On Mon, 09 Feb 2004 08:12:03 -0700, Ed Rasimus
wrote:

Been thinking about this situation since the question was first
posted. Here's what I think might be a reason. Art can fill the blanks
if he has additional info.

The original stated the guy was a private pilot who went to Canada and
then wound up in the RAF flying Hurricanes. It didn't indicate if he
had gone through a formal military pilot training course in Canada or
England.

Anybody who flew RAF aircraft underwent an RAF training course. Even
the first Eagle squadron volunteers did so in the winter of 1940.
Transfer into the USAAF from the RAF was voluntary for American
pilots, and some didn't want to do it, for various reasons (in one
case a sense of obligation to the RAF who had paid for his training
and posted him to a combat unit where the pre-war USAAC had rejected
him as a pilot, another because he throught he'd fail a more stringent
USAAF medical examination). However, most did, for various reasons -
the most common given being for the higher pay.

Since the guy had some experience, he could fill a space on the
schedule, but without a rating he couldn't be advanced to
pilot-in-command duties. Plausible explanation??

I suspect the explanation lies somewhere along those lines of
differing USAAF institutional training and type-command requirements.
It was rare but not unheard of for a single-engined pilot to convert
to multi-engined aircraft.

Gavin Bailey