Originally Posted by
glojo
Train hard, fight easy..
As an aside what type of reaction would there have been from someone like Guy Gibson if his co-pilot were to criticise his flying during a TRAINING exercise? Words similar to..... ''There's the door, get out and leave your parachute on the seat!" come to mind!
I would hate to think we are trying to get rid of the characters that I so loved and admired.
I think care needs to be made when looking at WW2 practices. Since more pilots were killed in training crashes then in combat I am not sure there is a lot to be learned when compared to todays aircrew training challenges.
I think a more relevant example is air ops during the Falklands war. There were many examples where quite appalling risks were taken in order to get the job done. The difference between those risks and what the Puma crew did was Operational Necessity. From my reading (I was not there) the crews in general knew very well the increased risks they were taking and made a conscious choice to accept them. None of that applied to the situation the Puma crew was in.
I think it also points to the well documented fact that the vast majority who serve are not inherently reckless, yet will step up to the plate when it matters on real world ops, including taking risks that would be unacceptable in a peacetime training scenario.