A-hopefully NOT TOO Silly-question RE: 'nachwuchs'

[NickM]

Guys:

I've been re-reading 'JG26 War Diary' and 'Luftwaffe over Germany' & I've noticed the trend of higher & higher casualties among JW pilots-especially among the new & inexperienced pilots...however I was wondering if it's know why MORE of the pilots didn't 'hit the silk' more often---it seemed like sometimes the casualties were running on the order of 80% dead, 20% wounded; was it a case of being inexperienced & panicking when under fire or had the firepower of individual fighters grown to the point where armor plating & self sealing fuel tanks couldn't keep the pilots 'safe'-relatively speaking?

Hope this isn't too dumb a question...

TIA

NM

[WEISNER]

Nick, I would say inexperience and yes... total panic and freezing up accounted for many of these losses, many allied pilots reported EA flying straight ahead when under attack.
Also many of the bomber pilot converts had no clue as to what it took to shake off a persuer, and when attacked went into a series of turns of which most allied fighters could easily get inside.
Kevin

[Griffon]

...also bear in mind that once your plane is heavily damaged, starts smoking or even burning, the world is spinning in a crazy speed and direction, you have to keep your wits and stay calm and think about how to get out of that plane or maybe get it down to the ground in one piece.
to stay thus calm, you need a lot of practice in emergency drills, and I am sure LW nachwuchs fighter pilots did not receive such training in a good amount.
most of them were barely able to take off and land in one piece, so probably, most of them did not really know how to successfully leave a crashing plane.

and I am also pretty sure that the heavy armament of many fighters contributed to a heavy death toll.
I just read Paul Zorners memoires and in this book, he relates how about 90% (IIRC) of the aircrew of the bombers he shot down were killed.
This even though Zorner as a night fighter always aimed at the wings and wingtanks of his bomber victims instead of the fuselage.
I guess, it was not that much different at day and in fighter vs fighter combat...

[Franek Grabowski]

Well, a good hit into wing tank causes explosion of fumes, the wing is breaking off, and the remaining wreck is spinning down, trapping the crew inside.

[Griffon]

yes Franek, I am familiar with such happenings, but the same is true for fighters;
a fuselage hit severs control cables and the hit fighter spirals down out of control, and the high centrifugal g-forces also trap the pilot inside...

there were many ways to die in a hit plane in ww2...

[John Beaman]

Yes, inexperience and panic were major factors. When viewing Maj. George Preddy's gun camera film from Aug 6/44 where he was credited with 6 109s destroyed, he and 2 others come up behind an ENTIRE gruppe of 109s and he shoots down 2 BEFORE they even start to break! Who was watching?

Also, a 109 is a very tight fit and, as other have pointed out, damage to the canopy, fire, smoke, etc. can be totally debilitating towards bailing out. The impact of the rate of fire for 6 x .50 cal MGs is often underestimated. It is the same as 20mm cannon shells and can severely damage an aircraft.

[Franek Grabowski]

I mean that hitting the tank was the most effective way to shot down the Viermot and it did not have anything to give any chance of rescue. Actually they were slim.

[NickM]

Originally Posted by John Beaman

Yes, inexperience and panic were major factors. When viewing Maj. George Preddy's gun camera film from Aug 6/44 where he was credited with 6 109s destroyed, he and 2 others come up behind an ENTIRE gruppe of 109s and he shoots down 2 BEFORE they even start to break! Who was watching?

Also, a 109 is a very tight fit and, as other have pointed out, damage to the canopy, fire, smoke, etc. can be totally debilitating towards bailing out. The impact of the rate of fire for 6 x .50 cal MGs is often underestimated. It is the same as 20mm cannon shells and can severely damage an aircraft.

The thing that I found strange was that, even during the 'Focke Wulf Summer', when the JW units on the Channel were full of VERY experienced pilots the JW's losses seemed to be majority fatal....I, sort of assumed that more shot down pilots would be able to bail out & survive to fight again.

NM

NM

[Nick Beale]

I'd noticed that some of the top scorers baled out many times. I suspect that one secret of a long career was realising quickly that your machine was probably past saving and getting out.

As for experience levels, I can remember from researching Air War Italy 1944-45 a couple of cases where RAF pilots shot down Axis ones on what the ORB noted was either the Squadron's or the individual's first ever encounter with enemy aircraft in the air. That seems to point to the quality of Allied training.

[Franek Grabowski]

Few years ago together with a friend we did a statistic of killed Spitfire pilots per destroyed aircraft over the war in the Polish Air Force. The result was approx. 47% pilots killed. The same calculated for 1941 summer offensive (June-December) German losses gave the ratio of 86%!!!
It is either ratio of killed Germans was very high or the German loss lists are largely incomplete in case of incidents not involving human losses.
I must note here, that I have noticed some cases of Allied pilots claiming seeing parachutes over France that could not have had been attributed to own losses but not present on German lists as well.