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Is this story true?In air-to-air combat, experienced Japanese pilots flying Shiden Kais could more than hold their own against most American pilots flying F6F Hellcats. In February 1945, a brave pilot, Warrant Officer Muto, single-handedly engaged 12 Hellcats and shot down four of them before the remainder disengaged
No, and it's not even a claim actually made by Muto. It was invented in a war time Japanese press release, then repeated by writers like Green and Francillon and ever since.'a brave pilot, Warrant Officer Muto, single-handedly engaged 12 Hellcats and shot down four of them before the remainder disengaged'
Is this story true?
I didn't notice the quotation of that classic chestnut before. There's simply no evidence to support that statement, AFAIK no evidence Green even thought he had any particular evidenceThis to quote Green:
.... it soon proved itself a redoutable warplane, and its pilots came to lool upon the formidable Gruman Hellcat as a relatively easy 'kill'.
Once upon a time I would assume the kind of general characterizations in those books were backed up with a lot of well documented examples of particular combats, but now I realize that's a doubtful assumption.
It compared favourably with the best of its antagonists; it was slightly slower than the P-51H Mustang and the P-47N Thunderbolt, but it could out-climb and out-manoeovre both American fighters.
Yes, "Japanese a/c..." is an important book but you can't rely on it entirely, not for those sort of unfootnoted characterizations, and also not for the order of battle info (which units operated which planes at the end of each section), or necessarily the production histories, etc. Though there isn't any one English language book that covers the whole topic better that I know of.You discussed a number of authors in another thread Joe and now Francillion joins the list?
...Francillion's biblical "Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War" of 1970. He mentions the Ki-84 reaching;
Who can believe this?I can say that it was difficult. Only twice had I ever been caught unawares by my enemy, and the second time was on 24 June 1944 when we flew from Iwo Jima to intercept an inbound force of American planes. This was also when I first met the new Grumman F6F Hellcat, a very formidable fighter. I shot one down, but I was lucky because I never saw the enemy flight approach on my blind side. My peripheral vision was gone. This was when I took off the straps of my parachute harness so I could turn my head around and see things more. As soon as I did this I saw perhaps six Hellcats on my tail, and I began all of my tricks to throw them off. I was lucky, because I don't think they had much experience against an experienced fighter pilot. I reduced power, they overshot and I increased throttle and turned right inside them. I was on their tail and I shot down another one, but then there were more on me! I pulled away, rolled over into a dive to get away. Then later I pulled out, but found myself surrounded by fifteen Hellcats, and this was amazing, because these aircraft matched me turn and spiral at every maneuver. No other enemy aircraft I had ever fought could do this, and I learned at that time my old tricks were of no use; this plane could perhaps not turn inside the Zero, but it could pull every other maneuver, and it was faster than our 350 miles per hour and could take much more damage and still fly. What saved me was the fact that these pilots were very new. Had they been the veterans of before I would have been dead many times over. I was in this fight for almost half an hour, me alone against possibly twenty enemy planes, of which I had shot down two and damaged another, but they would not let me go. I must have been something of a novelty to them, given the fact that they had been used to killing inexperienced teenagers. Now it seemed that these were also the same caliber of pilots firing at me from incredible distances. They never had a chance of hitting me. It seemed that they just wanted to keep me in the area, and the law of averages would allow them to win
likewise the 1 George v 12 F6F's comes out 4:1 in favor of George, was a Japanese wartime press claim, not an actual JNAF claim, besides not being true.
Joe
Again, the key flaw in that story is it's based on a wartime press account, not the JNAF's account. In the press account Muto (then with the Yokosuka Air Group Fighter Sdn) took on 12 F6F's singlehanded, thus creating a much needed new hero. In the real combat, February 16, 1945, it was 10 Shiden from his unit, and Muto himself never claimed otherwise, that probably believed they took on 12 F6F's. The actual opponents were 7 F6F's from VF-82. See Sakaida "Pacific Air Combat WWII-Voices from the Past". VF-82 did in fact lose 4 a/c but many more were claimed. There may have Shiden losses that's not clear AFAIK. So it's not 'couldn't' it's just 'didn't', and didn't actually claim to.What was the actual result then? I've read this version of the battle. While such a feat would be an "exception" vs. the norm, it's not out of the realm of possibility.
Uhm, i guess you are rightAgain, the key flaw in that story is it's based on a wartime press account, not the JNAF's account. In the press account Muto (then with the Yokosuka Air Group Fighter Sdn) took on 12 F6F's singlehanded, thus creating a much needed new hero. In the real combat, February 16, 1945, it was 10 Shiden from his unit, and Muto himself never claimed otherwise, that probably believed they took on 12 F6F's. The actual opponents were 7 F6F's from VF-82. See Sakaida "Pacific Air Combat WWII-Voices from the Past". VF-82 did in fact lose 4 a/c but many more were claimed. There may have Shiden losses that's not clear AFAIK. So it's not 'couldn't' it's just 'didn't', and didn't actually claim to.
...
Again, the key flaw in that story is it's based on a wartime press account, not the JNAF's account. In the press account Muto (then with the Yokosuka Air Group Fighter Sdn) took on 12 F6F's singlehanded, thus creating a much needed new hero. In the real combat, February 16, 1945, it was 10 Shiden from his unit, and Muto himself never claimed otherwise, that probably believed they took on 12 F6F's. The actual opponents were 7 F6F's from VF-82. See Sakaida "Pacific Air Combat WWII-Voices from the Past". VF-82 did in fact lose 4 a/c but many more were claimed. There may have Shiden losses that's not clear AFAIK. So it's not 'couldn't' it's just 'didn't', and didn't actually claim to.
Maybe we're destined to quibble over small pointsOk, so what you meant when you said "didn't happen" was the part stating that only 1 Shiden took on (or was taken on) by 12 F6F's, not that Muto didn't/coudn't have downed 4 Hellcats during the fight.
Maybe we're destined to quibble over small points. To me the fame of the story come froms 12:1 yields 4:0, so I would simply say it didn't happen. Since first none of those stats is accurate, and moreover the Japanese air unit itself didn't claim that version, somebody made up important aspects, not the usual situation of conflict between good faith perceptions/recollections on opposing sides.
And the likelihood of all 4 F6F's being due to one pilot in a sizeable fight with many other claims (the combat described in Hata/Izawa may be the same one, claims exceeding the number of F6F's present) would seem minimal.
Whereas the possiblity than any given pilot *could* score 4 victories in a mission would seem taken for granted, as already stated. Per official USN list VF-82 was awarded 6 victories in that combat, almost surely an overstatement, but 4:0 was probably not the total score either (Sakaida doesn't say).
1. How could I be saying there weren't USN losses when I'm the only one quoting a source matching specific USN losses (4 of VF-82) to that combat?lol....perhaps we are..
1. So you are in fact saying it, [the losses] didn't happen at all.
2. Unfortunately "official" victory lists are usually wrong, though sometimes they can be spot on. They can also be completely wrong.
3. I would be interested in reading what Sakaida wrote about this combat (or seeing it posted) . I've not yet found any other source so far that confirms it to be a simple distorted press account. So i'll fall back on the more generalized conclusions i've made from past research.....