Posted On: Friday - April 4th 2025 10:24PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity History Science
(EXCUSESs is my acronym to replace the oft-derogatory expression "conspiracy theory". It stands for EXplanations of Causes of Unusually Suspect Events.)
We're really trying to follow up from posts that promise more of a conclusion coming. Rather than lots of other stupidity to cover, we'll follow up here on our post from 2 weeks back EXCUSEs: Means and Motives - Example, JFK. Note that very small difference in our title, "JFK, Jr." rather than JFK.
Everyone's got something to say about JFK's murder, though all Peak Stupidity could come up with is that there are over half a dozen, maybe a full baker's dozen, reasons that people would have wanted to kill President Kennedy. There's more hype now, with the release of dozens of reams of paper (in digital form, I guess) by the Trump Admin., but we speculate that the REAL KILLER might have had the means to get rid of the incriminating evidence over the last, what, 52 years?! Ya think?
So that wasn't much of a post of ours, without this follow-up to explain what we think of speculation on motives that don't understand the possible means.
About the Kennedies, some say there is a curse or they are just highly accident prone, explaining some of the other deaths of this so-called American Royal Family. I'd guess the naming of the band The Dead Kennedys [sic] back in 1978, only 10 years after RFK, Sr.'s murder, signified that Americans (no, not New Yorkers, but Americans) were already sick of that Camelot crap. That whole deal is not American - we really shouldn't be hearing about dynasties* outside of Chinese Buffet restaurants.
JFK, Jr.'s death was the most interesting of all the Kennedies' unnatural deaths. Skiing into a tree, ahhhh, boring. Getting drunk and choking in one’s own vomit – not sure any of them actually have, YET, but we’ll be the first not to know about it. ("We found a 2nd puddle of vomit behind the grassy knoll!") Plus, they're not Rock & Roll stars - that'd be somewhat culturally appropriative - not cool
The reader may detect a little disdain out of Peak Stupidity for the Kennedy worship and Camelot business. It's there, but I have more respect for President Kennedy than I used to, and though I barely knew who he was at the time, the assassinated President's son John sounds like he was one of the better of the lot.
A man-about-town, magazine publisher, and businessman who'd kept up with politics - particularly in a quest to eventually get to the bottom of the events of 1963 - I suppose I was supposed to know about him. Simply putting 2 + 2 together, that there was that sad little boy saluting at his murdered Dad's funeral in that iconic photo, and that I'd not heard anything about any unnatural death out of him - his would have surely been noted - would have told me this guy was around in the 1990s. It was one episode of Seinfeld really, that jogged my memory. Elaine Benice was all hot and bothered about his being in the same gym there in NYC. (The show had an occasional big shot on, such as Mayor Giuliani, but I wouldn't have known "John John" from an actor.)
John F. Kennedy, Jr. was one big city eligible bachelor or eligible non-bachelor, and he was going places, as they say. Sometimes he got around in his Piper Saratoga, a retractable-gear 6 seat single-engine plane. That's not a RICH RICH man's plane. He probably could have bought a business jet and hired pilots - I don't know his state of wealth at the time - but, flying can be a great hobby for people like JFK, Jr. and for those with much lower means too.
Rather than say, with the hobby of fishing, fun and relaxing but not really paying off unless one catches a LOT of salmon, flying would pay off in time saved for a guy like him. The story in question here is a great example, minus the unnatural death part, of course. Anyone who knows anything about Camelot (ha!) knows that this whole Kennedy Klan had a compound**** in Hyannis Port and spent time on Martha's Vineyard Island. Kennedy was in NYC a lot, and a car trip from there to "the Vinyed", including the ferry too, would have had to have been around 6 hours. Once he got to his plane at Caldwell (now called Essex airport) in northern New Jersey (no way I'd go out of the big NYC airports either - closest in NY would be Republic- Fairchild in Nassau County) and did his preflight, he could fly nearly in a straight line to Martha's Vineyard airport in an hour and a half. From Caldwell, one can stay under the NYC airspace with a little maneuvering to stay away from both LaGuardia and White Plains, and once level, that thing would do about 140 knots true airspeed on a 170 nm straight shot. Time was worth a lot of money for a guy like JFK, Jr.
Along with that great convenience would come the pride in being able to pilot one's self and up to 5 others, in an endeavor that requires some dedication and diligence to master. Practically speaking, if Mr. Kennedy was not a spendthrift, having a nicely kept Saratoga was a very good decision. (There are airplane owners that don't have quite the money to keep everything just about perfect, but that wouldn't have been a factor for him.)
I found out more about who this guy was on July 17th of 1999, the day after Mr. Kennedy's Piper Saratoga, with he, with his wife and her sister aboard, augured into the Atlantic Ocean just west of Martha's Vineyard airport. Because I didn't know any of the possible motives for any foul play, my neither really caring about the antics of these types nor about NY City, I and the people I discussed this wreck with didn't even consider it. This was also because the official story was VERY LIKELY all that COULD have happened.
As I will get into the article that purported to tell us how nefarious the death of JFK, Jr. was, let me agree with this part. From all I read, Kennedy took flying seriously and was competent at it. There is competence in the actual flying and competence in good decision-making. All I read has me agreeing that he was certainly competent in the latter. I can't get into everything here but his having possibly waiting for one of his flight instructors to go with him, then going anyway without him, was not a bad decision in and of itself.
Mr. Kennedy had to have gotten the required few hours of simulated instrument flying (using view-limiting "foggles") during his training for his Private Pilot license. Then, too, he'd been working on his instrument rating, so he had practiced, IIRC, a dozen or so hours at that with an instructor (more on this). It was both perfectly legal for him to fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules) that night and safe enough to, per Mr. Kennedy's confidence in himself. He should have probably already known from experience and been warned by his instructor and the books that night-time flying over water in 5 miles visibility, i.e. without always enough ground lighting to perceive the horizon, can require good reference to the instruments.
Still, bad things can happen if you don't pay attention. By that, I refer to what probably did, inadvertent***** entry into a "Graveyard Spiral".
Let me back up. The need for "blind flying" (the old term), or instrument flying as it's been called for half a century, to begin with is due to the biophysically determined limitations of our sense of balance. That stuff in our inner ears is very good in helping us know our attitude (in the flying sense), and which ways we are accelerating, etc. However, that's only for a short while, something like 15, 30 seconds or so. Pilot trainees get to learn just how much that short time is by flying in a bank for longer than that. Our bodies fail us here - we have not been built with Sperry's or laser-ring gyros. Smart inventors like Sperry going all the way back to the 1930s developed what we needed to safely keep attitude, so that flying could be accomplished without visual reference to the outside.
Here's what can happen, if one is not good at flying instruments. The plane enters a bank as the pilot is not spending enough time scanning the gauges. Vertical lift is reduced in a bank, so the plane starts descending too. Then the pilot continues to be distracted, and by the time he sees that the aircraft is in a fairly steep bank and losing altitude to boot, and the speed's headed toward the red line, he might unfortunately not recover from this in the way he was trained. That would have been - after the instructor has told him to close his eyes and then maneuvers the plane all kind of ways to mix him up and finally say "OK, your airplane - recover" - to first roll out of the bank before pitching "up" for altitude. ("Up" is not up, see? It's toward the top of the plane which might be inclined 60 degrees from actually up.) Some altitude is sacrificed, and one may have to pull power to keep speed under control, even though headed for the ground. After the wings are close to level, one can pitch up, get the plane climbing, add power, and switch seats with the passengers to change his underwear in the back seat.
The problem with pitching up while in a steep bank, especially at high speed, is that 2 very important limits can be exceeded. The airplane can stall due to the angle of attack required to increase lift, seeing as (for example) at a 60 deg. bank, it takes twice the lift just to stay pitch level. If the wing stalls at a level altitude, recovery is simple, but here we are in a steep bank, which will lead to a spin after a stall. In many planes, one can recover from that, but a lot of altitude. When you've already dove down toward the ocean for a while ...
Worse yet is a structural failure of the airplane as the g-loading is high enough to bend or break off the wings. That's it, then.
I just got done writing that it sounds like JFK, Jr. was probably a good decision maker as a pilot. Those who say he shouldn't have been flying that night are wrong. It's just that he screwed up this time. Was he distracted by the passengers for just too long? Was he too used to using the autopilot?****** I've heard a theory that he may have accidentally turned off the autopilot instead of pushing the "push-to-talk" switch. Both switches would be on the left side top of the yoke (steering wheel?) so that one can use them while manipulating the controls still, the right hand being for other functions. The ability to turn OFF the autopilot is very important for safety. Usually there are multiple ways to do it (including, worst case, turning off electrical power for a bit - the engine will still run), but one usual method is with a switch right there. Did he not realize the autopilot was off and spend too much time off the gauges? Were this speculation correct, it was still no excuse for getting the plane into this state, but it might explain it.
I have considered the relationship between Mr. Kennedy and his flight instructors. I imagine he hired the best around. However, were one to be teaching a guy like this, said instructor would not be inclined to be a hard-ass. 1999 was still a tough time for aviation jobs, and having a "sugar daddy" like JFK, Jr. who would bring you along on trips to ritzy places with expenses paid was a good gig. Of course, you teach as much as you can, but you wouldn't berate the guy, and if he just let you fly when he's not in the mood to, you'd just be his corporate pilot, a pretty nice deal. Mr. Kennedy may have unintentionally used his flight instructor as a crutch. That can happen.*******
The Graveyard Spiral has killed pilots before, and even with all the training that the FAA has pushed for decades, this will still happen. If this fatal accident had one benefit, it was to bring more awareness of this to the pilots that somehow had never read about this danger. (Not likely, though.)
What else might have happened? Why is there speculation that this likely interpretation by nearly everyone who knows about flying is not a good enough EXCUSE?
We'll delve into the article that I am using for example of how not to make EXCUSES - conspiracy theories - next post. This one got WAY too long!
* Then there were the Bushes, of course, hopefully a defunct dynasty, and the Clintons, even defuncter, thankfully.
** Unz Review commenter Ralph L. kindly informed me that Ted Kennedy has been in his own aircraft wreck, a pretty bad one too, with serious injuries for him, in a Rockwell Twin Commander back in 1964. One wonders, had he died, how the Hart-Cellar immigration act he supported in '65 would have fared. I AM sure that Mary Jo Kopechne and her family would have been much happier.
*** The Cherokee 6 (for 6-seater), the Lance, and the Saratoga are basically the same plane.
**** The one example I know of Democrat's huge properties being called "compounds". Usually that term is reserved for rich Conservatives and Preppers, who really would like to have compounds. (Is Trump's Mar-a-Lago ever called a compound? Maybe the term has come into disuse.)
***** You may exclaim "no duh!" here, but one might get into the beginning of that on purpose, in training.
****** IMO, it's a crutch. For a plane like that, it shouldn't be a problem to go on 3-4 hour flights without one. Use the trim!
******* One thing not enough pilots training for instrument flying do is to fly with a "safety pilot" - just there to keep you out of trouble - looking outside for other planes, and keeping you from entering airspace you shouldn't be in and from hitting the ground. You can make bigger mistakes and learn more quickly, than with an instructor who's likely to give hints.
Comments:
The Alarmist
Saturday - April 5th 2025 12:20PM MST
PS
Lets see. The main rival for the Senate seat coveted by Hillary dies under mysterious circumstances.
Yep, must have been pilot error.
🕉
Lets see. The main rival for the Senate seat coveted by Hillary dies under mysterious circumstances.
Yep, must have been pilot error.
🕉
SafeNow
Saturday - April 5th 2025 9:57AM MST
PS
“One thing not enough pilots training for instrument flying do is to fly with a "safety pilot" - just there to keep you out of trouble” - Mr. Moderator
“It is foolish to be grudging about safety precautions for fear they might turn out to have been unnecessary” - Adm. Nimitz, concluding his report on the tragic “Halsey Hurricane”
“The 10 seconds it takes to put on a condom is easier than spending 10 years pretending to like soccer.” - 2 1/2. Men tv show.
So I guess we all agree.
“One thing not enough pilots training for instrument flying do is to fly with a "safety pilot" - just there to keep you out of trouble” - Mr. Moderator
“It is foolish to be grudging about safety precautions for fear they might turn out to have been unnecessary” - Adm. Nimitz, concluding his report on the tragic “Halsey Hurricane”
“The 10 seconds it takes to put on a condom is easier than spending 10 years pretending to like soccer.” - 2 1/2. Men tv show.
So I guess we all agree.
https://www.google.com/search?q="the+Trump+compound"
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