To Gary Casey:

Having been with Rockwell's Aircraft Division (which started life as North
American Aviation [NAA]) for 30 years (though Boeing did buy us for my last
two - three years), I've had the occasion to read up on the history of a lot
of NAA produced aircraft. One that comes to mind is the AT-6 "Texan" (navy's
SNJ) trainer (NAA produced about 25,000 of them - that's right - 25 with
three zeros).

The archives revealed that the AT-6 killed a lot of pilot trainees during
basic flight school and stated that a major culprit was the turn to final
where the student didn't bank the airplane steep enough to fly the turn.
Keeping the turn too shallow from base leg, the inquiry results said,
encouraged the student to try to rudder the airplane around and it would
snap over the top and go in.

Maybe the AT-6 was just special, dont' know, never flew one, but it's food
for thought.

Dan Schaefer