Reader123:-
one dreads to think how many unnecessary deaths on bombing raids otherwise than as a result of enemy action.
Not quite sure of the point you are making there, unless it is that
all deaths on bombing raids were unnecessary because the bombing raids themselves were? I only say that because it is what modern perceived wisdom seems to say these days.
I don't think the wartime accident rate was something that could be changed much, given the dangers inherent in training for, and conducting of, such a massive enterprise as the War in the Air comprised, but Danny will no doubt take me to task if I am wrong in that.
The problem was that wartime philosophy carried on into the peacetime airforce when the imperatives to carry on in that way no longer really pertained. OK the Cold War soon set in and the switch from Pistons to Jets (especially those primitive first generation ones) produced a steep and often unscalable learning curve, but in retrospect a lot of those deaths were both unnecessary and avoidable. It was after all on the back of them that RAF Flight Safety was launched.
Given the urgency of the task, the lack of time in which to properly learn one's craft, the very limited aids available and their tendency to become swiftly unavailable, and the measures that had to be taken to ensure concentration of force and defence against enemy interception, those +8000 training losses be they down to CFIT, mid-air collisions, or plain lack of airmanship were as much the price of victory as those suffered by direct enemy action. All 55573 BC deaths were a part of the waste that is war. Would that they were all unnecessary and avoidable.