Negative or Positive G?

I’ve had a few comments via Bantam Press from readers of my Battle of Britain book taking me to task on my descriptions of negative g.  This is the latest:

“Bottom of P242 Top of P243
Cocky realized (realised???) he was being fired upon, so he banked his Spitfire into a tight turn, the blood draining from his head from the force of negative gravity. This is factually incorrect in a tight banked turn the pilot would experience positive not negative gravity. To experience negative G the pilot would need to push over into a dive, unlikely when attempting to escape a pursuing ME109.”  Dave, Pilot.

I’m going to get back to Dave, but my understanding is this: that Cocky would only have been experiencing positive g if he had been flying straight and level, which is unlikely in a combat zone.  Also, since this description came from Cocky I suspect he would know what he was experiencing.

Anyway, I’ve asked my scientific guru, Professor Rick Hillum, to write something for the site that should clarify this!  It should be up on the site by the end of the week…