Originally Posted by
surreal1221
May sound silly, but what good does being able to fly a fingertip @ .9 do for someone about to go fly a large cargo beast such as the 141?
Back then, the AF position was that they wanted the ability to assign any UPT graduate to any airplane, in case the needs of the service changed. For example, they did pull a number of guys out of the KC-135 and send them to F-105s during the Viet Nam war. It was rumored that if a student's IPs thought he wasn't ready for fighters, they could "blackball" him from getting one for a first assignment, even if his class rank was high enough.