Sometimes my students ask me things like "is it time to panic yet?" -- usually when they're trying to figure out if they can pass the class of mine they're in. And what I say is that there has never been, and will never be, any situation ever that any human ever is in ever, in which panic is the best solution. Even if you're piloting a plane and the wing falls off, I say, panic is STILL not your best option.*
Here's proof. No, alas, probably not so much. Snopes.com believes the video to be digitally doctored. Too bad. The fighter pilot who sent it to me LOVES this video. Still, I stand by my original statement, which is, don't panic ever. You might as well not go down having horrible hysterics.
(Watch the whole thing. It's going to be ok, believe me.)
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*The ex says that when he was learning to fly fighter jets, he was told that the first thing he should do, if a wing fell off, was to reach up and wind the clock. Just. Don't. Panic.
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3 comments:
I'm pretty sure that that was a fake. You might ask the opinion of an expert.
By the way, a great book for former fighter pilots is The Hardest Day, Alfred Price, which is an account of one day in the air war over Britain in 1940. The author (a historian) interviewed all the survivors, German or Allied, and collected together their stories in a way that really gives you a sense of what the war was like. See the customer reviews.
Yeah, that was an edit.
It is possible to land a plane with one wing. Here's what a real one looks like.
The jet pilot who sent it called it a "miracle," though certainly he believes it. But of course, my expert could be wrong.
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