drgondog
Major
Code:
Hello Elvis,
The US where the only wargoing nation that from the very beginning strongly empathized on the flight training of its pilots, and using a training and evaluation program very similar to its unique or typical American approach of mass production techniques. Therefore the US IMO had the best overall pilots during WW2 and maybe until today.
Regards
Kruska
We talked this over in another thread and as usual it is a.) hard to define 'Best' - but certainly easy to define 'Most'. In 1938 when Roosevely signed the Civilian Pilot Training Program Act there were only about 13,000 USAAF airmen and pilots, growing to 26,000 by Sept 1939 and 354,000 by Dec 1941.
By the time the CPTP was wound down 435,000 Pilots had graduated from Primary School at 1,132 different universities and 1,460 flight schools - and as such were accepted into USAAF Basic Training.
Looking over my father's logbook, he was entirely USAAF trained starting with his first flight Feb 7, 1941 and graduating from Aviation Cadet Training in June 1941 as a 2nd Lt with ~ 345 hrs. His total time was not unusual for pre-Dec 1941 cadets. By Pearl Harbor day he had 750 hours and was an IP at Goodfellow airfied, TX.
He became CO of the #3 BFTS - 302 AAFFTD on 2 January 1943 - a major training program for Brit and Commonwealth pilots at Miami OK. At that time he had 1430 hrs. When he finally escaped Training Command he got 100 hours in B-26, then escaped again to Fighters and got 250 hours more in P-40 before 'escaping again' to 8th AF.. where he got 3 hours at Goxhill, flew his first mission on D-day and scored his first kill - on 6 June his logbook time was 2100+ hours. At war end he had 2500+ hours
This is unusual, but an example of many of the best pilots out of Cadet Training were ASSIGNED as Instructor Pilots which is another reason US had very good training.
Last but not least was weather across entire southern half of US - very few bad flying days.