Jim

In my 650 hours in the bird, I never saw formation landings. Sometimes
the birds got close together after touch down but the wing man never
got up into a formation position or passed the ship ahead.

As Dudley said and I agree, civilian pilots flying the '51 should not
attempt formation landings. Their life and the bird are too precious.
Confed Air Force also say the same thing per Dudley.

On the "A" model of second bird. Did someone put an allison engine in
it? Did it have a bird cage or bubble?

I hope everyone realizes that we were not there and are making
comments from the little data available.

On the word section, Element is also used. I think Section came from
the Brits??????. Both are two planes. Four birds are a flight composed
of two elements. Leader and his wing man are #1 & #2. On the other
side matching #2 is #3 and on his wing is #4.

If the flight goes into echelon, then #3 moves out from close
formation with #1 and #2 moves under #1 over to the other side and
flight is then #1,#2,#3 & #4. This formation is normally used so that
each bird can break out behind the smaller numbered bird into the
landing pattern. #4 is tail end charlie )

This leads to another War Story. One time I was in a 48 ship echelon
of P-80's (A's & B's) and leader turned into the echelon to get lined
up for the pass over the field. I was about #20 and cut donut holes in
my drawers. What #48 did I don't know. The tail end got snapped like a
whip. They got back in some semblance of an echelon before the pass
over field I was told )

We then went and did some acrobatics. In the loops they were like a
cork screw with birds ahead coming down at the same time trailing
birds were going up starting their loop.

Later the leader doing some tight turns and ask #48 how he was doing
and #48 in a strained voice used to combat 'G's said "I'm doing OK Sir
" )

In my career in the AAC/USAF I made 3 ship formation take offs and
landings only during Basic training (on grass field) in the T-6 (we
were a experimental group that flew the T-6 in both Basic and
Advanced). After we proved the point they took the BT-13 out of basic
and every one flew the T-6.

In the formation landings you flew tight formation and could see the
ground behind the leader and you never knew when you were going to hit
the ground and then transition from flight to 'ground hog' ( We also
shot hurdle stages in the T-6. Would drag it over the rope with the
little flags so you could see it and just before going over you
chopped the throttle. As the bird started to sink you put in full up
elevator and after making the hard Navy landing from 15 feet with
brakes locked you stopped in 100-150 feet. Tires just skidded on the
grass so you didn't nose over.

We didn't know better in those days to not do some of the things we
would not do today.

Dudley. Where did you see the full important part of the pattern
through the accident? Can you give me the URL?

Keep um flying.

Big John

************************************************** *******************




On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 00:52:45 -0400, "Morgans"
wrote:


"Dudley Henriques" wrote

It is interesting to note as well that Warbirds of America and the
Confederate Air Force do not encourage section landings in P51's for the
same reason.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't ever recall 51's
doing formation landings at OSH. They usually land with at least 200 feet
between them.

I can't figure why they felt the need to formation land, this time.

Regardless, condolences. A sad way to go.