At the beginning of WWI, only the first wave of Russian infantry was armed. The second and third wave was instructed to retrieve weapons from the fallen.
Total WAG: The RAF spent a longer proportion of the war without the benefit of long-range fighter support?
Done.
Not the worst, but pretty bad and avoidable
British Fighter Pilots in the Battle Of Britain had close to zero chance of survival when shot down over the channel. The British had no working air-sea rescue service so when the pilots ditched all they could do is look to Blighty and drown or die of exposure after a few hours.
The Germans had white painted sea-planes with red crosses to rescue their pilots (and British pilots), but very soon Churchill gave orders to shoot down the rescue aircraft, calculating it would hurt the Germans more than the British.
Later in the war the British developed a working rescue service and stemmed their massive loss of pilots.
Going a bit further back in time, being a fighter pilot in the Great War had mean survival time measured in days down to hours for new pilots. Parachutes were mostly discouraged as it was though pilots should attempt to save their aircraft at all costs.
That’s Hollywood getting its wars wrongs; as carnivorousplant noted lack of enough rifles to equip the infantry was a serious problem in WWI for Czarist Russia, not the USSR in WW2. The Soviet Union was producing far more than enough rifles and was distributing submachine guns like they were candy - 1.5 million PPSh-41s were produced in 1942 (with Stalingrad starting at the end of the year) out of a total production run of 6 million.
Since it started in GQ, worst job was the poor bloody infantry, which was taking upwards of 90% of the casualties:
The thing I find the most staggering is that the 8th Air Force had more KIA/WIA than the entire US Marine Corps did during WWII, and had a higher percentage KIA as well (7% vs 3%).
Not much media coverage of that- by the way the USMC propaganda machine spins things, you’d think that they had the highest casualty rates of any service, etc…
Sherman tank crewman in 1944-1945.
That plan to build more Shermans than there were Panzers had some drawbacks.
US Shermans had amongst the best creature comforts of any tanks, the best logistical support, and the degree to which they were dangerous and suffered losses is massively exaggerated in popular history.
Operating the flamethrower was no piece of cake, either, once the enemy figured out how to turn the operator into a human torch.
“I was a Combat Engineer. Isn’t that ridiculous? The two things I hate most in the world are combat and engineering.” Mel Brooks
True, but from what I read, by analogy, captured American bomber pilots who firebombed Japanese cities were still only beheaded or shot. I thought they would have been in for far worse treatment but apparently weren’t.
So maybe flamethrower guys would still only have gotten a quick bullet to the head.
Tell that to this guy. They called them Ronsons for a reason.
Yeah, that’s the history channel version of history, but it’s wrong. Tank vs tank combat was relatively rare on the western from in WW2. Most of a tanker’s combat duty was facing against infantry and hardened positions, and scattered resistance during a pursuit. There’s drama, almost like a boss fight in video games, when a rare German tank shows up to the battle and everyone diverts its attention to taking it down, but it was relatively infrequent. The Sherman was well suited for most of the duties it faced.
As far as casualty rates - it was a beachhead breakout in extremely dense tank-unfriendly country against a country that had 4 years to develop and combat test its close in anti-tank weapons against another major power with tons of medium tanks. That’s a recipe for losses.
Shermans did have a problem with the ammo catching fire when hit early on, though, that’s true. But it was rectified pretty quickly with wet storage. So even then that was a fairly short lived factor.
Usually the people who subscribe to the same “the Sherman was the sux0rs” history channel glossed over interpretation of WW2 also said “The t-34 was a great tank! best tank of the war!” which is funny, because when Soviet divisions had proved themselves to be amongst the best of the Soviet army and were designated Guards divisions and received better equipment as a result, they were given the lend-lease Shermans. It was a reward - Soviet soldiers considered them to be significantly superior to the T-34. And they didn’t even get the best ones.
Consider anyone who had to remove bodies from a burned-out tank. Garth Ennis briefly deals with this in one of his stories.
Kurt Vonnegut’s stint as a corpse miner after Dresden was no picnic either.
Dad shoveled brains out of aircraft with his hands to be able to do repairs.
For some reason that made me laugh out loud, sorry!
This is a really interesting thread actually. I was going to mention RAF Bomber Command as well but I see someone has already done so. Though if I recall correctly Winston Churchill singled out all other branches of the British services for individual praise and recognition during his victory speech but pointedly left out Bomber Command as its role in bombing German cities was already making the powers that be uncomfortable.
It was a low thing to do, saying as he was the one who sent them there in the first place.
Yes I realise it wasn’t his personal decision but it was under his ultimate authority.
A few years back I went to a talk by a guy who was a tail-gunner in a Lancaster and it sounded like a truly shitty job - hours alone, in the dark, freezing your ass off and hoping the next light you see isn’t from the the cannons of a German night-fighter.
He had some pretty funny stories though - the difference between flying night combat missions and daytime ones (“I can see my gunsight!”) and their encounter with an Me163 Komet ("Something went blasting straight up through our formation and a few minutes later came racing straight back down with 5 or 6 American fighters hot on its tail!) 
I do not recall the author of a poem, “The Ball Turret Gunner”, but the last line is, “and they wash me out with a hose.”