Theorem: There are no accidents and no fatal flaws in the machines; there are only pilots with the wrong stuff. Corollary: no single factor ever killed a pilot; there was always a chain of mistakes.
Once the theorem and the corollary were understood, the Navy’s statistics about one in every four Navy aviators dying meant nothing. The figures were averages, and applied to those with average stuff. From “The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe
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This applies to deaths in dogfights?
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Yeah in actual combat, in practice, even in day to day life they were supposedly always concerned with having the “right stuff”.
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“A Navy pilot (in legend, at any rate) began shouting, “I’ve got a MiG at zero! A MiG at zero! - meaning that it has maneuvered I’m behind him and was locked in on his tail. An irritated voice cut in and said, “Shut up and die like an aviator.”” Pretty brutal stuff.
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Most of “it” was unspoken as far as I can tell in the book so far. An unspoken “right stuff” that made you one of the greats, an Ace, that showed you had what it took to strap yourself to a death rocket and make it through in one piece.
End of conversation
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