In the European theater of war during the Second World War, the RAF lost over 22,000 aircraft. It’s a horrific number, of course, as it meant the deaths of terrible numbers of airmen, killed in their prime. But we were at war for six years, so despite all the individual tragedies, perhaps the scale of the sacrifice is no surprise. But how many aircraft has the air force lost since then?
In 1991 alone the figure was twenty-two. Of that total, seven were lost during the Gulf War, so perhaps it’s unrepresentative. How many, then, have been lost in years since the end of the Second World War? Seven hundred? A thousand? Those estimates might be about right. It was peacetime, after all.
In fact, between the end of hostilities in 1945 and the end of the twentieth century the RAF had lost 7,419 aircraft and 4,850 crew. But after the carnage of the 1940s and 1950s, the number of deaths decreased sharply. It wasn’t just that fewer aircraft were being lost—although that was significant; it was also because the widespread introduction of the ejection seat meant that crews had a fighting chance of escape.