View Single Post
  #18  
Old 02-23-2012, 02:30 PM
Crumpp's Avatar
Crumpp Crumpp is offline
Approved Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 1,552
Default

Quote:
How many people died in it because they screwed up?
About as many as any other Air Force trying to fly a high performance aircraft with poorly trained and inexperienced pilots.

A very good analogy to represent 95% of the Luftwaffe pilots from late '43 would be the equivalent of a pilot with 100 hours in a Cessna 172 hopping into a P51 Mustang to fly a mission.

Under those conditions, the P51 would have a very bad reputation for its high rate of landing accidents.

Today, Insurance companies count "Hours in Type" as the major criteria for determining the probability of an accident in a pilot. The Luftwaffe was only giving its pilots ~20 hours in type before throwing them into combat.
Reply With Quote