"Big John" wrote in message ...

Dudley

I've heard nothing about the broad with the jocks in T-birds. Have you
heard any feed back?

As a new 2nd Lt I took a P-40N to almost 25K and rolled over with full
power straight down. Pulled out about 7K and never came close to any
mach one.

Looking back stupid, stupid, atupid.

I had heard you could out dive a Zero and wanted to check it out.

Still recovering from shoulder operation.

Big John
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You mean that pullout damaged your shoulder and you are still recovering from the operation?

Just kidding ;-)

Went to the AirZoo the other day to see an ASME presentation commemorating the wing fold mechanism of the F4F-4 Wildcat
(http://www.airzoo.org/news/asme-award). It was apparently a unique and space efficient way to fold a wing while easily
maintaining structural integrity. An interesting fact came out about the Zero: When the Zero was flying ~250-300 mph the
controls would become so stiff that the pilot would end up bending the stick trying to do a high G pullout, thus the
reason the Wildcat, P-40, etc could do the dive away trick. The Wildcat could dive at WOT and not exceed any
limitations, and during testing folks bent the wing at 12 plus Gs and then couldn't fold it back...