On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:03:05 -0500, Howard Berkowitz
wrote:

In the late sixties, I worked for the Human Resources Research Office
(HumRRO), an Army contract research center. They concentrated on things
like selection criteria for various specialties, training, etc.,
although there were a few bizarre projects like a Viet Nam village
pacification questionnaire. The latter was intended for villagers, but
graduate students in social science that tested it had trouble answering
the questions.

Anyway, one of our studies was a retrospective look at the personality
traits that were associated with respected combat helo drivers. I
remember looking at some of the results and was reminded of the old
saying about people you want to keep in a freezer until a war breaks out.

The questionnaire given to the selected pilots was in the form of
"Did you ever do XXX?" (typically as an adolescent)
"If you did do XXX, did you like it?"

IIRC, 30% had jumped off garages or other roofs at least one story high.
Of the jumpers, 70% liked it. A smaller subset got into knife fights,
but again, an appreciable percentage liked it.

Our impression was that the ideal candidate was somebody that was enough
of an adrenaline junkie to REALLY SCARE fighter pilots if the fighter
types got to know them. :-)

And tellingly, the U.S. Army RIFed out warrant officer helicopter
pilots by the score after the war was over, and by 1976 had a pilot
shortage. They then cranked up the WOC flight program again,
simultaneously still RIFfing out Vietnam-era warrants well into 1977.

John Hairell )