Subject: Flight Instruction: Then and Now
From: "Jim Baker"
Date: 3/7/04 4:25 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:


"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
When I went to flight school in WW II every instructor we had was a combat
veteran who returned after a full combat tour of duty was completed to
instruct. My Bomb instructor was a bombardier with the "Bloody 100th"
Bomb
Group. He flew 25 missions, most of them England to Berlin with no fighter
cover and suffered terrible losses. As an instructor he taught us more
than
the basic job of bombing. He made us aware of what it was like in combat
and as
a result we were well prepared for the missions we flew.

In a recent post it was pointed out that Rumsfeld instructed even though
he
had flown no missions. That is no reflection on him, 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.
Or to put it another way. was Rumsfeld the exception or the rule. Anyone
know?




Arthur Kramer

About your problem with Instructos who haven't been to war; in the USAF of
the mid '70s on,
there were a ton of First Assignment IPs. I mean most of them were FAIPs.
These FAIPs, and all the other flying instructors, weren't teaching mission
flying, they were teaching get-your-wings-flying. There were a few in the
squadron that had been in SEA, and I flew with most of them. Guess what,
they didn't fly any better than the FAIPs (after some time, of course). The
skill and savy they'd picked up in combat wasn't what was being taught in
UPT. They had good stories to tell, but everyone as an IP had to teach to
the standards in the syllabus so their studs could pass their checkride,
and none of that involved air-air combat or IP to target flying. It
involved learning to fly precise formation and instruments and hopefully
some judgment.

The IPs that had SEA experience were better off being sent to FTUs, as many
of them were,
where combat aircraft (or whatever it was called, I forget now) training was
being conducted. But, as I said, it didn't
matter a wit in UPT and I'm sure most non-FAIP, UPT IPs would generally
agree. Of course, we all hated being FAIPs, we wanted to get out into the
real world. But, c'est la guerre! (sp?)

JB


I undersyand. I still remember my instructor describing how a German fighter
set up a fighter approach. He said, " The ******* will drop his inside wing
and start to point his nose at you. Once you see the nose coming around pick
him up in your sights and follow his constant bearing approach. Watch for
whether he plans on flying over you or under you and be ready to track him as
long as you can." And when we got over there that is exactly the way it
happened to the letter. Good instructor, Prepared us for what we needed to
know.


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