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Why does the shuttle throttle on ascent?
Pat Flannery wrote:
MichaelJP wrote: I wonder how many found it too much and came to grief - were there any trainer versions of the P51D or was the first flight always the first solo as well? I don't think I've ever seen a trainer P-51, in fact most U.S. WW II fighter didn't have a trainer version. I assume that after you had done enough hours in a Texan trainer they assumed you were ready to take on a Mustang, although I have heard of some pilots training stateside in P-39s before moving up to P-47s or P-51s overseas. (Chuck Yeager for instance) During the war there weren't any 2 chair P-51s (Except a few one-offs like the 2-seat P-51B that was used by Eisenhower for direct recon of Normandy.) There were some TF-51Ds put together after the war by Temco - They can be spotted by their having the bigger F-51H fin & rudder, and a canopy shape that gives a bit more rear headroom. Cavalier made some, as well - including a couple delivered to the U.S. Army in the 1960s for use as chase planes for the AH-56 Cheyenne Compound Helicopter. But, backduring the War, the usual procedure before transitioning to a singe seat fighter was to demonstrate proficiency in landing an AT-6 from the read seat. This gave the same lousy over-the-nose visibility, and the T-6's much snarkier behavior on landing and rollout meant that if you could handle that, you could pretty much handle anything. Figher training (More of less what we'd call LIFT (Lead-In Fighter Training these days) was typically performed in war-weary P-39s or P-40s. It was considered part of the Advanced Single Engine syllabus. The U.S. Aviation Training Programs, both Army and Navy, were some of the most amazing miracles of WW 2. A lot of study went into syllabus and methods - And the result was Pilots coming out of training in with 250-300 hours who could not only fly a fighter, but fly it on instruments, navigate their way from England to Prague and back, and fight the Luftwaffe (or the IJN) to a standstill when they got there. Well, and the U.S. Aviation Industry, that could build fighters that could not only fly from England to Prague, but take on the short-ranged interceptors when it got there, and, if necessary, run them out of gas, and fly home. (The only German fighter pilots who got instrument training were the NachtJagd. This was a factor in choosing bomber pilots to fly the early jets - they could make instrument let-down in the usual crappy German weather. An Me 262 didn't have the fuel on board to stooge around looking for a hole in the clouds to descend through, or a VFR airfield. Pete Stickney Without data, all you have is an opinion |
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