Bush Flew Fighter Jets During Vietnam

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 09:40:29 -0500, Jack
wrote:

Sam Byrams wrote:

[Mason's book claims] the T-38 Talon was a big challenge for people
whose total experience consisted of under 200 hours in the T-37.

In the mid and late 60's it would have been less than 100 hrs in the
Tweet for studs transitioning to the Talon, and nobody didn't like the T-38.


You've got that right. I had 132 hours in Tweets before Talons. The
UPT syllabus dropped that to 120 with introduction of the T-41
screening. No problems. Later with better simulators the total UPT
syllabus was reduced to 188 hours with less than half of that coming
prior to T-38 qualification.

The T-38 has been a great airplane for 42 years of training and with
the upgraded glass cockpit looks like it will be active in SUPT for
another 20 years at least.

Easy to fly, no adverse characteristics. Reliable. I wound up with
about 1500 hours in Talons, more than 1200 accrued as an instructor in
Fighter Lead-In teaching new instructor candidates. (And taking the
occasional recreational trip to ski in CO/UT, visit the sea-food
paradises of FL or the sexpots of LSV.)


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8