ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Tainan group should be the most or one of the most experienced and highest morale Japanese air groups at the start of the game...
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It is top-of-line, isn't it?
One might wonder whether in some part the Tainan Kokutai's reputation springs from having received greater publicity in the English-speaking world than most through Sakai's book (nevermind that he didn't write it himself).
If the footnotes are anything to go by, the Wiki article is primarily based on Hata & Izawa's chapter on the Tainan Ku in "Japanese Naval Aces and Fighter Units in World War II". Hata & Izawa only states that the Kokutai was the "best known and...with the largest number of aces" rather than explicitly stating that the unit was the best of the landbased fighter units - in fact they also state that "compared to Tainan Air Group personnel, the ratio of senior, experienced personnel was higher [in the 3rd Kokutai]" (p.123).
Considering the four aces mentioned, only Sakai had previous combat experience as of December 7th '41. Sasai had only graduated from flight school that November. Nishizawa had yet to see combat and in any case wasn't assigned the Tainan Ku until April.
Ota, though having been assigned to 12th Ku in June '41, had seen no actual combat. In any case the Tainan Ku saw more combat than any other IJNAF fighter unit (such as they were) '41-'42, so it is perhaps not surprising if it came to have the "largest number of aces".
Looking at the some of the Tainan Ku pilots killed prior to the unit being posted to Rabaul suggests that the picture wasn't uniform:
Hatanaka, O.: Month graduated: 6/41 - Date of death: 24/11/41
Nakamizo, R.: 4/36 - 08/12/41 (ex-Kaga Kitai)
Hirose, Y.: 2/38 - 08/12/41 (ex-12th Ku)
Sato, Y.: 8/38 - 08/12/41
Kawano, Y.: 3/39 - 08/12/41
Aoki, Y.: 7/41 - 08/12/41
Higa, M.: 2/38 - 10/12/41 (ex-12th Ku)
Kuratomi, H.: 1/39 - 13/12/41 (ex-12th Ku)
Kikuchi, T.: 3/39 - 24/12/41 (ex-14th Ku)
Harada, Y. 5/33 - 24/01/42
Wakao, A.: 4/40 - 25/01/42
Seki, A.: 10/41 - 25/01/42
Sakai, T.: 8/38 - 29/01/42 (ex-12th Ku)
Kobayashi, K.: 7/41 - 03/02/42
Asai, M.: 7/38 - 19/02/42 (ex-12th Ku)
Ueda, M.: 10/41 - 24/02/42
Sakai, T.: 8/38 - 27/02/42
(Hata & Izawa, Appendix B, C)
Making a couple of presumptions about the data, of the 17 pilots, five were recent graduates and seven potential combat vets. That the picture wasn't entire monochrome is perhaps not surprising if one accepts Mark Peattie's argument in "
Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power" that "
By the time of Pearl Harbor, half of the Japanese naval air service was, by its own reckoning, insufficiently trained, a situation that had lead to widespread allocation of inexperienced aircrews. Because the carrier units demanded the highest level of training, the could be supplied on at the sacrifice of the quality of many of the land-based air groups. At the opening of the Pacific War, for example, the table of organization for the first-line air groups was nearly complete, but if one looks at the composition, particularly those of the Eleventh Air Fleet, it is clear that they contained a fairly high percentage of aircrews assigned before their training was finished. In part this was a consequence of the recent commissioning of the carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, which borrowed a number of the best air group leaders for their participation in the Hawai'i operation" ( p.166-7). It should be noted that the IJNAF's idea of "sufficient training" was a 12 months apprenticeship with a combat unit on top of basic flight training, at what point the pilot was considered combat-ready.
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- apologies if I gave the wrong impression.
