"Target for Today"

[WDD]

They probably gave them M1s and sent them to the front.

Best use of a consultant!

 

[Bob Noel]

They probably gave them M1s and sent them to the front.

ohmygawd. I wouldn't give an MBA a rifle, unless you make sure you're behind them.

of course, if you ask an MBA...

 

[Mikey52]

The C-46 was not a nose wheel plane.

 

[3393RP]

While Ford built 24 B 24 bombers a day, the Military and contractors were training 48 pilots, 24 bombardiers, 24 flight engineers, 24 navigators, and a large number of gunners, every day, just to crew those B 24's. From raw recruits, never even had been a passenger in an airplane to their first mission, maybe a little as a month or 2 in service.

It's fascinating to explore the efforts made to train military aircrews during WWII. One operation in particular stands out, Great Britain's Empire Air Training Command. It established huge training bases in all of its dominions across the world, and also the United States. Because I'm a little lazy today, this link to Wikipedia explains it better than I could without jogging my memory and looking through books in my collection.

British Commonwealth Air Training Plan - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The US Army Air Forces built major airbase training centers across the Southern United States, taking advantage of the weather patterns that allowed flight seven days a week. The average amount of PIC time that culminated in the B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers before the pilots began combat flying was around 400 hours.

The green aircrews' first challenge as they headed for the European theater was finding the tiny Narsarsuaq airfield, also known as Bluie West One, located on the southern tip of Greenland at the head of a fjord. Operational losses on these trips neared 10% during winter months; many pilots and crew disappeared before reaching England.

Any examination of facts and statistics about America's production of aircraft and crew training during the war produces amazement at the expansive scope of the efforts. This also extended to all aspects of war materials, America truly was the arsenal of democracy.

The civilian government and military leaders made a conscious decision in 1941 regarding the United States contribution to the war. It was agreed that the size of the armed forces would be capped at eight million personnel and 90 Army divisions, and that decision conserved the domestic manpower needed to produce weaponry and logistics of all types to feed the Allies' military requirements across the world.

 

[luvflyin]

All theses facts will never make Catch 22 and Unbroken seem quite the same again

 

[Brad W]

Also in that time the US went from the approximately 16 strongest military to top dog.!!

I think that apart from the human tragedy in it all....that this growth along with the lessons that can be learned from the vast production of war goods, is probably the most fascinating and often missed takeaway lesson from that war...

Seems like we've never as a society gotten behind anything to that level since then
and that points to a lack of teamwork, motivation, and purpose
but even if that motivation and purpose were ever rekindled
I fear that we would not even be able to come close to the production independently as we did then. We are far too reliant on import.
Back on those days you name a product a made in USA model could be easily found.... so we had all sorts of capability available that could be quickly re-tooled as needed
now days it sees that it's hard to find made in USA versions of most things.... so it seems to me that we'd be very hard pressed to produce what we need when the boats form China and elsewhere stop...

 

[fast99]

While Ford built 24 B 24 bombers a day, the Military and contractors were training 48 pilots, 24 bombardiers, 24 flight engineers, 24 navigators, and a large number of gunners, every day, just to crew those B 24's. From raw recruits, never even had been a passenger in an airplane to their first mission, maybe a little as a month or 2 in service.

and most were in their early 20's or younger

 

[3393RP]

and most were in their early 20's or younger

My friend COL Ralph W. Evans, USAF (Ret) was a B-29 pilot in the 498th Bomb Group, Saipan, Marianas Islands group, 1944-1945.

Ralph began his B-29 training in mid 1944, flying a modified B-17. There weren't enough B-29s to fill the training requirements at that time. Later, in the winter of 1944, Ralph flew to the factory in Bellevue, Nebraska, to pick up a brand new B-29. The plant was run by the Glenn L. Martin Company, under license to Boeing. This was the same factory which produced the Silverplate B-29s for Paul Tibbets' 509th Composite Group.

Ralph and his crew flew from Bellevue to the San Francisco Bay Area's Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base (Later Travis AFB) , a 2,400 mile hop across the Pacific to Hawaii, and then a 3,700 mile leg to Saipan.

When Ralph landed his B-29 on Saipan and joined the 21st Air Force, he was 20 years old.

He flew around forty missions to Japan without incident, but he watched several aircraft in his squadron go down due to flak, fighters, and operational losses. A bomb run to Japan involved flying a 3,000 mile round trip. It was like flying from Dallas to San Diego and back, a twelve to fourteen hour mission.

After the war, Ralph flew the last B-29 out of Saipan and returned to the states. He stayed in the Air Force for twenty years, commanded a B-52 squadron, retired as a Colonel, and went to work at Eastern Air Lines as a pilot. He retired to Terre Haute, Indiana and played some pretty decent golf into his eighties.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

But how did they do all this without a legion of MBAs inhabiting corporate offices in Maryland and Virginia?

Yes, that is correct.

On the left is a one-cylinder APU generator to supply power for engine starts in order to save the main batteries also there on the left.
View attachment 133543

Looks like it has its own tiny fuel tank that had to be filled separately?

A B17 was parked at my local airport a few years back. They let us into the plane and spend a lot of time just gawking.

In 2008, I went to the Evergreen Air Museum for the first time. Oh, they called it the Evergreen Air and Space Museum then too, but after checking out the Spruce Goose and a couple of other things, we came across a B-17...

And that's where I met Lt. Col. Russell Barney, who had been a B-17 pilot in WWII and was volunteering at the museum. We talked to him for a little bit and then he pulled the ropes aside, opened up the plane, and he told us all about the plane and the war. I think it was the first thing I saw after lunch, and it was the last thing I saw that day - We asked questions and he answered them until the museum closed and they kicked us out. It was fascinating.

It's fascinating to explore the efforts made to train military aircrews during WWII. One operation in particular stands out, Great Britain's Empire Air Training Command. It established huge training bases in all of its dominions across the world, and also the United States. Because I'm a little lazy today, this link to Wikipedia explains it better than I could without jogging my memory and looking through books in my collection.

British Commonwealth Air Training Plan - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The US Army Air Forces built major airbase training centers across the Southern United States, taking advantage of the weather patterns that allowed flight seven days a week. The average amount of PIC time that culminated in the B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers before the pilots began combat flying was around 400 hours.

The green aircrews' first challenge as they headed for the European theater was finding the tiny Narsarsuaq airfield, also known as Bluie West One, located on the southern tip of Greenland at the head of a fjord. Operational losses on these trips neared 10% during winter months; many pilots and crew disappeared before reaching England.

I saw a presentation given by a WWII B-17 copilot a number of years ago. He had *fifty* hours of total flight time when he was sent, along with the rest of his crew, to pick up a brand-new B-17 from the factory and fly it to Europe.

They found Bluie West One okay, but the weather east of there was terrible and wasn't expected to clear sufficiently to continue for several days, so they all went out and got wasted... And then at 3 AM they were roused and told to GO, NOW.

They were flying over the ocean at 10,000 feet and got into the weather, and started picking up ice. They didn't have enough training or knowledge to have any idea what to do, so they kept going in the ice until they were no longer able to maintain altitude, and they got down to where they were in ground (sea?) effect, at night, over the ocean. He said that the salt spray from the ocean helped them to shed the ice.

As if that wasn't bad enough, they got to England and everything was socked in. They were shooting NDB approaches. His crew got lucky, but the weather was hit or miss at all of the bases, and many of the other crews shot repeated approaches until they ran out of fuel and crashed. He said only 10% of the crews that left with them early that morning made it.

 

[MBDiagMan]

That’s the second time I’ve read about a pilot headed across the Atlantic in a four engine bomber with 40 hours total time. Might be the same pilot that I read about. I suppose almost anything is possible with military field expediency, but I find it EXTREMELY difficult to believe. 40 hours in type would sound more reasonable. While they were trying to build massive numbers of aircraft, they were holding some potential pilots trying to keep them from going to other opportunities while they built planes for them to train and fly into combat. I think that six or 700 hours total would be much more common.

 

[3393RP]

That’s the second time I’ve read about a pilot headed across the Atlantic in a four engine bomber with 40 hours total time. Might be the same pilot that I read about. I suppose almost anything is possible with military field expediency, but I find it EXTREMELY difficult to believe. 40 hours in type would sound more reasonable.

I doubt its veracity. I've been reading and researching WWII aviation for forty some years and I've found somewhere around 400 was the minimum for heavy bomber pilots.

 

[3393RP]

I've posted this before, but it's a good story about the men that flew the bombers.

This happened during a visit of the Collings Foundation's bombers to KDAL. I was there to fly on their B-25, Tondelayo, and while waiting, I was standing in front of Nine-O-Nine. A tall elderly man walked up, looked closely at the B-17, turned, and said to me "The last time I was in a B-17, I left it in a parachute".

His name was Austin D. Rinne. He was assigned to the 546th Sqdn, 384th Bomb Group, Grafton Underwood, England, and the pilot of B-17G #42-31058 'Liberty Run'.

He and his squadron were attacking V-1 launching sites under construction near the French coast on February 25, 1944, when his plane was hit by flak. The crew bailed out, and the man I was speaking to spent the rest of the war as a POW at Stalag Luft I. Other Americans at the camp included USAAF POW commander Hubert Zemke, Bob Hoover, and Frances "Gabby" Gabreski.

The camp was liberated by the Russians on May 1, 1945.

I was practically speechless while listening to this old warrior tell his tale. It's one of my favorite memories.

His obituary further describes the man:

Austin Dean Rinne: World War II pilot survived German prison

Austin Dean Rinne liked to say he completed his college education during his 14 months at a World War II prisoner of war camp in Germany.

www.dallasnews.com

His ashes are interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

After he died, I contacted his son and emailed him photographs of his father I took that day, standing tall and erect in front of Nine-O-Nine.

 

[X3 Skier]

When I graduated from Engineering School, I went to work at Wright-Patterson AFB. A lot of the engineers were WWII Vets who had gone to school on the GI Bill.

One of my best friends and a true mentor was a B-26 Co-Pilot. After he completed “type rating” in the Marauder at McDill in 1943, he was called to the First Sargent Office, handed some paperwork and other stuff and given a tail number. Next he was told to get the crew and take the plane to England via the Southern route.

He was shot down on his 24th mission, watched the Pilot and two gunners in their parachutes gunned down by a Bf-109. He was captured but the rest of the crew escaped capture and made it back to England. He spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft III.

Those guys were superhuman.

 

[wanttaja]

He was shot down on his 24th mission, watched the Pilot and two gunners in their parachutes gunned down by a Bf-109. He was captured but the rest of the crew escaped capture and made it back to England. He spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft III.

Interesting bit of WWII trivia:

Most of you are probably aware about Disney drawing mascots/patches for any soldier or sailor who asked for one during WWII. There's a lot of airplane and squadron logos featuring famous Disney characters.

One woman in 1943 heard about the program. Her boyfriend was in Stalag Luft III, and she asked for a patch design for the prisoners....


IIRC, it didn't reach the POWs until after they'd been released.

Another bit of trivia is that Stalag Luft III was, of course, where the "Great Escape" happened. Americans worked closely during the preparations. However, the Germans decided to put all the Americans into their own section of the camp a couple of week prior to the escape, so only a couple of Eagle Squadron folks who remained with the Brits were able to take part.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[Domenick]

That’s the second time I’ve read about a pilot headed across the Atlantic in a four engine bomber with 40 hours total time. Might be the same pilot that I read about. I suppose almost anything is possible with military field expediency, but I find it EXTREMELY difficult to believe. 40 hours in type would sound more reasonable. While they were trying to build massive numbers of aircraft, they were holding some potential pilots trying to keep them from going to other opportunities while they built planes for them to train and fly into combat. I think that six or 700 hours total would be much more common.

I seriously doubt/speculate more than a handful of WWII combat pilots (bombers and fighters) ended the war with 600 or 700 hours. Maybe some cargo/transport pilots.
In the case of a bomber pilot and you flew 25 missions at 10 hours each that's only 250 hours. I'd think it would be a rare combat pilot who saw the end of WWII with 700 hours.

 

[WDD]

Maybe combat hours were 200, but going into combat (in the middle and towards the end of the war) the US Pilots had hundreds of hours of training. This was because the industrial complex also turned out large numbers of trained pilots. The dominance over the Luftwaffe and the Japanese was in part because of superior pilot training and hours flown.

Adding to that was that we brought experienced pilots back and put them into training the next generation. The Japaneese had fewer but higher quality pilots in the begining, but they were used until they were no more with no quality replacements behind them. Same with the Germans. "You either come home wearing the Iron Cross or come home with the Iron Cross on your coffin".