ERA16LA195 · Republic P 47D D
Republic P 47D D · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Republic Airport (FRG) to Republic Airport (FRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA195
- 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
Republic P 47D D
- Aircraft type
- Republic P-47
- 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
- N1345B
- Operator
- American Airpower Museum
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NYTo Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 71 years (built 1945)
- 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 (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The World War II-era fighter airplane was part of a three-ship formation performing a photo shoot. About 1,000 ft above the water, the pilot of the accident airplane made a distress call to air traffic control, stating that he had "smoke," and he subsequently ditched the airplane. The airplane landed on the water and subsequently sank. Another pilot in the formation reported that the canopy was partially open before the ditching. The pilot was unable to egress the airplane and drowned.
Examination of the engine revealed evidence of internal seizure. Damage to the inside of the crankcase prevented the removal of cylinders and disassembly of the engine. Oil and metallic fragments were found inside the engine's supercharger. Although the supercharger may have failed as the initiating event, the reason for the engine failure could not be determined due to the excessive internal damage to the engine.
Examination of the pilot's seat belt/shoulder harness restraints and canopy operation, including a functional test of the jettison T-handle, did not reveal evidence of any in-flight anomaly or failure. Although the airplane's operating instructions called for the pilot to jettison the canopy before ditching, the pilot did not do so, and was subsequently unable to fully open the canopy and egress the airplane as it sank.
Toxicology testing revealed diphenhydramine, an impairing medication that causes sedation, altered mood, and impaired cognitive and psychomotor performance in blood and urine specimens. However, the level of diphenhydramine in blood was too low to quantify and therefore any effects from it likely did not contribute to the accident.
Probable cause
A catastrophic engine failure of undetermined origin, which resulted in a total loss of engine power and subsequent ditching. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to jettison the canopy before ditching, which resulted in his inability to egress the airplane as it sank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA195
- Event ID
- 20160530X30749
- Case number
- ERA16LA195
- 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: e3e93418d2f10b2e3a3f74d590e9c140ae412ca8a6a466c77522d7067d385717; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:47:39.902Z.