Years ago I remember my father recounting to me a training film he and his fellow flight school students were asked (forced) to watch in which Guy Kibbee played an angel who admitted dead student pilots to a special place in heaven/hell, without knowing why. The flight instructor showed up to explain to him why they were there–in each case the student pilot had either violated a rule or skipped a procedure which caused the fatal wipeout. My father particularly remembered the tone of the instructors explanations as mocking, sarcastic and altogether unsympathetic to the plight of the students–‘”Smart-guy Jimmy here had his own clever ideas about how to land his plane…and look where it got him, heh heh heh.” Well, as you probably have guessed by now, I found said instructional film and am surprised by how much it resembles my father’s recollection of it forty or fifty years after he saw it. Even thought the memory of the film was an unpleasant one, clearly it had the desired effect on the students–why else would he have remembered it all those years later? So, dear audience, I hearby present you with “Learn and Live With Joe Instructor”. Every lesson in this film is still applicable and taught in flight schools, albeit in not quite the same style and with different music on the soundtrack. The plane they use is the mighty T-6 Texan (sometimes also known incongruously as the ‘Harvard’). I recall my father telling me that the first thing his instructor told the students about the Texan, which was nicknamed the ‘Pilot Maker’ was: “Don’t let the nickname fool you. This plane isn’t here to make you a pilot. It’s here to wash out the bad ones.” Trivia note: the animated oil gauge that comes to life is voiced by Mel Blanc, clearly on a day off from his robust schedule at the Loony Tunes offices at Warner Brothers.