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>The one that always gets me is McCudden.
Most aviators seem to be pretty cocky, even the veterans. Have to remember too even the veterans were still lads of often 19 - 24. Maturity is relative. The Australian Flying Corps' Richard Howard wrote of some escapes he had in doing a similar manouvre to McCudden;
"I have got quite a lot of praise for my flying here - in fact I think I shall be getting swelled head. Within a few minutes of leaving the ground here on my first solo, I had everybody out of the hangars watching "that Australian stunting" and when I came down, the Flight Commander said I was the best soloist that he had ever seen. I have also had quite a lot of excitement and narrow escapes. Once, for instance, I was just leaving the ground and making to pass over the hangars at 50 feet from the ground. Suddenly my engine banged and stopped, through a broken inlet valve and my machine went careering wildly into the hangars. Somehow I managed to yank on a hair-raising bank and turned into a field on the right, which was full of sheep. Next day I dived down to within 200 feet of the aerodrome and was just about to fly off again when my engine began sputtering and would not answer at all. I should have landed straight ahead in a ploughed field, but this was not good enough, so I turned around and by some means managed to do a circuit with the conking engine and landed safely on the aerodrome. On landing, the Flight Commander rushed up to me and said "Good God man, you should not have done that. That is the way 99 men out of 100 lose their lives!" In fact, the very next day the same thing happened to another chap who had gone up in my machine for a flight. He came down crash unfortunately and smashed the machine to smithereens, while he himself was badly damaged. The funny part about this accident was that everybody thought that I was in the machine and there was a great cry about "poor old Howard" just having been killed. However, when I came out of my room shortly afterwards I found a group discussing all the good I had not done in life. They were visibly surprised to see me and, as for myself, I wondered why they all came round and shook hands with me.
A couple of days later I was up at about 2,000 feet when my engine stopped completely. I managed to do a spiral glide to within 500 feet of the ground and then, seeing an open field in front of me, dived down for this. To get in, I had to come down at a fairly steep angle and consequently at great speed. When I flattened out I hit the ground with a little force, crashing the undercarriage, and the machine stopped with its nose in the ground and its tail sticking backwards and upwards. I was not hurt in the least."
cam
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