Originally published at: Short Final: Author's Aviation 'Gotcha' - AVweb
When ‘speed’ isn’t what it seems.
For the B-24 crew stranded in the Pacific and later captured in the Marshall Islands, it seems likely the bombers heading to Japan would encounter a headwind, not a tailwind as described unless I, too, have been caught in a “gotcha.”
Malcom Gladwell fell for a similar gotcha in his The Bomber Mafia book, when we said the bombers waited days on a remote island for a strong tailwind so they could get off the runway heavily loaded.
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Most non-aviators have a difficult time understanding airspeed vs. ground speed (I don’t confuse them more by describing the different types of air speeds used for different reasons). I simply make a comparison most can relate to: floating down a river in a canoe.
If you don’t paddle and are standing still in a river flowing at 5mph, you are going 5mph in relation to the land around it.If you paddle it at 5mph down stream, then you are going 5mph through the water and 10mph relative to land. So the canoe isn’t really going 10mph, a near impossible feat.
Now I still can’t explain how that episode “Odyssey Of Flight 33” of Twilight Zone with the 707 airliner going faster and faster over the ground exceeding 3,000 knots ground speed but their TAS remained the same (and they went back in time).