Quote:
Originally Posted by flynlion
Interesting combat reports, sounds like some of these guys coulda used a third hand (or an FO  ) An old Wildcat pilot once told me about the landing gear, how you had to rotate a hand crank something like 25 times to bring the gear up. If your hand slipped it would just spin back down, possibly bashing your hand in the proccess. Pretty heavy workload in some of these old birds.
Sorry for the threadjack Mac, guess I've had too much free time lately. I do like that cockpit shot of the MiG  |
They had a similar thing in the Spit MkI, seen a few quotes where the pilots could tell who was new by how much they bobbed up and down just after take off because they were pumping away at the hand crank for the gear. They called it 'porpoising' after the way porpoises swim.