XPost: alt.history.what-if, rec.aviation.military, soc.history.what-if   
   XPost: alt.politics.uk   
   From: keithwillshaw@gmail.com   
      
   On 13/01/2020 06:09, pyotr filipivich wrote:   
   > Keith Willshaw  on Sun, 12 Jan 2020 21:51:16   
      
   >   
   > 	As has been pointed out many times: RAF pilots shot down, were   
   > shot down over their own country.  If was possible for you to get shot   
   > down in the morning and be back up in the afternoon.  Possible, I   
   > don't know if that happened.   
   > 	OTOH, Luftwaffe pilots got shot down mostly over enemy territory.   
   > Even if they made it to the channel, they weren't going to be getting   
   > back to the mess anytime soon.  On going problem.   
   >   
      
   That was important but equally important in the long term was the   
   inception of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan at the beginning   
   of the war. By Sept 1940 the first batch of pilots being trained in   
   Australia, Canada and Rhodesia were graduating. One thing that is not   
   well known is that Fleet Air Arm and RAF pilots were being trained in   
   the still neutral USA. All of this was additional to the 7000 pilots   
   trained in the UK by the end of August 1940.   
      
   The Germans always had this idea that it was going to be a short   
   victorious war. The British like the Soviets and Americans were under no   
   such illusion. They geared up both pilot training and aircraft   
   production for a war of attrition.   
      
   Both the Luftwaffe and RAF developed  organised systems for recovering   
   downed pilots from the channel and it was often a race to see which   
   service would pull pilots out of the water first but this was still not   
   fully in place in 1940.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)