According to Matsuda's analysis, before the July 7 Incident, the ratio of active duty pilots in Japan and the United States was about 2,500:1,500, and the number of pilots in the United States and the United States, including active duty and emergency mobilization reserves (referring to those who can come to report and carry out tasks as soon as they are mobilized), is seven times that of Japan (10,000+:1,500), because Japan is already engaged in a full-scale war, and all the reserves that can be shown are already signs. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

In order to meet the needs of the war and expand the number of pilots, the Japanese Navy Preparatory Training carried out the first expansion and reform in 1937, and set up a type of preparatory training (referred to as a flight) and a type B preparatory training (referred to as a flight), and the recruitment targets of a flight are graduates who have completed junior high school courses aged 16-19, mainly to train junior flight officers, who need to complete one and a half years of basic education and one year of flight training; Yifei still continues the practice before the reform, recruiting 14-16 years old high school graduates, who need to complete 3 and a half years of basic training and 1 year of flight training. After October 1940, the enrollment of the preparatory training was expanded for the second time, and the original system of operating trainees (5 months of flight training was required) was incorporated into it, which was called the C type of preparatory training (referred to as C Fei). At the beginning of 1943, in order to make up for the losses on the front line, the Navy recruited volunteers from the Yifei cadets to conduct accelerated training according to the Bingfei standard, and became the B type of preparatory training (special), referred to as the special Yifei.

In layman's terms, Jiafei cultivates the backbone of flight elites (especially good to study in naval schools, and can become middle and senior officers in the future); Yi Fei is an elite pilot who is grabbed from a doll; Bingfei is a crash course for older young people (actually only 18 years old) who have not had the opportunity to study A Fei before, and now they have passed the age of studying B Fei. Special Yifei is to bake the semi-finished products that have been cultivated half of the Yifei in advance after rapid training.

From 1937 to before the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan and the United States were expanding their pilot fleets, although the United States expanded the number of pilots, but Japan had a small base, and the growth was faster, and by the eve of the war between Japan and the United States in 1941, the gap between Japan and the United States in the number of pilots narrowed from 1:7 to 1:3. Although the United States has a large number of products, Japan still has an advantage in quality.

As the war entered its fourth year, the gap between the pilots of the two sides who had served before the war and survived to this day became 2:3, and the most elite carrier-based aircraft pilots in the United States are said to have less than 50 left (basically all in aviation schools), and Japan has nearly 200 people after transferring some of them to aviation schools (Note: The so-called statistical survival rate refers to the proportion of pilots available, and those who are injured and cannot recover and are captured by enemy forces are not counted, although people may still be alive)

"Based on this, it was concluded that the difference in the number of pilots in the Japanese and US navies before the war had been basically leveled off so far, and our military had an overwhelming advantage in the field of elite carrier-based aircraft pilots." Chiaki Matsuda explained, "Of course, the low survival rate of US carrier-based aircraft pilots is not entirely caused by Japan, and the successive bloody battles between Germany and the British and American Atlantic fleets have also broken the backbone of US carrier-based aircraft pilots. ”

The reason why the initial disparity in numbers and the final disparity in the elite is entirely due to Japan's strict training system.

Taking Jiafei as an example, in 1930, the Japanese Navy first launched a unified examination throughout the country, and the Ministry of the Navy issued a unified examination and a closed-book examination. Test takers first complete the 50-question Math Test in 15 minutes, followed by a 50-question reading and writing test in 20 minutes. Only those with an average score of 85 or above can pass the exam.

Then the physical examination and aviation aptitude test are carried out, and the standards are very strict, including a height of not less than 151 cm, a weight of not less than 41 kg, a chest circumference of not less than 74 cm, an unaided visual acuity of 1.2 or more, a lung capacity of 2600 ml, and a grip strength of 22 kg. After that, the aviation aptitude test mainly examines whether the candidate has the potential to become a pilot of Hainan Airlines, and the subjects examined include balance ability test, memory ability test, anti-vertigo test and so on. If you fail to pass the rules, you will be eliminated.

Students who have passed the two levels will go to the Yokosuka Air Force (later changed to the Tsuchiura Air Team) to receive a field test, which generally lasts for 3-4 days, and only after passing all of them will they be considered pre-course trainees, and after graduating after 5 years, they will have to pass many checkpoints (those who cannot be completed in the middle can be transferred to ground staff on a voluntary basis). More than 8,000 students from all over Japan passed the cultural test in the first phase of the preparatory department, and 79 of them successfully graduated, with an elimination rate of 99% (less than 30% in the United States during the same period).

Therefore, Hori Yiji wants to directly award the title of officer to Jia Fei, and even Fushimi Miyahiro Gong and others have no opinions, with Jia Fei's ability, even if he goes to the naval academy, he can be selected.

The reason why it is pressed so tightly is simple, Japan has no money! It is impossible to train pilots without dropping planes and consuming fuel, and a Zero is equivalent to the salary of 20 generals for a year, and even a low-priced training plane is equivalent to the salary of more than a dozen middle-level officers for a year.

The focus of the dispute between the aviation faction and the fleet faction is whether to give Yifei the title of officer, because theoretically, Yifei is selected from the high school graduates, and it is only equivalent to the junior high school level after reading, and there is still a long way to go from the golden diploma of the naval academy, but Horiyoshi believes that during the war, the combat merit is the first, the ability is the first, and no matter how high the diploma is, it is useless to fight in a war! Of course, he is the chief of the 32nd batch of naval soldiers, but it is reasonable to say that no matter how high the diploma is, others dare not say it directly - the first student who graduated from Tsinghua University dares to openly say that it is useless to study, and you dare to say that it is useless to study even a scumbag who can't get into a third-rate university?

Horikichi, who has great power in his hands, made the final decision: Ototobi graduates who have military merits and have served for more than 4 years or have served for 8 years and have performed in the middle and upper grades will be awarded the rank of second lieutenant to lieutenant directly corresponding to their qualifications and merits, and those with outstanding combat merits will be described separately (Akamatsu Sadaaki belongs to a separate category); After more than 2 years of service, he was awarded the rank of reserve officer (warrant officer); Graduates of Bingfei who have served for one year and have made meritorious service will be awarded reserve officers (warrant officers).

The second step of the analysis is to compare the training system and survival rate of pilots after the Pearl Harbor attack.

"At present, the most solid batch of pilots trained by the US Navy are cadets who were recruited after the Pearl Harbor attack but officially graduated after 1942. According to the data, it recruits 200 flight cadets every month, and still undergoes 14-month cycle training, that is, it not only cultivates the trainees' team ability, sense of discipline, and sense of obedience, but also cultivates their various abilities -- this batch of trainees is all trained according to generalists, each of them can fly fighters, attack planes, and reconnaissance planes, and has good ability to survive in the field, and even the training subjects include long-distance swimming and diving at sea (because it may be necessary to escape under the burning oil layer), and it is estimated that this part of the force is about 2,000 people. ”

After the Pearl Harbor incident, the United States expanded its military on the one hand, and on the other hand, cut some training subjects: 92 regular flight schools conducted three-month basic training for cadets to learn basic flight knowledge; Undergo another 3 months of sailing training, including operational and theoretical studies. It is equivalent to compressing the original military training from more than nine months to six months. The cadets are then assigned to 16 junior aviation schools for flight training, and if they pass the training (the elimination rate is only 15%), they are sent to Pensacola or Corpus Christi for intermediate flight training.

Only the flight cadets with excellent performance at this stage will have the opportunity to board carrier-based aircraft, and after two months of training, they will go to the Great Lakes for training on aircraft carriers. Each carrier-based aircraft pilot should have a cumulative flight time of 360-450 hours. On the whole, after 1942, the U.S. military compressed the 14-month training course to 9 months (11 months if it was a carrier-based aircraft), and this system persisted until the beginning of 1943, training a total of more than 20,000 pilots, including nearly 5,000 carrier-based aircraft.

At the same time, the Japanese Navy also carried out an expansion of the army, the scale of the first flight remained unchanged, the level and pass rate of the second flight were expanded, and the recruitment of the second flight was increased -- many pilots who were unsuccessful in the first flight many years ago are now re-entering the first flight, but the number of pilots has increased to less than 5,000 after all their efforts.

If it is said that before the war, the Japanese pilots had a clear quality advantage, and the quality in the early days of the war was half a pound or two, during this period, the quality of training pilots for the Japanese Navy, especially carrier-based aircraft, began to be inferior to that of the United States. Taking the Battle of Midway as an example, Japan lost 4 regular aircraft carriers and the United States lost 1 regular aircraft carrier, but the ratio of the number of pilots lost (killed) on both sides was 121:208.

As the difference in the number of new pilots between Japan and the United States widens, Japan will soon be dragged down if a war of attrition is fought. During the Battle of Kuah Island in history, because there were not many Japanese aircraft carriers, the remaining excellent pilots were even changed to land-based aviation and US army aviation to compete with each other. However, the course of history began to reverse in the second half of 1942, and the air battle on Kuah Island, which had caused Japan heavy losses, ended in a hurry after only a beginning, retaining the vital carrier-based pilots.

At a turning point in history, the Combined Fleet not only won the Battle of the South Pacific under the leadership of Horikichi Yoshi, but also worked with Germany to quickly refine the development of new aircraft, preserving the vital backbone and quality. Although the quality of the new recruits replenished by the Japanese army after the Battle of Midway has declined, after all, the veterans are still in the team, and their lack of experience has been promoted by their predecessors in the subsequent battles.

This period was undoubtedly tragic for the Allies, with the defeat in the South Pacific and the near-total annihilation of the Allied fleet in the Horn of Africa – many of the pilots on escort carriers were better than those on the 1944 fleet aircraft carriers today. In addition, the German Navy began to rise, and the US Navy Airlines, especially the carrier-based aircraft pilots, no longer had an overwhelming numerical advantage, and their total number was only slightly more than that of Japan and Germany combined, but the quality was much worse.

In order to further expand the scale of pilots, the United States launched the reform of the pilot training system in the spring of 1943: compressing the subjects, no longer emphasizing general training (that is, fighter pilots only train fighter pilots), reducing the overall training cycle by 2 months (7 months for ordinary naval aviation and 9 months for carrier-based aircraft), and using the five-class evaluation system of Lv1-5 for use, this batch of pilots served in large numbers by the beginning of 1944. Japan has only now been able to fully grasp the details.