Time train a US fighter pilot

[drgondog]

Quoting from memory from Lundstrom, the USN fighter pilots, once the war began had 300-400 hours flight training. Pre war it was more. If memory serves the training during the war took about nine months.

I suspect some form of Carrier landing qual and more air/flag gunnery training made up the difference - with emphasis on landing qualifications.. had my father gone directly to advanced and transition before being assigned to combat unit as a replacement, he would have had 350-400 hours. He did remark that aerobatics was emphasized more with the RAF training command - and when he participated as an instructor the AT-6 was the airframe he used the most.

[Glider]

From what I have read the Operational training for a USN carrier pilot was two months, took 100 hours and included carrier qualification.

[renrich]

Digging into Lundstrom, once the war was underway the carrier fighting air wings in 1942 averaged about 300 flight hours experience. In contrast the wings in 1940 averaged 1000 to 600 hours. The 1939 syllabus was 207 flight hours in 26 weeks and then carrier pilots were supposed to get about 75 more hours before going to operational squadrons. When war broke out the demand for fighter pilots meant that the squadrons themselves bore most of the burden of operational training.

[Glider]

That seems to fit. I had USAAF at around 260 hours, the transition training for USN was 100 hours instead of 50 for the USAAF which gives you about the right number.

[renrich]

I recall reading in Lundstrom that early in the war. March, April, 1942? The first ever carrier landing a certain fighter pilot made was when his squadron flew out to the carrier after the carrier had sortied from Pearl Harbor. He had made field carrier landings but never on an actual flight deck. He cracked up his F4F but was not seriously hurt and went on to be a decent pilot. Can you imagine?

[Glider]

There was one RAF pilot who flew off the Wasp to go to Malta but his extra tanks didn't work. He got down again on the Wasp without damage, without any training in carrier landings and most amazingly without a hook.

Story was he was desperate for a drink and wasn't too chuffed when reminded that USN ships are dry, but someone found some for him.

[renrich]

I believe there were Hurricanes with no hooks who flew out and landed on a Brit carrier from Norway.

[fastmongrel]

I believe there were Hurricanes with no hooks who flew out and landed on a Brit carrier from Norway.

HMS Glorious was the vessel. The Hurricanes had there tyres deflated to help slow them down.

[bogey.io]

I wonder how the hours correlate to other countries trainings. Without any facts at my hand I tend to assume that for example Soviets training wasn't as rigorous as with USAAF or RAF but perhaps someone has it in the top of their heads.

[Jabberwocky]

The US bombing survey has some excellent comparative charts on nominal flight time and actual flight time for pilots the GAF, RAF and USAAF.

It see what I can track down. Unsure if its for all pilots or fighter pilots specifically.

[Jabberwocky]

Apologies for the size





To me, this is one of the more revealing statistics of the war.

In early 1942 the GAF was forced to go to short-term measures and cut back flying hours, giving a good indication of just how badly Germany had miscalculated on the resources side of things.

[parsifal]

The hours are about right, for the end of the war, but for the allies, the average numbers of hours went up, whilst for the germans the average numbers went down.

Soviet training hours really were about 20 hours up until just after Kursk. The VVS was roughly handled at Kursk, though they did manage to put up a better show than previously. Between Kursk and the end of the year, Training hourse went up dramatically to about 100 hours for the Soviets.

Three things destroyed the german efforts in training...


1) overuse and too much attrition
2) insufficient training aircraft numbers
3) at the en, shortages of fuel

By wars end, the germans were in worse shape than Brits had been during the BoB. The brits had been forced to send in some pilots with as little as 20 hours in the OTU (training on the type they would fly in battle) and less than 100 overall. By the end of 1944, germans were being sent into fight with about 50 hours ion average.

But a rookie pilot, however well trained, is not your killing arm. 90% of the killers in the air are about 15% of your pilots....the super experienced guys that tended to lerad the rest into battle. these guys were almost irreplaceable, or at least eveolved from the "cannon fodder" only with time. This was the great strengtrh of both the german and the Japanese at the beginning of their respective wars, but as time went by they lost that edge as too many rookies were lost to allow a natural progression in the experience levels of the 'mainstream pilots. A shortage of adequately trained "mainstream aircrew" (neither rookies nor aces) will decrease the rate of emergence of aces. Which is why all the allied air forces tended to widen their base of airborne shooters, whilst the axis base contracted.

In terms of time needed to get to basic flying standard it usually took from 9 to 18 months for a Us citizen to become a US Fighter pilot. Many pilots spent a lot of time in the continental United States, so that the 250 hours covered in the training process was often greatly increase by non-combat general flying. Many US pilots went into battle with more than 350 hours under their belts. And this made the USAAC a very survivable force....

[Jabberwocky]

On Soviet pilot training, there was a massive expansion of the flight training programme from 1937 onwards, and a corresponding shortening of pilot training time. Then there was a complete re-jig in late 1940, dramatically shortening hours and flying time again: pilot training was to take no more than 12 months, aircrew training no more than 8 (5 months for radio operators and gunners),

Everything I’ve read suggests incredible variability in the number of hours of training aircrew (not just pilots) got between the pre-1940 pilots and the post 1940 pilots. There was also massive variability in training between different military districts.

Some information from ‘Soviet Air Force Theory, 1918-1945’ (James Sterrett)

Russian Air Force flight schools:

12 in January 1937
18 in January 1940
28 in September 1940
41 in early 1941
83 in June 1941

Officers graduating from training:

8,738 in 1938
12,337 in 1939
27,918 in 1940

However, there was a 50% shortage in aircraft (against establishment), a 60% shortage in fuel and a 44% shortage in instructors. In 1940 the Soviet air force was 60,000 short of its establishment officer strength. Sterett makes the argument that those 83 schools should really only be worth about 45 properly outfitted schools.

Sterrett notes that between 1939 and 1940 the basic flight-training regimen was shortened seven times, “bringing the peacetime training programme to the span of that used in wartime”. Later on he notes that the wartime span was 90 days!

He also notes that the Far Eastern MD managed over 100 hours of training per pilot in 1940 (the district with the most training) and the Transcausasus MD managed 70 (second most training) in the year. But some MD’s managed only 30-40 hours.

Training was also focused on daylight operations: in June 1941, 92% of the 5457 available Soviet aircrews (I think this means bomber aircrews as a unit) were trained for daylight, fair weather flying. Just 204 crews were trained on new aircraft (I don’t know how many hours “trained” means). Just 17.9% of available pilots were trained for poor weather flying in daylight.

18.2% of crews were trained for night flying. And just 0.7% were trained in night flying with poor weather conditions (only 44 crews).

Flight crew basic training was just 6 hours in January 1942, increasing to 34 hours in early 1943, with a focus on “combat manoeuvres”.


From ‘Russian Aviation and Air Power in the Twentieth Century’ (Robin D. S. Higham, John T. Greenwood, Von Hardesty)

Baltic Military District re-training: 15.5 hours flying time;
Western MD: 9 hours
Kiev MD: 4 hours

Note that this is re-training, probably for already qualified pilots, but such small numbers on operational types certainly bears notice.


In an interview Kozhedub said that he had to fulfill a flying quota of about 100 hours at the Chuguyev military aviation school. He was admitted “at the beginning of 1940.”

Interview here : Aviation History: Interview with World War II Soviet Ace Ivan Kozhedub

Another interview with a Soviet pilot (Leonid Sergeevich Kulakov) with a little more on training

Interview with L.Kulakov

Some more on training and transitioning to Spitfire in the Kuban region

Spitfires over the Kuban

I’ve also seen an interview with a Russian Sturmovik pilot who had over 450 hours training prior to the war, including 60 hours in operational aircraft. There are accounts of other pilots getting just 3-5 hours of training on operational types before joining squadrons or even going on operations. I guess much depends on circumstances.

[fastmongrel]

Why does RAF training drop from a high of 350 hours in Oct 42 June 43. Its only a small drop but I would have thought the hours would grow in line with USAAF hours.

[drgondog]

It might be interesting to note that about 70% of the fighter pilots in the 355th and 4th FG that were shot down in air combat with Luftwaffe had less than 15 hours of combat ops before going down. This statistical fact suggests that situational awareness, particularly for a wingman, was the deficiency - not flying skill.