tailslide

The tailslide is an aerobatic maneuver that starts from level flight with a 1/4 loop up into a straight vertical climb (at full power) until the aircraft loses momentum. When the aircraft's speed reaches 0 and it stops climbing, the pilot maintains the aircraft in a stand-still position as long as possible (this is greatly helped by thrust vectoring on newer fighter aircraft), and as it starts to fall to the ground backwards, tail first, the nose drops through the horizon to a vertical down position and the aircraft enters a dive. A 1/4 loop (push or pull) recovers to level flight.