This statement is totally inacurate for the first 2 years of the war
The statement was not made about the first two years of the war. The training hours and flying hours are posted. It was in answer to Guppy's statement about the ratio's being unanswerable. Simply examine the kill to sortie ratios.
Heck the germans called the brits formations the "row of idiots" due to their tactics..time changed all that.
True.
All airforces soon adopted the same section tactics the Germans developed in Spain.german had all the experienced flyers at first from what ive read..they were beat by attrition and allies gaining experience....how many german aces were there having ridiculous ridiculous amount of kills?
The Germans did not rotate their personnel. A German pilot flew until the war ended, he was too severly wounded to fly anymore, or he was killed.
Like many German pilots Oscar Boesch flew from the day the war started until the day it ended. Like the vast majority of German pilots he got only a handful of kills, 13 confirmed. There are many factors that go into making an "experten" or an "ace". The frequency one encounters the enemy is one big factor. The German pilots lived in a "target rich" enviroment. Almost every time they flew, they saw enemy aircraft. Allied pilots, due to their vast numerical superiority, could go a whole tour with only a few encounters with the enemy.
If you examine the numbers of encounters with the enemy to the number of kills, the Luftwaffe "Experten" were far from the "superpilots" of popular myth. They simply had far more chances to shoot down enemy aircraft. With the exception of a few shining stars, most of them have an average kill to sortie ratio with several allied aces surpassing them.
if u were to say a ratio of german pilots to the ratio of allied pilots having experience maybe..lotta variables...
Just like most airforces, the "Experten" form about 1 percent of the total German fighter pilot force.
The 8th USAAF Fighter Groups had a saying, "Fly five and stay alive." It took between 5-6 encounters with the enemy for a pilot to develop his Situational Awareness. If a poorly trained German Pilot could survive long enough to develop his SA, his chances of surviving the war went up astronomically. Almost 98 percent of the German fighter pilots Killed in Action, were killed before the completion of their first few missions.
The Luftwaffe in 1944 was made of a very small core of very experienced pilots surrounded by scores of poorly trained amatuers.
The vast majority of German pilots encountered by allied pilots were these poorly trained cannon fodder in the last years of the war.
Guppy35 says:
I can't imagine the strain the LW drivers were feeling after a time, but I know if you look at the photos of some of the Experten, you can see the strain on thier faces. They look beaten up from the constant ops, which was to be expected.
Which is absolutely true.
All the best,
Crumpp
