"JD" wrote in message news:8lqmd.104450$R05.74500@attbi_s53...
Something like that happened to Yeager (I think) flying the F-86 (I think)
out of Downy Field (I think) enroute to Edwards AFB (I think) in the early
'50s. Someone here will know the story... I think. I don't think you
could do that in an F-14 though.

JD

An incident is described in Yeager's book in which I think his
ailerons were locked, and it happened while he was inverted on a
low-level pass of a friend's cabin. Being Yeager, he used quick
thinking to deduce and correct the problem, unlocking the controls.
After a safe landing, the plane was taken apart and both it and other
planes that had been lost without explanation were tracked to the same
factory. There was some critical part - a linkage or something of
that sort - that had been intalled the wrong way by a single factory
worker who had been working so long that when he saw something in the
plans that didn't gibe with his experience, he ignored. Nobody was
telling him how to put planes together. Yeager notes that nobody told
him how many men he killed.