You may suppose that the most lethal and the worst spot of an American airman during the Second World War would be over the European continent or the Pacific Ocean. No. It is even more tragic and bizarre.

Many US airmen had lost their lives without having been to a battlefield.

The following are the statistics: 52,173 airmen killed in action. However, another 25,844 people died in accidents. It might not come easy to believe but over fifty percent of such accidental deaths occurred in the United States, even as the men were still in training. They were not really safe and at home.

Why was it used to kill so many airmen here on American soil?

The primary reason was speed. This world war required the military to train a significant number of pilots in a very short period. They threw young and inexperienced men into powerful aircrafts that were not easy to operate.

Any slight miscalculation might end up being a disastrous crash. The planes themselves were also troublesome, mechanical problems were common and the planes were not in a design that had safety equipment like modern planes.

In the war, the United States had lost more than 42,000 aircraft due to mere accidents. Only an estimated 23,000 were brought down by the adversary.

This implies that an aircraft in the US had two times more chances of crashing due to pilot error or mechanical failure as opposed to being shot down. The risk of commuting every day was a fatal murderer to these flyers. They were also in extreme danger even when they were not fighting.