Mike Durant

I would say more people probably have trouble with instruments than they do moving the sticks.

The instruments is you can't see outside, and you're flying based on indicators in the cockpit and bars and needles.

And it requires a lot of, I would call, situational awareness, spatial awareness.

And I would say if I had to compare the two, I think more people have trouble with instruments.

But our class started with 80.

We were cut in half, and that was purely a throughput issue.

It wasn't that half got thrown out.

But we got cut to 40, and then I don't know what percentage ended up dropping out.

But I would say most make it through.

And then I ended up going to Korea.

And again, I didn't really want to go to medevac yet.

That's kind of lame, right?

I want to go to aerosol.

battalion or something like that where we're going to do multi-ship missions and support customers.

I don't want to go fly patients around.

But again, in the end, it's the freaking greatest assignment I ever could have got because I'm having to learn how to operate on my own.

I was the first Blackhawk guy to get to that unit, and they still had Hueys.

So I'm the most experienced freaking guy in the company with Blackhawks, and I'm 22 years old.

Wow.

In the end, I flew 150 actual missions in Korea.