"Average" WWII Fighter Pilot

[Mark Allen M]

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Last edited by Mark Allen M on Sun Sep 09, 2012 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Stephan Wilkinson]

BTW my favorite non ace fighter pilot book is Nanette by Edwards Park. A wonderful book about flying P-39s in New Guinea.

Funny, I was going to mention "Nanette" when I saw this thread. I knew Ted Park, flew with him, got him to write for us at Flying Magazine back in the days when it was actually a magazine and not an industry leaflet.

[michaelharadon]

Yes, "Nanette" is a major fave.

Two more are "The Hunters" and "Burning The Days", both by James Salter. He flew F-86's over North Korea, and both books express the agonies of striving for "acedom" and falling four victories short. The Hunters is fiction; Burning The Days is his autobiography/memoir. Both capture the squadron life and fighter pilot ethos as no others...as if I knew firsthand. What I do know is that they are great reads that are heavily about this thread.

Me, too, I've known several fighter pilots in World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam who never even saw an enemy plane in the air. Cruel for hunters at heart, but the luck of the draw, I'm guessing...

[Stoney]

According to the AAF Statistical Digest, in less than four years (December 1941- August 1945), the US Army Air Forces lost 14,903 pilots, aircrew and assorted personnel plus 13,873 airplanes inside the continental United States. They were the result of 52,651 aircraft accidents (6,039 involving fatalities) in 45 months.
From January 1, 1941 through December 31, 1945 documented and verify at least 6,360 fatal accidents in the Continental United States involving Army Air Forces aircraft.
6,360 Fatal AAF aircraft accidents
15,551 fatalities
1,358 serious injuries
1,560 minor injuries
7,114 aircraft damaged or destroyed
79 Army Air Forces aircraft still missing in the continental US and its waters.
These numbers were derived from the actual accident reports and included only fatal accidents involving the AAF (there were thousands of fatal accidents involving USN, USMC, USCG and CAP in the US).
The number of aircraft lost does not reflect aircraft lost in non-fatal accidents nor do the numbers include people injured in non-fatal AAF accidents. The numbers are slightly higher than that of the Army Digest cited above because this covers the time period from Jan 1, 1941 to Dec 31, 1945. There were over 500 fatal B-24 accidents; 394 fatal P-39 accidents. Several hundred fatal BT-13/BT-15 accidents. In 1943, there were over six fatal AAF accidents per day resulting in over 5,600 fatalities for the year. On Sept 23, 1943, there were 18 fatal AAF accidents just on that day alone. In January of 1944, over 500 people were killed in 231 fatal AAF aircraft accidents in the US. The numbers are staggering.

[Adam Kline]

Air Force did a very comprehensive study I think in the 50's or 60's trying to figure out what made a great fighter pilot. I think I have a copy of it in a pile of old Aviation Heritage mags. They tabulated age, education and flying experience From what I remember it was sort of inconclusive and that timing was everything. Tom Walsh mentioned in a thread on a book he is working on that Canadian trained Eight Air force pilots were responsible for 10% of the kills of the Eight in the ETO. That was an extraordinary high amount for such a small proportion of the fighter pilot population.

[Dudley Henriques]

So watching the WWII in HD got me to thinking last night. Of all the American fighter pilots during WWII...how many just did their job, flew their required number of missions for their tour, and came home without ever having a confirmed enemy kill?

Or would it be fair to ask how many actually DID shoot something down? Percentage? Thoughts?

This might be a flawed context from which to view the issue.
I've known fighter pilots all my life and I'm fairly certain that if asked this question in the context specified, all of them to a man would say that it would be virtually impossible for a pilot to simply fly into and out of a combat area and do nothing.
From the moment a pilot entered the combat area he was either attacking something or defending like hell trying to stay alive. Considering this, it's safe to assume that once there, the best chance to stay alive would be to avoid being defensive.
I know of one pilot who hesitated to engage. His wingman rolled in behind him and threatened to shoot him down. He was eventually relieved and sent home.
Other than this one incident, I've not heard of many who didn't learn early on that the best way to stay alive was to engage and engage with malice!
Dudley Henriques

[tom d. friedman]

This is an interesting "resurrected" topic. Dad was one of the Hellcat pilots who went, served and came back with no fanfair. All he states in his logbooks about encountering actual Japanese aircraft in the air is "Saw Some" and Chased Some" nothing else.

your dad is no less a hero than any ace or top shelf ace!! he did his duty..... cut & dry..... be proud. he passed the same training & survived the same rigors of aerial combat as the bigshots. if he's still around he might have some stories he could still relate to you. my dad as an infantry rifle company commander has been gone 4 years now. i regret the fact of questions i never asked him. now all gray area. if he's still alive do it now!! or you'll regret it later, as i do.

[Fearless Tower]

Many untold or little known stories out there.

One of the "Our Gang" or "Little Rascals" kids:

Wheezer -- Robert Hutchins was killed in an airplane accident at age 19
According to findagravecom, he was killed during the last thirty minutes of his basic training at the Merced Army Air Corps field in California when his plane crashed on landing.

Apologize for resurrecting this thread, but I stumbled across it searching for info on Merced AAF.

My grandfather actually knew this guy and was a bunkmate of his at Merced. His death in a T-6 really shook my grandpa up. He escorted the body home to the family and had to take some time off. According to my grandfather, when he was ready to go back to flying, they asked him if he would rather go to bombers instead of fighters as he was originally slated for. He took them up on the offer and was transferred to Douglas AAF for B-25s. Met my grandmother there and the rest is history...

Interesting thing about Wheezer is that my grandfather had no clue he was one of the Little Rascals until he went home with the body to meet the family.

Small world.

This is really interesting....I looked up the entry for Robert Hutchins on Findagrave.com and it says he was killed in a mid-air flying a B-26. I suspect that is an error. They were flying T-6s at the time (according to my grandfather). I just looked up the date (17 May 1945) in my grandfather's logbook. His entry says "Night Landings Instruments".

As I recall the story (he told it many times), they were at the end of their training and either his airplane collided with another during a night landing. My grandfather flew one more T-6 flight the next day and did not fly again until they sent him to Douglas.

[JDK]

Interesting sidlights on an old thread! Nice to see.

So watching the WWII in HD got me to thinking last night. Of all the American fighter pilots during WWII...how many just did their job, flew their required number of missions for their tour, and came home without ever having a confirmed enemy kill?

Or would it be fair to ask how many actually DID shoot something down? Percentage? Thoughts?

It's the wrong question if you couple 'their job' with 'victories'.

'Their job' was to obtain and maintain air superiority so everyone else can then apply air land and sea power without interference from the enemy's air arm.

As soon as one recognises the strategic task of the fighter arm, one should realise the irrelevance of counting victories.

What mattered was control of the sky; often that meant a lot of flying with no enemy activity, conversely, those times when pilots were racking up significant kill rates, were times when the enemy were either in the ascendant or, like the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot or Operation Bodenplatte, the enemy was making a desperate throw with inadequately trained pilots. The significance of victories at such turkey shoots compared with last ditch defences such as 'the fighter pilot's heaven', Malta, or other occasions the allied forces were being forced back (in the Pacific or the Battle of Britain) are poles apart in military import, yet the ace production rate will be similar (- losses, however very different).

Despite the development of hero worship of fighter pilots, ultimately they're the goalkeepers of the air force; they won't win the war, the work of the others does that; but they can stop you losing, and they must enable the other forces work by managing that air control.

Herendeth the lecture!

Regards,

[Mark Allen M]

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Last edited by Mark Allen M on Sun Sep 09, 2012 1:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[Mark Allen M]

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