On Apr 10, 10:43*pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Dave wrote:

:
:IIRC, There was a specific non-combat maneuver which, when removed from the
ilot's repertoire, cut the accident rate in half, for both models. It was
:called, among other names, "bow to the crowd". It was done in a hover, and
:was a tip the nose down and return maneuver that accentuated some instability
:in the hover, and caused several crashes over the years.
:

There were several flight regimes where overly-close tolerances
between the turbine blades would lead to a flameout of the engine.
When you only have one, that sort of sucks.

I'm only aware of one 'bow' crash and it didn't look like it was
caused by instability. *It looked like an engine casualty, with a big
gout of flame and the aircraft shooting down into the water.

I have no idea if they still do this at air shows or not, but I
wouldn't be surprised if they do.

There was a Harrier in the show here Saturday (Thunder Over
Louisville) and I don't believe it bowed.
The hover portion of the routine was biased towards the crown on the
other side of the river though, so I may simply have not noticed it.