The U.S. lost 65,164 planes during the war, but only 22,948 in combat. There were 21,583 lost due to accidents in the U.S., and another 20,633 lost in accidents overseas.
Many more planes were lost due to pilot error or mechanical failure than were shot down by the enemy. More than 1,000 were lost while being delivered to their duty stations from the U.S. So the danger of non-combat flying did not end with the conclusion of training.
It’s an astonishing forgotten part of World War II. Dozens of reasons, high-performance aviation was relatively new, dozens of new aircraft designs being pushed out of the factory with minimal testing, sometimes with problems that were known to exist but the war time urgency over road redesign. And a gigantic number of 22 year olds flying some 1500 hp aircraft. Instrument flying was in its infancy, Weather prediction was truly abysmal. Radar was new and pretty much only used by the ground in some situations, but didn’t have a lot of application for pilots. It was a carnage
These are excellent points. If there wasn't a war going on, a lot of these planes or even pilots probably wouldn't have been cleared to fly.
(From what I've read of the B-29, that NEVER would have been cleared for use in a peacetime environment. Supposedly, the airstrip at Iwo Jima wasn't needed simply for shot-up planes to use as a divert field; it was because so many of them were ditching in the ocean [to and from Japan] because of mechanical problems.)