The Britannica article says the Japs lost many of their best pilots.
Parshall disagrees. He accessed Jap casualty lists. Amazingly few of their veteran pilots died at Midway.
It was the attritional battles around Guadalcanal, which began a couple months after Midway, that cost the Japs many of their best pilots.
Yes....... You have recited precisely what I mean
Most of what people think they know about Midway is not really correct
Damn...... I’m all het up now and have to go read it some more
Parshall’s thesis is the Japanese real loss was in skilled mechanics, a problem America did not have because almost so many American kids had a car or farm equipment which needded maintenance.
Either way, it cut into their pilot supply.
Hmm. Loss of four fleet carriers. Only two older, smaller carriers (CVLs Zuiho, Hosho) left in the area as landing places. Three fleet carriers were lost while rearming for a strike against the US fleet. Hiryu was sunk a bit later. When the carriers sank, the pilots went into the water. But there are escorting destroyers and cruisers that would try to rescue them once the American strike was over. So the pilot losses might not have been as horrendous as if the losses occurred while attacking the American CV groups (no friendly ships nearby).
But losing four fleet carriers is not something you want to do everyday!
I am not sure that Japanese pilots that survived Midway went on to the South Pacific. Most naval officers and men were held at bases north of Hokkaido, in, as I recall, Kunishiri. As the Island of Japan began to suffer attacks the survivors were reinegrated. It was said that very few of the Japanese pilots involved in the Midway engagement survived WWII.