All aircraft go thru handling changes at different speeds, you can't simulate it with ground training, or a gentle flight in a glider.
Just from my limited flight experience, some aircraft require a lot of trim changes with different speeds. and i'm just talking about regular flying. I don't know if I could keep up with the trim changes on a Cessna 172, if I put one in a suicide dive. I remember one time I complained to the instructor about how busy I was changing elevator trim, so he let me with fly it for awhile without trim changes, it began to require a lot of muscle to fly with just some minor airspeed changes, I never complained again.
That is IMO one of the problems encounted by the Okha pilots, they had glider training, but none of them had even flown the aircraft at the speeds they attained in that finale dive.
And then there's the problem of what is called getting behind the aircraft, where things happen faster than you accustomed to reacting to.
Training pilots in gliders that maybe could approach 200mph, and then expecting them to be able to sucessfully dive them on a target at speeds approaching 500mph was madness.
Just from my limited flight experience, some aircraft require a lot of trim changes with different speeds. and i'm just talking about regular flying. I don't know if I could keep up with the trim changes on a Cessna 172, if I put one in a suicide dive. I remember one time I complained to the instructor about how busy I was changing elevator trim, so he let me with fly it for awhile without trim changes, it began to require a lot of muscle to fly with just some minor airspeed changes, I never complained again.
That is IMO one of the problems encounted by the Okha pilots, they had glider training, but none of them had even flown the aircraft at the speeds they attained in that finale dive.
And then there's the problem of what is called getting behind the aircraft, where things happen faster than you accustomed to reacting to.
Training pilots in gliders that maybe could approach 200mph, and then expecting them to be able to sucessfully dive them on a target at speeds approaching 500mph was madness.