Mike Marron wrote:
"william cogswell" wrote:

I alos seem too have seen some footage of several cessna 172 type a/c
ditching, The one that stands out the gentelman made a beautiful ditching
the a/c pitched forward but reamained upright for several minutes

On a tricycle, due to the CG location aft of the main landing gear
when the main wheels impact the water surface this usually forces the
nosewheel down into the drink and causes the A/C to immediately
tumble end over end in the water.

Correction: that should read, "...due to the FORWARD CG (relative to
the mains) on a tri-gear A/C the nosewheel will be forced down into
the drink and cause the hapless A/C to immediately tumble end over
end.

On a taildragger, due to the CG
location aft of the main landing gear, a taildragger can literally
lightly skim the water with the mains w/o instantly flipping over
instantly like a tricycle would. Although there may be a slight
pitching down motion when the main wheels skim the surface, a skillful
taildragger pilot is able to delicately balance this nose down moment
with that of the aft CG induced tail low moment. Of course, after the
second or third skip and the taildragger loses airflow over the wings
and control surfaces, he too is gonna tumble end over end regardless
of skill.

The first thing I noticed when the nose gear dropped inadvertantly on
an experimental amphib (open-cockpit) that I had just landed in a
fresh water lake was the bow of the floats submarining into the drink.
Since it was a hot day, the cold water rushing up to chest level was
sorta' refreshing, actually. I simply came off the throttle and let
the craft re-surface via the buoyancy of the pontoons, manually raised
the nose-gear and launched again. The other time I was forced down
over a swamp when the fan stopped. I had just enough altitude to make
two turns -- one 90-deg turn towards civilization and one more 90-deg.
turn into the wind. After one final quick tug on my seatbelt for good
measure, the next thing I knew I was upside down hanging from the
belt. I walked (er' sloshed and waded) away with nothing more than
a nasty bruise across my groin where the belt held me. Great fun was
had by all during the recovery and salvage operation but others
haven't been quite so lucky.

The bottom line is that there are too many variables to answer the
original question asking what to do when ditching in a calm sea with
a fixed landing gear airplane. Tons of material regarding ditching
procedures out there, however, as others have pointed out in this
thread, "not panicking" is the #1 priority. Perhaps the next priority
would be to make your own Dilbert Dunker training apparatus and
practice underwater egress procedures and techniques before you
go fly over water.