% of Lost planes ?

[PFFF]

Was the % of planes lost in training accidents about equal to planes lost in combat?
Who had the highest/lowest %? British ? Germans ? French?

[Old Man]

From Mr. Kennet's "The First Air War". They relate only to deaths, rather than wreckage of machines, and so are not precisely what you asked for.

Reportedly, Fench training programs suffered a loss of three hundred trainees killed in crashes, while graduating 18,000 pilots. Given the number who failed training or otherwise failed to complete it, this suggests that about one in seventy-five or so of the men who entered flight school died there. In basic training during 1916 and 1917, there was about one death per 3,000 flying hours, and in 1918 about one per 4,000 flying hours. In advanced training schools, where aerobatics were taught, the rates were a bit worse, about four deaths per 5,000 flying hours.

English training programs were more dangerous than the French, averaging in 1918 about five deaths per 4,000 flying hours. In the three month period between December 1916 and February 1917, 58 airmen were killed flying in England, and the greatest proportion of these must have been training incidents.There are reports of much more dangerous conditions in the early days of the war, with a credible report of one death per ninety hours of flight training.

Apparently there are no figures surviving relating to German training casualties, but there is a report that 28% of German air arm casualties occured in Germany, and again, a goodly proportion of these must have involved trainees.

Accidents were certainly very common in training programs, but given the gingerly nature of the flights undertaken by those being trained in the basics, may well have involved pretty low rates of injury. The machines were flown at low altitude and slow speed in the basic training programs, and so crashes in most instances would not have been very energetic.

[PFFF]

Thanks!! I Was curious-for some apparently training was more dangerous than combat!!