Flying and Dying in WWI: British Aircrew Losses and the Origins of U.S. Military Aviation Medicine

Abstract

In 1918, 1920, and 1935, William H. Wilmer wrote that of every 100 British military pilot deaths during the first year of World War I, 90 resulted from individual deficiencies (60 of these from physical defects), 8 from aircraft defects, and 2 from enemy action. "As a result of these appalling findings, the British established a special service for the 'Care of the Flier,'" thus reducing deaths from physical defects to "20% during the second year and 12% during the third." Wilmer never specified the source of his statistics. American aeromedical texts have long cited his '90-8-2' numbers as the basis for establishing the U.S. military flight surgeon system in 1918, but these statistics never appeared in British aeromedical literature. Given the frail aircraft and sketchy mishap investigations of that era, it seems unlikely that pilot deficiencies (today, "human factors") were proven to have caused 90% of British aviation-related deaths in 1914-15, or that their military aviation medicine program reduced human factor losses to just 12% of total pilot fatalities by 1917. Recent analyses from academic British sources demonstrate that of 153 British military fliers who died while flying between August 1914 and December 1915, 89 (58%) were killed in action or died of their wounds soon after being shot down, and 64 (42%) perished from injuries suffered in training or operational mishaps. This article reviews the history of early British and American military aeromedical services, and proposes replacement of the 90-8-2 statistic with a ratio of 58:42.