Originally published in the January 1941 issue of Flying and Popular Aviation. That one is the Japanese. Here is that it has been possible to learn about the men and planes that have been battering virtually defenseless Chinese cities day after day for nearly 3 years. The information comes from a variety of sources, none of them public and none of them official Japanese. Tokyo doesn't talk much about anything military or economic and that silence goes double for matters aeronautic.
Japanese planes are also the poorest qualitatively, but more about that later.
A year ago, the air corps had 3.000 pilots including reserves, and the navy, 2,100. Just about half of these were commissioned officers, the rest enlisted men. The Island Empire's seven army and navy air schools cannot turn out more than about 600 pilots a year. All of which, again, is small potatoes compared to the other major powers, where training commanders are accustomed to counting their yearly output in thousands instead of the hundreds. Even our own War and Navy Departments are put to shame in this.