Simviation Forums

Pilot Shot Between The Eyes Rescues Comrades

We always knew this chap was going places in the RAF - now he's going to get the DFC (at least!) for this, it seems even more inevitable!

Top bloke!

I don't want to take anything away from the chap, I would not swap places with him, but I would be interested to read the real story and not the boy's own version produced for Joe Public. Whist he struggled to fly with blood was pouring from a gunshot wound to the forehead, what was the other pilot doing, filing his nails, reading the agony page of the Sun. Sorry to be sceptical, but it looks like this has been spun to make a feel good factor for an unwanted war.

Matt

I don't want to take anything away from the chap, I would not swap places with him, but I would be interested to read the real story and not the boy's own version produced for Joe Public. Whist he struggled to fly with blood was pouring from a gunshot wound to the forehead, what was the other pilot doing, filing his nails, reading the agony page of the Sun. Sorry to be sceptical, but it looks like this has been spun to make a feel good factor for an unwanted war.

We'll see. I'm sure it has been "tabloided" a little. Still, it's not everyday a former colleague survives a bullet to the head!

I don't want to take anything away from the chap, I would not swap places with him, but I would be interested to read the real story and not the boy's own version produced for Joe Public. Whist he struggled to fly with blood was pouring from a gunshot wound to the forehead, what was the other pilot doing, filing his nails, reading the agony page of the Sun. Sorry to be sceptical, but it looks like this has been spun to make a feel good factor for an unwanted war.

Matt

It does seem odd... but in the heat of combat, when you're busy flying a chopper, it's possible to not realize the severity of your injuries, and other crew may also not be aware at first.
A better case-in-point is the story of ANG Major Tammy Duckworth, who was commanding a Blackhawk (with the copilot actually at the controls at that moment) that took an RPG hit in the nose, which blew off both her legs and almost took off one arm.

She was unware, at first, that she'd been hurt so badly, because she was focusing on the aircraft, as her training would require:

[i]

Bullet took out the hinge of the IR sight, he got the metal shards of that in his forehead, not the actual bullet. But that doenst make it less dangerous