HFB 320 Hansa Jet accident near Madrid

The HFB 320 Hansa Jet accident near Madrid occurred on 12 May 1965. An HFB 320 Hansa Jet crashed to the ground during a test flight by Hamburger Flugzeugbau after a loss of control with a deep stall, killing one person.

Accident sequence

On that day, stall tests at high altitude were being carried out with the aircraft. At an altitude of 22,000 feet (approx. 6,700 metres) a deep stall occurred. The aircraft, equipped with rear-mounted engines and a T-tail, thereby assumed a supercritical angle of attack at which, in addition to the flow separation on the wings, the airflow also no longer reached the horizontal stabiliser and the elevator, as these were in the wake of the wings. The aircraft, no longer controllable, circled towards the ground in a flat spin. The HFB 320 was equipped with an anti-spin parachute, which the pilots activated in order to recover the aircraft from the stall. As the deployment of the anti-spin parachute had no sufficient effect, the crew members bailed out of the aircraft with parachutes. The pilot Hans Bardill and the third crew member were able to bail out of the aircraft safely with parachutes. The pilot Loren Davis became entangled in the lines of the aircraft's anti-spin parachute after bailing out and was no longer able to free himself. The HFB 320 fell to the ground and struck a slope, with the aircraft's nose pointing towards the valley after the impact. Davis was killed in the accident.