On The Deck

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The "how low can we go?" mentality killed a lot of people, not always the pilot. I read of a 308th BG pilot that wanted to impress some ground crew. So he took them up with him and then did a flat hatter down the river. hit the surface of the river and lost the bomb bay doors and the bottom of the fuselage, killing all his passengers.
 
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About how low can you go: in an air show way back, one french guy who previously demonstrated ( i think it was the Salis collection) the ww1 Caudron G3 biplane went wild on this aircraft. Must be said that no effort was spared to pamper the pilots, crew and owners and there was also a Spitfire demonstration from England. The Spit pilot did a very good job with high speed passings high turnings and diving back to the runway. The ooze of 1940 was baffeling, sound of the Merlin mesmerizing the crowd was played by a snake charmer.

The Texan was next.
Small french dude in a white overall went to his start up while the Spifire landed and was greeted with a roar and applause. Just a trainer one would have thought. While i was still casping for air after seeing my first Spit, i caught the back blast from it revving up.

My father was one of the organizers of the event and the way they got the Caudron was more or less give carte blanche for his Texan demonstration. The Dutch government never was, and is, a fan of fancy flying, so permission was "arranged" with some bobos from the airfield. A party in the Hilton must have helped. It helped also to get me a place very close to the runway

To this day i vivid remember his show. He started with getting up from runway, turn, climb hang on prop kick left and right then vertical then going backwards on tail make speed barrel roll. Lots of smoke coming from the engine, burning oil. That will get your attention, many of the crowd thought the plane was well out of control. I still feel the horror in my body as i saw it gaining speed towards the strip. I was sure it would smash right in front of me in the ground.
High exit turn low pass ( i swear about 50 cm between prop and concrete), the noise it made was awesome. Crowd reacted by not only turning around to watch, but as with a Wimbledon tennis match unison, as it it was a many headed beast, following this fast and weird moving plane. I also remember that during the Spit demo there were a lot of oohhs an aahhs. Non at this one. At his final pass he took a high speed pass alone the runway weaving its wing. Show over one would think .
But no. Making a loop going to the base of the strip rolled one his back at the and of the loop going upside down 50 cm clearance between prop and death and waving.
I kidd you not. Waving. The bastard was flying upside down so low it must have been very illegal, one handed, and waving.
When he landed the noise of cheers of the crowd were deafening. As i learned later most of this aerobatics belonged to his set, but it was the first time he did it all in 1 go.
God what a pilot, what a plane
 
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