"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 15:36:42 -0500, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:

That's one pilot's opinion of another and hardly definitive. BTW, in earlier
days, anybody weighing 270 pounds would not have been able to fit into a
fighter
cockpit. The tall guys inevitably ended up in bombers or transports, and the
real heavy guys (like 270 lbs.) ended up as the flight surgeon's medically
grounded annual project. Century series cockpits might be far more forgiving
and I'd certainly defer to someone like Ed Rasmussen, who'd be far more
knowledgeable than I on that subject. Anyway, one might be forgiven for
wondering what Udell's supervisors thought of him, and if Udell admired Bush
so
much because they were cut from the same cloth and excelled at juvenile
drinking
games in the O Club bar.

George Z.

After all these years, still misspelling my name....

'Tis the price of fame that one must pay when encountering old timers being
subjected to repetitive brain farts. In any case, my apologies.

The big guys to bombers, small guys to fighters concept is strictly an
urban legend. And, it isn't simply related to Century Series--take a
look at Robin Olds, 6' 2" and a solid 220 for most of his flying
years. That means starting with his WW II experience in P-38s and 51s.

I'm 6 foot and have been 200 pounds for my entire active flying
career. Lots of guys were taller and a few were shorter. Had one guy
in the 613th TFS with me at Torrejon named "Tiny" Reich. He was 6' 6".
He was a pilot in the F-4 at that time, but had been a WSO, shot down
in the back-seat of an F-4 and POW in Hanoi for almost a year.

The T-37 IP I mentioned, Tom Lockhart (who has a stronger favorable
opinion about GWB than Udell) is 6' 3" and generally ran about 225.

Apart from repeating that I'd rather ask someone I thought might know rather
than insisting and making a fool of myself, I really always thought that the
bigger guys, and by that I mean guys who weighed considerably more than 225 or
measured somewhere above 6'3", were kept out of fighters by the people who made
those kinds of assignments early in our flying careers. At least, I thought
that was the case back in WWII and Korea.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying that for me. Obviously, even if it was true way
back then, it must have changed before or during the heydey of the Viet Nam
festivities, in which case, I obviously stand corrected.

George Z.