If you were a pilot in ww2 which plane would you want to fly
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danperin
Recruit
P-47D!
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,954
- Jun 25, 2013
Quite true. I'm USian, so my fighter choices in 1942 -- before that is not relevant -- are the Wildcat, P-40, the P-39, and, possibly, Spitfires.
I think I'd take a Catalina.
Shortround6
Major General
Flying out of Florida
Greg Boeser
1st Sergeant
One of the late war German ones.
"If you see a silver plane, it's American, if you see a green one, it's British, and if it's invisible, it's one of ours."
"If you see a silver plane, it's American, if you see a green one, it's British, and if it's invisible, it's one of ours."
Carboncrank
Airman
- 24
- Dec 16, 2016
Maybe the question is too vague. What kind of combat would you want to fly a jug in? Let's say air to air combat and there's a load of 109's a 190's coming. You are running up to the flightline and you can choose between a mustang and a jug.
You first job is to shoot down bad guys. Your second job is to not get killed. Big powerful tough or fast and nimble? Big target or small one?
While one reason humans evolved is because we're tough as mammoth hide, the main reason is because we have big brains. Darwin say the smart man call is better than the tough hard man call.
Now, if the combat assignment is shooting up trains and convoys and bad guys on the ground the smart call is different. There's that whole rifle shot in the Prestone tank thingy.
parsifal
Colonel
For most pilots in WWII, the objective isn't to kill the enemy, its just to stay alive. Numerous studies show that about 80% of the killing is done by 20% of the pilots. The rest are just there as target, to increase the chances for the real killers in the group.
fastmongrel
1st Sergeant
Probably nearer 90% to 10% and the big scorers were one in a hundred.
The bare statistics hide a lot of things. For example in many German squadrons the prestige of the squadron was enhanced by having a top scorer so the squadrons efforts were geared to increasing one or two pilots. On the other side the RAF used "weavers" for a while flying behind the formation. This was the place most likely to be "bounced" and frequently given to new pilots i.e.least experienced. They suffered very high losses.
I would say that for the first few missions at least a pilot should be more concerned with survival than anything else, not easy to do though.
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,954
- Jun 25, 2013
I've read — I think it was a book by Gwyn Dyer — that only about 15% of the soldiers in a firefight used their weapons. Interestingly, it wasn't always the same 15%: everybody was about equally active overall,
This is a human trait. There was documentary on TV about an excavation of a battlefield site from the US war of independence or civil war. Some of the muskets found had a high number of cartridges rammed down the barrel one on top of the other, in the most rigid of military activity some were just going through the motions.. In another documentary which covered all areas of the military it estimated that less than 5% of males in military service were true "warriors". Whereas 10, 15 or 20% can do the killing 5% or less can do it and then return to their previous life unchanged
soulezoo
Senior Airman
This is all true. And to add, many soldiers who do fire their weapons, unconsciously aim to miss (i.e. shoot blindly upwards for instance), or close their eyes while firing. .
It makes me laugh on TV news programmes when irregular "fighters" are shown doing just that on camera. It even fools the reporters who describe them as fearless or fanatics depending on which image they want to project.
Greg Boeser
1st Sergeant
The saying in Iraq was "Allah will guide my bullets."
swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,954
- Jun 25, 2013
Kind of like the people who eschew medical trearment for prayer?
Greg Boeser
1st Sergeant
Perhaps.
I prefer prayer with medical treatment. I'm a form believer in using all that God's creation has provided for my well being, and thanking Him for it.
I prefer prayer with medical treatment. I'm a form believer in using all that God's creation has provided for my well being, and thanking Him for it.
parsifal
Colonel
Ive been under fire. Id be interested to hear how other people reacted when under fire.
I certainly did not shut my eyes or not want to mete out retribution to the sobs shooting at me. To be honest, I was scared sh*tless before and after the events, but whilst it was happening, I found I just shut out everything and got on with the job of returning fire.
It was a case of a drug runner firing at my guys as we were boarding to search and apprehend his vessel. Lucky for us he was bloody scared as well. My guys hit the deck, I pulled out my pistol, emptied 13 rounds into the wheelhouse, swore at the little t*rd, was reloading and telling this loser to come out so I could put him out his misery. it was about that time that someone told me he was trying to surrender. Within seconds I was on the deck myself, the adrenalin was that intense. I would say that people do act uncharacteristically when under fire, and often unpredictably. I don't normally behave like a murderous nutter most of the time, though there are people in this place who might think differently.
There have been episodes since, but none as intense as that. Maybe I got used to it.
,
I certainly did not shut my eyes or not want to mete out retribution to the sobs shooting at me. To be honest, I was scared sh*tless before and after the events, but whilst it was happening, I found I just shut out everything and got on with the job of returning fire.
It was a case of a drug runner firing at my guys as we were boarding to search and apprehend his vessel. Lucky for us he was bloody scared as well. My guys hit the deck, I pulled out my pistol, emptied 13 rounds into the wheelhouse, swore at the little t*rd, was reloading and telling this loser to come out so I could put him out his misery. it was about that time that someone told me he was trying to surrender. Within seconds I was on the deck myself, the adrenalin was that intense. I would say that people do act uncharacteristically when under fire, and often unpredictably. I don't normally behave like a murderous nutter most of the time, though there are people in this place who might think differently.
There have been episodes since, but none as intense as that. Maybe I got used to it.
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Carboncrank
Airman
- 24
- Dec 16, 2016
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
I hear a lot of extraordinary claims being made in the last few posts and zero extraordinary proof.
This is the age of search engines. Opinions are meaningless unless you can connect them to the reasons you hold them. facts and data are easy to find. All the information in the history of mankind is basically at your fingertips .
Use it.
I do not buy the premise that most Pilots were flying around just avoiding combat. And nobody here is bothered to source that notion. Some facts are that we had more pilots coming through training than we knew what to do with. We washed out thousands of fighter pilots. My father was a Hellcat pilot. I know what he went through in flight training. Only the most aggressive true believers made it out of fighter pilot flight schools. If you didn't show the proper aggression you ended up being a flying truck driver in a c-47 or a B-17. Most all of them were itching for a fight. Read the books written by fighter pilots. They hated missions where they couldn't find a fight. My uncle was a bombardier on a B-17 shut down December 1st 1943 And spent 18 months in prisoner-of-war camps. He said B-17 bombing missions were absolutely terrifying. The helpless feeling of making long flights in broad daylight with German Fighters trying to kill you and the German 88's on the ground trying to kill you and all you can do is keep flying in a straight line. And this was before the Mustangs. But he says almost without exception everybody did the professional job they were trained to do. I've read the daily reports of the 91st Bomb Group 322nd Squadron through 1943. I see no evidence of the kind of cowardice you are inferring. I didn't hear it from my uncle, I didn't hear it from my father, I didn't hear it from my father's best friend who flew b-29s. I didn't hear it the air crew guys that I've met or the Guadalcanal veteran that I met and others.(as a long hair anti-war Counter Culture type I somehow became friends with this Guadalcanal veteran.... And a Korean War Navy SEAL now that I think of it.)
And cowardice is what several you are inferring by these claims that only a small percentage of World War II soldiers in fighter squadrons and an infantry actually participated in the fight. You're inferring cowardice.
What I've read, and what I've heard from direct sources is that by the time you made it to combat the thing you are most worried about was letting down the other guys in your squad or your squadron.
The kind of thing you're talking about more describes the later years of Vietnam more than it does World War II, but that's a whole different story. But even in Vietnam the combat infantryman feared most doing something that got one of his friends killed.
If you're in a Fighter Squadron in World War II and you end up in a fight with the Enemy you don't have a choice but to fight.
Even in the real world best defense is an offense.
One time long ago this huge tough guy took a swing at me at a bar. I have extremely fast reflexes and he missed badly. As his arm went across me he was close enough that I got hold of his shirt at the chest as we went to the floor I held him as close to my body as I could so that he couldn't get his arms out and swing. People stepped in and broke it up.
But that does not describe combat.
This is not a glorification of War. There is no glory in war, ever. I hate the war, not the warrior.
parsifal
Colonel
I was relying mostly on jim Dunnigans book "Dirty Little Secrets of WWII". I know Jim and can say he is now a senior adviser to the US department of defence. There are few people with grater general military knowledge than he.
Referring to this passage in Dunningan's book
"One of the more unpleasant aspects of air warfare is that there were only two kinds of pilots, aces (who shot down five or more aircraft) and targets (pilots who got shot down). There was no middle ground. There was no "average" pilot. During the war, a new pilot, on average, had about a 7 percent chance of being shot down on his first encounter with the enemy. As he experienced more combat, his chances of survival increased. By his tenth combat, his chances of getting shot down were less than 1 percent and tended to stay there for the rest of his career. Only 5 percent of pilots shot down five or more aircraft. The rest, for the most part, served mainly to provide victims for the aces in air-to-air combat. Only about a half of all pilots ever shot down another aircraft, and only 10 percent of that august group obtained five kills and qualified as an ace. Fortunately, many fighter pilots were able to apply themselves usefully in ground attack missions."
I dont now have a copy of his book, having lent it to someone, who decided not to return it. .
FWIW, I did find a thesis at some point by someone at USACGSC on air-to-air combat, where the section on Vietnam noted that TOPGUN trained naval aviators accounted for 50% of their squadron's kills.
no implication on cowardice mentioned or implied here. its a question of combat experience .
Stephen Bungay quotes similar figures in Chapter 20 of Most Dangerous Enemy, "Hunters and Hunted" - 5% of pilots scoring 40% of all kills. He cites Systems Analysis Problems of Limited War, a 1966 paper by Herbert K. Weiss, and Mike Spick's The Ace Factor, though I'm afraid I haven't got either to check the originals.
Bungay looks at RAF claims during the Battle of Britain where 2,927 pilots made 2,698 claims. 104 of those pilots were aces (five or more claims) and they made 806 claims, so about 30% of the claims were made by 3.5% of the pilots, broadly in line with the previous figures. He briefly assesses the qualities that allowed a pilot to survive (flying ability, eyesight and mental capability/situational awareness); in aces these were combined with the ability to hit a target (many of the more successful pilots were keen hunters).
So where are your sources to refute these analyses?
Referring to this passage in Dunningan's book
"One of the more unpleasant aspects of air warfare is that there were only two kinds of pilots, aces (who shot down five or more aircraft) and targets (pilots who got shot down). There was no middle ground. There was no "average" pilot. During the war, a new pilot, on average, had about a 7 percent chance of being shot down on his first encounter with the enemy. As he experienced more combat, his chances of survival increased. By his tenth combat, his chances of getting shot down were less than 1 percent and tended to stay there for the rest of his career. Only 5 percent of pilots shot down five or more aircraft. The rest, for the most part, served mainly to provide victims for the aces in air-to-air combat. Only about a half of all pilots ever shot down another aircraft, and only 10 percent of that august group obtained five kills and qualified as an ace. Fortunately, many fighter pilots were able to apply themselves usefully in ground attack missions."
I dont now have a copy of his book, having lent it to someone, who decided not to return it. .
FWIW, I did find a thesis at some point by someone at USACGSC on air-to-air combat, where the section on Vietnam noted that TOPGUN trained naval aviators accounted for 50% of their squadron's kills.
no implication on cowardice mentioned or implied here. its a question of combat experience .
Stephen Bungay quotes similar figures in Chapter 20 of Most Dangerous Enemy, "Hunters and Hunted" - 5% of pilots scoring 40% of all kills. He cites Systems Analysis Problems of Limited War, a 1966 paper by Herbert K. Weiss, and Mike Spick's The Ace Factor, though I'm afraid I haven't got either to check the originals.
Bungay looks at RAF claims during the Battle of Britain where 2,927 pilots made 2,698 claims. 104 of those pilots were aces (five or more claims) and they made 806 claims, so about 30% of the claims were made by 3.5% of the pilots, broadly in line with the previous figures. He briefly assesses the qualities that allowed a pilot to survive (flying ability, eyesight and mental capability/situational awareness); in aces these were combined with the ability to hit a target (many of the more successful pilots were keen hunters).
So where are your sources to refute these analyses?
Perhaps you should rest a while, read your own post and consider the complete contradictions it has within and then consider the contradictions with historical evidence. There is a poster here who has on his siggy "if it is a fair fight you have done something wrong" that is the basis of air combat. Knocking your enemy out of the sky before he sees you or can hit you is the ideal all branches of all air forces worked towards and still do.
If you want to bring personal experience into the discussion, I was a motorcycle racer which seems like an aggressive sport. Purely aggressive riders crash well and often. It is the skilled riders that win the race, the best are not aggressive at all but out ride and out think their rival. Your dad may or may not have been aggressive in a Hellcat, What is certain is no one was ever allowed to fly a Hellcat purely because he was aggressive. One Ace produced by the Battle of Britain was Bob Doe he was in no way aggressive at all, and was not an outstanding pilot he hated flying inverted, his strength was he concerned himself with his own survival. That is not cowardice it is sensible, every combat he survived he improved until he could match the best. There were many courageous and aggressive pilots lost their lives by disobeying orders chasing LW aircraft back over the channel. I respect their courage but that is no way to win the battle you are involved in
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