Mike Durant

And the only reason I know that number is because you'd get a little award every time you reached a milestone.

And getting 150 was a lot.

And I actually extended my time there in Korea because I liked it so much once I got there and I was flying so much.

The key to a brand new aviator is log in time.

And it's hard now because helicopters are expensive.

All platforms are expensive.

So getting flight time, it's tougher and tougher.

But to be really good and develop as a pilot, you just got to get time in the seat.

I mean, that's just the fundamental truth.

And so flying, I think I almost got 500 hours in my first year there, which is quite a bit for somebody right out of flight school.

And they made me a unit trainer, which means I'm teaching people how to fly along the demilitarized zone.

You had to memorize it.

You couldn't use a map because the idea here is if you get misoriented, you got to know, you know, burned in your memory where the line is.

Because if you fly over it, they're going to shoot you down.

I mean, it's just – it happened – I don't know if you remember this, but it happened in the –

late or mid 80s, a Kiowa, I think he was flying a Kiowa, a guy named Robert Hall overflew the border and the North Korean shot him down.

And that was basically what you were doing everything you could to avoid.

But you would get medevac missions up near the border.

So you had to know where it was.

And because I was the first Blackhawk guy there, I'm the unit trainer.