Warbird Information Exchange

Imagine it's 1948, you have been flying P-51s including a year of combat in the Pacific or Europe, and your squadron has just been switched from Mustangs to F-80s. What do you imagine would have been the typical level of experience (hours logged, calendar time, etc.) of an Air Force pilot making such a transition? Not talking test pilots or anything unusual here, just typical line pilots.

My experience flying SEL and MEL is that flying is flying. The more experience one has, the more transitioning becomes one of learning the systems and V-speeds. During that time period, my dad was simply given a flight manual and met the Check pilot the next day and flew (Solo) with the Check pilot flying formation or even observing from the ground.

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Cheers!

Lance Jones

Could be, but the accident record of the P/F-80 was so bad, and so many of the accidents seem to have been caused by stupidity, lack of useful experience, and a variety of factors in between, that I'm curious about the experience level of the pilots flying them. I suspect that the best of them had just enough time and experience to barely qualify them for a junior right seat on a regional carrier. And yes, I understand that flying a jet was a new deal.

https://www.afhra.af.mil/Portals/16/doc ... 151431-133

Seems like the average was 200-400hrs of flying in theater, followed by rotation home, with some training.

Fair guess is that a SH fighter pilot is likely to have less than 1000 hrs total time by 1948, with some having fewer, and that probably optimized for a single type post training.

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

"Lack of useful experience"
They were among the FIRST to convert to jets. NOBODY had experience.
They were writing the manuals in blood leaned from lessons of that
generation. Aviation is still a bit unique in that we are taught by the
previous generation , learning from their mistakes and the mistakes of
the people who taught them. Looking back now we think it as stupidity,
arrogance or whatever, and there surely was plenty of all that to go around.
It did get us to were we are today though.

Both Robin Olds and Jack Broughton wrote of their transitions to jets in their books. I think Yeager did, too.

Old's first flight in a British Meteor was a particularly amusing, entertaining, and hair-raising passage.

Wasn't the problem early with the P-80 due to the engine? A lot of the pilots back then had a lot of different types of aircraft under there belt already so it must have been a normal day to jump into something different.

Don Gentile was killed at Andrews when his T-33 went down on takeoff, though I don't know whether that was a catastrophic engine failure or the failure of an accessory (not that it mattets)Stephen, I might question your assumptions that the typical 1948 pilot had combat experience. A lot of the combat gets hot out of the service, there were a lot of newcomers in the ranks, but yes, their flight and squadron commanders had combat experience.

Last weekend I was speaking with a female first officer for a regional carrier. She said she only has 300 hours of piston time. She then briefly flew Caravans for a freight carrier before getting into a RJ.
She ain't exactly Captain Sully, I suspect.
And I don't think I'd be happy with her in the cockpit if things weren't going perfectly on approach in less than ideal conditions.

At least ANY military pilot of the period should have far more experience and "seat of the pants" time in ill equipped aircraft (Stearmans and T-6s) than today's green RJ FO who had never flown anything more demanding than a C208 or Navajo before getting into a passenger jet.

I found your comments on military pilots far too harsh on your second post.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

Most interesting question. Can’t answer the part about the experience levels of 1948 pilots, but I have experienced the transition from piston to T-33 née F-80 jet. There are certain techniques from the piston that don’t apply to the early jets. With the prop driven, there is almost instant response to the throttle. This becomes a muscle memory that requires little thought. Respond to the jet engine with that kind of throttle movement and it will burn itself out or destroy itself. Many died by getting low and slow in the F-80 and then trying to salvage the approach with throttle. The engine could take 20 seconds to spool up from idle. It has to be done slowly or it will overtemp. The T-33 was designed to give an instructor a chance to erase the piston driver’s techniques with the new jet guy’s proper techniques. Centrifugal flow engines are great when spooled up, but at low rpm, not so much. I just have to keep reminding myself which airplane I’m in. The T-34 and T-28 were also designed to resemble the T-33 cockpit to help the newbie transition to the jet. Watch out for that last step though. That familiarity could easily lead you into doing the wrong thing in the jet. It becomes really clear the first time you hear the overtemp oral warning.

Take a look at the German experience with the F-104, nicknamed "The Flying Coffin" when WW2 era pilots suddenly find themselves in hot jets - Alot of accidents and fatalities, and most of them pilot error.
[I believe they transitioned from F-84's so not exactly from prop to jet, but almost might as well have been]

Erich Hartmann warned that the jet was far too hot, complex and ill suited for use in Germany but his warnings were not heeded and the results were very unfortunate.

When I was a boy, I was lucky enough to go to a lecture by Luftwaffe ace Franz Stigler at the US Air Force Museum.

He talked mostly about the Me262 and his experiences transitioning to it and its use in combat. They showed a Luftwaffe training film and he talked over it. Just fantastic. Lots of anecdotes about Galland, Macky Steinhoff, etc., too. I wish I had a tape recording of it now.

One of the things I remember him saying was that flying the 262 was easier than piston engine a/c, in that there was no engine torque.