Another of the Greatest Generation Gone

Norman 'Dusty' Kleiss -- Battle of Midway hero dies at 100: Dusty Kleiss

The greatest generation label gets tossed around a lot but that man embodied it.

Thanks for the link.
It's a little misty here at the moment.

Larry

IIRC Kliess was one of the few who flew that day with any kind better training. Something like 80% of the hits at Midway were
scored by something like 20% of the pilots. The reason being that, at the time, few peace time pilots had enough training on
moving targets.

Actually the older peace time pilots like Kliess were extremely well trained - it was the more recent pilots that had joined after 1938 that found their flight training shortened. Kliess had over 800 hours of training while many other pilots in his group that day had around 500 hours.

The Navy (and Air Force) eventually learned that no matter the training only a small percentage of pilots had the aggressive nature to go out into combat and get themselves some. In WW2 the number is like 1% of the pilots accounted for almost half the kills - over half the fighter pilots that saw combat never fired a shot. Eventually psychological screenings were used to make sure only the most aggressive were made combat pilots - no point in issuing an expensive airplane to someone that wasn't going to use it.


In WW2 only 20-25 percent of America's front line combat soldiers actually fired shots at the enemy - the rest were taking up space. This percentage was similar to other nations and US history in general (WW1 and Civil War) - especially when conscripted troops were involved. In Korea the rate increased to 55% and Vietnam with a higher percentage of troops being volunteers the rate willing to shoot to kill was increased to near 90%.

At Midway I think only 12(?) hits were scored by US pilots - Kliess claims/was awarded 2 of them - that means 10 other pilots made hits. With 150 (or so) dive bombers and torpedo bombers on the US side that's about 8%.

In WWII, the Army Air Corps noticed that every squadron had several pilots who were far more effective at shooting down enemy airplanes than the rest of the pilots. They set out to see if they could find a commonality between the highly effective pilots.

They looked at personality. Nothing. An aggressive, gregarious pilot might not be better than a quiet, introverted man.

Education? A highly educated pilot might not be more successful than one who barely met the minimum education requirements to be a pilot.

Physical stature? Didn't make any difference.

They finally figured it out. Almost all of the pilots who were highly successful at shooting down enemy airplanes were farm boys from the Midwest. They grew up shooting pheasants and ducks on the wing, and when in a fighter plane shooting at an enemy plane they instinctively built in the proper elevation and azimuth lead angles.

Kinda interesting. But, you have to realize that in those days a gun sight in a fighter plane may not have been anything more than an "X" drawn inside the windshield with a grease pencil.

Dick Bong was assigned duty as an aerial gunnery instructor and observed: "I don't know anything about gunnery. I just get up so close behind them that I can't miss." He got so close to one that he collided with it. 40 kills. Highest attained in WWII. Medal of Honor. He was also famous for flying down Market Street in San Francisco, double looping the Golden Gate Bridge and blowing the clothes off from an Oakland woman's clothes line.

Bong was the highest scoring U.S. ace in WWII. Far from the highest in the war.