If you don't stall the airplane, it won't spin.

Anytime you push a plane to the limits of it's performance you have to be aware of the possibility of stalling the aircraft. High performance turns and maneuvers at the edge of "the envelop" of the planes capabilities need to be performed with care. The experienced pilot learns the limits of his aircraft and learns to "fly the edge of the envelop". If you push the plane too hard you can stall the aircraft and the plane could enter a spin. The pilot has to react quickly to regain control of his aircraft, or it may well enter a spin from which he cannot recover.

What is a stall?

A stall is when the wing can no longer generate enough lift to maintain flight. A "stall" occurs when the airflow over the wing (or other surface) is disrupted to the point where it no longer generates lift. This is measured by "angle of attack" which is defined by the angle between the chord line of the wing (the line through the cross section from the trailing edge to the leading edge) and the relative wind. When you exceed the critical angle of attack, the wing will stop making lift and stall. This can happen in any configuration, altitude or airspeed.

Stalls can happen at any time, and the pilot needs to stay aware of this. Stalls are not just a phenomenon of low airspeed. The average pilot has to be most mindful of stall on take-off (pulling back on the stick too hard or trying to pull up too early), or when trying to turn or maneuver to hard during combat. Take-off can be very tricky, especially with a bomb-loaded plane. The pilot needs to be very mindful to get his airspeed up and not pulling up too fast. Stalling right after take-off leaves the pilot no altitude cushion to recover, and is therefore almost always fatal. Stalling when landing also happens, but less often for the average pilot. Most pilots tend to land too "hot", that is at too high a speed, rather than too low a speed.

What is a spin?

When a plane enters a stalls the plane will normally begin to roll to one side. There are two main reasons for this. When the plane enters the stall, the torque of the engine may start to roll the plane in the opposite direction of the prop's rotation. This is possible because the wing lift is no longer providing the steadying influence that keep the engine torque at bay. The second reason is that one wing may lose lift before the other. This causes the wing that still has lift to start the plane rolling because the plane has lost lift of the other wing.

Recovering from a Spin

For typical airplanes, the spin recovery procedure contains the following items:

1. Retard the throttle to idle
2. Retract the flaps
3. Neutralize the ailerons
4. Apply full rudder in the direction opposing the spin
5. Briskly move the yoke to select zero angle of attack

Now let's discuss each of these items in a little more detail.

Retarding the throttle is a moderately good idea for a couple of reasons. For one thing (especially if you have a fixed-pitch prop) it keeps the engine from overspeeding during the later stages of the spin recovery. More importantly, gyroscopic precession of the rotating engine and propeller can hold the nose up, flattening the spin and interfering with the recovery (depending on the direction of spin).

Retracting the flaps is a moderately good idea because you might exceed the ``max flaps-extended speed'' if you mishandle the later stages of the spin recovery and you don't want to damage the flaps.

Retracting the flaps may help with the spin recovery itself. Flaps effectively increase the washout of the wings. Washout ensures that the airplane will stall before it runs out of roll damping. (This produces a nice straight-ahead stall.) In the spin, though, when you have lost all vertical damping and roll damping, the washout doesn't help. The early stages of spin recovery are not like the early stages of stall entry.

Neutralizing the ailerons is usually a good idea for the simple reason that it is hard to think of anything better to do with them. Deflecting the ailerons effectively increases the angle of attack of one wingtip and decreases the angle of attack of the other wingtip. In a spin, the part of the wing where the ailerons are may (or may not) be in the stalled regime — so deflecting the ailerons to the left may (or may not) produce a paradoxical rolling moment to the right

Depressing the rudder to oppose the spin is obviously a good thing to do.

Finally, you want to move the yoke to select zero angle of attack. In typical aircraft, this means shoving the yoke all the way forward.