Kill ratio in the Pacific

[The Nerd]

Is there a web site that talks about the kill ratio for aircraft in the pacific theater? Im guessing it would be the corsair, but I could be wrong. This is for a speach Im doing.

 

[syscom3]

Leonard would be a great source for that.

I would venture to say the F6F for the navy, and the P38 for the army.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Here's information on the USAAF in the Pacific

http://www.usaaf.net/digest/operations.htm

 

[The Nerd]

That is totaly awesome, thanks flyboy

 

[R Leonard]

And the Navy data is at http://www.history.navy.mil/download/nasc.pdf but it's a 360 Mb PDF download, so be prepared, takes about 10 minutes on a 56K modem. Also this document has some 60 year old calculation errors in it that will bite you if you don't take the time to check ALL the calculations. Also it only counts enemy fighters and bombers, though with a little detective work you can figure out that when they say bombers they were counting VB, VN, VOS, VP, VR, VT, and even U/Is together in that number. VF's are VF's and it appears they did not count VOS(F) at all. F6F was the highest scorer in terms of total numbers with 5174.5 credits, and with 270 losses that works out to 19.2:1. The best ratio of claims to losses was the FM-2 with 32.9:1, with 428 credits to 13 losses.

Rich

Rich

 

[Barrett]

Rich beat me to it. The FM-2 "Wilder Wildcat" probably retains the world record for piston fighters. And unlike most other VFs, I'm inclined to accept the FM record almost at face value because of the nature of its mission. Air defense of CVE task groups very seldom generated the multi-multi bogey furballs common to Hellcats and Corsairs with their inevitably high claiming errors. Look at the FM's breakdown and it's a high % of "bomber" (bmber-attack) types which GENERALLY were easier to track than fighters.