Years ago Air Progress magazine had a picture of an F-15 in
Germany that did the same thing, except it was about 6
inches into the ground. The top side appeared undamaged but
there must have been a ton of dirt in the engines.



"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...
|I don't think he "saved it" really. He just bottomed out
too low and the
| mush gave him just enough room to clear.
| He would have known instinctively how much back pressure
he had left and
| couldn't have gone past that anyway.
| Once you have all the g in there that the airplane's
recovery profile can
| give you, you're totally committed to the recovery line
that amount of g
| provides. Feed in more and you're topping off the CL curve
and you're done
| for when that happens. If anything, he had all the stick
in there the line
| was giving him and just sweated out the exit .
| Ground effect won't save you going through a bad recovery
line. The impetus
| will take you right through it into ground contact. He
maxed out the line
| and went tail low with just enough air under him to clear
the prop tips. Had
| he caught the tips with that much power on the airplane,
the vibration would
| have probably torn him apart through the exit.
| I think I know who it was. This guy is a very good warbird
pilot. He just
| blew the line on this one and got away with it.
| He's an even better warbird pilot now :-))
| Dudley Henriques
|
|
| "Ben Jackson" wrote in message
| ...
| On 2006-12-28, Dudley Henriques
wrote:
| As an aside, if anyone is even remotely interested in
the technical
| aspects
| involved in low altitude vertical recoveries like this
one when being
| flown
|
| I'm curious to know if he actually saved it because of
the extra lift
| of ground effect right at the bottom, or if he really
hit the ground.
| Since he executed a victory roll afterwards I figured he
was not worried
| about the plane coming apart...
|
| --
| Ben Jackson AD7GD
|
| http://www.ben.com/
|
|