Camel

Vince, I'm not sure WWII training was as dangerous as that of WWI. I
don't see how it could have been. The trainers of WWI were a
hodgepodge of many types and few things were normalised as they are
now. They stalled abrubtly, had extremely steep power off descent and
were very unstable on the ground. In addition, the unreliability of
the engines was legendary. For a while, few individuals understood
how much training was necessary to qualify a person as a bonified
pilot.

I agree with that, Corky. In addition, pilots were reportedly put
into operational types such as Camels and sent into combat with very
few logged hours.

We had somewhat more than 200 hours in SNJs, including formation,
instrument and ACM flying and carrier qualification, before getting
into an operational type. Had the Navy put us into F4Us with only 20
or 30 hours in SNJs, no doubt most cadets would have killed
themselves. (It was called the "Ensign Eliminator" in any case.)

But the point I was making is that grossly exaggerated claims were
made about the fatality rate during WW II, and I am skeptical about
them, and therefore about WW I too.

vince norris