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I'm trying to quantify in some way why it's often said on this forum and elsewhere that by 1944 a 'kill' in the Pacific theater was on average easier to obtain (not that I feel one way or the other)
Interesting. So the trend from late 1943 onwards was the systematic withdrawal of seasoned pilots from forward combat areas, replacing them with disposable Kamikaze recruits. That dynamic says a lot about the general eroding quality of the Japanese pilots encountered during the allied island hoping campaign. Do you happen to know roughly how many of these raw recruits eventually ended up in a Kamikaze unit?On the other hand, veteran fighters were asked to return to the homeland for the future homeland battle
That is a given. The quality of training of Japanese pilots declined through the war as it did in Germany and also UK in 1940.Exactly and because of this they were basically sitting ducks, easy for allied fighters to engage and shoot down. Obviously this allowed carrier air wings to run up sizable scores against them. And while they weren't trained as pilots in the traditional sense, their planes were still counted as an aerial victory in the same fashion as one piloted by a seasoned combat veteran. I'm now wondering how wide-spread Kamikaze flight training was and did it eventually surpass the training provided to traditional pilots? If it did that would definitely lower the perceived aptitude of the traditionally trained Japanese combat pilot.
There are many facets to it. A German "expert" may have had his home airfield bombed, he can still land somewhere else or bail out behind his own lines. A carrier pilot just has nowhere to go whether he is on the ship or in the air. Another facet is that the German experten were as adept at protecting themselves on the ground as they were in the air. Having been promoted as national heroes they used their political clout to minimise the danger to themselves. I have no idea if this was possible in Japan or the IJN but to my mind the top German aces did while those with no clout at all were used in suicide missions against bridges.That's a very good point. So in essence the rates of attrition that the Japanese experienced in these singular battles was much greater than the rather slow erosion of the skilled pilot pool found in Germany during the war.
Well then, I welcome you to the forum, if you hang around you may read many things you hadn't read before. There are many better informed than me. Here is anotherThat's a very interesting link, I never heard of those particular suicide missions planned by the German Luftwaffe.
Do you happen to know roughly how many of these raw recruits eventually ended up in a Kamikaze unit?