Hi Schweik and RCAFson,
The book shown earlier, Statistial Digest 1946, is NOT the same as the WWII digest. It is for 1946. There is one for every year, more or less. The "special edition" was for the entire war. Links below.
1) USAAF Statistical Digest of World War II:
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a542518.pdf
2) Naval Aviation Combat Statistics of WWII:
https://www.history.navy.mil/conten...s/naval-aviation/aviation-monographs/nasc.pdf
These have bare statistics and do NOT give individual statistics. Also, the USAAF and US Navy/Maries did NOT save exactly the same data in their records, so comparisons are difficult except at the macro level. For instance, the USN/MC break out combat losses into losses due to enemy aircraft, AAA, and operational losses. The USAAF does not do that. Then, the USAAF breaks out victories into ground kills and air kills. The USN/MC does not do that.
So, we have losses broken out for the Navy/Marines but not the victories, and victories broken out into air and ground for the USAAF but not for the Navy/Marines.
It's almost as if they specifically don't WANT you to be able to compare the data, and that is likely the actual case. Who says interservice rivalry doesn't exist? But, there ARE some useful data in these studies. It is also useful to recall that the USAAF and the USN/MC had wildly different combat experiences. In the ETO, you had 1,000-plane raids with a LOT Mof aircraft engaging each other at times. Anyone who bailed out or went down and wasn't shot on the way down could usually return to service and crash-landed airplanes could be recovered or at least scrounged for parts. In the PTO, you usually had small units of 4 or 8 aircraft encountering anywhere from 1 to 12 enemy aircraft, mostly over water. If anyone went down any real distance away from home, they were usually lost and the aircraft were just gone. It is a LOT easier to keep track of potenital victories in a sky with a few airplanes in it than it is in a sky with 1,000 ariplanes flitting about.
The difference in experience between carrier air combat and air combat over land was tremendous, especially if you talk with people who have done both in WWII where modern nav aids weren't avialable.
Cheers and happy statistics, if those actually exist, that is.