WARNING LONG POST
I've been thinking alot lately about the "inconvenient truths" of military aviation i.e things that we think suck that no one really talks about and is left for each new student to learn. Granted that no matter how hard we try there are some things no one could prepare you for(think about pickup day in boot camp)
In my very limited experience there have been 3 things
1)FAMS
2) race
3) nepotism
FAMS
I think I can say that having come to America, broke and alone, as a 19 year old wanting nothing more than to be a fighter pilot I had a few more challenges than the average stud on my road to flight school. I was therefore mortified when during fams I would pray for bad weather and dread going to the squadron. I assumed I should have been in heaven, all I had to do was fly and didn't even have to clean toilets to do it as I had during college, but I was miserable. I was not alone(even though I thought so) 7 out of 74 of my OCS/TBS classmates DOR'ed and later a few of my buddies revealed that they too had been miserable.
Looking back I think the biggest factors are a lack of feedback, learning to accept criticism while realizing which criticism is important and not having the tools to realize what effort pays off.
While you got a gradesheet after each flight, it gave you no idea how you were doing compared to your peers. This was important because apart from getting kicked out for too many downs(which was instant feedback
, all other actions were done in relation to your peers i.e attrition for low grades or getting that magical 50NSS. Add the fact that rarely did anyone admit to mistakes, you wound up believing you were the only one who screwed up checklists, or gooned your course rules.
Criticism was also now alot more intense compared to most other previous military and civilian training. There was now one on one with a screaming instructor who's sole role in life appeared to tell you how stupid you were. Eventually you accept that it isn't personal but that takes a while.
Personally by FAM 3 my instructor seemed to spend as much time yelling at me for not taxiing at exactly 8 knots ("look at the GPS!! not 7 not 9, 8 fu$king knots!!") as he did on my landings. Except for a rare "too fast", no one talked about taxiing after fams, but everyone would mention landings. The hours I spent trying to figure out how to taxi at exactly 8 knots, would better have been spent improving my landings.
Which leads to the final point. In every thing I'd done to this point I was able to figure out a linear relationship between effort and results. Study more = better grades, workout more=better PFT. But even living in the Q without a T.V, stereo or computer and doing nothing but studying didn't bring earn me an 80 NSS. Later I learnt that trunking flights, hours in the simulator and chair flying produced better results than rote memorization.
Conclusion fams suck!! But the solo is put there as a reward as is the entire PA phase and is does get alot better. If you want to DOR at least wait till PA's solos!!
RACE
I was once 'well balanced' vis my views on race(i.e it's not a factor) but 20 months in Meridian were tougher than I could have imagined and changed me radically.
Apart from extremes such as "we don't cut your kind of hair around here" to getting my tires slashed, telling the cops and having them laugh and ask if "JD still has BBQ over at his party", I had to change my perspective on alot of day to day things.
First when I got to NMM, I got the sheet from the housing office and called every apartment complex on there asking for a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. There was only 1 one bedroom apartment available and I took it. Turned out that all my neighbors where black. No Biggie. Neither was the fact that my TBS classmates who checked in the week before and after me found places quite easily. The housing market can be like that. But what about my classmate and his wife who told me that when they were trying to buy into Dalewood the agent proudly told them they don't allow niggers there(he wound up not buying).
Later, I tried selling my car at a price below book value. I kept showing it but no dice and finally sold it to a black lady. Nothing strange so far. Then one of my classmates told me that when he went shopping for a car, the dealer kept remarking that "A white guy owned this car".
What I finally did was focus on flying, trunking flights and viewing friday nights as prime simulator time and tell myself that flying hornets out of mirarmar would make up for it all.
NEPOTISM
I was reluctant to share this one, but feel like a coward if I don't. After I joined, I believed in the Marine Corps, more than religion. While not perfect it was the most egalitarian organization in America, a true meritocracy. Everyone was equal. The endurance course hurt for everyone, 20 mile humps didn't care who your daddy was and DI's and SI's thought everyone was sh!t. Then 3 incidents in flight school changed my views.
A week after I selected one of my TBS classmates got a 51NSS was assigned jets another got a 49 was given helos. They asked to switch and were told that 50 was the minimum for jets and it was not going to happen. Well months later I'm talking to a Navy classmate who had selected around the same time who revealed that he had a 49 NSS and by chance his dad was a rear admiral.
Then two other classmates finished the TS program at the same time. Neither was no 1, but they did well. The CTW-1 senior Marine assigned the higher performing guy to his last choice and gave the hornet to the guy with the lower score. Quite by coincidence the winging guest speaker was the lower perfroming guy's father who was also an active 2 star general.
Finally I'm about to leave meridian, hanging my head when one of my buddies walks out of the commodores office, on his ACM 13X(two more flights to wings) he got his fifth down and was attrited. The exact same thing had happened to 2 other Marines in my time in meridian and they had to find new professions. So I tell myself "I may be a distinguished naval graduate who got his last choice, but hey at least I'm better off than him."
My buddy appeals to CNATRA himself who then awards him 12 more flights and switches him over to VT-7 to finish them. He gets hornets west coast. Appropos nothing whatsoever this guy's dad was a 2 star admiral.
Now even thought they told us at TBS that perception is reality, I'm a junior dude so there are probably things I don't know about that went down in al 3 situations, but if I had a son or especially a daughter going through the program I'd strive to either be a general, a congressman or have a billion or two in the bank.
Are these major points? No. Can you change them? sadly No. But perhaps you can steel yourself for them.
