Word: rudder
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...less than a mile. But now a sudden breeze stirred sharp ruffles on Pyramid Lake. The chop broke the normal suction grabbing at the hull, turned the water into a fast-running surface. Tempo-Alcoa did not slow, instead seemed to take off at a speed that made the rudder all but useless. Says Staudacher: "It was like skidding on ice. When I saw that rocky shore coming, I believed this was the end of my life...
...sidewise skid, or yaw. Skid her too far one way or the other, he explained, and she will flip over.*At 12,000 feet over Seattle's suburbs, Pilot Berke, flying slowly with flaps down 40 degrees, tried to get the feel of impending trouble by kicking right rudder and putting the jetliner into a flat right skid...
Barrel Roll. Details of what happened next would have to await a Civil Aeronautics Board investigation. It may have been that Berke failed to correct with his left rudder in time, or inadvertently applied more right. The 707 flipped on its back. The gut-pounding stress was too much for the 248,000-lb. plane, and ordinarily the wings might have torn loose. But the 707 was designed to lose its engines under such strain, rather than its wings-and three engines ripped loose, plummeted to earth...
...thumbs-up sign from a frizzy-haired native, then raced his blue and white Cessna down the crushed-coral airstrip, over the palm-dotted swamplands, and high into the sky to hurdle the jagged mountain peaks concealed in thick cumulus clouds. Settling his sandaled feet on the rudder, he flew with one hand as the other fingered a heavy gold cross hanging from his neck. After a short flight-over forbidding jungles, the pilot banked his plane, swooped down toward a clearing and made a smooth touchdown on another makeshift airfield. There to greet him were the local priest...
Lame and defenseless, the 395-m.p.h., four-engined Mercator (curiously designed, with two turbojets and two piston engines) was a sitting duck. The 670-m.p.h. Red jets swooped down in six passes altogether, scored 15 to 20 damaging hits, knocked out both starboard engines, and left the rudder usable only by its trim tabs. While Plane Commander Mayer kept a lookout, Lieut. Commander Vincent Joseph Anania, 39, the copilot at the controls, put the plane into a steep, top-speed dive and leveled out just 50 ft. above the sea. The MIGs broke off. Mayer ordered all movable equipment dumped...