Originally Posted by
threeighteen
This thread is making me wish I was born in 1920.
Not me. Willy Driscoll (the one from Duke Cunningham's F-4 who's not in prison) gave my NFWS class a talk about stress in combat. He showed us pictures of a 20ish WWI pilot and a 40ish WWI pilot who happened to be the same guy a few months later. In WWII some squadron's would kill so many guys in pre cruise carrier quals they'd be down to an 0-3 skipper. One of my roomates on the boat had an uncle who flew bombers for the AF in WWII. His training was so minimal he felt he was basically thrown into combat unprepared and never flew after the war. We truly stand on the shoulders of giants, but I wouldn't want to trade places with them.