Round and Round you Go.
Fareastdriver,
Your #5505 reminds me that I used to give "Air Experience" flights to our troops from time to time on Sundays at Thornaby (always picking a sunny afternoon for the Station TM !), and sometimes in the Harvard.
It was strange to find that, even as late as the early'50s, that apart from the tiny minority who had wartime aircrew experience, and some who'd a bit of glider or light airctaft time, no more was generally known about the art of piloting than fifty years before. Many thought of it as a sort of "high wire" balancing act, in which only the consummate skill of the operator stood between safety and and an uncontrollable plunge to earth.
So when I offered the back-seat passenger the chance to "have a go", the response was often naked terror. Not for all the tea in China would they touch the stick, and begged me not to let go. I'd lift my hands in the air to show that the aircraft could happily look after itself - they were horrified. "Take it", I'd say, "there's no trouble that you can get into that I can't get out of in ten seconds" (I was sticking my neck out a bit there). It was no good.
At the other end of the spectrum, some went at it with gusto, and I had to intervene before they had the wings off the poor old Tiger. It takes all sorts.
On the Spinning front, my experience differs from aircraft to aircraft. At Primary School they told us that you had to demonstrate ability to recover from a spin before you were allowed to go solo (in case you got into an accidental one). This made sense, I suppose, but the result was that you were introduced to the spin at the 5 - 6 hour point (when it's only just starting to come together, anyway), and most people found it a nerve-racking experience.
Having said that, I must say the Stearman was kind to us. It would stall cleanly, after all the warning signs came straight out of the book, spin nice and slowly to help us count the turns, and always come out to order. You reall couldn't ask for more. I don't remember anyone trying to spin a BT-13, but as the thing was so cross-grained to begin with, that it was probably a mattter of "let sleeping dogs lie !"
The AT6A ("Harvard") was a different kettle of fish altogether. Stall that and you were quite likely to get your spin whether you liked it or not. The (usually left) wing would drop savagely and you had to get opposite boot in smartish to restore equilibrium. Traits like this were of course what it made the ideal trainer for the first-line singles of the day.
We came back to the UK, and IIRC nobody bothered about spins at all. The Master Is we started on would probably spin all right, but I don't think it was even on the syllabus. We had to treat the aged Hurricanes which they let us try with kid gloves; slow S&L only was the order of the day. When we got to the Spitfire it simply never entered anyone's head to do spins, although I suppose the aircraft would manage nicely (like it did everything else).
Generally, once you got past "Wings" stage, practice spins were things of the past. It was rather like the Driving Tests in bygone years, when you stuck your arm out of the window and waggled it about in accordance with with the Highway Code, passed your test and never bothered about doing it again (even before the "winkers" came in).
As for the Vengeance: that didn't "stall" in any meaningful sense at all. As you got slower it started to "mush", changing in a smooth progression from flying machine to brick. I never heard of one spinning and have no idea how to set about it. Indeed, we were somewhat disconcerted at first by the advice (in a sketchy "Pilots' Notes" from Vultee), in the event of your wheels sticking up, to "reduce speed as far as possible and yaw the aircraft violently from side to side" (this sounded like a good recipe for a spin - until we found that we didn't need to worry).
When I came back in '49, we had the Harvard and spins as before, and in early '50 tried our luck with the Meteor T7. All I can say about that is that it was an alarming experience best forgotten, and when I came back in '54, intentional spins had been forbidden (and a good thing, too).
Cheers, Danny.
Last edited by Danny42C; 23rd Apr 2014 at 21:53.
Reason: Typo.