On Wed, 1 Jun 2005 11:59:45 -0700, "Jay Beckman"
wrote:

IIRC, the "instructor" they sent down was Jimmie Doolittle, was it not?

Doolittle was put in charge of demonstrating the airplane to prove
that it could be flown safely, but he wasn't the guy who did most of
the flying. According to my information:" General Doolittle sent his
technical adviser, Captain Vincent W. "Squeak" Burnett" to do the
demo flying.

I watched in the video as he (I assume it was he) brought in a B-26 on
one engine. The final approach was incredibly steep, and the pilot
pulled the nose up at the last second and greased it on. From what I
could see, this was a do or die type of landing (given the approach
speed): pull up too late and the landing gear is history (given the
rate of descent I saw), pull up too early and the airplane would
instantly stall to the runway wiping out the gear again.

Corky Scott