Groundhog Thread Part Deux - P-39 Fantasy and Fetish - The Never Ending Story (Mods take no responsibility for head against wall injuries sustained)

[GrauGeist]

Overclaiming is not solely pinned on Axis nations, despite some observations, but happened across the board.

As has been stated (exhaustively) already, the heat of battle can lead to incorrect claims, mis-identification can lead to claims and then there is also the political aspect of it - both for the public's consumption and to bolster moral.

One of the reasons why the "losers" numbers seem to be erratic, is because towards the end of the war, record keeping was in complete chaos.

 

[gomwolf]

Hmmmm...... It is quite weird, but IMHO, Nikolay Gerasimovich and interviewer doesn't understand difference between IAS and TAS...

 

[XBe02Drvr]

If you have the resources to handle the losses and can impose your will onto the battlefield then you win and the other guy loses

Isn't this what Isoroku Yamamoto tried to tell the Imperial Council when they asked him for a war plan to defeat America? He had been many years in the US and seen its resources first hand.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Hmmmm...... It is quite weird, but IMHO, Nikolay Gerasimovich and interviewer doesn't understand difference between IAS and TAS...

Well at least the interviewer doesn't, and something got lost in the translation. And if you're driving a weird foreign airplane with weird markings on the gages, do you even give a flying fig for TAS? Your world is governed by IAS, the observed relative speeds of your opponents, the colored limitations bands your comrades in Technical Services have painted on your ASI, and the needle on your fuel gauge. The numbers are for engineers to consider who are not getting shot at.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[gomwolf]

Well at least the interviewer doesn't, and something got lost in the translation. And if you're driving a weird foreign airplane with weird markings on the gages, do you even give a flying fig for TAS? Your world is governed by IAS, the observed relative speeds of your opponents, the colored limitations bands your comrades in Technical Services have painted on your ASI, and the needle on your fuel gauge. The numbers are for engineers to consider who are not getting shot at.
Cheers,
Wes

Normally, aircraft specifications were recorded with TAS(at least germans did) and only figure you can only see is IAS when you are in the cockpit. In addition, Nikolay Gerasimovich said technicians took away their speed figure differently by altitude. So, if they didn't educated about the difference of both, It is quite possible that they didn't understand about it.

I don't know about ww2 soviet pilot training process, so if someone who know about it, plz add some more information.

 

[parsifal]

Soviet new pilots' flying time, was nowhere near that of other countries. Soviet top fighter ace in World War II - Ivan Kozhedub - once said in an interview that he'd received 100 hours of flight training at his aviation school. Another pilot - Evgeny N. Stepanov said he'd got 80. But both finished training before the German invasion in June 1941. In the dark days of 1941 and 42, well, Soviet pilots often got only 8-10 hours of flight training before combat. Bergstrom in his book on Kursk said that by 1943, VVS pilots were receiving somewhere between 20-40 flying training. By 1944, the situation had improved. Ive read that by mid'44, VVS pilots were receiving about 150 hours flying training. The number tended to go up in later years.

 

[GrauGeist]

The contrast between the VVS pilot's training and the Luftwaffe's Fleigerschule training at the onset of the war was night and day.
The Soviets were at a clear disadvantage both in pilot skill and equipment until the tipping point about mid-war, when the Soviet pilots were able to have better equipment and training and the Luftwaffe was suffering from attrition in regards to replacement pilot quality and equipment supply short-comings.

 

[gomwolf]

Actually, the meaning of soviet pilot training I said was hummm... "Were they learned basic aerodynamics like differences between IAS and TAS?"

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Actually, the meaning of soviet pilot training I said was hummm... "Were they learned basic aerodynamics like differences between IAS and TAS?"

How many people have YOU, personally, taught to fly?? I did it professionally for years, and I'm here to tell you that if you're going to train pilots to do just a few things, and you don't have much time and resources to do it with, you don't need to "waste" time on the niceties of TAS vs IAS. These guys (and gals) aren't going to fly at high altitudes, or at night, or on the gages. At least not until they've survived the front long enough to gain a little experience.
For flying that's going to stay below oxygen altitudes, the difference between True and Indicated isn't going to be all that great, and is something the Technical Services people can compensate for by making sure all placards and instrument markings corelate to IAS.
I've soloed students with less than five hours of flight time. That doesn't mean they were ready to fly to and land at JFK. That means that on a nice sunny day, with the wind right down the runway, and not much traffic, they could get the plane safely into the air, around the pattern, and back on the ground in an acceptable manner, with me watching intently, radio in hand, ready to give advice if asked. The rest of pilot training is learning to deal with all the less-than-optimum situations that are sure to arise. The idea that, as Parsifal suggests, they might be expected to fly into combat in a high performance airplane with only another three to five hours of instruction is a chilling thought. No wonder the Experten ran up such scores!
It took me five hours to get signed off in the T-34 (a 230 HP retractable gear military trainer), and I already had ninety five hours flying time, including a thousand mile cross-country. At that point, I was nowhere near ready to even get near a 1200 HP fighter plane, say nothing of going out to play tag with Erich Hartman in it.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[gomwolf]

I couldn't understand why you so angry. I apologize if I said something rude. I am often misunderstood because I am not a native English speaker. However I served in the Army and I'm in reserve army now, but I don't care if someone who have no military experience talks about Army. I just telling about that Russian pilot and interviewer seems doesn't understand about differences between IAS and TAS and that seems the reason they couldn't reach the speed recorded at specification.

Gomwolf.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I couldn't understand why you so angry. I apologize if I said something rude.

Sorry, brother, I wasn't mad, and I apologise if I sounded that way to you. It's just that for some kinds of flying and some circumstances, the differences between IAS and TAS just aren't that big a deal, and if the Russian pilot involved was an experienced aviator he probably did understand the difference, but maybe didn't express it very clearly, or the interviewer didn't understand the explanation and the meaning got lost in the translation.
BTW, thank you for your service. And keep plugging away at your English, it's a damn hard language to learn, but it gets easier as the years go by.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[gomwolf]

I understand what you said. It seems quite reasonable.

This words are just for prevent another misunderstanding. I served in the Army but I am not US citizen. However, my country is one of strong ally of United States.

 

[swampyankee]

IAS is how the plane flies; TAS is how it covers ground. And airplane that stalls at 75 knots IAS does so at sea level or 20,000 ft; at sea level TAS=IAS, but the TAS at 20,000 is considerably different from the indicated airspeed. Since landing, takeoff, and maneuver speed (at a given weight and flap setting) are constant in terms of IAS, specifying those in terms of TAS seems odd.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Since landing, takeoff, and maneuver speed (at a given weight and flap setting) are constant in terms of IAS, specifying those in terms of TAS seems odd.

Ah, but it makes for a more impressive number, especially at altitude!
Cheers,
Wes

 

[Shortround6]

let me see if I have this straight, It appears you "fly" the plane using IAS but you navigate (find next airport?) using TAS?

 

[Glider]

All I can say is that if an instructor told me to go solo after 5 hours, I would stay firmly on the ground and ask for a different instructor.
No one, no matter how gifted, or how benign the conditions, has the skill and knowledge to handle the eventualities that can happen in flight in five hours.

 

[DarrenW]

Yoshino was credited with 15 victories as I understand it . That number is based on admitted losses from Allied sources rather than the over-inflated claims made by the Japanese flyers themselves.

What makes you believe he only shot down 4.5 allied a/c?

Do you happen to have some sort of list, specifying the actual aircraft destroyed by Yoshino, according to allied sources? And I wonder how many Japanese pilots were given credit for the same allied aircraft, as these "lists" were developed years later by various authors and historians through their own individual research. There is no central data base which is monitored by an impartial person, in order to compare them and weed out the identical claims and losses. That's just one of the reasons I have a hard time trusting the aerial victory totals of the axis nations that I often read about in books and on the web, but for some reason they are much less scrutinized here and elsewhere. If you can easy discount official US Navy documents and trust wholeheartedly in the Japanese version of events, then I think it's not too extreme of me to question the validity of victory totals created decades after the war by people who might just have an axe to grind.

And the 4-5 victory tally for Yoshino was calculated by using your formula to derive the actual number of aircraft destroyed in aerial combat. I believe you mentioned that only about a third of credited aerial victories resulted in the destruction of an enemy aircraft. If it works for the allies it should also work for the Japanese as well....

 

[P-39 Expert]

Some of it was blatant overclaiming and some was honest mistakes in the heat of battle. Fired at plane, saw smoke and figured it was damaged/on fire.
Things can get confusing real quick.
Firefighter story, One of the first times I went in as a nozzle man we entered through the kitchen to attack a couch fire in the living room (Push fire out the front window to save the rest of the house.) Lots of heat and smoke, can't see much more than a dim glow through the smoke. I point the nozzle and open it up and give it a couple of swirls and shut down to see effect. The glow is much smaller so I repeat. Still getting a pulsating red glow through the smoke and steam so I try it again. Still getting that pulsating red glow so one more time with the water. Smoke is thinning out, glow seems to be outside the house?? I move forward and things clear up! I am looking at a police car on the lawn with flashing lights

Nobody was shooting at me either.
Couch was destroyed by fire as were curtains and molding. Wall phone on the other side of the room was melted. Scorch marks (light charing) about 3-4 feet down from the ceiling all around the room.

Great story. But more importantly, did you claim the couch as a victory?

 

[DarrenW]

A few of the more well known Aces of the 80th Fighter Squadron were Major Jay T. Robbins (22 confirmed kills) and Major Richard I. Bong (40 confirmed kills). Between them, based on these '"confirmed" kills, they had managed to destroy the entire tainan AG severasl times over!!!!!!!!

Neither Robbins nor Bong made claims against the Tainan Air Group; it was disbanded months before their first aerial victories were made. And from what I can tell Bong never served in the 80th Fighter Squadron. Can you clarify?

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Neither Robbins nor Bong made claims against the Tainan Air Group; it was disbanded months before their first aerial victories were made. And from what I can tell Bong never served in the 80th Fighter Squadron. Can you clarify?

According to the 80th FS history page he did.
http://80fsheadhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Headhunter-Headlines-1-Apr-92.pdf

Records show in Feb., 1944 Bong was assigned to the V Fighter Command HQ, so he was allowed to attach himself to any unit.