"Autocollimator" wrote in message
...

(Snip)

As I understand it Art is the only one in this NG that actually flew combat in
WWII as aircrew.So I will take his view above all those that never flew as
aircrew in WW II. As far as wallowing in the mud goes, look to yourself.

Just for the record, I flew Troop Carrier gooney birds in Italy during WWII,
Bad guys shot at us, and we didn't have anything but our .45s to shoot back
with, or bombs to drop on them, but I still think it was considered combat.

Anyway, since I started this thread with an innocent question, in recognition of
the **** storm it generated, I'm going to claim author's rights to revise my
question. AIR, we were talking about ditching characteristics, and I asked what
the manufacturer had to say on the subject.

In those days, before an aircraft hit the inventory, the only people who knew
how it was going to behave were the manufacturer and his test pilots. Before
they turned the aircraft over to the military for their acceptance testing, they
sat down and wrote a flight manual, which contained everything the operator
needed to know about how to make the bird go up and come back down in one piece.
Before the first of that model actually ditched in the water somewhere, its crew
should have familiarized themselves with every bit of the information in that
manual, including how it was going to behave when it hit the water and
recommendations on how best to make initial contact with the water.

After all of the back and forth about how smart the surviving pilots of
successful ditchings must have been, it boggles my mind that it hasn't occurred
to anyone that the reason for their survival may have been more a matter of what
they got out of their flight manuals than the luck of the draw and their
superior flying skills (superior to the manufacturer's test pilots, of course).

And since we were talking about Grumman's TBM, I don't recall that anyone
commented on what the manufacturer's flight manual said about ditching it. Now,
I really didn't need to hear about how smart the surviving pilots of ditched
TBMs were; I can easily assume that there were plenty of equally smart but far
unluckier pilots who didn't survive the experience. That there would be a
number of variables in every ditching situation is a given, including pilot
health, piloting skill levels, aircraft condition, weather conditions, ocean
surface conditions, etc. The only constant is the question of what was designed
into the aircraft, which would be the same regardless of the variables. For
that, you have to go to the manufacturer and his flight manual.

Shall we try again? Or am I all wet (no pun intended)?

George Z.