A Mississippi-based warbird pilot was killed Tuesday afternoon when a North American F-51D Mustang was involved in an accident at Tallulah/Vicksburg Regional Airport in Mound, Louisiana. F-51D is the postwar U.S. Air Force designation for the P-51D Mustang, the World War II-era fighter by which the type is more commonly known.
According to local news reports, the aircraft, registered N251CS to Southern Heritage Air LLC, was destroyed in the accident. Few details have been made public, although the accident occurred at about 3:12 p.m., and tracking data showed the aircraft had been airborne for about three minutes.
The pilot was identified by The Vicksburg Post as Dan Fordice, chairman of the Southern Heritage Air Foundation and an experienced pilot with more than 5,000 hours of flight time. Fordice served in the U.S. Army and Mississippi National Guard and was involved in aviation preservation through the foundation, which is based at the airport. He was also the son of Kirk Fordice, who served as governor of Mississippi from 1992 to 2000. Local WLBT reported the aircraft involved is believed to have been Charlotte’s Chariot II, a restored Mustang painted to honor World War II aviator Cary Salter.
The Madison Parish Sheriff’s Office confirmed a fatality following the accident but did not initially release the pilot’s name. The FAA and NTSB were responding to the accident site Tuesday.
Condolences to family and may the pilot RIP. Hopefully, an investigation will report on the cause of this crash.
Can we please change from calling crashes ‘accidents’ and calling them what they are: crashes.
Collisions are preventable events caused by human choices and systemic flaws, rather than random, unavoidable acts of chance.
Accidents are things that were not the intended outcomes of an action.
I’d say this wasn’t intentional. Therefore, it’s an accident.
It’s an accidental crash.