Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Now, who wants to to be the first to start an argument about turning
back?

Seems to be a timeless topic. I just finished reading "Winged
Victory" by V. M. Yeates, a fictional account of his real life experience
flying Sopwith Camels during WW1. In it he describes one poor rookie
pilot's fatal attempt to turn back to the field after an engine failure
at takeoff. The story's main character wondered why the pilot made that
poor choice rather than fly it straight ahead. Guess the danger of
turning back was known less than 15 years after the invention of the
airplane.

The book has a great writeup on the vices (and virtues) of the Camel:

"Flying Camels was not everyone's work. They were by far the most
difficult of service machines to handle. Many pilots killed themselves by
crashing in a right hand spin when learning to fly them. A Camel hated an
inexperienced hand, and flopped into a frantic spin at the least
opportunity. They were unlike ordinary aeroplanes, being quite unstable,
immoderately tail-heavy, so light on the controls that the slightest jerk
or inaccuracy would hurl them all over the sky, difficult to land, deadly
to crash: a list of vices to emasculate the stoutest courage, and the
first flight on a Camel was always a terrible ordeal. They were bringing
out a two-seater training Camel for dual work, in the hope of reducing
that thirty per cent of crashes on first solo flights."
....
"Camels were wonderful fliers when you had got used to them, which
took about three months of hard flying. At the end of that time you were
either dead, a nervous wreck, or the hell of a pilot and a terror to
Huns, who were more unwilling to attack Camels than any other sort of
machine except perhaps Bristol Fighters. But then Bristol Fighters
weren't fair. They combined the advantages of a scout with those of a
two-seater. Huns preferred fighting SEs which were stationary engined
scouts more like themselves, for the Germans were not using rotary
engines except for their exotic triplanes, and the standard Hun scout was
the very orthodox Albatros. They knew where they were with SEs, which
obeyed the laws of flight and did as properly stabilized aeroplanes ought
to do. If you shot at one, allowing correctly for speed, you would hit
it: it would be going the way it looked as if it were going, following
its nose. But not so a Camel. A Camel might be going sideways or flat-
spinning, or going in any direction except straight backwards. A Camel in
danger would do the most queer things, you never knew what next,
especially if the pilot was Tom Cundall."

Great book of WW 1 flying (though I have to admit it is the only book
of WW 1 flight that I have read). In my opinion it does a better job with
the theme of "fate" than Gann's "Fate is the Hunter" and has elements of
Heller's "Catch-22" madness. And it predates both of them. Considering
the kind of machines Yeates and his contemporaries flew, it really makes
Gann and Heller's protagonists look pampered by comparison. All IMHO of
course.