Just this weekend, I was watching a documentary about the B-17’s and the 8th Air Force......indication was made that the 8th lost more men than did the Marine Corps in the Pacific - now, that’s a new one on me.
In addition to KIA and wounded, they are probably counting POW’s in the “losses.” The Marines didn’t have many POW’s in the Pacific. But if you figure the average number of planes on a mission, the number of crew per plane, and the percentage of aircraft lost per mission, over time it adds up. Not to mention the killed and wounded on the planes that made it back to England.
Somebody once did a calculation as to how many resources were diverted from the US Army by the Strategic Bombing Campaign against Germany. It was astounding how many more troops & equipment could have been fielded. Of course a lot of the equipment the US did produce was being used to equip the Soviets and the Free French Army, so really it was a question of where all the highly-skilled manpower went.
By a pretty good number, actually. Official USMC dead in WW2 is 19,733. 8th Air Force dead is 23,806. Counting wounded, MIA and POWs gives 67,000 Marines and 62,000 8th Air Force. Plus the 8th was a far smaller unit, manpower-wise, than the USMC. The actual air crew strength of the 8th was about 135,000, compared to the USMC's 475,000 by war's end.
The air crews were certainly more likely to become POWs than Marines, but they were also far more likely to be killed.