Forced Landings
Quote: You are treating the forced approach as if it were a landing, it is not , it is a crash. The most important part of the forced approach maneuver is to get the airplane to your intended flat area where it is going to hit the ground. In a perfectly executed forced approach this will be nose high and slow when you touchdown, but you do what you have to do . If you are high and fast then you may need to smash the aircraft into the ground with forward stick to avoid floating in ground effect until the airplane hits the obstacle at the end of the field at flying speed and people die.
I'd say that people shouldn't treat all forced landings as crashes, in fact they should be seen as the minority in my opinion, they would all be uniquely different for many reasons. I believe students should treat them all as landings and remaining calm, not panicking about an imminent and inevitable crash, ensuring they are careful to choose the best available field to have a "landing" as the outcome, this applies to EF's from a decent altitude where there is time for good planning for a correctly positioned base leg for the chosen field assuming you're over some fields of course. EF's on take off are different and they don't allow for much planning at all of course, just aiming the plane really and using flaps and/or side slipping if height is an issue. To be high and fast can definitely be unavoidable on an engine failure on take off but should be able to be avoided when suffering engine failure at say around 2000 feet or more as good and quick planning would likely and ideally have you being at between 500 and 700ft at the beginning of the final approach to the chosen field with a bit of height to lose which can always be done but much better to have to lose it than to not have it. As for smashing the aircraft into the ground, I would rather do a late and very low almost stall using rudder to pick up a dropped wing if one drops I think if things were that desperate, though I'm not sure about this to be honest - both are better than hitting a large tree or building for sure. The field I was lucky enough to choose, (and I chose it very quickly knowing I was heading into wind), on my GFT was very long and turned out to have medium grass approx. 6" to a foot high max, that would have been a landing, not a crash - I hope. Also agree with a point someone made re. downwind forced landings on a long good field. Should always be borne in mind as an option, not the first, but don't rule it out.