Re: SItuational Awareness
TeeCee,
I thought in the Ethiopean case that the pilot had the wings nice and level (from memory of the footage) and the sudden back at the end was the hijacker grabbing the controls and spoiling his nice water landing. It was a long time ago though.
My favourite crash is from Eric "winkle" Brown - who I believe is the most prolific test pilot in history, with more carrier landings than anyone else as well. At the end of WWII he got to go to Germany and test a whole bunch of thier experimental stuff, with no (or partial) manuals, and hoping that the few remaining ground crew were cooperating and not trying to kill him.
He also taught himself to fly a helicopter while testing at Farnborough.
He was flying a search and rescue helicopter in the late 50s, in a blizzard. And had an engine failure, while over a mountain. There was no flat bit to crash on - and through the snow he saw a barbed wire fence. Thinking to himself that this looked (to a desperate man) rather like an arrestor wire on a carrier, and that his tail was definitely hook-shaped - he decided to try his luck. And managed to hook the wire with the tail, and land on the slope.
I believe he was also the guy that did the test for the Navy - where they took the undercarriage off a Gloucester Meteor in order to lose weight extend the rather pathetic range. Then build a rubber "trampoline" above the flight deck of a carrier, and he deliveberately stalled the plane such that it landed on this rubber sheet.
...Balls of steel...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
