Crashes in War and Peace
„The reception and depiction of crashes – plane accidents in War and Peace were very much similar. For once, as already mentioned, early aviation was extremely hazardous. Crash-Landings, accidents and crashes have been a part of the socialization of pilots. Because they happened in front of the watching mass audiences, the spectators had been used to this component of aviation – the risk of a crash was, as mentioned, was a motivation, not be underestimated for the sensation-seeking interest of the audience.
During the War the accident rate, the losses of planes and pilots without enemy contact, remained high. I don’t know a single report of a pilot of the War without the narration of accidents during starting and landing, collisions in the air, fatal engine failures or failed emergence landings. It is almost impossible to quantify this, but the risk for a pilot to be wounded or even killed beyond combat in a “normal” accident, must have been comparable to the risk in combat, for example at the eastern front. Flying was one of the most dangerous activities before the War, during the First World War this remained unchanged, even without enemy contact. About half the losses of the German flying staff died without enemy action. 6.840 members of the flying staff had fallen; additionally 1.400 pilots have been reported as missing. If you don’t account the latter, than 1.800 of the flying staff had been killed at home, 98% of them during their training. Of the 3.200 pilots in service 1.450 died without enemy contact. The official number of fallen during combat was comparable small; it reached 1.420, including 710 observers. The comparable numbers of the Entente might have been of the same magnitude. We have more exact numbers for the losses of US pilots. In the comparable short time from them entering the War and November 1918 they lost during training 500 dead, which have been twice as much as on the front, and even their a considerable number of accidental deaths has to be reduced from the overall losses.
In short: the training to become an US-pilot was statistically more dangerous than the combat at the front. A British flying trainee had been warned, that he should quit the training, if he felt that the training was too dangerous, because the risks would “multiple by the hundreds” as soon as he reaches France. That wasn’t true. Death by accident or death during combat was – at least concerning the risk – hardly different. Dogfights lead to an increased risk, but flying alone always was as dangerous as fighting. Pilots crashed frequently without enemy contact. Paul Klee, whose duty in the Bavarian flying school was to document the accidents, described ironically some of the common incidents: “This week we had three dead, one was treated by the propeller, two crashed. A forth one crashed […] on the roof of the hanger yesterday. Flew to deep, hit a telegraph pole, bounced on the roof and overturned and remained upside-down like a little pile of garbage”“
Source: Kurt Möser, Fahren und Fliegen in Frieden und Krieg, Verlag Regionalkultur, Mannheim 2009, p. 522.