My dad was in training to be a bombardier during WWII, and was trained for every position on the bombers including navigator and bombardier, but not pilot. His eyes did not have the depth perception to pass the depth perception test. And fortunately for him the war ended before he finished training. So he never was sent over seas. But he was most of the way through that training when the war ended. He told a few stories about the lives lost in training. He said that the base he was on in Texas had to fly the flag at half mast one day for each life lost on that base, and that after the war ended that flag had to still fly at half mast for a year and a half to catch up to all the names on that list.
We use to watch 12 O'Clock High on TV late at night, and he very seldom commented on anything on that show, but it really showed what those men went through flying in combat. One thing he did say is that because there actually were very few who qualified to be bombardiers and actually made it all the way through the training, that often on real missions whole flight group only had one or two bombardiers.
One thing I found out just a few years ago, after he passed away, was the the survival percentage rate of the men who flew on those bombers in combat to make it through the war alive was actually lower that the survival rate of the Japanese kamikaze pilots.
As to sayings, when he did not like the attitude of one of his children, he would say " You got the wrong altitude. " We all knew want he meant by that.