Mil Pilot - Nature or Nurture?

[gums]

Salute, LOM

Very good analysis of the "naturals" with only one exception - "hands", or "touch".

My own experience as an IP in three attack/fighter jets was mostly with the "naturals" as you postulated, but I also had what I called "technicians", that seem to have exhibited the "nurtured" charateristic. My definition was those folks were very "mechanical" WRT the basics of flying. Not only a slow scan rate of attitude, speed, body rates and such, but they could not"feel" the plane or what it was telling them like the "naturals"

I am not bragging when I assert I was a "natural". Except for over control of yaw on takeoff my first 2 or 3 hops, I was ready to solo and did. Figure 4 hours or so. I was 16 years old. Later, going thru USAF pilot indocrination and then the T-37, it was the same way. My only bad grades were "spin entry", duh? I just had a hard time holding the controls in an unusual position long enough. I could feel the imminent stall and had been taught by my civilian IP long before to first relax back stick, use rudder to keep pointing end forward and wings level ( not much aileron) and then even push forward if required. The key was recognizing the imminent stall. Some planes I flew had very little shake, rattle and roll or wing rock or "nibble". One had pronounced wing rock, one had a fair amount of "burble" and finally shaking before it departed. The Deuce had nothing but a "buzz" as it developed a healthy sink rate, but directional control was no problem although you could spin it if you tried hard enuf..

When I became an IP, I would point out the indications of an imminent stall as well as other characteristics of the plane - asking the student, " can you feel that?". Not surprisingly in the fighter/attack courses, most of my students caught on very easily and some recognized "bad" things without my help. A very few had to be nurtured, with some just depending upon attitude/airspeed scan rate. Those few would sometimes have problems adding/incorporating the other tasks as you have pointed out.

So I would add the "touch" attribute to the "natural" definition, LOM.

Gums opines...