Sunday, February 18, 2024

Made it down.

 


8 comments:

  1. Just water ditch the plane rather than potentially damage the ship.

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  2. Kind of looks like the ship is on fire, too - is he still airborne in this shot? I wonder what the back story is.

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  3. Bad landing that ruptured the belly tank? The ripples in the skin indicate that the fuselage is bent beyond repair. I think the dark horizontal bar under the wing is a collapsed main gear.
    Al_in_Ottawa

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  4. Water landings are very hard to do without crashing, especially in rough seas. Did you ever try water skiing? There are many old military films showing these guys with shot up airplanes making miraculous landings.

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    1. As long as you weren't trying to land with a bomb still attached, you were good to go for a deck landing. A water landing was fraught with peril, and had a fairly high crew loss rate. If shot up, single engine planes were not very buoyant, and often disappeared before it stopped moving, while the crew members might not be thinking clearly from injuries and the landing impact.

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