Recent content by Tom47

Roscoe, Thanks so much for finding this video for me. This maneuver certainly could be described as a "spiral twist like a corkscrew" and may be the one described in the letter. It might also be the McGilder Twist and may be as close as I will get to understanding what that was like. All the...

While looking through some of Top's letters from when he was in flight school at Rockwell Field, North Island, San Diego in 1918 I came across this statement: I have been practicing stunts every morning with Mike Brown, the best flier in the country and we sure have a picnic. He taught me a...

I had a good laugh at the comments about the 'rurhtng' nose-dive. Truly funny. One good thing (perhaps) that came out of those jokes was my looking again at the newspaper article about the subject. It seems that the word printed in the paper was actually "ruching" which, although I initially...

That's me also. I'm curious and want to know. Granted that those were all low-performance aircraft in those days, it seems he was a rather daring flyer. Another newspaper report has him doing a "loop the loop" at a starting altitude of 200 feet so that at the bottom of the loop his wheels...

Thanks for sending the link. I appreciate your searching this out for me but I already have the clipping. It's the reason I asked if the 'turn' and the 'twist' were the same or different maneuvers. All the best.

Thanks to everyone who responded. The only information I have on this maneuver is from this article from the Blyth (California) Herald of October 13, 1919, transcribed below: Thrilling Air Program At noon the big crowd was thrilled by aerial stunts performed by Lieut. T. O. Paine, who brought...

Hello, I'm not a pilot but I have a question about a stunt my great-uncle used to do. He was a stunt instructor in aerial gunnery in the Army Air Corps in WWI and, after his discharge, he put on air shows in southern California. According to a newspaper report on one of his shows, one of the...