USN Pacific Ops, 1944/45.

The new thing about the carrier ops of the USN in 44/45 was their long duration without visiting a port, although keeping a substantial sortie rate. That was possible due to escort carriers having spare aircraft on board. ANother factor was probably the more reasonable weather of the Pacific (compared to North Atlantic).

I don’t think the USN had such a high attrition in crews as they gave special attention to that. The Japanese however suffered heavy losses each time they went into combat, even when winning the engagement. After normally two to four sorties against defended targets most aircraft and crews were expended. Compare with operations at the Salomonen Islands. Possibly also due to Samurai mentality of the Japanese airmen.

As Papa Lima has said, the accident and attrition rates associated with carrier ops were/are always higher than land-based. I’ve recently re-read ‘Carrier Pilot’, the autobiography of Fleet Air Arm fighter pilot Norman Hanson. He flew Corsairs with 1833Sqn aboard HMS Illustrious in the Pacific during 1944, and it seems that ‘prangs’ of one sort or another were a daily occurance. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Illustrious also had a Fairey Barracuda squadron, another type that was notoriously tricky to land without bending it. Hanson comments on how every Corsair landing looked dicey, but every Barra landing looked a certain crash!

Ofcourse this was in the days before angled decks, where you were guaranteed to end up in the barriers (or something even more substantial) if you missed the arrestor wires. There was virtually no such thing as a ‘bolter’ in those days, unless you were lucky enough to be landing on a completely empty deck.

Even in peacetime the attrition rate of carrier pilots was (and still is) rather high. The actual figures must be available somewhere, and I guarantee they will be hair-raising! My late father was on board the old HMS Eagle before and during WW2 and had plenty of such tales to tell!