I first became an instructor pilot—an IP—in the U.S. Air Force. This was four years after starting as a warm lump of flesh in a flight suit, a ball of clay to be molded. As a student pilot, I had gone through Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma, the “Little Prison Camp on the Prairie.”
Vance’s UPT was tough, and 44 percent of the students that year, across the board in the Air Force at all UPT bases, “washed out.” Didn’t make it, got kicked out of pilot training. The instructors were fierce. I lived in fear of washing out for the entire 50-week program.
