WARBIRD RADIO - Jim Pietz & Josh Wells - Season 17 - Episode 1

About this episode

The episode features a candid conversation with veteran pilot Jim Pietz about his experience with an in-flight fire during a routine flight in a P-51 Mustang.

WARBIRD RADIO - The seventeenth season of Warbird Radio opens not with spectacle, but with sobriety. Last year, during what should have been a routine flight in a P-51 Mustang, veteran airshow pilot Jim Pietz encountered one of aviation’s most unforgiving emergencies: an in-flight fire. In an aircraft designed in the crucible of World War II, where systems are mechanical and margins can be thin, smoke in the cockpit is not an abstraction. It is immediate. It is disorienting. It is measured in seconds. What followed, as Pietz recounts in a candid conversation that anchors the 2026 premiere of Warbird Radio, was not improvisation but preparation. A former Chairman of the International Council of Air Shows, Pietz is widely regarded as a pilot’s pilot — an instructor, mentor and trusted adviser to some of the most accomplished aviators in the airshow community. His response in that moment reflected decades of disciplined training and a deep familiarity with the performance characteristics of the airplane he was flying. What might have been instantly fatal became survivable. In the interview, Pietz resists dramatizing the event. There is no theatrical retelling, no indulgence in…

People in this episode

Host: Josh Wells

Guest: Jim Pietz

Topics covered

• aviation emergencies
• pilot training
• airshow culture
• decision-making under pressure
• warbirds

Keywords

• aviation
• P-51 Mustang
• airshow
• emergency response
• pilot training

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: International Council of Air Shows

Products: P-51 Mustang

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