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For quite a while I held to John's view about WWI aircrew being mostly scared most of the time. The more I've learned about people, though, the more I've had to adjust my view. I still believe that the majority of aircrew were indeed suffering to some extent from stress. But I've also come to the conclusion that some men adapt very well to stressful situations. Some of these are just plain psychotic; we should never forget that some of the men who became heroes fighting in this war might never have fitted into "normal" society. But most of those who became aces were, I think, just self-centred and self-absorbed enough (call it borderline sociopathic, if you want) to be able to cope under the stresses of daily flights under the most hazardous conditions. And once you learn that you're able to cope with stress, it seems to me a natural response to want to test your own limits. This would, I think, explain the deadly situations some pilots sometimes put themselves into. Factor in the social constructs of the time (very real to many aircrew, if somewhat preposterous to us) and I have no trouble believing that many pilots did believe, some of them throughout their time of service, in the sorts of social myths Mr. Ralph describes.
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