Length of a tour of duty

C

ck9791

Rear Admiral
I was just wondering if anyone knew what the length of a tour of duty of a fighter squadron assigned to carrier duty in the TCSF? I'm assuming that they are assigned to a carrier for some length of time and are then given leave before being part of another deployment. Even during the Kilrathi War I'm assuming that Confed gave its pilots leave to prevent them from being burned out. I don't know if this is mentioned anywhere though.
 
I may be wrong, but I think in the modern navy, a naval avaiator's tour of duty is something like six months. Or it could be based on the number of missions flown, I read somewhere that during World War II, pilots were rotated back to the states to serve as instructors after flying 20 combat sorties. Again, I'm not real sure though.
 
During Early World War 2 it was 25 bomber missions completed or 50 fighter missions complete for the united states. Later from like 1944 onward it was 50 bomber missions and 100 fighter missions before you got rotated back to the states to train. The luftwaffe on the other hand had a fly till you die policy. The US policy turned out to be the superior policy. While we didn't have 300+ kill aces we did have superior overall pilots because of better training back in the states. Confed probably follows a little bit of both of these policies. After completing so many missions you are given a choice of becomming an instructor back home or allowed to be a celebrity and promote the war effort or to continue fighting.
 
I would imagine that with the dire state of the war very few combat vetrens were sent home to train.

Also you forgot to mention the Imperial Navy which used a smiliar policy as the Luftwaffte (though I'd never heard the Luftwaffte used that policy before this thread). By the end of World War II the US was fielding vetren pilots who had rotated back to duty or rookies who had been trained by the vetrens and thus gleaned some of there experiance.

Japan on the other hand had lost it's most capable pilots in the Battle of the Coral Sea followed shortly by the Battle of Midway. This left them fielding mostly inexperianced pilots at the end of the war.

Something similar this can be noted in Wing Commander, at the end of Fleet action the Kilrathi are pushing fighters out of the hanger bay as they come in, in order to take all the pilots back on board. They also mention a shortage of pilots while the Hakaga are under construction, and end up transferring all the dedicated fighter pilots to the newer carriers rather then keep the old outfitted.

If I'm not mistaken though, on the Kilrathi side of the war once you became elite enough you were transferred to the home Fleet we see in End Run. You'd have to ask Loaf about that, I don't have my novels handy and haven't read them for a while so I'm posting just from memory (Everything I said should be back checked and taken with a grain of salt until some proof is dug up somewhere).
 
Here in the Royal Australian Air Force I know pilots must do a 13.5 year service or something like that. Not sure if that's a whole tour of duty (I doubt it is) but you can't leave the service till the end of that.
I'm not sure on the numbers for Army and Navy (helicopters only, I don't follow it hehe).
 
What i was wondering is if anyone knew whether the length of a cruise for a Confederation carrier is mentioned anywhere, in a novel or any of the supplemental materials for the games. I've read Fleet Action and the novelizations for WC3 and WC4 and I don't remember it being mentioned, but I may have missed something.
 
They seem to operate until they are so badly damaged that they need to be brought back to drydock. I mean our hero served basically continually from 2654 to 2667, then was home for the false peace, then back at it in 2668/69.

I don't think it's ever mentioned how long the actual tours are, but in my mind they never seem to go home....


The kilrathi were short on pilots because of the emperors desire to have the program be extremely elite. Many pilots were cut for the simpliest of infractions, he thought it instilled a eliteness in the pilots. However, it also cost them a lot of pilots that could have become elite.
 
Ok. So the crew and pilots are pretty much assigned to that ship until it is destroyed or brought into drydock? It does seem to look that way in the games. You have the Tigers Claw being destroyed so Blair can eventually end up on the Concordia, then you have the Concorida destroyed and Blair transferred to the Victory.

I hope the confederation pilots at least got a few days off or some shore leave every now and then.
 
Raven0215 said:
During Early World War 2 it was 25 bomber missions completed or 50 fighter missions complete for the united states. Later from like 1944 onward it was 50 bomber missions and 100 fighter missions before you got rotated back to the states to train. The luftwaffe on the other hand had a fly till you die policy. The US policy turned out to be the superior policy. While we didn't have 300+ kill aces we did have superior overall pilots because of better training back in the states. Confed probably follows a little bit of both of these policies. After completing so many missions you are given a choice of becomming an instructor back home or allowed to be a celebrity and promote the war effort or to continue fighting.
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Actually as soon as P-51 could fly to Berlin and back with the bombers it became 35 missions
 
One difference between Confed's situation and WW2 is that Confed is essentially an "island" nation, with its territory intermixed right into the theater. During WW2, the United States had a secure home base, and was sending people off to go fight in Europe and the Pacific from this secure home base. The examples of Germany and Japan were mentioned... these forces couldn't afford down time for their pilots, as they were constantly engaged. Similarly, during the TC-EK war, both sides were very evenly engaged in a life-and-death struggle, Confed more so than the Kilrathi. I would suspect there was very little slack for sending people "home" to train, as the situation was simply too dire in terms of men and materiel, and the forces forward deployed too far to make resupply and rotations easy.
 
ck9791 said:
Ok. So the crew and pilots are pretty much assigned to that ship until it is destroyed or brought into drydock? It does seem to look that way in the games. You have the Tigers Claw being destroyed so Blair can eventually end up on the Concordia, then you have the Concorida destroyed and Blair transferred to the Victory.

I hope the confederation pilots at least got a few days off or some shore leave every now and then.
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Pilots who have been out a while do get rotated back to non-combat duties, or so it seems: remember that, in SM2, Knight was offered an opportunity to run a training squadron by Confed HQ. He's been out there for some time, at least ten years by this stage - his age is 36 at the time of WC1, and we know Maniac was 23 when he graduated and joined the Claw. As to how often they're actually rotated back, that's another question - but shore leave does exist, and pilots do get rotated in and out of that as well. But, again, that'd be subject to availabilty and mission requirements.
 
Yeah I was talking only in terms of being rotated off the ship and into another position. Hunter's shore leave during SM2 is described in FF.
 
They had a running count I think they were on their way to breaking a record for deployment or something...
 
My bet would be that 'tour of duty' is, indeed, mission based in the Wing Commander universe. Bear claims he served "two tours" on the Concordia in 2667... which would have occured in a matter of mere months.

Johnny Greene was on station for nearly two years, and they do refer to the fact that it might have eventually broken a deployment record.

They seem to operate until they are so badly damaged that they need to be brought back to drydock. I mean our hero served basically continually from 2654 to 2667, then was home for the false peace, then back at it in 2668/69.
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Except from 2656 to 2665 Blair was assigned to ISS and not on the front lines (we also don't know that he went home - he remained Wing Commander of the Concordia through the Battle of Earth).

Consider Maniac - the WCP guide confirms that he rotated from test squadrons to combat units throughout that ten year period.
 
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