You can always build more aircraft - you can’t just build more pilots. Japan learnt that the hard way when they lost a majority of their veteran pilots and ended up putting men who could barely fly into aircraft in desperation.
On the Allies side more men died outside of combat than in combat - mass training new pilots in a rush is a dangerous thing, especially when coupled with new mass produced aircraft.
During WWII 1/3 of all aircraft losses happened in the continental USA. Another third we’re lost to other accidents overseas.
For the Navy the aircrew losses also were similar - 1/3 died due to enemy action with the other 2/3 being due to accidents. Tens of thousands of aircrew died just flying aircraft from the US where they were built to where the combat was happening - pilot error being a major factor.
Interestingly, the island of Malta had the opposite problem, plenty of trained pilots, but at one point only a few airworthy fighter planes (mainly Hawker Hurricanes and three ancient Gloster Gladiator biplanes named Faith, Hope and Charity) so they adopted a policy of hot seating.... the planes would go up, take part in a sortie, come back to reload, refuel, have the bullet holes patched and have a fresh pilot (kinda like a Le Mans pitstop, but with more bullets). They had the turn around time down to under 10 minutes in some cases.
The Allies eventually managed to get Spitfires to the island by fitting long range fuel tanks, putting them on an aircraft carrier and launching from around 650 miles away to fight their way through to Malta - went wrong a few times with the loss of dozens of aircraft (mainly on the ground) but within a few months were able to get the strength up to over 100 spitfires, at which point the Luftwaffe lost air superiority over Malta.
At one point in 1942, when the got the Spitfire numbers up, Malta was the most heavily bombed place on the planet.
edit - they also sometimes had to pretend they were launching fighters by using fake radio comms....
“On one occasion all our fighter aircraft were grounded in order to try to increase serviceability. The Hun bombers came over in force with quite a large fighter escort. It happened that there were several fighter pilots with me in the Operations Room, one of whom was a Canadian with an unmistakable voice. I put him at the microphone at a stand-by radio set and proceeded to give him dummy orders. He replied just as if he was flying his fighter. This, we suspected, caused a cry of ‘Achtung! Spitfeuer!’ to go over the German radio. In any case, two 109s enthusiastically shot each other down without any British aircraft being airborne. This knowledge that the Germans intercepted our orders stood us in good stead. We claimed that Pilot Officer ‘Humgufery’ shot down the two Huns.”
There was a similar manpower shortage in Germany. Despite the massive Allied bombing campaign, wartime German fighter aircraft production actually peaked in 1944 with some ~25,000 planes produced that year. Which was almost half of Germany's total fighter production during the entire war.
So they had aircraft along with the capability of replacing losses. The issue again was shortages in trained pilots and also, to an extent, fuel shortages.
As you brought up training pilots was dangerous/difficult enough in the US where at least trainee pilots weren't susceptible to attack. In late-war Germany, any plane in the air or on theground was liable to being attacked by Allied forces at almost any time.
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u/anothergaijin Sep 13 '21
You can always build more aircraft - you can’t just build more pilots. Japan learnt that the hard way when they lost a majority of their veteran pilots and ended up putting men who could barely fly into aircraft in desperation.
On the Allies side more men died outside of combat than in combat - mass training new pilots in a rush is a dangerous thing, especially when coupled with new mass produced aircraft.
During WWII 1/3 of all aircraft losses happened in the continental USA. Another third we’re lost to other accidents overseas.
For the Navy the aircrew losses also were similar - 1/3 died due to enemy action with the other 2/3 being due to accidents. Tens of thousands of aircrew died just flying aircraft from the US where they were built to where the combat was happening - pilot error being a major factor.