Ian BB,
Frankly Ian, no. That it may have said
some bearing, I readily acknowledge. But the unspoken message here is: "These excessive losses were due to the RAF "Kay-dets" inability to assimilate the new culture, climate, military discipline, and different foods".
That is simply untrue (in my experience in Carlstrom, and I do not think the succeeding RAF intakes were any different fom ours).
All our "washouts" from 42C were flying-related, either for not being fit for solo at the 10 hr mark, or for subsequent gross breaches of flying discipline.
AFAIK, not a single one of our 40% "wastages" was due to a ground disciplinary offence. That cock simply will not fight.
Note that the month's "familiarisation" included no actual flying (the paltry total of 9 failures for the entire time is evidence of that - and it would be very hard to fail a Course that consisted of simply being lectured at for a month and (
AFAIK) had no exam at the end.
They would arrive at Primary with zero hours (perhaps one in a thousand had a little previous flying experience): most of us had never been off the ground.
There is something else at work here. I suspect "creative accounting" (cooking the books !) And if there
was this dramatic improvement from 42D onward, how do you account for the overall wastage of 3,392 (42 %) of the entire entry ? (this was higher than 42C's loss rate ! we had insignificant losses after Primary - but a few killed).
Danny.