A PILOT who died after steering his plane away from spectators at an air show was praised yesterday for his bravery.
Wiltshire coroner David Masters said display pilot Robin Bowes, 51, loved flying and was obviously brave and skilful.
He added:``It appears even at the last he sought to avoid persons on the ground at fatal risk to himself.''
A jury at Salisbury returned a verdict of accidental death on Mr Bowes, of Ivybridge, Devon, who died when his plane crashed and burst into flames at Stourbridge Gardens, Wiltshire, last July.
He was flying his replica of German World War One air ace the Red Baron's Fokker Triplane it crashed at National Trust centenary celebrations.
The hearing was told the plane went into a steep dive and then banked away, hitting a tree before crashing and bursting into flames. Mr Bowes died from burns.
Witness Mrs Hilary Higson, who was attending the event with her two young children, said: ``He banked away to avoid us. If he had had to make a forced landing, he would have come straight into us. It was a heroic thing he did.''
Air accident investigators said the one of the plane's two rudder hinges had metal fatigue and had fractured, which would have caused difficulties controlling it.
One said a fault in the rudder would affect the directional stability.
The coroner said the pathologist had found no evidence of anything medically wrong with Mr Bowes.
Returning their verdict of accidental death, the jury said it was due to failure of the top rudder hinge and the subsequent malfunction of the rudder.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article