Originally Posted by
Two's in
This is where the system really failed him.
I think the system really failed him when it put him into an environment for which his training had hopelessly ill-equipped him. The RAF was often accused in the past of pushing people too far and too fast during training, but this takes the biscuit. And I can't believe the poor man had no reservations about his upcoming first experience of AAR being at night, especially as it was to be followed by his first stab at the SEAD job; I know I would have been apprehensive in that position. When I did my first AAR trip it was in daylight with an instructor in the back seat and with AAR as the primary aim, nothing else counted. I was absolutely knackered by the end of it. I got nowhere near a night sortie until I was properly day qualified.
Mindful that people would have been doing their best to get him through to a mission qual rather than knowingly setting him up to fail, he would still have been under enormous self-imposed pressure once he was unable to get fuel. I wonder how his mindset would have been had the flight lead briefed him that he probably wouldn't crack the AAR and that it was not a problem, just RTB and shoot some approaches with the remaining gas.
Whatever, a tragic outcome with widely applicable lessons about supervision, managing training, and deferred maintenance activity on something as critical as an ejection seat.