The magazine was primarily focused on persuading pilots to fly more safely. Back in the 1940s, general aviation was piling up aircraft at the rate of 77.8 accidents per 100,000 hours. We've come a long way since then, with the accident rate declining to 8.79 accidents per 100,000 hours. However, in looking at 1993's statistics, which were analyzed and released this spring by the AOPA Air Safety Foundation, the leading phase of flight where pilots have serious accidents is the maneuvering phase. If you don't fully understand the concept of angle of attack, you are at least a possible candidate for joining the more than 100 pilots who in 1993 crashed in their attempt to make an aircraft do the impossible.
Accidents are the ultimate manifestation of confusion.
Understanding how the controls affect flight has a marked effect on the learning process, as well. No maneuver can be fully understood unless you understand this well. He recommends that we forget Bernoulli's theorem, which may serve to confuse more than illuminate those few facts that a pilot really needs to know. In speaking with Langewiesche, as he was approaching his eighty-seventh birthday in April of this year, I was struck by the simplicity and humility of his explanations. The student would be overloaded with too much theory.