Evening star., 1942-09-08
How Il Feels as Pilot
Puts Dive Bomber Into
W-Degree Plunge
Writer Says Its Like
Being Tilted Back
Abruptly in Choir
BY WILLIAM r. BONI,
Wide World Military Editor


UPSIDE DOWN AND BACK.
WARD IN A UNITED STATES
ARMY AIR FORCES DIVE BOMB.
Err, Sept, s.-Riding In the gunner.
seat on one of these jobs is a good
deal like being tilted back abruptly
In chair until your legs are sticking
straight up and your back is parallel
to the ground, and then being Drop
ped at $50 m. p. h., If you can imag-
Inc something like that.
Actually, it's nowhere so bad as
your imagination made it. As the
plane, with Second 1t. Edward
Richardson Of Muskogee, Okla, at
the controls, keeps climbing up to
bombing height of 5000 feet, you
look ]ongingly at the switch on your
interphone control. All you'd have
to do would be press 1t and say:
Rich, can't take this. Get me
home"
Pilot Is Only 22.
But wouldn't you look silly in
front of these kids who do it every
day, and on some near day will be
doing it for keeps? Take Rich, for
lnstance-he's only %, a bare five
months out of his advanced flying
school at Stockton, Calf. Yet he
handles his A-3l smoothly, puts it
through its PAGES without hitch or
hesitation.
We are the last plane in the flight.
By craning your neck and peering
through the dirty hatch cover, you
can see the others ahead OF us tilt
over and down one by one. The
next to last one +. . Now 80.
First, there's a momentary breath
fssness, in which you seem to drive
the imprints of your fingers into the
wooden handles of your machine
gun; then conviction that "okay,
the worst is over, couldn't dive any
sleeper; then surprise and what
the hell, it's gotta end sooner or
later" resignation as the dive
promptly does get sleeper.
still insist our angle of dive was
30 degrees. straight up and down.
Capt. John Redding says this isn't
so, that it was no more than 10 de-
grees. Besides being AAF liaison
officer for the California maneuvers,
he also has ridden dive bombers at
525 m. p. h., compared to my
puny $50, and therefore should
know. But he wasn't there, and
still insist that if our dive had been
any sleeper we would have been over
on our backs.
You notice funny things on flight
like that-not during the dive
all YOU think of then is "okay, chum,
when do we come up for air?" But
you notice that the slipstream tugs
at the. hair on your arms so that you
have goose bumps, and you see
white cross painted on a rock by the
side of the Colorado River and
think, MY, how appropriate"
Then You Pass Out.
You notice that a plain dive out
Of level flight is one thing. but that
a dive out of a. peel of is even more
so, You wonder how.sH A Zero or
a Messerschmitt FSere I'm his tail
during dive, the gunner would
have time to do anything more than
cling to his weapon for dear life.
You notice that Rich sets his
plane down on the runway as deli
cately and smoothly as if Ii were
carrying eggs. You take this as
matter OF course. Then you hear
Rich say back in the operations tent,
Boy, In all the time I've been f1ying
these babies, that's the first wheel
Landing I ever made. Usually
bounce 'em 20 feet In the air the
first time I HIT
Then you don't notice anything.
You've passed out.