James Holland: prediction

Transcript context

…So it has to do with the Blitzkrieg? It has to do with the Blitzkrieg. The Luftwaffe becomes kind of the bogeyman of the Third Reich. They’re blamed for everything, but that’s because they’re completely abused. They’re the only part of the Third Reich’s Armed services, only part of the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht being the Navy, the army, and the Air force, that is in constant use the whole time, or constant abuse, I should say. In Britain and America, they rotate their pilots really, really carefully. By the time that you’ve got the eight Fighter Command, for example, part of the Mighty Eighth, the Eighth Air Force operating in Britain, by the end of 1943, you would have, in a squadron, that would have 16, you would never have more than 16 airborne from a squadron at any one time. You would have 40 to 45 pilots to service 16 in the air and similar number of aircraft, which means you’re not overusing these guys. And what would happen by that stage of the war, by 1943, a young fighter pilot coming to a Thunderbolt Squadron or a Mustang Squadron, for example, at the end of 1943, beginning of 1944, he’d have 350 hours of consecutive flying because you can train in America, in Florida or California or Texas or wherever, you can process many, many more people because the training is much more intense because you’ve got clear skies. So it’s not a question of, “Oh, we’d like to take you out Fritz this morning, but it’s a bit cloudy and oh, the RAF are over or Air Force are over, so we can’t fly today.” So in Germany, pilot training is constant. Aircrew training is constantly being interrupted by the war, by shortage of fuel, by inclement weather, et cetera, et cetera. In America, you have none of those problems. And Britain, because of its global reach also has training bases in what was Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and South Africa, Canada as well. And so you are able to process these guys much better. You’re able to give them more training, so that when they come, they are absolutely the finished article as pilots. Well, they’re not the finished article, as they say, a bomber pilot or as a fighter pilot. But that’s okay because you join your squadron of 40 other guys with 16 airborne, and the old hands kind of take you up a few times. So you arrive at, I don’t know, let’s say some airfield in Suffolk in East Anglia in England, and you’ll have 10 days to two weeks acclimatizing, getting used to it. The old hands will put you through your paces, give you some trips, tips. You can pick their brains while you’re having some chow and listening on some briefings. Then, the first mission you do will be a milk run over to France where the danger’s kind of pretty minimal and you can build up your experience, so that by the time you’re actually sent over on a mission to Berlin or Bremen or the Ruhr or whatever, you are absolutely in the business. kind of pretty minimal and you can build up your experience, so that by the time you’re actually sent over on a mission to Berlin or Bremen or the Ruhr or whatever, you are absolutely in the business. So qualitatively and quantitatively, you are just vastly superior to anything the Luftwaffe has got. The Luftwaffe by that stage, in contrast, 1940, new pilots coming to frontline squadrons with 150, 170 hours in their logbooks, less than a 100, 100, 90, 92 hours, something like that. It’s not enough. And they’re just being flung straight into battle and they’re getting absolutely slaughtered. And they’re also because their machines are quite complicated, there’s no two-seaters really, so no two-seater trainers. So the first time you’re flying in your Focke-Wulf 190 or your Messerschmitt-109, it’s this horrendous leap of faith for which you as a young, bright Luftwaffe fighter pilot know that you are not ready for this and it can bite you. And something like a Messerschmitt-109 has a very high wing loading, so it’s very maneuverable in the air, but it’s got its tiny wings. It’s got this incredible torque, this Daimler-Benz DB 605 engine with this huge amount of torque, and it just wants to flip you over. So if you’re not used to it, and it’s got a narrow undercarriage as well, if you’re not used to it, you could just crash. So in the first couple of months of 1944, they lose something like 2,400 aircraft in the air and pilots and about 3,400 are accidents.…

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