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Old 25 June 2009, 06:20 AM #14 (permalink)
bristol scout
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Newcastle on Tyne---England
Posts: 967
 
McCudden

Hi Alex, Guys,

Trainee pilots were taught--or learned the hard way in the very early days NEVER to turn back after engine failure at low altitude!-Never, even if it meant flying through a brick wall in front of you! -----You would have more chance of surviving that, than attempting to turn low down--dead stick.

It is incomprehensible that anyone could imagine an 'old hand' like McCudden doing anything so silly and suicidal.
We have all read, i imagine accounts ranging from ---stunting--stunting with bombs on---being 'worse for wear' (even though he was famously a near tea-totaller)!

C1126 was a standard S.E. and McCudden was an experienced pilot---but the possibility that 'non standard incidence wires may have been fitted--to increase 'washout' may have had some adverse effect at low altitude--or not
(that from Christopher Coles book)!

Whatever it was---Goof doesn't come into it!

Dave.
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