20. Was This Hollywood Stuntman Killed Because He Flew While Drunk?
When the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1’s landing gear touched the desert floor on its third low pass on July 8th, 1965, the boom section behind the wings failed and snapped off. That caused the nose section to pitch forward and slam into the ground, and the airplane broke apart as it cartwheeled into destruction. Mantz was instantly killed, while the more fortunate Bobby Rose survived because he was thrown out of the cockpit and clear of the wreckage. Rose suffered a broken shoulder and pelvis but lived. The subsequent investigation uncovered a variety of factors that combined to produce the tragedy, but pilot error was the main culprit.
In essence, despite his vast experience, Mantz had overestimated his plane’s structural capacity and miscalculated the consequences of his speed in this final touchdown pass. Investigators also assumed that Mantz might have been under the influence of alcohol at the time of the accident. However, there were hiccups and delays with the collection of a blood sample and getting it to a lab, so the results might have been skewed. Thus, whether or not Mantz was drunk at the time of the crash was never proven conclusively, and has remained a matter of speculation ever since.
