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While there's a lot of truth to that, it's really nonresponsive. Your conclusion, too, in your last sentence, I don't know where you got that from. The bottom-line is, you're not really being full of news, here. It's conceded why we needed this new aircraft. It came in at a time when Germany was hurting for the most part as much as Japan was, and for much the same reasons. There's your issue.No, they didn't.. what they did do, however is go after German fighters that pulled out of range of P-47s and Spits.
If you were a modest student of airpower in ETO you might have known that neither the P-47 nor Spitfire were able to prevent the LW from stopping deep strategic bombing by the US - dead in its tracks between the August 6, 1943 and October 14, 1943 Schweinfurt attacks. The P-47 was powerless to stop the LW Fighter arm and the P-38 was ineffective.
There was a reason that the 8th AF lost more KIA than the Marines in WWII. IIRC, between the RAF and USAAF, their losses KIA exceeded the combined US/Commonwealth KIA in PTO. After Midway, the IJN was a shell of its former self and it was the F4F that carved the heart out of that pilot pool. Try to recall instances of combat in the PTO in which the USN (or USAAF or RAAF or RNZAF) lost 30 or more shot down in air combat in a day in the PTO after Midway?
The PTO simply didn't meet the intensity test of the Battle of Germany.
You know drgondog, I wasn't there and do not know the complete details, having been born after the report was created. Maybe you could tell me how it was done. Volunteers at our Museum who flew for the Navy just post-war say it was a well considered report. They were certainly closer to it than I was or am.
Greg - you are such a sly devil.. You can say FU in so many clever ways by pointing out that neither you nor I were there.. and then leaning to your always convenient fall back of referencing 'phantoms at the hanger' to support your thesis - rather than point to a well documented source pool of Victory CLAIMS prior to AWARDS.
Try this..
You didn't have to submit an Encounter Report to Research the format. You didn't have to be a Squadron I/O to Research the process. You don't have to be born prior to WWII to Understand the process. You just have to DO the research rather than rely on anecdotal discussion.
One thing is that the report is victory awards by the Navy, not a claims list. One of the things they DID was to cross-check the claims with the after action reports for accuracy.
Wow - the holy grail. Where is the claims list? Where are the Encounter reports that sourced the Claims within the "List"? Do such reports have witness or gun camera review as they transformed from Claim to Credit?
Greg - THIS is what happens at the I/O de-briefings in the USAAF - at least the 8th AF. One by one all the pilots making claims review the time, location and type aircraft. In many cases the number of rounds expended was a detail in the briefing. The claims are cross referenced to a witness - or held in suspension for review of combat film. The pilot writes up the report AFTER the briefing, gathers his witness for signature and passes to the I/O. The film is extracted and loaded up after the reports are collected - and individually reviewed by the I/O. He makes a judgment BUT in the case of no witness, the film accompanies the Encounter Report and passed to 8th AF VC Board for review and approval, downgrade or elimination of the credit.
The I/O for each squadron prepares the Mission Flash Report, which includes Claims that passed I/O review. The Gp I/O reviews all the squadron Reports and prepares the Group Summary - then sends to 8th AF HQ - where each Division I/O assembles all the Bomb and Fighter Group Mission Summaries and prepares the 8th AF Daily Mission Report. Each of these documents are stored in duplicate at Group/Squadron HQ.. and so on,
The 8th AF VCB receives and reviews a.) all the Encounter Reports submitted and signed by the pilot, witness and I/O. For those that have no witness, they review the film. The pilot, serial number, rank, squadron/Group, date, time and type a/c is logged and recorded. Victory Credit assessment is finalized, individual reports sent back to Group for Credit, and report retained at Division level.
Post WWII, the 8th AF Victory Credit Review Board convened and ALL the victory credits were reviewed and documented line by line, pilot by pilot, enemy a/c by a/c for 8th AF FC. The 8th VCB is stored on microfilm 520.3652 - index 1954.
In some cases names are mispelled, in other cases there are two entries for one credit. USAF 85 reviewed the 8th VCB and eliminated the errors but made no changes to the record otherwise.
If there are people who doubt the Navy, fine. That's their perrogative and I would not attempt to change their mind. I'll take it at face value and would accept British, German, or Japanese data from official military reports before any civilian revisionist reports. I doubt if any report summarizing a 5+year long war is 100% accurate, but if all the national lists are even 95% accurate, then we could still make some very valid comparisons. I probably would not trust Soviet data simply due to their history of rewriting the facts to fit the new party line.
As for what is so special, I posted the report number and, unusually so, it is availavle online for download. You probably already have it in your pdf fliles. Most of the USAAF data I have seen listed individually doesn't tell you the vicitim type or the type of the victor for individual data, just the name, rank, unit, date, victories awarded. So the US Navy tables that list action sorties, victories over fighters, bombers, losses on action sorties, losses on non-action sorties, especially by aircraft type are in a form I prefer since the essential data is there.
Then you carefully avoided the single biggest and best documented repository of US Victory Credits on file and available to all that have even the slightest intellectual curiosity? Set yourself free and get 8th VCB Reports. You will have to search elsewhere as I noted for loss records, and you will have to make judgments as I did from parsing the MACR, including eyewitness and German reports attached to the MACR.
I have seen the USAAF WWII data in scanned form, but the scanning is terrible, generates WAY too may OCR errors when that is attempted, and I'm not going to type in tens of thousands of records for fun. Maybe if I get REALLY bored. I might work on it with someone, but don't want to tackle that one alone. Likely if I did and even if it were 100% correct, most wouldn't believe it anyway. If they don't buy into official victory lists, why would they think any better of an honest attempt to collect the data for later analysis?
And if you don't credit the OPNAV report, that's fine. You may be right. And you may be ignoring a good source. You certainly have turned up with and shared some data in here before, so maybe you have different totals?
This may be of relevance, here. Greg turned us onto this link. Look at the full link to get an appreciation of what really went on in this study. Note, here, as regards this enemy aircraft destroyed in combat, the authors were conscious of the issue of over-claiming, and methodically dealt with it the best they could. That's not to say, give them a medal. It is to say, sure, one has to factor that in, absolutely.MACRs probably have far more validity than any USN similar report - simply because many losses were duly noted in a KU or J report for any US aircraft loss found on the Continent through 1944...the Pacific Ocean didn't reveal many clues with respect to losses and the Japanese records are poor to non-existent. The combination is what I used to compile the 355th FG Loss statistics and the rest of the 8th AF (WIP).
Absent such processes as Existed within say 8th AF for both losses and victory credits how do support USN process 'better'?
• The German system was impartial, inflexible, and far less error-prone than either the British or American procedures. German fighter pilots had to wait several months, a year, or sometimes even longer for a kill confirmation to reach them from the German High Command.
IF you don't care.. or can't contribute positively, Then why answer? Perhaps your vain attempt to start a pissing contest. Nothing nationalistic with me.
It was just a question, so if you know the answer, I'm all ears.
drgondog,
How fast were claims in the 8th airforce was officially recognized? The reason I ask is because the Luftwaffe had a very stringent approval process for the confirmation of aerial victories.
• One plane, one kill. No shared kills
• Without a witness, a Luftwaffe fighter pilot had no chance to have his victory claim confirmed. Such a claim, even if filed, would not pass beyond group level.
• The final destruction or explosion of an enemy aircraft in the air, or bail-out of the pilot, had to be observed either on gun-camera film or by at least one other human witness. The witness could be the German pilot's wingman, squadron mate, or a ground observer of the encounter.
• There was no possibility, as with some RAF and USAAF pilots, of having a victory credited because the claiming officer was a gentleman and a man of his word. The German rule was simply "no witness – no kill."
• The German system was impartial, inflexible, and far less error-prone than either the British or American procedures. German fighter pilots had to wait several months, a year, or sometimes even longer for a kill confirmation to reach them from the German High Command.
How close was the American system to the above?
The people in the PTO might disagree with the inrensity test part. Wasn't as widespread since Islands are smaller than continents, but intensity-wise, the Japanese put up as much fight as anybody in the world did. Didn't generate the losses of D-Day, but landings on small islands were fought just as hard by smaller forces. I daresay that tropic weather was every bit as hard on troops as winter weather, ruined eqipment, clothes and food much more quickly, and had a much wider variety of bad things borne by mosquitos, snakes, etc. than continental Europe.
Each was a deadly challenge and I'd hate to have to choose which one to go fight in.
Hey, how many times has that Zitjin fellow been banned under different usernames? Seems like a lot...
Why does it seem like a lot? If someone is banned they can't create a new account. The site has features to prevent that.
drgondog,
How fast were claims in the 8th airforce was officially recognized? The reason I ask is because the Luftwaffe had a very stringent approval process for the confirmation of aerial victories.
• One plane, one kill. No shared kills
• Without a witness, a Luftwaffe fighter pilot had no chance to have his victory claim confirmed. Such a claim, even if filed, would not pass beyond group level.
• The final destruction or explosion of an enemy aircraft in the air, or bail-out of the pilot, had to be observed either on gun-camera film or by at least one other human witness. The witness could be the German pilot's wingman, squadron mate, or a ground observer of the encounter.
• There was no possibility, as with some RAF and USAAF pilots, of having a victory credited because the claiming officer was a gentleman and a man of his word. The German rule was simply "no witness – no kill."
• The German system was impartial, inflexible, and far less error-prone than either the British or American procedures. German fighter pilots had to wait several months, a year, or sometimes even longer for a kill confirmation to reach them from the German High Command.
How close was the American system to the above?