The Most Difficult Thing In Aviation?

  

"If you can drive a car, you can learn to fly an airplane."

As a helicopter flight instructor, I've made this statement for years.
I still believe it is true. I fly helicopters AND airplanes, and the only thing I ever found remotely difficult about flying the fixed-wing was landing with a strong crosswind.
(Manipulating the controls of the helicopter automatically adjusts for crosswind landings. Having first learned to fly helos, crosswind landings in fixed-wing aircraft seems totally foreign and uncomfortable to me.)

But there IS one task in all of aviation I believe may be more difficult than learning to hover and do a perfect normal approach in a helicopter-
And that task is landing an airplane on a pitching, rolling, moving deck of a ship.

This video is 27 minutes in length. If you have any interest in aircraft carrier ops or in the history of how we got where we are in Naval Aviation, I think it is worth your time.

And I'll now be searching for a copy of the original "The Fighting Lady".
Neat stuff.