Have just been reading Ascent and I have a question

[DrTre]

Finished Ascent a few weeks ago (a good wheeze, very quick to read, would probably appeal to some on here) and I've a question about something that I reckon is, frankly, bks.

Two planes (Mig 15s? 21s? Can't remember), one runs out of fuel and tries to glide to the airfield. They realise they can't make it so the second plane dips in behind the one on the glide approach and settles his nose underneath the exhaust of the gliding plane. Gives it the beans to increase airspeed and lift on the gliding plane and then runs out himself.

Both land, hunky dory.

Remotely realistic?!

[Eric Mc]

Feasible I suppose. It might depend on which plane is doing the pushing. The MiG 15 would have a slower stalling speed than a MiG 21.

[DrTre]

Cheers Eric, am glad it's not completely ridiculous.

Good book.

[Eric Mc]

It's now on my "to buy" list.

[DrTre]

I can post it to you if you like, it's good but i won't be reading it again.

[dr_gn]

DrTre said:

Finished Ascent a few weeks ago (a good wheeze, very quick to read, would probably appeal to some on here) and I've a question about something that I reckon is, frankly, bks.

Two planes (Mig 15s? 21s? Can't remember), one runs out of fuel and tries to glide to the airfield. They realise they can't make it so the second plane dips in behind the one on the glide approach and settles his nose underneath the exhaust of the gliding plane. Gives it the beans to increase airspeed and lift on the gliding plane and then runs out himself.

Both land, hunky dory.

Remotely realistic?!

Absolutely, there are a couple of well known instances of this kind of thing from the Vietnam war, here's one:

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/f4/pa...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardo's_Push

Cheers,

Edited by dr_gn on Friday 26th June 12:19