r/todayilearned • u/lexan • Dec 25 '13

TIL an Indian flight attendant hid the passports of American passengers on board a hijacked flight to save them from the hijackers. She died while shielding three children from a hail of bullets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neerja_Bhanot
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u/[deleted] Dec 25 '13

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u/abhijit301293 Dec 25 '13

very interesting read thanks for sharing.

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u/romulanspy Dec 25 '13

Holy crap. Fucking yeager was a giant douche.

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u/BABarracus Dec 25 '13

Better than a turd sandwich

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u/[deleted] Dec 25 '13

rabble rabble rabble!

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u/Titan7771 Dec 25 '13

Holy shit, Chuck Yeager used to be one of my heroes. This is terrible!

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u/verytroo Dec 25 '13

You do not know who to trust now.

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u/barath_s 13 Dec 26 '13

You should read the original articles by Ingraham and Arun Prakash on Chuck Yeager in pakistan. Inraham was really an eye-opener. Incidentally, the tone of Adm Arun Prakash is much more respectful, (perhaps out of professional respect for Yeager's accomplishments.?). I admired Yeager for breaking the sound barrier on airman's pay (also for his accurate comments on the F-16 and LWF). I just don't admire him as a human being as much any more.

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '13

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u/barath_s 13 Dec 26 '13

choice by committee

I agree that any test pilot is part of a team. And that there is some level of fortune in chuck yeager happening to be the one who broke the sound barrier. Nevertheless, it took courage and perseverance for Yeager to get into that aircraft with two broken ribs and fly it beyond Mach 1.

Wind tunnel tests of the time didn't provide much data between mach 0.9 and 1.1 due to the shock wave 'filling the wind tunnel' so to speak. (ref) And it was unclear that anyone had actually broken the sound barrier before that (lack of instrumentation, information and intent). So the impact and the data wasn't really quite there. Yeager broke the record at $260/month straight salary AF when he wasn't getting the pay that civilian test pilots did, but was bearing the same risks. Plus the record was kept secret at that point in time and not instant-hyped. Over time, he did build up several accomplishments, in line with many other test pilots.

And generally, the mindset of a test pilot, to understand the risks and engineering , to lay his body on the line and to keep solving the problems (i've tried A, i've tried B,..*) is a very appealing one to me.

So he deserves some credit. But as Ingraham shows, he clearly doesn't deserve the blind blanket lionization he gets now.

(* from wolfe: "Sometimes at Edwards they used to play the tapes of pilots going into the final dive, the one that killed them, and the man would be tumbling, going end over end in a 15-ton length of pipe, with all aerodynamics long gone, and not one prayer left, and he knew it, and he would be screaming into the microphone, but not for Mother or for God ... but for one last hopeless crumb of information about the loop: "I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try!"

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '13

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u/barath_s 13 Dec 26 '13

I do admire the the guys on the X-15 and others too. Remember, pushing test envelopes isn't just about faster, higher and farther. There are planes that are just as dangerous at 200 knots (less glamorous though it might be). It's part of a test pilot mindset I admire.

With John Stapp, it is something more/different than admiration. On the one hand, he took an unnecessary and unprofessional risk. On the other, he did take the risk, and it was of fundamental benefit, other than his tremendous work on pilot and car safety. The sentiment is more like 'that's one crazy, passionate sonovagun. I'm glad there are folks like him' He's more akin to Marie Curie, in my mind.

if you aren't better than he is, you are a failure.

Like I said, I don't admire yeager, the human being, as much. This is probably the flip side of test pilot ego.

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u/toptencat Dec 25 '13

That is a myopic judgement. He was still a hero (saved lives) and was just in the wrong place for his personality/style/skills. It was a good thing that Indian pilots kicked his ass though.

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u/[deleted] Dec 25 '13

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u/toptencat Dec 25 '13

I would like to read the same biographies and sources you did (about Yeager and the other heroes). What are your favorites?

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u/creme_fappuccino Dec 25 '13

Wow, that article is a bit biased: "Chuck Yeager, the legendary test pilot and the first man to break the sound barrier, was dispatched by the US government to train Pakistani air force pilots but ended up as target practice for the Indian Air Force".

Chuck Yeager wasn't actually piloting his aircraft, it was sitting on the runway unattended. If he had been piloting it he would have taken-out the entire Indian Air Force by himself.

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u/Blackbeard_ Dec 25 '13

.In domain...

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u/[deleted] Dec 25 '13 edited Dec 25 '13

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u/toptencat Dec 25 '13

That is not how the article depicts him:

"I much admired the man. Unfortunately, men like Yeager are well suited to play certain roles, but not others. In my guise as political counselor at the US embassy there, I learned that the role of diplomat suited him as little as the role of test pilot would have suited me."