Fly Boy ?????

Steven asked:
I would think the operator would have better information on the ditching
behavior than would the manufacturer.

How so? The manufacturer designed the darned thing. The flight manual stated
the limitations for various conditions and emergencies. The manufacturer wrote
the flight manual and flight tested the a/c.

Oxmoron1
Remember the BOLD print!

"OXMORON1" wrote in message
...
Steven asked:
I would think the operator would have better information on the ditching
behavior than would the manufacturer.

How so? The manufacturer designed the darned thing. The flight manual
stated
the limitations for various conditions and emergencies. The manufacturer
wrote
the flight manual and flight tested the a/c.


Well, who ditched more Avengers, the Navy or Grumman/Eastern?

"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

I would think the operator would have better information on the ditching
behavior than would the manufacturer.

Glad to see you finally coming around Steven. There's no substitute
for experience but when I asked you how many hours you have in
a certain type your non sequitur response was "irrelevant."

"Mike Marron" wrote in message
...

Glad to see you finally coming around Steven. There's no substitute
for experience but when I asked you how many hours you have in
a certain type your non sequitur response was "irrelevant."


Your message makes no sense whatsoever.

On 23 Oct 2003 17:18:15 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

Subject: Fly Boy ?????
From: ost (Chris Mark)
Date: 10/23/03 9:02 AM Pacific Daylight Time

But I'm willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt.

Once you give someone the benefit of the doubt, you admit that there is doubt.
Always lingering, disturbing unsettling doubt.

Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS

I've followed all this thread, biting my tongue in the process. What
amazes me is that the resident "if you ain't been, you ain't ****..."
curmudgeon is so eager to condemn someone who has been there.

Anyone who has been, knows that you all sign on--pilots, navs,
bomb-aimers, gunners, EWO's et. al. You go to war. You go with the
folks you are assigned to go with.

War happens in a heartbeat. It sometime works for you and sometime
against. Some folks die and some folks live. The live ones aren't
better or worse than the dead ones, simply luckier.

To second guess circumstances sixty years later, particularly based on
an author's creative account is to demean the whole warrior ethic.

I'm sorry. I survived. I didn't spend years in a POW camp. I wasn't
wounded in action. I didn't lose any crew members. I didn't lose any
aircraft. I saw a lot of losses.

The fact that is incontrovertible is that Bush (41) was a combat
pilot. He was younger than most. He was blooded. He lost an aircraft
in honorable combat. He survived. What is wrong with that?

Additionally, as I've previously noted in this forum, Bush (43) was a
graduate of UPT, a qualifier in a Century Series aircraft, and a
commissioned officer. Those are fine qualifications in my book.

"Mike Marron" wrote in message
...
"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

I would think the operator would have better information on the ditching
behavior than would the manufacturer.

Glad to see you finally coming around Steven. There's no substitute
for experience but when I asked you how many hours you have in
a certain type your non sequitur response was "irrelevant."

Lune.

More to the point, what did the manufacturer have to say on that subject?


I would think the operator would have better information on the ditching
behavior than would the manufacturer.

Unlike some other Naval aircraft, the TBF/TBM were known as "floaters" and it
was not uncommon for them to remain at or near the surface for some time after
they were dumped overboard or ditched. My first instructor in A-school had
started his career a thousand years earlier as a little pup turret gunner in
Avengers and would occasionally share stories with us from either his time in
them, or things he had heard from the "old hands" when he was first starting
out. (OT That dude was crusty old, to the point you couldn't even guess - I
noted that he didn't carry an ID card, just a disk with a Roman emperor's
profile on it. His first ship was some sort of trireme, "I **** you not".)

Without knowing sea state, winds and surf conditions at the time, or taking
into account the controlability issues, its very difficult to second guess
Bush's choice of silk or ditch. I would rather ditch than bale, primarily
because I was a SAR swimmer and I believed that I would find a way to not
drown. Knowing that Bishop, a former NCAA swimming ace, had died in an H-46 in
the best shape of his life didn't tarnish my unshakeable faith that if I
survived impact, I would make it out of the water alive. (Or be found in the
wreck with my hands around the pilot's neck.)

v/r
Gordon

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...

I've followed all this thread, biting my tongue in the process. What
amazes me is that the resident "if you ain't been, you ain't ****..."
curmudgeon is so eager to condemn someone who has been there.


Methinks the resident curmudgeon would have a different viewpoint if GHWB
had been a lifelong Democrat.

My Uncle ditched an Avenger after running out of gas due to a
battled-damaged carrier and bad DF steer preventing a timely recovery.

His crew survived. He did not.


Sorry to hear that, Jack. Would you mind stating his name here? I am one of
the people who believe that as long as a person's name is remembered, a piece
of them stays with us. Sounds to me like he deserves to be remembered 'out
loud'.

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR Aircrew

"Got anything on your radar, SENSO?"
"Nothing but my forehead, sir."

Steven asked:
Well, who ditched more Avengers, the Navy or Grumman/Eastern?

Of course the Navy did, but they used the information and design work of
Grumman.

Rick