Family Experience With M1 Carbine

[Dave-In-Maine]

Belly landing, ouch.

His first choice was to bail out, but the control surfaces were so shot up that when he let go of the stick, the plane went in to a steep climb and pinned him to the seat. He had to brace the stick against his knees just to keep it level. The "official" bail out protocol was, I believe, to unsnap the seat harnesses, open the canopy, turn the plane upside down and simply fall out of the seat. Not an option in this case.

The real **sser is that dad's plane was being serviced between sorties to Bastogne, so he flew the squadron commander's brand-new plane on it's first (and last) combat mission............in his befuddlement after the landing, in the aircraft log, he checked the plane off as "okay."