We’ve been over this before here. A pilot loses a plane for any reason, then after all is said and done said pilot is lucky to be able to return to the cockpit flying for Uncle Sugar, even if the loss wasn’t his fault. After two aircraft losses then it’s hard to ever fly again on the taxpayers dime, unless your father is high up which McCain’s was. Once again it’s either a bad or unlucky pilot, neither type can the taxpayer afford. So when this accident happened, his time as a USN pilot should have been over.
Not sure thats really the case today. Few years back I met the first pilot who had to step outside and F-22 Raptor while it was in flight. He was part of the OT&E unit. Problem was quickly traced to sensor malfunctions and he was up flying another Raptor about a week later.
Again, thats today. Back in the 1960s there was still a latent WWII mentality that surviving a crash made a pilot better. Go look at the Navy pilots who put their planes into Lake Michigan (the ones that for the last 20 years have been brought up and restored) during training and went on to successful combat service.
Heck, consider that Chester Nimitz grounded his first command (a destroyer), went on to a successful career in submarines (where he became one of the Navy’s experts on diesel propulsion) and ran the Pacific Fleet in WWII.
With aircraft now costing in the hundreds of millions of dollars each, and warships in the billions, with both expected to last 40 years or more, it’s a different world today. But I’m also pretty sure those guys who crashed a B-2 on Guam (another sensor malfunction situation) didn’t lose their flying careers.
“A pilot loses a plane for any reason, then after all is said and done said pilot is lucky to be able to return to the cockpit flying for Uncle Sugar, even if the loss wasn’t his fault.”
Not correct. I can’t think of a pilot REJECTED from further flying after a crash UNLESS he was found at fault. I knew a guy with 2 ejections, still flying. That was in the 80s.
In the 60s, we lost a LOT of planes. They were cheaper back then...