In article ,
(ArtKramr) wrote:

ubject: Flight Instruction: Then and Now
From: (BUFDRVR)
Date: 3/6/04 7:52 PM P

but it raises the
question as to whether the idea of using combat veterans as intructors
was
abondoned and combat inexperienced instructors were used as a matter of
course.

.when I began B-52 Formal Training in the summer of
'95, there were but a handful of Desert Storm vets in the FTU. These
guys did
have some good insight, but to be quite honest, I could not grasp or
apply
any
of their suggestions. It was all I could do to learn how to fly a 300K+
lb.
aircraft at 500' AGL through the mountains, I was not able (nor was any
new
crewmember) to perform defensive maneuvering tasks besides the very
basic.
Once
I got to my unit and went through *mission qualification training* there
were
many more DS vets and I had become comfortable enough in the jet to
begin
taking advantage of their experience, particularly in the low altitude
environment.




BUFDRVR

Too bad that the commbat veteran's advice was not useful to you. I
found that
it was very useful to me. There were itmes on a a mission when something
happened and I would f remember that it was just what he was talking
about and
I would relive those training moments with that instructor, His
description of
just how fighters attacked bomber formations was dead accurate. In fact
I have
thought of him many times over all these years. I guess you never forget
the
man who taught you how to go to war.


Art, there are also some people never to be forgotten. They are the
conspiracy that keeps 50% of the people inferior to the other. They are
called statisticians.

OF COURSE you had combat-qualified instructors available during WWII. In
later years, combat was not as frequent, the force size had dropped, and
many aircraft had smaller crews. People age. Eventually, it is a
practical reality, in a more modern training environment, that there
wouldn't be combat experienced people that were of an appropriate rank
to be instructors, and also qualified in type.

Was it even possible there would have been a type-qualified S2F,
combat-experienced instructor? Yes, some were shot down on surveillance
missions, but they essentially were never in combat. As far as I know,
a P-3 never fired a live round at anyone, although they've certainly
located targets for shooters recently.

B-58. F-102. A5 Vigilante (non-recon). F-106. B-36. B-47. Combat
aircraft all, but I suspect none of them ever fired a round or dropped a
bomb in combat. Who would make the better instructor, someone that had
flown a different platform that did have a backlog of combat pilots, or
someone with much more experience in type?