I agree there is leveling out as experience builds, a 1500 hour mil pilot probably has a lot more exposure to high performance and heavy metal airplanes. It is hard to match that mil experience in the civ world early in a career. 18 months after getting my wings, kinda the same as finishing comm/MEL/Inst, I had over a 1000 hours of P-3 time, a 127K 4 engine MEL turbine time, half of it in the left seat. Had made over dozen ocean crossings, flown in and out of airports all over the world, was doing low level night IFR runs ins on radar contacts, managing a 10 man crew while acting as the PIC under training. It is kinda like learning to swim in the deep end of the pool. This not saying that most pilots if physically qualified here couldn't do this, I mean if I could do it almost anyone could, but most civ pilots do not get this experience early on.
In 65 almost the fogged mirror qualification, Navy was facing a big surge in training and recruiting number went way up. I took the AQT/FAR and scored high so they said take the physical. Your were supposed to have 20/20 vision in both eyes, near and far. My near vision in right eye was 20/25 on the test. The recruiter took the corpsman aside and said this guy is a pilot test him again, so I read them again and passed.
