Page 188 - Demo

184trips in a JP if he wanted but had not taken the opportunity and failed very early on. He actually had a new QFI to CFS flying an early sortieand that QFI came in and said he had failed the sortie. I went to our Wing Commander who was a great chap but didn%u2019t like you beating around the bush. I told him this student had failed a simple sortie and the Wing Commander just said chop him. This meant raising a form questioning whether he should remain a pilot. I asked if the Wing Commander wanted to fly with him. He said no chop him. I pointed out that his instructor had only just arrived and so perhaps I should see if he was as bad as had been suggested. No, again was the reply. Chop him. I had to go back to the Squadron and tell this chap that he was chopped. He was absolutely flabbergasted but that was that. Another pilot was dead keen on an RAF career and came to work each day immaculately dressed with highly bulled shoes. Clearly, he did not fit into our hardworking life where we were rushing from pillar to post whenever the weather was good enough. He was not a very good pilot but he needed an above average assessment to get promoted and I told him when we chopped him that he was most unlikely to ever get one. He asked what he should do and the only thing I could think of was to tell him to remaster as a navigator. That course lost nearly half the pilots before they graduated. I think the posters took more care in the future. The next course thought they were doomed when they realised they were coming to our Squadron but they actually did OKOne day in the crewroom, one of the students said that he was surprised that another student was on the next course. I asked why and he said that that pilot had crashed and written off a Victor K2. I said he can%u2019t have done as it would have been in his F5000. After a fair bit of discussion, we found out that he had indeed crashed his Victor by aborting beyond the V2 speed to avoid some birds. I took this to the Commandant who was furious. He contacted Strike Command and it turned out that his Station Commander had not put the crash in the chaps F5000 on