Gary,

Googled the B-17 story. Many accounts of it. I've heard other stories of compassion as well, including a luftwaffe seaplane rescuing allies and given safe passage to repatriate them to allied medical treatment. Each time I read a story like this, it makes me wonder (again), why we fight each other in the first place?

Lou Siegal, USA 

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I recently received a call from a reader that said he was learning to fly, but had a recurring problem. He said that each time he took to the air, he became unreasonably afraid that the engine was going to quit. He said that it wasn’t just a nagging worry but rather that he remained tense and nervous throughout each entire flight constantly fretting that the engine would quit at any given time and that he would then be doomed. After chatting for a while it certainly seemed as if he was genuinely concerned that he would indeed be in mortal danger if he were ever greeted by a whole lot of silence from up front. I advised him to get his instructor to skip some lessons and move on to the simulated forced landing part of the training course so that he could see that, should the engine fail, there was indeed a whole lot that he could do about it. This would then hopefully allay any future fears.

Engine failure in any aircraft is extremely rare but it does happen. In my 9000+ hours I have experienced three engine failures so it does indeed sometimes happen. It is for this reason that there are procedures in place and it is vitally important for any and all pilots to practise regularly. In the airlines, pilots are regularly drilled in simulators on engine failure and recovery techniques and PPL’s too have to renew their licenses every two years by demonstrating their expertise should an engine fail. Doing a practise forced landing only once every two years though is by far not enough. You would do well to round up an experienced instructor at least every six months and simulate engine failure under various different circumstances.

Engines can fail for a variety of reasons. In one of my three experiences I was working flat out at a flying school. We were extremely busy each day and it got to the stage where one flight just melded in with the next. On one such day I went on a training flight with a student in an aircraft that had a broken starter motor. I hand swung the engine to life and off we went. The flight was to practise simulated forced landings and once in the general flying area at altitude, I shut down the engine to initially show the student that the aircraft glides just as it should with the propeller standing still. I then flicked the starter to demonstrate the air start only to have the realisation dawn on me that this was the trainer with no starter motor! Darn! That’ll teach me to leave my brain on autopilot! Anyway, I then merely continued with the demonstration of the forced landing with the only difference being that this was now for real, rather than a simulation. We both learned a lesson that day.

On the other occasion I was flying a Baron at altitude when one of the pistons on the right-hand motor began disintegrating. I had to shut down the engine and return to base on one engine but there was no panic involved, merely the following of procedure. I appreciated having a “spare” engine that day. On the third occasion I also had to shut down a misbehaving engine in a twin but there were no dramatics and the flight ended peacefully.

An engine failure in any aircraft is never meant to be fun, especially if it is in a single, but there should also not be any reason for panic. In the early days, before carburetors were added to engines, the only way pilots could control the power output of the engine was to either have it switched on, or off! In other words, for the descent, the engine was merely switched off and then “blipped” every now and then to keep the propeller windmilling so that they had power if they needed it. Once they were committed to a landing the engine was left switched off altogether. Gliders too do a forced landing every time they fly and you don’t hear them grumbling! Large airliners too often reduce power to idle and glide from altitude all the way to final approach. They are really just big gliders with forward thrusters.

Remember that if an engine fails in a single engined aircraft, you need merely glide the aircraft to a reasonably flat piece of open ground and land it, fully stalled, into wind. You will then touch down at the lowest possible ground speed and you need merely prevent the aircraft cabin from striking anything solid and you will walk away from it. Easy huh? Get yourself an instructor and go and practise them forced landings. You owe it to yourself not to be too surprised when the cabin goes quiet.