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Originally Posted by Zebedee DuBois
So after 25 missions, you would expect one of the twenty planes to survive? Does the fact that we don't have replacement aircraft factor in? What I mean is, 20 planes fly out the first day, and 16 come back. 20% mortality. If 16 planes go out the next day, 20% mortality means 3 (3.2) planes buy it. Doesn' the fact that fewer planes go out each day mean that you have a greater and greater chance of cashing out? Based on fewer numbers rather than total number of missions?
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The 95 percent factor was based on my running of simulations for 23 planes with 230 crew members. Of those 230 crew members, 12 survived through 25 missions, and the most of which who survived on one individual crew was four. I think that one or two actual aircraft survived, but I don't have the papers in front of me to check. Some of the crew members survived 25 missions by bailing out of a crashing plane and then joining another crew.
Our numbers may vary, though, because I'll shuffle the missions and won't fly them again in the same order and aircraft lineup.
In real terms, I think this mortality is probably somewhat accurate if the loss rates from the early days of the Air War held up. In WWII, though, the losses to German fighters over time meant that the survival rate was actually very high from early 1944 on. I guess for simulation purposes we can assume that our missions are in 1943.