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Originally Posted by Christer Bergström
I do think that in general, the victories attained by the German fighter pilots in the East in 1941 actually were comparatively “easy” due to the low quality of Soviet pilot training standards
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Forgive me for entering this discussion late, but what exactly were the standards for Soviet pilot training?
Recently I saw a documentary about the Battle of Britain where former RAF Spitfire pilots confirmed that it was absolutely routine for a new pilot to have just (9) hours in a fighter before they were sent into combat. Basically, they knew how to take off and land -- and not much else. The rest was on-the-job training for those who managed to survive the first mission. Many did not.
Bob Doe of No. 234 Squadron had this to say about target practice:
"We were given 20 rounds per gun each and told to go fire them into the North Sea -- but you couldn't really miss the North Sea. And, uh, that was the only gunnery we did"