F US NAVY MECHANICS+PILOT WW II

During World War II, the US Air Force, the USAAF (United States Army Air Force), was not an independent type of armed force and was formally under the command of the army. Thanks to their excellent industrial base and efficient organization, they became the most powerful military aviation in the world during World War II. It is also worth remembering that the USAAF grew tremendously in terms of the number of personnel - in 1939 they numbered about 25,000 people, but at its peak, i.e. in the summer of 1944 - as many as 2,400,000 people! So in five years they have grown almost 100 times! In this number, approx. 300 thousand. were officers, while about 2.1 million were privates and non-commissioned officers, mainly from ground service. Despite such enormous growth, the USAAF implemented effective training systems and methods, which made the overwhelming part of the above-mentioned personnel perform their tasks efficiently. It can also be mentioned that all types of technical and mechanical facilities were used on a large scale in the work of ground handling, which shortened the number of hours needed to bring a given machine to take-off and flight. It is worth remembering that the number of US overseas air bases also increased dramatically, in December 1941 there were 19, and in May 1945 - as many as 130!At the start of World War II in the Far East, the US Navy had nine aircraft carriers that served in the Atlantic and Pacific. However, in the period 1941-1945, thanks to the use of the enormous production potential of American shipyards, the US Navy gained several dozen fleet (mainly Essex) and escort (mainly Casablanca) aircraft carriers, surpassing the Japanese Navy in this field. Of course, the main weapon of UA Navy carriers was their on-board aviation. During World War II, the US Navy introduced several successful types of aircraft, among which one could indicate: the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver dive bomber, the Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo plane or the very successful Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter, which it replaced in 1942-1943 in this role. Grumman F4F Wildcat. It is also worth adding that the US Navy implemented an effective Naval Aviation Cadet Program in 1935, which was modernized during World War II (exactly in 1940-1945). It consisted of four training stages ( pre-flight, primary, basic, and advanced), as a result of which each of his graduates finished it with about 600 hours of flight, of which 200 hours were spent on the machine on which he was to fly. It is worth adding that the US Navy pilot training system turned out to be highly effective, and approximately 61,500 pilots completed it in 1942-1945. At the same time, the Japanese Navy trained 2.5 times fewer pilots, which translated into the poor quality of Japanese naval and on-board aviation in 1944-1945.