The aftermath

In August 2016, Le Rêve Bleu, a replica of the prewar Bugatti-de Monge 100P racer, crashed on its third flight.

The airplane was only 100 feet in the air when the stall occurred, and it was impossible to recover. The airplane was destined for a museum in the U.K. So was the extreme taper, which would predispose it to a wing drop at the stall. This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. But the fact a 10,000-hour former fighter pilot, intimately familiar with his airplane and able to plan for the scenario, failed to execute the indispensable response is a caution to us all. The third flight was announced to be the last. During this sequence, which lasted 20 seconds, the indicated airspeed, which had never exceeded 85 knots, gradually bled off, and the angle of attack—displayed on a conspicuous digital indicator at the top center of the instrument panel—steadily increased, eventually reaching 18 degrees. The second flight, in October, was a single circuit of the airfield. The only potential point of failure common to both was the lubrication system for the nose gearbox. Unusual for an event involving a single fatality and a unique airplane, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) produced a detailed analysis. Hydraulic clutches, intended to protect against harmonic resonance during start-up, connected the engines to slender drive shafts that ran forward on either side of the pilot to a speed reduction unit driving the two fixed-pitch props. In August 2016, Le Rêve Bleu, a replica of the prewar Bugatti-de Monge 100P racer, crashed on its third flight.