Japanese aircraft were behind in timing to Allied aircraft.

The Ki-43 had a lot of trouble killing B-24s. It was a lot different than combat over Europe.

There was little or no flak. In 1943 the formations, on both sides, were small, almost minuscule.
The India based unit/s bombing Rangoon were flying well over 2,000 miles round trip however the Japanese could only attack for a period of about 1-2 hours, usually closer to an hour.
However the bombers flight meant take-offs about dawn in order to return before night fall which meant about a 1-2 hour window to attack Rangoon making defense somewhat easier.
The B-24s would leave India, fly down the Bay of Bengal, turn over the Irrawaddy Delta and attack Rangoon, turn back to the Bay of Bengal and escape northwards. This kept them out of the range of ground observers for most of the trip. It also meant hundreds of miles over water if the plane was damaged. The small bomber formations cruised at much higher speeds in the combat area than the 8th Air force used in Europe but they could slow down for the long over water parts.
There were few Ki-43 units in Burma and there was little chance of interception either going down the Bay of Bengal or returning home.

The same Ki-43 units would some times make 3-4 firing attacks in a 40-60 minute time period. It took a lot of time after a head on pass to turn around, pass the B-24 formation, regroup and position the formation (small) for a 2nd firing pass. At 22,000-25,000ft the Ki-43 wasn't that much faster than the B-24s. The B-24s were using a fast cruise and sometimes a gentle dive. The Ki-43s could not use full throttle for long periods of time while getting into position for the next pass.

One or two 12.7mm hits in the cockpit was not a guaranteed kill. Commander of the 7th BG took at least one hit in the windscreen wounding both him and the copilot, he flew the B-24 over 1000 miles back to India. It took the Japanese a while to figure out effective tactics as "normal" attacks didn't work. One group of 5 Ki-43s attacked a single B-24, expended over 1000 rounds and the B-24 left the area with no visible damage to the attackers. These were veteran Japanese pilots.

The Japanese did shoot down B-24s with Ki-43, but better aircraft would have shot down a lot more using the same number of planes and pilots.

BarnOwlLover said:

Those Ki-84s, intended to be competitive with the likes of the P-47D, later P-38s and P-51Bs and Ds......................................,

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This is one of the great fallacies of WW II aircraft design/development. It took too long to design and develop an aircraft in response to an enemy aircraft.

In this instance, work on the Ki-84 started in early 1942 so the Japanese would be ready for what ever the Allies came up with in late 1943/44. The Japanese knew the Allies would come up with something better than the P-40E or F4F or Buffalo, but they had no idea what aircraft or what the margin of change would be.

The Ki-84 was designed to be competitive with the P-X1 and P-X2 and P-X3 instead of the P-40???

What the Japanese wound up facing were the P-47D, Merlin Mustangs, P-38Js and Ls and the F4U and F6F. And in 1944 they were not the same as the early versions that had debuted in 1943.

This may have been what you meant but there a bunch of "experts" that claim the F6F was designed counter the Zero. from Wiki, "Grumman had been working on a successor to the F4F Wildcat since 1938, and the contract for the prototype XF6F-1 was signed on 30 June 1941." and the Prototype F6F flew about 3 weeks after Midway.

this was just the natural progression, start working on the new plane about the time the currant plane starts to enter production/squadron service.

That's what I meant. By the time the Ki-84 was available in numbers, there were Merlin Mustangs, late P-38s and P-47s in theater. As far as anything that made it into mass production, the Ki-84 was the best the IJA had. And even then it can be argued just how much parity it managed to achieve, between it being at least somewhat inferior in performance (looking at numbers, and especially at altitude) and the (general) decline of the skills and abilities of IJA's fighter pilots.

Juha3 said:

I gave a very quick browsing to Molesworth's P-40 Warhack vs Ki-43 Oscar China 1944-45 (Duel 8, 2008) seems to have several long quotes from USAAF After Action Reports and gives claims and real losses, at least at least from the few combats I glanced at but no tables on real losses, only Aces lists and those of Japanese aces gives only Total scores, the USAAF table gives both Ki-43 kills and Total scores but no tables on real scores or losses in air-combats.

I read the booklet 15 years ago and IIRC I thought that it was a fairly good but not excellent. But as I said, I read it 15 years ago but it was not a bad one, I recall that I was positively surprised by its quality. The quality of Osprey booklets vary widely.

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Yes agreed, I have that book and I like the author (Molesworth) but he did not have a lot of actual loss data on the Japanese side, only a few incidents here and there.

In that book Molesworth concludes that the P-40 pilots did extremely well against the Ki-43, but it's mostly just based on the US data. It does seem clear that they did not exactly suffer heavily uneven losses the way pilots of some other types did. But the actual losses may have been much closer to even. I think it was pretty hard to verify victories in that Theater. Overclaiming was high on both sides.

PAT303 said:

And it flies directly in the face of the P47 being less vulnerable because it's powered by a radial, or the Spitfire and Hurricane having weak armament in the BoB.

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That is a very literal minded way to look at it. But drive on!

Reluctant Poster said:

P-51s weer based in China and Burma they didn't fly combat missions over the hump.

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There were some P-40N (and I think maybe some M) units, IIRC 80th FG, which did fly over the hump though, and didn't seem to have particular trouble.

RCAFson said:

I used Bloody Shambles V3 to look at Hurricane vs Ki43 combats some years back, and if all one does is make a tally of the kill/loss ratio between them, then it doesn't look that good for the Hurricane. When you look at the number of sorties flown vs the number of kills, you realize that the number of Hurricanes lost to KI-43s was so small (a very low sortie loss rate) and over such a long time frame that it wasn't really an issue for the Hurricanes, which were typically flying low altitude strike missions, and were constantly at a disadvantage in terms of situational awareness and altitude. I expect that the same was true for the B-24s.

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I'd love to see some of the actual numbers. Sadly Bloody Shambles series seems to be out of print and every time I look for a copy they are wildly expensive.

Shortround6 said:

The Ki-43 had a lot of trouble killing B-24s. It was a lot different than combat over Europe.

There was little or no flak. In 1943 the formations, on both sides, were small, almost minuscule.
The India based unit/s bombing Rangoon were flying well over 2,000 miles round trip however the Japanese could only attack for a period of about 1-2 hours, usually closer to an hour.
However the bombers flight meant take-offs about dawn in order to return before night fall which meant about a 1-2 hour window to attack Rangoon making defense somewhat easier.
The B-24s would leave India, fly down the Bay of Bengal, turn over the Irrawaddy Delta and attack Rangoon, turn back to the Bay of Bengal and escape northwards. This kept them out of the range of ground observers for most of the trip. It also meant hundreds of miles over water if the plane was damaged. The small bomber formations cruised at much higher speeds in the combat area than the 8th Air force used in Europe but they could slow down for the long over water parts.
There were few Ki-43 units in Burma and there was little chance of interception either going down the Bay of Bengal or returning home.

The same Ki-43 units would some times make 3-4 firing attacks in a 40-60 minute time period. It took a lot of time after a head on pass to turn around, pass the B-24 formation, regroup and position the formation (small) for a 2nd firing pass. At 22,000-25,000ft the Ki-43 wasn't that much faster than the B-24s. The B-24s were using a fast cruise and sometimes a gentle dive. The Ki-43s could not use full throttle for long periods of time while getting into position for the next pass.

One or two 12.7mm hits in the cockpit was not a guaranteed kill. Commander of the 7th BG took at least one hit in the windscreen wounding both him and the copilot, he flew the B-24 over 1000 miles back to India. It took the Japanese a while to figure out effective tactics as "normal" attacks didn't work. One group of 5 Ki-43s attacked a single B-24, expended over 1000 rounds and the B-24 left the area with no visible damage to the attackers. These were veteran Japanese pilots.

The Japanese did shoot down B-24s with Ki-43, but better aircraft would have shot down a lot more using the same number of planes and pilots.

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The numbers shown, assuming they are accurate, give a roughly even number of single crew fighters for four engine, 11 crew bombers. That is a fairly good trade for the intercepting fighters. I'm not sure a Bf 109 could score at that rate, in fact I don't think they did where they were facing B-24s over North Africa and Italy.

If that alone doesn't show you that the Ki-43 still had considerable bite that late in the game, I'm not sure what evidence could ever convince you of anything.

The Japanese did do better with the Ki-43 in some of the later engagements but there were several reasons for this.
The Early engagements were small on both sides. This meant that the small bomber formations could use maneuver to disrupt the attacks. A small (5-7 plane) formation could turn towards an attack or turn way, in either case disrupting the attack and forcing the Japanese to circle around and attack again. It also meant that a similar number of attacking Ki-43s didn't have enough firepower bring down more than a few bombers total.

Later attacks with 20-30+ bombers couldn't use maneuver to disrupt the attacks and had to rely on firepower which didn't work much better over Burma and China than it did over Germany. On the other hand the Japanese started using larger formations over China and the increased fire power meant more cumulative damage. Japanese often concentrated on the lead ship in the formation and if they succeeded in shooting it down they then attacked the next lead ship. In one early successful shoot down (after 3-4 months on not very successful) they used 35 fighters to attack 5 B-24s. Imagine what the Luftwaffe could have done with 7 to 1 odds against the 8th Air Force in mid/late 1943.

The later (in 1944) attacks swung back in favor of the B-24s and their new escorts. In part due to the general attrition of the JAAF. Pre/early war JAAF pilots were supposed to have 500 hours before getting into combat, By 1944 they were down to 200-250 hours. To get the Ki-43 to work you needed excellent pilots. Pilots that could make repeated, close range attacks with good accuracy in order to get big bomber kills. With accuracy and pilot skill deteriorating being brave was not enough. The book B-24 Liberator vs Ki-43 Oscar makes a comparison between the 12.7mm bullets the Oscar used and the well known twenty 20mm shells the Luftwaffe figured they needed to bring down a 4 engine bomber. The book figures that 50-60 12.7mm bullets equal the weight of twenty 20mm shells but since the 12.7mm shells don't carry the same weight (percentage) of explosives they Japanese probably need more than 50-60 rounds. What the book does not take into account is the German calculation that the average German pilot was only getting about 2% hits and so needed to fire 1000 rounds of ammo (or several planes) to get the 20 hits. This was part of the calculation that lead to the 30mm guns.
The Japanese were on the right track, the Germans had also figured out that concentrating the hits in the cockpit was more effective than scattering the hits all over the bomber and that fewer than 20 hits would be needed. The Japanese were also emphasizing getting very close (better accuracy/hit rate) and with the slower Ki-43 they may have had a bit more time to aim but even with 4 times the hit rate and needing 60 hits you need to fire 750 rounds and with a 6% hit rate you need 1000 rounds. The Ki-43 held 500 rounds, If the Japanese pilot got the 2% hit rate the the Germans figured you need 3000 rounds fired and six Ki-43s.

That was a big problem with the Ki-43. A Fighter with four 12.7mm guns would need 1/2 the number of fighters/pilots to get the needed rounds onto the target.

Reluctant Poster said:

From Rand Corp "Aircraft Vulnerability in World War II"

"Figure 3 compares the vulnerability of Navy carrier based fighters to hits by 0.30 calibre machine gun, 0.50 calibre machine gun and 20 mm cannon shells. Wheras hits by
0.50 calibre machine gun are about twice as lethal as those by 0.30 calibre machine gun, 20 mm cannon hits are nearly twice as lethal as those by 0.30 calibre machine gun."
View attachment 727919

Also the report notes that the German attacks were much more lethal than the Japanese.
View attachment 727920

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Vulnerability of fighters to enemy hits doesn't that different between Europe and Pacific. Pacific is 37% of hit fighters lost, Europe is 48%. It's a difference but not quite the stark difference you would expect based on some of the rhetoric in here (and the two gun Ki-43 in particular)

Against bombers it looks a lot worse, though as we know the Germans employed some truly big guns on heavy multi-engined fighters and up-gunned single engined fighters to achieve this.

Shortround6 said:

The Japanese did do better with the Ki-43 in some of the later engagements but there were several reasons for this.

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This is not what I'm saying at all. As far as I know, the Ki-43 units did quite well in all their engagements, with a few exceptions. In the beginning, middle and almost to the end of their service. Obviously there was a tipping point where they ran out of skilled pilots and started to get heavily outnumberd in aircraft, but clearly this "1940 /41 design" had a bit more longevity than some people would assume. They seemed to range from rough parity to uneven slaughter in their favor, depending on the aircraft types and units they faced. Later, by say 1944, they were still proving to be quite lethal in spite of the increasing disparity in performance and the compounding attrition problems and lack of replacement pilots, i.e. by then many of their pilots were comparatively untrained. And yet still:

19 Ki-43 vs 10 P-47 (in spite of almost 100 mph speed advantage
31 B-24 for 29 Ki43 .... that is pretty amazing.

And it's a different plane but 129 A6M5 for 129 F4U is also pretty amazing. You have a 40-60 mph speed advantage there for the Corsair.

Those reports on Ki-43 vs P-40, P-47, and P-38 give some texture and detail to the abstract concept of "more maneuverable". It's not just a matter of having a higher turn rate or roll rate, it's agility, speed retention, handling, maintaining control vs losing control. It means it's very hard to get a shot at the opponent and very hard to escape them. It's very hard to engage in air combat without ever chasing the enemy aircraft and it also means you have to forgo a lot of potential attacks, as well as trusting your tactics (and your escape maneuver) to save you rather than your instincts 9to evade) when death is looming. Many pilots pulled it off, but many failed and died for it.

I think the Ki-43 was an extraordinary warplane.

Shortround6 said:

The Early engagements were small on both sides. This meant that the small bomber formations could use maneuver to disrupt the attacks. A small (5-7 plane) formation could turn towards an attack or turn way, in either case disrupting the attack and forcing the Japanese to circle around and attack again. It also meant that a similar number of attacking Ki-43s didn't have enough firepower bring down more than a few bombers total.

Later attacks with 20-30+ bombers couldn't use maneuver to disrupt the attacks and had to rely on firepower which didn't work much better over Burma and China than it did over Germany. On the other hand the Japanese started using larger formations over China and the increased fire power meant more cumulative damage. Japanese often concentrated on the lead ship in the formation and if they succeeded in shooting it down they then attacked the next lead ship. In one early successful shoot down (after 3-4 months on not very successful) they used 35 fighters to attack 5 B-24s. Imagine what the Luftwaffe could have done with 7 to 1 odds against the 8th Air Force in mid/late 1943.

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Well, when it comes to heavy bombers, the Luftwaffe did take a while to develop their tactics, and modify their aircraft with heavier and more guns to make this work. I don't see a lot of Bf 109F shooting down B-24s (or Gs for that matter) in the operational history in the Med. And they did encounter one another, often with relatively little bomber escort.

Shortround6 said:

The later (in 1944) attacks swung back in favor of the B-24s and their new escorts. In part due to the general attrition of the JAAF. Pre/early war JAAF pilots were supposed to have 500 hours before getting into combat, By 1944 they were down to 200-250 hours. To get the Ki-43 to work you needed excellent pilots. Pilots that could make repeated, close range attacks with good accuracy in order to get big bomber kills. With accuracy and pilot skill deteriorating being brave was not enough. The book B-24 Liberator vs Ki-43 Oscar makes a comparison between the 12.7mm bullets the Oscar used and the well known twenty 20mm shells the Luftwaffe figured they needed to bring down a 4 engine bomber. The book figures that 50-60 12.7mm bullets equal the weight of twenty 20mm shells but since the 12.7mm shells don't carry the same weight (percentage) of explosives they Japanese probably need more than 50-60 rounds. What the book does not take into account is the German calculation that the average

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We've debated this issue of payload vs accuracy many, many times. I think it applies with fighters very similarly to bombers. I think the very fact that a Ki-43 could shoot down any B-24s, let alone making an even trade with them, is proof that accuracy (and tactics) can be just as important as weight of ordinance.

Shortround6 said:

German pilot was only getting about 2% hits and so needed to fire 1000 rounds of ammo (or several planes) to get the 20 hits. This was part of the calculation that lead to the 30mm guns.
The Japanese were on the right track, the Germans had also figured out that concentrating the hits in the cockpit was more effective than scattering the hits all over the bomber and that fewer than 20 hits would be needed. The Japanese were also emphasizing getting very close (better accuracy/hit rate) and with the slower Ki-43 they may have had a bit more time to aim but even with 4 times the hit rate and needing 60 hits you need to fire 750 rounds and with a 6% hit rate you need 1000 rounds. The Ki-43 held 500 rounds, If the Japanese pilot got the 2% hit rate the the Germans figured you need 3000 rounds fired and six Ki-43s.

That was a big problem with the Ki-43. A Fighter with four 12.7mm guns would need 1/2 the number of fighters/pilots to get the needed rounds onto the target.

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Well clearly some of those pilots figured it out. They used similar tactics against the fighters too as I've been pointing out. It's not that easy to shoot down a P-40 or F4U from behind if you shoot bullets all over the fueselage and wings randomly.

In some Allied fighter types, you could defeat a moderately skilled and trained Japanese pilot in a Ki-43 or an A6M, if you used exactly the right tactics which played to your arcraft's strengths. But you couldn't make any mistakes. Some pilots got used to doing it the way it needed to be done, and survived, or even prevailed to become aces etc. Many could not.

And before anyone says it, no I don't think that was always so much the case in every aircraft matchup in every Theater, in every time period during the war.

BarnOwlLover said:

That's what I meant. By the time the Ki-84 was available in numbers, there were Merlin Mustangs, late P-38s and P-47s in theater. As far as anything that made it into mass production, the Ki-84 was the best the IJA had. And even then it can be argued just how much parity it managed to achieve, between it being at least somewhat inferior in performance (looking at numbers, and especially at altitude) and the (general) decline of the skills and abilities of IJA's fighter pilots.

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They seem to have not done so well in a few engagements with P-40s according to a couple of incidents someone posted on here a while back. But I suspect that may largely be down to the available pilots by that time. The Ki-84 looks like a good design to me, especially if it had anywhere near the kind of agility the (very similar looking) Ki-43 had. But it came too late.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

I think the Ki-43 was an extraordinary warplane.

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And it makes a mockery of the billions spent on engine, fuel, aerodynamic development done by the Allies, not to mention bigger, better guns, ammunition and most importantly gunsights when an undeveloped and underperforming by western standards aircraft can have parity with first tier aircraft such as the F4U.

?

re "And it makes a mockery of the billions spent on engine, fuel, aerodynamic development done by the Allies, not to mention . . ."

No. It does not. Or at least not anymore than it makes a mockery of the billions/trillions spent in the post-WWII period to today.

Examples

Korean War - despite the significant speed and altitude advantage of the MiG-15 vs the F9F - the F9F scored 7 confirmed kills vs the MiG-15 for 2 losses, or a 3.5:1 kill to loss ratio. The F9F was significantly more maneuverable at low-medium speeds than the MiG-15. Crew quality may or may not have been better. Armament of both aircraft was up to the task of killing their opponent. The USAF and USN subsequently spent billions on upgrading their aircraft, weapons, and training (but not increased ACM training?).

Vietnam War - despite the significant speed and altitude advantage of the F4 Phantom vs the MiG-17/MiG-19 - the USAF and USN were very unhappy with the ~2:1 kill to loss ratio (in the US favor) in the first half of the war. Billions were subsequently spent to upgrade the US airframes weapons, and training. The war's overall kill:loss ratio for all types of aircraft was ~3:1 for the USAF and ~5:1 for the USN. The USN subsequently kept up with their Top Gun training and the USAF with their Fighter Weapons School/Aggressor training.

The US subsequently spent billions on the upgrading of their aircraft, weapons, and improved training - allowing the kill:loss ratio to increase to ? Serious ACM and dissimilar air combat training continues to today.

Today the USN, USMC, and USAF, use the Top Gun monicker for their joint Top Gun program. I think the USAF uses the Weapons School monicker.

What should the US experience in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, tell you? That a "more maneuverable" aircraft will (as a general rule) score kills against "faster less maneuverable" aircraft in any war where ACM is necessary. The ratios will depend on many factors - with the over-riding factor being situational awareness. Somewhere around 80% of all air-to-air kills scored in an ACM environment occur when the victim is unaware of the enemy aircraft at the time of the shooting.


Also, although I do not want to get personal, it seems to me that when a WWII US/UK/French/German/Polish/Italian/Finnish/Russian ace claims that he aimed for various parts of an enemy aircraft (whether waiting to get really close or not) against fighters or bombers - most people go "OOOH", "Ah, that explains it", . But when the same is said about Japanese pilots, even when using the tactic of holding fire to point blank range and aiming at the cockpit area of non-maneuvering lumbering/slow bombers, some people go "that can't be true". As if the Japanese pilots were not capable of the same feats of hand-eye-flight control coordination, or of learning/developing an effective tactic (possibly the only and/or most effective tactic vs US heavy bombers) and teaching it to significant numbers of pilots.

WTF

ThomasP said:

?

re "And it makes a mockery of the billions spent on engine, fuel, aerodynamic development done by the Allies, not to mention . . ."

No. It does not. Or at least not anymore than it makes a mockery of the billions/trillions spent in the post-WWII period to today.

Examples

Korean War - despite the significant speed and altitude advantage of the MiG-15 vs the F9F - the F9F scored 7 confirmed kills vs the MiG-15 for 2 losses, or a 3.5:1 kill to loss ratio. The F9F was significantly more maneuverable at low-medium speeds than the MiG-15. Crew quality may or may not have been better. Armament of both aircraft was up to the task of killing their opponent. The USAF and USN subsequently spent billions on upgrading their aircraft, weapons, and training (but not increased ACM training?).

Vietnam War - despite the significant speed and altitude advantage of the F4 Phantom vs the MiG-17/MiG-19 - the USAF and USN were very unhappy with the ~2:1 kill to loss ratio (in the US favor) in the first half of the war. Billions were subsequently spent to upgrade the US airframes weapons, and training. The war's overall kill:loss ratio for all types of aircraft was ~3:1 for the USAF and ~5:1 for the USN. The USN subsequently kept up with their Top Gun training and the USAF with their Fighter Weapons School/Aggressor training.

The US subsequently spent billions on the upgrading of their aircraft, weapons, and improved training - allowing the kill:loss ratio to increase to ? Serious ACM and dissimilar air combat training continues to today.

Today the USN, USMC, and USAF, use the Top Gun monicker for their joint Top Gun program. I think the USAF uses the Weapons School monicker.

What should the US experience in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, tell you? That a "more maneuverable" aircraft will (as a general rule) score kills against "faster less maneuverable" aircraft in any war where ACM is necessary. The ratios will depend on many factors - with the over-riding factor being situational awareness. Somewhere around 80% of all air-to-air kills scored in an ACM environment occur when the victim is unaware of the enemy aircraft at the time of the shooting.


Also, although I do not want to get personal, it seems to me that when a WWII US/UK/French/German/Polish/Italian/Finnish/Russian ace claims that he aimed for various parts of an enemy aircraft (whether waiting to get really close or not) against fighters or bombers - most people go "OOOH", "Ah, that explains it", . But when the same is said about Japanese pilots, even when using the tactic of holding fire to point blank range and aiming at the cockpit area of non-maneuvering lumbering/slow bombers, some people go "that can't be true". As if the Japanese pilots were not capable of the same feats of hand-eye-flight control coordination, or of learning/developing an effective tactic (possibly the only and/or most effective tactic vs US heavy bombers) and teaching it to significant numbers of pilots.

WTF

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Those kill ratios, are they supported by postwar impartial research comparing loss records from both sides? In Vietnam the figures i've seen indicate practically parity, roughly 1 to 1 ratio overall. And pretty sure the Korean war figures are far less that the oft claimed 10 to 1, maybe 3-4 to 1 at most, maybe even lower can't recall now. Taking at face value USAF or USN claims would be the same as doing that for WW2, and we have just seen how rife overclaiming was on all sides. Overclaiming was just as rife in Korea, Vietnam, arab-israeli wars, Desert Storm, you name it. Though in fairness as we get closer to current times overclaiming was less extreme, probably due to more reliable methods of confirming a kill. But still, only about 2/3 of kills in DS and Bekaa 1982 air combat seem to be confirmed (though i guess we digress too much)

ThomasP said:

But when the same is said about Japanese pilots, even when using the tactic of holding fire to point blank range and aiming at the cockpit area of non-maneuvering lumbering/slow bombers, some people go "that can't be true"

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Not saying it can' be true, just saying it's amazing that such a lightly armed aircraft with very modest performance can do so well, he F4U had such a performance advantage it should have been able to cruise in at near the Ki-43's top speed and engage and disengaged at it's choosing, likewise the Oscar could neither catch nor run away from the Corsair, it makes you wonder what tactics or situation the Corsairs were in that allowed the Oscars to get an advantage.

In theory, the numbers above are ~confirmed by post-war to today research.

Vietnam has been very cooperative with their records, so I think we can go by the latest research.

Post-USSR Russia was quite cooperative also. North Korea not so much. But 6 of the 7 MiG-15s shot down by F9Fs were confirmed by both Russian records (the pilots were Russian in all 6) and USN records.

(Note that the 7x MiG-15 kills does not include the 4x shot down in the controversial November 1952 action.)

in the ACIG databast i just find 5 MiG-15 + 1 damaged for the F9F for 3 lost to MiG-15

PAT303 said:

Not saying it can' be true, just saying it's amazing that such a lightly armed aircraft with very modest performance can do so well, he F4U had such a performance advantage it should have been able to cruise in at near the Ki-43's top speed and engage and disengaged at it's choosing, likewise the Oscar could neither catch nor run away from the Corsair, it makes you wonder what tactics or situation the Corsairs were in that allowed the Oscars to get an advantage.

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When refering to the F4U kill ratio it was when fighting against the A6M in the Solomons, not the Ki-43 (not sure if there are significant encounters between them, at least for 1943-44).
The Ki-43 faced the P-47 in New Guinea, to which what you said above indeed applies.