Claims to losses is a sticky subject. If you're looking for an analysis of actual, verifiable victories to actual verifiable losses, that's real hard to do. That being said, when talking about F4F's vs A6M2's in the first year of the war in the Pacific, the best place to go is two books written by John Lundstrom, "The First Team – Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway" and "The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign". Both are pretty thick books with real small print. John was probably the last researcher to get to most of the USN and USMC pilots while they were still with us. As an example, from VF-42 he was able to speak to ten of the squadron's pilots who flew at the Battle of the Coral Sea. There's only two left today. John went to the Japanese records to reconcile claims to actual victories. I have not personally gone through the books page by page and made a stick count, but I can think of a few of guys who have and all agree that the ratio of F4Fs to A6Ms is damn close to about 1 F4F lost for every 1 A6M in the first year.
Personally, I like to work with the official reports. If you look at the roll up reported by the USN in 1946, you quickly find that it divides aerial victories into enemy bombers and enemy fighters, which, of course leaves out quite a few other players (float planes and the like) and leaves us wondering which fighters are they talking about. The only way to determine who is who is to look at the actual reports from the squadrons. I can do that with the Navy squadrons, I don't have the information from the reports of the Marine squadrons.
Overall it looks like this (and just for F4F's; FM-2's are another story all together, with one of the highest kill claim to loss ratios of the war):
Carrier based F4Fs flew 1,104 combat sorties. Within these combat sorties, 17 F4Fs were lost to AA fire and 47 to enemy aircraft. There were 32 combat related operational losses (that is losses that occurred during a combat sortie but were not caused by combat damage; these are usually due to fuel exhaustion or flight deck accidents), 49 losses on non-combat related flights, and 22 were lost in the sinkings of Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, or Hornet. On the claims side, there were a total of 302 enemy planes reported destroyed in combat, 190 bombers and 112 fighters.
USMC land based F4Fs flew 1,074 combat sorties. Within these combat sorties, 4 F4Fs were lost to AA fire and 75 to enemy aircraft. There were 11 combat related operational losses (these are usually due to fuel exhaustion or airfield accidents), 34 losses on non-combat related flights, and 26 were lost on the ground, at Wake or Guadalcanal. On the claims side, there were a total of 356 enemy planes reported destroyed in combat, 175 bombers and 281 fighters.
USN land based F4Fs flew 450 combat sorties. Within these combat sorties, 3 F4Fs were lost to AA fire and 56 to enemy aircraft. There were 7 combat related operational losses, 29 losses on non-combat related flights, and 20 were lost on the ground, at Wake or Guadalcanal. On the claims side, there were a total of 147 enemy planes reported destroyed in combat, 53 bombers and 94 fighters.
So, from the USN statistics, there were a total of 178 F4Fs lost in aerial combat versus about 905 claims, of which 487 were fighters. As much as I am an F4F booster, those numbers are a little hard to swallow, although I was interested to read in Herbert Bix's "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" on page 461 reports 892 airplanes and 1882 pilots (and, one presumes, crewmen) lost between August 1942 and February 1943 in the struggle for Guadalcanal. General Yamada Otozo who was on Hirohito's staff noted that this was " . . . two and a half times the number of planes and fifteen times the number of pilots lost at Midway." Certainly the F4F pilots did not shoot down all the Japanese planes lost during that period, but they did shoot down a goodly number, if not a majority. Gives one some pause to think, anyway.
Navy statistical records indicate that F4F's were out of combat by October 1943, but the last two squadrons in action were VF-11 and VF-21 operating out of Fighter I on Guadalcanal. They left combat in July 1943. There may have been some F4F-4s mixed into with FM-1 squadrons operating from CVE's between July and October, but they scored no victories of which I am aware.
So much for the gross numbers. If you look at the results culled for reports you can get a better feel for actual types shot down. Since I only have the information on Navy squadrons, you can draw your own conclusions on the Marines. The results I have tabulated for the Navy F4F squadrons looks like:\
Navy F4F-3 pilots were credited with 68.5 victories/10 Probables/7 damaged. Navy F4F-4 pilots were credited with 453/74/34, for a total of 521.5/84/41. Also of interest is that only 494 of these credits were for Japanese planes. Two of them were for German types and 25 for Vichy French (all from the F4F-4 total). If you compare the USN victory credits from the 1946 statistical report you can see that the statistical report has 449 credits for USN F4Fs for just enemy fighters and bombers in the Pacific. That would mean that some 45.5 of the Japanese aircraft shot down were NOT included in the statistical study as they were neither fighters (VF) nor bombers (VB). Counting up the non VF and non VB types listed gives a total of 33 victory credits or 12.5 less than the calculated value. On the other hand, the by squadron count shows 226 Japanese VB types credited and 233 Japanese VF types compared to the 1946 statistical report's 243 and 206, repectively. My list of enemy types shot down by Navy F4Fs, based upon what was actually reported by squadrons, looks like this:
Japanese:
219/33/19 - A6M Mitsubishi A6M series Type 00 Models 21, 22, 52 VF (Zeke)
6/0/0 - A6M2-N Nakajima Type 2 Float VF (Rufe)
1/0/0 - A6M3 Mitsubishi A6M series Type 00 Model 32 22A VF (Hamp)
58/14/6 - B5N Nakajima Type 97 VTB (Kate)
115/22/14 - D3A Aichi Type 99 VB (Val)
4/0/0 - E13A Aichi Type 00 2/Float VSO (Jake)
4/1/0 - E7K Kawanishi Type 94 VSO (Alf)
1/0/1 - E8N Nakajima Type 95 Float VSO (Dave)
7/1/0 - F1M Mitsubishi Type 0 Float VSO (Pete)
60.5/5/1 - G4M Mitsubishi G4M series Type 01 2/E VB/VR (Betty)
14/0/0 - H6K Kawanishi Type 97 4/E VP FB (Mavis)
2/0/0 - H8K Kawanishi Type 2 4/E VP FB (Emily)
1/0/0 - U/I 4/E VP Unidentified Japanese Patrol Aircraft
0/1/0 - U/I aircraft Unidentified Japanese Aircraft
2/2/0 - Me-109 Pacific Action Mis-ID, Probably A6M Mitsubishi Type 00 VF (Zeke, Zero)
494.5/79/41 – Japanese Total
German:
1/0/0 - He-115 Heinkel S/E Twin Float VSO
1/0/0 - Ju-88 Junkers Ju-88 Series 2/E VB
2/0/0 – German Total
Vichy French:
1/0/0 - B.174 or P.63/11 Bloch Type or Potez Type 2/E Lt VB
4/1/0 - D.520 Dewointine Type VF
8/0/0 - D.520 or H.75 Dewointine Type VF or Curtis P-36 type VF
8/4/0 - H.75 Curtis P-36 type VF
1/0/0 - LeO.45 Loire et Olivier Type 2/E Med VB
3/0/0 - Martin 167 or LeO.45 Martin 'Baltimore' or Loire et Olivier 2/E Med VB
25/5/0 – Vichy Total
521.5/84.0/41.0 – Grand Total
For what it's worth.
Rich