Interesting videos Alan, but none of those guys were hot WWII pilots. They were civilians flying restored WWII airplanes many years later, certainly not spun up like guys flying combat missions every day in time of war.
Have your read "Stick and Rudder"?
Just a little information on Wolfgang Lengewiesche the author.
"Wolfgang Langewiesche (1907?2002) aviator, author and journalist, is one of the most quoted authors in aviation writing. His book, Stick and Rudder (1944), is still in print, and is considered a primary reference on the art of flying fixed-wing aircraft.
Born in D?sseldorf, Germany, in 1907, he migrated to America in 1929. He was a graduate of the London School of Economics and earned his master's degree from Columbia University. He was in a doctoral program in the University of Chicago when he decided to learn to fly and pursue a career in aviation.
Mr. Langewiesche wrote for Air Facts magazine, an aviation safety-related publication edited by Leighton Collins, and his articles were the basis for most of Stick and Rudder. The basic facts about flying that he emphasized in 1944 have withstood much criticism since then. Over 200,000 copies of the book had been printed by 1990.
He taught "Theory of Flight" to US Army aviation cadets in the ground school at The Hawthorne School of Aeronautics in Orangeburg SC during World War II, and test flew F4U Corsairs for the Vought Corporation. He later worked for Cessna as a test pilot. In the 1950s he became Reader's Digest's roving editor, retiring in 1986."
I'm not interested in selling the book, only what the guy wrote when the war was going on and how to get a handle on training pilots during that effort. Langewiesche was very influential at the time.
The stuff he wrote then makes sense to me today. Thats all I am saying.
Yes, I know it was some 73 years ago, but no one has invented aviation since then, just made up their own interpretation of it. There never has been a more intense time for aviators than WWII.
I knew (he passed away recently) one guy who flew P-51's in Italy in 1944, he was 21 years old when he got to the unit, had about 200 hours and never sat in a 51 until then, had flown P-40's in training. There was a guy in the unit who wrecked 2 51's because he could not land the airplane. There simply was not time to adequately train pilots. A problem Langewiesche was trying to fix back in the states. He was 37 years old at the time.
There are lots of misconceptions about aviation. One is this eternal fixation that "my way is best". I flew with a senior captain at TWA before crew resource management was implemented, back when airline captains walked on water. This guy had learned to fly in a Champ sometime during the war but never served in the military and somehow got a job with the predecessor of TWA. It was my leg and at about 100 feet said, I've got it let me show you how to land an airplane like the Champ. (he had talked about his glorious days flying a Champ) This was in a 707. He flared and hauled back on the stick trying to stall the Boeing in like a Champ, finally touched nearly dragging the tail on concrete, all this with a load of passengers.
I thought, well isn't this interesting. I was just hired and knew this guy was nuts (I had about 2000 hour of KC135 time from the military) but did not have the balls to turn him in. I wanted the job, not confront a senior captain in the front office, I would have lost that one.
Some time later a more senior first officer did turn him in and the captain had to go to "attitude adjustment" training in Kansas City. Airlines did bend over backward in those days to not fire a captain they had blessed for the job but did insist company airplanes be flown in accordance with Boeing and company policy.
My point being, none of us have invented this stuff. That was done a long time ago by guys like Langewiesche who contributed to it. What we can do is try to figure a way to apply it today to make aviation safer than it is. Things have changed so much, even the FAA does not believe stick and rudder skills are important anymore, based on some mysterious over educated premise invented by government psychologists who may not even be pilots.
So how does all this apply to flying the RV-8 (a passion of mine since building the darn thing).
There is a marked difference from landing a Champ and B-707. The RV-8 lies somewhere in between, where it is exactly I am attempting to discover for myself and sharing that experience here. Some days I wish I had not done that because it confuses the issue. We have a lot of guys here who are good pilots, don't crash and burn, but are rather closed minded about what they know.
What really scares me as a pilot is how a guy like Charlie Hilliard died. He was the best of the best in his day and kills himself flipping a Sea Fury after landing. How does stuff like that happen? I just don't know.
What I do know, getting back to the discussion, is I have to fly the 8 in a manner that leaves feeling like I have a chance to survive the next flight. I have never gotten a 3 point landing in an RV that leaves me with a feeling I was in control. And I've had quite a bit of instruction in the 6. In fact the guy i flew with most always wheel lands it and he is an outstanding pilot. The first guy I flew with always 3 pointed it and said I did just fine but on the inside i was a wreck, I had no control over the event except haul back on the stick and hope for the best.
So there you have it one more time, do it in a manner that suits you. There really is no "best way" for all, only a "best way" for you.
Unless of course you work for a living in military or airline and then you do it their way.