A complete overhaul and re-development of Gary Grigsby's War in the East, with a focus on improvements to historical accuracy, realism, user interface and AI.
planes lost does not equal pilots lost - sounds right
air groups on map does not equal every air group that was ever on the map - sounds right
Specifically, if a fighter group is on map, then kills generate experience (along with just flying), it goes to the reserve and its pilot record is cleared and replaced by a generic 'pilot' with the average morale/exp of the group. When it returns to the map its given a newly generated set of pilots who average to the morale/exp of the group (and exp in the reserve could have improved via training). The original pilot set are lost and the new set have, as far as I know, no kills at the pilot level but the airgroup retains its collective score.
back on map, then further pilot kills = pilot experience = average air group experience and so on
I did a recent deep dive on pilots for three turns, the deaths, kills and mission numbers all worked out correctly. In this case no pilots were sent to reserve who had kills so there was no discrepancy.
