Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Heh,
I’d love to read the report he sent to the Insurers, trying to explain this one…..
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was a touch and go out of the question? the article simply states that the skis skidded, not that they got stuck or went loose. i’d be curious to learn if a touch and go was possible once he realized he wasn’t going to stop the plane.
Tomas/
My first thought as well. Looks to be the old story about the dangers of trying to salvage a bad landing rather than go around (or RTB in this case.)
Shoot, looks like he could have dribbled off the end and flown away.
Although I doubt any of that was going through his mind at the time…
LOL, Lex, you’re right. I would imagine that if the thing were analyzed more closely the greatest actual degree of risk was in physically exiting the aircraft–as opposed to letting momentum
help in flying it off. They were both just damn lucky their escape vibrations didn’t send the ac down the mountain side taking them with it, period.
Dribbled away eh? Sort of like carrier aviation?
Of course he had a good 1500 feet of altitude before the dribble proved fatal and for aviators that’s probably a lot of room to work with.
He almost had his empannage going through his mind at the time!!!
Any VXE guys (gals) here? I was under the impression that at the pole they always did a touch and go if landing somewhere unprepared, just to see if the ice/snow/”runway” was as it looked.
In the airline world you would not call that a “go around” you would call that a rejected landing. About the same thing but technically in a go-around you don’t touch down at all. (In the Airbus anything below 50′ RA is a “rejected landing” because the flight controls go into land mode there…)
Nose/ Since you’re here, OT, but did you ever buy/read Forrester’s “The Good Shepherd?”
I saw a movie called “The Good Shepherd.” Same thing?
Nose/
No, it’s a GREAT WWII story about a USNR destroyer Capt who was a convoy leader on the North Atlantic run despite being Jr (in experience) to his English, Canadian and Polish counter-parts. He is also suffering a divorce at the time and also has the hang-over of a German background (his name is Krause, and is a Morman to boot, IIRC) A GREAT read beginning to end what with the operational demands of convoy duty, ensuing combat, constant tension, lack of sleep and inner turmoil, etc.
Always trust Virgil’s recommendations.
Latest was “The Raid” and “The Doom Pussy”. Out of print but obtainable. Keep ‘em coming Vx
In my copy, he is Lutheran, the son of a Lutheran Pastor.
Sorry, I hit post by mistake. Virgil is correct in liking this book, it probably is Forester’s best work.
It is two stories interweaved, it is Cmdr. Krause’s having to get a 30 odd ship convoy through in April of 1942, when the USN really had not gotten anywhere near up to speed on escort duty. As COMCORT, he is tasked with the protection of a block of ships 6 miles wide, by 2.5 miles deep, ( standard convoy spacing was columns 1 mile apart, ships in each column spaced 1/2 mile apart ), with his ship, the MAHAN class DD USS KEELING, the Free Polish Navy DD VIKTOR, and a pair of FLOWER class corvettes, HMS JAMES, and HMCS DODGE.
This gives him ships from 4 different navies, ( yes, the Royal Canadian and Free Polish Navies were administrativly parts of the RN, but they are still culturally different ), which alltogeter are still 2 ships short of the bare minimum recommended for a convoy that size.
Add to this that the convoy has been discovered by a wolf pack, and the escort has been running around from one U Boat contact to another, with no oiler accompanying the convoy, and Cmdr Krause’s job becomes that much harder.
One of the more interesting parts of the book is what is going through Krause’s mind during the 2 days the book covers. He is trying to be COMCORT, and coordinate what cover he can give to the convoy, run his ship as part of the escort, and he still has to run the ship on a day to day basis, as day to day things do not go away just because the Germans have dropped by.
In his relationships with the OODs as they rotate through the watches, we see how Krause observes his officers, and guides them to making thier own decisions, as, ” a Naval Officer’s job is to build, as well as destroy “, and with the just spooling up, that will last who knows how long, he must get these young Lts and JGs up to speed, with the huge build up in the Fleet due to the war, they very well may be commanding thier own DDs in a years time.
Krause even finds himself brooding on his past, and wondering if he really is where he should be. Krause takes his job very seriously, and 3 years later, is still crushed by not having made Commander in 1939. While he knows that in the Depression Era USN, there was only one Commander slot for each tem Lt. Cmdrs trying for it, having been ‘fitted and retained’, despite flawless FITREPs, stunned him.
His young wife, who it appears, was a party hearty girl, could not understand why he would spend so much time on his ship, when he could be going to parties with her. This she considered to be grossly unfair, and it caused her to stray, and resulted in a rather nasty divorce.
Nevertheless, even with all these fish on his plate, Krause gets the convoy to a point where he can hand what’s left of it over to an RN Support Group, and an air cover provided by USN PBYs, with minimal losses, which, unfortunately, included VIKTOR.
It really is rather a ripping yarn, and is BADGER APPROVED.
SCOTTtheBADGER/
Sorry about the Mormon bit, guess it’s time for by bi-annual re-read. Memory…Going..Slowly..but…surly..And as I’m out here on the coast, I couldn’t check out the details from my library.
One of my favorite lines is when VIKTOR’s British laison officer “Tubby” asks him over the TBS to give them a once over as to how the heavy ice in their rigging looks, to which he labors for a few moments for an appropriate reply (all this and humor too? the normally dour Krause thinks) and then replies: “You look North Polish.”
Now you see where the old saying “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots” comes from.
That boy has an empy barrel of luck, fa sure!
It looks like he had a chance to hear the gyros spool down anyway.
Actually, this wasn’t bad luck, it was panic clouding his mind. Always a bad thing in any application. A judicious addition of thrust and a bit of back pressure on the stick looks like it may have gotten him out. Now that he has “experience,” he may have good judgment, or at least better judgment.
Another expression: “It’s better to be lucky than good”….and he was. While it seems likely he could have successfully nosed it over and flown away, now he’s famous. Of course Larry the lawn chair balloonist became famous too. It’s not always a good thing.
I had this in que for posting at about the same time. Good story that he can luckily tell his friends.
I’m sorry the young man feels ashamed or embarrassed. He lived, and so did the other guy. He gets to learn from his mistake. Hallelujah.
He most likely got into the “I’m a great pilot and I don’t do go arounds” syndrome. He put it down, had a slight problem and instead of hitting the power when he had the chance tried to save a not so perfect situation, he waited until he was out of airspeed, out of runway and out of ideas. Well good ones anyway.
oops
Roll and go baby! Power Power Power!
I thought any landing you walk away from is a good landing.
Any, if there is photo or video evidence, you can be embarrassed by your peers and ground pounders alike for the rest of your life.
And, if you can reuse the Ac it’s a great landing!