Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military
From: fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: dogfighting
Message-ID: <7600@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 20 Jun 89 03:47:13 GMT
References: <7022@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7128@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7210@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7395@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix)

In article <7395@cbnews.ATT.COM>, yngve@whoozle.softlab.se (Yngve Larsson) writes:
> 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
> 
> [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 ]

The Luftwaffe training system was different than that of the Imperial
Navy's.  The Japanese pre-war training seemed to depend on *lots* of
training, lots of flight time, after pilots arrived in operational
units.

By the time of the Marianas Turkey Shoot, not only had the most
experienced Naval pilots been lost for the most part, the operational
pilots remaining had nowhere near the flying experience of their...um...
ancestors.  (It didn't help that no replacement for the aging Zero was
ever to show up in significant numbers.)  There *were* still excellent
pilots available to Japan, but they were pretty rare.  Saburo Sakai,
for instance, even though after Guadalcanal he was missing one eye.

Speaking of which...

The Luftwaffe allowed pilots to stay on active duty after major injuries,
such as Rudel (Stuka driver) after losing an eye, and the RAF with Bader
after losing both legs.  Admittedly rare, but did the USAAF have any
active-duty pilots in equivalent condition?