Narrative:

I left for the 45 minute flight to ZZZ2 and it was non-eventful; VFR and the ceiling was about 4500 feet with a slight tailwind. Got to ZZZ2; called unicom announcing my intentions and entered a mid-field cross wind to a downwind approach for the active runway. I had the airplane slowed down to 90 knots and lowered the gear with the gear switch. About three seconds after I hit the gear switch; there was a loud bang/pop followed by a second bang/pop. The gear indicator gage that indicates status of the gear up or down indicated down and locked. I didn't like the noise I heard and followed up with the secondary/visual gear mirrors on the wings and I could see the mains down; but the nose gear was trailing at a 45 degree angle. I climbed to 2500 feet by setting up a manual gear extension. That did not work as I was circling over the field announcing my intentions. I continued to circle the airport and tried to raise someone on the unicom for 10 minutes. The parking lot airport was empty and I figured that no one was there. I elected to fly to another airport.in the next 5 minutes I decided to land at ZZZ1 as a primary and ZZZ as a secondary. As I got closer to those airports I decided to switch to ZZZ because of the longer runway; clear approaches and the fact that I knew they had emergency equipment. As I got closer to ZZZ I called the tower to advise them of my problem and my direction of flight to the airport from the east. As I got closer; radio reception was degraded and I could hear them; but they were having a hard time hearing me. They cleared me to land when I was about 2 miles from the airport. As I approached the field; I maintained a little higher altitude and stopped my descent at about 500 feet. When I had the runway made; I shut down all the electrics and fuel. I did not use flaps as I was uncertain that the mains were completely locked; and wanted to mitigate any possible damage in the event the gear collapsed. I was able to shut the engine down; semi-feather the prop horizontally and prepared for; what turned out to be; an uneventful landing.I landed on the mains and kept the tail down; and nose up as long as I could. When I ran out of elevator control the nose dropped slowly and I skidded to a stop within 300 feet or less. I did not use the brakes. Opened the canopy and climbed out and surveyed the damage that appeared to be limited to the nose landing gear doors; the bottom of the nose bowl; a part of the nose gear trunnion and a small scrape on one prop blades trailing edge. It took about an hour to get things sorted out and the plane was put in the hangar at the airports FBO.I have a current medical; almost 10;000 total hours; multi-and instrument rated with about 350 hours in type and about 20 hours in type during the last 90 days. All the T-34 time that I have is in this aircraft. The airplane just came out of annual; has a recent weight and balance; and has the alternate means of compliance that was completed last year. Additionally I had degraded radios and am not sure if I met all the requirements of the fars on entering class B airspace. Transponder was on; but tower only had a primary on me. I think I did a good job with minimal damage to the aircraft.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: The pilot of a T34-A reported the nose gear did not come down during approach. The nose gear completely collapsed during landing.

Narrative: I left for the 45 minute flight to ZZZ2 and it was non-eventful; VFR and the ceiling was about 4500 feet with a slight tailwind. Got to ZZZ2; called UNICOM announcing my intentions and entered a mid-field cross wind to a downwind approach for the active runway. I had the airplane slowed down to 90 knots and lowered the gear with the gear switch. About three seconds after I hit the gear switch; there was a loud bang/pop followed by a second bang/pop. The gear indicator gage that indicates status of the gear up or down indicated down and locked. I didn't like the noise I heard and followed up with the secondary/visual gear mirrors on the wings and I could see the mains down; but the nose gear was trailing at a 45 degree angle. I climbed to 2500 feet by setting up a manual gear extension. That did not work as I was circling over the field announcing my intentions. I continued to circle the airport and tried to raise someone on the UNICOM for 10 minutes. The parking lot airport was empty and I figured that no one was there. I elected to fly to another airport.In the next 5 minutes I decided to land at ZZZ1 as a primary and ZZZ as a secondary. As I got closer to those airports I decided to switch to ZZZ because of the longer runway; clear approaches and the fact that I knew they had emergency equipment. As I got closer to ZZZ I called the tower to advise them of my problem and my direction of flight to the airport from the East. As I got closer; radio reception was degraded and I could hear them; but they were having a hard time hearing me. They cleared me to land when I was about 2 miles from the airport. As I approached the field; I maintained a little higher altitude and stopped my descent at about 500 feet. When I had the runway made; I shut down all the electrics and fuel. I did not use flaps as I was uncertain that the mains were completely locked; and wanted to mitigate any possible damage in the event the gear collapsed. I was able to shut the engine down; semi-feather the prop horizontally and prepared for; what turned out to be; an uneventful landing.I landed on the mains and kept the tail down; and nose up as long as I could. When I ran out of elevator control the nose dropped slowly and I skidded to a stop within 300 feet or less. I did not use the brakes. Opened the canopy and climbed out and surveyed the damage that appeared to be limited to the nose landing gear doors; the bottom of the nose bowl; a part of the nose gear trunnion and a small scrape on one prop blades trailing edge. It took about an hour to get things sorted out and the plane was put in the hangar at the airports FBO.I have a current medical; almost 10;000 total hours; multi-and instrument rated with about 350 hours in type and about 20 hours in type during the last 90 days. All the T-34 time that I have is in this aircraft. The airplane just came out of annual; has a recent weight and balance; and has the Alternate Means of Compliance that was completed last year. Additionally I had degraded radios and am not sure if I met all the requirements of the FARs on entering class B airspace. Transponder was on; but tower only had a primary on me. I think I did a good job with minimal damage to the aircraft.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.