Over to you Nigel,
Having, perhaps attracted some academic interest with this thread it may be of interest or indeed some safety benefit if the industry had greater understanding of the differences in discipline and airmanship (if any) between pilots with military and non military backgrounds. We related our experiences from differing, yet very valid viewpoints, mine from accident and incident investigation, yours from training. Thus I ask the academics or anyone with related experiences, is there a difference between the levels of discipline or airmanship shown in recurrent training with those levels recorded by accident investigation. IF … as a hypothesis: the ex-military pilot fares better in the accident count (when statistically balanced) THEN … with more investigation into the training backgrounds of the non military pilot we might be able to define some important training issues; I suspect at the ab-initio level.
My unbalanced statistics would argue that the ex military pilot somehow mitigates and recovers from his errors during actual operations far better than the non military trained pilot; thus the ex-military pilot avoids an accident. In this respect my previous post was a hypothesis that military trained pilots are more able to control fear than the pilot without a military background. The ex-military pilot exhibits less observable panic and thus retains control of hazardous situations.
Following your post I would then ask what then can be deduced from observing airmanship during training. Those with ‘good’ GA backgrounds may well have gained similar qualities as (some) of the ex-military pilots, yet until tested by real fear the significance of ‘GA’ pilot’s lack of subsequent military experience cannot be judged. Continuing the discussion on these lines could question whether those qualities of airmanship that are affected by fear, or by the lack of control of fear, can ever be accurately assessed during training / simulation. I have yet to find a simulator or training exercise that realistically generates fear at a level where personal characteristics are fully tested. I have never seen the same level of fear as recalled by crews after accidents or incidents, except that experienced personally during solo flight training or the experiences of continuing airmanship development throughout my career.