That sounds almost like some of the exams that Heinlein described in his story Space Cadet.
“FOAF”?
Friend of a friend. e.g. My neighbor said that her cousin said that her ex-boyfriend always ate ice cream with chipotle mayo on top.
IOW, a not very credible story probably distorted in the retelling[sup]n[/sup].
Which in this specific case it turns out I was wrong. Or at least probably wrong.
I’ll chime in for a second. . .
I was the same–I was in 3rd grade when Top Gun came out. Even put in my elementary school’s “yearbook” that I would be a US Air Force pilot.
Fast forward a bunch of years, and through my eyesight limiting me (I developed farsightedness–later corrected through PRK), I went through AF ROTC and became a Civil Engineer. Had the opportunity to become even better than a fighter pilot–I earned my E.O.D. badge.
See, when pilots screw up. . . I go fix it.
::ducks and runs:: Neener to you jet jockeys! 
Tripler
“The seat of purpose is on the land.” -Capt Hughes (USN).
[sub]underlining added by me to point out the important part.[/sub]
There was a sign that hung in the ready room of our squadron.
Our mission was to demonstrate to the enemy that no army could live, much less fight, while we were on top of them. And to meantime prevent the other guys from making the same point.
Ideally our army marches unopposed from the pre-conflict border right to their capital city. Because we paved the way for them. As seen in Iraq during the initial major combat and since, we’re a necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition to victory.
Now in the budget wars things are different. It’s all us all the time and don’t you grunty guys forget it.
So let’s say they pick someone with no flight experience, how did that person get initially trained? I assume the basics were covered very quickly; what plane would the student learn in? Would it be the standard Cessna a GA pilot learns in?
Pretty much.
A friend of mine up through high school is a Marine pilot, and basically the way he did it was to be the first guy accepted to Annapolis for his class year, graduated 3rd in his class, and then apparently kicked some ass in flight school and ever since. He’s something of a superstar from what I gather; being one of the Tailhooker of the Year about a decade ago, and now attending the National War College.
The details have varied from year to year and between USAF, USN/USMC/USCG, and US Army. In my era in USAF …
Everybody first learned to solo a Cessna 172 or similar. The Academy and OTS each had a dedicated training operation at a dedicated airstrip on the grounds. Which operated along very much military-style lines even though the workers were all civilians.
Folks going through ROTC would obtain similar experience from a civilian flight school near their college that was contracted with USAF. The curriculum was about 95% FAA standard private pilot, with a smidgen of military flavoring thrown in. But the folks doing the teaching had no real military background, and these programs were a small sidelight for most of the schools, so the overall flavor was much more civilian than was USAFA or OTS.
After that everybody from all three commissioning sources went through the exact same pilot training program, called “Undergraduate Pilot Training” (“UPT”). Which was one month of fulltime ground school academics, then 4 months flying T-37s while also doing ground school an hour+ a day. Then 6 months flying T-38s while also doing ground school an hour+ a day.
At that point you graduated as a USAF pilot and sent on to aircraft specific school (“Graduate Pilot Training”) for whatever your job was going to be.
Since my era the details of all this have shifted, and I don’t have all the details to hand. I know the big picture is still pretty similar.
I had many friends inspired by Top Gun and do the ROTC path in the early 90’s. Out of about a dozen that I knew, none managed to get fighter seats, only one even made it to a cargo plane flight crew. Too many applicants for a very few competitive slots.
To clarify (not that anyone cares), the helo trainer and the P-3 are the only military aircraft I got to ride in the cockpit.
I’ve been a passenger on several military transport/cargo aircraft, including a Navy C-9, and Air Force C-130, C-141, and C-5. I also got a ride in the back of a Marine Corps CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter (with an M-16 rifle between my legs and a few hundred rounds of blanks in my pockets).
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