On 2005-06-11, George Patterson wrote:
I remember a thread a year or more back in which this technique was discussed. A
few posts claimed (and, IIRC, proof was presented) that stalling an aircraft
into the trees would usually result in such a strong decelleration force when
you hit that compression of the spine would result. This would frequently
produce paralysis or death.

We had an aviation doctor come to our flying club for one of our monthly
safety meetings. His talk was basically how to properly crash a plane.

The salient points are that the body (and the restraint systems) are
extremely well equipped to take enormous momentary decelerations in
the normal direction of travel, but very poorly equipped to take side
loadings or loadings from underneath. You can survive momentary
decelerations over 100G if you're going forwards, but going sideways
or down, only a tiny fraction of that. Sideways in particular, what
happens is that rescuers get to the crash scene to find a seemingly
unscathed but very dead person - the heart and other organs can get
torn from their 'mountings' in that direction (which is very bad juju)
and the person has died from internal injuries.

From what I've seen, I'm firmly convinced that so long as the angle
of arrival isn't too steep and I keep going forwards until everything
stops, I've got a decent chance of escaping from a really bad day.
Keep flying it until you're done crashing was the lesson.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"