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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
Hello Old Wizard,
could that be the reason why we (Luftwaffe) decided to shift low level flight manouvers to Canada?
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.
Kruska,
I'm surprised to find out that Luftwaffe pilots felt inferior...I guess the 'experten mystique' remains very powerful. Is it due to financial reasons that their training is not up to par with other Western nations? And is this recent, or has it been the norm since the Luftwaffe was rebuilt after the war?
I remember Hartmann's bitterness about the 'too-early' acquisition of the F-104, but wasn't Canada's loss rate even higher? We certainly had the space to train in, and we lost over half of our Zippers to accidents (this is from memory...)
Anyone here know much about WWII Russian aircrew training? I get the impression it wasn't that great. Perhaps too much emphasis on dialectical materialism, and not enough ACM...
Hey Ol' Wiz, isMaybe so that your aircrews could have fun scaring Caribou over Labrador and sport fishermen in Alberta.
When the GAF initially were having a tough time with the 104 I believe Galland or Hartman asked the RCAF to do an inventory of the operating procedures which were found wanting in both maintainence and airmanship. They soon switched over to the RCAF doctrine . I have an article on this some where in non dewey system archives . As for the 104 it worked in a dangerous enviroment low and fast and 31 hit the cumulous granite and and 13 were birdstrikesHello pbfoot,
So the flight training of the CAF might not have been so good after all ?
Okay very sorry, it is not in my intention to make fun of those CAF pilots who crashed or got killed.
What makes me wonder is that the CAF or RCAF did have a continuous follow up on technological developments and new fighter types after WW2, which the GAF did not have.
As such the "jump" after 10 years from Mach 0 to Mach 1.0 to Mach 2 was actually the reason for overstressing the abilities of the F-104G crews.
My uncle loved the F104G, he's quite famous for certain "stunts" within the 60's but he was a WW2 veteran with thousands of flying hours and did his PPL in Switzerland shortly after WW2.
Did the CAF jump from Sabres straight to the CF104 or wasn't there the CF100 and CF101 Voodoo in between?
View attachment 62504
Regards
Kruska