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Early flight was a different beast (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by PugJesus@lemmy.world to c/noncredibledefense@lemmy.world

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[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 27 points 1 month ago

Major Bill March, a historian with the Royal Canadian Air Force, is quoted as saying of the early pilots “they used to call themselves the 20-Minute Club because the life expectancy of a new pilot in combat in 1916-17 was 20 minutes.”

I understand that in the early part of the war pilots were being sent into combat with less than 9 hours flying time – basically, they knew how to take-off. But of course, we all know that there is a lot more to it than that, being able to land is probably optimistic, but useful if the need presented itself.

[-] TrojanRoomCoffeePot@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

That's grim, hadn't heard that before. I guess that the aces were the ones good at learning quickly and improvising.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 13 points 1 month ago

I'm not an expert, but I can see the military minds of the time thinking that training people would be a waste of time because flying was so deadly. In their minds it would be like training people to swim across the Atlantic from New York to London; it was a matter of luck, not training.

imho

[-] CluckN@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

They use to call me the 2-Minute Club back in college.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

You still pretending that you went to school?

[jk]

[-] CluckN@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Had a buddy walk out during a community college placement test because it was getting too hard. I tried telling him the point of a placement test is to have hard questions but it never clicked.