Flying the Feathered Edge is an inspiring film about one of the world’s greatest pilots, Bob Hoover. There are a bunch of screenings in various cities on November 11. A group of (mostly) MIT-affiliated pilots watched this at a friend’s house last month on Blu-ray. What amazed us the most is that Hoover would fly high-performance fighter jets wearing a business suit. What’s also impressive, of course, is the amount of risk that a World War II combat pilot or an early Jet Age test pilot had to become comfortable with.
3 thoughts on “Do you need a flight suit, gloves, and helmet to fly a fighter jet?”
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Amazing that man lived to a ripe old age.
I think today there’s too much obsession with dressing the part. You really don’t NEED special clothing for a lot of things. Orville and Wilbur also favored business suits. People wore suits and ties (and hats) a lot more in the past on occasions when they would no longer be worn today.
I think it’s hilarious when I see weekend bike riders dressed as if they are about to race in the Tour de France when they are just out for a leisurely drive around the park.
Isn’t it a matter of “how” they are flying the fighter jet? The prospect of ejecting is one thing – but are there not functional bladders worn by pilots to keep blood in the right places during multi-G turns?
I don’t know about suits and gloves, but let’s not forget that Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier (Mach 1) with a broken rib. The night before he rode, and was thrown off a horse. It was in 1947, when nobody thought it necessary to subject military test pilots to obligatory pre-flight medical checks, during which the condition would have been detected—and then the squadron back-up pilot would have flown the Bell X-1 experimental aircraft. Quoted from memory, but the source: “The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe is solid.
PS. I once flew in a two-abreast ultralight wearing sandals. I remember that clearly, because I took pictures with my feet dangling over ever so smaller Lego-like doll houses.