MovieChat Forums > The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) Discussion > Outside loop vs tailslide/whipstall .

Outside loop vs tailslide/whipstall .

posted 18 years ago by rogerc210
4 replies | jump to latest

Esra's plane could stay together during the negative g loading of the outside loop attempt, but crumpled during the backflow load of the tail-slide when he ran out of speed in the vertical. Seems most planes that can survive an outside loop can survive a tail-slide, not withstanding the different direction of the load. Seems though, that most existing planes that are one way are the other.

If I'm wrong if I don't & wrong if I do, you're having your cake & eating it too.

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] moonpuppy_ver1-1 15 years ago

Just watched this scene. I don't think the plane cracked up because of the stresses from the tail slide. I think Esra lost control of the aircraft and the crackup we hear is the result of the forces from the uncontrolled fall. After all, it was an experimental design and likely could not withstand forces of a flat spin or whatever attitude it ended up in when Esra lost control.

[–] jz5x5 14 years ago

I just re-watched this as well. Before, I'd thought the plane broke up from stress, but this time it seemed he lost control and corkscrewed into the ground, and we hear (it isn't shown) that impact.

[–] Etherdave 9 years ago

The Ezra Special (as well as the DeHavilland Chipmunk, for that matter) was intrinsically unsuited for this maneuver: terribly flimsy, insufficiently aerodynamic, and hopelessly underpowered; there was no way in hell this stunt was ever going to be first performed by anything other than a state-of-the-art, high-performance military fighter plane. When none other than James 'Jimmy' Doolittle achieved it on 25 May 1927, it was in a United States Army Air Corps Curtiss P-1B Hawk, from a starting altitude of 10,000 feet, and an airspeed, entering the bottom of the loop, of 280 mph. The Curtiss was a short-ratio, weight-forward design that sported an advanced cast-aluminum 19-liter 12-cylinder engine capable of 440hp at just 2200 rpms, and was, ironically enough, a biplane.