Free pilots

[MrBlizzard]

Playing scenario battleground italy;
Need badly South African pilots, so I disbanded a SA air transport squadron and all pilots went to the "free" pool.
But it seems they're not available to fill bomber or fighter squadrons.
What can I do?
"Free" pilots keep their former specialization?
Is it impossible to retrain transport pilots?

[EddyBear81]

No, once they have a specialty, they stay in it, so don't dream about disbanding LB fleets when you're playing the Axis.

To fight shortages, you have to save on pilots of some nationalities (British and US already have plenty of blood to spill), and also train your pilots.

=> Training used to be costly and not very efficient, but with the latest patches it is a good investment (until 50-60ish exp levels)

But be careful not to train your transport crews the week before para airdrops : it will raise the miles used % above zero, thus making the air groups unavailable. And then you are in despair.

[cfulbright]

ORIGINAL: EddyBear81
But be careful not to train your transport crews the week before para airdrops : it will raise the miles used % above zero, thus making the air groups unavailable. And then you are in despair.

To amplify on what EddyBear is saying, you should go into the Air Doctrine screen and manually set Train Exp to 0 for all air commands, then just manually setting Mission to Training for those air groups you want to train.

Cary