From 39 through very late 44, very, very few airmen in bombers or fighters lived long enough to “collect 25 missions” and be relieved.
The men flying were actually only a small part of the total “air force” though. Most were back at the bases trying to keep them flying.
...pretty sure Brits had more than 25 to complete.
If I’m not mistaken, RAF bomber crews had a “quota” of 30 missions on their first tour. If they survived—and very few did—their next assignment was (typically) in a training unit, preparing new pilots, flight engineers, navigators, bomb aimers and gunners for combat.
Of course, training duties were not without risk; many instructors who survived an operational tour died in accidents due to crew mistakes or mechanical issues.
When I read about the loss of this Lancaster, my first thought was they were an early victim of “Schrage Musik” the upward firing cannons installed on German night fighters, beginning in 1943. But a quick check revealed that the Luftwaffe didn’t claim its first kill with that system until June of that year, about two months after the Lancaster crew went down.
Freeman Dyson, bomber command’s leading operations analyst, said his biggest failure during the war (and that of leadership) was ignoring intel reports about night fighters equipped with upward firing cannon which began to filter in during the summer of 1943. An attack from a Schrage musik-equipped fighter was terrifying; suddenly, the bomber began to disintegrate around the crew, as dozens of rounds tore into the aircraft from below. Many crew members died instantly, while others could not escape from their aircraft when the wing fell off and the Lanc went into an uncontrollable spin, or a round detonated the bomb load.
Still interesting that the Germans managed to hit the bomber with multiple AA shells. Usually, one well-placed 88mm round was enough to do the job; bombers that took multiple rounds were often “coned” by search lights that blinded the crew and made it easier for AAA crews to target them.
It would be interesting to know what German AAA defenses in that area looked like. The crash site is south of Frankfurt, so the flak guns were probably part of the city’s defenses. Guessing the bomber stream’s egress was designed to carry it south of the city—and the heaviest concentrations of flak, search lights and night fighters. I wonder if the RAF had grown a bit complacent and used that routing a few too many times and the Germans set a flak trap, or perhaps there were other targets near the crash site, and the egress route carried the unfortunate crew through that area. BTW, the crash site is about 210 miles west of the target area, so the crew was well into their return flight when they were shot down.
Brave men all. Bomber Command’s cumulative KIA rate in World War II was 44%—more than 55,000 men. You had better odds as an infantryman in the trenches of World War I, although some of the best crews racked up amazing sortie totals. Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who led the “Dambusters,” logged more than 170 missions before being killed in a Mosquito pathfinder late in the war. Leonard Cheshire, who survived the war, flew 103 missions; his last was as the British representative on a B-29 that was part of the Nagasaki mission.