line.
With no disagreement about the fact that the B-17 was right where it was supposed to be, and a reasonable likelihood that the P-63 pilot was also trying to get to his assigned show line, it appears in hindsight that both aircraft were probably complying with the air boss’s directives when they collided. Despite this, Royce insisted in his interviews that his directives were normal and that pilot compliance represented the biggest safety issue. Because there was no time for every aircraft to read back his commands in a dynamic, fast-changing environment, he had to trust that everyone understood his instructions correctly, and the only way to verify comprehension was compliance. Furthermore, in his view, because he had asked the fighters to “get in front of the bombers,” the fact that the P-63 moved to the 500 foot show line without getting in front of the B-17 amounted to non-compliance. But if we think about it in another way, that sounds an awful lot like a fancier way of saying, “If I tell you not to hit each other, and you hit each other anyway, that’s your fault because I told you not to.” It’s a complete abdication of responsibility and a violation of the pilots’ trust.
In addition to being a copout, this philosophy is also problematic because, as I stated earlier, visual separation is less effective than procedural separation unless definitive visual contact has already been made. Also, only the lead fighter was asked to confirm the B-17 was in sight; no one asked the P-63. And when Royce asked whether the B-17 had the fighters in sight, he described the fighters as being “in front,” when the P-63 was actually behind, so when the B-17 replied in the affirmative, there was no way to know whether Len Root had looked back to find the third fighter or whether he only saw the P-51s. So could the two crews actually see each other?
To find out, the NTSB conducted a visibility study using a flight simulator. What they found was that when the air boss asked the B-17 if the fighters were in sight, the P-63 was visible through the rear left side window, over the captain’s left shoulder; but after 5 seconds it became obscured by the captain’s window pillar until the collision. Under the circumstances, it was highly unlikely that either of the B-17 pilots would have seen the P-63 coming. Furthermore, it would not have been obvious that the P-63 was on a collision course until about 7 seconds before the crash, when it appeared to break formation with the other fighters. That was less than the time it would take for one of the two scanners, who were not current and qualified pilots, to spot the incoming aircraft, determine that it was a threat, tell the pilots, and for the pilots to take evasive action.
Meanwhile, starting from the time that the air boss asked the fighters whether they could see the B-17, the latter was visible to the P-63 pilot for 16 continuous seconds near the lower right side of the canopy. The B-17 only became obscured by the P-63’s upturned right wing about four seconds before the crash. However, Craig Hutain’s focus at that point was probably ahead and to the left as he attempted to follow his lead plane and find his assigned show line. Furthermore, the B-17 was still wearing its original military colors — that is to say, olive drab camouflage. This paint scheme was specifically chosen in order to make it harder for enemy fighters to spot the bomber from above against a background of trees, buildings, and earth. Hutain wasn’t an enemy but the color scheme doesn’t discriminate; as far the paint knew, it was doing its job.
The NTSB concluded that while it was theoretically possible for Hutain to have seen the B-17 if he focused on keeping it in sight, there were also good reasons why he might have glanced over where he thought it was, seen nothing, and decided that he was in the clear. As for the slower, less maneuverable B-17, their chances of avoiding the collision were almost nil. But these findings merely confirmed decades of NTSB research into the dangers of relying on visual separation, especially in complex maneuvering environments. So the discovery that “see and avoid” was inadequate for air show deconfliction was hardly a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention.
To summarize, then, the air boss wasn’t using procedural separation techniques to deconflict aircraft and expected pilots to avoid hitting each other no matter what directives he gave them. If this attitude strikes you as unreasonable, you wouldn’t be alone. In fact, several people who were interviewed by the NTSB expressed displeasure with Russell Royce — and even more with his dad.
Among interviewees, there was widespread agreement that Ralph and Russell Royce possessed a shared approach to air bossing, whether they liked that approach or not. And in fact, quite a few people came out of the woodwork to mention previous close calls involving both air bosses, including just two weeks earlier at Wings Over Houston, under the direction of Royce senior. One of those people was the Vice Chairman of Wings Over Houston, a CAF pilot who flew as copilot of a bomber in an air boss directed performance during that air show. According to his recollection, Ralph Royce ordered Craig Hutain’s P-63 to cut in between his aircraft and the bomber ahead of him with no altitude separation. The pilot in command of his bomber confirmed that the incident had taken place and added that the P-63 came within 100 feet of his aircraft.
According to both the Wings Over Houston Vice Chairman and CAF Chief Aviation Officer Jim Lasche, several pilots were so incensed at the incident that they met after the air show to commiserate, and one of them even confronted Ralph Royce and told him that he was “going to kill somebody if you do this again.” But the confrontation seemed to result in more ass-covering than soul-searching. In fact, according to the Wings Over Houston Vice Chairman, Royce senior tracked him down a month after the accident and asked him what he had told the NTSB about the Wings Over Houston incident, then insisted to him that the P-63 wasn’t at his altitude and that the maneuver was perfectly safe. After that conversation, the Vice Chairman said that he was bothered by the senior Royce’s dismissiveness of his concerns and his insistence that he disbelieve his own eyes.
This wasn’t the only alarming incident described in the NTSB testimony either. According to the Wings Over Houston Vice Chairman, he had previously experienced an event in which Royce senior ordered him and another aircraft to turn into the same show line at the same time from opposite directions; realizing that this would put him on a collision course, he refused to comply. And in yet another incident, also at the air show in Houston two weeks before the crash, the pilot of a C-47 told the NTSB that the air boss sent a Messerschmitt Me-262 head-on into his aircraft on the show line, causing the replica German jet fighter to pass directly beneath him when he was only 200 feet above the ground. He was unaware that the Me-262 would do this until the air boss ordered it; the maneuver was not briefed beforehand; and it was not debriefed after.
In order to get a second opinion, the NTSB interviewed several people with decades of air show experience who were not involved in Wings Over Dallas, including two air bosses who regularly directed other major air shows. Both of those air bosses stated that they normally determined the choreography for an air boss-directed performance in advance of the briefing and would assign altitudes and show lines to ensure separation between aircraft in different groups or formations. The typical minimum separation between aircraft was 200 feet and they did not normally allow aircraft with different cruising speeds to fly together. The air bosses said they were expected to carry out the pre-planned choreography without deviation.
The Wings Over Houston Vice Chairman agreed that other air bosses didn’t use “freeform” directives as often as the Royces did, and said that he normally expected the fighters to remain above the bombers using pre-briefed assigned altitudes. Separately, the CAF Director of Operations said that it was a “mistake” to send the fighters past the bombers without 500 feet of separation, describing Russell Royce’s directive as “not the right way to do it.” “I would have thought it would have been intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that you don’t do that sort of thing, but apparently it’s not,” he said to the NTSB. And regarding the absence of a planned choreography, he opined that if a “new guy” were to attend the briefing, he would probably come away knowing only to “follow the guy in front of him and hope nothing happened.” Without a moment’s pause, he added, “And that to me is not right.”
Finally, joining the chorus of voices, CAF Chief Aviation Officer Jim Lasche said that Royce was wrong to avoid assigning altitudes, because, as he put it, when a fighter is flying along at 250 knots and the pilot hears confusing directions, there needs to be something for them to fall back on, like an assigned altitude and show line — but there wasn’t.
None of the interviewees made much mention of the fact that Royce also sometimes used unclear language and terminology, like “walk your way up” and “keep it a little flat.” Royce himself was unable to explain exactly what he meant when he used some of these phrases. However, it was agreed by both the NTSB and other experts whose commentary I reviewed that the use of this kind of language in a highly dynamic environment can and did cause confusion. When airline pilots and controllers talk on the radio, they’re expected to use certain established terminology so that the intent of a statement is as unambiguous as possible — so why shouldn’t we expect the same from an air boss?
And yet, despite criticism from these authoritative voices, the majority of interviewees spoke positively or neutrally of Russell Royce and his air bossing techniques. For instance, the pilot of the B-24 immediately behind the B-17 said that Royce didn’t do things particularly differently from other air bosses. The pilot of the second P-51, himself an accredited air boss and warbird safety researcher, said that Russell was the best in the business. The FAA inspector and the trainee inspector both said they observed nothing unusual or incorrect about Royce’s air bossing on the day of the accident. And the air boss observer shadowing Royce praised his ability and took his side on the question of separation, arguing that pilots always shoulder the primary responsibility for knowing where the other aircraft are, and noting that when he was in the Air Force flying jets, the obligation to maintain that awareness didn’t go away just because he was in a high G-maneuver with his belly up to someone else. But he also added that performers expect the air boss “to be ahead of the game, to understand what’s going to happen so as to avoid conflicts down the road,” and it’s not clear how to reconcile this statement with Royce’s actual performance.
The most important voice of support among the interviewees was Wings Over Dallas air show Chairman Gena Linebarger, who was responsible for selecting the air boss. She described Royce as a “perfectionist,” said she liked the way he did things, and explained that she always hired the Royces if she could. Her relationship with them dated back 10 years and included numerous air shows. In fact, her confidence in Russell was so great that she told the NTSB, months after the accident, that the only reason she hadn’t hired him for her next air show was because their insurance wouldn’t let her.
The clear takeaway here is that the air show community was deeply divided on the question of whether the Royce duo were cowboys. And with no consensus that their techniques were in any way abnormal, the air boss training and accreditation process needed to receive greater scrutiny.
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As I mentioned earlier in this article, Russell Royce began air bossing with on the job training from his dad, before later receiving a letter of authorization (LOA) designating him as a “recognized air boss, multiple venues.” The typical training for an air boss lasted about four years and involved observing other air bosses, discussing theory, gaining radio experience under supervision, and other skill-building practices. These same type of activities are included in the International Council of Air Shows (ICAS) Air Boss Recognition Program (ABRP), which Royce underwent less than three years before the accident when the requirement was first introduced. The ABRP came with a training manual against which air boss applicants were to be judged by an ICAS-approved “air boss evaluator,” who would observe the applicant directing an air show and assesses their performance against the criteria on an evaluation form. Achieving full recognition also required a record of air show experience, letters of recommendation, completion an “air show education data sheet,” and a score of 75% or better on a multiple choice test. Should the applicant meet these requirements, the FAA would issue an LOA on ICAS’s recommendation. The triannual renewal process for the LOA was described earlier in this article, but it bears repeating that the process did not include recurrent training or evaluations.
The air boss community is small and insular. At the time the NTSB report was written, there were only about 60 to 70 ICAS-approved air bosses, and only 6 to 7 of them were air boss evaluators. Although close friends and family are forbidden from evaluating each other, it’s plausible that almost all air bosses in the United States know one another through industry connections and ICAS conferences.
In such a community, outside monitoring by the FAA is probably necessary to ensure that corners don’t get cut. However, the NTSB found that FAA oversight of the process was minimal. The agency checked in on ICAS on a quarterly basis but was not closely involved in the accreditation of air bosses, nor were FAA inspectors at air shows given guidance on how to spot improper air boss behavior. In fact, their guidance was mostly aimed at ensuring that the provisions of the airspace waiver were met; that is to say, that the performers held the correct licenses, that the airplanes stayed within the designated airspace, that the briefing was held at the proper time, and so on. Since the inspectors were not experts on air show or air boss conduct, nor were they given any training or checklists related to those topics, it was unlikely that they would independently identify safety issues. The matter was considered so secondary that the FAA inspector didn’t even have a radio with which to listen to the air boss frequency. The trainee inspector did listen to the air boss frequency but was unable to identify anything out of the ordinary about the communications.
With the FAA exercising minimal oversight of the air boss training, accrediting, selecting, and monitoring process, the burden of ensuring the quality and trustworthiness of each air boss fell disproportionately onto the air show organizers themselves. In the case of Wings Over Dallas, that was the Commemorative Air Force.
As this article has already established, Chairman Linebarger, a CAF employee, selected Russell Royce as the air boss because she liked his “way of doing things.” But as Linebarger herself freely admitted, she was too busy during air shows to actually monitor the air boss’s performance, and even if she could monitor it, she hadn’t received any training or guidance on what proper air bossing was supposed to look like, other than her own lived experience. In fact, she told the NTSB that the only way for her to find out about a problem with the air boss’s directives was for someone to bring it to her attention. However, as we’ve already noted, many senior CAF pilots didn’t see anything wrong with the way the Royces directed performances either. Furthermore, a small group who did have complaints about Ralph Royce after Wings Over Houston didn’t bring their concerns to the Air Show Chairman or indeed any other authority figure. It was therefore quite probable that Chairman Linebarger had little idea that the Royces’ freeform air bossing technique was controversial, or that other air bosses employed better safeguards.
Even months after the accident, some interviewees didn’t appear to understand what the problem was, including Chairman Linebarger herself. In one regretful interview passage, the NTSB asked her what she would do differently if she were to organize a 2024 rendition of Wings Over Dallas, to which she replied that she wouldn’t do anything differently at all. And when further pressed on whether she had learned anything from the disaster, she said, “I learned how quickly things can change in a blink of an eye regardless of how well you’ve planned it; anything can happen. But you just have to move forward.”
Is there any interpretation of that statement other than an admission that she learned nothing? I don’t want to be overly judgmental considering that some people freeze up when put on the spot, but it’s hard to imagine what would be a worse way to answer those questions.
Based on extensive testimony gleaned from multiple interviews and other information sources, this attitude appears emblematic of a larger problem with the safety culture at the CAF.
The Commemorative Air Force has some structural and historical barriers to achieving the kind of open, responsive, regimented safety culture that you might find at an airline. As an organization composed of volunteers, almost all of them retired pilots, the average CAF member is old and set in their ways. For instance, Chief Aviation Officer Jim Lasche described visiting a CAF wing that was having problems and discovering that everyone was over the age of 75 and the lead mechanic was 84. He said that many CAF members didn’t like it when he made changes, were uncomfortable around computers, and resented requirements being imposed upon them. Some of the units had turned into “old boys clubs,” ostensibly representing the warbird community in a major metropolitan area without adding any new members for a decade or more. And most importantly of all, everyone was there because they wanted to fly warbirds — and the implicit fear that that privilege could be taken away sometimes created a culture of silence.
In a robust organization, that pressure can be alleviated by erecting clearly defined and well-understood safeguards for members who want to express safety concerns. But in a tight-knit organization full of experienced people, each of them bringing a lifetime of agendas and opinions to the table, abuse was known to occur. For instance, Lasche mentioned one incident in which a CAF member unsuccessfully propositioned a female wing mate, then falsely reported that her plane was unsafe in order to get back at her for turning him down. And while Lasche freely gave out his personal phone number as a 24/7 safety hotline, he stated that some people would call him just to rant or vent off steam, sometimes at odd hours of the night.
But perhaps the most concerning story about the CAF’s internal culture was directly related to Wings Over Dallas. As you might recall, a two-seater Stearman on a revenue ride flight landed on runway 31 at approximately the same time as the collision. The NTSB was alarmed not only because the Stearman was potentially distracting for the air boss during a critical period of the show, but also because the plane was nearly struck by falling debris from the colliding aircraft, which could have injured or killed the occupants, one of whom was a paying passenger. In his interview, Jim Lasche stated that it had always been CAF policy to run revenue ride flights during breaks between warbird performances, when no other aircraft were airborne. But in recent years, air show timelines had been condensed to eliminate breaks that would cause some of the audience to leave. Because revenue ride flights are crucial to balancing the CAF’s books, this in turn resulted in pressure to conduct revenue rides during performances. On the other hand, Lasche felt that having paying passengers airborne in the same airspace as an ongoing performance was dangerous, so he came out against the move. But he “acquiesced” after receiving intense pushback from what he described as “higher up people,” including the air boss. As a compromise, he agreed to allow revenue ride flights during performances, but only as long as they didn’t take off or land while another act was flying.
However, this agreement apparently wasn’t recorded in writing and wasn’t properly enforced, because the air boss authorized several revenue ride flights to take off or land during the accident performance, including the Stearman that almost became collateral damage. The decision to allow these takeoffs and landings was made without Lasche’s knowledge and he was upset to find out about them after the fact. Nevertheless, the Stearman issue made it clear that concerns such as entertainment value and revenue were sometimes taking priority over safety, and that there was no framework in place to ensure that safety won out.
Years before the accident, Lasche had attempted to create such a framework by implementing a safety management system, or SMS. The idea behind an SMS is to provide a secure, anonymous avenue for members to report incidents and concerns, creating a stream of data that can then be analyzed to detect unsafe trends. The CAF wasn’t required to have an SMS, but implementing one was undoubtedly a good idea and it could have been very useful, in theory.
Lasche explained that he was inspired to develop an SMS after he asked a group of CAF pilots where they thought the organization’s next accident would come from, only for everyone present to agree, without hesitation, that a particular named person was at risk. When that very pilot killed himself and a passenger in a crash a few weeks later, Lasche concluded that if a system had been in place to turn those concerns into action, lives might have been saved.
But the SMS as actually implemented was something of a disappointment. Despite efforts to make sure all CAF members knew how it worked, the system was rarely utilized and received zero reports during the year leading up to the crash. Nevertheless, Lasche never really tried to figure out why. The NTSB rightly pointed out that receiving zero reports is usually indicative of a lack of understanding or trust in the SMS rather than a lack of safety issues to report. It was clear that some CAF members preferred to keep reporting issues using Lasche’s personal phone number, but the lack of anonymity in that approach and the absence of detailed record-keeping limited its usefulness. Nor was this problem confined to the CAF, because ICAS had its own similar safety reporting system that only received 10 reports in 15 years.
In its final report, the NTSB wrote, “An organization’s culture can become unhealthy if motivational factors exert influence that turn it into something colloquially known as “don’t rock the boat” syndrome.” The investigators felt it was understandable that such a culture could develop at the CAF, where members paid for the privilege to participate and didn’t have the protections afforded to an employee. Further, the NTSB added, “In such cases, the performance can become more about thrilling the crowd, sometimes to the detriment of aviation safety. While some air show event organizers have actively worked to apply administrative controls to preclude such performances, the circumstances of this accident suggest that, for some parts of the warbird community, it may persist.”
The NTSB notes that these circumstances created a culture where members did not speak up about deficiencies. But I would like to point out that the CAF interviews show many members didn’t recognize that safety deficiencies existed in the first place.
I want to caveat this section by mentioning that I am not a CAF member, not a pilot, and not an expert on air shows. Weeks of research don’t replace or equal years of experience. But in all the testimony I read and all the guidance I reviewed, I didn’t find a credible defense of the way that the accident performance was carried out, not from Russell Royce nor from anyone else. Royce’s beliefs about the proper way to conduct an air boss directed performance were inconsistent with basic, well-established safety principles that transcend most modes of aviation. It is a fact that in a complex maneuvering environment involving multiple aircraft, especially dissimilar aircraft, visual separation is insufficient to preclude an accident, and it is a fact that the use of procedural separation in addition to visual separation is superior to visual separation alone. Of course pilots should be keeping each other in sight; that’s a basic part of flying any aircraft. But that doesn’t mean that the air boss shouldn’t take easily available measures to reinforce the imperfect substrate of see-and-avoid, and the existence of visual separation certainly doesn’t allow the air boss to wash their hands of all responsibility when two pilots inevitably and predictably lose sight of each other and collide — because saying, “that’s too bad, I guess they should have looked harder,” and then moving on to the next air show, is a surefire way to kill another 6 people next year.
As seasoned aviators, often with decades of experience in the highly regimented and extremely safe world of passenger airlines, most CAF pilots and managers should theoretically have been in a position to recognize that Royce wasn’t using procedural separation, and that this represented a serious safety issue. But not only did nobody speak up about this before the accident, several prominent CAF members interviewed by the NTSB still didn’t see anything wrong with it even six or eight months later. As far as they were concerned, Russell Royce’s freeform air bossing style was just the way things were done, and the possibility that “the way things were done” was unsafe and should be improved may not have occurred to them. Looking in from the outside, as someone who hasn’t spent my life in the air show environment, and as someone who knows what the consequences of these unsafe practices turned out to be, it’s easy for me to say they should have reacted differently. But I won’t say that, because it’s a well-documented fact that human beings, existing day in and day out within a system where safety measures are not being used, will quickly become accustomed to the unsafe environment even if they know, in principle, what a safe environment ought to look like. And that’s what sociologist Diane Vaughan famously called “normalization of deviance.”
The normalization of deviance is the process by which actors within a complex system featuring complex safety requirements unconsciously tolerate increasingly unsafe behaviors and practices as long as those practices are not met with adverse consequences. It’s really not a very difficult concept to understand, because all of us have probably experienced a basic version of it at some point in our lives. For example, I spent years writing articles using a laptop with broken keys, even though this resulted in a greatly elevated number of typographical errors, simply because I had become accustomed to my little workarounds for using the keyboard and catching mistakes. But if someone else had tried to sit down and write using my laptop, they would have been frustrated beyond belief. So while it would have been better to get my computer some professional help, I never did, even though I knew the problem existed and I could afford the repairs.
The point is that when you’re inside the unsafe system, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees, and sometimes even if you do, inertia can prevent change. This was probably especially true at the CAF, an organization with a tight-knit membership, disincentives to rocking the boat, and a unique mission that requires flying 85-year-old aircraft with all the safety issues inherent to that. And when you’re up there in a formation, flying a B-17 Flying Fortress or a P-51 Mustang, living the dream in front of thousands of awed spectators, who really wants to be the one to say, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this?” Hell, who even wants to think that?
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To its credit, the CAF made several changes to its operations after the accident without waiting for NTSB recommendations. In 2023, CAF management drafted new air show guidance banning CAF aircraft from participating in air boss directed performances that included aircraft of differing performance; multiple parades of different aircraft categories without at least 500 feet of altitude separation; or maneuvers other than racetrack patterns. Dog bone turns and crossing paths would only be allowed as part of an approved maneuvers package. Air bosses would be required to meet these stipulations before the CAF would agree to participate.
At the same time, the FAA issued a Safety Alert For Operators (SAFO) recommending that air show organizers provide all pilots with a detailed written plan, including well-defined separation strategies, in advance of any performance. The SAFO also stated that maneuvers other than racetrack patterns were not recommended for air boss directed performances, and linked to a new ICAS document that outlined a strategy for using altitude blocks and lateral buffers to separate aircraft. A form that air bosses could use to assign aircraft to these blocks was also included.
In its final report, the NTSB made several recommendations that went even farther. These included the following:
· The FAA and ICAS should establish air show standard operating practices addressing procedural separation in air boss directed performances, risk assessments for air show operations, and a post-show debriefing with reporting of results to the FAA and ICAS.
· The FAA should require recurrent evaluations upon renewing air boss letters of authorization.
· ICAS should develop a set of standard terminology for air bosses to use when describing air show maneuvers.
· FAA inspectors should observe air boss performance during air shows and provide feedback during the debriefing, and the FAA should provide its inspectors with evaluation guidance.
· The CAF should use existing FAA guidance to develop a risk assessment and mitigation process tailored to its unique operations.
So far, the effect of these reforms remains to be seen. Some changes are already visible; for example, Chief Aviation Officer Jim Lasche said he refused to allow CAF airplanes and pilots to participate in a February 2023 air show where Russell Royce was the air boss. Later, the family of Len Root sued Royce for negligence, and the CAF for hiring him. The outcome of that suit is pending as of this writing.
However, one of the points I want to end on is that while there were characters in this story who came across very unfavorably, a true safety reckoning doesn’t stop at blaming those people — in fact, searching for blame isn’t really part of the process at all. Everyone in this story was a product of the environment that they operated in, while at the same time, each contributed in some unconscious way to the perpetuation of that environment. It requires vision and drive to change the culture of an organization — or it can require tragedy, lawsuits, and new FAA regulations. But both methods require that the root causes of unsafe practices be identified, and it’s clear that the practices that led to the disaster at Wings Over Dallas didn’t start with Russell Royce, or with his dad, or with the air show chairman. They probably didn’t even start with the CAF. Most likely, those practices arose from the informal origins of warbird demonstrations — a few guys getting together on weekends to pluck ex-military aircraft from boneyards to fly for fun — and those origins created attitudes that shaped the institutional character thereafter. And because of the Wings Over Dallas tragedy and other recent warbird incidents, it’s now up to the current generation of warbird enthusiasts to ensure that it remains possible to uphold the CAF’s mission — to preserve the aviation heritage of the Second World War for the education and enjoyment not only of current, but also future generations.
In that mission, I wish them luck. I am not and probably never will be a warbird enthusiast, but it nevertheless fills me with a certain wonder to look up and see a B-17, its mighty radial engines turning fuel into noise, like a beast out of another age, brashly carving its way through our modern skies. I hope that some lucky few will one day get to ride on a B-17 as it celebrates its hundredth birthday. The biggest obstacle to that milestone isn’t the age of the planes, but the way that we treat them, and if nothing is learned from this latest tragedy, then not only will we lose this part of our history — we will deserve it.
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Thanks for your patience in waiting for this article! After publishing my piece on EgyptAir 804 in December, I moved half way across the country in a long, messy relocation process fraught with other struggles along the way. But here I am, and here it is. Thank you!
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Don’t forget to listen to Controlled Pod Into Terrain, my podcast (with slides!), where I discuss aerospace disasters with my cohosts Ariadne and J! Check out our channel here, and listen to our latest episode about a titanic battle between a BAC 1–11 and some wind. Alternatively, download audio-only versions via RSS.com, or look us up on Spotify!
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