Yeah, but can you do it INVERTED?

A big news item I have been trying to follow the last couple of days has been the disappearance of an Indiana man who seems to have jumped out of his super-fine airplane (Piper Malibu) and perhaps faked his death....but now seems still alive.

Among the links you can find are a video on youtube that shows this guy flying underneath a bridge in the Bahamas. No easy feat, I assure you.

But he's no LTC Dewey Patton (USAF, Ret.), who was an instructor at Middle Tennessee State University while I was a student there.

Colonel Patton told us that when he was in flight training, they would take a Boeing Stearman and fly it under a bridge. INVERTED. The particularly skillful pilot candidates would bounce the tires off the underside of a bridge.

When pilots get to telling stories, put your boots on and get comfortable, because the BS gets deep and the stories get long! But this Hoosier whippersnapper is no Dewey Patton.