pilot training hours prior to combat

i belive hartmann had something like 45 hours under his belt when he went to russia in 42.........u.s. pilots had about 350 hrs before being sent to combat flying...does anyone have any figures for pilot training hours before combat for other nations...excluding axis panic time in 1945? on second thought include crisis pilots training hours too...if possilble{REMEMBER BOB MOVIE SCENE..where polish trainees leave formation to attack luftwaffe bombers ,to the great dismay of their raf intsructor pilot}hollwood or real event?

 

Polish Pilots.

REAL!

 

I have removed the duplicate topic...

 

I heard that in the battle of britain, that commonwealth pilots only got rundementry training in a bi-plane trainer for 9-15 hours, before being sent into combat.

 

not unless they were going into combat in tiger moths....they would need some hours "in type...ie hurricane or spit"...though it could be they had 10 hours in tiger moths and 4 hours in hurricanes before being thrown in the fire....depends on desperation,i guess.

 

Well, they were desperately short of pilots, and they needed them up in the air as fast as could possibly could.

 

During the BoB flight training work Monday thru Friday normal hours. It was not until later that they thought of training on Saturday to save time.

 

sometime in the 20s or 30s some raf fighter general decided that the tru test of pilot skill was in flying a nice tight vic of 3 fighters ,promotions and careers were made on how well one ...or ones pilots flew nice neat vics of 3(this is quite difficult ,to be sure)....however only the flight leader is allowed to look arround as both wingmen must concentrate on his rivets to mantain perfect allighnment....needless to say this vic habit was found to be a useless and dangerous skill when the ex condor legion boys came plungeing out of the sun over france in 1940...gee it worked so good in peacetime airshows,,,,

 

During world war 1, the average British or French pilot was lucky if he had 15 hours training before being sent into combat, where often it was as low as three hours... this was partly why the Germans maintained comparatively fewer aerial losses throughout the war, because although the Germans never had the numbers in the air, they focused more upon training their pilots well.

 

rfc pilot training early in ww1 bordered on the criminally incompetent....i read somewhere that the british were killing 8 or ten student pilots for every one killed in canada in 1915..

 

According to Len Deighton's "Fighter" pre-war Luftwaffe pilots had 250 hours training. He mentions as well that at the height of the battle RAF pilots were getting as little as 10 or 15 hours in a fighter before arriving at their squadrons (Note, this represents quite a bit more than the previously mentioned 9-15 hours in a biplane trainer).

 

Note the 9-15 hours in a fighter. The RAF never really reduced basic training requirements, it was the operational end that suffered.

I seriously doubt Hartmann went to Russin in 1942 with only 42 hours of training. Maybe 42 hours in type, or operational training.

Prior to Pearl Harbor the IJN carrier pilots, the elite of Japan, averaged about 800 flying hours.

British and US training length and standards increased throughout the war so by 1944 the norm was over 300 hours, plus operational training. LW and IJN standards were impossibly high to be maintained, add in fuel shortages and you constantly declining training.
Masses of good pilots beat a relatively few excellent pilots.

 

im sure you must be right about hartmanns 42 hours ,cananbridge...hartman and another 109 rookie were hitching rides to their first combat squadrens in 42...an airfeild commander asked the newbie fighter pilots to ferry a pair of brand new stukas east as they were heading that way...figureing a stuka would be childs play for a 109 driver....apperently not...hartmann put his through the operations shack and his companion flipped his stuka upside down...toe brakes are heel brakes in a stuka it seems....see... even hartmann was a newbie once.

 

How embarrassing!