PS: I am on a business trip today and tomorrow, and the update will be irregular.

The third and biggest problem of the Air Force crisis that the Red Army suffered in 1942-1943, in addition to the lack of resources and production capacity and the gap in aircraft performance, was the quality of pilots.

In the face of the urgent needs of the war, many Red Army pilots were brought out for actual combat after only 50 to 80 hours of training, and they received the most basic training in flight and combat skills, but there were very few training subjects related to mutual cooperation, maintaining formation, adopting reasonable tactics, and eliminating faults. The logic of the Russians is simple and crude, they go up and fly when they have mastered the basic skills, and every time they participate in a battle is the best training process, and surviving is victory -- in terms of gaining experience and ability, one hour of combat is more useful than 20 hours of training.

Their opponents were usually pilots who had trained 250 hours in Germany and had a full range of training experience at all levels of trainer aircraft - although this training time was much shorter than before the war (the German new pilots initially had more than 350 hours of training like American pilots), but still better than the Red Army's novice pilots who were not even fully trained. At the request of Hoffman, who was also the commander of the Air Force, the ranks of pilots on the Eastern Front after September were also significantly adjusted, and those record-breaking meritorious pilots were transferred back to China one by one, either to serve as instructors in schools, or to join the home air force to deal with British and American aircraft.

Most of the new pilots like to fly the Bf-219, because they are used to dogfighting, they like dogfighting, and often forget about the combat mission because of the dogfight, and the Bf-219 is especially suitable for them, while the veteran usually prefers the BZ tactic. Therefore, such a scene can often be seen in the sky above the Eastern Front, where the novice has been chasing and pestering for a long time, and his commander or senior comrade-in-arms has solved the opponent with just a light kill.

According to the rotation system drawn up by Hoffman, all new pilots who graduated from aviation schools joined the Eastern Front, and then senior pilots were transferred from the Eastern Front to fight on the Western Front. There is a saying circulating within the aviation school that the aviation school is the first training stage, and the Eastern Front is the second training stage, and only when the Eastern Front has completed its work and fought more than five times can it be regarded as a qualified student and allowed to graduate.

In this way, the Red Army rookies on the Eastern Front did not become a place for German ace pilots to brush up their achievements, but instead became a place for novice pilots to conduct actual combat training, and because of the production of aircraft and aviation cadets much more than in history, the Luftwaffe was able to maintain a high frequency of sorties, and at the same time was able to withstand higher losses. The benefits of this policy were not yet evident in September and October, and were even more passive than before, but in December and January, the effect was more pronounced - the Red Army pilots gradually fell into the suffocating trap of being strangled.

Hoffman's policy is very clear: the best pilots will be brought back as instructors - increase the intensity of personnel training; Veteran ace pilots served as the pillars of the Western Front -- intensifying counterattacks against British and American strategic air raids; Usually ace pilots lead teams on the Eastern Front - using their experience to pass on to novices; Novice pilots go to the Eastern Front to practice their skills -- in the face of Red Army novices who do not even have a complete training time, they have a higher chance of survival and room for improvement. Of course, if you can't even beat the Russian novice pilot on the Eastern Front, it only means that you are not worthy of being a pilot.

For example, after entering December, the average survival time of new Soviet pilots was 50 flight hours -- more than 95 percent of them did not survive 100 hours, while the performance of German new pilots was much better, with less than 20 percent of them dying in the first 100 flight hours, which means that the exchange ratio of novice pilots on both sides was roughly 1:5. The problem was not 1:5 or 1:6, as long as the German pilot could survive this stage, he could be regarded as a mature pilot, able to face the Red Army veterans without worry. And their opponents are still novices who have been stubble after stubble.

If he can survive 250 hours, he basically has a record of more than 5 shot downs, which is enough to meet the ace standard. When a German pilot had 250 hours of training and another 250 hours of combat, he began to enter a phase of steady growth in performance, and he had the level to lead a team on the Eastern Front. To paraphrase the game's terminology, the Eastern Front is a huge novice village, and being able to withstand the test of the Eastern Front means surviving the rookie stage.

Although the losses brought about by this rotation method are greater than those of the previous one, which has always allowed the top pilots to perform their tasks, persist until they are shot down, and then go on a novice replacement, most of the people killed in the rotation are novices, and the damage to the overall team is not too great, and the Air Force Command is stunned to find that while a large number of pilots are being lost, the quality and flight time of the overall team of pilots are steadily rising. Now it is more difficult to catch more than 100 super aces on the Eastern Front, but there are more than a dozen and dozens of aces.

At this time, most of the British and American pilots they encountered had sufficient training time but lacked combat experience, and then these veterans happily used the tactics and strategies they had summed up and refined on the edge of life and death to deal with these novices, and there were not many British and American pilots who could withstand the old fritters on the Eastern Front. Moreover, even if the German pilots were shot down, it would not matter, as long as they parachuted back a life, they would be able to fight again in the blue sky in a few days, while as long as the British and American pilots were shot down over the European continent, except for a very few rescued by underground resistance organizations, most of them could only become prisoners.

With the passage of time and the sharp increase in aircraft production, the Luftwaffe ranks became stronger and stronger, and the comparison of Soviet and German combat aircraft on the Eastern Front changed from 3,000 in August: 9,000 to 5,000: 8,000, and the loss rate of the British and American bomber groups on the Western Front climbed all the way, reaching a maximum of 19%, and after the introduction of the P-47 escort mechanism, the loss rate decreased, but still remained at about 14%. At the same time, the personnel structure of the Luftwaffe also underwent a major change, from bombers to fighters, and Hoffmann confidently declared: "There is no country in the world that can defeat the German Army in a purely ground war without the air force factor." (To be continued.) )