Chuck Yeager and the IAF

"Jose" wrote in message
...
Can't speak for the guys getting shot at

Well, gee. That was the definition of "smart". Flying where you don't
get shot at.

Jose

I'll go for that. Sounds smart to me!!
:-))
DH

Dudley

Some additional comments.

I took a P-40N above 25K and rolled over in a full throttle dive and
ran the air speed up as far as I could. Never came close to Mach One
and bird didn't come unglued either (thank God). Oh to be so young and
inicient again )

Never ran the P-51D/K over 505 MPH (red line). Had a number of friends
from ETO who said they ran the A/S well over red line in a dive when
being chased by a 109. The 109 was supposed to have a weak tail and
would come unglued in a very high airspeed dive. The P-51 terminal
velocity dive tactic was an escape maneuver.

The Jug in a terminal velocity dive tended to tuck. If you cut power
it tucked harder. To recover you had to keep a high power setting and
wait until you got to a lower altitude when you could recover.

The P-38 ended up getting some dive boards so it may have gotten a
little closer to Mach One than the rest of the WWII fighters????

All I remember from that era.

Big John
***************************************

On Thu, 24 May 2007 16:40:16 -0400, "Dudley Henriques"
wrote:


"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...
Dudley Henriques wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...
Funny story:
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Hi...unPrakash.html


Although Yeager is without question one of the finest sticks the
United States military has ever turned out, and he is entitled to
many accolades involving his fine career, the following statement
accompanying the photograph of Gen Yeager from this article is
incorrect.
"The first man to break the sound barrier - Brigadier General Charles
E "Chuck" Yeager, USAF."

In fact, Chuck Yeager was the first man to beak the speed of sound in
LEVEL FLIGHT.
His flight in the X1 at Edwards followed by a week the flight of the
first man to actually break the sound barrier. That man was George
Welch. The aircraft was the North American F86 prototype.
Dudley Henriques

And there are stories of pilots during WWII doing it in powered dives. But
the X1 was the first to do it with only the power it's engines were
producing.

Actually, no prop fighter can exceed mach 1, as a shock wave builds on the
propeller disc and the prop itself will prevent supersonic airflow. The tips
however can easily go supersonic and can easily cause catastrophic failure
at the prop hub.
I had a friend who experimented deeply into the transonic range with prop
fighters while a test pilot for Curtis Wright. Using a P47 Thunderbolt and
many different propeller combinations, Herb Fisher never actually got the
Jug through the barrier.
Another friend, Erik Shilling of the Flying Tigers, lost a good friend when
the friend was playing around with a P40 in China. In a deep dive over the
field, the prop was heard to go supersonic just before it tore the P40 apart
in the air.
Tony Levier from Lockheed did many deep dives in the P38 dealing with mach
tuck and never put the Lightning through the barrier. The Brits at Boscombe
Down after the war worked with Spitfires in high mach dives with no success
there either.
On the German side, one ME-262 driver was absolutely certain he had gone
mach 1 in a dive, but later tests proved he was dealing with the lag in his
pitot static system as that affected his airspeed readout. The 262 due to
design couldn't break mach 1 anyway which later tests at Wright Pat proved
out without question.
I personally have a P51 out to about .70 mach in a dive and I can tell you
it was one scary experience :-))
George Welch did it the week before Yeager while on a test flight in the
Sabre prototype.
Through the years of my own career, I either knew or met at least a half
dozed people who were at Pancho's bar eating lunch the day Welch went
through. The boom knocked all the pictures off the walls at Pancho's. The
story goes she wasn't all that happy about it either as she liked Yeager and
knew of the rivalry to be the first. But that's another story :-))
Dudley Henriques

Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
...
And you know it was well calibrated?


Yup.




You did it personally? Wow, I didn't realize you were that old. Even
the best calibrated instrument is as accurate as the underlying natural
phenomenon. A sonic boom is absolute confirmation of hitting the speed
of sound. An instrument is at best a close approximation.

Matt

Dudley Henriques wrote:
"Jose" wrote in message
et...
The secret however, to reaching the "old" end of the equation, is to be
smart......REAL smart!!!
Isn't that another way of spelling "lucky"?

Can't speak for the guys getting shot at, but in my end of the business
(display flying in fighter planes) we did all we could to take luck out of
the equation.

There is of course, always the element involving the unknown factor, but
those of us who retired old and are now on Usenet enjoying dialog with our
peers instead of ending up at the bottom of a six foot hole in the ground
learned the first day on the job never to rely on "luck".
Vince Lombardi was an inspiration to me as a pilot and I based much of my
career in aviation as a pilot on his philosophy. In teaching people to fly
airplanes, I always taught from the Lombardi point of view.
"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch
excellence"
On the issue of "luck"; Another coach, Darrel Royal put it nicely for all
pilots doing airshow demonstration work when he said,
"Luck happens when opportunity meets preparation: :-))))

No, that is the definition of success, not luck! :-)

Matt

Matt Whiting wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote:
"Bob Fry" wrote in message
...
"DH" == Dudley Henriques writes:
DH it's proper place

"*its* proper place" dammit. There are only two spellings:

its -- possesive
it's -- contraction of it is


I'll have to admit I wasn't an English major by a long shot, but
isn't the word "possessive" spelled with two s's and not one?

Yes, that is one of the two misspelling errors he made. :-)

Matt

damn it your right

































you're

Let's see who flames me after not scrolling down this far.

Hi John;
see inserts;


"Big John" wrote in message
...
Dudley

Some additional comments.

I took a P-40N above 25K and rolled over in a full throttle dive and
ran the air speed up as far as I could. Never came close to Mach One
and bird didn't come unglued either (thank God). Oh to be so young and
inicient again )

Do you happen to remember on that dive if you had to retard throttle on the
way down to prevent overspeed? What happened to Erik Shilling's buddy (Pete
Adkinson) in China most Erik told me Adkinson was diving the P40 over the
field to "wake everyone up" Everyone on the field heard a high pitched
scream from the airplane just before it came apart in the air. This would
have been the tips overspeeding well past mach one. Erik was involved in the
accident investigation team reporting to Chennault on what probably
happened. The governor and prop were still in one piece when they hit the
ground which led Erik to conclude that governor failure with prop overspeed
might not have been the cause. He concluded that some cowling fasteners
(Duez) might have come off allowing high speed air into the engine
compartment causing intense forces. Interesting story. I've never actually
been convinced it wasn't a prop overspeed but of course I wasn't there.





Never ran the P-51D/K over 505 MPH (red line). Had a number of friends
from ETO who said they ran the A/S well over red line in a dive when
being chased by a 109. The 109 was supposed to have a weak tail and
would come unglued in a very high airspeed dive. The P-51 terminal
velocity dive tactic was an escape maneuver.

My high speed dive was the result of an O2 failure at high altitude during a
ferry flight. I woke up with the stick walking all over the cockpit and deep
into compressibility. The governor had reached it's limit and we figured if
I hadn't come around to realizing what was happening, it could easily have
turned out differently than it did :-)

The Jug in a terminal velocity dive tended to tuck. If you cut power
it tucked harder. To recover you had to keep a high power setting and
wait until you got to a lower altitude when you could recover.

Nothing outdives a Republic "Brick" :-))

The P-38 ended up getting some dive boards so it may have gotten a
little closer to Mach One than the rest of the WWII fighters????

The L solved a lot of issues for the 38 if I remember. Hope you finally got
to fly one.

Dudley Henriques

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...

Nothing outdives a Republic "Brick" :-))

The P-38 ended up getting some dive boards so it may have gotten a
little closer to Mach One than the rest of the WWII fighters????

The L solved a lot of issues for the 38 if I remember. Hope you finally
got to fly one.

Isn't it amazing: modern fighters go twice as fast straigt UP as WW2
fighters did going straight DOWN.

"Jose" wrote in message
...
I'll have to admit I wasn't an English major by a long shot, but isn't
the word "possessive" spelled with two s's and not one?

No. It's spelled with four esses.

I take it you know that s's is not the plural of "ess".

The pluralization of a single letter is the only context in which an
apostrophe is appropriate to form the plural.

For instance: CDs, ATVs, Oakland A's. ABCs, A's, B's and C's.

Source: AP Stylebook and Libel Manual, OSU Department of Journalism.

-c

The pluralization of a single letter is the only context in which an
apostrophe is appropriate to form the plural.

For instance: CDs, ATVs, Oakland A's. ABCs, A's, B's and C's.

Source: AP Stylebook and Libel Manual, OSU Department of Journalism.

And the New York Times stylebook says that acronym plurals should be
spelled with an apostrophe: one DVD, three DVD's.

That doesn't make it right.

Jose
--
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that just want to
know what button to push, and those that want to know what happens when
they push the button.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:
The pluralization of a single letter is the only context in which an
apostrophe is appropriate to form the plural.

For instance: CDs, ATVs, Oakland A's. ABCs, A's, B's and C's.

Source: AP Stylebook and Libel Manual, OSU Department of Journalism.

And the New York Times stylebook says that acronym plurals should be
spelled with an apostrophe: one DVD, three DVD's.

That doesn't make it right.


Language is nothing but a set of agreed upon rules. The way the rules get
changed is by those that carry a lot of weight has far as language is
concerned change them. The AP and NYT fit this description.

There is no law that says you cant spell dog, C A T. Though there will be a
lot of people who don't know what you are taking about.