Blinking against the wind, his eyes watering, he watched the claw-shaped aircraft bank and recede.

As his aircraft banks away from the ruins of the enemy's battleship fleet, the hero reminisces in wistful voice-over: "What a wonderful day!"

When the aircraft banks, the lift of the wings no longer acts vertically, and so the force directly upwards is reduced (by the cosine of the bank angle).

Now the terrain-avoidance computer would select the lowest altitude possible for the Alegafortress based on a small error factor of the radar altimeter or terrain-avoidance computer, plus aircraft bank angle and terrain elevation.

A pylon turn is a flight maneuver in which an aircraft banks into a circular turn, in such a way that an imaginary line projecting straight out the side of the aircraft (nominally the wing) points to a fixed point on the ground.