Look at the (very dramatic) video on the AOPA safety foundation site where a guy lands his floatplane 206 on water with the small front wheels (for hard surface landings) sticking out. The flip momentum is enormous….
I think the pilot did the best he could do IMHO, given the situation….In deep water he could have drowned easily when the aircraft would have stayed inverted….
One can flip a taildragger forward (smash the prop, etc) just by heavy use of the brakes.
Depends on the tailwheel aircraft. If the stick is held fully back, in most tailwheel aircraft you will not nose over with hard braking unless you’re going so slow there is no appreciable air moving over the tail. Some tailwheel aircraft have very heavy tails and would be pretty much impossible to nose over even with the most ham-footed application of the brakes.
With the stick held back the wheels on our Auster will start to skid under heavy braking on tarmac and the tail won’t lift at all.
Depends on the tailwheel aircraft. If the stick is held fully back, in most tailwheel aircraft you will not nose over with hard braking unless you’re going so slow there is no appreciable air moving over the tail.
The biggest difference between controling a tailwheel aircraft and tricycle aircraft is that you need to fly tailwheel aircraft with the aerodynamic controls even when on the ground :-)
Some tailwheel aircraft have very heavy tails and would be pretty much impossible to nose over even with the most ham-footed application of the brakes.
Maybe the ultimate expression of this for bush plane flying, at least visually, is the Helio Courier. Cessna 180s are also very stable under braking.
The main subject having been thoroughly discussed, may I be allowed drifting aside? It has been stated that ditching any plane with gear down has a high probability of seeing the plane flip over tail over nose. Did I hear a rumour that such a mishap also occurred to the Do-24 famously reequipped with turboprops? No mention of that on its own website but I could understand that.
I have asked someone I know in the USA, here is his story. I took out some names.
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Airplanes are all different. But if you land in the water wheels down with an airplane (or a float plane) you’ll likely go over on your back and it’s harder to get out. As in the pictures you sent. The navy has pilots ride the “Dilbert Dunker” in the base swimming pool to teach them how to get out of an overturned airplane. I had two navy friends who were unable to do it. (Both were shallow water or mud.) If you go into the barricade on the carrier deck you may go over on your back too.
So, I suppose you know, I put one in the water at night off North Carolina in 1957. It was a Douglas Skyraider. This is the story. It was a real screw up caused by the air boss (“Wings” in the Royal Navy) being drunk, passed out and two sailors covering for him running the deck. When things began to go south they had no idea what orders to issue in his name. Here’s the tale from my book.
August 21, 1957 was a nice night out in the Gulf Stream, 200 miles east of Cape Fear, North Carolina. There were some thunderstorms around, but they were well east of us. The Forrestal was conducting air operations 30 miles away. VA (AW) 33 lost an AD that night for reasons that are still unknown. Perhaps he flew into a thunderstorm. ENS Sch. plane crew did not have him on radar but he was in their sector. I was well out to the west. The pilot was named John Mxxxxx or Myyyy and I didn’t know him at all. He had a wife and children. He was only missed when he failed to reappear at Charlie time, and by then Charlie time was a total confusion. No trace of him, his crew or airplane was ever found. Maybe he flew into the water. Maybe anything. It is quite possible that he experienced spatial disorientation and had the same sort of experience that President Kennedy’s son had in July 1999. He didn’t broadcast either. ENS Sch. and I joined up with me leading in the “Dog” circle at Charlie time and waited for our signal. We had an hour’s fuel left if we husbanded it. The ship was trying to catapult an A3D Skywarrior (what the pilots called a “Whale”) and was having trouble getting the right bridle to fit it to the cat. After what seemed an interminable time of screwing around, the leader of the Skyrays called in and declared a fuel emergency. Four of these bat winged twin jet fighter planes were down in the “Dog” circle below us and burning fuel at a prodigious rate. There were also 2 Skyraiders from VA 75 back after an 8.7-hour flight (with drop tanks) from a “special weapons” exercise. Nobody on the ship was being keen to their need. But when the Skyray skipper spoke up, they struck the A3D Skywarrior below, and cleared the deck for the jets, which now were hurting for fuel. There were two experienced pilots in those planes and two “nuggets.” They bent it on in and made their pass, and we were cleared to follow them. The skipper got aboard, and his wingman took a “bolter.” The second section leader got aboard and his wingman also boltered. The Skyrays took priority and their two senior pilots had got aboard expertly. The two nugget pilots both bolted the deck on their first passes. Now they were really hurting for fuel. I waved off and went around to give them all the room in the world. Sch. didn’t know he was supposed to do that, and he landed aboard. Ron Sch. is practicing law in Minnesota at this writing. They pulled him out of the way in a hurry, because one of the remaining airborne Skyrays was in the groove for his final try, and he was “shook.” He knew you couldn’t ditch a Skyray. If you do, it either explodes, or the impeller blades separate and come slicing through the cockpit. For him it is land or die. He landed. And then there was one remaining. His skipper was sitting on deck with his engine still turning watching the youngster. He was reporting indicating near zero pounds of fuel. The gauge was off a little, but nobody knows how much. He’s still high and he’s still fast. He hit the deck, and it was “Bolter! Bolter! Bolter!” He went roaring off into the night and bent it tight around. I gave him lots of room. He lined that sucker up, and he was still fast. Now we can be sure he doesn’t have fuel for another “bolter.” He’s still high and he’s still fast. When the LSO calls to tell him that, he knows he’s got seconds to live, and he saves his life by “ducking the nose at the cut.” You don’t do that with a Skyray, you have to keep the nose high or you break off the tall nose wheel. Well, to hell with the nose wheel. He broke it off. He was terribly fast. He caught the last wire, number 5, and pulled it out to its furthest extremity. It held. He was down and stopped, but the broken strut of the nose wheel was jammed in the catapult track up in the end of the angled deck. And it stayed there. The mobile crane they call “Tillie” was buried in the pack of parked airplanes, and anyway it was not fueled. A hundred blueshirts under the Skyray wouldn’t budge it. And nobody told me the problem. They told me to keep making passes, so I used up lots of fuel going around and around the landing pattern. There was no direction and no leadership. Nobody in authority was thinking ahead. The authors of the AAR hinted that an airman apprentice was running Pri-Fly. At least an airman apprentice was the radio voice of Pri-Fly. I came by the ship on my last wave off indicating 50 pounds of fuel and burning 50 pounds a pass. I had a crew, and it would not just be me if I hit the spud locker with a dead engine on final. The LSO, LT Larry xxxxx, from VA 75, gave me some encouragement. He said. “Pick a can.” That was my clue that I would not be criticized for ditching while I had power to run the engine. That is the safe way to do it. We had practiced and practiced those low altitude emergencies since the days at Whiting Field. I made up my mind I was going to ditch this airplane. I said to my crew, “Asxxx, jettison that hatch.” To get out of the rear compartment the crew member has to pull a handle that allows the overhead hatch to carry off into the slipstream or it can get jammed down. If the front hatch is open, it won’t release, so we had to close our hatch forward to let him do it. Another crew found out the next year what happens when that is omitted. The guy in back thought he would surely drown and the pilot said, “Sorry,” to him, not realizing all he had to do was close his own for a moment. But the design isn’t as bad as you would think, for the rear hatch canopy releases after impact and the rear seat guy can swim out. Unless he goes in upside down with the gear down. I don’t know what happens then. What I didn’t expect was that that would be the last thing my comrade would do right that night. I expected to count on another jaygee to do his job, but Asxxx had a pathological thing about the water and couldn’t swim. Oh, he had a valid swimmers card in his jacket; he just couldn’t swim. Back at Quonset when we all went up to the base pool for our yearly requalification with swimming and riding the Dilbert Dunker, Ash would say, “Hey, sign me in, I’m going to stop off at the Gedunk and order a new uniform,” and we would write his name in, and not notice that he never showed up. In time cards would come down to the squadron for all the crew who signed in that day as qualified in swimming and the Dilbert Dunker. He wasn’t going near the water, and now he was about to. He kept saying to himself, “Smitty’s lying, he’ll get aboard with the next pass.” But now there was no next pass. I called the ship, “704 ditching starboard side the leading can.” Pri Fly called back with the extraneous information, “That’s no can; that’s a cruiser!” (It was USS Northampton.) So what? I’m just using it for a light to line up on. Gear up, Full flaps, Hook down, canopy back, 92 knots, attitude just like a carrier pass. If I do it just right, I’ll feel the hook skip just before she touches down. I was watching the radar altimeter. “Everybody tight and locked, here we go.” And I felt the hook skip! And in an instant we hit down just like landing aboard, and then the nose dug in and this cascade of salt water came flooding into the open cockpit. We were stopped and right side up. “Unbuckle! Everybody out and into the rafts. Take your chute with you.” Dube didn’t have to be told twice. He was gone out the right side, and off the end of the wing, just as I had shown him. Was he worried? Not a bit. He was with a world’s authority on the subject of ditching, and it didn’t surprise him that it had been done perfectly. Asxxx was another matter. He was frozen in his seat and wasn’t about to evacuate into the sea. The plane was down by the nose and sinking fast. It took about 60 seconds to sink. I crawled into the back compartment and released his seat belt and pulled him out with me. I got a fist in the side of the helmet for my pains. He was frantic to stay with the plane. When the plane was gone, there was just he and I in the ocean with our Mae Wests inflated. His parachute and survival gear were long gone, but I got my raft out and pulled the lanyard to inflate it. Then I crossed him and the raft, and all of a sudden he was sitting up in the raft and out of the ocean and not going “Blurb, blurp, blurb” anymore. Now where was Dube? “Dube! Where are you?” “Over here, Mr. Smith.” His voice was a long way off. He had swum hard dragging his chute and raft for fear of being sucked down by the plane. “It’s not the damn Lusitania, come on back, it’s already sunk.” We had to stay together, and get a light going. I popped a flare and gave it to Steelman to hold. That big mass of a carrier is absolutely gigantic when seen from a raft. And it was bearing down on us at 34 knots. Pop another flare. Between us we had 24 of them. Dube came swimming in with his stuff, “Sir, I respectfully request permission to inflate my raft.” “Yeah, Dube, do it.” “I don’t know how.” So I showed him the lanyard and pulled it, and now we had two very satisfactory rafts. Dube’s idea of naval etiquette did not envision an enlisted sailor occupying a raft while his pilot was in the swim, so I got in his raft and we had him with an arm and leg in each raft holding them together while his butt dragged in the water. We were at 32 degrees, 16 minutes North, 75 degrees, 18.4 West. The water temperature was 84 degrees. The task force came at us at high speed. We popped some more flares. We could see that the last can in line had a searchlight on us. The One M.C. on the carrier boomed at us as they sped by, “Men in the water, Save your flares!” Yeah, what for? Now there was to be one more bit of fun. Asxxx didn’t know the briefing for climbing aboard a destroyer from the water, but I did. You have to get out of the raft to do it. The raft keeps you too far out to grab the cargo net they have over the side. So as the destroyer wallowed up to us with her net rigged, I spilled us out of the rafts and grabbed him and hauled him over to the net, and yelled, “Climb!” Well, he didn’t. He hung on for dear life, and, as the ship wallowed, he went underwater with each roll. “Climb! Goddamit!” But still he hung on. Then the biggest sailor on the ship came down the net and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, like a tabby cat, and ran up the net with him. I climbed for dear life, lest I suffer the same indignity. A ships’ officer identified me, and took me to dry off and get a pair of wash khakis and a shirt. I was told the Captain wanted me on the bridge as soon as I was presentable if I wasn’t hurt. That’s when I learned about Mxxxxx. They gave me a cup of hot coffee. It was confusing, because I thought they were still talking about my plane going in. I stayed on that bridge of the USS Stormes all the next day with a pair of binoculars staring at water. Stormes was a Sumner class destroyer built late in the war, which took a hit from a Kamikaze aft of the after 5 inch gun mount, was repaired, and returned to the fleet. She was eventually sold to Iran in 1972 as their navy ship Palang. The Captain was surprised that a pilot who flew the same kind of plane didn’t know another pilot from his ship, but we operated out of different ready rooms. We searched all the next day as we scoured the sea for wreckage. Steelman made himself scarce and two days later we were highlined back to the Saratoga. Dube and I found that was a treat! Asxxx turned in his wings and disappeared from the squadron. He came to a reunion of the squadron in 2003 and joined me for dinner and we reminisced.Ben Great story.
He sent me more, even a song of the Air Fleet Arm that was written during WWII and is still in use 
He also wrote a book about his exploits called “Gupy Pilot”.
