The Odds!!

This is coolbert:

Here are two military aviators from the World War Two [WW2] era that beat the odds in a fashion that is just incredible:

1. Kirk [Krekor] Kerkorian. American pilot. Ferried newly built Mosquito two-engine aircraft from Canada to England. Did so flying the non-stop route, via the north Atlantic, “riding” the Iceland Wave. Completed thirty-three missions of this sort [ferrying aircraft] when the odds were only one in four [1:4] that a single crossing could be made in this fashion [non-stop, via the “Iceland Wave”] successfully. “Blasted” across the Atlantic at near jet transport speeds, and doing so IN A PLYWOOD AIRPLANE!! Fancy that!

[the Iceland Wave is the jet stream? Believe this to be so, but not exactly sure. Air-currents, moving at high speed and at high altitude? Kerkorian was a civilian flying on contract during this cross-Atlantic mission, but flying a military aircraft into a combat zone. It that sense he qualifies as a military aviator in a general sense.]

The odds against Kerkorian completing thirty-three missions [ferrying] of this nature were:

73 billion billion to one!! That is 73,000,000,000,000:1!! 1/0.25^33.

2. Guy Gibson, VC. English bomber pilot, commander of the world-famous “Dam Busters” Squadron. By the fourth year of the war [1943], Gibson had completed 174 missions over Germany. This at a time when only one in five [1:5] American bomber aircrews were able to survive twenty-five missions. Twenty-five missions at the time was the magic number, an aircrew being returned stateside, their combat tour having been fulfilled.




The odds against Gibson surviving 174 combat missions over Germany were:

78 thousand to one. That is 78,000:1. 1/0.2^7.

Here with comments from a man [John M.] that knows statistics, an actuary, an informed evaluation of these odds: [particular emphasis here on the 73 billion billion to one figure!!]

A. That would be correct if the trials (flights) are independent, or in
other words the odds of the first flight were one in four and the odds
of each of the next 32 were also one in four. There was no learning from
a successful flight or any other improvement that helped raise the odds
of success on subsequent flights.

B. Since independence of the trials would mean one chance in about 73,000 trillion, it seems that either the trials were not independent, and each success greatly increased
the odds of future successes, or the odds were much better than one in four all along, or he was better than the average pilot, or a combination.

C. The one in four was probably subjective or based on a small sample of pilots (who maybe were less skilled than he was?)!

And - - again from John M.:

"I tried an experiment with just 10 successful flights. It seems that for even just ten successful flights if the flights are independent and the odds always one in 4, the odds are one in 1,048,576. This means that it is still 50% likely that you could have 725,000 guys try to do it and all would fail."

Thank you John M.

And here too, from the Suvorov book, "Inside The Aquarium":

"Do you realize that in the last war [WW2] there were two categories of pilots in our air force [Soviet]? Some, the minority had dozens of enemy planes to their credit, while the other, the majority, had practically none . . . The statistics of war make very painful reading. The majority spent no more than nine hours in the air before they met their end. Fighter pilots were shot down on average on their fifth sortie. With the first category the opposite happened: they carried out hundreds of sorties and each of them spent thousands of hours in the air . . . . In between those two categories of wartime pilots there was absolutely nothing, an abyss. There was no link between them, no middle class. Either an ace, a hero, a general, or a lieutenant, shot down on his first sortie. Nothing in between." - - Soviet Major-gneneral of the Air Force Kuchumov.

It should be clear that Kerkorian and Gibson were best termed NATURALS? Persons with a instinctive flair for aviation. Top-notch pilots way above average in ability using measured audacity and mastery of the calculated statistic to accomplish where others could not!!

For each and every one of those ferrying flights across the Atlantic, as a civilian contract employee, Kerkorian was paid $1,000. That was a princely sum at the time? The tidy sum saved by Kerkorian during the war years was the “seed money” used to finance a subsequent entrepreneurial career! Kerkorian, still alive and active at an advanced age, is one of the richest men in the world!!

Guy Gibson, VC, unfortunately did not survive the war. Was killed-in-action, evidently, when his bomber aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed? Of Gibson, it is said:

"For some men of great courage and adventure, inactivity was a slow death . . . Facing death had become his drug . . . He had pushed his luck beyond all limits and he knew it. But that was the kind of man he was…a man of great courage, inspiration and leadership." - - Barnes-Wallis.

Indeed!!

coolbert.