Aircraft pics

[427TJ]

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Just goes to show you, there are bold pilots and there are old pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.

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Dave: Fuc*in'-A Bubba! (As the Gus Grissom character said in the movie "The Right Stuff.")

Belair: The B-52 pilot flew the airplane far too aggressively, as you might have already realized. His last pass down the runway was to be flown as a fighter-type pitch-up maneuver of the kind flown by the Thunderbirds or Blue Angels as they approach the field for landing. The B-52 can do that but not nearly as aggressively. So the B-52 guy wracked the airplane into a very aggressive climbing u-turn (the pitch-up maneuver) putting enough G on the airframe to bleed-off almost all of the airspeed but for a few knots. When he rolled-out on downwind--the opposite direction--and at about 1500 feet, the airplane was all out of airspeed. He had used his energy (the airspeed) in the aggressive pitch-up and it was then too slow to maintain level flight upon completion of the maneuver. He rolled wings-level and pulled back on the control yoke to hold the nose (the whole airplane, that is) level but there wasn't enough forward airspeed for the airplane to maintain level flight. He kept holding the nose up and it quickly entered a basic stall condition. Stalls often develop into spins as one or the other wing loses lift and drops, and that's why the B-52 rolls left (it could have gone right just as easily) in the video. Not enough airspeed means not enough lift being made by the wing which means the B-52 became a huge dead weight at the end of that pitch-up maneuver and just fell out of the sky.

So as Dave pointed out, there really are no old, bold pilots. ("Bold" in these cases means stupid, not brave or appropriately aggressive as in wartime or in a Thunderbirds or Blue Angels display.)