THE PILOT WHO WOULDN'T FLY

Subject: THE PILOT WHO WOULDN'T FLY
From: (Michael)
Date: 2/9/04 7:23 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

(BUFDRVR) wrote in message
...
do you think fighter and bomber pilots (in
general) have a completely diffferent mindset in regard to the final
missions of a tour? I know they're different breeds to begin with

I've often heard this, and I have trouble believing it. Usually the
"fighter
pilot" lable is defined as agressive, unshakeable and highly skilled
(someone
correct me if that's not the generalized definition).

I in no way want to imply that bomber men are inferior to figthers.
They both have to be unshakeable and highly skilled and even the
bomber pilot has to be aggressive to a certain extent. But there has
to be a different mindset for the fighter pilot if he's going to be
successful at shooting other men out of the sky or streaking low
through flak to drop bombs, compared with the mind set of a bomber
that has to flying straight and level and take what get's thrown up at
him.

The whole reason I brought this up was while you hear of WWII heavy
bomber crews wearing thin toward the end of their tours, you don't
hear the same thing about their brothers escorting them in fighters.
I'm wondering if that was because of a different mind sets to begin
with, or if it was because of different circumstances (fighters
weren't being lost in as great of numbers and they could hunt their
enemies down and kill them instead of sitting there waiting to be hit
by them). Maybe if they had had a higher attrition rate, they would
have started getting jumpy too as their tours neared completion? But
according to Ed, in Vietnam that didn't happen among fighters, if any
thing they got more confident and aggressive as things wound down for
them.

~Michael


I was there right to the bitter end. And as time went on and men got killed
just before the war ended, it gave us all a lot to think about.. But in bombers
you can't be :"careful" You flew your last mission just like your first. It
was all SOP all the way. No wiggle room whatever. Go to my website and read "
The Last To Die".



Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer