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.
Agree with you tank.
For a while there many years ago, the saying was “The USAF is not a ‘one mistake’ air force, but it sure ain’t a two-mistake one either.”
A change took place and the USAF became more reasonable about aircraft mishaps, and the Air Force made a decision that a ‘mistake’ was not something to ground you for but a ‘crime’ (deliberate violation of regulation) was.
However, Happy Hal Hornburg, Wing/CC of Seymour-Johnson, he didn’t go along with this approach (he wanted to make general). So, when we newbies arrived we were brought into his office where he looked us over and then said: “If you drop one of my jets, I don’t care if the mishap board finds you did nothing wrong. . .if I think you are wrong I will f&cK you.”
The message was clear: ride the jet to your death trying to save it even if you are blamless beause your career and life in the Air Force was over if you didn’t.
Nice guy. . .years later I was working in the private sector and saw he was caught doing a crime (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901261.html).
Karma.