The American practice of bringing aces back home so they could be instructors for new pilots is a seemingly simple idea that has massive repercussions for force generation and overall force quality - ThreadSky

abeardedpanda.bsky.social • 19 days ago

The American practice of bringing aces back home so they could be instructors for new pilots is a seemingly simple idea that has massive repercussions for force generation and overall force quality

Reposted from Secretary of Defense Rock

Hot take but I think scaling up the recruiting/training of carrier pilots was even more impressive, there is a reason the battle of the Philippine sea is known as the “The Great Marianas Turkey shoot”

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scottche.bsky.social•19 days ago

Something similar happened in Britain during WWII. The most successful squadron during The Battle of Britain was 303 squadron, which was mostly staffed by Polish flyers (1 of 16 Polish squadrons). They had first hand knowledge of Luftwaffe tactics, without which Britain probably would have lost.

abeardedpanda.bsky.social•19 days ago

If you ever look at the lists of "WWII aces by aerial victories" most of them are nazis which is admittedly a result of taking propaganda numbers or self reported numbers at face value but if you look a little closer, basically all of them were KIA

danielhaknsson.bsky.social•18 days ago

In fact quite a few of them survived the war (e.g. 3/12 top aces KIA). The biggest issue with the German system that I see is that their experience was not flown back into high command or into training.

abeardedpanda.bsky.social•19 days ago

These dudes would (theoretically) rack up enormous kill counts but once they got unlucky all of that knowledge died with them

In contrast, the Americans wouldn't let you get to 50 aerial victories in the first place because you'd be shipped back to Kansas as an instructor

dapperkitty.bsky.social•19 days ago

This is basically what happened to my grandpa. He was trained on the Norden bombsight when it was first introduced. And was so good with it, he was placed as an instructor. He wanted to go on a raid, but the army wouldn't risk losing him.

snootacamund.bsky.social•19 days ago

Isn’t there a decent correlation with reported losses though?

Prewar the training pipeline for the Nazi was lesser because a SG38 glider isn’t a PT-17 trainer, and by late in the war there effectively nil training for Nazi pilots because of fuel/consumable limitations.

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