Taj Mahal, Agra

Today I was going to recreate Earnest K. Ganns attempt to demolish the Taj Mahal, Unfortunately the airstrip he flew from is not represented.

When I went into 'change location' and entered Agra I had to look twice to make sure that I wasn't seeing what I thought I was seeing.

Today I was going to recreate Earnest K. Ganns attempt to demolish the Taj Mahal, Unfortunately the airstrip he flew from is not represented.

It doesn't seem to exist any more -- after all, that was 75 years ago. On Google Earth the Agra airport is a good five miles from the Taj Mahal, and no runway points that way anyhow, so it must have been an airport that (like so many others) has disappeared in the intervening years. But from Gann's description, the airport must have been just north of the river with a takeoff to the south. It also looks as if the trees he so carefully describes are mostly missing now, too.

And BTW, he was trying to NOT demolish it -- don't give the wrong impression. Of course you'd need that drastically overloaded, poor speciment of a C-87 on an extremely hot day, too. :pilot:

Come to think of it, though, in real flying you can (in most any aircraft with flaps, at least the piston engined ones) duplicate the sudden application of flaps and its ensuing extra lift (and drag) and their effects on your path -- it does work (if applied at the right time) to get you over an object, at the cost of a loss of airspeed and, very shortly, a loss of altitude again, and that slow milking up of the flaps would also be a necessity. I've used that, though not in the serious situation that Gann was.

BTW, for those who've not read it, Fate Is The Hunter by Ernest K. Gann is a fascinating book about airline (and military transport) flying in the later 1930's through the mid-1050's, non-fiction telling of his huge variety of experiences.

Dear Inuss,

I was being ironic.

Dear Inuss,

 

I was being ironic.

OK, but facial expressions, body language and tone of voice don't come through the keyboard, and I certainly didn't want someone who had not read the book to think Gann was actually trying to destroy it.

Larry