Good Morning: I am curious, I flew in the B-26.and later, it's replacement, the A-26, during the war in the Pacific.
The cabin / cockpit setup requires both the pilot and co pilot to exit the mid hatch door, right side half way back of the fuselage. this means that the crew, if mobile, will bail out first in an emergency.
The fact that the pilot and co-pilot were found with no impact / exit injuries leads me to believe that the rest of the crew also bailed out successfully, but were later lost at sea from one reason or another.. There would be a few minutes from the first man exiting to the last so they would be far apart, especially the crew from the pilots.
The aircraft was found with the engines separated in what appeared to be a high speed impact with the water.
The only conclusion that I can reach is that somehow the engine controls were locked into a max rev.
condition and they were unable to control it. Since they were in a training setup, perhaps they didn't clearly understand how to still use the aircraft "relatively" safely, and with the B-26's known tendency to stall at inconvenient times, may have just panicked and abandoned it as the safest manner to handle it. Probably the correct procedure under the circumstances.
If this is correct, the fault would be in the line / crew chief's pocket, faulty maintenance plus the pilot's inexperience with the aircraft..
After abandoning the aircraft, it would continue flying by itself with the auto pilot / bombing system until it contacted the water. This would place it far from where the men bailed out, hence the difficulty in finding them.
The main weakness with this theory is that the article did not say if any bodies weer found in the aircraft.
K, mi buddy Capt Buzz kill, pick my theory apart.
Don Jose de La Mancha
