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Thread: Pilot hours

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    London
    Posts
    15

    Pilot hours

    Does anybody know approximately how many hours an average P-51/B-17/B-24 pilot would have when he reached his squadron/unit ?
    Thank you.

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Aug 2016
    Location
    Chicago
    Posts
    918
    Found this out there in the interwebs:

    "The United States Navy aircrew training syllabus adopted in October 1939 was for three courses totaling 26 weeks long during which the pilots would accumulate 207 flight hours. They would get 74 hours over 14 weeks of primary instruction, 45 hours over 5 & 1/2 weeks of basic training, and then 88 hours of specialized training over the final 6 & 1/2 weeks. Basic training was the phase where instructors would determine what type of aircraft pilot trainees would specialize in.
    By January 1941, training had settled in on seven months and 210 hours to graduation with pilot wings. Future carrier pilots still had to accumulate 75 hours of flight time training to become carrier qualified and considered combat ready."

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Posts
    2,575
    I don't have specific info on 51, guess it would be a couple of hundred hours. My T6 manual says traines might have 60 hours before going to the 6.
    Famous RAF pilot Geoffrey Wellum, author of FIRST LIGHT, one of the most enjoyable books Ive read on WWII piloting, was 18 years old with a total of 168 hours, and 95 solo when he was sent to an operational combat squadron, # 92, which has Spitfires, and he has never even sat in one. Soon he does his first Spit fligth, solo of course and he is then a full fledged fighter pilot ,about the time of the Dunkirk battle.
    One thing in their favor is that that training was very good.

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