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NTSB Describes Split S Preceding Bill Anders’ Fatal Crash

By

 Russ Niles

 -

Published:July 3, 2024

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Former astronaut William Anders seen in a 1966 NASA photo during ataken zero-gravity training mission.

An NTSB Preliminary Report suggests former astronaut Bill Anders was doing a Split S in his Beech A45 Mentor but ran out of altitude and crashed into the ocean off Deer Harbor, Washington, on June 7. The NTSB does not use that term, but its narrative of cellphone video of the 90-year-old Anders’ final moments accurately describes the maneuver taught all fighter pilots as a means of reversing direction in a hurry.

“At the beginning of the recording the airplane was inverted with a slight nose down attitude and heading generally to the south. Over the next 3 seconds the airplane had transitioned to an almost vertical dive,” the report says. “As the airplane approached the water, it began to pull out of the dive, now facing the opposite direction. By the time it had recovered to almost wings level, upright attitude, the airplane struck the water with its right wingtip, and spun across the water on a northern trajectory.”

The report said Anders took off from Skagit Regional Airport about 10:50 a.m. in the Mentor, which is part of the collection at the Heritage Flight Museum he founded there. He told his son, who was working at the museum, he was doing what he termed the “Orcas Run,” in which he flew around the San Juan Islands just off the coast of Washington. He texted a friend on Orcas Island that he would be flying by about 50 minutes later and he was there on time. The friend told the NTSB that Anders would frequently fly past her house but “he never performed any kind of aerobatic maneuvers.”