"No, there's no glamour in being a fighter pilot"

[Artist]

I have met many fighter pilots that have told me that it was the greatest time of thier lives. But most of them are aces. Some fighter pilots fly to shoot, some fly to get shot at.

[George Hopp]

I think you will find the opinion of the Australian of 3 Sqn to be echoed in "The Big Show" by Pierre Clostermann. He wrote his comments in reaction to the criticisms of the French of France who had complained about how difficult things had been for them as opposed to the easy life of pilots like him.

[Christer Bergström]

I have met many fighter pilots that have told me that it was the greatest time of thier lives.

I agree. That doesn't necessarily contradict the account by the Australian pilot veteran. Many look (looked) back on those days with ambivalence. But very few would like to be there again. That at least is the impression I've got from the pilot veterans I have met.

Life expectancy often was shorter in air units than in ground units. If we compare some units which took part in Operation Barbarossa, we will find the following figures for one ground unit and one air unit:

18th German Pz Div:
Manpower on 22 June 1941: 17,174
Soldiers killed or missing 22 June 1941 - 31 Dec 1941: 1489

JG 51:
Pilots on strength on 22 June 1941: 139
Pilots killed or missing 22 June 1941 - 31 Dec 1941: 33

In 18th Pz Division's case, the losses equal 8.7 % of the original strength when the campaign started.

In JG 51's case, the losses equal 24 % of the original strength when the campaign started.

In other words, life expectancy was three times longer for a soldier in the 18th Panzerdivision than for a fighter pilot in JG 51 during Operation Barbarossa.

With his perspective restricted to ground units, Omer Bartov writes regarding the Grossdeutschland Division and the casualties it sustained during the war:

"The GD Division sustained extremely high casualties during the war. . . we reach the astonishing total of 34,700 casualties, of whom 973 were officers; that is, over 192 percent of the establishment figure." (Bartov, "The Eastern Front 1941 - 45", p. 15.)

That maybe is extremely high if we compare with other ground units, but for a Luftwaffe air units, such a loss rate would be considered as low. In fact, JG 51 had more than 600 of its pilots killed or missing during the war - which equals more than 400 percent "of the establishment figure".