Lonewolf_50 (#32),From when I was a student:
..."one of the students stood up and asked "What can we do to prevent these hard landings?"
From the back my night flying instructor (I recognized his voice) drawled out ...
"Flare!"...
Excerpt from my Page 120, #2391 on "Gaining a RAF Pilots Brevet in WWII":
..."At one point on the Course there was an epidemic of "ground-looping". The AT-6 is above-averagely susceptible to this at the hands of the ham-fisted (or I suppose I should say, the ham-footed) student. There were cases on night landing, and our instructors devised a special technique to deal with it.
You came in at 70 mph, flaps down, with enough power set to give a descent of 700 ft/min. Then you simply flew into the runway with no attempt to check or hold off. There was an almighty bang, you shoved the stick forward, the aircraft skipped once then thumped down, tail-up onto its wheels. You held it there until it had slowed down enough to let the tail down.
It was a "controlled crash". How the AT-6 stood up to this barbarous treatment, I'll never know. The undercarriage must have been massive. I suppose, as a training aircraft, it had to be. At least, none of ours broke"...
Danny42C (class of, in the US Army Air Corps Arnold Scheme).