Mortality among pilots

Farbourne

Rear Admiral
I was just thinking about something. The mortality rate among pilots we see in the Wing Commander universe, especially in the Kilrathi war, is amazingly high. This post is necessarily going to contain game spoilers, so don't read if you don't want...

Think about all the pilots we meet in the Kilrathi War games, and what (canonically) happens to them...

Maniac - Shot down over Kilrah, but survives the war
Spirit - KIA during Second Enigma campaign
Knight - Fate unspecified, but strongly implied he is killed prior to Second Enigma campaign (maybe when the Claw is destroyed?)
Angel - Captured during a Covert Op, executed
Hunter - KIA just before the Battle of Earth
Bossman - KIA during the Battle of Firekka
Iceman - KIA sometime between the Battle of Firekka and the disaster at K'Tithrak Mang
Paladin - Survives the war
Jazz - Turns traitor, KIA during the Mandarin Incident
Doomsday - Fate unspecified (didn't he joint the FRL? Does he survive the war?)
Shadow - KIA during Second Enigma
Downtown - KIA during Second Enigma
Hobbes - Turns traitor, KIA just before Battle of Freya
Stingray - Fate unspecified
Bear - Fate unspecified (becomes captain of the Guadalcanal)
Vagabond - Shot down over Kilrah, but survives the war (later killed in BW conflict)
Vaquero - KIA just before Battle of Freya
Flash - KIA in the Ariel raid (?)
Cobra - Murdered by Hobbes
Flint - KIA over Kilrah

I think that is all the "major" pilots we meet with a name, in the course of the games played in the Kilrathi war.

Counting Blair as a survivor, that's 21 pilots. If we assume Knight dies in the war (which is strongly implied by the bar scene in WC2 where the pilot talk about who is left from the 'Claw), that makes:

14 killed during the war
4 survived the war (Blair, Maniac, Paladin, Vagabond)
3 fate unspecified (Stingray, Doomsday, Bear)

Treating these 21 pilots as a "random sample" that implies a mortality rate of at least 67% among pilots. That seems crazy high. Maybe one of our resident military historians could comment if any real wars had pilot survival rates so low (I know things were bad in WW1, but not if they were that bad).
 
Stingray and Doomsday both survive to fight the Nephilim according to Star*Soldier; and if Bear died, it wasn't as a pilot.

I suspect the reason that Confed pilot mortality is so high is because it doesn't seem to rotate ace pilots back to training commands, instead keeping them on the front line until they burn out (and get shot up).

Additionally - those pilots are not a random sample. They're all (except Shadow) carrier pilots who served in some of the hottest theatres of the war for many years. They would be expected who have a highly elevated casualty rate compared to the Confederation average.
 
I think Vietnam was pretty close to that level, particularly if you're counting fighter and bomber roles which (aside from a few airframes) the planes at the time carried out both roles.
 
I was just thinking about something. The mortality rate among pilots we see in the Wing Commander universe, especially in the Kilrathi war, is amazingly high. This post is necessarily going to contain game spoilers, so don't read if you don't want...

Think about all the pilots we meet in the Kilrathi War games, and what (canonically) happens to them...

Maniac - Shot down over Kilrah, but survives the war
Spirit - KIA during Second Enigma campaign
Knight - Fate unspecified, but strongly implied he is killed prior to Second Enigma campaign (maybe when the Claw is destroyed?)
Angel - Captured during a Covert Op, executed
Hunter - KIA just before the Battle of Earth
Bossman - KIA during the Battle of Firekka
Iceman - KIA sometime between the Battle of Firekka and the disaster at K'Tithrak Mang
Paladin - Survives the war
Jazz - Turns traitor, KIA during the Mandarin Incident
Doomsday - Fate unspecified (didn't he joint the FRL? Does he survive the war?)
Shadow - KIA during Second Enigma
Downtown - KIA during Second Enigma
Hobbes - Turns traitor, KIA just before Battle of Freya
Stingray - Fate unspecified
Bear - Fate unspecified (becomes captain of the Guadalcanal)
Vagabond - Shot down over Kilrah, but survives the war (later killed in BW conflict)
Vaquero - KIA just before Battle of Freya
Flash - KIA in the Ariel raid (?)
Cobra - Murdered by Hobbes
Flint - KIA over Kilrah

Well remember you also have to take duty status into account in your analysis, as well as other factors that contributed to a pilot's death. For example:

Spirit: Her fighter was sabotaged, so her death had nothing to do with her actual flying skills or the skills of the Kilrathi flying against her.
Knight: If we assume he was killed when the Claw was destroyed, then this doesn't impact his skill as a pilot.
Angel: Died doing an extremely dangerous covert operation on the enemy homeworld, not out in a fighter in space.
Hunter: Intentionally flew his fighter into a missile to keep it from destroying the Bonnie Heather.
Jazz: Well he did lose to Christopher Blair, who has the best record against Ace pilots of any pilot in the entire war.
Shadow: Inexperienced security pilot who normally never fought Kilrathi ships.
Downtown: Strongly implied that Jazz set up Downtown to be ambushed.
Hobbes: See Jazz
Vagabond: As with Angel, died doing a covert operation, nothing to do with his fighter.
Cobra: Same reasoning as Angel and Vagabond - her death had nothing to do with flying a fighter.

So when you remove certain extenuating circumstances (such as sabotage or murder), only eight of these pilots (Hunter, Bossman, Iceman, Shadow, Downtown, Vaquero, Flash, and Flint) were killed flying a fighter where some other factor (sabotage, betrayal) didn't influence their death. And even in Flint's case. she was flying a fighter in the enemy's home system on a covert op with no carrier backup. Not exactly SOP for fighter operations. When you use that number, only 38% of these pilots were killed flying their fighters under what can be considered normal combat conditions. That's not too terrible considering many of these pilots flew on active duty for 5+ years without being rotated home.
 
Hey! I remember Flint surviving the game with Blair on the Shuttle. That was my choice anyway. Cheers!
 
Realy hard to compare to real world conflicts. Firstly data is far and between when it comes to actual numbers of pilots compared to casualties. There are short campaigns where those numbers are documented - as with the Battle over Brittain which became was very much about atrition with excessivly high casualty numbers on both sides in planes and pilots. But even if you look at WW2 as a whole that conflict is just way shorter than the Terran-Kilrathi war. The highest number I found was about 17-18 % for the German Luftwaffe through all 6 years of war - which also included Ground staff and airborne infantry units - probably the casualty rate for pilots was quite a bit higher considering that the Luftwaffe fought a losing battle for quite some time. But still that does not come close to the enormous length of the Terran-Kilrathi conflict.

So a pilot that started his active duty at the start of the war at age 23 would be in his late fifties by the end of the war - probably long retired from active flying duty by then. The probability to live through the whole war or unitl his retirement( or promotion out of cockpit) might have been quite low for any single pilot. Doing 20-25 years of fighting brings so many possibilities to find an early death by the enemy, technical malfunction, space hazards etc. that even the most experienced of top aces has enough possibilities of a bad day coninciding with bad luck.

And especially during dire periods of the conflict when whole fleets were obliterated or earth was on the verge of defeat, the average lifespan of a pilot, beeing it rookie or veteran becomes ever shorter. In late WW1 for example German rookie pilots had a quite high probability to die on their first mission as they were undertrained and faced highly superior numbers and pilots that were capable to survive.
 
Doomsday - Fate unspecified (didn't he joint the FRL? Does he survive the war?)

Montclair returns to Confed following the Free Corps mission with the FRL but then is recruited after the war by Vance Richards and Geoff Tolwyn back to the FRL. He works on Project Goliath and was Squadron Commander of VF-88, the "Crazy Eights". He survives the Battle of Baka Kar and is mentioned several times in Star*Soldier. On page 18 he's listed right below Kevin Tolwyn as one of the "Up & Coming". So he's alive as of January 2701.

Stingray - Fate unspecified

He's the third pilot mentioned under "Best of the Best" on page 13 of Star*Soldier with 1,981 career kills. The bio lists him as "a retired Confederate General who was mentored by Christopher Blair himself. Wright commanded entire fleets against the Nephilim, winning praise for his improvised tactics at Third Warsaw." He's also alive as of January 2701.

Bear - Fate unspecified (becomes captain of the Guadalcanal)

You can find an indepth rough draft article on WCPedia for Bondarevsky.

I think you're confusing the Tarawa and Guadalcanal. After the First Battle of Kilrah, Bondarevsky was given command of the Tarawa. The escort carrier was laid up for a year undergoing extensive repairs. After that was completed he was captain of Tarawa through the False Armistice, the Free Corps mission, and the Second Battle of Earth in 2668. Following the battle, Bondarevsky was transferred to command Destroyer Squadron 67 (TCS Ajax, Sheffield, Coventry - TCS Victory's escorts in WC3) with his flag on the Coventry. It was during the Behemoth debacle that Coventry struck a mine that extensively damaged the bridge. Janet "Sparks" McCullough saved Bondarevsky through some heroic efforts costing him only his right arm instead of his life. He sits out the remaining weeks of the war and is on Moonbase Tycho when Blair drops the T-bomb. He's recruited by Richards and Tolwyn in 2670 for the FRLN and goes to work on Project Goliath. He served as Wing Commander on the FRLS Mjollnir during the Battle of Baka Kar. Bondarevsky was promoted to Rear Admiral and placed in charge of the Landreich's escort carrier fleet. He then fights his mentor Tolwyn in the brief Confederation-Landreich War (2671-2672) to a draw with the help of Vance Richards. We know he's alive as of January 2701 because he's quoted on page 27 of Star*Soldier for Maniac's autobiography.


Treating these 21 pilots as a "random sample" that implies a mortality rate of at least 67% among pilots. That seems crazy high. Maybe one of our resident military historians could comment if any real wars had pilot survival rates so low (I know things were bad in WW1, but not if they were that bad).

Yep, Japanese pilots during WWII. Unlike their American counterparts, Japanese pilots never rotated off the front. They flew till either they were too injured to fly, killed, or lost. This is one of the reasons why the quality of Japanese carrier (and single-engine land-based) pilots plummeted after the battles of 1942. American squadrons rotated out of combat for rest and refit after a period of several months for the most part. There are several examples of American squadrons being mauled, most notably of course the torpedo squadrons at Midway. The American carrier pilots, like the Japanese, suffered heavy losses at the Battles of Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands but the American pilots had a significantly higher chance of being rescued compared to their counterparts. Staring in 1943, the USN began what became known later as the "Lifeguard League". At first a single US submarine was stationed off a target island to rescue pilots shot down during a raid. Later operations saw a number of subs patrolling target islands ensuring a high survival rate. The League worked amazing well (as did most US ships) in rescuing downed aviators. The five-gallon guaranteed reward of "Gedunk" (USN ice cream) from the carrier when they returned a downed pilot may have played a small part in that as well. :D

The Japanese pilots suffer mauling after mauling after mauling throughout the war. At the Battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands in late-1942 the IJN pilots suffer roughly 40% and 50% losses respectively. These actions along with Operation I in the Spring of 1943 gutted the remainder of the cadre from the early During the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot (June 19, 1944) the IJN suffered 78% losses. Total losses were 92% for IJN pilots. (Don't quote my math though...I'm definitely a historian not a mathematician) I'm not sure on the overall survival rate for IJN and IJA pilots but I can't imagine it being higher than 20-25%.
 
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I suspect the reason that Confed pilot mortality is so high is because it doesn't seem to rotate ace pilots back to training commands, instead keeping them on the front line until they burn out (and get shot up).

I think they do, we just don't see it very often because that just isn't a very interesting story. Maniac spends much of the war rotating between combat and testing assignments and we see Bear spend a year at the Academy after End Run... Knight is offered a flight school assignment at the end of Secret Missions 2. Lots of little examples, we just don't follow those pilots once they're off not having adventures.

I think Vietnam was pretty close to that level, particularly if you're counting fighter and bomber roles which (aside from a few airframes) the planes at the time carried out both roles.

No, the loss ratio in Vietnam was miniscule: 0.4 aircraft per thousand sorties.

Knight: If we assume he was killed when the Claw was destroyed, then this doesn't impact his skill as a pilot.

The explanation for why Blair is flying his patrol alone that day is because the Tiger's Claw was stretched so thin that there's no available wingman... so if Knight died that day, it was likely in the cockpit.

Vagabond: As with Angel, died doing a covert operation, nothing to do with his fighter.

Also, he (and several of the others) died in a /different war/. The mortality rate for humans is 100%, all things considered... but you can't count that against the Terran-Kilrathi War.

Hey! I remember Flint surviving the game with Blair on the Shuttle. That was my choice anyway. Cheers!

Yeah, yeah, nice to see you again, every person on the usenet in 1995. :)
 
Oh, one other bit - at one point a Privateer bartender mentions that the Confederation is losing "hundreds of ships" per day in the war.
 
Actually, I was thinking more about this. Is it reasonable to believe that Knight was killed prior to the Second Enigma campaign (i.e. WC2)?

When I said so, I was going off the implications in WC2 that Knight was not among the surviving 'Claw pilots. First, in the rec room, when Blair comments that he didn't realize that there were so many of them left (addressing Spirit, Angel, Doomsday, and Jazz), and Doomsday adds that all they need is Paladin and Maniac so they can all die together. Secondly, Jazz says he swore he would "kill everyone on that damn ship" (presumably, at the time of the Goddard massacre, so not including Doomsday) and had almost succeeded. He admits to sabotaging Spirit's fighter, and says that he only had you (Blair), Angel, Paladin, and Maniac left. Again, the implication is that these are the only survivors who were serving on the Claw at the time of Operation Thor's Hammer.

But there are at least two counter-examples of this--Hawk, and Hunter. OK, maybe Hawk wasn't a pilot yet at that time, and maybe the WC2 context was loose enough that they meant only pilots, or maybe even only pilots who regularly flew and knew each other (i.e. the pilots we see in the game). Also, maybe Hawk wasn't on the 'Claw at the time of Goddard? I don't remember enough of his history to know for sure. But Hunter is more problematic. We KNOW he is alive at the time of WC2, because he pops up in Fleet Action and in Victory Streak as being alive and fighting well after Second Enigma. He was definitely a pilot on the 'Claw at Goddard, and should have been on Jazz's hit list, as well as being one of Doomsday's "survivors". So obviously, we're not meant to take those implications too literally (unless Hunter was somehow presumed dead at the time?)

Which opens up the door to Knight being still alive at that time as well. Is there any indication of his fate in the war that we know of?
 
He was definitely a pilot on the 'Claw at Goddard, and should have been on Jazz's hit list, as well as being one of Doomsday's "survivors".

There is a more specific list of victims mentioned by Blair on the losing path, that includes I believe Hunter but definitely Halcyon, who according to canon did not die on the claw. There also were patrols out during the claw's attack run on 'Mang, likely Hunter was on Patrol with the other surviving wings.
 
Actually, I was thinking more about this. Is it reasonable to believe that Knight was killed prior to the Second Enigma campaign (i.e. WC2)?

Yes, but also it wouldn't be unreasonable to have him show up somewhere else later. From a purely narrative point of view, yeah I think it's trouble that every single person you *thought* died on the Tiger's Claw actually died somewhere else... but from a logical point of view I can't get past the idea that every pilot was in space that day. (That said, he may have died in his fighter that day; didn't have the range to make it back to the Austin, or was flying CAP and was dispatched by the Strakhas... or maybe he was downchecked for medical or tech reasons and stayed on the 'Claw that day.)

But there are at least two counter-examples of this--Hawk, and Hunter. OK, maybe Hawk wasn't a pilot yet at that time, and maybe the WC2 context was loose enough that they meant only pilots, or maybe even only pilots who regularly flew and knew each other (i.e. the pilots we see in the game). Also, maybe Hawk wasn't on the 'Claw at the time of Goddard? I don't remember enough of his history to know for sure. But Hunter is more problematic. We KNOW he is alive at the time of WC2, because he pops up in Fleet Action and in Victory Streak as being alive and fighting well after Second Enigma. He was definitely a pilot on the 'Claw at Goddard, and should have been on Jazz's hit list, as well as being one of Doomsday's "survivors". So obviously, we're not meant to take those implications too literally (unless Hunter was somehow presumed dead at the time?)

Fleet Action actually does retcon this; remember the conversation between Hunter and Vanderman (another Tiger's Claw veteran) where they both had heard the other was killed in action. I think that's the long and short of it, plenty of confusion among the characters as to who did and did not make it out that day.

Hunter's letter is earlier than Victory Streak. It's in the Kilrathi Saga manual and seems to have been written just after Freedom Flight. But it does show he's alive after the Tiger's Claw was destroyed... and more troubling, Blair apparently KNOWS that.

Actually, there's a little nod to Hunter survivng in Wing Commander II itself; one of the redshirts you run into is "Jaeger" (German for Hunter.)

Hawk is a non-issue, he had likely left the Tiger's Claw to attend flight school before Goddard (and as a simple comm tech, was probably unknown to Jazz in the first place.)

The weirder one is Shotglass, whom the Armada manual suggests survived K'Tithrak Mang.

There is a more specific list of victims mentioned by Blair on the losing path, that includes I believe Hunter but definitely Halcyon, who according to canon did not die on the claw. There also were patrols out during the claw's attack run on 'Mang, likely Hunter was on Patrol with the other surviving wings.

No, Halcyon definitely died on the 'Claw; the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide confirms that while he was reassigned after Firekka he hadn't actually left before the attack on K'Tithrak Mang.

(For reference, the names Blair lists in the losing endgame are: Specialist McGuffin, General Halcyon, Iceman, Knight, Hunter, "everyone else on the Tiger's Claw" and Spirit. Of course we now know he didn't kill Iceman or Hunter... and it's a conversation that "never happened"... so it's hard to go by.)
 
Of course we now know he didn't kill Iceman or Hunter

I suppose it's possible he contributed to Iceman's death...he could have sabotaged Iceman's fighter the same way he sabotaged Spirit's...or leaked information about Iceman's patrol route to the Kilrathi, or something like that... Just speculation, though...

Maybe on the losing path, the redshirt "Jaeger" can die due to Jazz. :)
 
Outside of the mortality rates and story arcs, after reading your post I'm fascinated by another aspect: the fact that this is a video game! And I mean that with no negative overtones whatsoever. Think about it: in what other video games do you have such a bond with an NPC, only to have it taken away. And at such high rates!? Death is a fact of war. But in most of your Call of Duty games or Gears of War games, it's never the guy you really know and love - it's some other guy who was just introduced earlier in that level, or a nameless "Marine #12" or something. Even Gears of War tried to make you all watery-eyed when they killed off Carmine. Then it became a running joke for the series (evidently the Carmine brothers aren't good at keeping their heads down).

There are many games that do lead you down a path, then take away that one close personal friend of yours near the end to really try and hit you hard and shock you... but none even come close to the rate at which you lose people in the Wing Commander Universe. People you've sat down and had a drink with one minute, gone the next minute. The Wing Commander universe makes it personal - and in an era where games developers wanted to be taken more seriously, but there was still no doubt games were "for kids" - seeing this much mortality should've warped us all for life!

Flash: It's a war, people die all the time.
Blair: You've never seen it, have you? Pilots, people you know, getting fried in their own cockpit!

-NuAngel
 
Exactly. It's like trying to make a reality comparison or a simulator out of watching Top Gun. It an be anything the writer desires.
 
Oh man, that's so true.
I remember being like "NOOOOOOOO!!" When Spirit died. Also when Flint died the first time. I don't remember the exact words but she flew directly in one of the yellow shots of a Fralthi II and said something like "I never had the chance to tell you that I ......." (of course she said it in German in my version) and then there was only static. I was like "WHAT? NOOOOOOOOOO!" and that wasn't even in the story, just a random death.
Somehow I was equally shocked by Vagabond's death. I never would have guessed he would die. That was a really well done story line. And I was really, really sad.

There are few games were I felt it that intense, I can only recall two or three where I felt really close to the characters.

Many gamers name Final Fantasy VII for one of the top emotional moments, for example. If you played it, you know it.
<SPOILER>
Aeris dies.
</SPOILER>
 
FF VII was the only one I played because it was the only one available for PC.
I didn't own a console back then (I own PS3 now but I rarely play games on it), I've always been a PC gamer.

Maybe there are more such games on the consoles because they focus more on the stories nowadays than PC games do. At least that was the impression I got when I last watched some console gamers play. Although of course there are story-driven PC games as well, for example Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Fallout etc.
 
FF VII was the only one I played because it was the only one available for PC.
I didn't own a console back then (I own PS3 now but I rarely play games on it), I've always been a PC gamer.
FFVII was a little spoiled for me, because I had a roommate who was more into console gaming than I was and talked endlessly about the big tragedy. In general, however, the Final Fantasy game line wasn't shy about actually killing a major character. The aforementioned VII, Shadow in VI, Galuf in V, practically the entire supporting cast in IV. The thing was, it was always a little silly, because characters would "die" all the time in the normal battles, by having moons dropped on their heads or gigantic medievil knights slice them in two with massive mythic swords, and you'd just bring them back to life with a Pheonix Down. But a scripted death...it didn't work for some reason. Granted, this is a little like the characters in WC3 being "unkillable" (they would just eject) until they fulfilled thier scripted purpose, but WC3 hid it better, because even after they became mortal, they would survive an ejection, sometimes. You just weren't supposed to notice that they ALWAYS survived up to a point in the game. In FFVII, I was yelling "quick, use a Pheonix Down" when the tragedy happened, much to the annoyance of my roommate. The only Final Fantasy that really tugged at my heartstrings, as another poster mentioned, was X.

However, none of these games had death on the scale of Wing Commander. Even Xenogears, which had practically the entire populace mutate and die, had all the main characters miraculously survive becaue they were in some way special. In Wing Commander, you would drink beers with someone in the bar, and then see them bite it out in space, and then have to speak at their funeral. And it happened a lot.
 
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