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Air Disasters!

Caustic Soda’s going down in flames with our latest episode – Air Disasters! Special guest Lucas Black joins us all the way from the UK via the magic of the Interwebs (and Skype and our engineer Mike). We look at some of the world’s worst aviation disasters, from the Hindenberg to 9/11 to the horrible Sknyliv airshow disaster in Ukraine.

We had a few technical difficulties while recording this episode so please excuse the glitches and odd sounds you may hear, as well as some fairly obvious edits.

Music: “Flying Trapeze 1943” sung by Virginia O’Brien

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Warning: This one gets GRUESOME with graphic depictions of the aftermath.

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Top Gun:
Lucas: 8/10 (the cockpit to cockpit USA/USSR bit is the “Superman mini balloons” that ruins it for me…)
Kevin: 8/10

Airplane:
Toren: 8/10
Lucas: 10/10 – Purely for the memories of laughing at it with my dad so much we couldn’t breath. And the boobs.
Kevin: 7/10

Donnie Darko:
Toren: 9/10
Lucas: 9/10 Great bit of twisting
Kevin: 9/10

No Highway in the Sky:
Lucas: 10/10 – Proper film from when they made proper films, what ho chaps!

Superman Returns:
Toren: 7/10
Lucas: 5/10 I want to suspend belief… I really do…
Kevin: 6/10

The Aviator:
Kevin: 7/10
Lucas: 8/10 even though it has Leo in it.

25 Responses

  1. The Ukraine crash doesn’t have much effect on me to start with. I guess it’s in the blood, but the first thing I notice is the direction the casualties and”splatter” has spread. It demonstrates how close to actually saving the incident the pilot was. There is a lot of forward motion, so it wasn’t a steep impact.

    But then… the small child layed spread eagle on the ground brings a huge lump to my throat.

    I get the cold calculated “evidence” to the tragedy from my Dad – and the deep sadness from being a Dad.

  2. Wasn’t there a Canadian designed blimp which was UFO shaped that debuted at Expo 86 which was supposed to be used for logging? It’s design was much superior to the PA97

  3. Wasn’t there a Canadian designed blimp which was UFO shaped that debuted at Expo 86 which was supposed to be used for logging? It’s design was much superior to the PA97

  4. In a related note, I once met a guy who was a janitor at a jet propulsion test facility and he related a story of how he had to clean up the area where they threw frozen chickens into jet engines. He said it was what eventually drove him to leave his well paying janitor job. Clean up all the chicken splatters got to be too much.

    ps. There were some rather long spaces between each person’s intro. In case you hadn’t heard that yet.

  5. I think its weird that someone overlaid an Enigma track on top of the Ukraine crash…

    1. I’m going to make an amendment in my will that says nobody can put my death up on YouTube overlaid by an Enigma track now.

  6. I think its weird that someone overlaid an Enigma track on top of the Ukraine crash…

    1. I’m going to make an amendment in my will that says nobody can put my death up on YouTube overlaid by an Enigma track now.

  7. They use frozen chickens, this is true. In fact when a new high speed train was being developed the designers asked for some info from the aviation testers as to how to launch the chickens.

    Test after test and the train designers just smashed windshield after thicker windshield. They went back to the aviation designers & asked what they were doing wrong.

    The aviation guys went to see the test and just gave one comment…

    “… Defrost the chicken”

  11. During your podcast on Air Disasters!, I found a pop culture refrence that would also tie into your murder episode. Lord of the Flies starts with a plane crash, and, as the book continues, Simon is killed but because they are on a deserted island, no one finds out. (Perfect no?)

  12. Fans of air disasters should try to see a performance of Charlie Victor Romeo, a stage play that is entirely performances of the recordings on cockpit voice recorders. The depressurized bulkhead disaster mentioned in the podcast is among the crashes performed.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Victor_Romeo

    It’s amazing and has a cult following among pilots.

  13. Fans of air disasters should try to see a performance of Charlie Victor Romeo, a stage play that is entirely performances of the recordings on cockpit voice recorders. The depressurized bulkhead disaster mentioned in the podcast is among the crashes performed.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Victor_Romeo

    It’s amazing and has a cult following among pilots.