What was life like as a World War 2 pilot?

Answer 1

in war - 2-5 minutes

all war - 6 weeks

AnswerDepended on when you were flying, early on in the war, it was around 5 weeks, by the time of "Bloody April" in 1917 it was about 17.5 minutes. AnswerPlease. Both of the above are ludicrous. Aircraft casualty rates, while severe, were nothing like the above. In WW1, accidents killed more pilots than combat, as flying was still extremely new, with no good pilot training programs until later in the War, and dangerous aircraft designs not really up to the demands of combat. In fact, over twice as many pilots were killed in "training" accidents than killed in combat.

According to H.A.Jones' War in the Air, a study of the UK's Royal Flying Corps in WW1, the amount of time a pilot could expect to fly before becoming a casualty (killed, wounded, or psychiatric) was a low of 92 hours in April 1917, and a high of 295 hours in August 1916. Note, in particular, that a much higher percentage of pilots became psychiatric casualties (modern-day PTSD) than would otherwise be expected (as high as 25% of all casualties), due to the radically higher stress of combat flight. Given that a typical combat flight lasted an hour or two at most, with an average number of mission at less than 1 per day, a pilot would last at least 4 weeks before becoming a casualty, to as many as 5 months.

Answer 2

life was horrible. you had to eat like a pig and walk with dead bodies unburied.

Answer 3

About 87 flying hours. That's less than four days. All considering, maybe two weeks, though some died within hours of first flying a plane and some lasted over a year.

Answer 4

About 7 weeks.

Answer 5

20 minutes.