How good was Japanese aviation?

[Wildcat]

Interesting! wish there was a site like that for the RAAF.

PS how good do those Hellcats up there look in Australian markings
Hmm if only.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

If the allies could have guarded the borders between Syria and Iran, the insurgency could not have corrupted the war effort after the "war was won".

Do you really believe that? We would not have been able to contain the insurgency any better with our allies or not. The border is too porous. Trust me I know I spent 14 months in Iraq when I was in the Army.

I also believe the WMD's were moved to Syria.

I agree...

Sure Bush made mistakes and this was one of the worst mistakes made, but WHERE WERE THE ALIES? It's not like terrorism is not a world-wide concern, is it?

I disagree. Iraq was not the fight of any one else but the US. There is more to the story than you or I know. Would you want the US going to fight in a war between Saudi Arabia and one of our allies just because you felt that the US was there ally. See what I am saying...

All it would take is an Al Qaeda attack in Berlin or Frankfurt and perhaps the Germans would withdraw their troops?

From someone living in the Federal Republic of Germany I guarantee you this would not happen. The only reason that they are not doing more in Afganistan as we speak is because of the ruling party. Pulling out though they would never do.


Okay now having said all this. Lets get this back on topic. Iraq has nothing to do with Japanese Aviation and this is not the polotics thread.

 

[JoeB]

It's possible that that figure of 44 a/c lost in feb is including the sinking of the Langley which went down with a heap of P-40's I believe this happened in Feb '42.

True, but 10 USAAC P40's where destroyed on the 19th Feb raid on Darwin

The Langley was carrying 32 P-40's and they were destroyed by enemy aircraft, though not in air combat, in February. At Darwin Feb 19 10, 4 were at altitude several others just taking off, but say 7 air combat, plus another that engaged a Mavis flyingboat Feb 15 in mutually destructive combat. In Java I count 1 P-40 in air combat Feb 4, 4+2 on grd Feb 5, 1 on 2/18, 7 on 2/19, 3 on 2/20, 2 on 2/21, so total 20 combat losses. So that totals 62 losses 'to enemy a/c' (w/ P-40 in air or not) including Langley but is too small without it. 44 is probably just wrong.

As long as analyzing Feb '42, 24 of those P-40's were downed in the air by Japanese fighters (all Navy, all A6M, no loss in one engagement v. JAAF Nates, and 2 losses were to bomber defensive fire, rest to enemy a/c on the ground or aboard ship). In turn the P-40's downed 2 A6M's and a Ki-27 for sure; they claimed 15 A6M's and 4 Ki-27's among Japanese fighters (they downed around 8 non fighters and only overclaimed about 2:1 against those). Very tough situation, claims don't give much clue, especially fighter-fighter. The source for actual incidents is Shores "Bloody Shambles". It's not gteed the Japanese accountings are 100% inclusive but seemed to reliably include pilots killed and in such long range ops, w/ no parachutes or rescue service, there were few if any destroyed Japanese fighters with surviving pilots in that particular situation. Later on that discrepancy, pilot v planes losses, causes more questions in the accounting.

That was about the nadir of the P-40's career v the JNAF. The units in the Phillipines ironically had done better in air combat although losses on the ground quickly reduced them to ineffectiveness; and then defending Australia the P-40 did better in spring and summer '42, but still the exchange ratio according to reported losses was heavily in the A6M's favor in total for 1942. P-39's entering combat late April in New Guinea did a pretty consistent 1:3 against the JNAF fighters that spring and summer, though worse than that in their minor participation at G'canal where the tactical situation called for high altitude fighters. Parity or any real success for the P-39/40 against the A6M lay in 1943, and when supported by P-38's (and F4U's in the Solomons).

Joe

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Good information but are relying on "Bloody Shambles" for thr 1:3 rato for the P-39 in new Guinea? The air to air ratio from the Army Air Forces Statistical Digest, World War II does not break out kills/ losses by type. When combined with the P-40 the claims/ kill ratio comes out to 1.43 to 1 aside from the errors shown.

Here are the two tables...

Army Air Forces in World War II

Army Air Forces in World War II

 

[JoeB]

Good information but are relying on "Bloody Shambles" for thr 1:3 rato for the P-39 in new Guinea? [/url]

No, it only covers to the end of the first set of Japanese offensives in that area around the beginning of March. For New Guinea I'm comparing the Japanese losses given in Sakaida "Winged Samurai" w/ the US claims and losses given in Hess "Pacific Sweep".

The 8th FG (P-39) claimed 45 enemy aircraft April 30-June 1 1942, 37 of them Zeroes, losing 26 P-39's in air combat almost all to Zeroes. They were the only Allied fighter unit at Port Moresby having relieved 75sdn RAAF (P-40) when they arrived. The unit opposing them was the Tainan Air Group, A6M's, with suffered 11 pilots KIA in the same period. So actually I misrecalled 1:3 before looking back at notes, sorry, it's more like perhaps 1:2 considering in this case some of the combats were over the Japanese airfields and they could have lost some planes w/ surviving pilots, though it's not mentioned in any specific accounts I know of.

Going on to P-40 in defence of Darwin from March22 -August 23 1942, for completeness, the sources are Kagero series book "3rd/202nd Air Group" v. again Hess. The 49th FG claimed 33 Zeroes for the loss of 18 P-40's in air combat, all or almost all to Zeroes though also trying to shoot down bombers. The 3rd Air Group was escorting the raids and recorded 8 actual losses.

Back in Philippines source is Bartsch "Doomed at the Start". There weren't that many air combats, the Japanese mainly neutralized the US fighters destroying them on the ground, thereafter mostly the JAAF fought there. In the first two big attacks 11 P-40's and a P-35 were downed or written off to air combat, v 7 A6M's (3rd and Tainan) lost to all causes, at least one to a PBY's defensive fire and probably at least a few to AA while strafing, nobody can know at this point. The A6M's got another P-40 later, and surprisingly P-35's got an A6M December 24 in return for one P-35 damaged beyond repair. Complete US claims aren't given. The small remaining force of P-40's had a number of encounters with the JAAF Nates until near the end, but the book uses a JAAF source without complete day by day losses. But, P-40 v. Nate in the Philippines seemed about even.

The 3rd and Tainan Air Groups were also the IJN opponents over Java; the February Darwin raid was the exception, being carrier based A6M's. The Tainan was worn down over G'canal from August, though as a unit it outscored the Marine/Navy F4F's (they in turned outscored other Zero units to end 1942 about 1:1 v A6M's). The 3rd didn't see heavy combat again until 1943 when renumbered 202nd it downed about 26 Spitfire V's (air combat, a few could have been by bombers but it's *doesn't* count the heavy Spit fuel/mechanical losses) over Darwin that spring-fall in return for 3-4 A6M's, better than it had done against P-40's over Darwin the previous year, counter to the general trend of the air war. Source, both sides, is Price "Spitfire Mark V Aces", also the Kagero book.

Joe

 

[mkloby]

wow you guys are still at this

 

[FLYBOYJ]

No, it only covers to the end of the first set of Japanese offensives in that area around the beginning of March. For New Guinea I'm comparing the Japanese losses given in Sakaida "Winged Samurai" w/ the US claims and losses given in Hess "Pacific Sweep".

Thanks for the info Joe, then how accurate do you consider Army Air Forces Statistical Digest?

 

[JoeB]

Thanks for the info Joe, then how accurate do you consider Army Air Forces Statistical Digest?

For enemy aircraft destroyed, *by itself*, it doesn't offer that much. Not because the claims exceed enemy losses, that's almost always true for everybody (in WWII at least), but the degree of overstatement varied a lot over time. However if you can benchmark a series of sample incidents in a particular period and theater to real enemy losses, but can't find the real total enemy losses (this is often true in '43-45 in the Pacific) you might reasonably assume the claims/real losses inflicted ratio was constant in that period and theater and discount the total claims with it. You just can't assume that ratio was constant between periods, among numbered AF's, and especially between bomber and fighter claims.

For losses and causes I would guess the Stats Digest is much closer to the real numbers, but probably not exactly correct either. We saw the Feb '42 fighter loss to enemy a/c number appears wrong, although that was an early confused period. I doubt anyone has studied that in detail for the whole war, huge job. For the Korean War I've tried to correlate the USAF Stats Digest for that war (from 1953) with each actual loss from detailed records, a more manageable project. I found the air combat loss totals were fairly close but lower than the actual air combat losses for two reasons: accounting errors which ended up slightly understating net for whatever reason, and losses to "unknown" that can be seen from corresponding enemy claims to have been air combat losses in fact; 10-15% understatement of air combat losses overall; but reasonable people can disagree exactly what constitutes "air combat loss". My guess would be WWII situation was similar.

Joe

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Very Interesting - I still find that even with some of these skewed stats if we looks at "close" kill/ loss numbers of the USAAF in the South Pacific it really wasn't as bad as some would make it. I could remember reading articles as a kid and those writers would have you thinking that we lost 10,000 aircraft between Pearl harbor and GuadalCanal. The same for the Performance of the F4F. One of our members posted that only 192 F4Fs were lost in air-to-air combat for something like 600 aircraft claimed. Even if you split those numbers it still shows the USAAF and USN weren't suffering in many cases...

 

[syscom3]

Good info Joe B.

 

[Chingachgook]

The US/RAAF claim to JP loss rate over Darwin seems suspect IMHO. Any chance that the Japanese were cooking the books on their losses?

This kind of thing did happen, LW cooked the books in the Battle of France...

 

[JoeB]

The US/RAAF claim to JP loss rate over Darwin seems suspect IMHO. Any chance that the Japanese were cooking the books on their losses?

This kind of thing did happen, LW cooked the books in the Battle of France...

AFAIK the original source of those Japanese losses (which have appeared in more than one English language book) is the Japanese official history of the war, the Senshi Sosho, 100+ volume work published from 1960's-80's that used a large mass of original Japanese records many of which were held in the US until the late '50's but never translated. I know some western scholars have commented on Senshi Sosho's detail and lack of apparent bias; nobody has found evidence of cooking in it AFAIK. But prove any negative...

I don't recall the exact Spit claims v fighters in that case. For all Japanese a/c in that 1943 Darwin campaign the Spit claims were overstated around 3 or 4:1 according to Japanese accounts, though IIRC somewhat worse v the Zeroes and better v bomber/recon a/c. See the US P-40 claims in 1942 above which followed a similar pattern. In turn the JNAF 202nd Air Group claimed over 100 Allied a/c downed over Darwin in that campaign <30 actual. So no, on the surface those loss numbers don't look so strange to me.

The Allies, including Brit/CW overclaimed that much or more against the Japanese in many early combats and campaigns, and the RAF overclaimed similarly to that in some encounters with the European Axis (including the Italians) esp in the first half of the war. Late in the European war, the RAF (and USAAF fighters too, though not bombers) with numerical and qualitative superiority and spare resources to put into operational analysis (gun cameras and also intel manpower to follow a detailed claim procedure) claimed much more accurately than that. But it's a mistake, IMHO but with backing I think, to project that situation to the rest of the war and "suspect" enemy losses that seem to show several:1 overclaims by Allied fighters. The simple explanation is that the hard pressed Spits overclaimed a lot, in line with numerous other examples of high overclaims by losing sides in air combat.

Joe