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Originally Posted by winny
I think this is slightly unfair. Pilot's who flew 'by the book' generally didn't last very long, on both sides. There are too many stories of people breaking 'planes out of desperation, panic or fear. Lot's of Spitfire and 109 pilot's took thier machines to the limit, and beyond. In fact nearly all the top guys did it.
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Absolutely, however some of the limitation were not soft ones. Say the manual may say spinning is not permitted below a said altitude, and it may well be on the safe side. However it wasn't there without a reason. The rules could only be bent to a certain degree, and after that line was left behind, there was no coming back, and no telling of stories.
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Pilot's are given notes so that they understand the limits and dangers. There were no referees or people from the ministry flying around enforcing the law...
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Mother Nature took care about enforcing it though..
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To simply dismiss this in such a trivial way "limitations are not really limitations at all, and they should be adhered only at the pilot's will." seems petty.
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It's not petty, it's realistic. If a plane can only take 12 gs before breaking up, it will at 12.1 g. If its humanly impossible to get it out from spin without having 5-10 000 feet of altitude, you will die in it.
What I find petty is that when some guy damands the same papers he has seen about 2 years ago already (back then the excuse was that it's a 'forgery'), he knows very well about it, then when he is presented with it, he changes to subject and tries argues that it really isn't to be taken so seriously.
The Pilot's notes describe the behaviour of an aircraft accurately. They cannot be just dismissed with that 'oh, its not set in stone'.
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At the end of the day individuals made individual choices. If you returned from a mission with a bent airframe nobody grounded you for it, they just said 'oh he's bent the airframe' and ordered a new one.
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Sure not, though I've heard some times the damages were deducted, if it was for careless flying. Combat of course is a different matter, anything goes. As Crumpp said, you take a ris k and choose between certain death and likely death, as cruel as it is.
The question is alway: Which one is which? Is flying within the limits or pressing your luck is more beneficial to your survival in combat? Sometimes its the former sometimes its the latter, and the unlucky ones do not tell stories.
Physics just keep working all the same, those rules cannot be bent.