Stick and Rudder (Wolfgang Langewiesche 1972):
> There are situations in flying when he who "ducks," he who flinches, is lost. The most important example is the recovery from a stall at low altitude-getting that stick forward and pointing the nose at the ground; that does require courage, and no two ways about it. [...] It might seem that learning to fly the conventional airplane must necessarily be mostly a matter of drill, like animal training, like making a dog not eat when he wants to eat, making him jump through a flaming hoop when he does not want to jump. [...] But another view of the problem is also possible. It may be that our common sense, our natural reactions mislead us simply because they are working on the basis of wrong ideas in our minds concerning the wing and how it really flies, the controls and what they really do. [...] Perhaps what happens when the beginner reacts wrongly in an airplane is similar to what happened in the early days of the automobile, when a man trying to stop in an emergency would pull back on the wheel as if he had reins in his hands and would even yell "Whoa." There was nothing really wrong with his reactions, with his intentions; the only thing wrong was the image in his head that made him see the automobile as a sort of mechanized horse, to be controlled as horses are controlled. Had he clearly seen in his mind's eye the mechanical arrangement we take for granted now-the clutch that can disconnect the motor, the brakes that can clamp down on the wheels; had he clearly appreciated that the thing was a machine and had no soul at all, not even a horse's soul, and that thus there was no use in speaking to it-he would then have done the right thing without difficulty. It may be that, if we could only understand the wing clearly enough, see its working vividly enough, it would no longer seem to behave contrary to common sense; we should then expect it to behave as it does behave. We could then simply follow our impulses and "instincts." Flying is done largely with one's imagination! If one's images of the airplane are correct, one's behavior in the airplane will quite naturally and effortlessly also be correct.