Question on aircraft upgrades

[loki100]

I'm slowly getting to terms with this game and in a test SP game decided to pay more attention to managing the airwar than I have.

So its a 1941 Soviet GC and I took the common advice of bouncing most of the VVS to the national reserve - apart from some fighters and the long range stuff. Left it in there for about 3 terms in which period I'd juggled the air HQs and bases to suit my emerging deployment and then starting farming out the VVS.

For the junk I-153s/1-15s, some I committed on the grounds they'd shoot something and any attrition on the Germans is good. After a while they were in a mess - fatigue/morale/losses so I sent them back to reserve and replaced by better Migs/LAGGs.

Now all this is a long way to get to my question. I've ended up with about 15 units notionally equipped with I-153s that have been in reserve for an age. So they have very high morale - up in the 80/90s - but are flying garbage. So should I (a) just wait till the natural upgrade cycle catches up with them and assume at some stage I'll have high morale units with better planes; (b) intervene and use the manual upgrade; or, (c) just scrap them. Equally should I, rather than send them to reserve, have just disbanded them right at the start?

If I do (c) does anything happen to the pilots or are they just lost in the ether?

ta

[JeremyB]

I've ended up with about 15 units notionally equipped with I-153s that have been in reserve for an age. So they have very high morale - up in the 80/90s

How the hell do they get to 80-90s????? I thought they could only gain morale up to the national morale level...

huh???

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: JeremyB

I've ended up with about 15 units notionally equipped with I-153s that have been in reserve for an age. So they have very high morale - up in the 80/90s

How the hell do they get to 80-90s????? I thought they could only gain morale up to the national morale level...

huh???

heres the report:



some of those never left the reserve but as you can see some formations have pretty impressive kill rates

[morvael]

Spend the points and upgrade them manually, it will take a long time to burn 3000+ obsolete planes with just 15 regiments, that could be doing their work in new machines. That's what I did. I used the Bn first, but when the Dec'42 change came in I disbanded them, as I had enough regiments to fill airbases to the max supported capacity (side effect of respecting support size is I get no new bases).

[Simbelmude]

How the hell do they get to 80-90s????? I thought they could only gain morale up to the national morale level...

huh???

I echo Jeremy's surprise... aren't you supposed to gain morale only if you're under your national level? What am I missing?

[cpt flam]

national moral is not a factor for aircrafts as i see it
doing fine you can reach 99 for each side
but big losses and replacement will kill you

[Von Weber]

They've got morale, but not experience, for gaining experience they would fly combat missions.
BTW what date screenshot is related?