Comparison of Pacific, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and North Atlantic naval combat

I like the comparison of Ceylon , Midway and Darwin as all were similar attacks by the KdB on land based facilities. I researched this some time ago , at least partly inspired by a thread on another forum. Most of my numbers are from Bloody Shambles by Shores and Cull except for the Midway numbers but feel free to fact check the ones I use. I also believe that at Midway the forces engaged at roughly co alt where as many Fulmars, Hurricanes and P 40s were shot down on take off. Also remember 258 Squadrons planes included 5 clapped out Hurricane Mk1s.

Battle/ Plane type/ Kills/ losses/ Sorties loss rate
Midway/ F2a/F4F / 2/ 15 / 24/ 62%

Darwin/ P40 / 1/ 10/ 11/ 90%

Ceylon/ Hurricane/Fulmar/ 10/ 30/ 71/ 42%

Interesting results, more to come.

No lets compare sorties required per kill at these three battles

Midway/ sorties/kills/ ratio/( lower is better)
Zero /36/15/2.4
F2F/F3F/24/2/12

Darwin
Zero/27/10/2.7
P40/11/1/11

Columbo
Zero/36/14/2.5
Hurricane/27/7/3.85

Trincomalee
Zero/41/8/5
Hurricane/16/5/5.3

So at Trincomalee, where the radar at least worked, it was a tie between Hurricanes and Zeros of the KdB even though the Hurricanes were out numbered three to one.

That's an incorrect analysis of Darwin. Don't know if that's based on a single day or what, but this is a more complete analysis

The USAAF 49th Fighter Group over Darwin: a forgotten campaign | The Strategist

The count was 19 fighters lost vs. 19 enemy aircraft lost ( 1 x Ki-46, 7 x A6M and 12 x G4M bombers). They actually did a lot better than the Spitfires.

Very interesting thread, to which I'm Johnny-come-lately.
I tend to question the initial premise that the PTO was the only, or the most significant, naval air battle of the war. We Americans tend to think of the Pacific as the "big show", but then again we've never been in danger of being starved out through attrition of merchant shipping. I can understand our UK friends' differing take on this. It may not have been as spectacular or as dramatic, but I think the Battle of the Atlantic was just as crucial to the eventual allied victory. Despite the lack of fleets of fast carriers duking it out in aerial battles, it did involve aviation and warships (mostly submersible) in a fight for control of the seas, which is, after all, what naval warfare has been about since time immemorial. Aviation hasn't changed that. CVEs, DEs, LRB24s, Dumbos, and Sunderlands aren't as glamorous as Essex Class carriers, but they saved our collective posteriors just the same.
Where would we have been without Churchill's "unsinkable aircraft carrier"? Waiting for the B36 to come to life? Supporting the British North African army all by ourselves through Uboat infested waters?
The tide was not truly turned in the Atlantic until May-June of 1943, by which time other fronts were already swinging in our favor.
Just a thought.

Totally reasonable points, and I wouldn't refute any of that. I was only comparing naval air war (and naval air vs. land based air).

I was thinking recently in fact of how the u-boat / submarine warfare in WW2 was much more important than most people realize including in the Pacific. Two of the three IJN carriers lost in the Battle of the Philippine Sea were sunk by US Submarines, not the strike aircraft. In fact the whole issue of range was quite telling because the US planes, the newest of which (SB2C) having a bit shorter range than the old SBD, they were so far out at the edge of their range envelope that we ended up losing a bunch of them to ditching, and I suspect worry about their near future fate was affecting their bombing accuracy. The US was lucky with the Submarine attacks and that the Japanese just didn't have a strong enough air-fleet to overcome their CAP.

In a way, all the submarine warfare (and countermeasures against) them during WW2 were precursors of our own era with the extra emphasis on Stealth. With all the recent saber rattling in the Taiwan strait I've been thinking a lot about the next gen naval war. We may find out in not too long whether aircraft carriers are still relevant, or if they are the Battleships of our era.

Schweik said:

We may find out in not too long whether aircraft carriers are still relevant, or if they are the Battleships of our era.

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I think they are at the end of their supremacy for large scale conflicts, along with nuclear submarines, whose reactors have reached the limits of their silencing capabilities. Future conflicts will favor those navies who are close enough to the scene to deploy ultraquiet diesel boats.

I wonder what a drone carrier would look like. Drones and SM2 missiles and some kind of supersonic cruise missiles.... in a vehicle that could submerge. Maybe go hit the underwater geothermal charging station lol

Schweik said:

That's an incorrect analysis of Darwin. Don't know if that's based on a single day or what, but this is a more complete analysis

.

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Those are analysis of KB single strikes , including the Darwin raid.

RCAFson said:

Those are analysis of KB single strikes , including the Darwin raid.

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There was many more than one Darwin raid... the article I posted is the history of the main, (I think the only?) P-40 unit which was actively involved in the defense of Darwin, the 49th FG, from March to August 1942. The same unit went on to New Guinea where they continued to encounter both A6M and Ki-43 with increasingly positive victory ratios, using more or less the same aircraft (P-40s).

Schweik said:

There was many more than one Darwin raid... the article I posted is the history of the main, (I think the only?) P-40 unit which was actively involved in the defense of Darwin, the 49th FG, from March to August 1942. The same unit went on to New Guinea where they continued to encounter both A6M and Ki-43 with increasingly positive victory ratios, using more or less the same aircraft (P-40s).

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KB = Kido Butai, the IJN fast carriers.

RCAFson said:

KB = Kido Butai, the IJN fast carriers.

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Is there some reason to assume that their fighter squadrons were more lethal than the ones flying from Formosa or say, the Tainan Kōkūtai on New Guinea?

Schweik said:

Is there some reason to assume that their fighter squadrons were more lethal than the ones flying from Formosa or say, the Tainan Kōkūtai on New Guinea?

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The topic was a comparison of KB raids.

The topic of the OP was comparing the Theaters - Pacific with Med, and North Atlantic too. Narrowing it down to one raid seems like a cherry pick ...

He also showed one F2A combat, one P-40 combat, and two Hurricane. Which again, looks like consciously sifting to find just the right dataset.

The whole thing about the radar not working, being outnumbered, caught having to scramble etc., all of that was routine for Allied fighter units especially in the first half of the 1942. The beginning of the war was one continuous screaming emergency. Most of the initial battles like in the Philippines, Malaysia and Java were one-sided slaughters. P-40 units at Port Morseby and Wildcat units at Guadalcanal were routinely outnumbered. The defenders at Darwin were as well. Almost the entire RAAF 75th Fighter Sqn at Port Morseby had severe dysentery during the battle of Milne Bay and nearly a quarter of them had Malaria. I remember listening to an interview with one of the guys talking about how the gas bubbles of a full fledged stomach meltdown affected you as you rapdly descended from 20,000 ft to Sea Level trying to escape a zero, and how they had to tuck their trousers into their boots so as not to have diarrhea sloshing around the cockpit. The runways were incomplete, partial mud pits, many of these pilots were sleeping in tropical heat under little more than a tarp and (if they were lucky) a mosquito net. Most of the P-40, P-39 etc. pilots in the first few months of 1942 had almost no training on type. I think the same is true for most of the Marine pilots flying F2A and Wildcats. The odds were steeply against them.

In some cases, once they got their feet beneath them, they were able to make their machines work well enough to harm the enemy as much as they were being harmed. This was true of the 49th FG and the RAAF 75th and 76th squadrons, and most of the carrier based Wildcat squadrons, and the Marine flyers of the Cactus Air Force or Wake Island. It was not true to the same extent for the RAF units at Ceylon or the P-39 units in the Solomons or the F2A Buffalos at Midway.

Schweik said:

The topic of the OP was comparing the Theaters - Pacific with Med, and North Atlantic too. Narrowing it down to one raid seems like a cherry pick ...

He also showed one F2A combat, one P-40 combat, and two Hurricane. Which again, looks like consciously sifting to find just the right dataset.

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The topic of posts 141/142 was a comparison of the KB raids at Darwin, Ceylon and Midway and was a logical extension of the current discussion in the thread. Your shifting the discussion to comparing carrier raids to twin engine bombing campaigns is more than a bit apples to oranges.

RCAFson said:

The topic of posts 141/142 was a comparison of the KB raids at Darwin, Ceylon and Midway and was a logical extension of the current discussion in the thread. Your shifting the discussion to comparing carrier raids to twin engine bombing campaigns is more than a bit apples to oranges.

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That is completely disingenuous and laughable. He tried to narrow the focus to divert attention from the poor record of the Hurricane and Fulmar fighters against the Japanese. I could also add the Spitfire to that but I'm kind of convinced that most of the problems they had at Darwin were organizational and maintenance related - though the short range of the Spit also was a factor.

The issue is comparing the Theaters for the overall Naval Air War. Specifically the performance of fighters and strike aircraft came up. Cherry picking one specific attack to the exclusion of dozens of others is more than a bit dubious. Just face the reality and move on. The Hurricane couldn't handle combat with the A6M. It had it's day, that day was just two years before Ceylon.

Schweik said:

That is completely disingenuous and laughable. He tried to narrow the focus to divert attention from the poor record of the Hurricane and Fulmar fighters against the Japanese. I could also add the Spitfire to that but I'm kind of convinced that most of the problems they had at Darwin were organizational and maintenance related - though the short range of the Spit also was a factor.

The issue is comparing the Theaters for the overall Naval Air War. Specifically the performance of fighters and strike aircraft came up. Cherry picking one specific attack to the exclusion of dozens of others is more than a bit dubious. Just face the reality and move on. The Hurricane couldn't handle combat with the A6M. It had it's day, that day was just two years before Ceylon.

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You continually shift the discussion rather than actually replying to the posts 141/142. Your reply was this:

"That's an incorrect analysis of Darwin. Don't know if that's based on a single day or what, but this is a more complete analysis

The USAAF 49th Fighter Group over Darwin: a forgotten campaign | The Strategist

The count was 19 fighters lost vs. 19 enemy aircraft lost ( 1 x Ki-46, 7 x A6M and 12 x G4M bombers). They actually did a lot better than the Spitfires."

So you tried to shift the discussion from KB carrier raids to a land based TE bombing campaign.

The Darwin raid on 19 February 1942, was comprised several waves of aircraft from the Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu and Kaga: A6M, D3A and B5N as well as land-based G3M and G4M bombers.

Subsequent attacks were conducted both by IJN and IJA aircraft.

RCAFson said:

You continually shift the discussion rather than actually replying to the posts 141/142. Your reply was this:

"That's an incorrect analysis of Darwin. Don't know if that's based on a single day or what, but this is a more complete analysis

The USAAF 49th Fighter Group over Darwin: a forgotten campaign | The Strategist

The count was 19 fighters lost vs. 19 enemy aircraft lost ( 1 x Ki-46, 7 x A6M and 12 x G4M bombers). They actually did a lot better than the Spitfires."

So you tried to shift the discussion from KB carrier raids to a land based TE bombing campaign.

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I started this thread to compare the two Theaters. Remember this all started with your ridiculous claims that the air combat in the Pacific Theater paled in commparison to the convoy fights in the MTO with the fleet of 600 Italian and German planes. As this discussion started to focus on the specific aircraft, first strike planes and now especially fighters- I summarized all the combat involved with Hurricanes and FAA naval aircraft in Ceylon, because that was about the only maritime related air strikes the FAA or RAF got into in the Pacific by that time. This was in contrast to the combined naval and land air war in the MTO such as at Pedestal and the other Malta convoys.

We were already, incidentally, discussing land based bombers such as the G4M and G3M specifically. Both are IJN strike aircraft equally capable of attacking land or sea targets.

Then slaterat posted one raid at Darwin involving P-40s, and the one raid on Midway, and compared it to two raids involving the Hurricanes at Ceylon. Both of which I had already posted.

(There were other IJN carrier raids in the Pacific besides Midway, just FYI.)

I just pointed out the obvious gap in the record, there was plenty more combat involving the exact same fighters in the same spot. You may have decided that the discussion should stop whenever you or someone you agrees with makes a point - but I never signed a contract saying I agreed with anything you posted or think.

And the truth is, I almost never do.

So, here's the thing, I am free to speak my mind, so I posted the results of the US P-40 units involvement in the defense of Darwin, which did not match the trend slaterat was trying to establish. And I guess you really didn't like that. If I include later activity from that same unit from Port Morseby you will like it even less. And also (obviously) if we include other Japanese naval strikes against US carriers, it could trigger got knows what.

If you want to start a thread called "Cherry pick air battles which put your favorite aircraft in a favorable light" go right ahead. The 111 raids on Darwin and other North Australian bases also by the way did include attacks on shipping, according to Wikipedia on the Jan 12 raid there were 11 vessels sunk, but ships were still getting sunk in 1943.

I think the point of discussing these things on this forum though is to establish what really happened and learn about it. Not scramble desperately and cherry pick data to try to make it look like the side you identify with never made a mistake. That seems pretty pointless, we can all easily read what happened.

GrauGeist said:

The Darwin raid on 19 February 1942, was comprised several waves of aircraft from the Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu and Kaga: A6M, D3A and B5N as well as land-based G3M and G4M bombers.

Subsequent attacks were conducted both by IJN and IJA aircraft.

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The only part of the raid looked at in posts 141/142 was that by the KB aircraft.