LAX00FA159 · Convair BT-13A
Big Ship Productions Convair BT-13A · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From NPS · Ford Island, HI to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00FA159
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Convair BT-13A
- Aircraft type
- Convair BT-13
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N56336
- Operator
- Big Ship Productions
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From NPS · Ford Island, HITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Low pass, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying a replica Japanese Val during the filming of 'Pearl Harbor' on Ford Island, Hawaii. The movie shot called for a low pass of three Val's over a movie set with 65-foot-tall palm trees. The number 2 and 3 wingmen were to stack up (above) on the flight leader number 1. At the completion of the pass, the number 3 wingman's left wing contacted a palm tree, severing about 18 feet of left wing. The airplane rolled twice and descended into the ground. The pilot was wearing a 5-point restraint system and survived with serious injuries. Video and film were viewed to determine whether or not smoke created by smoke generators for the movie shot were a factor affecting the pilot's view of the palm trees. The pilot reported the smoke was not an issue. The last thing he recalled was turbulence from the flight leader.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to anticipate turbulence from the formation lead airplane. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00FA159
- Event ID
- 20001212X20835
- Case number
- LAX00FA159
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f627b9a199a3cb3d9b320ed70ba8feb46bcbede42c39693085eb08d9f8be8762; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:40:08.620Z.