"Talk of Many Things"
Hummingfrog,
Throttle back a bit old chap, please ! Give us time to catch our breath ! (roughly 1200 pairs of keen eyes each day scan your story, quite a few may want to come in with questions or comment). Already I feel like the Sorcerer's Apprentice with the craic we've started - we're "spiralling out of control" * (to use a phrase so beloved of radio and TV newsreaders). Slow down a bit - your stuff's far too good to be rushed out like this !
No pun * intended, but I'll shortly put in my take on the Spinning story.
To answer your Dad:
His No.1: the US "neutrality" was a farce from the outset. It didn't matter that his instructors were civilians (as they also were in the US Primary Schools), when he wore RAF uniform and had RAF officers and NCOs. You can't carry on like that and pretend to be a "neutral".
Of course he would have come in a long time after Pearl Harbor and so we were allies then. For a while I believed that that the BFTS scheme didn't start until early '42, but I've read that they in fact commenced in late '41 (at the same time as the "Arnolds"), when the breach of neutrality would have been glaring (and so I had to travel in my natty grey pin-stripe from Toronto to Florida, and never wore uniform in the States).
His No.2: I was an Arnold Scheme trainee, we had no contact with, and knew little about, the BFTSs, apart from the fact that they existed, and did not suffer the huge "washout" rates of the US Army Air Corps Flight Schools.
They were ingenious out there in the way of fashioning "Cruel and Unusual Punishments" (I've told in my Carlstrom Field Posts how a trainee caught roughly-handling a parachute received condign penance !) Your "Tee" offender seem to get similar treatment. To repeat some old doggerel:
"Neither smoke direction, sock nor Tee
Cut any ice with Philbert McGee,
At last a crash made hin change his mind -
You can't use a field you've left behind !"
The "incident" (your #5508) at Miami, Oklahoma BFTS was (IIRC) also reported by Cliff. And the "Washout" terror hung over us all, like a "Sword of Damocles", all the time - and it is true that, like all manual skills, there is a minority of people who just can't do it however hard they try, and it is no kindness to keep them at it when there is no hope ...D.
Union Jack,
You'd better get in the dinghy quick and start paddling - things are hotting up nicely in the Ukraine, pretty soon the Western Powers may have to "put up or shut up" - and I know which one it'll have to be !....D.
Ian Burgess-Barber,
No "permission to speak" needed in this our old Crewroom in Cyberspace, Sir! It is very interesting that the US contingent formed exactly 20% (just as Cliff [RIP] had said), and I'm surprised that they had a chop-rate of 13%. What was the figure for RAF candidates ? (I'd always thought that the BFTS failure rate was supposed to be insignificant) .....D.
Molemot,
I've been sampling the Mr Guinn's "Arnold Scheme" (your #5498 refers). This is comprehensive, enormously detailed, well researched and I would accept it as authoritative. I can recommend it to Hummingfrog Senior (it includes a lot about the BFTSs, too - start on page 23), and I hope to find there more statistics to add to the one figure I have in a notebook (we sent 7885 pilot candidates out to the Arnold Schools and got 4493 pilots # (57%) back - so 43% were "scrubbed". Most would re-train in Canada as Navs or Wop/AGs, but it is a shocking figure all the same)....D.
Goodnight, all. Danny.
EDIT: # (including 577 "creamed off" QFIs)
Last edited by Danny42C; 21st Apr 2014 at 20:20.
Reason: Add Text.