Kill Ratios (2 Viewers)

Joe

You are talking about fighter effeectiveness, i am talking about airpower effectiveness. Theren lies the reason for pur diferent opinions

Dress up the term 'straw man" however you like, in my country that is an extremely demeaning and derogatory statement to make. I do take offense to you using it. My position is not a straw man, and you know it, you just want to ratchet up the heat to hopefully start a fire. you should know by now that I am hard to ignite, though i will rfute your essentially proagandist claims every time i see them.


There are too many points in your last post to motovate a full response from me, but a couple of things I do need to refute or clarify

This is again irrelevant to my argument. If fighters and fighter units are a small enough factor in the outcome of air wars, or wars in total, 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 answer the first point, it's talking past it

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Insofar as fighter unit effectiveness goes, loss ratios are relevant. insofar as the role of fightes are concerned, they are a factor, but not the only factor. Reason i say that is that fighters dont have to (always) actually shoot anything down in order to be effective. Fighters are sent somewhere for a purpose, usually to protect something. A good case in point might be the fighters protecting "pedestal". Using your argument as the measure of success, the allied fighters did okay, but not outstandingly. they shot down 28 Axis aircraft, and lost 31 (19 in air combat) in return. However that is not the measure success that should be applied. the fighters primary mission in that operation was to get a convoy through to Malta, and also protect the remaining carriers in the RN TG. They were outsnadingly successful on both counts. the success of the convoy operation IMO ssealed the fait of Panzerarmee Afrika and ledd to the losses of literally hundreds of thousands of axis tropps, and the eventual defeat of the Italians. not directly, but because of the force multiplieying effect of the airpower based on malta. that effect was made posible by the efforts of those 70 fighters, but had nothing to do with their kill ratios.

I am not saying that kill ratios for measuring fighters importance is not a factor i am saying it is not the only measure, and am also saying that kill loss ratios as a measure or airpower effeectiveness is generally unimportant.

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 an even or unfavorable air combat exchange ratio v Soviet fighter units, the LW's problems would have been a lot bigger.

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And again i think you are wrong, and this is no strwaw man argument. The efforts of the LW fighters, courageous and impressive as they are, on the eastern front they had no effect. because the front was so exapansive, soviet losses whilst heavy, were never critical to the outcome of the battle. Soviet losses were due far more to issues other than the activities of the JGs, moreover, as time progressed the JGs were too thinly spread to make any difference to the outcome. This where it gets complicated....whilst they were inneffective, they were still needed....without them the Soviets could have attacked heer positions at will. So, rather like rations, ammunition and overcoats they were needed on the eastern front, but never were decisive or critical to the outcome. There was a reason why most JGs were used mostly as Jabos on the EF

I guess you mean what you said at the end of that bit, that fighter losses to causes other than opposing fighters are a small %. But sometimes this was true, other times not, it's certainly not axiomatic. Again a 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/accident causes. All 4 a/c lost in the campaign failed to return or ditched in cases where there were (a multiple) of Spitfire claims to account for them, and we reasonably assume all 4 were air combat losses

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We have had this debate before and one of the fundamental problems with your position on this is that not all the records are available on the japanese side, and you simply will not accept that there is even the slightest possibility that some errors may exist in those japanese records that you have consulted. However, having said that, i am not denying that the losses over darwin were one sided and a heavy loss for the RAAF and USAAC forces involved. Iam also not going to debate with you again the dogmas that you hold to, but suffice it to say that my silence on the matter is not an acceptance of your research....its a resignation that your belief in your own infallibilities is unshakeable. What is contentious is that spitfires were not only engaging Zekes (and infact not just the 202 kokutai either), something you and i have locked horns over before today. The weaknesses of the spitfire are pretty well brought out in these encounters, and in fact reinforce what i am arguing with you about. Overwhelmingly, Spitfire losses had little to do with enemy action and a lot to do with the operational limitations of the type.......how many spits were lost simply because they ran out of fuel, or crashed on the rough strips that they were based on???? In other words, the losses were going to happen as soon as the type left the ground in that environment, regardless of the types other effectiveness. This says volumes about what happens to fighters when they just fly.....they suffer losses just like everyone. In the end, also, the Spitfires were there for a reason, and they achieved that mission. darwin as a base was protected, and pressure on the japanese in the indies was maintained. That IMO is a far relevant measure of success or failure than some questionable kill loss ratio between the fighters. But again, it s because you want to narrow the argument and look solely at fighter effectiveness in air combat, whereas i am looking at overall airpower effectiveness

Kill loss ratios are irrelevant if they are not of concern to the protagonists suffering them

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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 the losses you assume aren't actually happening. But in that case Ultra intercepts allowed the British to realize that the confirmed victories were serious exaggerations of actual German losses, though not which particular ones were overclaims, and of course nobody's personal victory credits were ever revoked on that basis, they all still stand officially. But the British could plan and proceed on a realistic basis. 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, the kill ratio wouldn't have mattered, because it wouldn't have seemed a problem... I think the illogic there is pretty clear, I sure hope so anyway

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How on earth does what you have said in reply relate to the statement I have made. And sorry to burst your comfortable little bubble, but in fact the claimed heavy losses suffered by the RAF at that time in those operations only reinforces my argument about how irrelevant kill loss ratios can be, not the other way around. The stated strategic purposes of those sweeps was to draw up the LW, and thereby lend the greates possible assistance to the Russians. The second objectives was to force LW bomber and antishipping units away from the coast and thereby reduce losses to shipping around the british isles. Without going into the detail the RAF was highly successful in that. thirdly, a stated objective was to close the channel to axis shipping whilst keeping it open for themselves. again successful. lastly the objectives was to deny the axis easy access to British airspace, and to gain air superiority over the british isles and the coastal regions of western europe. The RAF was fully successful in terms of controlling british skies, partially successful in gaining control of the skies over western europe. If kill loss ratios had played any part in strategic thinking, the RAF would have abandoned those sweeps in a flash, they didnt,partly because of raw british pig headedness, but also because the losses were serving a higher, more important purpose, which was judged worth the cost....cheap and expendable....remeber that...

stona said:

1. 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.

2. 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.

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1. If we have the date to accurately collate a/c kill ratio's, we have the data to accurately collate pilot loss ratio's in air combat. The latter is generally easier in fact, because it doesn't involve the same judgement calls of whether crashlanded shot up planes were repaired and whether they should count or not either way. And even in the absence of complete records, comrades and families remembered who had been killed and usually dates and general circumstances, and they would also be included in higher level records which didn't deal with particular a/c losses (records of decorations and so forth). For example we know pretty accurately which JAAF fighter pilots were lost in each of the early Pac War campaigns, the names, dates and general circumstances. We don't know in all those campaigns the JAAF fighter a/c losses by incident. For example in the first Philippine campaign that info doesn't exist except for one combat, though it does for JNAF fighter units in that campaign and every other one into 1943. Therfore we can't state a figther-fighter kill ratio for USAAF v JAAF in PI, though we could state a pilot exchange rate in combat.

So I don't disagree with this point exactly, but don't see a big difference in the process of assembling accurate plane v pilot loss ratio's. Virtually any time you can do the first, you can do the second, and each person could decide which is more relevant. Though again I would reiterate, I would look at fighter-fighter kill ratio's as *one* important measure of which unit was the more effective in air combat, and I think it's of interest and relevant to that how effective each side was in downing opposing fighters, not killing pilots per se.

The latter tends to be affected more by specific circumstances (who is farther over whose territory for example, since POW pilots are 'lost' for the duration) and extraneous factors (who has a good air-sea rescue service for example, again related to distance). This is exactly some people's (albeit situational logic) complaint about a/c kill ratio's, that they are (supposedly) too much affected by specific circumstances not directly related to fighter unit effectiveness (though actually in many cases the prevailing kill ratio of one opponent v another were shown not to vary dramatically in different circumstances, eg. F4F v Zero in carrier battles v G'canal defense, two pretty different circumstances, was essentially the same; Bf109 ratio's over British fighters in Med which were actually lower in the supposedly 'advantageous situation' as escorts over Malta than as interceptors mainly over the Western Desert).

But was a higher pilot loss rate despite a 1:1 kill ratio important? (again over G'canal that was the case, and in New Guinea summer 1942 the JNAF had a big kill ratio advantage but a definitely narrower pilot loss ratio advantage) sure, nobody said to look at only one thing ever.

2. I don't know which info you believe is not available. Detailed two sided accounts from original records of combats in the WW's and Korea, making generally quite clear which a/c and pilots were lost in which circumstances, are certainly very often available, though not always.

Joe

parsifal said:

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

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The same applied in WW2.
At 1943 prices a Lancaster crewman cost £10,000 pounds to train. The aircraft cost about £40,000. To arm,fuel and service it for a typical mission cost £13,000. It has been estimated that the cost of a typical Lancaster sortie to the British economy was a staggering £100,000.
Was this worth it? The war would probably have been won without a single Lancaster sortie. Imagine those resources being spent elsewhere.
Cheers
Steve

stona said:

The same applied in WW2.
At 1943 prices a Lancaster crewman cost £10,000 pounds to train. The aircraft cost about £40,000. To arm,fuel and service it for a typical mission cost £13,000. It has been estimated that the cost of a typical Lancaster sortie to the British economy was a staggering £100,000.
Was this worth it? The war would probably have been won without a single Lancaster sortie. Imagine those resources being spent elsewhere.
Cheers
Steve

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Ah nope...it was trending that way, but there is no comparison to modern aircraft costs and pilot training and those of WWII. Whats the average cost of the JSF, last time i looked it was 130 million US per copy or something obscene like that. If an average wage is assumed to be $50000 pa, thats the equivalent of 260 years of wages

back in the day of the lanc, the average yearly wages (in Australia) was about 500 pounds per year. That means that it took 80 years of average wages to field a lanc.

The effectiveness of the bombing campaign is a whle diffrent world of debate, but suffice it to say that despite the losses, it was deemed to be worth the cost. i do have some doubts as to the wisdom of that decision, but just the same, the losses were not sufficient to deter the british. That reinforces the argument that kill/loss ratioos were not important in the strategic decision, not the other way around. and certainly, if the decision to send the bombers over might be questionable, how much moreso is it for the germans to build and maintain forces to counter it.

dont forget the losses being suffered by the NJGs fighting them, and the costs in the flak firing at them.....10-20% of the NJGs force structure was simply falling out of the sky each month combatting those heavy bombers (amounting to about 37% of the RMs fighter budget overall) , and 16000 rounds per kill at an average cost of 85RM per round. 400 barrel failures per month (not sure of the cost) The flak expenditure alone is 13000 RM per kill for a start, then we have the costs of the flak artillerie, and attrition there...maybe 4000 rm per kill . and then there is the actual damage they the bombers caused.....about 17-25% of german GDP was lost to RAF bombing in 1944-5.

stona said:

The same applied in WW2.
At 1943 prices a Lancaster crewman cost £10,000 pounds to train. The aircraft cost about £40,000. To arm,fuel and service it for a typical mission cost £13,000. It has been estimated that the cost of a typical Lancaster sortie to the British economy was a staggering £100,000.
Was this worth it? The war would probably have been won without a single Lancaster sortie. Imagine those resources being spent elsewhere.
Cheers
Steve

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The only consistent is 'arm,fuel and service'. For every sortie the Lanc flew the cost of the a/c and training of the crew would be lower. If the a/c flew 10 sorties then the cost would be £4,000 per sortie and training £1,000.

The Brewster Buffalo is commonly known as a major disappointment and failure, but the kill ratio suggests the opposite! Despite being vastly underrated in American service, in Finnish service it had a very high kill ratio of 32.1 aganst the Soviets. Major coincidence? Maybe, but highly unlikely. Maybe the Buffalo is not so bad after all.

A rough calculation of relative prices,based on average salary,house prices etc gives the value of a brand new Lancaster in 1943 as about £1.6million.

7377 were built at a cost of roughly £12,000,000,000. That's 12 of our UK billions. How does that compare with the cost of the relative handful of modern fighters any air force will order?
Britain will now purchase a mere 40 F-35s at a cost of £5,200,000,000 (5.2 of our billions). I believe the Australian government has "postponed" its first order. Very sensible IMHO.

We need to compare the total investment,not unit cost.

In a major cold war conflict,as envisaged by legions of cold war planners you would start with a certain number of assets with little prospect of producing more in the timeframe of the conflict.

Cheers

Steve

hurricane55 said:

The Brewster Buffalo is commonly known as a major disappointment and failure, but the kill ratio suggests the opposite! Despite being vastly underrated in American service, in Finnish service it had a very high kill ratio of 32.1 aganst the Soviets. Major coincidence? Maybe, but highly unlikely. Maybe the Buffalo is not so bad after all.

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Unfortunately, that's the "claim ratio" (ie claims to losses) not the kill ratio. As we've discussed at length on this thread, determining the actual kill-to-loss ratio is almost impossible unless you can state with 100% certainty the causes for losses on both sides in every single engagement. Even then there are differences of opinion (at least in this thread) over what constitutes a "kill" - is an aircraft that is damaged in combat but returns to base only to crash there a kill? Per the "standard" definition, it's not but it's still a loss to that side.

stona said:

A rough calculation of relative prices,based on average salary,house prices etc gives the value of a brand new Lancaster in 1943 as about £1.6million.

7377 were built at a cost of roughly £12,000,000,000. That's 12 of our UK billions. How does that compare with the cost of the relative handful of modern fighters any air force will order?
Britain will now purchase a mere 40 F-35s at a cost of £5,200,000,000 (5.2 of our billions). I believe the Australian government has "postponed" its first order. Very sensible IMHO.

We need to compare the total investment,not unit cost.
In a major cold war conflict,as envisaged by legions of cold war planners you would start with a certain number of assets with little prospect of producing more in the timeframe of the conflict.

Cheers

Steve

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Hard to compare in that perspective as most of the cost of a modern combat aircraft involves avionics. You also have to consider the life span of the Lancaster (the example you showed) compared to the investment. You can try to make the same comparison with the B-52(50 years in service and counting) but would also have to factor in costs for modifications.

It's a bit simplistic to compare costs and investment of WW2 aircraft to modern combat aircraft where you have aircraft being built today who's ejection seat is more complicated than an entire airframe of the same era!

FLYBOYJ said:

It's a bit simplistic to compare costs and investment of WW2 aircraft to modern combat aircraft where you have aircraft being built today who's ejection seat is more complicated than an entire airframe of the same era!

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I couldn't agree more.

We'd have to start a thread on the economics of WW2 to make any kind of meaningful analysis and that would involve a LOT of statistics

Cheers

Steve

The whole point of that subdiscussion about cost was that a/c in the modern environment are no longer "cheap and expendable". They werent exactly cheap in WWII either, but I think the point is made that compared to the modern situation they were a lot cheaper (per unit) as a proportion of available resources......Each loss counted for less as a proportion of total resources than a modern day airframe and its crew

What one must include when talking about the value of airframes and pilots are

1. Pilots are always harder to replace that airframes a fighter may be built is a couple of days a good pilot needs 5 weeks of just basic training.
2. In a war cost is not an issue as its all in or lose the war.

Bill

Agree with your first point but not your second. "All in" essentially means leveraging the entire national capacity for the war effort but if your country's total capacity is less than your opponents then it will, ultimately, become an issue and you start cutting corners by reducing training or using non-strategic materials (sounds an awful lot like certain countries during WW2 to me!).

wmaxt said:

1. Pilots are always harder to replace that airframes a fighter may be built is a couple of days a good pilot needs 5 weeks of just basic training.
Bill

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Yes and no.
A WW2 fighter could be built relatively quickly (days) but it was a very simple machine.
A modern combat aircraft takes very much longer. That's why I said that in the context of a modern,cold war type of conflict you would not be able to replace assets in the timeframe of the conflict. Your initial investment in aircraft was all you'd have to fight the war with.

Cheers

Steve

stona said:

Yes and no.
A WW2 fighter could be built relatively quickly (days) but it was a very simple machine.
A modern combat aircraft takes very much longer. That's why I said that in the context of a modern,cold war type of conflict you would not be able to replace assets in the timeframe of the conflict. Your initial investment in aircraft was all you'd have to fight the war with.

Cheers

Steve

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Not really - depending on the airframe and availability of long lead time items, it's a lot quicker than you think. In the 1980s I seen 2 P-3Cs a month being built.

A newly minted combat pilot these days takes a year to complete training at the expense of about 7 million dollars and I think those numbers have grown some...

I thought this thread was about fighter kill ratios, not airpower effectiveness or the cost of aircraft and crew training. JoeB, me, and a few others feel that the kill ratio is a good measure of the effectiveness of the combination of aircraft, pilot training / skill / tactical situation at the time, and weather ... all combined, plus maybe the relative effectiveness of the enemy's fighters and pilots, etc. assuming we can get the data reliably. Some we can and some we can't.

Parsifal and others argue it is not a measure of anything; we simply disagree. I think we'll have to just disagree since we feel that kill ratio does indicate something to us, and it's OK to disagree. I don't really think either of us will convince the other to change views.

Somehow we got from kill ratios to the Brewster Buffalo. Buffnut argues that the Fins deserve theie own kill ratio due to their claims, despite the fact that they only operated 44 Buffalos out of the more than 500 produced. I responded that any "kill ratio" should be from a sample that comprises at least 75 % of the fighters employed in combat. We still get arguments about the Fin's kill ratio being the number for all the Buffalos. Sorry, won't wash. The Fins may have been wildly successful, but the other 90+% of Buffalos weren't, and thier record covers a LOT more ground with the Buffalo. I use the kll ratio for the Hellcat un US Navy service because they operated a sample of about 90% of the Hellcats employed in WWII, and shot down several thousand enemy planes ... 5,271 to be exact. It wasn't a sample of 50 Hellcats, it was most of them, about 11,000 in fact. The British operated abouit 1,263 Hellcats out of 12,263 produced, so their experience with Hellcats was, on a percantage basis alone, about what the Fins percentage of Buffalos experience was.

The Netherlands East Indies operated Buffalos at the start of the war. They took delivery of 71; just less than twice the number the Fins had. They achieved some 11 - 15 kills, lost 34+ in air combat, and 15+ on the ground plus some 5 or so operationally. That kill ratio in air-to-air combat alone, again, almost twice the percentage sample of the Fins, is about 0.32 : 1; or 1 / 100 as good as the Fins experienced. The Buffalos didn't serve past the March 1942 surrender of the Netherlans East Indies, but the balance that were rescuable were transferred to the USAAF.

The Buffalo in US service didn't survivie much past Midway in combat use; it was taken out of service as rapidly as possible. They were transferred back to the States and used as advanced fighter trainers.

The Fins could probably have shot down the early Soviet aircraft if they were flying Tiger Moths. The fact that they flew Buffalos does not pull the performance of the rest of the Buffalo up to even acceptable levels, but it DOES show what can be done using good pilots flying poor aircraft against a completely ineffective foe flying outdated equipment.

FLYBOYJ said:

Not really - depending on the airframe and availability of long lead time items, it's a lot quicker than you think. In the 1980s I seen 2 P-3Cs a month being built.

A newly minted combat pilot these days takes a year to complete training at the expense of about 7 million dollars and I think those numbers have grown some...

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It took Bae Systems more than a year to knock out a Tornado!

That is not a government stastistic but a comment from my brother in law who used to build and overhaul them.

Steve

stona said:

It took Bae Systems more than a year to knock out a Tornado!

That is not a government stastistic but a comment from my brother in law who used to build and overhaul them.

Steve

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What was the contract flow rate? What was the production flow rate if the line was accelerated? Lockheed by contract was told to accelerate the P-3C production flow around 1981 if I remember correctly. We could have done as many as 4 a month if long lead time items were available. Normally we would deliver one every 45 days.

Just because a company is only producing one aircraft a year doesn't mean it could not be produced quicker. Production flow rates are contract driven depending on lead time times and the customer's ability to deliver progress payments for the aircraft being produced.

BTW, I worked on the P-3, L1011 and B-2 production lines so I speak from personal experience.

I didn't mean they produced one a year,just that each one took a year. I know there were problems and delays waiting for components and sub-assemblies to come in from other parts of the group. Panavia is a European consortium,not a single company.
Cheers
Steve

Kill ratios can be very badly skewed by the quality of the opposing aircraft and / or the quality of the opposition pilots and their tactics.
Hence the Bf109 had some good kill ratios - against bi-planes in Spain and Poland fe example.
Yes it is a superb fighter but benefited from being before its time / ahead of most of the other current fighters.
It also benefited from poor RAF tactics - use of Vic formation rather than finger four. New pilots often were lost because they were trying to hold formation rather than looking for enemy machines.
Also in the Pacific, the Japanese pilots sometimes took on antiquated planes and poor tactics - and hence had lots of success.
The boot was firmly on the other foot at the Turkey shoot.
So kill ratios are only a very crude measure of an aircrafts ability.