EDIT: Please see post on page two for attachments of a more modern interpretation/analysis.

Prop hanging as a subject is currently being buried in the Pfalz thread. I think it is a subject worthy of its own thread and debate.

REAL video from the Valdez STOL competition. Wait till 56 sec mark and you will be amazed, if not amazed at the take offs leading up to it..
Apparently this is called a 'Harrier' rather than prop hang, but still relevant. Of course these aircraft have a much better thrust to weight ratio than out virtual crates and buses.

I do not believe for a second that the DVII could 'prop hang', but had a thicker airfoil (allowing higher angle of attack), with very low stall speed, and benign stall characterisitcs that made it APPEAR to prop hang. And yes, it would be a very stupid maneuver in any dogfight unless one-to-one, or otherwise vastly outnumbered your foes.

Say what you want. They were there, and we were not.



SE5a pilot John M. Grider, 85 Sqdn.

Good reading there..

OK, let's look at the important bits again:



The fact that the SE5a pilot, John M. Grider, was still turning to evade the tracer, which apparently kept following him in the turn, means the DVII was still maintaining airspeed in order to maneuver the SE5a into his sights, right? How else could the DVII pilot keep a stream of fire accurate on a moving target? I think there is some discussion of the "prop hanging" myth in the book "Three Wings for the Red Baron", I will transcribe relevant portions later once at home.

As far as being "witnesses to history", this is true, but witness accounts are notoriously unreliable and inaccurate. Take for example the case of the Flamming Onion 37mm anti-aircraft artillery (aka Lichtpucker LINK HERE ). Numerous RFC/RAF accounts testify to the flaming onion tracer rounds being chained or wired together. This is of course absurd on retrospect. Should we believe all historic accounts verbatim? Or should we interpret them with the knowledge we now have?

It would be well worth it to first define what you mean by "prop hanging." Otherwise, people will be talking about different things. The examples in the video of prop hanging all showed aircraft that still maintained some amount of airspeed.

What I think people think of when 'prop hanging' is mentioned.

As I said in my first post, some German aircraft with thick airfoils could attain high angles of incidence, low stall speeds, and had benign stall traits, all combined to give the impression they could literally "hang on their props". They were just moving slowly at the very edge of stall. If this is your definition of "prop hang", then I agree it is possible. If "prop hang" means stationary, I disagree.

Saying "the pilots who were there were wrong about prop-hanging, because this is how I define prop-hanging..." is an insipid argument.

Thanks for posting the STOL video, great to see !

Not completely OT, please also read further down about Fieseler: Another STOL plane from 1936:
The Fieseler "Storch" (Stork):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDcB0pSUYOI
(the narrator is wrong, the action to help Mussolini in Italy Gran Sasso was successful, it was not a "british mountain hideout")

Certainly not suited for bush pilots, since the freight load was very limited, but interesting to see how it is able to land without those big rubber wheels due to the ingenious gear arrangement. What you can also see is that this plane almost flies sideways, and can direct its nose anywhere at very low speeds.

And this brings me to a book written by Fieseler.

Back to the initial topic:
I tjink the D.VIIF was well able to fly at the edge of stalling, at very low speeds, and thus being able to fly sideways in a way and follow the SE5 in its curve like in the text by Grider, and at very high altitudes (for the time - DVII pilots also carried oxygen equipment with them)
I do not think it was able to hang on the prop like in the RC video, but it
a) was able to fly at a high angle of incidence, and slowly, without stalling
b) it was able to point its nose upwards indeed, and stay in this position longer than other planes without stalling. Even if it would fall back it wouls still be manoeuverable and not go into a spin.

Fieseler wrote a book "Meine Bahn am Himmel" where he describes his manoeuvers when he flew a Fokker DVII (he does not write about a "D.VII F" though) at the Saloniki front.
I had never thought that Fielesler also had been an "ace" in WW1 until i read that book b.t.w.

When he was asked to produce a plane able to land in very tight spots, with a short take-off distance he writes how his WW1 experience helped him to dsign such a plane (the "Stork"). WW1 planes had no slotted wings, but he writes that his DVII had been "able to hang on its prop" and how he transferred those properties into the Stork (!)

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish

Actually somebody asked (and rightly so) for a definition after the fact, so I provided a working definition for the sake of clarification, in fact I sort of provided two (in case my original assumption that people thought of stationary or nearly stationary as being prop hanging was wrong--I can admit I'm wrong). My discussion of the merits of historical accounts is an entirely separate issue. Care to start another thread?

I'm interested why don't you define "prop hanging" then? What do you think they meant by it in WWI? Is the airplane stationary or nearly so? Or is it balancing just above stall, but moving and being able to maneuver none-the-less?

EDIT: on retrospect the discussion of prop hanging in the Pfalz thread may have lead me to incorrectly make assumptions. In that thread some maintained that prop hanging was nothing but a prolonged stationary moment of an aircraft at the apogee of a climb, followed by a stall. So a third definition. Which one should we debate?

PS: good stuff catfish, very interesting to compare that video with the STOL competition.

I would define prop "hanging" as just that - HANGING, as in zero forward momentum, with maybe some slippage.
I pilot with workable control surfaces, enough to follow a bandit above him anyway, is clearly not prop
hanging by that definition. I don't think "going very slowly, and moments away from a stall" is prop hanging
IMHO.