Total number of USAAF fighter pilots enlisted in WW2

[Deleted member 68059]

I`m looking for the total number of USAAF fighter pilots who enlisted in WW2, as in the total from all years of the war, not the
number operational at one point in time.

This sounds like a very straightforward statistic to obtain, but it appears not to be.

Anyone got any thoughts on what this number is, or where it can be obtained.

It has to be fighter pilots, not just airmen sadly.

 

[Greg Boeser]

Well, the question asks about fighter pilots enlisted. Nobody enlisted as a fighter pilot.

 

[Deleted member 68059]

Well, the question asks about fighter pilots enlisted. Nobody enlisted as a fighter pilot.

Presumably it must still have been recorded what aircraft type the pilots were trained in and ended up serving in, I cant imagine very many people switched. You cant possibly tell me the USAAF didn't know how many pilots suitable for each service aircraft type they had.

 

[Shortround6]

It maybe that the fighter pilots were not segregated from from pilots in general until graduation from flight school.
Once you had a 'pool' of pilots (graduating class) they were separated out into Fighter pilot, bomber pilot and transport pilots and sent to appropriate advanced training.
Please note that this had as much or more to do with temperament (aggressiveness?) vrs actual flight skill. You wanted very good but careful pilots flying bombers with 5-10 man crews or transports with 20-50 passengers.
You want cocky pilots for fighter pilots, they had to believe that they were the hottest pilot in the sky if they were trying to shoot down enemy pilots you thought they were the hottest pilots in the sky. Fighter pilots who 2nd guess themselves during combat may not last long?
With that said, some fighter pilots could sort of flunk out of fighter training and be sent to bomber or transport schools. They already had a lot of money (training time) invested in them and it may have been possible to be transferred from multi engine school to fighter (maybe by being a pain in the ass to the commander by requesting a transfer every other day

In the US men who flunked out of "pilot school" were often sent to navigator and/or bombardier school.
A lot of US pilots were officers and joined up as officers based on their education as in years of collage education. I don't think they had to have graduated but they needed at least 1 full year? or maybe two? Not sure on this but the collage education was dividing line between officer and enlistment which is why they had a name for enlisted men who became officers.

There were also physical requirements (eyesight, hearing and other) that might block an enlistee from going to flight school but not keep him from serving in the ground forces (or as ground staff in the Air Corp).

Just throwing out reasons why the number you are looking for might be hard to find as they may not have actually kept such a record?

I cant imagine people switched.

They did, not often after the end of training but while they may have enlisted as a pilot they were not guaranteed type of aircraft. Sometimes one school or another ( bomber or transport) got a priority on one graduating class or another depending on the needs that month (or week).

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Pilots were sometimes shifted around between a/c roles, as well. Bomber pilots trained and flew P-51s to do weather surveillance, fighter pilots became transport pilots, and so on.

 

[Greg Boeser]

Needs of the force was certainly the guiding principle. At times graduates were given a choice, other times the service selected based on requirements.

 

[Shortround6]

This may have errors in it but the US (and other air forces) changed things around during WW II.

Aviation Cadet Training Program (USAAF) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You would need the
Number of men who enlisted to be pilots.
Number of men who qualified for training to be pilots.
Number of men who qualified to be pilots. (graduated)
Or the number of men who became fighter pilots.

 

[Engineman]

Because service pilots were streamed and posted to Fighter roles as a specific employment, to meet the Service requirements, I would expect that there are statistics for the numbers who completed training to say, posting to fighter units out of training, or some similar landmark in training. That point might have been reached at the stage where "Wings" were awarded and the new groups were posted in disposal to fighting units or Fighter conversion training. Of course, the vagaries of what happened to different individuals and their desires, was very complicated. However, I think that the point in training where the trainee had qualified as a Service pilot and had also been selected by the Service to move into a Fighter pilot stream, defines the point that the trainee first becomes enlisted in the Fighter pilot cadre. Before that point, the trainee is neither a Service pilot nor a selected fighter pilot. Other service pilots that the Service later re-assigned to a Fighter role should be counted as part of the Fighter pilot cadre after their re-assignment.
I would expect that there are suitable statistics out there somewhere!

Eng

 

[GregP]

If you look in the Statistical Digest of World War Two, you can find Tables 47 and 48. These are "Flying Training Graduates, 3rd Quarter 1939 to 3rd Quarter 1945," and "Flying Training Eliminees and Fatalities" for the same period.

It is my thought that of you add up the fatalities, eliminees, and graduates, you have a number very close to the people who signed up to be pilots in the war.

That is, of course, all pilots. The table only tracks graduate fighter pilots who trained in P-38, P-39, and P-40 aircraft. From there, they went to specific type training, but they didn;t train in P-47s or P-51s until they reached their units. However, Table 47 only shows 18,617 graduates in the three fighters above, and those were in 1944/1945. My take on it is that they didn't specifically train pilots in fighter tactics, but rather trained them to fly the specific airplanes and they got transition and basic local fighter training at the units.

That has been repeatedly confirmed by pilots who were there in what we used to have as monthly presentations at the Planes of Fame. Most could fly the planes they were assigned to, but weren't really fighter pilots until they got to their units and survived their first 5 or so missions, absorbing what they could from their peers.

So, if you look at single engine pilots, the total graduated was 102,907, and most were likely fighter pilots.

Add the single-engine guys to the 18,617 fighter guys and you get 121,524. That doesn't account for P-38 pilots, though.

The two-engine pilots were 90,533 and I'd estimate maybe 15,000 of then went to P-38s, making the estimated fighter pilots at about 136,500.

Since we built about 100,000 fighters, that number seems low. You are right, this isn't easy. I'd estimate about 180,000 - 200,000 pilots myself, not counting eliminees and fatalities, but that's just my estimate.

It seems a harder question than is should be, doesn't it?

 

[Engineman]

If you look in the Statistical Digest of World War Two, you can find Tables 47 and 48. These are "Flying Training Graduates, 3rd Quarter 1939 to 3rd Quarter 1945," and "Flying Training Eliminees and Fatalities" for the same period.

It is my thought that of you add up the fatalities, eliminees, and graduates, you have a number very close to the people who signed up to be pilots in the war.

View attachment 753339

That is interesting. There must have been other statistical breakdown of Pilot allocations to role.

Edit. Got your later comments. Good job.

Eng

 

[Reegor]

As others have pointed out, the question does not fit the way decisions were made. ("Fighter pilots who enlisted.") The training system had a major branch after "wings" were awarded, but it was usually to single versus multi-engine School. There were a variety of single-engine non-fighter planes, including some bombers. And new-ish pilots were frequently sent into seemingly inappropriate assignments, e.g. trained for one thing and ended up doing something else.
A more feasible question would be "how many pilots had their first operational assignment to fighter units?" That may be very hard to get answers to, but it is well defined. Just realize that there were pilots who did second tours in very different aircraft, e.g. from fighters to multi-engine bombers. My sense is that for much of the war there was more need for multi-engine bomber pilots than there were volunteers. (Strategic bombing was rightly perceived as dangerous drudgery.)
Another question would be "why are you asking?" If we knew the purpose behind your question, we might be able to answer what you are really asking. And do study the "Statistical Digest."

 

[Deleted member 68059]

As others have pointed out, the question does not fit the way decisions were made. ("Fighter pilots who enlisted.") The training system had a major branch after "wings" were awarded, but it was usually to single versus multi-engine School. There were a variety of single-engine non-fighter planes, including some bombers. And new-ish pilots were frequently sent into seemingly inappropriate assignments, e.g. trained for one thing and ended up doing something else.
A more feasible question would be "how many pilots had their first operational assignment to fighter units?" That may be very hard to get answers to, but it is well defined. Just realize that there were pilots who did second tours in very different aircraft, e.g. from fighters to multi-engine bombers. My sense is that for much of the war there was more need for multi-engine bomber pilots than there were volunteers. (Strategic bombing was rightly perceived as dangerous drudgery.)
Another question would be "why are you asking?" If we knew the purpose behind your question, we might be able to answer what you are really asking. And do study the "Statistical Digest."

Its simply to allow turning the number of USAAF pilots who scored a victory or more, into a percentage of the total pilots who passed through the system who spent at least one part of their operational service flying a fighter in service. An exact answer is not required, but something approximate is useful.

 

[Snautzer01]

Perhaps in:

 

[MIflyer]

Total number of USAAF fighter pilots enlisted in WWII:

Answer: All of them.

 

[tyrodtom]

I surprised they lump people eliminated from flight training for not being able to learn to fly, for whatever reason, with those not able to complete it because they died trying.
Sort of a cold statistic, the USAAF didn't care why you didn't complete the training, just that you didn't complete it.

 

[R Leonard]

USAAF victory credits?

For fighter credits, go here
Numbered USAF Historical Studies 51-100
Pluck out study # 85 "USAF Credits for the Destruction of Enemy Aircraft, World War II."
Caution, it is 685 pages.

Or you can get same from here

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA542272.pdf

The alphabetical portion of the study is about 200 pages, but it gives you a list of individuals with victory credits which gives you a reasonable count. Probably find a couple of corporals and sergeants who were gunners in P-61's, but not enough to be statistically significant.

That little glitch is because of this: ". . . Individual fighter pilots in single-seat fighter aircraft earned almost all of the verified victory credits of World War II. However, this study also includes night fighter credits in which each member of the two- or three-man night fighter crew received one victory for each enemy plane destroyed. Though this distorts the actual number of enemy aircraft destroyed the procedure is the same as that used for World War I and Vietnam victory credits when a two-place fighter was involved."

A tedious process, but certainly do-able, especially if you plug the data into a spreadsheet and delete duplicate names/service numbers. I have little interest in the USAAF, but once, probably in a fit of boredom, did this years ago, so it looks like about total of 7,360 individuals out of 15,946 victories noted in the study.

Of course, there were obviously more than one or two fighter pilots who flew combat missions in the war & never shot at, much less shot down, anyone, so the number of credited pilots may not be a good indicator of an estimate of the total number of fighter pilots.

This might be of some interest, Study #2 "Initial Selection of Candidates for Pilot, Bombardier, and Navigator Training".

https://www.afhra.af.mil/Portals/16/documents/Studies/1-50/AFD-090602-023.pdf

 

[Engineman]

I surprised they lump people eliminated from flight training for not being able to learn to fly, for whatever reason, with those not able to complete it because they died trying.
Sort of a cold statistic, the USAAF didn't care why you didn't complete the training, just that you didn't complete it.

Agreed. I guess that these are the bottom-line stats and all the detail reasons for wash-outs are combined.

Eng

 

[Engineman]

The stats in post #9 breakdown in an interesting way. Taking the total washouts and deaths against the total trainees in each year, the percentage changes a lot!
Starting at the left, Jul-Dec 1939 and going forward;
37%, 24%, 22%, 15%, 12%, 10% and 9% . So it looks like the chop-rate or the Flight safety got a lot better! However, due to the fact that the numbers trained are huge after the 1941 figures, the really large numbers trained after 1941 in these stats are more representative with an overall chop+loss rate of about 11% over the whole period. If I were interested in the reasons for these stats, the three first year % figures would catch my attention. I wonder if they just changed the standards? Certainly, more modern training stats are micro-managed!

Eng

 

[special ed]

I have met several USAAC pilots who went through fighter (pursuit) training only to be kept stateside as instructors. I was told most of their fellow instructors were also heldback from operations while the remaining cadre were pilots returned from combat.

 

[Engineman]

I have met several USAAC pilots who went through fighter (pursuit) training only to be kept stateside as instructors. I was told most of their fellow instructors were also heldback from operations while the remaining cadre were pilots returned from combat.

Yes, Well this is hardly surprising when the total in training jumped x6 in '41-'42 period and x18 in '41-'43 period! They had to get the up-to-date instructors from somewhere and the multiplication factor of using newly trained students as instructors was high. Of course, mature older instructors they were not but, they were young-Bucks training young-Bucks to go and fight a nasty World War.

Eng