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. For those of us engaged in flight instruction, perhaps a few well-chosen words will do far more good than a running commentary. Judging by the record, as instructors, we're not doing a good job of explaining angle of attack and how to avoid being overcome by a gust of gravity. Note that the longest chapter in Langewiesche's book, some 40 pages, is devoted to the nuances of turning flight.
Pilots have the wrong idea about the rudder and about angle of attack in turns.
In the accident scenarios, this fact comes up repeatedly. The principles of turning flight also apply to pull-outs from dives, which Langewiesche describes as nothing more than an upward turn. This chapter also contains a very clear picture that explains that the radius of a vertical turn quadruples as the airspeed doubles. The description is equally graphic on the failure of the airframe or the ensuing high-speed stall as the pilot realizes too late that he is going to overshoot the vertical turn and strike the ground. One topic that is guaranteed to start an argument is the function of the flight controls and his claim that the elevator controls airspeed, throttle controls climb and descent, bank angle controls the turn, and rudder controls the lateral balance.