Dec 7th vs. Dec 8th start: pilot losses

[Jorge_Stanbury]

Has someone done the math on how severe are the losses in terms of IJN pilots by selecting a December 8th start ?

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

Has someone done the math on how severe are the losses in terms of IJN pilots by selecting a December 8th start ?

I assume you mean compared to historical orders.

They really aren't that bad. I think in my game, due to database updates (which included flak fixes, DBB-style), I lost 21 Zeroes in the PH attack because of airfield attack orders and that was the worst of it. If I did a non-historical turn, I wouldn't have Zeroes strafing the airfields because of the flak.

Losses over Luzon are minimal due to the altitude settings.

The most risky place I would think would be the attacks on Force Z. British Buffalos tend to leak on CAP there.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

No, I fully understand it is a lot more painful to go historical due to strafing... With DBB you can easily lose 60 to 75 "KB quality" pilots. As you said, changing altitude to avoid strafing attacks is one of the 1st things I do when setting up a non-historical turn.
The only benefit I had found from historical 1st turn is that PoW and Repulse almost always get sunk or heavy damaged... which is cool, but not enough incentive to outweight the horrendous KB losses.

My original question was : has someone had compared the databases of Dec 7th vs Dec 8th scenarios to see how many pilots are taken out.. or assumed "dead"... when you start a December 8th campaign?

In other words, I am trying to assess if Dec 8th is a good/ better start than Dec 7th for Japan, assuming of course a game start that is following a path not equal but relatively close to history.