Kill Ratios

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Steve - a harsher 'judge' making the argument that they made a bad call has probably not been flying for long - and certainly not experienced with ETO weather November through April. You might be critical of the Weather forecast at 8th AF HQ for not anticipating the terrible return conditions but the combat leader(s) at the time correctly judged that they had enough fuel to at least make it back to Manston based on the information that they had. So, make your case for a 'bad call' on the part of the guys that couldn't fulfill that expectation?

Note that 10 more minutes of the extra coverage would not have made a whit of difference to the guys that landed in Holland or the one that ditched in the North Sea but might have been crucial to the two that landed in France. Do all five make a bad call? or the Group leader? or the weather forecaster(s)? or do we chalk it up to the fact that flying combat in Northern Europe presents many risks which became a reality that was impossible to overcome?
 
Kryten said:
there are so many variables involved that I honestly believe the only true way of measuring the effectiveness of an air force during a particular campaign is the actual outcome of the campaign!
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But people will even argue about that

Steve
 
Njaco said:
For me, 'kill' would mean destruction of the a/c. You can have as many pilots as you may need but if they don't have a machine to fly, they're useless. So destruction of material would be a high priority.
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The reverese is equally true however. The Germans and the Japanese are generally acknowledged as sufering plummetting pilot standards in the last years of the war. as their pilot qualities fell through the floor, their loss es mounted even though they were generally flying aircraft that were still competitive performance wise. For Germany it basically became pointless to put large numbers of a/c into the air, burning up dwlindling supplies of fuel and achieving basically nothing. The Axis were well supplid with aircraft (less wel supplied at the fronts, and less well supplied with spare parts) but this failed to help them a lot. Even if you accept the inevitability of defeat after 1943, I dont think the performance of these air forces was optimised by having large numbers of airframes that could not basically fly, or if they did, were inneffective because of the poor quality of the pilots flying them.
 
Kills or kill ratios is in no way a valid measure of success. Airpower does not win wars by itself. Each nation has a doctrine, a purpose for the air power that it puts into the field. The measure of its success has to be how effectively it carries out that mission, and how far it is forced to deviate from that primary mission as a result of the camapign outcomes they are involved in. Whilst ultimate victory or defeat may be a measure of that success for some, to me it is a rather crude and poor measure of the forces effectiveness. Example....ultimately the Finn AF was defeated because its country was defeated. However I would argue that its AF was very successfuly applied to the task. However was the Soviet AF defeated just because it suffered heavy losses? The Soviets would argue not....they were not forced to deviate from any of their primary missions in the finish. The Soviets do however, acknowledge that their AF was largely inneffective in 1941-2.

For the allies, we can be obtuse, and say they were successful, because they ultimately won. However, as far as successfully implementing their various doctrines, they had to modify their thoeories considerably before they could claim that victory. The bomber did mopt always get through, night bombing had to be adopted for the bris, high level bombing by B-29s was not that effeective, ground support was a valid application of airpower, range was possible for SE fighters, carrier borne a/c could operate with equal performance to land based air etc etc

So who was the most successful at implmenting their various doctrines. Thats a very hard question. Despite their defeat, I am tempted to claim the Japanese or perhaps the Russians, or even the Finns previously mentioned
 
Kills or kill ratios is in no way a valid measure of success. Airpower does not win wars by itself. Each nation has a doctrine, a purpose for the air power that it puts into the field. The measure of its success has to be how effectively it carries out that mission, and how far it is forced to deviate from that primary mission as a result of the camapign outcomes they are involved in. Whilst ultimate victory or defeat may be a measure of that success for some, to me it is a rather crude and poor measure of the forces effectiveness. Example....ultimately the Finn AF was defeated because its country was defeated. However I would argue that its AF was very successfuly applied to the task. However was the Soviet AF defeated just because it suffered heavy losses? The Soviets would argue not....they were not forced to deviate from any of their primary missions in the finish. The Soviets do however, acknowledge that their AF was largely inneffective in 1941-2.

For the allies, we can be obtuse, and say they were successful, because they ultimately won. However, as far as successfully implementing their various doctrines, they had to modify their thoeories considerably before they could claim that victory. The bomber did mopt always get through, night bombing had to be adopted for the bris, high level bombing by B-29s was not that effeective, ground support was a valid application of airpower, range was possible for SE fighters, carrier borne a/c could operate with equal performance to land based air etc etc

So who was the most successful at implmenting their various doctrines. Thats a very hard question. Despite their defeat, I am tempted to claim the Japanese or perhaps the Russians, or even the Finns previously mentioned
 
Not suprisingly, I think kills and kill ratios with good data ARE a good measure, so we disagree. But hey, that's OK. Our agreement or not won't change the outcome of the war.

I simply feel victories and kill ratios are a very good indication of the quality of the aircraft / pilot / pilot training / employment of same in whatever situation they were used combination. If we had the real data, I suspect the German kill ratio for the Me 109 would be startling, but I can't prove that. I think it would be better than that of the Fw 190 but, again, I can't prove that. So, I'll just say I THINK that and let it go. I will never claim that to be true ... it's just my hunch based on everything I've read over more than 5 decades on the subject.

But, you may be right in the end since the data are unlikely to surface if they haven't surfaced by now ...
 
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To touch briefly on an earlier point I think that an analyasis of any of the air campaigns fought in WW2 would show that the killing (or loss in any way) of highly and expensively trained aircrew had a more important bearing on the outcome than the destruction of the aircraft. Simplistically they were harder to replace.

FWIW I agree with Greg that properly collated kill ratios could give a valid comparison of two aircraft as long as all the other factors,type of operation,crew training etc,are not forgotten. Sadly this sort of data is simply not available for WW2 aircraft.

Cheers

Steve
 
I assume this post was in response to mine but if so with all due respect it misses the main point I made pretty much entirely, IMHO.

We can never calculate a really meaningful kill ratio using one side's claims. The problems you raise seem to assume we'd calculate the ratio based on one side's perception of the outcome of combat. I thought I was clear saying that would *not* be the way to do it.

To calculate fighter combat exchange rates which are at all meaningful to compare among air arms, or needless to say, which don't contradict the ratio calculated from the other side of the same campaign, we need to count losses on both sides, and essentially ignore claims, except as indirect evidence*. And to do that we need the detailed records, or detailed published accounts based on them, from both sides.

In some large campaigns and especially later in WWII this information doesn't fully exist or the scale of combat prevents us being sure we're viewing the same combat in each sides' records (are we including all units actually involved in a given combat?). But in many campaigns of WWII, and definitely true of early Soviet MiG v US combats in the Korean War, it's quite clear which units were involved on each side in almost all combats, and each sides' account are reasonably detailed. We then count the losses due to air combat, or likely so, according to a consistent standard, combat by combat, bottom up. That's not to say we ignore grand totals of air combat losses given by each side in a campaing, but the bottom up method short circuits IME a lot of tail chasing arguments about (usually supposedly, not actually) missing or fudged info in totals.

And we avoid apples and oranges by, as I said, counting according to a uniform standard, such as I briefly described in earlier post. People who reach different results based on the same books or records should be able to discuss it and discover if and how they are counting differently. But again I think the issue of vagaries in counting tend to be exaggerated, anyway. Often 'judgement call' cases are a pretty small % of all losses.

We are counting the kill ratio using both sides' info, now. We're not directly concerning ourselves with what the participating air arms *thought* the kill ratio was then, which is obviously two (often wildly) different figures.

*for example if one side records losing a/c to unknown causes, the presence or not of opposing claims at similar time and place might clarify that cause. But just because somebody was sure they'd downed an enemy a/c didn't mean it happened; I assume we're all entering the discussion realizing that basic fact of air combat history...

Joe
 
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1. Sure it is *a* valid measure, of relative fighter unit effectiveness. I've still not seen a cogent argument why, in its proper context, it isn't.
2. This is a collossal straw man. Where did anybody ever say the relevance of fighter-fighter kill ratio's extended to factors which determine the outcome of wars which have nothing to do even with air power?!?, let alone fighters? Nobody ever did. War outcomes aren't determined by air power alone: statement of the obvious with zero relevance to whether fighter-fighter kill ratio's are one valid measure of relative fighter unit effectiveness.
3. As shown by the Finnish fighter forces generally favorable kill ratio v Soviet fighters, among other things.
4. Another straw man. Show me any quote in any of these debates where anyone, let alone me, says that a side suffering heavier losses can't win. Never been said; irrelevant to whether fighter-fighter kill ratio's are *a* valid measure of relative fighter unit effectiveness.
5. As shown by the overwhelming kill ratio advantage of German fighters in that period, an exampe of it as useful measure of relative fighter unit effectivenss.
6. True, and irrelevant to whether fighter-fighter kill ratio's were one valid measure of relative fighter unit effectiveness; they were.

Joe
 
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1. Sure it is *a* valid measure, of relative fighter unit effectiveness. I've still not seen a cogent argument why, in its proper context, it isn't.
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Its even less valid to restrict fighter kill ratios as opposed to overall kill ratios. Fighter kill ratios account for such a small percentage of overall losses as to be basically irrelevant. Moreover, even under the most optimistic of circumstances the defending side is still goiong to take attritional losses, sometimes approaching or even exceeding those of the bombers it is attacking. Fighter losses due to enemy action, defensive fire (for offensive missions) navigational errors or mechanical failures are much more important than losses due to enemy fire, and have nothing to do with the performance of a fighter in the air.

To test that theory, if fighter kill ratios were somehow linked to higher performance, one might expect a far higher ratio of kills to losses for types like the Me 262. No such correlation exists. Losses to aircraft like the 262 were as bad, or worse as a percentage of the forces committed as types like the gladiator or CR42. Oh, I know we can say their respective combat situations and levels of opposition were different, and I would agree with that, but those earlier types themselves are, or should, be more vulnerable due to their relative low performance. But they arent. Loss ratios remained remarkably constant for everyone throughout the war.....what mattered was not the losses, but the powers of recovery for the forces involved, the sortie rate, and even more importantly whether the mission those fighters were supporting was successful or not.




Why is it a "collossal straw man". The "colossal straw man" is in fact that kill loss ratios can act independantly so as to neutralize the effects of airpower. if that were the case, we would have to conclude that the Soviet application of airpower was not a success, when clearly it was. And, your claim that airpower does not affect the outcome of wars is also starkly flawed. Name one western style army that has won a war without control of the skies since 1918. Whilst airpower does not win wars independantly, winning wars without airpower is a virtual impossibility.

But fighters are a relatively small proportion of the application of airpower. What is far more important is the development of an appropriate strategy or doctrine to counter or defeat your opponent, and then developing the tools to achieve that outcome. Having the right fighter is of course a part of that. Having success in air combat is also part of that. But it is not a measure of success in the air. What is important is the development of an appropriate strategy and then having the equipment and resources to complete that mission.


I dont see it as any sort of straw man. Finnish war aims were achieved by the end of 1941. Thereafter their overall strategy was to sit back and try and weather the storm, ie remain on the defensive, whilst the battle between the Soviets and the germans was played out. That required an essentially defensive weapon. The Finn AF was just that and suited the war aims of the nation perfectly. It has nothing to do directly with kill loss ratios, they are essentially a bi-product of the strategy.

5. As shown by the overwhelming kill ratio advantage of German fighters in that period, an exampe of it as useful measure of relative fighter unit effectivenss.
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Achieved at an overall cost to the LW in that period that proved prohibitive and unsustainable. By October 1941, for example, the LW had lost about 300 a/c in air combat, but were down to less than 1000 effective a/c from a starting total of over 3000 plus the reinforcements and replacements sent to the front June-October. Soviet airpower was inneffective not because its doctrine or its a/c were inneffective. It had organizational problems, airworthiness problems, training problems, to name a few, but losses due to enemy air action were a relatively minor issue for them, even at that stage of the war. The kill loss ratios achieved by the JGs at that time had virtually no impact on the outcome of the campaign, let alone the war, the doctrines and resources did. Result....Kill loss ratios are not relevant as a factor in determining the effectiveness of airpower, unless those losses affect the implementation of the enmy strategy. German fighters never achieved that, except at the very beginning of the war, and over Germany itself in 1943.

6. True, and irrelevant to whether fighter-fighter kill ratio's were one valid measure of relative fighter unit effectiveness; they were.
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Kill loss ratios are irrelevant if they are not of concern to the protagonists suffering them. They are relevant if they lead to changes to strategy. The losses inflicted on the RAF at the beginning of the war had a dramatic and fundamental effect on the RAFs concept of applied airpower. The efforts of the JGs in 1943 led to a fundamental change in US daylight air raids over germany in 1943. The efforts of the JGs, by far the heaviest losses inflicted on any opponent had no effect on Soviet airpower theories (they did have a massive effect on their techniques and training and even equipment and development policies). And yet loss rates (as aratio of the total forces committed) shows no dramatic change in any of those campaigns. One could argue that the fighters wree irrelevant to the losses overall. I wont go quite that far, but loss rates due to enemy fighter activity, particulalry over wide ranging fronts like the eastern Front have been grossly overstated in terms of their impoprtance since the war.
 
Hi Parsifal,

I seems several of us in here don't particularly agree with you. Since entire countries can't agree on aerial kills and credit standards, I suppose we're all in good company.

Speaking for myself alone, I disagree with you but also don't want to fight about it; your opinion is as vaild as mine is, and you are welcome to it. We are unlikely to achieve consensus on this one.

But we all still like the discussion!

Cheers.
 
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My position just to make it clear, is that air losses are irrelevant unless they have an impact on the outcome of a campaign. Moreover, because the variables are so variable, you cannot ever hope to get comparable events from battle to battle.

The only way to measure success, is to measure it against the campaign or strategy that airpower is supporting. If the airpower applied is decisive and effective in achieving or altering the outcome, the airpower has to be considered a success. Measuring that is hard enough...adding another dimension by trying to gauge the effect of the losses, is not only misleading, its damn near impossioble to get any meaningful results that are comparable to each other
 
Your position can be easily supported and is a good one.

That I disagree is mostly due to my wanting to reward the successful pilots who shoot down enemy aircraft, regardless of of the eventual outcome. The individual pilots can only do their best and cannot affect the overall outcome except through their own individual efforts. Successful ones should be recognized, just as successful ships and land units are recognized.

There is little doubt the Luftwaffe had the best pilots in the ace range, but the rank and file late war were not able to support the performance of the "experten" enough to make the difference in the air. The reasons are numerous, including production, lack of fuel, propellers, and pilot training ... and, lest we forget, attrition.

There are numerous places to go from here, but I still like the accurate kill ratio as a good indicator of the effectiveness of air power at the time, under the circumstances they were faced with at the time. That I can't get the data doesn't make the notion any less valid. Only the real data are missing from which to draw some conclusions. They would not be ALL the conclusions, but would be a good indicator of the tactical situation at the time.
 
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parsifal said:
My position just to make it clear, is that air losses are irrelevant unless they have an impact on the outcome of a campaign.
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I broadly agree with you but that statement cannot be supported. It takes far too narrow a view. Any loss of men and materiel is relevant,regardless of it bearing on the outcome of an individual battle or campaign. Losses have a quantifiable impact on the economy and war fighting capability of both the winner and the loser and a more nebulous effect on morale and other psychological factors which analysts have struggled to quantify for nearly 100 years.

By your criteria in the second part of your post it would be hard to argue that airpower was succesful in any campaign of WW2.

Cheers

Steve
 
116 posts and none of it makes me care one bit about kill ratios or any kill stats. I couldnt care less who shot down who I love aircraft but stats leave me cold. Its like sport I love to watch and cheer for my team but knowing how many tries, runs or goals they scored in the 1906 season doesnt increase my enjoyment of the game.

Sorry chaps but numbers and percentages dont do it for me.
 
fastmongrel said:
Sorry chaps but numbers and percentages dont do it for me.
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Which is of course fine. However the statistics and analyses of them form a vital part in understanding any conflict. All arms include some sort of statistical unit. These vary from the Operational Research Sections on the ground,trying to find out if what a particular unit or organisation is doing is actually working,through to massive enterprises like the Strategic Bombing Survey,attempting to do the same thing retrospectively and on a much broader scale.

How can we hope to understand ,say,the attempted Stalingrad air bridge without knowing the numbers of aircraft available,operational ready rates,tonnages freighted etc ?
It is no accident that much of this data was carefully noted by the Germans at the time.
Statistics can be dull themselves but they enlighten an otherwise murky picture.

Cheers

Steve
 
fastmongrel said:
Your right stona but the continued rehashing of Fighter claims losses never gets anywhere and usually ends up as a nationalistic pissing contest.
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It does,primarily because the relevant data doesn't exist or there are just too many variables to make a definite assessment.People resort to bias unsupported by evidence or "cherry pick" facts to support their position,which is a shame.

Cheers

Steve
 

hi steve

i confess i dont quite follow you here. i think you are saying that losses do matter. if so, I agree, but aircraft losses and aircrew losses as a percentage of the nations total losses are usually insignificant compared to the effects that airpower can have. For example, say you lose 100 a/c to sink an enemy fleet, but have aircraft and ships left to complete your forces task(s). for most nations, the loss of 100 a/c is a heavy price, but the loss of the fleet for the enemy, and beyond that (i expect) a key position or resource (eg a convoy or a strategic airbase) is a loss far more serious than the aircrew and machines. In the context of wwii aircraft were viewed as cheap and expendable. largely that is a true statement. What makesw losses even less relevant to determining the effectiveness of airpower is that most losses....about 70% statistically for the west, were unavoidable. as soon as you put large numbers of aircraft in the air, on combat operations under wartime combat conditions, you have immediately accepted that your force will lose a percentage of those aircraft. if those losses are acceptable and sustainable, and you achieve the mission that they set out to do, such sacrifices from the national interst POV is acceptable.

Losses due to enemy fighter activity, in most cases (there are significant exceptions) dont have any significant effect on overall loss rates. thats a statistical fact. you have to look harder, because we have all been brought up on this propagandist notion that fighters in the WWII context were somehow omnipotent. they werent, except in some very specific and specialised circumstances. where the battle is decentralised, across a broad front, like the eastern front, as a generalization such losses from enemy fightes is not a significant factor. the soviets relaized this, the germans did not.....

Stalingrad was of course one of those exceptions that has to be acknowledged. why was it different compared to most othe battles in the east. Simply that the VVS for once was able to concentrate over a specific geographical point and thereby achieve the concentration of effort needed to be decisive. as it was, the activities of the VVS to shutting down the air bridge into the belegured city was still secondary to weather and operational losses for the LW. The germans lost far more aircraft to weather, navigational error, landing and take off crashes, flak and the like than they ever did to soviet fighters. even Soviet flak was more effective at briging german planes down than the Red fighters. I would go so far as to say that the german air supply effort would have failed, regardless of any efforts by the VVS fighters. The conclusion is, therfore, that VVS fighters were not significant to the outcome of the battle....they just added to the german misery

As far as interpreting my statements as airpower not being effective, far from it. I actually believe that whilst airpower cannot, of itself win wars, wars cannot be won without it. Airpower is,, in other words, a critical force multiplier, that modern western armies and countries cannot do without.

The "airpower is expendable" argument does not wash in the post war environment....aircraft have vastly increased in cost and complexity, aircrew have become highly trained, hard to replace personnel, so any loss is a serious loss. Under those circumstances, loss rates do take on a greater significance
 

Before responding, please consider the adtual definition of the term 'straw man', so we're at least on the same page on that: "fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position."

Moreover in the same vein, consider my actual argument, really try to please, if the consistent strawmen and tangents aren't deliberate but I just haven't really gotten it across.

I say fighter-fighter kill ratio's are an important measure of fighter unit effectiveness, in air combat.
-not the only measure of fighter unit effectiveness, which includes both a/c and all human aspects of the fighter unit itself (training, tactics, leadership, morale, etc)
-not a direct measure of the combat effectiveness of fighter airplanes, though in some cases we can make certain inferences in this regard (eg if units of the same or ostensibly similar air arms using two different fighter a/c types have significantly different kill ratio's v the same or similar opposing fighter forces, we might infer that differing effectiveness of the two fighter types is part of the reason; OTOH if completely different air arms use different fighters v completely different opposition, we probably can't make any such inference)
-not the measure of all larger issues of air power, and certainly not of completely unrelated things like the success of uescorted bombers, obviously unrelated to *fighter-fighter* kill ratio's.
By point
1. I guess you mean fighter losses to opposing fighters are a small % of losses. But sometimes this was true, other times not. It's certainly not axiomatic. One contentious debate of the past is Zeroes v Spitfires over Darwin in 1943 and we saw in that case going through the JNAF 202nd AG's combat reports one by one that *none* of their losses were due to known operational/accidental causes. All 4 a/c lost in the campaign failed to return or ditched in cases where there were (multiple) Spitfire claims to account for (each of) them, and we assume all 4 were air combat losses.

And, in cases where fighter units suffered heavy losses to AA on ground attack missions, this seems to me pretty apparently not related to 'fighter unit effectiveness in air combat'.
2. Straw man, meaning, I never once said in any of these discussions, ever, that fighter-fighter kill ratio's were strictly a function of a/c performance.
3. That statement itself is a straw man, by you, meaning, I never said 'kill loss ratios can act independantly so as to neutralize the effects of airpower.' whatever that even means...
4. *You* said airpower alone didn't *determine* the outcome of wars, and I said that was obvious. I never said it didn't *affect* the outcome of wars, and in any case it's irrelevant to my argument about fighter-fighter kill ratio's, please review it again, above.
5. This is again irrelevant to my argument. If fighters and fighter units are a small enough factor in the outcome of wars, we needn't discuss fighters or fighter units at all. But if we do discuss them, to the *extent they are important*, then fighter-fighter kill ratio's are an important measure of fighter unit air combat effectiveness. This kind of argument you make is simply illogical, sorry. One side says 'metric X is important in determining the effectiveness of unit Y' and you respond, 'the effectiveness of unit Y is not that dominant in larger issue Z'. The response just doesn't address the first point.
6. Again Finnish war aims are one topic, the effectiveness of Finnish fighter units another topic. Discussing the latter topic does not logically imply that it somehow substitutes for or overrides the first topic. But if we discuss Finnish fighter unit effectiveness, one salient measure is the typically high fighter-fighter exchange ratio they achieved v the Soviets.
7. Again a straw man, meaning, I have never argued that cumulative attrition or ability to make good on it is not an important factor in the outcomes of air campaigns. That said, if the LW fighter units had been less relatively effective, had had a 1:1 or even unfavorable air combat exchange ratio v Soviet fighter units, the LW's problems would have been a lot bigger.
8. Organizational and training problems in fighter units are part of fighter unit effectiveness, of which fighter-fighter kill ratio is one important measure.
9. A good illustration of the fallacy of that argument is RAF fighter sweeps over France in 1940-42. The RAF fighters suffered a consistently, sometime highly, unfavorable kill ratio v LW fighters based on their 'confirmed victories'. Fooling oneself about the kill ratio might instead lead one to believe the enemy has resources to replace losses that he doesn't actually have, because most of the losses you assume aren't actually happening. But in that case Ultra intercepts allowed the British to realize that the confirmed victories were a serious exaggeration of actual German fighter losses, though not which particular claims were overclaims, and of course nobody's personal victory credits were ever revoked on that basis, they all still stand officially. But still the British could plan and proceed on a realistic assessment of the actual kill ratio. But according the logic of your argument, that kill ratio only mattered because the British were able through code breaking to estimate it accurately. If they had had to go just on their pilots 'confirmed' claims, and maintained an unrealistic view of RAF's actual kill ratio v LW in that period, it wouldn't have mattered, because it wouldn't have seemed as much a problem... I think the illogic of that is pretty clear, I hope it is anyway.

Joe
 
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