ATL03LA016 · Chance Vought F4U-4
Chance Vought F4U-4 · Accident: fire en route
From Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (CUB) to Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (CUB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03LA016
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Chance Vought F4U-4
- Aircraft type
- Chance Vought F4
- 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
- N713JT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (CUB), Columbia, SCTo Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (CUB)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Fire
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The F4U-4 Corsair was the flight leader of 6 airplanes that were performing fly-bys on runway 13 at approximately 500 to 1000 feet above ground level (AGL). The airplane was participating in a level formation flight in preparation for the Veterans Hospital Fly-By. The Corsair had just passed the approach end of runway 13 when witnesses observed smoke trailing from the airplane. According to the air traffic controller, the airplane was last observed on base in a descent and disappeared beyond a tree line. The airplane collided with trees and caught fire about 3/4 miles from Columbia Owens Downtown Airport Columbia, South Carolina. The on site examination of the wreckage was done by the FAA. The airplane was damaged by fire and impact forces. The engine was examinined May 19, 2003 at Atlanta Air Recovery in Griffin, Georgia. Examination found the engine's accessory section consumed by fire from the super-charger aft, including the firewall, cockpit and part of the cabin.
Probable cause
An in-flight engine fire for undetermined reasons
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03LA016
- Event ID
- 20021113X05462
- Case number
- ATL03LA016
- 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, coordinates. 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: 2ab48cbbbb04f925b6ee77e15f5bf56a52b9b97c4cdefdcda55bf6fdb30ad42d; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:41:37.943Z.