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HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, 
1964 


DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY PAMPHLET 95-12 
Standard Flying 

Sense 

HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY 1964 
1 
STANDARD FLYING 
SENSE 

ANYONE who reads his newspaper with reasonable care eventually reaches the conclusion most people get into trouble by paying too much attention to the old saying that variety is the spice of life. Ifa bank teller wants a refreshing change there is no harm in switching the family vacation from the mountains to the seashore. He carries matters a mite too far when he loads the day's take into a satchel and takes off for South America 
with a blonde. Variety is like any other spice-dump in too much or apply it in the wrong place and you wind up with something not only far from pleasant but sometimes downright deadly. 
Every really mature person-any hard-nosed professional in his particular line of work-knows true excellence comes from fixed) standard) never-varying operating procedures in everything where results are what really count. No good chef tinkers with the recipe for his favorite omelet once he has learned how to turn it out to perfection. No heavy-hitting outfielder shifts his batting stance or alters his swing in the middle of the pennan,t drive. 
And no Army aviator deviates from standard procedures he has fixed for himself and regulations call for in all phases of flying unless he is absolutely forced to. 
Anything else is sheer recklessness-a heedless and needless change from accepted routines which brings on disaster. Most of 
us, to be sure, think of recklessness in terms of the lads with ducktailed haircuts and black leather jackets who boil past us on their motorcycles at ninety knots on a two-lane highway. We will agree these people have developed recklessness to a fine art-and sooner or later they pay for it. The real·truth is that recklessness is a surrender of good judgment which leads any man to leap into some
thing on the spur of the moment with a callous disregard of the consequences. The hotshots on the motorcycles haven't the maturity or the good judgment of a full-grown Belgian hare. But when the flying man leaps before he looks, he is doing something every bit of training, experience and mature common sense he has tells him is not only wrong, but risky. 
Another way of putting it is to say that the aviator who abandons the procedure he knows and can do best is simply exceeding his ability and experience. 
And the fact is, nobody is ever fully experienced. Every aviator is constantly running into a situation which tempts him to aban
don his standard flying techniques and venture out on thin ice.· 
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So? Why do people sometimes dunk themselves? 
WHO, ME? 
The Army aviator who thinks he is immune to the almost irresistible urge to do something beyond his capabilities or to experiment at the wrong time with something new is kidding himself. Give thought, gents, to the following dreary recital: 
Over a four-year period, the Army logged 
1,363 flying accidents, of which a fat eighty
six per cent included the pilot factor. In near
ly half, the pilot factor alone was responsible. 
Further, the pilot was at fault in one-half the landing accidents 
and one-fourth the crackups on takeoff. And-hear this-"the pilot 

exceeded his ability or experience"was listed eleventh from the top 
or half-way down the list of all the explanations the eagle-eyed investigators arrived at for accidents in which the aviator was to blame. Further, nobody knows how many other flyers missed joining the statistical parade by a hair after they had abandoned standard procedures or, worse, had not developed any. 
The nature of flying itself and of Army aviators makes con
scious cultivation of fixed flying methods as necessary as gas detectors in a coal mine. The chap runninga cabbage farm or raising snails hasn't many professional temptations which can get him into trouble. Anyway, he's likely to have a placid disposition befitting his 
work. The Army pilot who figures he has about as much chance of going off the deep end as he does of appearing at a costume ball dressed as Little Bo Peep might recall that every moment of flying offers a chance to tty something new and that his own temperament 
is likely the kind temptations work on best. A good many of the qualities which go into an expert airman's make-up are the ones which gave him his reputation as the neighborhood's leading dare-devil when he was in knee pants. Chances are he could run 
faster and farther than the rest of the gang, a handy ability for a lad who had just led a raid on a melon patch. He liked action and excitement. His reflexes were faster. He was a little stronger and likely to be quicker on the mental draw-and still is. 
All these are splendid attributes, highly desirable when applied to proper) standard procedures. They give the flying man margin when he must adapt himself to the true emergency which from time to time demands immediate, off-the-cuff thinking and action. But the Army pilot who has come to grips with himself knows that buried somewhere deep down in his sub-conscious the thrillseeking youngster may still be hidden, waiting a chance to throw away the rule book, to kick over the traces, to get loose long enough 
to buzz the little red school house or make a low, slow pass over a nudist colony-above all, to try something new. If Jack Armstrong, the All-American risk-taker; isn't kept securely under lock and key he can wreak total and permanent havoc in the moment or so he is in charge of the situation. 
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BY THE BOOK 
The only way to keep Jack safely under control is to 

1. Develop standard procedures for all phases of flying, and 
2. Stick to them. Naturally, only Hairbreadth Harry, whose mind flits from subject to subject with the gay abandon of a grasshopper in clover, actually ever succumbs to the tern ptation to fly under the Brooklyn Bridge or see how tight a circle he can fly around the Washington Monument-and you won't find Harry in the cockpit of an Army aircraft. But all of us are members of the human race, staggering 
along under a burden of assorted stresses and strains, subject to all sorts of pushes and tugs which can upset our equilibrium. For 
10 

a variety of reasons-worry, an excess of joy, anger, over-confidence, a stomach-ache arising from a breakfast of hot dogs, sauer
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kraut, and pie a la mode a fellow can be thrown off stride and subject to lapses in performance. Under such circumstances, theman who has developed a set of standard procedures has a kindof built-in automatic pilot which takes over when need arises.Let's take a simple example. As we all know, there are aboutsixteen different ways to execute an Immelmann turn-all ,equally 
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good and all comparatively easy to execute. So it's no trick for all of us to do the Immelmann sixteen different ways. On the other hand, why bother? Life is too short. It may be even shorter if some foggy day you're confronted with the need to do an Immelmann pronto and your mind hesitates for that final split second trying to select which of the sixteen to do. This kind of thing can be applied to any aspect of flying from pre-flight check to final touchdown. The mature man has made a thorough appraisal of himself and his profession, accepts the 
limitations his experience imposes and flies by the book his training has written for him. He has grown up in the realization that the man who gets the job done rarely makes the headlines. Instead, he is a steady work horse his C.O. can always count on, quietly competent instead of a flashy show boater and about as reliable as a century-old Boston trust company. A sensible man who sometimes wakes up in the night in a cold sweat remembering how close he came to disaster during some harebrained maneuver early-in his career, he knows he took his first giant step toward full flying maturity when he 
l. Asked himself why he did it and 
2. Resolved never to do it again. 
DULLSVILLE, DAD 
Everybody is in some kind of rut. There are times when anybody gets a trifle fed up with his job, no matter how glamorous. This is when the temptation to add an over-dose of spice rises like sap in a Vermont maple tree. For variety and excitement, an Army pilot leads a life outranking most people's, but anyone will admit there are times when flying becomes a ho-hum proposition and one day plods along behind another like a line of circus elephants. The pilot who drops his standard techniques to try some
thing new, overlooks some normal but essential move or ventures into the realm of heedless recklessness, often has simply let boredom take command. 
This is the particular danger area for the gifted veteran aviator. The comparative youngster, the one with fewer than 250 hours on his record, still has a lot to learn and knows it. An alert, intelligent person, he is feeling his way along, proceeding with the deliberation of the season's first skater testing the ice on the old mill pond. To put it one way, he doesn't yet know enough to take 
any unnecessary risks. He has routine risks aplenty on his hands as things stand. 
Ever since man first learned how to cope with dinosours it has been axiomatic that nobody can ever be completely experienced. Aviators who have been around since Bleriot first flew the English Channel are first to agree. Everybody approaches the unusual or exceptionally difficult task with all the skill and caution he can muster. Where boredom-and its deadly mate, impatience-enter the picture is in the execution of routine tasks. An hour-rich pilot who has done a particular thing a thousand or so times can be bored without realizing it. He may let over-confidence over-ride good judgment and normal flying techniques. He wants to get the job done in a hurry and get home to the wife and kiddies to settle down before the fire with his pipe and slippers. So impatience prods him into taking the fatal short cut. Some time ago 
a veteran pilot in a hurry deliberately spun his L-19 down from a thousand feet and was unable to pull out for the landing. He left a wife and two children who would have been perfectly willing to wait the few extra minutes necessary to get down in a standard and less lethal manner. The mechanic riding with him no doubt felt the same way. 
The thoughtful aviator who has gone in for a session of soulsearching knows when he is tired, bored, or in a hurry, he must never allow impatience to bring on the short cut which could bring him home a bit sooner. Impatience, riding in the cockpit as a sinister passenger, points to nasty weather ahead and slyly suggests it might not be bad after all. Why not take a small chance and bore 
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through instead of going all the way around? The savvy aviator who sticks by the book shrugs off the temptation, detours, and lands safely on the strip instead of disastrously high on the side of 
a mountain. Rut or no rut, the mature airman knows things have to be done in a conventional way. No impatient baker ever attempted 


Ito force a loaf of bread to rise faster than it wanted to without ending up With useless dough on his hands. The patient man has himself under control. If boredom tempts him to' undertake some
thing foolish, he remembers even photographers of movie queens have moments when life seems to pall. 
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BOWED UNDER 
Worry or anxiety can do the same thing as boredom to the man in the cockpit. Nobody is ever entirely free from some kind of strain and there are times when problems seem to accumulate like barnacles on the bottom of a Chinese junk. Unless he is mature enough to keep things in perspective, a depressed pilot can 
allow his troubles to cloud good judgment. A man so bowed down he figures things can hardly get any worse can get in a don't
give-a-hoot state which may impell him to take a heedless course he wouldn't consider on a happier day. 
Army pilots generally have no more worries than the average 
harried husband and father. To be sure, bills are hard to pay, the baby cries all night when he is teething, the landlord is a thorough-going, free-wheeling you-know-what, and the wife can't bake a blueberry pie the way Mom used to. Anybody can take these minor hurdles in stride. Further, the C.O. and the flight surgeon always have an eye out for the man plagued by more than he can handle. Just the same, accidents take place once in a while involving irresponsible risks taken by pilots investigators discovered later had serious emotional troubles. One aviator, for instance, had a 
spotless record and then suddenly was involved in two needless accidents, the last fatal. His background revealed his marriage had run aground in stormy seas and his private life needed repair work on the part of experts. Another aviator who had been in an accident for which he had been held to blame, took to brooding over what he thought was an injustice. One particularly nasty day he laid out a flight plan to avoid the worse part of the weather and then virtually committed suicide by deliberately flying into it. 
Angry, resentful, he was carrying a fatal chip on his shoulder and was out to show the world. He would still be with us if at some early stage in his flying career he had learned to follow an undeviating routine as a professional aviator no matter what personal woes he might have gnawing at him. 
19 
EVEN KEEL 
Alas, there's no denying some of us have emotional motors which tick over a little faster than others. At any party you can separate the chaps who like to sit in the corner and discuss the best way of eradicating crab grass from those clustered around the piano singing "Sweet Adeline." The man who takes a critical look and is forced to classify himself as the life-of-the-party type may also have to admit he has a basic tendency to accept or even seek unnecessary risks. If he realizes there have been times when 
he acted on the spur of the moment, he sets up standard procedures to protect his actions in the cockpit. The carefree, bubbling-with-action lad who is always coming up with something 
new can be fun to have around if he doesn't wear you down, but he is also the kind who organizes a picnic and then forgets the beer. Proper airmanship, like well-run picnics, follows set patterns which bring everybody home safe and happy at the end of the day. 
20 
The pilot with the extra mental RPM's can also be powerfully drawn to experiment. Everybody from small boys with chemistry sets to mad scientists you see in horror movies occasionally gets a yen to mix a few things together and see what happens. Every now and then Johnny blows the windows out of the cellar 
and mad scientists end being eaten by the new and improved model monster (CM-46Q) they just turned out. 
An experiment can be valuable but only when it is performed under controlled conditions with predictable results. When a CO wants to try something novel in, say, the wire-laying line, he will set it up with the same care as the chaps in the white smocks preparing an underground test at Almogordo and with just about the same safe-guards. Up to that point, any aviator sensibly lays wire in a way which 
l. 	He knows can be done 
and 

2. 	He knows he can do. 
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It boils down to that old business about a time and a place for everything. When the mature pilot wants a thrill he goes to Funland and rides the roller coaster. Once in the cockpit, he is always conscious that flying an airplane is a business to be handled in a set, well-planned, business-like way. Some time back an H-34 
22 
hit wires and crashed, killing four people, while on straight and level flight about a hundred feet above a river. The key to this totally preventable disaster lay in the fact that a moment or so before the crash the co-pilot was observed cheerily waving to the swimmer and boaters just below. The accident would never have occurred if all hands had been following standard procedures and keeping their nose to the grindstone the way they were supposed to and had been twined to do. 
The truly expert pilot never confuses daring with skill; in fact, a good part of his skill comes from the contempt he holds for show-off, look-maw-no-hands tactics. He learned a long time 
ago that the dashing maneuver more often than not is simply sloppy flying, and he reserves his do-or-die abilities for the true emergency. Flying Army aircraft on military missions frequently puts a man in a corner calling for daring, cool-headedness, and expert airmanship. When the time comes, the grown-up pilot accepts the situation, lets his standard techniques shore him up, and comes through with banners flying and bugles blowing. You never find him experimenting with something risky, or overlooking 
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the essential detail which turns a normal maneuver into an action foolhardy enough to whiten the hair of the village idiot. 
THINKING CAP 
The process of attaining standard procedures .wh.ich r~sist the crack-brained impulse is in the long run one of thmkmg thmgs 
through. Couples do occasionally meet in night clubs, elope to Las Vegas the same evening, and settle down to a half-century or so of wedded bliss. Most successful marriages involve a good deal of deep thinking and doubt-dispelling on the part of both people 
concerned. They step before the parson only after they've satisfied themselves they have a fair assessment of what they are getting into and that the risk is worth taking. 
The failure to think about the implications and dangers involved in a normal situation is as common an American trait as a liking for strawberry ice cream. Every automobile driver knows 
there is a speed limit. Nobody is ignorant as to what is likely to 
happen if a tire blows out while he is barreling down the pi~eat sixty or so. Yet practically all of us, including dear old la.diesand retired clergymen, violate speed laws a good part of the time, 
and more highway accidents are caused by fast driving than forany other reason. 
This failure to think things through to the often frighteningconclusion rises partly from another common attitude-that an accident is something which overtakes the other fellow. Even afterthey have come to in the hospital with one leg in traction andseveral miles of bandage bound around their head, most motoristshave difficulty realizing it has happened to them and getting themto admit they were in any way at fault is next to impossible without the use of branding irons and thumb screws.An accident-in the air, the kitchen or the bathtub-can happen to anybody. To be fair about it, the victim is not always atfault. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, perhaps, but not always. Even a human pumpkin capable of sitting so long in oneplace birds nest on his shoulders stands a remote chance of beinghit on the head by a shooting star or swallowed by an earthquake.But the man who has sized up his job with the critical eye bankers use on applicants for thirty-day loans knows accidents normally do not just happen. 
26 
They usually take place when somebody 
I. Does something he is not supposed to 
2. Or fails to do something he is supposed to. 
Sometimes the error is an honest one. A man who has become accustomed to the cockpit of one aircraft might hit the wrong button if he suddenly finds himself trying to fly an aircraft he has become rusty on. The mistake he makes here is at least understandable. When a man old enough to marry and raise a family goes out of his way to violate accepted procedures, it is a different kettle of ripe-smelling fish. Part of the explanation lies in the fact 
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all of us can find a reason for doing something, no matter how bumble-headed we know it to be. Further, we all enjoy the sensation of having done something wrong and gotten away with it. The mature man is the one who has waked up, thought things through, and decided not to go to the well the one extra time which will end him as just another statistic in the accident files. 
People are sometimes described as "accident prone," an easy way to explaip why they are constantly hobbling about on crutches or sporting interesting eye patches like the man in the shirt ads. The truth is, psychologists do not believe there is any such thing as a basic set of personality traits which can make one man have more accidents than the next in line. B'ut accidents can and do 
happen more often to the fellow whose personal and professional life is about as loosely organized as an untied bale of hay. When 
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a pilot, automobile driver, or locomotive engineer has an acci
dent-spotted history you can make a safe bet he has never really understood what adoption of fixed, unchanging procedures real
ly means. He may be the father of ten, sing bass in the lodge quar
tet, and smoke cigars strong enough to choke a rogue elephant, but the fact is at heart he is still Juvenile Joe. 
FOOL'S PARADISE 
One obstacle in the way of the former impetuous youth who is trying to stick to a set of standard procedures is that Army flying is particularly suited to show-off maneuvers. The aviator who grew up accepting every dare is in the position of a lady on a diet who makes the mistake of dining in a restaurant specializing in Viennese pastry. Iron determination is the only thing which can save the day. 
Army aircraft normally operate at low altitudes and campara
tively slow. The jet-propelled beasts the Navy and Air Force fly 
at speeds considered impossible a few years ago and usually so high the only time the public is aware they are overhead is when they leave contrails or break the sound barrier. A man's mental state would have to be such that he considered himself a reincarnation of Napoleon for him to try anything out of the ordinary 
with a delta-winged fighter and even a routine landing is enough of an ordeal to satisfy anybody's craving for excitement. 
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But all kinds of wacky stunts are theoretically possible for Army aircraft, and sooner or later any pilot will be struck by the temptation to try one just for kicks. There are enticing and risky 
prospects to tempt him, closeup scenery to be inspected, herds of Holsteins to be buzzed, blind valleys to be explored, and girls on the beach to be given a closer look. Here is where the mature pilot's emotional thermostat comes into play; if he wants a closer acquaintance with the lass in the bikini, he goes home and lands, 
puts on his bathing trunks, and wangles an introduction to the lifeguard. Like the calorie-counter firmly turning away from a 
cream-filled eclair, he knows he is surrounded by temptation and
he is ready to handle it when it rears its attractive head. 
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Low-level flying is also doubly dangerous for the risk taker:The veteran pilot never suffers from the delusion that Army flying is not an exacting proposition, one in which the pilot cannever afford to relax. He is always reminding himself what everyaviator knows, but some occasionally forget-that the man in control of an aircraft is but one step from not being in control. Atthirty thousand feet an airman trying a few uncalled-for didoscan briefly lose control and get it back without sweat or strain. 
34 
Lower down, where the Army operates, he wraps himself around the new smokestack at the iron foundry and is melted down for scrap. 
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But lower down or higher up, a mature man never attempts any maneuver he doesn't have firmly fixed in his particular bag of tricks. When it comes to the business of tackling some offthe-cuff shenanigan, he is as set in his ways as an elderly mule. 
FAR RIGHT 
Let's face it, the standard-procedure pilot is a fuss-budget, a 
conservative who never accepts anything new on faith, who would not be caught ·dead in a loud sports shirt, and who stays satisfied if his wife serves him the same breakfast every day for twenty years. And he is in possession of a basic fact which escapes some people until it is too late: 
STANDARD FLYING IS PART OF A 
POSITIVE ATTITUDE TOWARD STAYING ALIVE 

In any reasonably hazardous profession a lot of influences, real or imaginary, are constantly at work on a man to make him abandon accepted, safe techniques and undertake something which should not or cannot be done. An aviator is always anxious to do the best he can, but he can go too far if he allows pride or a desire for credit to push him into an action beyond his capabilities. His planned, conscious techniques match his experience and skill and there is about as much chance of his violating them as there is of palm trees sprouting at the north pole. 
Our standard friend grows up with his job. He doesn't mind showing his ignorance when there is something to be learned or admitting a particular task is not yet within his grasp. He is always anxious to add to his store of knowledge and he is aware his C.O. always has time to answer questions and share his own expenence. 
Through adoption of set procedures, an Army flyer can leap the gap which sometimes exists between judgment and experience and compensate for the occasional emotional or physical upheaval which drives people into rash or even suicidal acts. And on~y 
through positive application of all the principles of fixed routines can he avoid the Six Deadly Sins of Army Aviation: 
1. 
Misuse of controls 

2. 
Inadvertent operation of 

3. 
Violation of regulations 

4. 
Failure to act 

5. 
Acting on impulse 

6. 
Inattention. 


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Faster Army aircraft is sometimes dangerous, occasionally nervewracking, usually enjoyable-and always distracting. The man in the cockpit can never abandon the watch he sets on himself by so much as a second. Fully conscious that the results of a thoughtless act can be pretty nasty and that an accident can happen to anybody he is always on guard against any temptation to violate routine. He has his methods established and he sticks by them. 
Our hard-headed old New England ancestors would probably tell you our standard flying man has been blessed with a good helping of plain, ordinary 
COMMON SENSE 
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HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY WASHINGTON, D.C., 16 March 1964 
DA Pam 95-12 is published for the use of all concerned. By Order of the Secretary of the Army: 
Official: 
J. C. LAMBERT, 
Major General, United States Army, 
The Adjutant General. 

Distribution : 
Active Army: 
DCSPER, ATTN: USA Director of OCofSptS (5) 
Safety (70) USAAA (5) ACSI (5) ARADCOM (131) ACSFOR, AV (25) USCO~ARC (115) DCSLOG (10) USARAL (111) CRD (10) USARSOUTHCOM (83) CXGB (1800) USAREUR (1500) Ofc Res Comp (1) USARPAO (12) TPMG (5) USARJ (7) OPO (5) USARYIS (762) USASA (5) USARFT (30) CofEngrs (6) MDW (97) TSG {5) First USA (114) OCCE (5) Second USA (311) CofT (20) Third USA (1980) 
NG: To be distributed by the CNGB. 
USAR: To be distributed by Army Headquarters. 
For explanation of abbreviations used, see AR 320-50. 

40 

EARLE G. WHEELER, 
General, United States Army, Chief of Staff. 
l!'ourth USA (5.73) 
Fifth USA (315) 
Sixth USA (253) 
EUSA (417) 
USABAAR (100) 
USA AVN Test Bd (30) 
USAAVNC (1200) 
Ft Rucker (5000) 
Ft Wolters (600) 
USA Trans Intel Agcy (3) 
AMS ATTN : Safety Director (30) 
MAAG {4) 
Mil Msn (2) 
USA C~rps (20) 
-{:{U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1964 o-ns-392 
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