A question for pilots. if an aircraft's stall speed is, let's say, 120mph, does it fly OK at 120.1mph and stall at 199.9mph? What kind of leeway do you have? In such a turn as described wouldn't the engine be on full throttle? wouldn't the aircraft recover speed pretty quickly?
and another question: WWI aircraft had the ability to "hang by the prop" (if i have the phrase correct). was that possible for a WWII fighter. I have seen stunt aircraft do that on a climb until they nose down and dive to recover speed
anderson's book states what has been said before "a few miles per hour" not the 50 - 60mph stated in the first post.
I'll take a stab but I am sure others can provide a better response. Aircraft stall occurs when the airflow separates from the wing and the wing loses lift. This occurs at a specific angle of attack, or, angle in which the air strikes the wing, which is not associated to a specific airspeed. Several factors affect the stall speed of a wing, one is the weight of the aircraft another is the load put on the wing by the pilot inputs to the elevator. At a non loaded angle of attack, that is, the pilot is not pulling "gs", an aircraft typically becomes sluggish or mushy in response to control inputs at angle of attack, thus airspeed, approaches a stall. In a high speed maneuvering situation, control can be sensitive up until the time the stall occurs. Recovery for a non-loaded stall typically is to reduce angle of attack by lowering nose and adding power. For a loaded, or high speed stall, recovery can be exciting depending on the characteristics of the aircraft. I remember my instructor telling me that a stall cannot occur if there in no input to controls. One day, I entered a loop at a barrel roll speed which is slower, on reaching the top of the loop, upside down, I notice the controls being very sloppy, looking at my airspeed indicator, I saw that it was below 50 knots, basically zero, not wanting to stall upside down in an aircraft that would spin, the words of my instructor came to me, no control input, no stall. I did nothing and aircraft lazily fell nose down through the loop and no stall recovery was required.
I think your reference to hanging on a prop has to do with climbing at a steep angle. The better the power to weight value an aircraft has, the longer it can climb at a given steep attitude before it slows down and has to recover from a stall. If the thrust generated is greater than the weight, it will never slow down. Many modern fighters can do this. Some special props can do this. No WW1 or 2 props could do this. The SPAD XIII, a powerful WWI aircraft, had a power to weight ratio of .13 hp/lb, the WWII P-51 had .18 hp/lb. The P-51 could maintain a climb attitude longer than a SPAD. This is simplistic since thrust vectors all come into play.