P-51's in movie "Empire of the Sun"

Dan Ford wrote in part:
See my question to Gord about ground effect. Is it really there, as a cushion,
or is that a myth?

Probably a reality, but I don't recall noticing it in teh exercise mentioned.
Did have a friend who lost an engine in a P2V about half way to Hawaii.
Officially, too heavy to stay airborne, dump enough fuel to be light enough to
stay airborne, and one hasn't enough fuel to reach land. Double bind.
(It has ben suggested that is why Lindbergh elected a single engine plane.
With the engines available, if he had two and lost one -- splash. If he had
one and lost one -- splash. But the chances of losing an engine in a single
engine plane are half those of a twin.)
They went down to zero altitude --ground effect max -- went through plane with
bolt cutters dumping everything dumpable. They spent about 4 hours with one
mill feathered and the other operating beyond all redlines. Arriving at
Barbers Point (?) there was no "letting down" to a landing. They simply
lowered the gear onto the runway. Whew!

Quent

(QDurham) wrote:

Damnably impossible I'd say...the rules say 100 feet for 'pilot bombing' and
while this figure was likely (certainly) broken a _few_ times nobody actually
flew _knowingly_ with the prop tips
"3 to 5" feet above the water in a P2V. Trust me.

Sorry Gordo. Been there. Done that. Seaman's Eye bombing as well as mining
operations. Propwash in water. The Navy likes water. "Stay low and you can't
possibly fall very far."

We were "mining" Buckner Bay, Okinawa, once upon a time, leaving a propwash
wake in the water while the AF was up looking for us visually in F86s. Heard
one jet pilot say "I'm all the way down to 5 thousand feet. Wonder where they
are." Then another say something like "I'm down here in Australia. I'll go up
to Alaska and see if they are hiding behind a polar bear," or some such. Whish
whish zippy-zippy zoom-zoom!

We were at 5 feet. They never saw us. Hope we have better anti-mining
techniques now than we had then. Scary. If we could do that in barely 200+ kt
prop planes on a clear day with defense given time of arrival and looking for
us visually, what could the bad guys do on a dark and stormy night? Scary.

Quent (VP 29)


Ok Quent, all I can say is I'm damned glad that I wasn't with
you.

Just so that you won't think that I'm some pimply faced teen I
started my ASW career in 1954 in Lancasters for the RCAF on the
east coast (over the Atlantic of course), then on P2V-7 Neptunes
then on the Argus, about 9,000 hours logged in ASW + 4,000 logged
in Transport Command.

I've seen my share of low level, in the soup patrols. I've
returned to base with the tops of my thighs sore from smashing up
against the lap belt for many hours. I've never seen less than 30
feet on the rad-alt and I know well what that looks like.

I hope you'll allow me a small smile and a wink at your "3 to 5
feet".
--

-Gord.

I hope you'll allow me a small smile and a wink at your "3 to 5
feet".

As you wish. You've a lot more experience than I have -- at the higher
altitudes, of course. (snicker/wink)

Quent

Damnably impossible I'd say...the rules say 100 feet for 'pilot
bombing' and while this figure was likely (certainly) broken a
_few_ times nobody actually flew _knowingly_ with the prop tips
"3 to 5" feet above the water in a P2V. Trust me.

How much of a cushion do you have, from ground effect, in a
high-powered aircraft? I suppose it would be least in a fighter or a
B-26. But what about a B-25 or -17? If you were making 200 mph, say,
would the ground really want to reject you, or would you plow right
in?

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

Cub Driver wrote:
How much of a cushion do you have, from ground effect, in a
high-powered aircraft? I suppose it would be least in a fighter or a
B-26. But what about a B-25 or -17? If you were making 200 mph, say,
would the ground really want to reject you, or would you plow right
in?


Seems like the thing to do is to trim the nose up and manually force it down.
Then if you relaxed for a second, you'd naturally float up away from the water.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN


http://www.mortimerschnerd.com

I think it would depend on the attitude and the angle of attack, also wing
area; the vulcan would float because of the wing area, it pushed a cushion
of air in front of it at low altitude.
"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...

Damnably impossible I'd say...the rules say 100 feet for 'pilot
bombing' and while this figure was likely (certainly) broken a
_few_ times nobody actually flew _knowingly_ with the prop tips
"3 to 5" feet above the water in a P2V. Trust me.

How much of a cushion do you have, from ground effect, in a
high-powered aircraft? I suppose it would be least in a fighter or a
B-26. But what about a B-25 or -17? If you were making 200 mph, say,
would the ground really want to reject you, or would you plow right
in?

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

Interesting about the Vulcan. What made me think of this was reading
about the supposed difficulty of landing the Northrop YB-49 Flying
Wing bomber at Muroc (later Edwards) AFB -- that it would just float
and float.

On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 15:03:47 -0000, "M. H. Greaves"
wrote:

I think it would depend on the attitude and the angle of attack, also wing
area; the vulcan would float because of the wing area, it pushed a cushion
of air in front of it at low altitude.
"Cub Driver" wrote in message
.. .

Damnably impossible I'd say...the rules say 100 feet for 'pilot
bombing' and while this figure was likely (certainly) broken a
_few_ times nobody actually flew _knowingly_ with the prop tips
"3 to 5" feet above the water in a P2V. Trust me.

How much of a cushion do you have, from ground effect, in a
high-powered aircraft? I suppose it would be least in a fighter or a
B-26. But what about a B-25 or -17? If you were making 200 mph, say,
would the ground really want to reject you, or would you plow right
in?

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (requires authentication)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

"M. H. Greaves" wrote:

I think it would depend on the attitude and the angle of attack, also wing
area; the vulcan would float because of the wing area, it pushed a cushion
of air in front of it at low altitude.

I think that it's there for all a/c, look at that huge Russian
jobbie...'ekronoplanne' (or somesuch). It was designed to use
ground effect...I understand that you gotta be within about
one-half of your wingspan from the surface. You can almost
picture it, imagine why they use those 'winglets' at the tips of
Airbus and others, they prevent vortices by 'discouraging' the
higher pressure air from under the wings curling up and over the
tips to the lower pressure air above the wing.
--

-Gord.

I've just finished reading the book to the film, as usual, though the film
is quite excellent, i enjoyed the book a bit more, you find that there are
things in the book that may not be in the film, and one or two of the parts
of a film may be "holywood'ised!".
Great film, and very interesting.
"zxcv" wrote in message
...
I was watching "Empire of the Sun" the other night and near the end some
P-51's attack the Japanese base. What struck me was that the P-51's were
flying in just a few feet above the ground and dropping their bombs.
Would
this really have been done? How did the planes keep from blowing
themselves
up?

In article , zxcv
writes
I was watching "Empire of the Sun" the other night and near the end some
P-51's attack the Japanese base. What struck me was that the P-51's were
flying in just a few feet above the ground and dropping their bombs. Would
this really have been done? How did the planes keep from blowing themselves
up?


I understand that the way in which bombs are dropped from low level is a
combination of delay fuze (as already mentioned by another respondent)
and the attack profile. If you bomb from enough height to be able to
depart to a safe distance before the bomb goes off then that's okay,
even with impact fuzes. If you are going to be still close to the bomb
when the fuze is impact triggered then it should be a delay fuze, so you
can depart to said safe distance. That's the obvious basic principle.

But I guess that many complications can set in. For instance, (question
to you bods who have actually done this kind of thing) low level skip
bombing will probably give good accuracy, but I assume one must know a
bit about the nature of the target. If the target is sufficiently
massive (e.g. building/ship) so as to be able to bring the bomb to a
halt, then a short delay fuze should be fine - the aircraft will be a
long way the other side by the time the bomb goes off. But if the
target is less robust, the bomb could go straight through the target
(impact triggering the delay fuze as it does so) and accompany the
aircraft for some distance beyond; not nice, and suggests that an attack
from height would have been better.

That leads me to assume that somewhere in the mission planning process,
(following the target description) choice of fuze and attack profile
will be defined, and the safety parameters stated. I assume that even
on general roving tactical bombing missions in WWII, pilots would choose
which targets were safe to attack in a particular mode; given the fuzing
of the bombs they carried.

Re. the film 'Empire of the Sun', am I right to remember that one of the
bombs dropped by a P-51 actually flew off to one side rather than going
straight ahead? I thought at the time it must have been a low-density
repro to do that - rather than a real cast steel jobby.

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth