No reason to suppose any other force was any different. Every RAF pilots account I have read has said that pilots were accustomed to losing friends and fellow students long before they ever saw combat.Oh man.
How dangerous was it to fly ww2 era aircraft even without ever seeing combat.
- Thread starter michael rauls
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8000 killed in training in UK and since they weren't actually trained pilots until a proper training system was introduced the figures are even worse than they seem. The Royal Flying Corps in WW1 – dangers and accidents | Writing Family History
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,954
- Jun 25, 2013
While I'm sure the records exist, I wonder if there are any summary reports or would a researcher need to dig through hundreds of documents to get the information. The French and Germans likely kept decent records; I'm not so sure about the Austro-Hungarian (partly because of post-war disruptions permitting their loss) Italian, or British forces
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
I have a few books (packed away for the move) that cover training losses during the Great War, and they are sobering to say the least.
That time period was early enough in the aviation timeline, that aircraft design contributed a great deal to the losses as well as unrefined pilot technique. It also didn't help that parachutes were looked at as a novelty, too.
An example of the afore-mentioned aircraft design, the Sopwith Camel was good performer, but only for the experienced. It was more than a handful to the uninitiated and it nearly killed as many novice pilots during training as were killed flying it in combat.
As for WWII, here is a great publication focusing on USAAF training accidents during WWII:
https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/16879/MarlynPierce2013.pdf
That time period was early enough in the aviation timeline, that aircraft design contributed a great deal to the losses as well as unrefined pilot technique. It also didn't help that parachutes were looked at as a novelty, too.
An example of the afore-mentioned aircraft design, the Sopwith Camel was good performer, but only for the experienced. It was more than a handful to the uninitiated and it nearly killed as many novice pilots during training as were killed flying it in combat.
As for WWII, here is a great publication focusing on USAAF training accidents during WWII:
https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/16879/MarlynPierce2013.pdf
this website details all crashes in Yorkshire.
www.yorkshire-aircraft.co.uk
sobering how the majority are allied aircraft not Luftwaffe !
a dangerous game even without anybody shooting at you.
www.yorkshire-aircraft.co.uk
sobering how the majority are allied aircraft not Luftwaffe !
a dangerous game even without anybody shooting at you.
P-39 Expert
Non-Expert
We lost more planes to accident than we did to the enemy in WWII.
Freebird
Master Sergeant
Conversely, I would imagine that the aircraft with reputations for difficult handling or landing would generate higher accident rates.
SB2C and Seafire come to mind
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Several WWII aircraft that were unforgiving to novice pilots that come to mind, were the He162, F4U, Me163, B-26, Bf109, P-39, Me210 and LaGG-3.
All primary flight instructing is risky, to a degree, but fling wing training in a production environment has got to be 10x more so than rigid wing.
I got .1 hour of hover and hover taxi training in a Jetranger, and almost killed us all several times, much to the unruffled amusement of the IP, who was ferrying the bird out to an ordnance proving ground, where he was going to play live target for a radar guided AAA gun under development.
Cheers,
Wes
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michael rauls
Tech Sergeant
- 1,679
- Jul 15, 2016
Unfortunately that 20,000 number sounds believable. From the pilot quotes I've read on individual outfits 10% seemed to be about the going rate of training fatalities for USAAF types. I've only read 3 quotes from pilots concerning this but all 3 recalled about a 10% fatality rate. Even if it were half that it's a truly hair raising statistic.
tommayer
Airman
anecdotal speculation. Ding rates probably had a lot to do with what they flew. Maybe much more than high pressure training.
For 15 + years I gave biennials to & flew recreational acro with an ETO P-38 vet & an ETO 51 pilot. 51 jock had been shot down by ground fire twice. They were both terrific at stick and rudder work, not bad on gauges, at home inverted, and, when I first flew with each, did not know how VORs worked. In terms of pure flying they had been extremely well trained. What they did not know about then newish tech stuff they picked up in jig time. They both talked about how many of their contemporaries had bought farm in training. Short answer: lots of them.. Not surprising to me, since they'd been turned loose in medium tricky beasts, like 6s, with very little time. My deduction was you had to have been both good and lucky.
Things got much safer over the years. I was around the T-41 programs in Del Rio during Nam days. In spite of there being a war on, the cadets got lots of dual in souped up C-172s, a far more difficult airplane to kill yourself in than an SNJ or even a BT-13. T-41 was fine to get people ready for Tweety Birds and even T-38s, but flat Continentals perched on nose gears did not prepare you well to handle tailwheels attached to Merlin 61s or R-2800s with alcohol and water.
Related subject you guys might be interested in. See if somebody has any stats on training troubles when the USAF gave A-1s to the VNAF and started flying them themselves (Pleiku '66-'67, maybe later). A-1E reminded me of 1340 Bull Stearmans I'd been flying to dump DDT on cotton in northern Guatemala. Pretty gentle, as that sort of airplane goes. But the military junior birdmen of the day, who'd come up via nose gears and turbines, performed some really entertaining T/Os and lndgs. The ex-47/51 aces in the outfit, bald grandfathers with bifocals who'd been dragooned out of the Pentagon, were right at home, even if they hadn't touched a throttle in years.
In the 1980s, the commuter airline I was flying for was hiring 23 year old pilots with an aeronautical science degree, 900-1000 hours, and 100 hours multi. I had one from Embry Riddle Arizona in my right seat, who after I read him the JFK ATIS calling for turbulence, windshear, icing, an ILS to minimums, and poor braking action, said "What a way to get my first ACTUAL IFR experience! I've never been inside a cloud before. But I love a challenge!" Turns out he had 600 hours of flight instructing experience under his belt, 150 of it instrument training in the blue Arizona skies, and all of that "hood time". Needless to say, he became PNF and I flew the approach and landing. He got to dispose of the barf bags afterwards.
Cheers,
Wes
"Craig (2001) proposed that such a killing zone does indeed exist, and that it spans the range of approximately 50 to 350 total flight hours."
This is for GA pilots. Now imagine giving these pilots 1500-2000 HP high performance aircraft after they get their wings and told have a go at it. I guess my Father was rather correct in his thoughts conveyed to me.
If you survived your 25 mission tour on a bomber, you could be sent to an OCU as an instructor that was not much safer than operational flying.
Trainee pilots, war weary aircraft, lots of take offs and landings, the skies over the OCU full of trainee pilots - not a good mix.
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