ERA10CA465 · Stearman E75 N1
Stearman E75 N1 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Seven Lakes Airport (62GA) to Tullahoma Regional Airport William Northern Field (THA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA465
- 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
- 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
Stearman E75 N1
- Aircraft type
- Stearman E75
- 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
- N1370V
- Operator
- James G Ratliff · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seven Lakes Airport (62GA), Jackson, GATo Tullahoma Regional Airport William Northern Field (THA), Tullahoma, TN
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, after takeoff, at an altitude of 100 feet above the ground, the engine’s right side cowling door became unsecured. He stated that the door was banging in the air flapping onto the top of the cowling. As the pilot began to maneuver toward the airport to land, the cowling started to move to the closed position, and the pilot attempted to further close the door with rudder input. The pilot stated that he was fixated on keeping the cowling closed and inadvertently let the airspeed slow to the point that the airplane started to descend rapidly. The pilot applied full power to recover, but did not have enough altitude to regain flying speed. The airplane impacted trees, resulting in substantial damage to the upper and lower wings. The pilot stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the cowling camlocks and found them to be in good condition.
Probable cause
The pilot's diverted attention toward an unsecured engine cowl door after takeoff which resulted in his failure to maintain airspeed and altitude. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA465
- Event ID
- 20100906X40636
- Case number
- ERA10CA465
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 8ae2981b99379d5deaa6d0a8fc2d5b865baf0f403bab5a70ad82fda548d7ead6; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:06:43.863Z.