Subject: Aircrew casualities
From: Guy Alcala
Date: 9/16/03 3:21 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

ArtKramr wrote:

The common wisdom in WW II was that tail gunners and bombardiers suffered
the
highest casualties among bomber aircrews. Anyone have any actual statistics
on
aircrew casualties by position in USAAC bombers?

I wish you had asked that a few weeks ago, as I had a source here which gave
the
stats for B-17s. AFAIR, pilots were top of the list (because they had to
stay
while everyone else got out), with ball turret gunners about equal in loss
rate.
Bombardiers were actually among the best in survival rate if not the best (I
think
the navs were the best), because many of the attacks were from the rear, and
because they had an escape hatch in their compartment that was easy to get
to.

Guy


In the B-26 we had no escape hatch at all. The bombardier had along path to
creawl in front of the copilot then out the bombay. A long trip indeed. Maybe
we should break down the losses by aircraft type rather than lumping all
bombers together

Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer