The Dash 80 Barrel Roll: Which way is up?

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
08/29/2018 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik

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Some musings about airplanes, photography, and our penchant for seeing things the way we need to see them

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In the early 1950s, Boeing bet the company’s future on the development of the Dash 80, a groundbreaking aircraft that would go on to become the KC-135 aerial tanker and the world-shrinking 707 airliner. During a demonstration flight in 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston decided to show off the capabilities of the sole prototype by performing a barrel roll. Though Johnston knew the maneuver was perfectly safe, Boeing president Bill Allen was not happy, and he called Johnston in to the office to express his displeasure. The wily Johnston replied simply, “I was selling airplanes.”

On board during that flight was a Boeing engineer who happened to have a camera with him, and he shot this dramatic photograph of the Dash 80 inverted over Seattle. In a recorded interview years later, Johnston himself !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! the now-famous photo of “the airplane on its back and the engines up on top of the wing.”

But wait a second–if the aircraft were upside down, wouldn’t the photographer have been upside down too? Like the Dash 80, this famous photo has been inverted. But why?

Because our brain needs it to be inverted. The photo makes sense because we see the ground where it’s supposed to be—under our feet—with the airplane upside down, as if we are observing the barrel roll from outside the barrel. However, assuming the engineer was strapped into his seat, then he and his camera were inverted as well, and the photo would really have been taken like this, unless he was holding his camera upside down:

As true as this second photo is, though, it’s hard for us to make sense of it. We have trouble processing the image because the plane, which is supposed to be inverted, is right side up, while the world, which should be under our feet, is upside down (or really, downside up). But the camera doesn’t know one direction from the other. It works without any “gravitational bias” and doesn’t know or care which way is up (or down). But does the camera, as a dispassionate observer, have the power to change our perceptions and put us in that seat back in 1955 with our heels over our head?

I have never been in an airplane that was inverted. I’m not sure I want to be. But I would wager that, if I were, I would still perceive the world as right side up, even though I was right side down. My camera, however, would tell a different story, perhaps the true story, even if my brain refuses to believe it.

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DISCUSSION (16)

Ash78, voting early and often > ttyymmnn
08/29/2018 at 12:41

I have been inverted a couple times and in steep banks probably thousands of times, starting at a very young age. My brain is ok with the inverted pic. The flipped one confuses me. I suspect people like gymnasts or rock climbers are also more comfortable with inverted things.

One thing my grand pa always said about flying was to always trust what you see and never what you feel (implying that G forces will lead to bad decisions). One key, repeated error was that pilots would look down between the seats during a turn in the landing pattern -- looking for a manual or whatever. Just a modest 1.5+ G in that turn can make you feel like the plane has suddenly gone nose-down, so a lot of pilots would suddenly pull up in a panic and stall directly into the ground.

ttyymmnn > Ash78, voting early and often
08/29/2018 at 12:43

Which one confuses you--the first or the second?

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn
08/29/2018 at 12:47

I’ve been upside-down in a plane when a friend of mine was practicing stalls and spins . We absolutely knew we were upside-down.

However, there are situations where the flight path can generate enough force to fool your body into thinking down is toward the bottom of the plane even though the plane is inverted. It’s most dangerous when the pilot loses outside reference such as at night or in clouds.

This is why the attitude indicator (artificial horizon) is so important.

Ash78, voting early and often > ttyymmnn
08/29/2018 at 12:47

The first one -- I immediately wanted to know what kind of gimbal/rig they used to get the shot

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn
08/29/2018 at 12:54

I’m with Ash. The first one confused me until I decided the camera man must have inverted his camera. Then I read further and saw that it was flipped after.

The first one would have made sense to my brain if it was obviously taken from a spectator aircraft not inverted. But then it wouldn’t be so close up. So, still looks weird.

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck
08/29/2018 at 12:54

For this thought experiment, it’s not so much about knowing your bearings in an airplane but how a photograph got switched to satisfy our brain’s need for it to be that way. Sort of along these lines .

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove
08/29/2018 at 12:56

Interesting. The top one is the one that gets shared all over the Internet. Or at least all but one place, where I saw it in its true orientation and started down this path.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn
08/29/2018 at 13:54

Ah, I see. I’m with Ash - the first one made me wonder what the cameraman had to do to take the picture upside down.

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn
08/29/2018 at 17:57

I’ve seen the first picture many times, but never really thought about it - I just thought it was a very cool picture.

Now that I see it in the correct orientation,I i t makes perfect sense and I can’t unsee that the first picture is wrong.

My two year old loves to put his head on the ground or flip backwards to look at his world upside down. I never really do. It’s amazing what kids do - he has that sense of wonder in everything that is so refreshing. Maybe we could all learn a few things from small children...

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW
08/29/2018 at 18:17

I struggled with using words like “correct” and “right” and “true.” Because at the end of the day, it’s all subjective. As a kid, I remember lying on the sofa and watching TV and wondering why the TV didn’t look sideways. My brain was compensating for it, but I didn’t know how or why. I guess I was drawing on that experience when I thought about these two photos. I had only ever seen the first one. T hat’s the one that Tex Johnston described, and my brother bought a framed print of it from Boeing and that’s the way it came. It wasn’t until I stumbled across the second version the other day that I had a sort of epiphany.

he has that sense of wonder in everything that is so refreshing

That’s the one thing that I miss the most about my boys’ growing older. Nothing seems to impress them any more. Or, if it does , they won’t admit it.

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn
08/29/2018 at 19:01

Those two pictures are the exact same photo though, aren’t they? Just with different orientations?

I get what you mean about ‘correct’ - I guess I’m assuming that the 2nd one is ‘correctly’ oriented in the same way that the camera was when the photo was taken (which may or may not be true, I suppose). That, or it’s what the photographer’s eye saw, I guess .

I was sort of struggling to describe them, but Kinja is pretty terrible on my phone, so I bang things out and press ‘publish’ before Kinja decides to eat my words (which happens about 80% of the time when I go beyond 2 paragraphs).

I agree with ChariotofLove, in that the first photo really seems oriented like it was taken from a 2nd aircraft (though that’s obviously not true) , showing the Dash 80 upside down.

sonicgabe > ttyymmnn
08/29/2018 at 22:51

To me, the top photo looks peaceful and serene. The bottom one has a sense of motion, like the plane is about to tumble out of the sky.

I dig both versions. I would frame both and hang them next to each other. B ut I’m weird. I love perspective and messing about with it in my photography.

Kinja'd!!!

ttyymmnn > sonicgabe
08/29/2018 at 22:54

Until recently, I had only ever seen the top one, and never questioned it. It was not until I stumbled across the second one that I had an Ah Hah moment and started thinking about it.

sonicgabe > ttyymmnn
08/29/2018 at 23:53

Either way, i t’s a really amazing photo.

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW
08/30/2018 at 10:53

Those two pictures are the exact same photo though, aren’t they? Just with different orientations?

Yes. AFAIK, it was the only photo taken while inverted. It’s certainly the only one I’ve ever seen. I doubt there was much time for more shots to be taken.

Yeah, that’s the conceit of my argument. Maybe it’s a bit cerebral, maybe I’m splitting hairs. But I guess my main point is that the top photo, which is so famous, does not convey what it would have been like to be looking out the window when you were ass over teakettle. While the second photo shows a truer representation of how it was taken, the first one does a better job of illustrating what happened, particularly for the casual observer. Hey-- maybe that’s what I should have said in the first place!

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn
08/30/2018 at 21:32

While the second photo shows a truer representation of how it was taken, the first one does a better job of illustrating what happened, particularly for the casual observer.

Nailed it!!!