How dangerous was it to fly ww2 era aircraft even without ever seeing combat.

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michael rauls

Tech Sergeant
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Jul 15, 2016
I've run across a few things lately that made me wonder about this. The first was that the 56th fighter group apparently lost about 10% of their pilots when training in there new p47s stateside( and as far as I know the Thunderbolt had fairly docile handling characteristics compaired to other ww2 fighters). Also I read an interview with a p40 pilot that said the same thing, about a 10% fatality rate durring training.
Lastly, today I ran across a website that listed all the p51 accidents since 1947 and it seems an average of about 1 fatality a year can be atributed to P51 crashes. Cosidering there's only(I think) about 200 p51s in existence that's quite an achievement so to speak.
It looks to me like training and flying a fighter in ww2 was plenty risky even if you never saw combat.
Would love to hear everyones comments on this.
 
i am going to say 10% is low. Just a quick run through on Bud Anderson's website of 357th losses have 13 training deaths out of the 81 he has listed. that is about 16%. Some of the losses were weather related maybe some of those were also training??? between training, weather, mechanical problems ( structural failure, OX systems malfunction, etc ), and loss to groundfire ( strafing )...those claimed more lives that air to air combat. so just flying could be very dangerous...
 
I wish I could remember the magazine and the P-51 fighter squadron/group the article was about but the article was about Big Week and it seemed that several losses occurred during formation form up after take-off. Once the Group cleared the clouds they noticed they were missing aircraft
 
Another interesting angle on this I should have included in the thread introduction is what types in particular were dangerous to there own pilots and which types, at least comparatively, were not. From what I've read read I get the impression that the F6F and SBD were not full of unpleasant surprises but beyond that it's not something you read alot about one way or the other.
 
You're definitely right. Heck, a car will kill you if you don't pay attention to what you should be doing but modern day military aircraft or even ww2 era civilian aircraft are and were not killing 10% or more of there pilots durring training which points out( I think) just how dangerous a job it was even if one never saw any combat or verry little.
Don't think most people appreciate the risk those guys took to do there jobs even those that never fired there guns in combat. I can honestly say I didn't realize this until recently.
 
You also have to take into consideration that in wartime, pilots were at a premium, so the training process was accelerated in order to get "bodies" to the front line.
The Luftwaffe had the most comprehensive flight school of any air force in the world at the time (late 30's - early 40's) and they were turning out world-class aviators after months of intensive training, but by war's end, the training was literally in the cockpit and "good luck, here you go". There were even a few late-war Aces with the rank of Gefreiter - that's an Airman First Class.
Imperial Japan was a similar situation...intensive training pre-war but scraping the barrel towards the end.

The Allies fared a little better, but with Britain and the U.S., they were hard pressed to get pilots to the front during the war, so the training process was a bit more accelerated than it would be in modern times.

Matter of fact, in the early days of the war, the USAAF was in such need of pilots, they were drawing pilots from the Enlisted ranks during 1941 and '42.
 
Hey michael rauls,

Check out the USAAF Statistical Digest here: (https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a542518.pdf)

Combat theater losses (including operational losses) starts on pg.275 and losses due to accidents (including training accidents) in the continental US starts on pg.330.

and the USN Statistical Digest here: (http://beneathhauntedwaters.com/PDF-HTML_docs/NavyCrashWWII.pdf)

The USN document is less detailed than the USAAF document, and only includes the combat and operational losses in the combat theaters, and only includes the operational losses suffered by the units that saw combat in the months that they saw combat. It does not include training losses outside of the combat theaters or any operational losses by units that did not see combat (i.e. patrol squadrons, ASW squadrons, training squadrons, etc.).
 
ThomasP has the key sources, especially for the continental US (which was mostly training). The rates probably did reach 10% fatalities for fighters at certain points in the war. For example on page 309 the peak fatality rate (1942 and 1943) was 17 per 100,000 hours. Most pilots got less than 500 hours over the course of their training (fewer in 1942, more in 1944 as the demand for pilots eased off). With 500 hours, that would be 8% fatalities! Fighter A/C were above the average, and certain fighters were worse than others. See second page of the attachment, which shows all accidents, not just fatal ones.
Here are some graphs I put together on this. Remember that 1) vast majority of accidents were not fatal, 2) different groups measured in different ways. For example it is very hard to compare US and German accident rates, but here is one assessment.
Once you get into combat, operational losses can be hard to measure. Pilots go out and do not return. Look at St. Exupery - his aircraft was found after 70 years, and we still don't know why he crashed.
 

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bobbysocks said:
Just a quick run through on Bud Anderson's website of 357th losses have 13 training deaths out of the 81 he has listed. that is about 16%.
Click to expand...

13 out of 81 is 16% of those who were killed. But the OP was saying that 10% of ALL pilots were killed in accidents (not just in training). That is presumably much higher.
Thanks for the mention of Bud Anderson - I will take a look, since I'm trying to get a better handle on accident rates in different air forces and different years.
 
Operational losses were especially high in Naval Aviation. Anything that's not a "mission" is I suppose training. During the whole of WWII the US lost about 400,000 killed. Astonishingly small considering the Russians lost about 250,000 just taking Berlin. I am convinced that if the US had run a 4 year long live fire exercise doing everything they did during the war, but without combat, they might have lost 150,000.

There is a controversy between the (mostly wealthy) warbird crowd and the museum types, is it really worth flying these birds? Like all pilots with ego's sure I'd like to tool around in one...
 
They were dangerous times, without many flying aids that pilots have today and without cities lit up at night for example. There was an increase in accidental losses in the RAF during the BoB put down to start of night flying but mainly to cockpit routine. Running out of fuel or crashing into hills due to navigation errors was quite common here in North England as were crashes due to icing on the wings. Collisions were also more frequent than I first thought.
 
I can see both sides of that controversy. On one hand those warbirds are precious limited resource and each time one gets destroyed that's an irreplaceable loss. On the other hand it's tragic in it's own way for them to sit and never fly as they were meant to.
 
You just need to take a look at who is funding the restorations to know who really cares about keeping these machines preserved...
 
Lauren Hildebrand's Unbroken has figures for non combat losses. I can't remember its been a couple years since I read the book. Louis Zamperini's B-24 was lost in a accident. And I believe a plane that was sent to search for his plane was lost. Flying long distance over the ocean took a lot of courage, even in a 4 engine bomber.
 
Slightly off topic, but when I took WOFT, Army flight training in 1970, in my one company we started out with 120-125 students, 3 students and one instructor was killed just in the 110-120 hour primary flight part.
That one instructor, like all our instructors, a veteran of a Vietnam tour. Probably over 2500 hours. Ironic that he could safely get back from a combat tour and die instructing a student in the pre-solo stage of flight training.
I'd heard more than one instructor comment that they considered instructing more hazardous than combat.
Maybe they were just jerking our chains, or maybe there was some truth in the statements.

I'd heard more than one instructor say " Hodges, you trying to kill me ? " or words to that effect.

Near the end of primary flight we were asked to critique our flight training.
My beef was we had so much to do that you either couldn't get it all done, or you lost sleep. I'd actually partly nod off in class, had a hard time staying awake during class room instruction, but always managed to stay wide awake during inflight training.
Luckily I was already pretty well versed in what they were trying to teach us in the classroom, I'd immersed myself in aviation since about 10 years old.
But the actual flying part needed time.

My critique got answered . I was told, in writing, that flight training was intended to be a pressure cooker environment , it was better to weed out those who couldn't make the grade, or take the stress, early, than to give a gentle instruction program that never prepared the student for what he'd actually face in combat operations.

They were right.

What I'm trying to say is maybe military flight training is probably never going to be like civilian flight training, it's always going to be a competitive, pressure cooker environment , even more so when a war is going on.
 
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nuuumannn said:
Ah, don't you just love the Socialist approach to aviation! I'd add the Me 163 as an aircraft that killed more Luftwaffe pilots than Allied ones!
Click to expand...
Aother good example was the He162 that lost more aircraft to operational incidents than combat - 13 aircraft lost but only two were shot down.
 
Somewhere in one of the threads here was a list of flights or accidents or something but what I took notice of was a formation flight south where all aircraft crashed into the mountains of Venezuela because of fuel depletion. At this time I think they were A-17s being delivered. Obviously poor navigation aids and unfamiliar territory cost five, or was it seven, aircraft and lives.
 
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