Japanese Versus American Victory Claims (1 Viewer)

[Squish]

Once again, we'll have to agree to disagree, but not with any disdain or sarcasm, really. "Carful research" indicates the records you are researching are accurate. My entire point above is they are generally only semi-accurate, not accurate. I've worled in paper systems in the past and it was EASY to lose or otherwise ADD a record to account for inventory discrepancies ot other "inventory event," including theft.

There are many, many airplanes for which we have the total built, accepted, and put into service with "records" disputing each other to the turne of some thousands of aircraft. I have several books, researched fairly extensively shortly after WWII, showing totals at odds with numbers generally accepted today. And these guys were writing with access to records that were relatively new at the time, and there were people around who knew where things were kept. And THEY can't agree with each other to wiothin several thousand.

Much modern "research" consists of pulling up computer files that may or may not be original records, but are usually formatted to LOOK that way with no way to really find out since the author and owner of the files in not generally known. Many may or may not be complete. If they are not complete, there is often no real way to "discover" what you are missing.

We like to say the U.S.A. built 300,000 combat aircraft in WWII, but ther real number is NOT 300,000. It's only close to the tune of several thousand one way or the other, as far as we know, and keeps getting "revised," but never wuite verified by anything believable.

So what is your basis that Soviet records are completely inaccurate?

There is fairly well regarded book from by Daniel and Gabor Horvath titled "Verified Victories: Top JG-52 Aces Over Hungary 1944-45" that looks at a very narrow timeframe late in the war and cross references claims with documented verified losses. The basic conclusion of the book is that there was a cumulative 2:1 rate of over-claiming vs records although it ran the gamut from 93% accuracy (Lipfert) to 20% (Haas). Hartman was around 22%. In this case study Lipfert was not neccesarily an outlier, with 5 out of 8 pilots examined having a documented claims rate of 60% or greater.

This rate of over-claiming is also lower than what Dunn has examined in his works on the Southwest Pacific theater, and is also lower that figures cited in Len Deighton's "Fighter: Battle Of Britain" that I have on hand as well.

So that leaves us with a question, assuming that the numbers cited in each work are broadly accurate insofar that each author has accurately reported documented losses of units involved vs claims, and not made an elementary error of ignoring other units in a theater.

Should we assume that Russian record keeping was subject to the "will of the commissar" and was more inaccurate than either the axis or the allied powers?
If this is the case do we also assume that German record of claims were even more accurate than what is documented? Since this would mean that all of the Russians hid their losses from JG.52 in 1944-45.

What happens when we apply this assumption to the Allied powers since there are even greater discrepancies in claims vs documented losses (Battle of Britain)? Does this mean that the British were also widely under-reporting their losses? Even more-so than the Soviets? That same standard would also apply to the US Navy and US Army Air Corps.

How about the Japanese? Should we also assume that the Japanese units drastically under-reported their losses in their own encoded radio traffic? If so...by how much?

 

[GregP]

Not saying ANY records are completely inaccurate. I'm saying they are not anywhere near exact.

I think all the records we can find thah are primary sourcers are either correct or close to correct. But we have no way to know if they are complete.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, we actually lost 100,000 airplanes in combat. 80 years later, we can find records indicating we lost, say, 76,000. Thnese records are either correct or nearly so. But they are also incomplete. So. modern researchers say we lost 76,000 becasue they did "careful research."{ But there are no records showing the report numbers of the missing reports because they were missing. I hope you are not suggesting we sent separate records indicating the report numbers of the records of losses, victories, air combat reports, etc. thath were being senbtr separately, becasue we didn't. We sent the records. When they got lost, the data had to be reconstructed from reports that weren't erxcactly the same as the lost reports ... simply because they were't the same reports.

So, inaccuracies crept in.

Soviet records are VEREY suspect. I have heard that from former Soviet airmen. Any records from WWII that paint the former USSR in a bad light are suspect becasue the officer who wrote it and his family might not have enjoyed long life if Stalin saw the reports. He was big on the "shoot the messenger" thing.

MANY German records were just lost in the fog of war due to bomb damage, weather damage, etc.

Japanese records are nowhere NEAR complete for the same reasons.

So, about all we have to go on are claims files, and even THEY aren't compelte as some were lost due to the same reasons above. I have a German claims file showing 66,000 claims, but it stops in late 1944. Nobody seriously thinks the Germans stopped aerial combat in 1944, do they? They were flying combat up until VE Day. Not in huge numbers, but theyW ERE flying.

The U.S.A. didn't get attcked by anyone at home where the records were kept, but we certainly DID lose some records in transit home from front lines around the world. And we can't agree on many things, such as aerial vcitories, even though we spent money to verify claims after the war. All the studies were service-based. That is, there is no single study on aerial victories. There isa USAAF report, a Navy/USMC report, etc. Nobody else spent money AFTEr thewar to study the war's numbers formally. And those reports have additional errors as well due to not having ALL the reports becasue of some losses on the way home. Ships were being sunk up until the end of the war. Many airplanes were lost in international travel. More than a few per day!

So, we have a sort of total for many things, but we cannot make the claim these totals are correct and complete. We can say they are about as good as we can get this far along after the war. DO you think we have accurate numbers for Viet Nam? Or was there "fog of war" there, too? Has anyone seen accounting totals for Desert Storm? I haven't.

Cheers!

 

[Squish]

Soviet records are VEREY suspect. I have heard that from former Soviet airmen. Any records from WWII that paint the former USSR in a bad light are suspect becasue the officer who wrote it and his family might not have enjoyed long life if Stalin saw the reports. He was big on the "shoot the messenger" thing.

So this means we should disregard Soviet day to day record keeping because the officers would be shot if they reported bad news?

Just casually treating their day to day records as more suspect than others has a few implications. It would mean some variation of the Germans were actually under-claiming, that everyone else was over claiming to a much more significant degree, or that everyone else's record keeping was somehow worse than the Soviets.

This also begs the question of whether or not we should regard all of the proceedings / punishment etc against Soviet officers for filing false reports as being more or less fabricated and instead assume that there was no negative repercussions to filing false reports; specifically of combat / material losses of aircraft squadrons in 1942 - 1945.

 

[CHen10]

I have a German claims file showing 66,000 claims, but it stops in late 1944.

We have it all the way until 1945.

Luftwaffe's WWII list of aerial victories and downed aircraft during Jan - May 1945

Asisbiz Luftwaffe's WWII list of aerial victories and downed aircraft during Jan - May 1945

asisbiz.com

Soviet records are VEREY suspect. I have heard that from former Soviet airmen. Any records from WWII that paint the former USSR in a bad light are suspect becasue the officer who wrote it and his family might not have enjoyed long life if Stalin saw the reports. He was big on the "shoot the messenger" thing.

No they are not suspect. See my previous post at #77.

 

[andrewgeorge]

Once again, we'll have to agree to disagree, but not with any disdain or sarcasm, really. "Carful research" indicates the records you are researching are accurate. My entire point above is they are generally only semi-accurate, not accurate. I've worled in paper systems in the past and it was EASY to lose or otherwise ADD a record to account for inventory discrepancies ot other "inventory event," including theft.

There are many, many airplanes for which we have the total built, accepted, and put into service with "records" disputing each other to the turne of some thousands of aircraft. I have several books, researched fairly extensively shortly after WWII, showing totals at odds with numbers generally accepted today. And these guys were writing with access to records that were relatively new at the time, and there were people around who knew where things were kept. And THEY can't agree with each other to wiothin several thousand.

Much modern "research" consists of pulling up computer files that may or may not be original records, but are usually formatted to LOOK that way with no way to really find out since the author and owner of the files in not generally known. Many may or may not be complete. If they are not complete, there is often no real way to "discover" what you are missing.

We like to say the U.S.A. built 300,000 combat aircraft in WWII, but ther real number is NOT 300,000. It's only close to the tune of several thousand one way or the other, as far as we know, and keeps getting "revised," but never wuite verified by anything believable.

I disagree that careful research means assuming that the records are 100% accurate. You have to know the genre of document you are working with, how it was created, and for what purpose. If you have an understanding of that, you can better "see" the gaps.

No one, as far as I know, attempts to cross check victory claims against total inventories of aircraft produced by manufacturers or even deployed to theater. They use operation logs and mission reports. Those sources are generally silent about the fate of airframes not lost in action (either operationally or due to enemy fire). They contain information on a specific set of data--aircrew, operational aircraft, deployment and losses of both of these (typically day by day) and reports of returning aircrew. They are not always clear about all of this information. Extent of damage to an aircraft, cause of loss of an aircraft, etc. There are sometimes entries that simply don't make sense or entirely add up. Clerical errors happen.

A careful researcher is aware of all of this and qualifies their findings accordingly. Sometimes the omissions themselves may actually help *explain* discrepancies.

For an interesting example (and one in which fighter claims were actually fairly accurate!), in SPAW, Dunn details the events of a Japanese Army air raid on Guadalcanal as part of Operation Ke on January 27, 1943.

According to USAAF and USMC records, intercepting fighters were 12 F4Fs from VMF-112, VMF-121, and VMO-251, six P-38s from 339th FS, and 10 P-40s from 44th FS and 68th FS. Two P-38s and two P-40s were lost, along with an F4F (Joseph Lynch's fighter, which he reported ran out of fuel) and two P-40s destroyed in crash landings. So six fighters total lost at least in part to enemy fire and one lost probably for operational reasons. The American fighter pilots claimed a combined 10 confirmed "Zekes" shot down.

Japanese Army records show 69 sorties (60 Oscars from 1st and 11th flying regiments and nine Lilys from the 45th flying regiment). One Oscar turned back early. Five Oscars from 1st FR were shot down outright and another had to ditch off the southeast end of the New Georgia islands (all aircraft from 11th and 45th FRs returned). The Japanese Army pilots claimed three P-39s certain and three P-39s possible.

So, here the respective losses and claims align pretty closely, even if everyone involved apparently misidentified the enemy fighters they were shooting at. The Japanese army pilots might have actually *underclaimed* (unusual, especially for a large air battle!) and the Americans only overclaimed by a bit.

Except... The Japanese army reports also record that five 1st FR Oscars landed in the Shortland Islands with damage so substantial they had to dispatch repair crews to the airfield. Dunn found no further mention of the Oscars in Japanese records apparently. Which would be enough on its own to at least suspect they ended up as write-offs and likely validate some of the American claims unaccounted for in the Japanese records. And Dunn points out that the wrecks of a few early-model Type 1 army fighters were found on site after the war. So presumably at least some of the American confirmed victories did in fact reflect the actual destruction (albeit delayed) of enemy fighters.

But a more common type of incident Dunn writes about was something that happened the day before, when two USAAF P-39s from 70th FS shot up a Japanese Navy Mavis flying boat picking up a downed pilot off Choiseul and were jumped by six Zekes from 252 Air Group. One of the P-39s (Capt. McKulla) was shot down, and the other (Lt. Fiedler) got away. Fiedler claimed a Zeke and the 252 pilots claimed two P-39s. McKulla's Airacobra was the only fighter actually lost (see: Pacific Wrecks - P-39 Airacobra piloted by 1st Lt. Lawrence R. McCulla).

 

[SaparotRob]

I've come to the conclusion that these claims are more like polling. They will never be completely accurate but they indicate trends. FWIW.

 

[Greg Boeser]

I disagree that careful research means assuming that the records are 100% accurate. You have to know the genre of document you are working with, how it was created, and for what purpose. If you have an understanding of that, you can better "see" the gaps.

No one, as far as I know, attempts to cross check victory claims against total inventories of aircraft produced by manufacturers or even deployed to theater. They use operation logs and mission reports. Those sources are generally silent about the fate of airframes not lost in action (either operationally or due to enemy fire). They contain information on a specific set of data--aircrew, operational aircraft, deployment and losses of both of these (typically day by day) and reports of returning aircrew. They are not always clear about all of this information. Extent of damage to an aircraft, cause of loss of an aircraft, etc. There are sometimes entries that simply don't make sense or entirely add up. Clerical errors happen.

A careful researcher is aware of all of this and qualifies their findings accordingly. Sometimes the omissions themselves may actually help *explain* discrepancies.

For an interesting example (and one in which fighter claims were actually fairly accurate!), in SPAW, Dunn details the events of a Japanese Army air raid on Guadalcanal as part of Operation Ke on January 27, 1943.

According to USAAF and USMC records, intercepting fighters were 12 F4Fs from VMF-112, VMF-121, and VMO-251, six P-38s from 339th FS, and 10 P-40s from 44th FS and 68th FS. Two P-38s and two P-40s were lost, along with an F4F (Joseph Lynch's fighter, which he reported ran out of fuel) and two P-40s destroyed in crash landings. So six fighters total lost at least in part to enemy fire and one lost probably for operational reasons. The American fighter pilots claimed a combined 10 confirmed "Zekes" shot down.

Japanese Army records show 69 sorties (60 Oscars from 1st and 11th flying regiments and nine Lilys from the 45th flying regiment). One Oscar turned back early. Five Oscars from 1st FR were shot down outright and another had to ditch off the southeast end of the New Georgia islands (all aircraft from 11th and 45th FRs returned). The Japanese Army pilots claimed three P-39s certain and three P-39s possible.

So, here the respective losses and claims align pretty closely, even if everyone involved apparently misidentified the enemy fighters they were shooting at. The Japanese army pilots might have actually *underclaimed* (unusual, especially for a large air battle!) and the Americans only overclaimed by a bit.

Except... The Japanese army reports also record that five 1st FR Oscars landed in the Shortland Islands with damage so substantial they had to dispatch repair crews to the airfield. Dunn found no further mention of the Oscars in Japanese records apparently. Which would be enough on its own to at least suspect they ended up as write-offs and likely validate some of the American claims unaccounted for in the Japanese records. And Dunn points out that the wrecks of a few early-model Type 1 army fighters were found on site after the war. So presumably at least some of the American confirmed victories did in fact reflect the actual destruction (albeit delayed) of enemy fighters.

But a more common type of incident Dunn writes about was something that happened the day before, when two USAAF P-39s from 70th FS shot up a Japanese Navy Mavis flying boat picking up a downed pilot off Choiseul and were jumped by six Zekes from 252 Air Group. One of the P-39s (Capt. McKulla) was shot down, and the other (Lt. Fiedler) got away. Fiedler claimed a Zeke and the 252 pilots claimed two P-39s. McKulla's Airacobra was the only fighter actually lost (see: Pacific Wrecks - P-39 Airacobra piloted by 1st Lt. Lawrence R. McCulla).

I've gotten pretty frustrated with Pacific Wrecks. I summerized the crash reports for every B-26 lost in the Alaska region for their entire tour, but he has not bothered to update the incorrect listings, let alone add the rest.

 

[SaparotRob]

That's disappointing.

 

[andrewgeorge]

I've come to the conclusion that these claims are more like polling. They will never be completely accurate but they indicate trends. FWIW.

Sometimes yes sometimes no.

There's some examples where the overclaiming was extreme, but sort of proportionate to actual losses.

But sometimes it was also just way off. As in dozens of claims for an engagement where one or two planes were lost. Or multiple claims—even double digits for dogfights where all the fighters returned to base.

From what I can tell, bomber gunners were the worst overclaimers, followed by fighter pilots. Ground gunners also usually overclaimed by quite a bit.

Regarding allied fighter pilot overclaiming in late 1943-1944 over New Georgia, Bruce Gamble in his "Rabaul" trilogy provides some helpful quotes. After providing an account of a December 23, 1943, B-24 strike on Rabaul aerodromes and concurrent allied fighter sweep in which a total of 30 Japanese fighters were "confirmed" shot down against 3 American fighters lost (actual Japanese fighter losses were six), he provides the following excerpt from USMC intelligence officer Frank Walton regarding marine F4U claims during the war:

"The records were way, way inflated; all of our claims were inflated. We shot down about four times as many planes as the Japanese ever produced, according to the records. We never had any verification on a lot of the claims. We trusted, in many cases, just the guy's word: "Yes, I did this and I did that." The way he detailed it was what we put down." ("Target: Rabaul" Chapter 19 if you're interested. BTW the "four times as many planes as ... ever produced" bit is hyperbole, but it's directionally correct--the total cumulative number of claims were basically impossible.)

Also quotes Bruce Matheson:

"Frank would tend to sort this out. He'd say, "Now, wait a minute, you said this," and somebody else would say, "Yeah, but I was over here and I'm sure I shot it." Frank would say, "Is there a possibility you two guys were shooting at the same airplane?" Hell, yes; there may have been three or four of us shooting at this poor sucker before he finally blew up!"

So in addition to all of the inherent reasons pilot and gunner claims would be inaccurate (confusion, limited visibility, adrenaline, optimism, etc), the claims review process was not especially rigorous. Again for perfectly understandable reasons—aircrew morale, propaganda, and so on).

I may have mentioned this previously, but the problems would arise when command put too much stock in aircrew claims. Claringbould's study of Operation Ro in November 1943 (which I mentioned earlier in this thread describing some cartoonishly erroneous claims reported by Japanese torpedo plane pilots on November 5, 1943) points out that Japanese 1st Carrier Division pilots claimed so extravagantly, that even accounting for the overclaiming command staff surely knew was taking place, the Japanese Navy assessed that they had at least put a decent dent in American naval strength for the time being. Sure, the 1st carrier division had lost like half its pilots and aircraft in two weeks, but they landed some haymakers! Admiral Koga was officially honored like he had just won a major victory. Then a couple weeks later, the quite intact American carrier fleet started pulverizing the Gilberts and Marshalls. Oops!

The allies sometimes made similar errors although they were less costly since they had the clear strategic upper hand regardless. General Kenney really did seem to believe the Fifth Air Force had more or less neutralized Japanese air power at Rabaul with his strikes in October, 1943, when the actual damage had been a fraction of what his air crews claimed (numbers that were multiplied again for public consumption!). It didn't end up harming the larger campaign objectives because allied air strength was still sufficient to beat back Japanese air attacks at Bougainville and Cape Gloucester. But still.

 

[andrewgeorge]

Suppose, for the sake of argument, we actually lost 100,000 airplanes in combat. 80 years later, we can find records indicating we lost, say, 76,000. Thnese records are either correct or nearly so. But they are also incomplete. So. modern researchers say we lost 76,000 becasue they did "careful research."{ But there are no records showing the report numbers of the missing reports because they were missing. I hope you are not suggesting we sent separate records indicating the report numbers of the records of losses, victories, air combat reports, etc. thath were being senbtr separately, becasue we didn't. We sent the records. When they got lost, the data had to be reconstructed from reports that weren't erxcactly the same as the lost reports ... simply because they were't the same reports.

Where have you seen any numbers like 100,000 or 76,000 airplanes lost in combat? Is it really that high? Are you sure that's not a total of all aircraft losses? I'll bet operational losses are significantly lower, and actual losses to enemy fire (either ground fire or enemy aircraft) lower still.

So, about all we have to go on are claims files, and even THEY aren't compelte as some were lost due to the same reasons above. I have a German claims file showing 66,000 claims, but it stops in late 1944. Nobody seriously thinks the Germans stopped aerial combat in 1944, do they? They were flying combat up until VE Day. Not in huge numbers, but theyW ERE flying.

Is that 66,000 German claims from aircrew alone? If so, that number is *surely* the product of substantial overclaiming, isn't it? I'm sort of guesstimating the total tally of lost allied aircraft losses you'd need to make 66,000 aerial victories plausible and it seems very unlikely. Like I mentioned above with U.S. total aircraft losses, actual losses to enemy fire were a subset of a subset of total aircraft losses. And then you need to subtract those lost to ground fire, which could well be a majority of total combat losses depending on the prevailing tactical situation!

Please correct me if I'm missing something!

Edit: I'm missing that this is not an actual number hah

 

[Greg Boeser]

He was proposing a hypothetical number.

 

[andrewgeorge]

He was proposing a hypothetical number.

ah that makes sense

 

[GregP]

So this means we should disregard Soviet day to day record keeping because the officers would be shot if they reported bad news?

Just casually treating their day to day records as more suspect than others has a few implications. It would mean some variation of the Germans were actually under-claiming, that everyone else was over claiming to a much more significant degree, or that everyone else's record keeping was somehow worse than the Soviets.

This also begs the question of whether or not we should regard all of the proceedings / punishment etc against Soviet officers for filing false reports as being more or less fabricated and instead assume that there was no negative repercussions to filing false reports; specifically of combat / material losses of aircraft squadrons in 1942 - 1945.

You do what you want to do, and do it in good health.

The U.S.A. put a lot of effort into data after WWII, and those data are not anywhere NEAR easy to find answers from.
I've been working on it for 40+ years. I have many answers, but not all, by long shot.

I enumerated many concerns above. No use in rehasing them again.

Cheers.

 

[bada]

i'm with GregP at 100% here.