My Zekes took most of the brunt of the action and are now no match for the P-51B Mustang XP. The Zekes will be phased out for the Ki-43 III Tojo in time, but comparing a 8 hex normal range Zeke to a 4 Tojo, 5 at extended is a loss of mobility that will hurt.
My training program is complex and worth talking about cause as I said earlier, I've kept in the fight despite the huge losses you can see. Luckily in this mod I get a generous 7 Naval and 5 Army pilots a turn. Until recently I've been using most of my naval pilots to go straight into Betty air groups as there is no available downgrades, but I've changed tack here recently and decided that I needed to use 2/3 groups as training units and have been ferrying supplies with these planes. Unfortunately running supplies is not as effective at training as combat runs, but as with most of my training groups I do no training until all my planes are repaired and the pilot morale is above 50. Then I start bombing an empty base at high altitude to minimise losses.
Using Tracker, I usually flip between the Airgroup and Air Production Tabs to find suitable candidates for pilot replenishment. I use the standard fragment disband method to top off my groups. I have a couple of hub bases with HQ and supplies where I can at any time fly the two units in and get them mixing.
Also, while I really would have loved to have trained up my pilots to 70's or 80's, at present I'm using only 60+ experience groups in my endeavor to keep these planes flying.
At present I have:
[*] 9 Claude groups training some large groups and a few small for flexibility for a total of 230 planes and pilots training. And this is not near enough, as their experience with which I am disbanding into, is falling.
[*]13 Nate groups and a total of 400 planes and pilots training.
[*]5 Mary, 1 Lily I, 2 Betty,1 Lilly II training for a total of about 190 planes and pilots training, but this is not near enough anymore and I'll need to disband a few more group fragments and make some more trainers.
[*]1/3 of both TB and DB are trainers.
So overall I am using about 20% of my fighters as trainers, I think I need to expand this to a 1/3 to give them a chance to gain greater experience, but I am keeping my front line fighters at a good operational level. I need to expand my LB training, but given the need to keep a number of crucial airfields suppressed at present, I can seem to spare much.
Lastly, my transport and recon airgroups only receive novice pilots unfortunately, but my DB and TB groups are in fairly good shape. If you notice on tracker reinforcement needs are high still for most plane types, but mostly my micro-management of this area has paid off. Every few turns I spend a good hour looking and making a list of couplings and get them into position for fragment disbanding.
I'll post a similar shot after I have done this in the next turn...
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