NEW Details About The N49961 Crash That Killed Bruce Collie's Daughter, Final Updates...

NEW Details About The N49961 Crash That Killed Bruce Collie's Daughter, Final Updates...
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#fligdebrief #plaincrash #planecrash #pilotfatalcrash
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NEW Details About The N49961 Crash That Killed Bruce Collie's Daughter, Final Updates...
At AirVenture 2023, the world’s biggest aviation gathering, a vintage warbird — a North American AT-6D — spun out of control and slammed into Lake Winnebago. On board were two young aviators with bright futures, including the daughter of a former NFL Super Bowl champion. Now the NTSB has dropped its final report, and the real story isn’t just about a stall-spin. It’s about physics, human decision-making, and how unforgiving these old machines can be when the margins disappear.
The Flight and the Fatal Turn
NEW Details About The N49961 Crash That Killed Bruce Collie's Daughter, Final Updates...
So, let’s set the scene. It’s the morning of July 29th, 2023, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. If you’ve ever been to EAA AirVenture, you know it’s complete sensory overload — thousands of airplanes crammed into one place, constant arrivals, and spectators everywhere. That morning, the 1944-built AT-6D Texan, tail number N49961, lifted off from runway 27.
The flight itself seemed ordinary at first. The airplane climbed north, leveled off around 3,900 feet, and then turned out over Lake Winnebago — a big body of water just east of the field. ADS-B data shows the Texan was cruising along at about 110 miles per hour. Nothing unusual. But then came the maneuver that changed everything. A right turn, followed quickly by a left turn. And here’s where things started to unravel: during those turns, the airspeed bled off. Not dramatically, but enough to matter. By the time the plane rolled through that left turn, the calibrated airspeed had dropped to around 87 miles per hour.
NEW Details About The N49961 Crash That Killed Bruce Collie's Daughter, Final Updates...
And that was the trap. For this airplane, at that bank angle, the accelerated stall speed was about 89. You don’t need to be a math major to see what’s about to happen. A witness on a boat later said he watched the airplane flatten into a spin — not a nose-down spiral, but a flat, rotating pancake of an airplane. It stayed locked in that spin until it smacked the water. No fire, no recovery attempt, just a violent end to what should’ve been a simple sightseeing hop.