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Thank you for your sentiment; my dad passed away in his sleep in 2013. I do not know the attrition rate for Fighter Command, it changed over the curse of the war as pilots gained experience. My dad went up solo after only 10 hours flight time, later on by 1943, pilots were much more experienced than the desperate, dark days of the summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain. Great film BTW.
He did tell me that chaps would arrive fresh out of flight training, go up on their first scramble and not come back. I asked then why you would ever go up and he said it was a question of survival, of the country and a clear case of standing up for what you felt was the right side of the conflict. He also said it helped that you never thought it would happen to you.
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