Flight Training accidents in WWII

[Dave Siciliano]

This was posted on another board: ACCIDENTS AND FATALITIES IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY AIR FORCESDURING FLIGHT TRAINING IN WORLD WAR TWO. It was her doctor's thesis. Some very interesting number in here. I can't dig in right now to post highlights, but wanted to get the basic information on here for others to see.

Throughout the war, the Army Air Forces suffered over 6,500 fatal accidents in the continental United States resulting in the loss of 7,114 airplanes and the death of 15,530 personnel.1This was an average of ten deaths and nearly 40 accidents, fatal and non-fatal, a day. The Army Air Forces reached its peak for both training and accidentsin 1943. That year the Army Air Forces suffered 2,268 fatal accidents that resulted in over 5,600 fatalities and over 2,500 aircraft damaged or destroyed.2The situation was better in 1944 with a 14 percent drop in accidents compared with1943.3However, there were still nearly 2,000 fatal accidents and the death of 5,000 pilots and crew


https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bits...38ILiExpJBWwOY

[Ward Miller]

Dave, that 250-page document is fascinating!! I joined the AAF in 1944 and experienced a small bit of what they talk about. I was a cadet when they closed the flight program. The document brings back many memories. I'll relate some of the when I get further into the reading.

[Ralph Jones]

The late Hod Taylor, who lured me into soaring, flew P-38s in North Africa (DFC for a spectacular fight). He had some pretty grim tales of recovering bodies in his cadet days -- it was basically clean up the mess and get back to work.

He said on his return from overseas, he was assigned to ferry an airplane cross country:

"What kind of airplane?"
"B-29."
"Never flown one."
"Here's the manual, there's your crew."

[Dave Siciliano]

That’s why I posted it before I could slog through and copy parts to the board. This information is very difficult to find. It was reported in many different places. Shows how risky training was before forks like Randy straightened it all out (kidding of course).

[Terry Carraway]

I have always heard that surviving training was less likely than surviving combat.

A quick search did not come up with easy numbers for pilots (not all crew) killed in combat.

[Dave Siciliano]

I’ve got some numbers from different places: much higher for combat losses. Let me dig around.

[Tom Charlton]

This was posted on another board:https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bits...38ILiExpJBWwOY

Thanks Dave,
Did a quick perusal. Lot’a good stuff in that.
* Chapter on “Culture of Risk”.
* Tables at the end with Accident rates per 100K.
Interesting.

Regards,
Tom Charlton

[Russell Holton]

One of the projects I worked on let me see a number of death reports from WWII. A whole bunch seemed to be non-combat. Accidents (was in a jeep that hit a tree), or succumbing to sickness seemed pretty common. Many would be unremarkable, except they were in the military during a war.

[Dave Siciliano]

One source: · Half of the U.S. Army Air Force's casualties in World War II were suffered by Eighth Air Force (more than 47,000 casualties, with more than 26,000 dead). Seventeen Medals of Honor went to Eighth Air Force personnel during the war.

[Russell Holton]

"during the first 32 months of the war, the Army Air Forces lost 3,300 more planes in accidents in the continental United States than in combat."

[Dave Siciliano]

From the National WWII Museum US MILITARY CASUALTIES IN WORLD WAR II

Army and Air Force	318,274	565,861
Navy	62,614	37,778
Marines	24,511	68,207
Coast Guard	1,917	Unknown
TOTAL	407,316	671,278

[Dave Siciliano]

Sources: Rene Francillon, Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific war; Cajus Bekker, The Luftwaffe Diaries; Ray Wagner, American Combat Planes; Wikipedia.

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.

Think about those numbers. They average 1,170 aircraft accidents per month---- nearly 40 a day. (However, less than one accident in four resulted in total loss of the aircraft)


It gets worse.....

Almost 1,000 Army planes disappeared en route from the US to foreign locations. But an eye-watering 43,581 aircraft were lost overseas including 22,948 on combat missions (18,418 against the Western Axis) and 20,633 attributed to non-combat causes overseas.

In a single 376 plane raid in August 1943, 60 B-17s were shot down. That was a 16 percent loss rate and meant 600 empty bunks in England .. In 1942-43 it was statistically impossible for bomber crews to complete a 25-mission tour in Europe .

Pacific theatre losses were far less (4,530 in combat) owing to smaller forces committed.. The worst B-29 mission, against Tokyo on May 25, 1945, cost 26 Superfortresses, 5.6 percent of the 464 dispatched from the Marianas..

On average, 6,600 American servicemen died per month during WWII, about 220 a day. By the end of the war, over 40,000 airmen were killed in combat theatres and another 18,000 wounded. Some 12,000 missing men were declared dead, including a number "liberated" by the Soviets but never returned. More than 41,000 were captured, half of the 5,400 held by the Japanese died in captivity, compared with one-tenth in German hands. Total combat casualties were pegged at 121,867.

US manpower made up the deficit. The AAF's peak strength was reached in 1944 with 2,372,000 personnel, nearly twice the previous year's figure.

The losses were huge---but so were production totals. From 1941 through 1945, American industry deliveredmore than 276,000 military aircraft. That number was enough not only for US Army, Navy and Marine Corps, but for allies as diverse as Britain, Australia, China and Russia. In fact, from 1943 onward, America produced more planes than Britain and Russia combined. And more than Germany and Japan together 1941-45.
However, our enemies took massive losses. Through much of 1944, the Luftwaffe sustained uncontrolled hemorrhaging, reaching 25 percent of aircrews and 40 planes a month. And in late 1944 into 1945, nearly half the pilots in Japanese squadrons had flown fewer than 200 hours. The disparity of two years before had been completely reversed.

http://pippaettore.com/Horrific_WWII_Statistics.html

[Dave Siciliano]

We had that my second tour in RVN: more casualties and deaths from accidents and illness than combat.

[A. Niemyer]

Wow. This was a topic of discussion on one of the Facebook WWII aviation groups I belong to. We didn't have the Navy/USMC/USCG training losses available, but we all agreed the losses in training were pretty eye-opening. I had heard once (Hangar talk) that we lost more in training and non-combat than we did in combat, but the data above seems to indicate it was about even. Still and all, pretty astpunding, and not in a good way.

Best,
Andy

[Terry Carraway]

From the National WWII Museum US MILITARY CASUALTIES IN WORLD WAR II

Army and Air Force	318,274	565,861
Navy	62,614	37,778
Marines	24,511	68,207
Coast Guard	1,917	Unknown
TOTAL	407,316	671,278

But are they pilots?