And the first 750 flying hours, when heady youngsters went into faster and heavier ships, were always the hardest, resulted in three times more accidents than the next 1.250 hours. Said General Dargue: "As long as the human element is the human element there will be ents. When an emergency makes it necessary to train men rapidly, the experience curve will temporarily drop, the accident curve rise. It ig regrettable, but there is nothing which can replace experience."
General Dargue knew that future training crashes would be frequent, spectacular. As new pilots went into bigger' ships with bigger crews, the number of deaths per crash was bound to The Air Corps would like all the pilots of four-engined Flying Fortresses to have at 2,000 flying hours. Future bomber pilots vill be lucky if they have had 500. Lone fighter pilots have their troubles and dangers, too. A young pilot recently asked General Dargue how many gauges, dials, other gadgets there were in the cockpit of his pursuit ship. Dargue guessed: 35 or 40. On a later flight, he counted 86 separate uses for his hands, eyes, feet.
The Air Corps can and does penalize the reckless, preach care, cull out the congenitally unfit. But it cannot be over careful. A pilot who never takes a chance may lose his life and plane in combat. Military pilots must learn ta. fly on instruments, in all weathers ("when these birds are grounded"), in and out of strange airports, with no radio controls. And in learning, some die. Said the War Department, leasing General Dargue's gloomy forecast: us face this situation with a calm realization that preparation for war takes its toll as well as war itself and that there is no more hazardous profession at arms than that which the combat flier has elected to follow."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.