Originally Posted by
Cornish Jack
early aviation mail pilots' method of dealing with being above cloud at destination (no instruments for a let-down) They apparently induced a FLAT spin (minimum descent rate) and held it until either breaking cloud or hitting terra firma! ... in the latter case, the low descent rate made survival chances more possible. As your friend pointed out they all knew how to recover from a spin!.
That's what I have been taught (but never had to experience ;-) provided we were sure of the ceiling below (no GPS then, but VHF).
The idea was that the spinning aircraft is in a known and airframe-kind configuration, contrary to an attempted blind let-down with the risk of overstress in case of loss of control.
Normal spin, though...