'Cowboy Pilots' n Business and Commercial Aviation, June 06

I was reading an article in the June 2006 Business and Commercial Aviation magazine.

It was basically about B52 pilot Lt. Col. "Bud" Holland and his antics preceding his awesome crash of a B-52, right into the ground.

Awesome, meaning, full of awe, how could you do that?!

One question about the article..

It said, during another performance, "he then abruptly pitched up, far past the aircraft's limits and performed a wingover type maveuver- a non standard maneuver the sideslip can damage the aircraft"

at another event, it said, "He flew several low altitude steep turns in excess of 45 degress of bank, a hig speed pass down the runway and then climbed at a 60 degree plus pitch attitude, concluding the maneuver with a wingover. When the aircraft was later brought intot the chocks, the maintenence techs were astounded at the number of rivets that popped..."


So what is a wingover? And what is sideslip?

Well, according to the video that I saw, he came down with the wings perfectly perpendicular to the ground and a hard bank.

From what I've learned in Flight Simulator and the After Burner arcade game when I was 8, if you make a turn, you have to pull back a little bit, too, or else the nose of the aircraft starts to aim downward and you lose altitude. I'm assuming that is what a sideslip is.

Now, I'm VERY amateur at this, but my take of what happened was that the slow moving B-52 couldn't recover from a very hard turn at a low altitude. He made a bank that this plane should not have been making, and couldn't maintain get out of it. The plane turned, "sideslipped" and hit the ground, nose-first, in a fireball witnessed by the families of those inside the plane.

His previous antics included dipping up and down over the hills of the desert, clearing peaks by 30 feet, again, with a plane that doesn't have the maneuverability of other military jets.

I have video of all this. I'll find it online later and post.

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Originally Posted by Phil D.

From what I've learned in Flight Simulator and the After Burner arcade game when I was 8, if you make a turn, you have to pull back a little bit, too, or else the nose of the aircraft starts to aim downward and you lose altitude. I'm assuming that is what a sideslip is.

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A sideslip is when the plane's nose is pointing in a diffirent lateral (I think that is the word, I mean horizontal) then the direction of travel. You can do this by kicking the rudder to the right, and aileron to the left (left wing down), or the other way around. Gliders quite often use this to loose altitude quickly, ask the complete fuselage is an airbrake.

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Originally Posted by JRadier

A sideslip is when the plane's nose is pointing in a diffirent lateral (I think that is the word, I mean horizontal) then the direction of travel.

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Sounds like crabbing, only "slideslip" appears to be more unintentional.

No wonder I'd spend weekends pumping $40 in quarters into After Burner. The seatbelt never worked, either.

I saw a video of a B-52 airshow crash some time ago - I'm assuming this is the same one. The guy just put himself way too low and way too slow to recover from that sort of thing. He tried to get himself out of it, but ran out of airspeed, the nose dropped, and he became gravity's bitch - never a good thing to be.

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Originally Posted by Futterman

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Originally Posted by JRadier

A sideslip is when the plane's nose is pointing in a diffirent lateral (I think that is the word, I mean horizontal) then the direction of travel.

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Sounds like crabbing, only "slideslip" appears to be more unintentional.

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Crabbing and slipping are not the same - crabbing is just coordinated flight with a certain wind correction angle to maintain a desired ground track. Slipping is uncoordinated flight - the rudder is acting opposite to the ailerons. And slipping need not be unintentional. A sideslip is a great way to land a small plane in a crosswind - turn your ailerons into the wind, and use opposite rudder to keep the nose aligned with the runway. You'll fly the entire approach with the upwind wing low, and if you do it right (far easier said than done, since the controls are not too effective at landing speeds), your upwind landing gear will touch the ground first.

You can also use a forward slip to lose altitude if you find yourself too high on an approach. It increases drag by a considerable margin, which slows you down, which means you have to pitch down more to maintain your approach speed, and voila! - increased descent rate without increased groundspeed.

A forward slip and a sideslip are in essence the same thing (intentional uncoordinated flight), but used for different purposes. The way to tell between the two is that the nose is NOT pointing forward in a forward slip, and the nose is NOT pointing to the side in a sideslip. Don't ask who was brilliant enough to come up with that one - probably the same guy who thought it made sense to put the right magneto selector to the left of the left magneto selector.

You don't see bigger planes doing slips that much - it's uncomfortable for the passengers. They tend to fly their approaches crabbed, and either touch down slightly crabbed, or transition to a sideslip just before touchdown to align themselves with the runway.

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Originally Posted by JRadier

A sideslip is when the plane's nose is pointing in a diffirent lateral (I think that is the word, I mean horizontal) then the direction of travel. You can do this by kicking the rudder to the right, and aileron to the left (left wing down), or the other way around. Gliders quite often use this to loose altitude quickly, ask the complete fuselage is an airbrake.

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Yea... I actually just did a forward slip this morning. The final approach speed in the mighty DA20-C1 (the plane we fly here) is 65KIAS, and sometimes if I'm coming in too fast, in order to bleed off some of that airspeed, I'll keep the nose pitched up. When that happens obviously I'm too high, so I'll put a slip in, which is really amazing. The plane drops like a rock, but maintains airspeed, so that when I level out just above the runway or threshold of the rwy the plane is pretty much perfect for landing. The slip procedure I was taught is that it's nose in the direction of the wind, and opposite rudder.
Another time we'll use the slip is if we're practicing SFLs (simulated force landings) since you want to be high so you don't land short of the runway. It's a great way to lose altitude while maintaining airspeed!

As far as the B-52 pilot goes, that guy should have been grounded and had his wings taken well before the incident. There were numerous documented times when he exceeded aircraft limits and acted like a "cowboy". The problem was leadership, above and below. No one, to include his commanders, had the balls to stand up to him and ground him. People would bring up the issue and it would get brushed off. In fact, on the flight where he crashed, I believe his squadron commander told the rest of the crew that they wouldn't fly with him because he was dangerous, and instead put himself in the right seat of the plane. Too bad he had to lose his life for it too....
If there's any good to come of this, it's that they show that video all the time in classes and pilot training as a reminder not to do stupid **** and what will eventually happen if you continually act reckless.

The horrible B-52 video can be found here along with a ton of other goodies!

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/aviation_v ... m#MILITARY

Well, after watching it again, I can only say: what an idiot.

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Yea... I actually just did a forward slip this morning.

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Do you fly out of that little fireld next to the Air Force Academy?
B/C if you do, I just wanted to let you know you guys make those turn onto final so drastic!

No one, to include his commanders, had the balls to stand up to him and ground him. People would bring up the issue and it would get brushed off.


Actually the article is a great one to read, as its not solely about the pilot but about how to address the situation.

I highly recommend it.

THanks for the sideslip information, now any accurate definition of wingover?

I've never done a wingover, but from what I understand, it's a combination quarter-loop and 180 degree turn, with the objective being to have the maximum possible amount of altitude gain in the least amount of horizontal space, and include a full course reversal. As aerobatic maneuvers go, it's not that stressful on the plane. However, doing aerobatics in a heavy bomber is just asking for your life to come to a premature end.

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Originally Posted by K9DEP

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Yea... I actually just did a forward slip this morning.

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Do you fly out of that little fireld next to the Air Force Academy?
B/C if you do, I just wanted to let you know you guys make those turn onto final so drastic!

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Just curious, how so? I've never really thought anything about the turn to final or the procedures for it...

Also, I don't exactly know what you're talking about when you mention a little field next to the AFA, because we have our airfield on the Academy's property, and then there is a small airfield just to the north of the Academy called Aardvark (although I don't think anyone really uses it). Our airfield isn't huge, but it's not one of those tiny ones either. It's located on Academy's property, and is just west of I-25. We have four runways, 16/34 L/C/R and 08/26, and a really nice tower they just rebuilt a few years ago. Are you familiar with the area at all?

But.... chances are if you've seen aircraft flying around the Academy, it's probably us. We fly the white planes that look like dragonflies, and the yellow ones are the tow planes for the gliders.

Our final approach procedures, at least from the pattern, are 7,300' MSL in the pattern. If landing 16L/C then we start our base turn right before Interquest Pkwy (which is about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile north of the threshold) and then turn final to intercept the runway. We pretty much drop 800 feet from the base turn until we touchdown.
Landing 34R/C we have the same pattern altitude but then make our base turn right before the South Gate (we aim for a cut in a patch of trees) and then roll out on final to intercept 34.

But at the same time you know we do what we can to make the turn onto final look so drastic!! lol

Just to add something... Maybe one of the reasons the turn seems so dramatic is because we only have something like a 1/4 or 1/2 mile final because we usually turn before our "last turn point". So basically, coming out of the base turn for final we pretty much have to be good to land. And, since the planes we fly are pretty aerodynamic and can be pretty hard to lose airspeed and altitude in, a lot of us like to fly a "normal" base and then bank harder to line up centerline and lose some airspeed and altitude in the process....


From what I've heard this is an Air Force wide policy, where they hate to extend downwinds for long finals. Kinda makes sense because everytime I've flown into a military airfield on a mil plane, we seem to make the turn to final real short!

Every plane has its limits. The cheif pilot at my company is a crazy ,man. We were flying the Mojave (PA-31-300) from SRQ to Lake Wales in Florida to pick up some Real Estate guy and enroute at 3,500 feet he tries to roll the plane. At 130 knots he stalled us! And managed to complete the roll loosing 1,000 feet in the process but nonetheless made it. He is for some reason whom I get stuck with flying every time though too. We do some pretty cool stuff in the Lear. He likes to rotate and bring the gear up while we are about 30 feet off the deck and acellerate to 230 knots (class charlie arspace at SRQ) than stand her on her tail up to 1,600 feet unless he can get clearnces to go higher. Crazy guy, He rolls the lear routinely when we are empty which is not so bad but a slight example of what he is like. He was never in the service either so I have no idea where he gets it. He flew for Carnival till they folded.