"Chris Mark" wrote

From: vincent p. norris

I don't know how many pilots
there were in the Air Corps during WW II

I found one stray figure that might be useful: in 1944 the AAFTC trained
80,693 pilots. I believe that was the peak year. As an item of interest,
in
1946, it trained 344 pilots.

Training figures during the WWII era (1939-1945) for the Air Force:

Pilots
-------------------------------
233,198 Primary with 88,279 (~28%) failures*
193,440 Advanced with (~13%) 28,790 (~13%) failures
108,337 Transition with 7,474 (~7%) failures.

Assuming everyone went Primary, Advanced, Transition (I'd *guess*
that's true but someone who knows is welcome to correct the
assumption), that's a total failure rate of about 39%.

Bombardiers
----------------------------------
28,361 total with 3,423 (~11%) failures**

Navigation
-----------------------------------
56,119 total with 10,822 (~16%) failures***

Bombardier/Navigation
------------------------------------
28,480 total with 3,533 (~11%) failures****

Gunners
------------------------------------
309,236 total with 26,815 (~8%) failures*****

*all failures includes training deaths
** includes Precision, Instructor, and Refresher courses
*** includes Celestial, Dead Reckoning, Instructor, and Refresher
**** includes Bombardier/Navigation, Bombardier DR & D8 Navigation
***** includes enlisted, officers, and instructors