Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Walker
I think your example from the Hurricane POH shows why the RAF made its own documents for US aircraft. The references to the RAF Training Manual (which probably contains the "more details about how to get out of a spin") would be useful information to anyone who had gone through RAF training, but would not be present in a US manual. The Hurricane quote provides extra information unique to the type, but the Training Manual also needs to be understood to fully operate the Hurricane. The description of the Hurricane's spin recovery may appear dry, but it is quite factual, and would be understood by anyone used to reading such manuals.
You may be interested to know that the RCAF wrote its own pilot's notes for new aircraft types, even when both US and RAF manuals were available. They did this in part because of the need to use terms familiar to RCAF trained pilots, and to provide necessary information relevant to Canadian operations - cold weather usage, interfacing with visiting aircraft servicing at RCAF fields, etc. The RAF would have had similar needs not filled by the US manuals.
As for the US "cartoony" style versus the RAF style, I think this may reflect the expected educational background of the readers. The RAF (and RCAF) required candidate pilots to have a university degree early in the war, the US draftees may have had less previous exposure to high level documents.
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I agree with #2 and 3, but the first point seems off to me. All pilots had practiced spinning in training. Now they are in a very new, much higher performance, aircraft, and the question is "what's different about getting out of spins in the Hurricane?" It's single seat - nobody can take you up and show you.
What did they get? A reference to a very generic training manual that they may not even have in their "kit". Why not just reprint that paragraph here? Then it says the mystery paragraph "should be amplified in light of the foregoing remarks." But those "foregoing remarks just amount to saying "all kinds of things can go wrong when you recover from a spin, such as flicking into a new spin in the other direction."
Finally, what does it mean that the paragraph "should be
amplified in light of the foregoing remarks." Amplified = ?
I will try to attach the relevant two pages so you can make your own judgment. My interpretation is that the test pilots had not done their job - they had not come up with useful information about how spinning and getting out of a spin in a Hurricane is different, other than to say "you will lose LOTS of altitude."
By the way, regarding "required to have a university degree," Boy Wellum was accepted in 1938 or 39 at 18, right out of his boarding school, and as I recall that was true of others. Also the RAF had plenty of sergeants as pilots, at least in bombers. My impression is that the RAF's manual writers did have elitist attitude about "cartoons," but it may not have been rational.
All in all, their documentation effort seems to have been weak. I just received 2 books edited by Sarkar with a variety of Hurricane and Spitfire material - it is mostly amateurish compared with what the Americans had.
thanks for further thoughts,
Roger