Japanese lightly built carrier aircraft

[tomo pauk]

Wasn't the Hellcat's 19:1 the ratio between claims and losses, rather than between kills and losses?

 

[Shortround6]

I believe so.
A lot of the kill ratios published during/after the war do not stand up.

However after just about everybodys ratio is pushed down to a more realistic level the Hellcat is still very good.

 

[VBF-13]

hellcat of course. Thats not the issue. The difference between the two planes was their durability and survivability, but plane for plane the hellcat was not 19 times better than a zero. It achieved its high kill loss ration because of a whole bunch of reasons.....pilot quality, numbers, superior logistics, better tactics and strategy, just to name a few. Allied victory never came down to just one thing, or nation or event. oh that it was that easy. It was a complex menage of different factors all working simultaneously.

so, choosing or preferring a particular aircraft over another is not "it in a nut' as you so eloquently put it. try this shoe on.....woulld the US have still won if it had been equipped with the zero, and the japanese had the hellcat. answer is yes.

so much for the superiority of the hellcat over the zero. it makes little difference

You're getting personal now ("as you so eloquently put it") and are proposing straw issues (show me where I said the Hellcat was "19 times better than the Zero") in defense of your attenuated position, and I'm sorry, Pars, but I'm not going to go there with you. I respect your book-learning very highly, and always have, should that mean anything to you. I'm on an iPhone right now and have other fires to put out, today, and you'll forgive for letting this go at, believe what you will. Take care.

 

[parsifal]

maybe we got off on the wrong foot. but as for book learnt.....well, I have never flown a hellcat or a zero, or any aircraft for that matter. but ive been around military a/c and served with the military both as a soldier and a a consultant for a lot of years, and not in a theoretical way. A lot of the stuff though is book learnt, i guess, that so i can book write. Academic argument is better than getting into a pissing contest in my opinion. So, if the 19:1 is not your thing, then what is. Maybe theres nothing to worry about. maybe we have the same views.

My position is this. hellcats were a great a/c, so too was the Zero. In a stand up fight the hellcat should come off the winner, but the margin of difference is quite small. Put a good pilot in a zero, and a mediocre one in the hellcat, the Zero has a beter than even chance of winning. Give the japanese better radios and comms, and the tables are turned.

I hope whateveri ssues are concerning you get resolved okay. There is no issue for me

 

[Milosh]

On the 24 June 1944, he met 15 Hellcats against his single zero (Earler the 200 or so Hellcats had demolished the 42 Zero defenders, due to the inexperience of the pilots. In a long running fast moving fight, Sakai managed to evade all 15 of them, eventually forcing the Hellcats into a defensive ring and shooting down at least two of thge American planes.

I have read a similar story with a different pilot and a/c (George iirc).

 

[VBF-13]

So, if the 19:1 is not your thing, then what is. Maybe theres nothing to worry about. maybe we have the same views.

The rate is an aggregate against all aircraft and if you'll go back you'll note that's how I referenced it. While the Zero was undoubtedly mixed into that rate the rate wasn't specific against the Zero. If you'll also note I used the rate simply as a means of showing we knew what we were doing at the start of the War with our heavier aircraft.

 

[CobberKane]

In some ways the cultural norms behind the Zero and the Hellcat were very different. The Japanese pilots saw their aircraft as a kind of airborne katana; something to be wielded by the highly skilled individual in personal combat. Defensive factors were spurned; Japanese pilot frequently junked their radios and flew without parachutes. American pilots were trained to see themselves as part of a team, where tactics and co-operation would win the day. Sakai himself commented on this, saying that he thought the Japanese pilots were better individually (he was talking of the first half of the war) but the Americans were much better at teamwork and this was to cost the IJN dearly from the mid-war onwards. He also said that the Japanese thought of conflict in terms of carrier v carrier, whereas the Americans thought in terms of fleet v fleet, which was much better.
I would maintain that in the hypothetical situation of equal pilots engaging 1 v 1 in anything but the low and slow scenario, the Hellcat was, as Pasifal said, somewhat better than the Zero. In the tactical (real world) sense, where multiple aircraft engaged each other, the Hellcats advantages in speed, survivability and decent communication gear made it very much the better aircraft. The Zero was built to win dogfights, the Hellcat to win wars.

 

[parsifal]

I have checked back on the discussion, not just your comments (this isnt just about you), your inference is that the hellcat could bat anything Japanese out of the sky, and that the pilot quality and numbers issue was something you would not accept. Your not saying that now i notice. The quality oif the hellcat is beyond debate, it was an excellent fighter. whether the losses suffered by the Japanese is a direct result of that design, or indeed the "heavy fighter" philosophy that the Americans adopted from 1940 onward is open to debate. I maintain that if the Americans had retained the Wildcat, or adopted a design similar to the Zero, the results would still be substantially the same. The conclusion to draw from that is obvious. The Heavy fighter....which includes the hellcat, was not decisive or essential in achieving the high loss rates. It was part of the formula, but not all of it. Ergo, your agressive assertion that the US knew what it was doing when it adopted the heavy fighter concept does not hold water, or not established. the heavy fighter concept helped achieve the result, but it was not essential to it. There were other reasons at play, some relating to Japanese decisions and philosophies, and some to American. One of the Japanese decisions was their emphasis on high quality aircrew which limited numbers, and which they could not maintainas the war progressed. Outnumbered, and then out skilled, the poor quality of new pilots by 1943 , fed off the inherent weakness of the zero (and its ilk) in a vicious circle. The zero needed a good pilot to survive, but its weknesses made it poor if flown by a poor pilot. In the hands of a good pilot, the zero retained its deadliness in the sky to the end.

 

[CobberKane]

[ In the hands of a good pilot, the zero retained its deadliness in the sky to the end.[/QUOTE]

I agree, if he could get the pilot of the Hellcat, Mustang or whatever to play his game. An equally goog pilot in the allied aircraft shouldn't let this happen. Of course, with a Sakai or Muto at the controls a KI-27 would be dangerous!

 

[GregP]

Hey Parsifal,

Do you have numbers to support your claim for the Hellcat versus the Zero in post 28?

I have been looking for that type of information for a long time! Maybe you have found it ...

Just for the record, the US Navy Hellcats shot down 1,387 bombers and 3,568 fighters while losing 245 to enemy aircraft in the PTO. They also lost 538 Hellcats to flak, 829 on non-combat-related flights, and a further 403 on ships or on the ground while not in combat. US Marine Hellcats contributed another 46 bombers and 47 fighters, with the bulk of the Marine contribution being in Corsairs and Wildcats.

There is no breakdown of how many of the 245 combat losses were to bombers versus fighters as far as I know, but if they all fell to flghters the fighter versus fighter kill ratio would still be 15 : 1, well ahead of whatever US aircraft is number 2. I don't know the ratio and kill numbers for German aircraft and would not be surprised if the Bf 109 was up there quite near the top. I also don't have the numbers for the Spitfire either since my numbers come from a US Navy synopsis of WWII.

Those figures are from OPNAV-P-23, No. A129 published in June 1946.

 

[parsifal]

[ In the hands of a good pilot, the zero retained its deadliness in the sky to the end.

I agree, if he could get the pilot of the Hellcat, Mustang or whatever to play his game. An equally goog pilot in the allied aircraft shouldn't let this happen. Of course, with a Sakai or Muto at the controls a KI-27 would be dangerous![/QUOTE]

In the battle over Iwo, the US hellcats were playing their game, and still couldnt shoot him down. They fomed a ring above him and employed diving pases on him, coming at him in all directions. Sakais reaction was pretty standard, kick the rudder over roll and dive away....a tight turnng dive as fast as the zero could do. Sakai was performing these manouvres at near top speed for the Zero.

Theory says that the hellcats should have had the advantage heree.....they were better divers than the zero and at high speed were supposedly more manouverable. Sakai however is the exception that disproves the rule.

Men like Sakai continued to get reasonable results from their Zeroes until the very end of the war. The problem for Japan, is that with every passing day, there were less and less Sakais to use the Zero. and the chaff they were turning out from their training schools....by wars end less than 50 hours flying time on average compared to an average of over 700 for the USN pilots, had virtually no chance. The zero was a pilots plane....it needed a good pilot....the hellcat was less reliant on the pilot ability....if a rookie pilot messed up in a hellcat he at least had a fighting chance of surviving to fight another day. Even if the hellcat crashed and the pilot bailed, he stood a good chance of being recued and returned to service. not so for the Zero pilot. if his plane was shot down, the pilot was probably dead already. If not, he was probably dead because he had no parachute. if he happened to carry a parachute, his radio was likely to not get any mayday out. and even if he did, Japan payed scant attention to SAR of downed pilots. to the japanese they were cheap and expendable assets.

 

[VBF-13]

In the hands of a good pilot, the zero retained its deadliness in the sky to the end.

Not against a Hellcat with a pilot who knew what he was doing it didn't. That's not to say it could never bag one. Wildcats bagged Zeros while Zeros were all the candy, too, recall.

 

[GregP]

The US heavy fighter called the P-51 dominated the skies in Europe, shooting down almost half of all German losses in the last year and a half of a five and half year war. The Hellcat shot down over 5,000 Japanese aircraft 3,568 of them fighters, all but a small handful in the Pacific. Once the Hellcat showed up, Japanese air superiority vanished and that heavily supports the Hellcat as a prime cause of the reversal.

I think CobberKane made his point. Since no other aircraft in WWII achieved a 19 : 1 kill ratio, how do you propose that a different aircraft could have done as well? None did. Only the Hellcat ... of all the fighters in the world for which we have records. Please don't bring up the Buffalo in Finnish service. When you rank all the other Buffalos with them so you at least have a representative sample of the population, it is less than an average aircraft.

 

[parsifal]

Not against a Hellcat with a pilot who knew what he was doing it didn't. That's not to say it could never bag one. Wildcats bagged Zeros while Zeros were all the candy, too, recall.

Can you explain then how Sakai could go up against 15 Hellcats which he described as being flown by cery good pilots, and emerge without even a single bullet hole in his mount. There were other instances of this sort of thing happening which because there is even a single example of the exception to the rule, blows the whole claim suggested in your post that the Zero had no chance agaiunst the hellcat. Clearly these exceptions, which you are not analysing, destroy the claim you are making

 

[parsifal]

Hey Parsifal,

Do you have numbers to support your claim for the Hellcat versus the Zero in post 28?

I have been looking for that type of information for a long time! Maybe you have found it ...

Just for the record, the US Navy Hellcats shot down 1,387 bombers and 3,568 fighters while losing 245 to enemy aircraft in the PTO. They also lost 538 Hellcats to flak, 829 on non-combat-related flights, and a further 403 on ships or on the ground while not in combat. US Marine Hellcats contributed another 46 bombers and 47 fighters, with the bulk of the Marine contribution being in Corsairs and Wildcats.

There is no breakdown of how many of the 245 combat losses were to bombers versus fighters as far as I know, but if they all fell to flghters the fighter versus fighter kill ratio would still be 15 : 1, well ahead of whatever US aircraft is number 2. I don't know the ratio and kill numbers for German aircraft and would not be surprised if the Bf 109 was up there quite near the top. I also don't have the numbers for the Spitfire either since my numbers come from a US Navy synopsis of WWII.

Those figures are from OPNAV-P-23, No. A129 published in June 1946.

My post 28 is a reaction to the 19:1 claim. The 19:1 relates to losses for all types, and you sem to have better information than me on that. Wasnt meant to be a serious in depth study. Sorry to disappoint.

I wonder if the 5000 odd losses by the japanese are the total losses in the PTO. if so, then until later 1943 the USN and USAAC were relatively junior partners in the air war. Front line forces were dominated by RAAF and RAF formations until well into 1943. I wonder wwhat would happen to that ratio, if the 5000 Japanese losses represent total losses, and the 246 US losses dont include RAAF and RAF losses in that same time period.

 

[VBF-13]

The US heavy fighter called the P-51 dominated the skies in Europe, shooting down almost half of all German losses in the last year and a half of a five and half year war. The Hellcat shot down over 5,000 Japanese aircraft 3,568 of them fighters, all but a small handful in the Pacific. Once the Hellcat showed up, Japanese air superiority vanished and that heavily supports the Hellcat as a prime cause of the reversal.

I think CobberKane made his point. Since no other aircraft in WWII achieved a 19 : 1 kill ratio, how do you propose that a different aircraft could have done as well? None did. Only the Hellcat ... of all the fighters in the world for which we have records.

Exactly. The evidence is just too compelling to have it any other way.

 

[GregP]

Here are the PTO kills and losses for US Navy and Marines.
View attachment 227150

 

[VBF-13]

Can you explain then how Sakai could go up against 15 Hellcats which he described as being flown by cery good pilots, and emerge without even a single bullet hole in his mount. There were other instances of this sort of thing happening which because there is even a single example of the exception to the rule, blows the whole claim suggested in your post that the Zero had no chance agaiunst the hellcat. Clearly these exceptions, which you are not analysing, destroy the claim you are making

Clearly I didn't say it had no chance. I said your statement, read your statement, didn't apply. I think you're missing the forest for the trees, here, too. That's not to say I'm discounting your anecdotal evidence. But that's all it is.

 

[VBF-13]

My post 28 is a reaction to the 19:1 claim. The 19:1 relates to losses for all types [...]

Pars, yes, that's what I said. You misread that, too, initially, and thought I was applying it only as against the Zero. And it's good as gold. Hell, it might even be in Wikipedia by now.

 

[GregP]

Sometimes coummunication is difficult ...

View attachment 227159