Posted on 10/03/2021 12:05:38 PM PDT by UMCRevMom@aol.com
In World War I, pilots on either side of the line enjoyed sudden lurches ahead in technology advances followed by steady declines into obsolescence. This created a seesaw effect in the air where Allied pilots would be able to blast their way through German lines for a few months, but then had to run scared if the enemy got the jump on them.
So the Allied pilots found a way to fake their deaths in the air with a risky but effective maneuver.
Some Nieuport planes had a tendency to break apart when pilots pulled them out of a steep dive. (Nieuport, public domain)
By the time that America was getting pilots to the front in 1917, all of the early combatants from the war had years of hard-won experience in aerial fighting. U.S. pilots would have to catch up. Worse, U.S. pilots were joining the fight while German planes were more capable than Allied ones, especially America’s Nieuport 28s purchased from France.
France had declined to put the Nieuport 28 into service because of a number of shortcomings. Its engine burned castor oil, and the exhaust would spray across the pilots, coating their goggles in a blinding film and making many of them sick. It could also turn tight but had some limitations. Worst of all, pilots couldn’t dive and then suddenly pull up, a common method of evading fire in combat, without risking the weak wings suddenly snapping off.
Yes, in standard combat flying, the plane could be torn apart by its own flight. So new American pilots adopted a strategy of playing dead in the air.
The technique wasn’t too complicated. In normal flying, a pilot who stalled his plane and then entered a spin was typically doomed to slam into the ground. And so, enemy pilots would often break off an attack on a spinning plane, allowing it to finish crashing on its own.
But a British test pilot, Frederick A. Lindemann, figured out how to reliably recover from a spin and stall. He did so twice in either 1916 or 1917. So, pilots who learned how to recover from a stall and spin would, when overwhelmed in combat, slow down and pull up, forcing a stall in the air.
Then as they started to drop, they would push the stick hard to one side, causing one wing to have full lift and the other to have minimal lift, so it would fall in a severe spin. German pilots, thinking they had won, would break off the attack. Then the Allied pilot would attempt to recover.
U.S. combat pilot Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker was America’s top-scoring fighter ace of World War I. (U.S. Air Force)
But spins were considered dangerous for a reason. Recovery required leveling that lift on the wings and then using the rudder to stop spin before pulling up on the stick to stop the fall. So, for the first few moments of recovery, the pilot had to ignore that they were pointed at the ground. If they tried to pull up while they were still spinning, they really would crash. In fact, on some aircraft, it was essential to steepen the dive in order to recover.
And this whole process took time, so a pilot who fell too far before beginning recovery would hit the ground while still trying to recover from their intentional spin.
Most future American aces learned these maneuvers from British pilots in fairly controlled conditions, but some of them were limited in their flight time by their duties on the ground. Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, in charge of maintaining and improving America’s major aerodrome at Issoudon, France, taught himself the maneuver on his own during stolen plane time, surviving his first attempt and then repeating it on subsequent days until he could do it perfectly.
Rickenbacker would go on the be America’s top scoring ace in World War I despite being partially blind in one eye and officially too old for training when he went to flight school.
Originally they were just used for reconnaissance, waving to each other, they’e enemy. Then one snuck up above the other, pistol in hand and shot the other. The rest is history including the shooting down of their own propellers. I understand 50% of them died.
Easy to mix up these names - they’re so similarly German names:
- Baron Manfred von Richthofen - Top German & WWII ace, and
- Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker - Top U.S. ace
The difference in shoot downs/victories is stunning.
Richthofen is credited with 80 shoot-downs while Rickenbacker is credited with 26 shootdowns.
Great story! Thanks for posting this. I’d never heard of this very scary maneuver before or that Rickenbacker used it.
I can’t imagine the nerves of steel to execute that. Here you are in an intentional spin and you have to get out of it, you are pointed down, and you have to steepen your dive. Every instinct is screaming “pull up” but you have to ignore it. Yikes!
This maneuver is taught to more experienced pilots.
A friend of mine is distantly related to Richthofen. One of his aunt’s has the Red Baron’s shotgun with proven provenance.
This writeup is pretty incoherent.
Provenance is proof by definition, so “proven provenance” is redundant. Yea, I’m feeling especially nitpicky today.
Crazy-brave.
Still preferable to living in the mud, muck, poison gas, artillery, machine guns and snipers in the trenches.
The reason von Richthofen was able to rack up so many kills, so I’ve heard, is that he had a knack for singling out the rookies in a squadron, and exclusively going after those. But isn’t that what any successful predator does, stalk the weakest in the heard?
A friend of mine was with a friend in his experimental ultralight and it went into a tailspin. The owner of the plane tried pulling it out and it just kept falling. My friend grabbed the controls and turned into the dive, gaining enough speed to pull out of it.
The owner never flew again.
The primary purpose of aircraft throughout the war was reconnaissance, primarily to spot for the artillery. Dawn patrol was a big thing because reinforcements would be moved up and enemy artillery positions shifted overnight. The specialty reconnaissance planes with trained spotters, detailed maps and photographic equipment were big, slow, highly vulnerable targets. The fighter sweeps were done to protect your own and clear the enemy’s reconnaissance planes. The great dogfights were dramatic and make for colorful history, but they were ancillary to the primary mission.
Richthofen was a WW1 ace.
When I was about 18, my dad demonstrated to me how safe the Piper Tri-pacer was. At about 2k’ agl, he threw it into a spin, and with feet off of the rudder pedals, let go of the yoke. It stopped spinning and started to pull the nose up by itself. (Of course dad didn’t wait for it pull up level on it’s own, but proved his point about how docile the bird was.
Baron Manfred von Richthofen - Top German & WWI ace
Baron Manfred von Richthofen - Top German & WWI ace
His cousin Wolfram von Richthofen was a top German General in the Luftwaffe in WW2.
and that’s how he ended up dying... stalking a novice.
Rickenbacker survived the war and died in 1973
Richthofen did not survive the war and died in 1918.
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