Nimbus 4 crash near Omarama, 1995

[zkdex]

Scrolling through the New Zealand entries on the Aviation Safety Wikibase, I came across an entry for a Schempp-Hirth Nimbus 4 glider, 'registration' GG, which crashed near Omarama on 2 January 1995. The pilot parachuted to safety and walked out from the crash site. The GG did not correspond to ZK-GGG so I did a little googling - amazing what you can find!

Seems this Nimbus 4 glider, constructors number 1/2, was actually owned by the French Air Force (Armee de l'Air), id letters GG. It was being flown by Gerard Lherm, who appears to be a very experienced glider pilot. Like other French military gliders, this would have had a radio callsign (formatted F-Rxxx or F-Sxxx or F-Txxx or F-Uxxx) which would have had no relationship to the id letters. Wondering if anyone with an interest in French military gliding might have the callsign for this glider?

[planewriting]

Tracing the answer to this question is proving difficult. Dave Paull and I both arrived independently at the World Gliding Championships which took place at Omarama in January 1995, a few days after the accident and somehow didn't record it. What I can tell you is that the letters GG were the competition letters used by Gerard Lherm on both this and the replacement Glaser Dirks DG800S glider D-6580, which illustrates a point. By convention competition letters, displayed on the glider's tail, were almost exclusively that (GG); not numbers (80), so there is no involvement of ZK-GGG in this event. I will chip away at this mystery and hopefully find the answer.

[zkdex]

Could be mission impossible, but thanks for the feedback. Competition letters/numbers/combinations seem to be used widely in Europe, unlike NZ where we have utilised the "last two" of the registration for identification.

[planewriting]

I am in touch with CAA on this one. Watch this space. The use of numbers on the tail is generally limited to countries which use numbers in their registrations such as the USA. There are some instances though when you will see one letter and one number usage.

[noooby]

I remember that one happening. The radio had someone saying that pieces of glider were raining out of a cloud.

I think he was jumping wave clouds and entered cloud. The machine started to break up at VERY high speed, the canopy jammed until the wings broke up and then he could free himself.

He gave a talk at the morning breifing the next day. Pat Driessen had 2 gliders that he was choosing between, the DG and an LS6 (??) I believe. He went with the LS and gave the other glider to Gerard.

The glider retrieval was done with a horse float. LOL.

[planewriting]

From international gliding historian Richard Cawsey, answering my question, I have the following, "The serial number would have simply been no. 1. The suffix "/2" refers to the build number, i.e. the second Nimbus 4 in the overall construction sequence, and appears on a "Bau Nummer" plate on the glider, but is not used officially. Although being a military aircraft it was not registered, it had a registration-style callsign F-UMGG (but only carried the last two). . ."

[zkdex]

Thanks for the updated info. This glider would be rather unique in l'Armee de l'air in using the last two of its callsign as its id. Most other gliders either use letter/number combos unrelated to their callsign, or incorporate all or part of their constructors number. Mind you the most recent French military glider purchases carry civil regos in the F-Cxxx block.

[Geoff Soper]

I saw images of the crash site and inspected the wreckage they brought back to Omarama. they burned the remains of the glider that were too small to bring back and other large parts were brought back in a trailer. The larger parts were put into its import container as the large wing sections were damaged beyond economical repair but still recognisable. Some instruments were recovered including the GPS unit which mysteriously was said to have been unable to have the data extracted. But that is another story. The glider broke up when Gerard Lherm entered cloud and lost control to close to Cumulus Granitus. His chute opened just in time thankfully. The nose cone was buried deep in the solid ground near the Lindis Pass and they tried to use crowbars to extract it but could not get it all out! As it was a World Gliding Championship they were permitted to operate on their foreign registrations. I too was at his talk about what occurred.