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interesting incident occurred. Much of our practicing was of any type we thought would help us. On this day Harold and I had been practicing single engine procedures and the rest of the crew had been doing their own thing. We were up over the flat farmland of Illinois just North of Springfield flying at just 500 ft. above ground level. Vatalie had been testing his radios and making sure we could contact anyone should we need to do so. O'Donald was busy getting sun shots through the bubble at the top of the crew station so he could confirm our position celestially.

Harold and I were testing this particular airplane to see just how slow we could fly it and maintain flight. (On formation missions we never flew slower than 120 mph, the speed we normally dropped paratroopers and towed gliders. On large formations, of forty planes or more, the inside planes in a turn sometimes had to slow up to 80 MPH or less.) We were trying to see just how slow we could get and still keep flying. We were empty of any load other than just the crew so we could fly slower than even a partially loaded airplane could. We had the prop settings set for immediate full power should we need it and kept reducing the throttles and trimming the airplane up to maintain our altitude. Usually before stalling we would get a buffeting effect and both wings would stall at nearly the same time.

This time, however, there was no warning. We were flying along at around 68 MPH as steady as could be when I reduced the power just a little more and rolled in a shade more upward elevator trim when all of a sudden the right wing stalled with no prior warning and we were suddenly looking out the right window and right front window at the ground only 500 ft. below us. Here is where good training paid off; both Harold and I without speaking pressed the left rudder to the floor and popped the column forward with one hand while advancing the throttles with the other. We broke the stall and stopped the spin almost immediately but not before we had lost around two hundred feet in altitude. After we had recovered the fellows in the back came up and ask us: "Please let us know when you are going into a spin again so we can buckle up."

 

I mentioned above the forty plane formation missions we flew. An incident happened at the beginning of one of these which I was afraid might get me some sort of disciplinary action. We were supposed to be somewhere in the middle of one of those formations leading a flight of three airplanes. In forming these large formations the lead plane would take off first and circle the field once in a wide circle maintaining a steady 120 MPH all the other planes in flights of three would follow as soon as possible and form themselves in their proper position either to the right or left and two or three feet above the leading flight and the same angle behind and to the side as the two wing planes were to the leading plane in the first flight. Each succeeding echelon of nine planes would be formed with the first flight immediately behind the leading flight and six to eight feet above it. Thus with four echelons of nine planes each and a box of four planes in the "V" immediately behind the lead flight of the forth echelon; forty airplanes would be flying in a total space of less than

 

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