Originally Posted by
John Eacott
With such thread drift my tale is another along these lines.
When I was interviewed for the RAF the question was inevitably asked, 'if we give you a pilot selection, what would you want to fly'. When I naturally answered helicopters the panel just about fell off their chairs, no-one in 1967 wanted to be a helicopter driver!
I did explain how much better it was than running up and down runways to get airborne, but they used my eyesight as an excuse to offer me a ground job anyway. Fortunately by an enormous set of coincidences I discovered the RN accepted helicopter pilots with 6/18 eyesight and got into Dartmouth that way. Two weeks after joining I was shown a DCI upping the eyesight standard for rotary wing drivers; they closed the loophole after my medical highlighted it. The Surgeon Commander had never heard of it before and had been rejecting applicants accordingly!
1967 and not wanting to be rotary?? Back then I was flying the Wessex in Aden, and enjoying the "licenced hooliganism"