Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: yngve@whoozle.softlab.se (Yngve Larsson)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: dogfighting
Message-ID: <7395@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 13 Jun 89 03:23:28 GMT
References: <7022@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7128@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7210@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7250@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: yngve@whoozle.softlab.se (Yngve Larsson)

In article <7250@cbnews.ATT.COM> fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix) writes:
>One reason that the German scores got to be so high (as were some
>Japanese, such as Nishizawa with 102) was that they were *not*
>rotated out from the front periodically as were nearly all allied
>pilots.  They stayed in combat (excepting R&R leave) until they
>were either killed or the war ended.

Question: did this practice have a known detrimental effect on the overall
capacity of the German and Japanese forces? I assume that the rotated
pilots of the US and British forces were used for something like flight
schools or higher staff duties, were they could make good use of their
talents and experience. In not using their experienced pilots to educate
the fresh ones, they might have ended up with a few _very_ capable fighters,
and a horde of nearly-useless ones.

			Yngve Larsson

[mod.note:  This has often been attributed to the collapse of Japanese
naval aviation; toward the end of the war, they had a decided lack of
trained pilots, which contributed to the adoption of kamikaze tactics.
I'm unaware of similar allegations for the Luftwaffe, though. - Bill ]

-- 
Yngve Larsson                               UUCP: ...mcvax!enea!liuida!yla
Dept of CIS                                       Internet: yla@ida.liu.se
Linkoping University, Sweden                          Phone: +46-13-281949