I found this on an aviation forum and I just can’t stop staring at the photographs.
N9368D is a Piper Supercub registered in Anchorage.
Apparently, the owner went on a fishing trip and left the catch in the plane.
A bear smelled the food and tore the plane apart to get to it. I suppose a Piper is easier to open than a tin can…
Take a look at the horizontal stabilizer. Wow.
So, the story goes that the Alaskan pilot had 2 new tires, three cases of speed tape and several rolls of cellophane delivered to the site and promptly repaired his plane so that he could fly it home.
If you look closely, you can just about see that he wrote the registration on the side with a ball-point pen.
Would you get in?
There’s nothing that duct tape can’t fix!
I wouldn’t fly in it though :)
Rob…
This is clearly Chuck Norris we are dealing with here. Flying a plane he repaired with tape after a bear attack…
Rob: I really can’t see how you can fix the stabiliser with tape! I’m presuming that as the photographs are on the internet, he made it back safely though.
dan: You are right! Except for the bit where he had the repair supplies delivered. Chuck Norris wouldn’t have needed help :)
This isn’t that suprising really. Duct tape (or a variation of) was used for quick repairs on aircraft in WWII.
Yes, I’d fly in it. The only think I want to know before doing so is that the duct tape is good quality, new and quite sticky, and that that the CG is still within limits, since duct tape weighs more than the original covering and it’s being applied quite far aft.
Brings a new meaning to the words, “duck” tape.
Nuttin’ any self-respectin’ bush pilot wouldn’a done.
My dad once repaired the horizontal stabilizer of his DC-3 with a t-shirt and a can of 7-up and then flew it home.
It was winter, so the frozen 7-up glued the shirt to the stab.
MacGyver at his best!
Wayne, how would you check, after fixing it in the middle of nowhere that the CG is still within limits ?
Great post Sylvia, thanks a lot.
This did happen…and the duct tape did get weighty, but it was part of the load factor…just him and the tape…older craft like the 1947 Aeronca Chief was covered in material similar to duct tape except somewhat lighter…65 hp and it went well…35 cruising and 72 redline (downhill…)
This was a very interesting story…glad he made it out.
Pilots have to be ingenious most times….
Vincent, “Back-of-the-envelope” should do: Estimate the CG of the duct tape relative to the datum, erring on the aft side. Estimate the weight of duct tape applied, erring on the high side. Multiply to get the moment. Get our your W&B sheet and add it in.
My gut says that the duct tape came nowhere near moving the CG aft of limits, but it’s easy enough to do the math.
I’m not a pilot, and I don’t even play one on TV. This might all be nonsense…
im a pilot guys, and trust me that thing can not fly no matter how much duct tape u use. sure if it was minor damage some duct tape could cure it, its not even about the CG, it would stay in limits even if it was used. thing is this crafts damaged too much, the airflow would become turbulent waaaayyy b4 its supposed to, the drag would be immense, even the tires are flat, this is a picture of a trashed craft that no longer flies, there are plenty of them out there.
shamsher: Read the story – he had new tyres delivered (look at the last 2 pix). The stab had a bent tube – he straightened it. Turbulence? Around a PA18? The wings were not touched, so I would fly it (except I’m not checked out on taildraggers!).
I would rather fly an aircraft hold together by duct tape than an aircraft without any duct tape at all
MacGyver has nothing on Alaskan Bush Pilots.
:D
Duct tape, blue tarp and baling wire keeps Alaska intact.
I applaud his ingenuity, Red Green would be proud. Gotta kind of wonder though being used to the natural threats of the North, why would you leave fish (or any food that might attract bears in your plane or any vehicle, like leaving a sign out for them ‘Dinner is served”. Cool pics anyways thanks for putting them out there.
I wonder why the bear found it necessary to destroy the tires? haha
did anyone else notice the GUN MOUNTED UNDER THE WING????????????
Do a search for “Koplin”
What a bad ass.
We have this stuff at the airlines called 500 mph tape! Now that stuff is bad ass! You know what they say “if you can’t duck it f**k it!!!!”. About the CG to far aft! Don’t stall the plane and you will not have to worry about that!
Would I fly in a Cellophane SuperCub? Hell yes.
We were flying reliably in wooden planes wrapped with canvas, secured with ropes. This fella made all the necessary repairs to get him back to his hangar for real parts.
I applaud him.
And what’s more, there was no real damage to the actual control surfaces. Sure, the horizontal stabilizer was almost FOLDED in one spot, but the elevator remained untouched. That in itself was a stroke of incredible luck in his favor; it might be a totally different story had it been damaged too.
If you can’t fix it with duct tape, you have used too little duct tape.
Two comments. If it were cold enough, the duct tape would take on the characteristics similar to the frozen 7up and tee shirt covering on the DC-3, maybe even those of a silk and dope covering. Stiff and tough. Also, who would waste that much duct tape on anything that wasn’t intended to be put to use again.
This really happened, it belonged to a friend of a friend and I know pretty much what you know… I would have no problem flying it out for repair, nothing structural was damaged except the right horizontal stab, and that was temporarily fixed. The rest is just aerodynamic covering. As for the weight of the duck tape, do you really think any of you could tell the difference in CG if you threw a couple rolls back in the tail and went flying? Youd do what you gotta do up here, when calling for help means using a sat phone to call a helicopter that is probably hours away and not much help to your plane anyhow…
BTW, re: gun on the strut, where else you gonna put it on a Cub? That’s the normal location, I have also seen caribou heads tied to a strut…
Truth be known, If anyone remembers the “Breezy” experimental, it was simply a Cub wing in a pusher configuration with open welded-tube fuselage. In this case, it would almost have been as simple to leave the fuse uncovered after trimming the ugly edges with duct tape and securing them to the tubing. It would have been draggy, but serviceable. Oh yes, and cold!
Anyone who has read aviation history knows how ingenious aviators (and sailors) can be.
They call that “100-mph tape” in aviation, esp. in Alaska. It’s been a gold standard in the bush for years.
I’m loving all the comments.
I’ve sent a card to the registered owner – maybe we’ll get the story from the horse’s mouth. :)
[...] Sylvia, from fearoflanding.com, found incredible picture of a Piper Supercub attacked by a bear. But the most incredible part is that the pilot repared it with duct tape. Lots of duct tape. Click here to see in which state this aircraft flew back home. [...]
Thank you Sylvia
I am looking to the real story from the
“horses’ mouth”
With great pilots and those wonderful
flying machines, anything is possible….
Wow, that’s some serious damage. Duct tape ought to work just fine for the skin – so long as the added weight doesn’t shift the C.G. too far aft. The real concern is the horizontal stabilizer. It wouldn’t take a big shift to make the airplane uncontrollable. There is no way this can be remotely legal. Hope the pilot made it back alright.
SURE I’d get in no prob just make sure that tape is good and tight
CG. is not an issue , if he was that worried, all he has to do is fly from the front instead of back. Im sure it flew great, as far as the attack goes, chuck norris would have caught another fish with his bare hands, hunted the bear down and ducktaped it to the bear, just out of reach, then smooched the bear on his lips and flew into the blue yonder.,,, this guy is a close second to chuck, though.
MAKES ME WONDER……BEAR OR EX_WIFE. THEY ARE EQUALLY VICIOUS
Transfered to Snag
The correct aviation term for the tape you are all thinking of is
” Speed Tape”, which is silver and like duct tape, but a lot more sticky. I once flew a brand new 747 ( The 1,000 th example) which had 25 hours on it, after a catering truck driver modified the wing root fairing.
Turned out the fairing was made of plastic laminated foam, and the engineers in Frankfurt carefully stuck the loose bits together
with speed tape, and off we went at Mach .84, and the tape was still there when we got to Singapore.
Thank you Donnyboy for your posting on speed tape. It has bothered me for days that I haven’t been back to the site to do the same thing. Although I am not a pilot, I did spend 20+ years in the Air Force and learned quite a bit about aviation, not to mention 35 years as a model airplane enthusiast. They all work the same way, back is up,,, etc.
Thank you for that – I’ve corrected the reference in the post so that it now says speed tape.
I suspect he wouldn’t have been flying quite so fast as you en route to Singapore, though! ;)
Hey guys,
My brother used to fly the F17 Stealth, you know the one with the “mysterious” skin that does not reflect radar. He told me that the mechanics would often use Duck tape painted black to make a minor repair to get it back home for full repairs. Who knows maybe the whole thing is made out of duck tape:)
I am a pilot who has a lot of experience rebuilding ad flying fabric aircraft and i would fly it in a new york minute. we also patched more than a few b-29 aircraft with duct tape. also called red tape (for the original name) because , in the air force it was RED!!!!!!!
Why wouldn’t you fly it, as stated earlier the wings weren’t really touched at all, but further than that planes were originally made out of canvas over a wooden frame. Pilots (being from the calvary) originally had to wear spurs while they flew, which needless to say caused a few problems, especially since they didnt have parachutes for a while either…
[...] Encounters with Bears. Meanwhile, Sylvia has recently found and posted pictures on her Fear of Flying blog that shows what happens when you go on a fishing trip in Alaska and leave the catch inside your [...]