Comments by "Neil of Longbeck" (@neiloflongbeck5705) on "The Killer Twins; Aircraft Wrecks on Carnedd Dafydd and Llywelyn" video.

Sounds like the pilots forgot the first rule. "If lost when flying at night or poor visibility, climb. For no one has ever collided with the sky."
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There are no truly wild horses in the UK, but we do have feral and semi-formal horses. The ones in the Carneddau are feral Welsh Ponies. The Exmoor, Dartmoor, New Forest, Shetland and Fell pony populations are semi-feral.
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@mtkoslowski it was a night navigation exercise. One of those killed was the Navigator who could of taken star shots and worked out their position if they could gave got above the clouds. Also onboard was the Radio Operator. Unfortunately the RO took a wrong radio bearing due to miscommunication. As for equipment the aircraft as it was from 239 Operational Conversion unit it would have been fitted with all the equipment in use on the operational squadrons including Gee-H which had been introduced back in 1943. The aircraft on this exercise would have sufficient fuel for their task plus a reserve, and considering the British weather in March they would gave gad suffcient to climb away from the hills and mountains of Wales and England. At the time of impact they had been airborne for about 7 hours. Now a Lincoln has a combat radius of about 2,800 miles at 15,000ft and 200mph with 14,000lb of bombs. The same fuel load would equate to a much greater range considering that no bombs would have been on board.
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@migueldelacruz4799 this rule should had been ingrained in pilots by the 1950s but still isn't.
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@mtkoslowski well let's start with navigation. The positions of numerous stars are given in Navigator's almanacs with a minimum of two stars you can get a rough positional fix, with 3 or more stars you can get a more accurate positional fix. Now RAF Valley is on the coast with the end longest runway being roughly north-south and the longest north-wedt-south-east in alignment. Once you get you position to fly to a point over the Irish Sea using dead reckoning and taking further positional fixes before turning g back towards the location of RAF Valley before descending to under the cloud base and fly back to the position of the base to land. The Lincoln had fuel burn rates between about 170 gallons per hour and 400 gallons per hour depending on the supercharger gear, the weight and altitude. These can be found online in the Pilot's Handling Notes. The Lincoln had a max fuel capacity of 3,580 gallons. Of course, as with every aircraft not al, of this fuel will be available for use in flight, so assuming g we can use 90% of this fuel in flight, then at the maximum fuel burn rate it equates to about 7 hours of running time for the engines. By the time RF511 crashed they had been airborne for about 7 hours, so at max fuel burn they would have been running on fumes. At the most economic fuel burn we're kicking at over 18 hours of engine running time.
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@alganhar1 yes, I know that you get a fix to within a fraction of a degree and that you need at least 3 to fix your position to this kind of accuracy. However, at night unless you are able to determine the difference between one patch of land and another most landmarks are useless. If you can spot the coastline or a body of water then you might spot a familiar location. But there again, and proved by WW2, you can spoof pilots into thinking there are not where they think they are by mistaking one body of water for another. Now unless you know that it is safe to descend it is impossible to avoid controlled flight in to terrain and to be certain of where you are to any degree you need to get a navigational fix, be that with celestial navigation or radio signal triangulation. Having done daytime navigational training flights I know how difficult it is to determine one town from another and that was with clear visibility, at night how do you determine one cluster of lights from another?
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