What Does the I in QWI Stand For? A Question by an Ex-Creamie
In the bad old days of the Cold War, PAIs (QWIs in old money), were accustomed to bullying and humiliating their unfortunate students (especially if ex-creamies) - presumably in some kind of perverse and sadistic attempt to acquaint them with the hard realities of front-line squadron life.
I remember this well from my first Ground Attack OCU course many years ago. On my first weapons dual as an ex-creamie, (Air to Air), the PAI spent the whole sortie cursing and harassing me, taking control on every possible occasion. As a result I only fired the gun once. I discovered later that he hated creamies, and was clearly trying to get me chopped. Given a cine solo, I taught myself the technique and achieved an overall 45% average score for the phase – well into the Exceptional bracket. I had not received one worthwhile word of airborne instruction from the PAI.
Having subsequently spent 22 more years in the mudmoving world, in my view this appalling, unprofessional attitude permeated to many future QWIs over the years. I also noted that a large part of the QWI course was devoted to solo weapons practice for the U/T QWI, in order to build up their range scores so that they could lord it over their future students. Even with this extra practice and inside knowledge (plus the fact that they could assess their own film in the cine room!), I found that the range scores of many QWIs were not significantly better than those of the average squadron shag.
In my view such bullies should have been 1020’d (do they still do that?) off the unit for petulantly refusing to instruct in a professional manner.