My father was a flight-line mechanic for most of WWII but received his flight engineer’s wings in late 1944 (I think). It’s reasonable to assume that had he gotten them much earlier, I wouldn’t be here. I don’t know anything about his progression from one to the other; the delay and the ultimate change could have been for many reasons.
I remember reading (I think it was “Masters of the Air” by Miller) that at the end of the war, the Germans actually had plenty of modern fighters available, but were desperately short of anything approaching trained pilots to fly them, and of gasoline to fuel them with.
They had gas-powered pilots? 
Japan was in much the same condition, I believe, and at the end was flying no more than short, almost meaningless patrols around the home islands.
More accurately a tour was 25 missions, 30 for RAF Bomber Command. The fact that you completed one full tour did not get you off being sent for future combat duty.
The commander of the Memphis Belle, Robert Morgan later flew a tour flying B-29’s over Japan; Paul Tibbets of Enola Gay fame had compleated a European Tour before being sent to the Pacific.
Generally, the US involvement in the war was short enough (basically from 1943-45 in earnest) that most people did not get a chance for a second tour. This is unlike the RAF where many aircrew got to do multiple tours;Guy Gibson most famously.
And sometimes in the middle of Lake Michigan.
During WWII, the United States built two imitation aircraft carriers, the Sable and the Wolverine, that were based in Chicago. They were converted commercial ships that had flight decks like a real carrier but had no support facilities. Their purpose was so naval aviator trainees could learn how to take off and land on a carrier deck.
The military was so eager to get the B-29 Superfortresses into action that there was almost no training whatsoever on that airframe. They took bomber crews from other bombers, gave them a Superfortress and they learned on the job.
For more in-depth reading-the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
When it comes to individual pilots, you can find examples of US ones who didn’t enter combat action for 2 yrs after joining. Read lots of first accounts (I’ve probably read too many 
). An example was first hander of a B-29 pilot. He joined very early after PH but after training was immediately recycled as instructor himself (as was common). Then not till 1944 into a B-29 unit for training, and first combat mission over Japan in 1945.
And if a new pilot was assigned to a new unit in the rapidly expanding US air forces (of Army, Navy and Marines), that unit would spend time training as a unit after individual pilot training per se. And in case of the USN, carrier pilot training and a/c production outran aircraft carrier construction. The big slug of carriers reaching action in 1944 often embarked air groups that would have been ready in 1943, and often pilots who had first joined early after or before PH.
As far as probability of loss for bomber crews, there’s a tendency to pick the worst periods of losses to get a shocking number. But the overall per sortie combat loss rate for both B-17’s and B-24’s, all theaters all periods, was around 1.6%, so around 1/3 chance of your a/c being destroyed in 25 combat missions, which includes cases where crews survived ditching, bailouts, or crashlandings which destroyed the a/c in or over friendly territory, besides those who survived as POW’s. The forces which suffered relatively lower losses in 1944-45 were a lot bigger than the ones which suffered heavier losses eariler. Overall B-29 and medium bomber combat sortie loss rates were lower.
Per “Masters of the Air” by Donald L Miller, 12.3% of 8th AF crew who flew in combat were killed. Whereas the wiki page on RAF Bomber Command personnel says 46% of operational aircrew in that service were killed, footnoting the work of WR Chorley. There might be some apples/oranges between those two counts, but the basic story is that very high % losses by the 8th AF were mainly when it was small in 1943 compared to its strength by 1945 when losses had dropped dramatically. The British effort was carried on at a relatively large scale compared to its final strength for much longer, and its main nemesis the German night fighter force did not decline as rapidly as the Luftwaffe day fighter force did.
But, a US airman might be unlucky enough to be among the small relative number in front line service at a period of very high loss rates, same would go for medium bomber units in New Guinea in spring-summer 1942, or the Army fighter units alongside them for that matter. Or the airman could be unlucky enough to be in a particular formation in even 1945 which suffered heavy losses, as still sometimes happened.
FIL (v.1.0) was such a good gunner that they kept him stateside as an instructor.
My Father worker on B-25s in New Guinea, and shoveled FIL’s students brains out the window.
I thought that the USAAC lost more men to death than the USMC in WWII.
My father had a slight vision issue (although he never needed glasses even at 94) so he couldnt fly combat, but was a B-29 flight instructor based in Kansas and Texas. He didnt talk too much about it.
He had a number of close calls with students. They would cut out the left or right side engines and then have the newbies land them that way. He said the hotshot know it alls always seemed to crash or end up dead.
The one flying tip he drilled into me…( one never knows when you might have to land a plane:eek:) was to never pull back on the stick/yolk/steering column? if all your engines died, but to push it forwards.
He said alot of guys died as a result those kind of stalls, because they panicked… I think I have actually had dreams about trying to fly a stalling plane…
Counterintuitive of course, since one would think pulling the stick back would make the plane go up… but with no juice,down is the only way to get lift.
I asked him why he didnt become a commercial pilot later, and he said that would be like driving a schoolbus…or " a chimney full of bricks with a jet motor on it"…:D:D
The stat in the book I mentioned was around 26k killed in 8th AF out of 210k who flew combat missions so around 12%. So the 8th AF alone exceeded the USMC in battle deaths, USMC’s were around 20k v a peak strength (not all who served) of 480k. The whole USAAF suffered around 52k battle deaths v a peak strength of 2.4 million, but that includes ground personnel which the 8th AF rate does not; likewise the Marine number while it doesn’t include turnover does include rear echelon units.
It’s really apples and oranges. Front line infantry in prolonged combat in WWII had a very high chance of becoming casualties, while artillery and other supporting arms and functions even within a ‘front line combat units’ were much safer in the typical conditions of US forces, on the offensive, though did suffer in some cases. If an AF was overrun on the ground almost all its personnel might become casualties, counting prisoners (as happened to the Far East Air Force of the USAAF on Luzon in 1941-2). But on the offensive with an enemy with little strength to spare attacking opposed airfields, ground crew combat casualties might be almost zero (like the 8th AF).
They did… the USAAF was HUGE.
Toward the end of the war, the Japanese had a Reduction in Force program to reduce the number of pilots as well as to eliminate obsolete planes. :eek:
Actually, Germany had more modern planes at the end of the war. Japan finished the war with essentially the same aircraft as it started while other forces either made numerous updates such as Germany or introduced several different models as America did.
Japanese planes were competitive or superior in the early war but gradually become increasingly uncompetitive as the war progressed.
Japan produced a mere 61,000 pilots in total, with nearly half of those in 1944. They lost about 2/3 of their pilots, including the accidents. They were committed to using the remainder of the pilots as tokko (kamikaze). Fortunately for an ex-girlfriend’s father who had survived the Great Turkey Shoot in the Philippines, the war ended before everyone was senselessly sacrificed.
Also relevant: The USMC was (and always has been) tiny. They’re the 90 pound kid with the mean right hook of the US Armed Forces.
The comparison was given above, whole USMC topped out around 480,000 in WWII v the USAAF at 2.4million. However the original tangent was about survival chances for aircrew, who represented a small proportion of the USAAF overall personnel but suffered the great majority of USAAF battle deaths. 8th AF aircrew suffered a much high % of KIA than the whole USMC…but then it’s reasonable to start differentiating within the USMC. Its infantry divisions suffered heavier relative casualties than its ground rear echelon structure, or the ground component of the USMC air contingent. And on and on potentially.
However to just compare ground front line combat units, the 1st Marine Division, which suffered the most casualties of the six Mar Divs in WWII, would be eighth on the overall list of US divisions’ casualties behind low numbered Army infantry divisions with long service in the MTO/ETO, and the Army divisions were slightly smaller units.
Survival chances really depended a lot more on specific function and phase of the war than service. But as been mentioned, air units of the WWII era (and for sometime after that) suffered cumulatively very heavy air crew losses by later standards of air units or compared to what contemporary ground or non-air naval forces suffered, just by training and exercising.
What Corry El said…
For my part, the notation of the 8th AF casualties isn’t so much to make some kind of argument about how bad they had it, but rather as a counter to the ever-present “Derp, the USMC is so bad-ass and suffered such high casualties in WWII” commentary that has become the norm.
A lot of people don’t realize that bomber crews in 1942-1943 suffered TERRIBLE losses, and that being a bomber crewman meant that you were in the same general league danger-wise as being an infantryman in the USMC or Army.
RAF Bomber Command:55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4 percent death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war. :eek:
USAF Losses in ETO/MTO. A page with major breakdownbut:
30,000 members of the 8th, 9th, 11th, 12th, and 15th Army Air Forces died in the ETO / MTO. Around 14,000 were wounded and some 33,000 were captured.
British airmen seemed to either survive unscathed or die, being POW was much rarer, about 1/6 as many were captured. The USAAF in Europe OTH seeme to be even amonsgt killed or captured.
It is worth noting that bomber crews are somewhat unique among the armed forces in that they charged headlong through artillery barrages pretty much as a matter of doctrine. I suppose you could make a similar comparison for naval surface warfare folks.
Storming the Normandy beach.
I can think of one land-combat precedent.
In my mind, the European traditions of air warriors derive from cavalry.