I watched a show called Autopsy USA (currently available on the app/website 7Plus) which focused on the death of John Denver. Spoiler alert: his plane ran out of fuel, he couldn’t reach the fuel tank switch, and crashed into Monterey Bay.

On the show they said the plane and his body were fragmented; he weighed about 150lb and they only recovered about 120lb of his body, including half his head and half his heart as well as assorted bits and pieces. They identified him from fingerprints and his toes as he’d had a lawnmower accident as a kid and was missing one and a half of his toes.

But anyway, I digress. He was apparently travelling around 600 feet when he ran out of fuel. The plane nosedived and he would have died instantly. My question is, how does he and the plane become nothing more than bits as they hit the water? What kind of forces can tear a human and a plane apart? On his death certificate, his actual cause of death is listed as “multiple blunt force trauma”.

Divine Angel said:

I watched a show called Autopsy USA (currently available on the app/website 7Plus) which focused on the death of John Denver. Spoiler alert: his plane ran out of fuel, he couldn’t reach the fuel tank switch, and crashed into Monterey Bay.

On the show they said the plane and his body were fragmented; he weighed about 150lb and they only recovered about 120lb of his body, including half his head and half his heart as well as assorted bits and pieces. They identified him from fingerprints and his toes as he’d had a lawnmower accident as a kid and was missing one and a half of his toes.

But anyway, I digress. He was apparently travelling around 600 feet when he ran out of fuel. The plane nosedived and he would have died instantly. My question is, how does he and the plane become nothing more than bits as they hit the water? What kind of forces can tear a human and a plane apart? On his death certificate, his actual cause of death is listed as “multiple blunt force trauma”.

Blunt force trauma is the crash. His body would have been shredded by the plane parts as they crumpled and tore on impact. Anything left pretty much pulverises. If you google the YouTube video on watermelons being dropped from heights the. You will see what blunt force trauma does to a soft object. More macarbly, the website about autopsy photos (I can’t recall the name right now) has a jump suicide victim and shows his leg mushed from the sudden stop. .

Also, something somthing about terminal velocity and bits flying off the plane… though that is external, it can explain the plane breaking up and being structurally less sound on impact.

Something something where are the wings!

They’re going quite quick to stay airborne, iirc my old mans A36 ‘stalls’ – nose dives…at about 95 km/h. There are no airbags or much other protection in planes.

The aircraft he was flying was a home-built Rutan Vari-eze. The heaviest part of the structure was the engine, which sits right behind the cockpit. If the hit was hard enough, the engine would have passed through the cockpit, thus making John a bit of a mess.

If not sliced up by plane parts, a body falling from a great height doesn’t hit the ground like a “spot of strawberry jam”. The skin contains jelly-like the contents quite well.

Ian said:

If not sliced up by plane parts, a body falling from a great height doesn’t hit the ground like a “spot of strawberry jam”. The skin contains jelly-like the contents quite well.

not it doesn’t.. it tends to split under the great stresses..

There is a reason many ambos don’t eat pizza on shift.

buffy said:

There is a reason many ambos don’t eat pizza on shift.

Or tinned spaghetti..

Arts said:

Ian said:

If not sliced up by plane parts, a body falling from a great height doesn’t hit the ground like a “spot of strawberry jam”. The skin contains jelly-like the contents quite well.

not it doesn’t.. it tends to split under the great stresses..

Yes it does.. under the conditions I specified.