Peter Gunn
Master Sergeant
"Ehrlicher Arzt, der Laborkittel macht deinen Hintern nur so groß..."
Honest Herr Doktor, that lab coat makes your butt look only this big
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Reminds me of my warrant officer appointment physical. I had to report at 04:30, and since I finished work at 01:30, I decided not to bother to try to sleep. By the time we got around to the balance tests, sometime after lunch, I was beginning to get a bit woozy. Coordination and balance definitely suffered after being awake for more than 36 hours, but I passed. Not without a few dirty looks from the docs.
I found the book to be excellent with little of the whitewash you normally find in Russian books.... the rear gunner is 'expendable' ... seated outside the titanium tub .... but the losses in the early models - single seaters - were, even by Soviet standards, unacceptable.
But the weak spot was the unprotected oil cooler - underneath. Ilyushin was never able to fully meet the performance specs that the Air Ministry set for the plane but that didn't stop deployment.
[Red Star Against the Swastika, Vasily B Emelianenko]