"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...

I can say with some degree of certainty that I would be absolutely amazed
to find out that Gerry Beck allowed his airplane to close on the D the
way it did had he been planning a normally spaced approach and landing. I
just think he was too good to have allowed that to happen. Something
obviously went terribly wrong with whatever it was that was happening.

Question: If they were active military aircraft they would more likely have
same powerplants, same construction, same mechanics and maintenance policies
and all the things that would make them behave similarly at identical pitch
and power settings. Is this correct?

If so, is it possible that since the two aircraft were manufactured and
maintained separately, there could have been subtle performance variations
that made it more possible for the rear plane to overtake the other when the
approach configuration is the same? There's a pretty big difference
between a scratch-built A model and a D (that's already crashed once) is
there not?

-c