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Hitting the Edge…
In the Pacific Ocean, near
San Pedro, California
November 25, 2006
The Success of Green Tech…
David Weston Hermance was
born in Danville, Indiana, on September 27th, 1947, to Keith and Peg
Hermance. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the
General Motors Institute, and joined General Motors in 1965, serving in a
variety of roles in the Vehicle Emissions Laboratory for fifteen years. In
1985, he became the Department Head for Durability Test Development at General
Motors.
However, in 1991, he left
General Motors, and joined the Toyota Technical Center in Gardena, California,
as the Senior Manager in Engine Evaluation, with responsibility for evaluating
North American passenger car engines. There, he became instrumental in
developing a second-generation model of the Prius, Toyota’s popular
gasoline-electric hybrid automobile.
Married, and the father of two children, Hermance was also an avid amateur pilot. Since his father was a flight instructor, Hermance began learning to fly at 14, soloing at age 16, and earning his private pilot's license during college. He was a fixture in southern California aviation, regularly flying his Russian Yak-55 aerobatic airplane in aerobatic competitions.
Taking to the Skies…
On the afternoon of
November 25, 2006, Hermance took off flying solo into high overcast skies from
Long Beach Municipal Airport in the single-engine experimental aircraft, a
Russian-built Interavia E-3 experimental aircraft, registered as N4426X and
owned by Yakety Yak Incorporated. He headed off shore to a practice area
popular with local pilots, and began a series of loops and dives.
At 1:18 in the afternoon,
a pair of pilots on an instructional flight heard "Mayday, mayday,
Experimental... X-ray… I'm going down." The flight instructor waited a few
seconds and then asked the sender to report his position, but got back only a
garbled response.
At the same time,
witnesses from the beach saw the unthinkable. "I was thinking he'll come out of
the loop, but he continued straight down," eyewitness Ed Storti said. "He went
beyond my eyesight, and I heard a loud impact that I will never forget ... It
was just like hitting a stone wall."
 "The plane was coming straight down, like it
couldn't pull out of a steep dive, and it just hit the water," a witness, Rick
Wadlow of Palos Verdes, told the local ABC affiliate news reporters.
Into
The Briny Deep…
Divers from the Los Angeles County Fire
Department, using sonar equipment, located the wreckage of the aircraft, at a
depth of about 70 feet below the surface, and videotaped
it to assist the National Transportation Safety Board’s
investigation of the crash.
A search team found the wreckage in 60 feet
of water the following morning, according to authorities. A lifeguard found
Hermance's body, floating on the surface near White Point. He had bailed out of
the falling plane, and his parachute had been deployed, but failed to spare his
life.
The NTSB determined the
probable cause of the accident to be loss of control for undetermined reasons.
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