"George Z. Bush" wrote in message
...

Anyway, since I started this thread with an innocent question, in
recognition of
the **** storm it generated, I'm going to claim author's rights to revise
my
question. AIR, we were talking about ditching characteristics, and I
asked what
the manufacturer had to say on the subject.

In those days, before an aircraft hit the inventory, the only people who
knew
how it was going to behave were the manufacturer and his test pilots.
Before
they turned the aircraft over to the military for their acceptance
testing, they
sat down and wrote a flight manual, which contained everything the
operator
needed to know about how to make the bird go up and come back down in one
piece.
Before the first of that model actually ditched in the water somewhere,
its crew
should have familiarized themselves with every bit of the information in
that
manual, including how it was going to behave when it hit the water and
recommendations on how best to make initial contact with the water.


Unless the manufacturer actually ditched the aircraft whatever was written
in the manual was theory.