What it took to get wings in WW II.

Subject: What it took to get wings in WW II.
From: vincent p. norris
Date: 7/15/03 7:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

I think that estimate is much too high. I don't know how many pilots
there were in the Air Corps during WW II (are you also including
bombardiers and navigators?), but if they were only two or three
percent of the number who started, then the starting number would have
to have been larger than the entire U.S. male population!

Roughly speaking.

vince norris

How can you know that when you don't know the final number?

Arthur Kramer

I don't "know" it, Art, which I admitted, and which is why I added
"roughly speaking."

If you know it, let the rest of us know and we'll do the math, just
for curiosity's sake.

vince norris


I have no idea which is why I don't try to speculate and guesstimate. Roughly
speaking that is.

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

From: vincent p. norris

I don't know how many pilots
there were in the Air Corps during WW II

I found one stray figure that might be useful: in 1944 the AAFTC trained
80,693 pilots. I believe that was the peak year. As an item of interest, in
1946, it trained 344 pilots.


Chris Mark

"Chris Mark" wrote

From: vincent p. norris

I don't know how many pilots
there were in the Air Corps during WW II

I found one stray figure that might be useful: in 1944 the AAFTC trained
80,693 pilots. I believe that was the peak year. As an item of interest,
in
1946, it trained 344 pilots.

Training figures during the WWII era (1939-1945) for the Air Force:

Pilots
-------------------------------
233,198 Primary with 88,279 (~28%) failures*
193,440 Advanced with (~13%) 28,790 (~13%) failures
108,337 Transition with 7,474 (~7%) failures.

Assuming everyone went Primary, Advanced, Transition (I'd *guess*
that's true but someone who knows is welcome to correct the
assumption), that's a total failure rate of about 39%.

Bombardiers
----------------------------------
28,361 total with 3,423 (~11%) failures**

Navigation
-----------------------------------
56,119 total with 10,822 (~16%) failures***

Bombardier/Navigation
------------------------------------
28,480 total with 3,533 (~11%) failures****

Gunners
------------------------------------
309,236 total with 26,815 (~8%) failures*****

*all failures includes training deaths
** includes Precision, Instructor, and Refresher courses
*** includes Celestial, Dead Reckoning, Instructor, and Refresher
**** includes Bombardier/Navigation, Bombardier DR & D8 Navigation
***** includes enlisted, officers, and instructors