Here is my summary of the flight school students called Yokaren by the year.
Each number for fighter, bomber or reconnaissance unknown with the list.
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Can't read Japanese either Shinpachi. I'd be interested in a summary by year if possible.
I'd guess these would be transport/recon pilots as well? I wonder what the percentages of pilots allocated to each type of aircraft would be, and by "type" I mean fighter, strike aircraft, bobber, etc.
I'm guessing the 100 per year were for IJN carrier qualified graduates
Its very impressive and once again I find myself thinking about the what if's. Had Japan been on a full war footing and the 44,000+ students been trained in 1942, and the 117,000 in 1943 life would easily have been very different. The end the same but the time and cost very different.
For clarification, are these how many entered the training program, or completed it by year?
I would think the kamikaze trainees would be included here as well, though you would think because of this 44 and 45 would have higher pilot mortality rates.
IIRC, late war graduates (45?) only required 40 hours of flight time, so these graduates certainly do not mean as much earlier ones.
Here is my summary of the flight school students called Yokaren by the year.
Each number for fighter, bomber or reconnaissance unknown with the list.
View attachment 262946
great Data Shinpachi. Excellent!
Here is my summary of the flight school students called Yokaren by the year.
Each number for fighter, bomber or reconnaissance unknown with the list.
Both aircraft suffered from nearly the same history in my opinion: When they were first produced, they dominated air combat.
Later in the war, both became outclassed as newer aircraft caught up to them in performance. Neither aircraft had much development potential. A Kinsei engine in a Zero would have made it LESS inferior in performance, but it was never going to be a 400 mph fighter. The XF6F-6 Hellcat also wasn't able to show the same improvement in performance with a P&W R-2800-18W as the F4U-4 Corsair did, thus its intended replacement would have been the F8F.
Neither aircraft had much improvement during its service life. Other than roll rate with the improved ailerons from the F6F-3 to the F6F-5, nothing much changed. The high speed roll rate also came with a significantly reduced low speed roll rate though.
The "improvements" from A6M2 to A6M5 were also not great. The Japanese even stated that "the fighting performance of the Mark II (A6M3 and A6M5) was inferior to the Mark I (A6M2) at medium altitudes and below but becomes progressively better above 8000 meters". (from the translated manual captured at Kwajalein)
Although 1130 HP versus 940 HP from the Sakae 12 to Sakae 21 seems like a great increase, the actual increase is a bit less significant when the outputs at various altitudes are compared. The increased weight pretty much offset what little power increase there was.
Great information! Is there any information about JAAF pilots?
to a maximum of about 35 per month and even then, with reduced training times that made the japanese jockeys uncompetitive. For all the jockeys, the flight hours were cut and cut again, to the point that Japanese pilots became just so much cannon fodder. Its really didnt matter how many they put in the sky, they were just a bunch of rookies flying around in outmoded aircraft, waiting to hacked down by the swarms of hellcats engulfing them.