life span

i can't remember if i heard or read that the average life span of a raw pilot on the front was two weeks. is this correct? if so, how would you feel going to a job where the average worker lasted but two weeks?

Well, three weeks or more is actually more like it for the RFC. The famous "two week" figure only applied during the early months of 1917--"Bloody April" being part of it. French pilots usually lasted about three months, and I'm not sure about Germans. If you survived those early days, your chances of survival increased dramatically, until eventual burnout and the inevitable caught up with you at some point down the road. Still, they aren't the best odds, now are they?

Btw, if someone wonders why the survival rate of an RFC pilot would be much less than the others, I'd suggest an aggressive aerial policy combined with three words: Royal Aircraft Factory.

[mike_baram]

"how would you feel going to a job where the average worker lasted but two weeks?"
Well, I drove a cab in Oakland, CA....does that count?

[Vin]

The average length of stay with 4AFC between 7.1.18 – 11.11.18 was 21 days, but including pilots transferred and hospitalised for illness as well as for treatment of wounds.


Vin

Thank goodness, Vin has introduced something that resembles valid statistics, recognizing that people were wounded or transferred as well as killed. The "two week" or "three week" survival figure has been thrown about for decades by screen writers and authors without any substantiation - it might be true, or true for a very limited situation, or the aerial equivalent of an "urban legend". Obviously the casualty rate would differ with time and cicumstance (we might find, for example, that some of the highest losses were in late 1914, before the age of aerial armament but also before engine and airframe reliability became the norm). Would anyone else care to provide some researched facts (rather than another Arch Whitehouse or Quentin Reynolds quotation) with figures for specific units or time periods ? I think I could come up with some figures respecting Canadians, but not until my return from Australia.

I found a couple of files at the Australian War Memorial which were compiled at the end of the War for each AFC squadron full of statistics and a summary of the squadron's achievements.

I haven't got my copy of 4AFC from the AWM yet (I ordered it about 2 weeks ago) but I do have the one for 2AFC in front of me.

2AFC served from September 1917 til November 1918 (this includes some REALLY hazardous ground attack duties in their DH5s during the Battle of Cambrai).

There stats are ;
79 Pilots crossed the lines on Offensive operations in this period.

Casualties; POW - 7, Died of Wounds - 3, KIA - 6, Wounded - 2, Missing - 1 Total-19 Battle Casualties Killed in accidents - 5

Number of Machines lost over enemy lines - 14

Average length of time served by flying officers - 4 months 2 days (I must admit I thought Vin's figure for 4AFC was too low).

Hope that helps for one squadron at least.

P.S.
The coarse stats for 4AFC in the time it was operating are;

KIA - 16, POW - 14, Wounded - 10 (1 twice), MIA - 1, Total Battle Casualties - 41
Killed in Accidents - 9, Injured (non-battle?) - 5

This is from 139 Officers (including non-flying officers) who served in the squadron.

Interesting figures when compared to 2AFC. I wonder if it reflects the more dangerous characteristics of the rotary-engined scout?

That hoary old "two weeks" thing just doesn't seem to go away. Apparently someone, at some time, calculated that during Bloody April (probably more likely from late March through mid-May) 1917, the average time span for a pilot from posting until death, wounding or imprisonment was two weeks for the RFC. From this, countless generations of writers have assumed that this held true for the entire RFC for the entire war.

In fact, this kind of statistical mumbo-jumbo is pretty much meaningless for anyone trying to get a true feel for what it was like to serve in the flying services of WWI. For one thing, as has been pointed out, the very term "average" is highly suspicious. (I wonder what the mean life-span was?) Because inexperienced pilots were much more likely to be killed either in combat or through accidents, it's quite possible for 80% of a squadron's personnel to have survived an entire tour if only a small percentage of newcomers survived their first week or two. (I know that "80%" is high, but it's just to make a point.)

I've done no research on life-spans myself, but I'm sure that someone, somewhere, has. If my experience is anything to judge by, this is the kind of study that military staff colleges eat up with a spoon.

Just browsing through the "Jasta Pilots" gives a good idea of just how many died in accidents. I didn't count them, but they sure did look like a whole bunch. I would imagine that the statistics for the 2-seater pilots would be pretty much the same. Any ideas?