Re:I was there when the DC-8 went supersonic
by GuB-42 on Sunday August 22, 2021 @09:01AM
(#28265135)
In fact, I think most pilots would have done that.
Pilots are trained to recover from stalls over and over, until it becomes second nature. And the way to do it is to follow into the dive until you regain control authority and then pull back slowly. This is not a regular stall but the idea is the same: pulling doesn't work? try pushing.
Of course I wasn't in the cockpit, and I would probably be panicking if I was, but from my armchair, it looks like the kind of reaction a properly trained pilot would naturally have.
I doubt that. A military fighter pilot would do that. Military fighter pilots are not afraid of diving.
My dad (KW fighter pilot) told me his favorite method of attacking ack-ack guns was to dive straight down on them. Anti-aircraft gunners do not want to fire straight up, for obvious reasons. He said he'd keep one eye on the altimeter, one eye on the airspeed, and his third eye (!) on the target. The trick was to keep the airspeed below the maximum and leave yourself altitude to recover. He also got yelled at once for flying a B-17 like a fighter.
The other two methods of attack are diving out of the sun (just put your airplane's shadow on the gun emplacement) so they can't see or hear you, and hedge-hopping off to the side. This makes it a very difficult deflection shot to hit you, and if you're close enough the gun cannot swivel fast enough to get a bead on you, then turn hard at the last second, line up, and blast it.