Typhoon1244
Member in Good Standing
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2002
- Posts
- 3,078
My wife and I recently took our kids to visit her maternal grandfather, Don. He was a night-fighter pilot in the Pacific in World War Two...started out on the P-61 Black Widow, then got called back to train in the P-38M Night Lightning. Ayway, I spent quite a while talking to him about the flying he did, and he told me a great story that would probably fall under the heading of what we today call "Crew Resource Management."
Newly rated Black Widow pilots were required to select their two remaining crewmembers. They were shown the training and personnel records for radar-operators (R/O) and gunners, then made their choices. (If there was a conflict, they either arm-wrestled or raced for it.)
Don picked a first-rate R/O, then started looking over the gunners. After looking through a couple files, he found a guy who had washed out of both pilot and navigator training. Now the training at the time was very competetive...guys were washed out of flight training for relatively minor stumbles.
Don got to thinking that even though this guy was a double washout, he had, after all, had some flight training and some navigator training. "Well-rounded," you might say. Might be a handy guy to have in the crew...somebody who knows a little bit about all aspects of the operation, right? Washouts were not uncommon...so how bad could he be?
Don got him on his crew. I think you all can guess what came next: Don quickly found out why he'd washed out of both programs. The man wasn't smart enough to come in out of the rain.
(Footnote: P-61 gunners were eliminated before they got a chance to fly together. The troublesome gun turret was locked forward and wired to the pilots yoke along with the four 20-mm's.)
Newly rated Black Widow pilots were required to select their two remaining crewmembers. They were shown the training and personnel records for radar-operators (R/O) and gunners, then made their choices. (If there was a conflict, they either arm-wrestled or raced for it.)
Don picked a first-rate R/O, then started looking over the gunners. After looking through a couple files, he found a guy who had washed out of both pilot and navigator training. Now the training at the time was very competetive...guys were washed out of flight training for relatively minor stumbles.
Don got to thinking that even though this guy was a double washout, he had, after all, had some flight training and some navigator training. "Well-rounded," you might say. Might be a handy guy to have in the crew...somebody who knows a little bit about all aspects of the operation, right? Washouts were not uncommon...so how bad could he be?
Don got him on his crew. I think you all can guess what came next: Don quickly found out why he'd washed out of both programs. The man wasn't smart enough to come in out of the rain.
(Footnote: P-61 gunners were eliminated before they got a chance to fly together. The troublesome gun turret was locked forward and wired to the pilots yoke along with the four 20-mm's.)
