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South America: August 1935

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thesmilingassassin

The Chosen One

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21

Wednesday, May 28th 2008, 3:50am

IIRC the Mexican loaners have seen action albeit in a losing one at that.

Red Admiral

Italian Stallion

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22

Wednesday, June 4th 2008, 11:18am

Quoted

9. One thing I have noted throughout the war is the what seems a extraordinarily high attrition rate among aircraft. beyond just damaged. On the 13th the FAA scrambled 70 planes, lost 7, a 10% rate, 10 bombers attacked an airfield and lost 30%.

On the 18th, 9 planes lost 3, albeit after six attacks, so 5.5% per sortie, but 33% on the day. On the 20th, the FAA made 400 sorties, 67 losses, nearly 17% on that day. True, this is still only a total of 80 planes over the course of a week, but that is a substantial figure.

Granted that armor is likely not common, and self-sealing tanks are not yet out, plus as the later post observes, daylight is not the best, so perhaps the rate are fine. However pilot morale should be abysmal, and pilot availability is going to decline.


Number of pilots will probably start to bite very hard as there aren't going to be masses of them in the pipeline. For an AF the size of the FAA you're probably only looking to train 100-150 pilots per year.

The fighter losses are quite heavy, but from early WWII, losses from unescorted bombers were crippling. I'm thinking of Wellington, Blenheim and Hampden raids in 1940/41 when losses of 50-80% were reasonably common. The attacks stopped pretty quickly.
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