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Originally Posted by Franek Grabowski
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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.
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I have a copy of a log book at hand. Pilot in question finished OTU at the end of July and logged about 30 hrs on Hurricanes. I will ask a friend who finished his training at the heat of battle but did not seen operational flying, what standards were then. Anyway, as long as I cannot check any such log book, I do not believe those 9 hrs. |
One log book does not prove your point.
No one said that all RAF pilots had just 9 hours of training time in fighters, but many did because that was, at one time, the length of the Spitfire training program after converting from trainers. Some of the prewar-trained RAF fighter pilots had hundreds of hours logged before they flew combat missions.