Thread: Saburo Sakai
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Old 28th October 2017, 20:12
Luftwaffle8 Luftwaffle8 is offline
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Re: Saburo Sakai

Quote:
Originally Posted by Juha View Post
Japanese suffered great losses during the long transfer flights. According to the interrogations of Admiral Kusaka, Admiral Irifune, Commander Hori and Lt Commander Watabe, appr. 40 % of the planes meant to Rabaul were lost during transfer, mostly because bad weather and poor pilot training. If long over-sea flights were so difficult to JNAF pilots sure they were a great challenge to JAAF pilots flying to e.g. New Guinea.

Juha
You are absolutely correct! Also, pilots were lost on ill-planned missions. There were also losses due to tropical illnesses, mostly malaria. You have to be in tip top shape to fly and fight.
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