The mission of the Naval Reserve Command in wartime is to train combat personnel for the Navy. This is a huge organization, divided into several departments, and Liao Hanxiang is in charge of this part of the reserve aviation.

The training of pilots is divided into several stages, and in peacetime, the pilots who have come here have already completed their primary training and can fly combat aircraft. However, during the war, with the expansion of the pilot corps, the aviation school could no longer meet the requirements of training, so the Navy directly recruited a group of young pilots, and then trained from scratch at the reserve command. These new recruits will first get acquainted with flying in slow planes, then follow the instructors to fly the trainers, and finally fly the trainers alone, and when the flight time reaches about 200 hours, they will be assigned specific positions according to their performance in training, and the best will be assigned to fighter units, then bomber units, reconnaissance aircraft units, and transport aircraft and seaplane units. And after being assigned a specific specialty, these pilots are allowed to fly the Navy's combat aircraft for training. After mastering the performance of naval combat aircraft, the final stage of tactical training begins.

Tan Renhao was assigned by Liao Hanxiang to be in charge of the final stage of training, that is, to let the pilots master how to drop bombs, how to drop torpedoes, and how to make bombs and torpedoes hit targets. It took Tan Renhao about a week to familiarize himself with the training content of the naval aviation, which was very different from the training content he had formulated when he was in the Fifth Fleet. For example, in bomb dropping training, the pilot only has to bomb a fixed area on the ground, and as long as the bomb is dropped on the white hit point, it is considered qualified. The torpedo dropping training is even less, there is almost no actual training content, the pilot only requires to be able to fly the torpedo bomber into the mine-throwing channel, as for how to ensure that the torpedo hits the battleship, this is not within the content of the training at all!

Obviously, this training mechanism is very backward. After having the actual combat experience of the last time, Tan Renhao has discovered that the quality of naval aviation has become the most important problem restricting the strike force of aircraft carriers. Even if there are the best combat aircraft, without good pilots, it is equivalent to a waste. One of the main reasons for the low quality of the pilots of the Imperial Navy was that the training of these pilots was very backward and did not have the nature of actual combat, so there was no guarantee of how well the pilots could perform in combat.

Soon, Tan Renhao developed a new training system, but he faced more problems.

"If you tow a barge, will you be able to reach a speed of 30 knots?"

The officer who was asked hesitated slightly, and said, "I think it can be, but we haven't tried it before." ”

"So, you try it today!" Tan Renhao was given privileges by Liao Hanxiang, and he was a colonel officer, so his status in the training base was very high. He gestured to the flat-bottomed barge docked next to the pier. "Go find the tightrope, tow the barge on, and run at full speed to see how fast you can go."

"Colonel, do you want to do it now?" The ensign officer on the torpedo boat was a little hesitant.

"What, are you going to do it after dinner?" Tan Renhao was not polite to this second lieutenant officer at all, "Call the people on your boat immediately, and follow me to tow the barge." ”

Half an hour later, the torpedo boat leaned next to the barge, and a steel cable with a diameter of two centimeters connected the boats. Then Tan Renhao asked the second lieutenant officer to drive the torpedo boat at full speed and sail towards the center of Taihu Lake. Tan Renhao was very satisfied with the results of the test, and the torpedo boat, which could reach a maximum speed of 42 knots, could reach a speed of 35 knots after being towed onto a flat-bottomed barge, but it could only continue to sail for half an hour at most, otherwise the diesel engine would burn out due to the heavy load. The maximum speed it can maintain is 31 knots, which is fully in line with Tan Renhao's requirements. Subsequently, Tan Renhao mobilized more than a dozen crew members on the torpedo boat, so that he did not go to find paint and canvas. The barge was refitted and a horizontal target was made on top of the barge. This is the target of Tan Renhao's training with live ammunition.

In the following days, Tan Renhao assigned a new task to the 240 dive bomber pilots and torpedo bomber pilots in this issue, that is, to aim at the barge that was "galloping" on the lake and conduct flight training before diving and torpedo attacks. However, he did not rush to train the pilots to drop bombs, because there were no suitable training bombs at the training base.

Ten days later, Tan Renhao's troubles were resolved. Wu Xianyu sent him a batch of training bombs used by the Fifth Fleet during training, and also sent Deng Zichao and Zhang Naiding to assist Tan Renhao in training new pilots. At the same time, General Liao Hanxiang personally ran to the Qingdao Arsenal and asked the Arsenal to provide a batch of trainer torpedoes. Then, Tan Renhao arranged tasks for Deng Zichao and Zhang Naiding, and asked the two of them to serve as actual combat instructors for these pilots while training with those new pilots. However, the new training tasks arranged by Tan Renhao are not so simple.

"In battle, the enemy's warships will not wait for you to attack, they will not only sail quickly, but also greet you with heavy anti-aircraft fire, and there are a large number of anti-aircraft fighters in the sky waiting to tear you to pieces. Therefore, when you are training, you must know this clearly, when you attack, the sea will not be calm, and there will be many enemy planes in the sky like flies! Deng Zichao almost told the young pilots his feelings, "From now on, you must treat every training as actual combat, there will be fighter jets in the sky, and warships on the sea will use artillery against you." It is under such conditions that you must bomb and torpedo the enemy's warships, and this is your task, and in order to complete the mission, you must be ready to sacrifice at any time! ”

Then, Zhang Naiding also taught those bomber pilots the experience he summed up in actual combat, and with these two people "speaking by example", Tan Renhao also saved a lot of trouble, at least, those new pilots were nervous.