History Main / VeteranInstructor

* TruthInTelevision. During WWII, the Allies would pull their best aces out of combat and send them back to train new pilots. This served two purposes: it kept famous aces from being killed in combat, thus avoiding the blow to morale that it would cause, and it allowed new trainees to benefit from the aces' vastly greater experience, making them better pilots. It must have been a great incentive for pilots to excel, aka "Make Ace, get excused from combat sooner." Notably, Japan did ''not'' bring their aces out of combat (the idea being that they should stay where they could do the most damage against the enemy), and they were almost all killed eventually (the lone survivor was only pulled from the lines and sent to train new pilots due to a stress-caused error causing him to get a bullet in the eye) -- and the quality of Japanese pilots took a sharp downturn near the end of the war. This is also why the best-known Axis aces had higher kill counts than their Allied counterparts.

** At the conclusion of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', O'Brien heads back to Earth to become one of these at the Academy. He'd been doing a fair bit of the VeteranInstructor schtick as part of his regular duties during the last two seasons anyway. Especially to Cadet Nog, who was whose period of "field training" away from the academy ended up being much longer than usual because of the Dominion War.

* At the conclusion of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', O'Brien heads back to Earth to become one of these at the Academy. He'd been doing a fair bit of the VeteranInstructor schtick as part of his regular duties during the last two seasons anyway. Especially to Cadet Nog, who was whose period of "field training" away from the academy ended up being much longer than usual because of the Dominion War.
* In the finale of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', Janeway volunteers as a guest lecturer on the Borg for Barclay's class, being one of the very few people who have extensive experience with them.

** Can happen in the Inner Sphere whenever a lowborn mechwarrior reaches retirement in service to a Successor State by one means or another (noble or ennobled mechwarriors get officer training, take over their family's estate, or are attained by their own lords and given lands to rule instead). For those who started out as mercenaries or the lucky few who tested into mechwarrior training, this is pretty much a dream assignment; unfortunately the positions are few and far inbetween (there being very few mechwarrior academies) and competition is fierce.

* In ''Film/TopGun'', the flight instructors at the eponymous school are all experienced veteran pilots. At the end of the movie, Maverick suggests that he might want to become an instructor himself. In the novel, he does.
** Based on the actual school, which had ace pilots as instructors. However, the storyline misses one important point of the actual school: Graduates of the Top Gun training course are intended to return to their original squadrons to teach the techniques they just learned to their comrades.

* ''Manga/OnePiece'': Marine Vice Admiral Monkey D. Garp becomes this during the TimeSkip. After retiring from active Marine duties, he retains his rank and stays on as a Marine instructor in order to bring up new and young Marines. Even before the time skip, he manages to turn two wimps, Coby and Helmeppo, into hardened Marine officers.