WPR12LA275 · de Havilland TIGER MOTH DH 82A
de Havilland TIGER MOTH DH 82A · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Flabob Airport (KRIR) to Upland-Cable Airport (KCCB)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA275
- 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
de Havilland TIGER MOTH DH 82A
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland TIGER MOTH DH 82A
- 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
- N523R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flabob Airport (KRIR), Flabob, CATo Upland-Cable Airport (KCCB), Upland, CA
- 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, the engine lost partial power. The pilot performed a forced landing into a field, and the airplane nosed over. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that a rocker bracket assembly clamping bolt had failed in fatigue, causing the assembly to partially detach from the cylinder head. The detachment prevented the exhaust valve from actuating. Peening damage sustained to the bolt revealed that it most likely failed during a prior flight, at an undetermined time before the ultimate displacement of the bracket assembly. No airworthiness directives existed for the antique engine, which was overhauled 46 years prior to the accident. However, a “modification news sheet” was issued by the manufacturer 16 years before the overhaul, which detailed a design change intended to preclude the failure of the clamping bolts. The modification was not performed on the failed cylinder; however, the three other cylinders exhibited an undocumented modification to their rocker valve assemblies, which appeared to perform the same function.
Probable cause
Partial loss of engine power during cruise flight due to a failed engine cylinder rocker assembly clamping bolt. Contributing to the accident was the failure of unknown maintenance personnel to perform a modification to the assembly that would have prevented the failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA275
- Event ID
- 20120625X15334
- Case number
- WPR12LA275
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-06-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1e90788da2256d506b5bc99703d88e28362759227fbe0ac9801097924f6f46b8; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:36:33.000Z.