Which way to go ?

Bomber/Fighter?

My answer has to be the direction the tail gunner tells me to!!

😉

When i first read the 1st post i was going to say exactly what Ant said – knew i’d read it somewhere. Thanks Ant. Must read Piece of Cake again.

The question was though for a Bomber, not fighter. Bombers are different arn’t they? Fighters having one handed controls, bombers the err… ‘stearing wheel’ type with two hands??

So if your right handed is it easier to stear left (hand up) or right (hand down)??

Maybe as the pilot is on the left and he wishes to look out the left window to see the enemy so naturally everything goes left.

Best i can do anyways.

I think Mark2 has a good point. You’re a right-handed pilot sitting in a cramped cockpit with restricted elbow movement and you want to whip the stick into a rear corner to pull rapidly into a turn then it’s easy to use the elbow as a pivot and roll left. Rolling right is a bit like trying to touch your elbow with your finger tips – it’s the up elevator needed in a steep turn that complicates things.

I read recently that a high percentage of the losses of Russian Sturmoviks in WWII was because the Germans learned to concentrate their flak assuming a left turn on pulling out from an attack.

This tendency to favour left turns has become an issue in gliding. Many glider pilots believe that a thermal is best treated as a miniature low pressure area which – in the Northern hemisphere – rotates anti-clockwise. Turning left – with the rotation – requires the glider to fly at a slightly higher speed and thus it has a reduced rate of turn. Turning right against the flow gives a tighter turn and better rate of climb. Other pilots discount this theory and believe that accurately flown turns get the best out of a thermal whether or not it rotates – each to his own.

However, a gliding competition fills the sky with spiralling glass fibre, sometimes with dozens of gliders in one thermal. Safety – and commonsense – demands that they all turn the same way so competition directors often specify the preferred direction of turn and get half the pilots to curb their natural instincts. Does all this mean that there is no such problem in Oz or SA where low pressure areas rotate clockwise and everybody wants to turn left?

Purely supposition…

Breaking left (for right handed pilot) has the palm of the hand pressing against the stick whereas turning the other direction requires one to grab on well with the fingers with a more ‘unnatural’ (my opinion) pulling away motion.

Although now that I think about it my backhand in tennis comes more naturally…

Oh — I give up…. who knows 🙂

Mark

Whilst it’s true that prop torque might be something to do with it,there is also human instinct to consider.Apparently,if you’re right handed,you’re more likely to swivel round to the left than the right if you sense something behind you.This is meant to be a natural defence against attack-your left hand can guard against whatever might be coming at you,and you can hit back with your right.
This is also something that is mentioned in Derek Robinson’s ‘Piece of Cake’,where the squadron photo is ruined by a noise in the hangar behind,with the result that everyone swings thier head round as the photo is taken.All the pilots swivel thier heads to the left-except left-handed Moggy Cattermole,who swivels to the right.Interesting theory,no?
It was at some point officially recommended in RAF training that you broke to the right if you came under attack,as breaking to the left was meant to be the expected direction.