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Probably belongs somewhere where talk is about that El Dorado , WITP II:

Dream for WITP III

Pilot training in WITP is ridiculous, we are tied to Fictional Levels, while the Japanese can alter it production or the Players suffer so many losses they run out of trained pilots they cannot alter the flow of pilots.

In addition, Vanilla Pilots get produced who are equally capable of flying B-29, PBY5 & Hellcats or Zekes, Betty’s & Okhas.

A Game, I think Victory Games in “Pacific War”, used training blocks which you allocated to various types & levels.

i.e Your side can train 150 new pilots per month. You could allocate “100” pilots to level 1 and “50” to level 2 for Single Engine Aircraft and similar for 2 Engine & 4 Engine. A level 1 pilot took “12 months” to train and a level 2 “18” months and they arrived with “40” exp pts or “60” exp pts. I think it included Level 0 “bait” as well.

Given the marvelous ability of Computers, this should be easy to control and allow further distinction between aircraft types, Arms of Service and Nationalities.

Players would also have to allocate resources to Training, i.e Aircraft & Supplies and gain bonuses by transferring Highly experienced pilots to teach. (Training could be shortened if a exp80 pilot helped, or lengthened if insufficient resources were allocated.)

For Example, I would see the Japanese as requiring distinct training pools for:
JAAF
Single Engine
Twin Engine Fighter/Attack
Twin Engine Bomber
Single engine Floatplane
Four Engine Flying Boat

JNAF
Single engine Fighter
Single engine Dive Bomber
Single engine Torpedo Bomber
Twin Engine Medium Bomber
Twin Engine Torpedo Bomber

(Probably missed some!)

And they are relatively simple!!

In this way Players would need to plans ahead, no good with a wealth of Mustang Pilots when you need them for your Superfortresses.

Some work would be required to find the average training times for various Air Forces but there are people here with amazing resource gathering skills.


I would envisage a monthly cycle to handle this, and maybe other “Strategic” decisions which (to me) are more of the direction I want rather than wondering who’s guarding the PX at Noumea

Pilot training in WITP is ridiculous, we are tied to Fictional Levels, while the Japanese can alter it production or the Players suffer so many losses they run out of trained pilots they cannot alter the flow of pilots.

You do know the Japanese DID run out of pilots? And that this was forseeable before hostilities began? A plan by a young naval aviator was not adopted - and it was never possible to play catch-up ball. ONLY if you allow a CHANGE in Japanese policy BEFORE hostilities begin (by some time) is a better situation possible.

In addition, Vanilla Pilots get produced who are equally capable of flying B-29, PBY5 & Hellcats or Zekes, Betty’s & Okhas.

Actually, pretty much, a pilot is a pilot. What you are assigned to fly pretty much is luck. And it can be changed. And in an emergency, they don't ask "are there any heavy pilots on board" - they ask "are there any pilots on board?" Because that is what matters. I was once on an airliner that had a big problem. The first plane out of Alaska after a volcanic eruption, it had a load of people who were willing to take risks to get whereever: one person had to get to Seattle or die - for an organ transport; another had to get to Hawaii or not get married; I was in the field thousands of miles from home not generating any revenue - my service call was over - and it was not customary to have expensive field engineers not working on something while still getting paid. The airliner did that Panhandle route - being the first plane there were passengers all along the line - and at Juneau they gave us an option to abandon the effort. We took off in darken ship conditions, with the radio connected to the speaker system, so if we crashed any survivors would be witness to what had been said. And this was BEFORE we were in trouble - that was just for foul weather (like you rarely see outside the Gulf of Alaska or North Atlantic in winter). We flew to Seattle - socked in - as was the alternate - Portland - then back to Juneau - socked in - then back to Seattle - and this time we are going to land - possible or not - due to fuel state. No joy: no alternate able to handle a 737 is close to minimums, never mind above them, and in range. Time for the field engineer: resident at Boeing, I knew of an experimental ILS not legal to use on a civil airliner - not fully developed - with which no one trained to fly a 737 was in the least exposed to - never mind on board. But Seattle is full of pilots, Boeing is full of pilots and other aviation experts, and our plane has three honest to God airline pilots on board, and several times as many general aviation and military pilots. There is just enough time to get someone familiar with the ILS down there to fire it up - and to attempt to use the data from it to talk the plane down - WWII Navy style - never mind no civilian has ever attempted it or been taught anything about the procedure - never mind the ILS is not supposed to be used that way and there is no SOP in place or anyone familiar with the SOP that has never been written. It is a shot - and right then any shot is better than crashing into a mountain or the sea. In less than half an hour a basic procedure was outlined, during which time the facility was manned, and commercial radios made available to whoever got the honor of trying to explain what they could see on their display. ALL the pilots on the airliner had a conference and decided who would do what - and who not - and the hell with law, protocols or any other thing that did not optimize our chances for survival. This was a first pass, this is no drill, and you are not going to get to practice in the simulator stuff: we had to land blind with zero visibility right down to the deck - in an age when planes did not have on board instruments able to yield useful options. It had to be done in double normal human reaction time - the guy on the ground had to react and say what he saw - then the command pilot had to react to what he heard - a process that is much worse than your ability to control a car. What resulted was, all agreed, the worst landing any of us had ever experienced. The plane actually hit very hard and bounced back up into the sky - and then repeated the process with less energy - and then - since there was no way to know how much runway we had - a full emergency reverse thrusters and breaks shuddering stop. Yet the reaction was one of jubilation - not anger - and cheering - and praise all around. Pilots may or may not succeed - but they will try - and it has little to do with what they are supposed to be able to do - or what they are supposed to be qualified to do it with.

Twin Engine Medium Bomber
Twin Engine Torpedo Bomber

Why? There is no instance of a JNAF twin engine bomber that is not a torpedo bomber - nor a unit which did not require its pilots to qualify to fly torpedo missions.

For Example, I would see the Japanese as requiring distinct training pools for:
JAAF
Single Engine
Twin Engine Fighter/Attack
Twin Engine Bomber
Single engine Floatplane
Four Engine Flying Boat

JNAF
Single engine Fighter
Single engine Dive Bomber
Single engine Torpedo Bomber
Twin Engine Medium Bomber
Twin Engine Torpedo Bomber

There is some merit to this - except you are REQUIRING qualified pilots. Japan, for example, got rid of whole categories of pilots, transferring them over to fighters: float fighters, recon, transport, bomber, attack.
Your system should allow any pilot be used - but at a penalty: when you change types you lose experience - the more severe the difference - the more you lose. IF you adopted your proposal, it would make things WORSE for Japan. You are trying to say "you do better when trained" and that is to a degree correct: what is wrong is to say "you cannot fly anything else." In PLAAF ANY pilot can fly a CJ-6 as many hours as he likes. And most units have some J-6s around - also unrestricted. No matter you are a H-6 pilot, or a Y-5, or whatever: you can fly the trainers (CJ-6) or old fighters (J-6) and it helps you do better - whatever you fly.

Sid,

I dispute your premise that any trained pilot can fly anything, with the proviso that they must fly to a combat standard. (There are always extraordinary pilots who will fly anything to its max. Leonard Cheshire, Willie Tait et al)

While there was movement between types, and the RAF had pilots move up from twins to 4E it didnt happen as a regular change up. During the Battle of Britain the RAF sought reinforcements from pilots with similar ENGINE experience, from the Battle & Fulmar Sqns, with only limited succes beacause they didnt have the Fighter Combat training.

I would accept that a 1E pilot could retrain to a different type, in the RAAF we had squadrons flitting between types and many Vengeance pilots later flew Liberators, but they didnt learn overnight.

I also stand by the need for a difference between Japanese Medium Bomber & Torpedo Bomber types, yes the preWar pilots were extraordinarily skilled & experienced and could do both, but the later war trainees were not as well trained, maybe they dropped torpedos. but with little expectation of a hit. Again, in the RAAF they dropped Torpedo training for Beaufort pilots beacause the results were not worth the extra training.

Your example of the Chinese airforce wouldnt carry across to the USAF, B-52/B1 pilots would not be combat proficient in the F-15C and Marine FA/18 couldnt step into the AV8. And (regular)carrier operations are TOTALLY beyond Land Based Air Force pilots.

I have just finished (yesterday) the Book "Zero" where the plan for improved training was mentioned, Yes, you would have to plan pre-war training (I think 12 months worth in the Game). You can go for fastre lower experienced pilots, or concentrate on quality. (I think the Japs had too many planes for their pilots, there were over 5,000 aircraft in the Home Islands at wars end.)

A Cessna pilot MIGHT be able to land a 737, but with so much outside assistance that its reference to WW2 is irrelevant.

In context of WWII....A P-40 pilot could probably land a B-17, but flying close box formation with eleven others while on a bomb run? I wouldn't expect greatness.

Maybe {Game-wise} training to 40 as a pilot and then after that would be plane/mission type? Differing procedures between the combatants or even years of the war? {dreaming after all}.

Didn't flight training in U.S. include several months in the type of plane AFTER basic pilot training?

ORIGINAL: rockmedic109

In context of WWII....A P-40 pilot could probably land a B-17, but flying close box formation with eleven others while on a bomb run? I wouldn't expect greatness.

Maybe {Game-wise} training to 40 as a pilot and then after that would be plane/mission type? Differing procedures between the combatants or even years of the war? {dreaming after all}.

Didn't flight training in U.S. include several months in the type of plane AFTER basic pilot training?

Similar in the Commonwealth, Elementary Training School then specialise at the Operational Training Unit.

One of the most serious problems with the Japanese training program for IJN pilots was the extreme length of time it lasted. Some pilots without formal education were taking years to train because of the provision for something like a "collage equivalence" provided prior to serious aircraft training. Their system at the start of the war was not producing enought pilots to replace those being lost via attrition and action prior to Coral Sea. Because of the length of the training program, many pilots who entered the program just before the war were not expected to finish before the war was expected to be over....literally years later. Any changes implemented worked their way throught the program slowly. A reduction of the training program from 2.5 years to 2 years would still not help you until 1944 if the decision was made in early 1942. What hurt the Japanese so badly was the lag time to develop and change there pilot training infrastructure. The Japanese training was not modeled on the mass production theme the U.S. adopted between the two wars. The US advantage came from decisions made several years before the start of the conflict, and included the subsequent creation of a very large reserve pool of qualified (but not spectular?) pilots. Finally some of the U.S. prewar pilots were very good. The very early war AVG group pilots had a better than 10:1 kill ratio against supposedly better trained Japanese pilots. Even an all powerful Japanese commander could not have instituted changes that would have had much effect before the pilot pool was seriously damaged. In fact there were really not enough pilots at the start of the war. To much lag between ordering changes, and the effects showing up was a cause of much of the problem. They did try to change things, but not until after they realized, based on war experience they had screwed up by believing we would sue for peace after six months.