It doesn't take a Choir Boy...

Neptunus Lex starts with a follow-up story on last year's Blackhawk crash in Afghanistan, then expands into a discussion on training and regulations for pilots. And yet we don't fill our ranks exclusively from the membership of the Vienna Boys' Choir. It takes a certain personality type to hurl himself at the earth at 500 knots and a 45 degree dive angle while the SAMs sing their songs in his radar warning receiver and the anti-aircraft artillery offers up its lethal blossoms both before and aft, and who in spite of that stays fixed upon the target like a bird dog trembling on point with a passionate intensity. Because he'd come too far just to jettison his bombs and bug the hell out. Compare the results in the above story with Good news / Bad news, courtesy of non-choirboy Bill, the Castle's rotary-wing specialist.