Once again, the USN/USMC pilots in California came up with an exemplary response for the review of the scenario's pilot experience. I do not know who wrote it, or where someone may have found it, but it is the best general overview of the state of the respective naval air forces that I have read. It puts many things in perspective and sharpens focus. I hope some of you will enjoy it.
The availability of Japanese carrier qualified pilots is a difficult number to ascertain, but the generally accepted view is about 1500 carrier qualified pilots in 1941. In preparing for the war, the IJN brought its operational aircraft up to a level of about 1800, with about 1200 of them shore based and 600 ship based (aircraft carriers and scouts). If there were indeed 1500 carrier qualified IJN pilots, it is highly likely that the IJN, much like the USN/USMC, carrier qualified the majority of its single engine pilots in its equivalent of Squadron-3.
These numbers pretty much correlate with those of the USN/USMC; examining active 1941 USN/USMC squadrons yields a similar number of available aviators. USN carrier squadrons, at the end of 1941, only mustered about 580 flying slots in 38 squadrons. Active land-based USMC VMF and VMSB squadrons probably accounted for another 200-250 readily available carrier qualified pilots. Certainly this was not the total pool of available carrier qualified USN/USMC pilots as it does not take into account carrier qualified pilots assigned to such mundane activities as training and staff positions, as well as land based squadrons. The same would be true of the IJN. There were undoubtedly many carrier qualified pilots not actually assigned to a carrier squadron and operating in that environment.
Reviewing USN pilot training, in the years 1925 through 1941, 7,061 pilots had completed the program. Of these, 44 percent, 3,112 completed the program just in 1941. Those most likely to endure most of the fighting were those who completed flight training between 1934 and 1941, some 5,687 pilots. How many of these were carrier qualified? They all were, at some point. It was pre-war USN practice to move pilots from “community” to “community”. Fighter pilot Jimmy Thach, for example, spent two or three tours in patrol planes, which amounts to five to six years, if not more. All USN pilots, prewar, were carrier qualified at some point regardless of the community to which they were eventually assigned.
In 1942 USN pilot training programs started to ramp up; 10,869 aviators received their wings of gold, almost twice as many as had completed the program in the previous 8 years. In 1943 there were 20,842 graduates; 1944, 21,067; and, with then end of the war in sight, 1945 ended with 8,880 graduates. As best ascertained, during the course of the war the IJN trained some 24,000 pilots of all stripes. Thus, in the period 1942 to 1945, the USN produced more than 2.5 times the number of pilots as the IJN. Each of those USN pilots went through a program of primary, intermediate, advanced, and, for the carrier pilots combat preparation in RAGs before heading west. New pilots were arriving for action in USN carrier squadrons with as many as 600 hours flying under their belts and as much as 200 hours of that in type.
Many will remark on the overall superiority of the start-of-the-war IJN carrier pilots, but this, too, may be somewhat of a distorted view. Popularly, the IJN pilots are given credit for racking up all that great combat experience in China. Well, so what about this great combat experience? It was exciting work, bombing raids blasting relatively, certainly by later wartime standards, undefended villages, towns, cities and the odd US gunboat. Fighter plane wise, this meant flying strike escort for these mostly unchallenged air raids; shooting up an occasional column of troops or refugees; and, on rare occasions, cornering a bunch of Russian built and Chinese flown I-15 biplanes or a rare I-16 monoplane.
Also, consider that IJN air units had considerably less involvement in China than IJA air units. Apropos, virtually all, if not actually all, USN/USMC VF vs Japanese VF encounters, were against IJN VF, during those critical first 12 months of the war. This is not to say the IJN flyers had no combat experience, but to posit instead that it was, perhaps, a "lower quality combat experience" than that for which they are popularly given credit . . . really not much more than overly realistic training.
The entire argument of the IJN pilots having all this vast combat experience must rest on some fairly unlikely presuppositions, such as (1) that all IJN pilots/air groups went off to China and obtained this vast combat experience (2) all sorties resulted in air-to-air combat action and as a result all VF pilots had the benefit of this air-to-air combat experience, and (3) all VF air-to-air combat experience was obtained flying the A6M2. The extensions of these pre-suppositions are also equally unlikely (1) that no IJN pilots/air groups went off to fight the Americans without this experience (2) that there were no PCS transfers out of these units (3) there had been no operational casualties in these units (4) there were no assignments of new pilots fresh from whatever advanced training to these units, and (5) there were no PCS transfers into these units from pilots who were busy elsewhere during the China adventure.
Significantly, whatever combat experience the IJN pilots did acquire in China would only stand them good stead if the USN pilots flew like the Chinese Air Force . . . which was, most definitely, not the case. So the popular theory, that green, inexperienced, fresh from training, USN/USMC pilots faced all these, combat experienced, multiple victory, mature late 20's to early 30's, rock steady, hardened professionals, is not really true.
The USN/USMC VF pilots of the period, while not combat experienced, were, in most cases, well trained, well led, and possessed of sound tactical doctrine. Their squadron commanders and executive officers, for the most part, were experienced aviators who had received their wings by the early 1930'. The division and section leaders usually had anywhere from three years to slightly less than a year in type. While the IJN pilots were presumably cavorting around in China, they were flying and training, flying and training, flying and training, ad nauseam. They had a good idea who they were going to have to fight, and some had a pretty good idea how they were going to go about it. Their training was much less rigid and inflexible than Japan’s, so rapid adaptation to new tactical patterns was uncomplicated.