The early jet age was pretty nuts. Check the Wikipedia page for a random fighter from the era and you'll see figures like, 1,300 built, 50 lost in combat, 1,100 lost in accidents. And that's operational aircraft. Test pilots were in even more danger.

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Quinner 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Some were pretty bad, but none were nearly that bad. The B-58 Hustler lost 22% of its airframes, the F7U Cutlass 25%, the F-104 Starfighter in German service lost 33%. And those were outliers.

	▲	wat10000 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You're right, those numbers are from the F-8 but include non-total-loss accidents. I don't think the numbers you quoted are outliers, though. The F-100 lost ~900 out of 2,300. The F-106 lost ~120/342. That's a pretty big list of planes with a 1/5-1/3 loss rate.

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jaggederest 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You should go back even a little further, the USPS air mail service lost 31 of the first 40 pilots.

	▲	mrguyorama 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Back in the days where the plan was "So we've built literal signal fires and giant concrete arrows and well, good luck, it won't help"

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ErroneousBosh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you ever listened to Robert Calvert's "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters"?