Head Injuries

I recall a German physiologist wrote a paper that Richthofen's head injury under modern medicene would have barred him from flying. Another candidate who suffered for the state of 1917 technology in medicene is Harry Taylor.

http://www.australianflyingcorps.org/peopl...aylorharry.html

Taylor had a few prangs while with 2 Squadron AFC, but on the 3rd of January in an SE5a he landed in heavy snow and over-turned his aircraft. He went to the hospital with a cut on the forehead. He was released a couple of days later and returned to the squadron, but was re-admitted to hospital after illness. He was re-admitted to hospital and was found to be suffering severe concussion, including a fractured base of the skull. His service records actually have;

"Ref to W.S.M.L 636.3 Should be dead Wounded Concussion severe"

He spent a couple of months convalescing and was transferred to 8 Sqn AFC in England as an instructor. He was engaging in a dogfight with another pilot when they collided, killing both.

I wonder if his abilities were impaired by the injuries he suffered in January and were part of the cause for his accident. Would Taylor have been grounded in a modern Air Force after such an injury?



cam

I wonder if his abilities were impaired by the injuries he suffered in January and were part of the cause for his accident. Would Taylor have been grounded in a modern Air Force after such an injury?

G'day Cam,

I admit I am not an expert in 'g' forces, but my guess is that if he tried to fly today with that sort of injury, the g forces would have killed him.

Andrew

[stephen]

Cam, I am no expert in the effects of "pulling" aerial G forces, but I can tell you the potential effects of impact G forces and the potential types of head injury due to my racing experience.

It was thought only 30 years ago in auto racing that a 40 G impact was not survivable. But impact-absorbing materials such as carbon fibers and so forth, which were not even dreamt of in WWI, have magnified the potential for survival exponentially. When Emerson Fittipaldi had the accident that ended his career (in '98?), he sustained over 100 G's and lived to tell. The collapsable nature of WWI airplanes is remotely related to modern race cars in that sense, and many pilots survived crashes where the G forces alone would have killed them due to the wooden structure of their planes.

Re: head injuries... the angle of impact is critical in determining the effect of a head injury. Blunt force is not always necessary to cause severe problems. The brain floats in a fluid which is encased by the skull. In some cases with angular impacts, the skull is intact and may have only shown slight injury, but the G forces actually forced the brain to spin slightly inside the skull. This results in a severe brain trauma which is difficult to detect and would have been completely unknown in the days of Taylor and MvR.

Slowness to think, comas, dizziness, vertigo can result from the brain's movement inside the skull, all to varying degrees. A race car driver, and without doubt a pilot as well, will be unable to perform to full capacity until healing is complete. And complete healing on such an injury is very difficult to ascertain. This sort of an injury is more common in impact injuries, however, and I have no idea if a bullet would could cause the head to snap in the same manner and have the same effect. Any extremely rapid movement of the head - movement so rapid that it cannot be executed by any natural or deliberate means - can produce such an injury.

That covers only a very small portion of the possible injuries to Taylor and MvR, so someone else will have to help us with things like skull fragments in the brain, and other things more closely associated with bullet wounds.