P-39 D Aircobra vs. Me-109

FLYBOYJ said:

1. you're missing something there Joe - you're showing losses by campaign - what about the day-to-day operations, patrols, sweeps etc. out side the major campaigns

2. Oh and BTW, I don't think pilot rotation had anything to do with this...

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1. No that's everything, just grouped by period and area, minus a few killed in accidents in Japan. The scale of the 1942 Pacific air war just wasn't that big. It also includes fighter pilots killed outside their a/c (dozen or so at Midway, others here and there), though doesn't include Zeroes destroyed in air combat but whose pilots survived, which wasn't very common early on, but became somewhat more common in the second half of '42. Anyway the critical Japanese problem was pilots. It's also not necessarily 100% exhaustive but probably close (for example if checked against day to day ops in "Bloody Shambles" it will agree for those areas/periods).

To give more context, the JNAF was estimated to have had a total of around 3,500 pilots Dec 7 '41, (Peattie, "Sunburst") so probably well over 500 qualified fighter pilots. Their training system graduated 389 new fighter pilots in 1942 (again Hata/Izawa lists). So that ~258 fighter pilot loss given above was quite signficant, though statements sometimes seen that 'most' JNAF fighter pilots were killed by the end of '42 are exaggerated.

2. Well that was somebody else's point, and seemed like he was referring to Med/North Africa campaigns v Luftwaffe. There are cases though in Pac War where lack of 'institutional memory' played a role too, though it wasn't the major explanation of anything IMO.

Joe

how do i post fourms?

What the hell are you talking about? You are posting in a forum.

If you have a problem with how to do something, send a PM to a moderator and we will help you.

Maybe he really is wanting to know is how to post a new thread. If so, just go to the main page (under aviation), go to the bottom where there is a "button" to post a new thread. Push and go....

Great info JoeB, thanks!

thanks joe

For a first hand account on a Soviet pilot who flew P40 and P39 in combat:

Conversations with N.Golodnikov

I would also like to address the supposition that the Soviet pilots grossly exageratted their kills. (it is also mentioned in the above linked interview)

Up till late1942, a soviet pilot would not be awarded with a kill unless the crash site was positively identified. All awarded kills had to be in friendly territory, anything shot down behind the lines simply was not counted, under any circumstance. Evidence of this is found when looking at early war kill records, by the fact that individual models are listed very accurately ie 109E7 rather than just 109. This is because they were recovering the serial number plates off the downed aircraft.

Later in the war they used a variety of methods to determine kills; and the requirements were not as strict.

I also find in interesting that the P39 is so often stated to be a low altitude plane. The Soviets considered it to be a high alt fighter, (high being a relative term).
During IL2 escort missions, the P39's had top cover, La5's were next, and Yaks on the bottom. When escorting higher flying Pe2's, they tried to use P39's. This may have been partly due to the P39 having longer range than Soviet built fighters.

claidemore said:

I would also like to address the supposition that the Soviet pilots grossly exageratted their kills. (it is also mentioned in the above linked interview)

Up till late1942, a soviet pilot would not be awarded with a kill unless the crash site was positively identified. All awarded kills had to be in friendly territory, anything shot down behind the lines simply was not counted, under any circumstance. Evidence of this is found when looking at early war kill records, by the fact that individual models are listed very accurately ie 109E7 rather than just 109. This is because they were recovering the serial number plates off the downed aircraft.

Later in the war they used a variety of methods to determine kills; and the requirements were not as strict.

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Claidemore, I've never seen a complete analysis of Soviet claims and German losses in WWII, even for a sub period, but I've looked pretty carefully at the same question in the Korean War. In that case the Soviets used nominally quite strict claim verfication procedures including later (in that war) requiring their own wreck evidence (earlier they used their allies' statements), as well gun camera evidence used throughout, and it still didn't prevent serious overclaiming: official credits to their pilots were several times the actual UN air combat losses. In fact, there's little discernable difference in accuracy between the period using allied statements and the period using Soviet wreck inspection teams in North Korea. So I start out tending to doubt the situation was dramatically different in WWII, especially considering the ratio of credits to enemy losses was about the same in the war immediately preceding WWII (Soviet-Japanese war of 1939, though I don't know if the procedures were nominally strict in that case).

Also at times and in theaters of WWII Allied units were said to verify claims with wrecks, and overclaiming didn't always seem to be affected in those cases either (AVG claims for example were said to be verified by wrecks but Japanese losses were about 40% of their claims, no more accurate than Allied units of the same period which didn't claim to have counted wrecks).

When you think about it, there's really no way to tell if nominally tight claim standards were really being followed, except to examine opposing records, which of course one side couldn't generally do during a war (and as we know, partisans of claims of particular countries' airmen claim, and often seem to thoroughly convince themselves, that the opposing loss records are understated, even decades later, even with usually no real evidence besides 'their' side's claims and *theoretically* tight verification standards).

Joe

Joe,
Couldn't agree more, I'm definately not trying to say that the Soviets didn't have overclaim problems.
I just wanted to point out that a climate of intentional overclaiming did not exist, and that in fact they tried to keep accurate records.
It just seems to me that too many people tend to dismiss so many things about the Soviet war effort, either due to left over feelings from the Cold War, or due to lack of accurate information (so much info has only come out in the last 10-15 years).
Since they lost about 28 million people during WWII, and contributed so much to the final victory, I just like to see them get a fair shake.
Ok, I'll get off my soap box now! lol

Claidemore,

You've got your facts screwed, the VVS would often rely on partizans to confirm their kills. The VVS was NOT very thurough when it came to the confirmation of kills, and they weren't very accurate when it came to reporting the exact chain of events leading up to the kill of an enemy a/c or the loss of a friendly a/c. When an ace was shot down the VVS often claimed that they were completely outnumbered, 7 to 1, solo against masses of German fighters, and that this was the only reason they were shot down. German records tell otherwise however, and often there werent even 1/10th of the German a/c in the area the VVS claimed, sometimes there were none even in the vicinity what so ever, and the VVS fighter shot down certainly was never alone. The Soviets more than anyone else made extensive use of such propoganda, another example being the Battle of Kursk where thousands of Tigers were claimed destroyed, however in actual fact only 10 Tigers were actually present during the entire struggle for Kursk.

Soren:

hehe, I don't agree that my 'facts' are screwed up, though I will agree that our opinions differ.

Read some of the VVS pilot interviews, you can find them online or in books.

As for the 7 to 1 and 8 to 1 stories, why not go higher? Billy Bishop attacked 70 german fighters in WWI, shot down 5, and escaped. This story is accepted, but if he had been a soviet flyer? It would be dismissed as propoganda.

Cases of one pilot engaging superior numbers are not unusual, and the general outcome isn't hard to guess.

In the case of the VVS, their radios didn't work much of the time, if they even had them. 90% of the fighters didn't have transmitters in at least the first half of the war, if one of them spots enemy fighters bouncing them, he has no way to warn everyone else, he has to turn and engage them. Hence the 8-1 fight. (btw, this is one of the reasons for the success of the P39, it had good radios, the unit was able to fight in coordination)

Robert Johnson was all alone when his P47 had a FW190 flown by Hermann Graf? empty it's guns into him without shooting him down. So, yeah, pilots, even aces were alone sometimes. Pappy Boyington was alone when he got shot down.

I'll use two stories that I am most familiar with, Budanova and Litvyak.

Budanova was escorting Il2's, turned to engage 3 german fighters, got one, and was shot down and killed. I beleive this story, no reason not to.

Litvyak, escorting Il2's, turned and engaged eight german fighters. Disappears in clouds MIA. Her wingman, who stayed with the IL2's is the source of the story. This story is a little tougher to sell, so let's examine it.

-Could there have been eight 109's flying together? Yes.
-Could a single Yak spot and engage attacking fighters alone? Yes (no radios)
-Would 8 109's rather attack a single Yak, or a formation of IL2's? Yes.
-Would they all have attacked at once? No.
-Would 6 cover the leader and his wingman while they attacked? Yes. (usual Luft tactic)
-Could the Yak wingman count eight 109's aginst 1 Yak? Yes. (assuming he could count that high, he was a subhuman soviet after all!)

So...the story could be basically true, just the details of it might be skewed. To dismiss it as soviet propoganda, would be presumptuous.

To look at the other side of the equation: here's one example; a Luftwaffe fighter unit in the north claimed 17 planes shot down on one mission, 3 by their 'ace' commander. Turns out there were only 9 Soviet planes on the mission, two of them made it back to base intact, 3 more crash landed at the base. That means the much vaunted Luftwaffe unit actually shot down 4 planes that could realistically be confirmed. But they claimed and were awarded 17.

Once again, it is not my claim that the soviet pilot kill claims were 100% accurate, I do however maintain that they were no worse than any other nation, and given the political climate, they were actually fearful to make claims that couldn't be substantiated.

Btw, what's wrong with partisans? I like partisans, would be one myself if the situation called for it.

You need to read up on the aerial conflict in the east.

Like I said many times there weren't even 1/10th of aircraft present that the Soviets would claim, and this is documented fact. A similar example is the outrages Soviet claims at the battle of Kursk.

Sorry but the Soviets were the record holders when it came to outrages propoganda claims, and there are plenty of examples, infact let me present another quicky: The famous duel between Vasili Zaitsev and Major König/Thorvald, well it just so happens that there never was any Major König or Thorvald in Stalingrad, infact there wasn't a single scharfschütze in the city let alone a Major.

PS: The story about Budanova and Litvyak is complete hogwash as-well, read LW records and you'll realize this quickly.

claidemore said:

Once again, it is not my claim that the soviet pilot kill claims were 100% accurate, I do however maintain that they were no worse than any other nation...

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To clarify my previous post in Korea the Soviet claim accuracy *was* lower than most fighter arms in WWII, opposing losses ca. 15+% of credited victories. Whereas US/UN fighter claims in Korea were good by WWII stds (MiG losses=70+% of credited victories), which isn't directly relevant except insofar as it indicates it wasn't a matter of jet combat inherently leading to less accurate claiming than prop combat in WWII. So, Soviet KW claim accuracy might suggest something about their WWII accuracy. And as mentioned their claim accuracy in the Nomomhan War with Japan was similar, probably less than 20%.

Note, I'm comparing *fighter* claims; *bomber* defensive gunner claims were inherently a lot less accurate, 15% wouldn't be that low. But 15-20% was pretty low for WWII fighters: 25-40% was typically in a lot of cases, but some fighters arms in some periods were 50% or more, and again the 70+% or so UN Korean level was sometimes achieved or surpassed in WWII.

Another important point is that there was no 'typical claim accuracy of other nations': it varied a lot, even within a given AF in different periods of the war. Both the Brits and Germans had periods of quite accurate claims, and quite inaccurate claims, with changes in the situation (the harder pressed AF would generally claim less accurately, for one thing). The Soviet level of accuracy in Korea was relatively stable over the war, but then again the basic combat situation was relatively stable. It might have varied more in WWII.

In sum I see no evidence on which to conclude Soviet claim accuracy in WWII was typical of other AF's and anyway, which other AF, in what period of WWII?, there's a wide range.

Also I'd distinguish issues wrt to something Soren said. "Propaganda" properly refers to *publicly* claimed successes, typically *during* the war. Nobody should use WWII press releases of any country as a source for true victories or losses. I'm talking about the variance between official records of victories and losses recorded, in the unit records of each side, so 'propaganda' doesn't enter into it.

Joe

The Germans had the strictest and most thurough confirmation system of all throughout the war, the OKL demanding atleast two pilots seeing the a/c crash, gun-cam footage or confirmation by German military ground personnel.

For this reason many actual kills weren't confirmed by the OKL.

Soren said:

The Germans had the strictest and most thurough confirmation system of all throughout the war, the OKL demanding atleast two pilots seeing the a/c crash, gun-cam footage or confirmation by German military ground personnel.

For this reason many actual kills weren't confirmed by the OKL.

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Again that was the nominal rule, and LW claims in many periods of the war were good, but actual German claim accuracy still varied considerably over WWII. Nominal procedure was not the key factor.

In some periods German nightfighter claims over the Reich were ~100% accurate. Another random example is Fw190 units in North Africa (since the book, "Fw190 in North Africa" nicely lays out each claim v Allied records); about 50% accurate, still good but considerably lower. On the big one day loss of USAAF P-39's to JG77 Bf109's in Tunisia, there were 20 credits, 7 P-39's actually lost; that's a pretty typical WWII result in a furball fight, not especially good or bad. Then in 2nd half '44-end of war in West German claims were often quite inaccurate; the procedures were probably not closely followed in that highly stressed situation.

LW claims were probably considerably more accurate than Soviet on average on East front, maybe most accurate on average in West too (I'm not sure that could be proved though). But the point is though that the claim accuracy varied considerably in different circumstances as it did in other AF's, and the nominal claim procedure was only one factor in the overall accuracy.

Joe

Some valid points JoeB, no doubt, but I'm not talking about claims, I'm talking about confirmed kills. The confirmation criteria layed down by the OKL was followed strictly until the very end, hence many actual kills stayed claims and weren't confirmed, esp. near the end.

When it comes to being accurate no'one is quite as thurough as the Germans, they're perfectionists.

Soren said:

Some valid points JoeB, no doubt, but I'm not talking about claims, I'm talking about confirmed kills. The confirmation criteria layed down by the OKL was followed strictly until the very end, hence many actual kills stayed claims and weren't confirmed, esp. near the end.

When it comes to being accurate no'one is quite as thurough as the Germans, they're perfectionists.

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Soren, meticulous they were - no question. Having said that I have spent a lot of time cross referencing 'kills vs losses' for the 355th and the 8th AF.

I would offer one case for thought. If we believe in the thoroughness of Dr. Prien's work (which I do) and by extrapolation Tony Wood's recounting of LW awards then the mission of April 24, 1944 is an example where the LW awards were nearly 50% in error -despite the rigor of the process.

They 'overawarded' the Mustang scores by nearly 3:1 in total and 4:1 with respect to fighter vs fighter scores. I'm not yet sure what the 8th AF overclaim ratio is because Dr. Prien's works don't break out losses to fighters vs bombers. The LW process 'overawarded' the bombers losses 27 by about 2:1 and that includes the 9 ships that landed in Switzerland, landed in Sweden, ditched in Channel and went down to flak.

Interestingly enough the JG11 claims of three Mustangs in Mannheim area matches exactly what the actual losses were in that area.

But take the 11 Mustangs awarded to III./JG26, JG3 and JG27 for the Augsburg Muhldorf, Oberpfaffenhoffen area for example. 8 were awarded on basis of film, three more with no reference, presumably witness, but only four were lost to fighters. Two were lost to mid air collisions with Me 110s that they shot down - but those claims are not even on the rolls, presumably because there were no surviving witnesses?

I have the details, thanks to help from Eric, and I presented the 355th awards and 357th awards as well as the 1st BD actual losses for all causes on Mike Williams site if you want to look at them.

To summarize - I KNOW the LW claims process was a good one, so was 8th AF, and I know that both awards systems produced more awards by some considerable margin than actaul losses experienced by the other side.

I found one of the root causes via Dr Prien, who confirmed that if a Germand aircraft crash landed due to an air battle, it wasn't on the rolls as 'destroyed' unless it was in fact salvaged on the spot. More likely it wouldn't show up as anything but '60% damaged' and might or might not reference whether it was flak or air damage.

I know another source of a faulty award was the dreaded example of 'The Fw was last seen spinning out of control and he could not have recovered" - well some did. etc, etc so the 8th AF awards systems were faulty in that respect as well as awarding a 'destroyed' for an a/c they forced to crash land - but later repaired by Germans.

At any rate neither was close to infallible.

Regards,

Bill

Soren said:

but I'm not talking about claims, I'm talking about confirmed kills..

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So I am, pardon any inprecision on my part between the term 'claim' and 'confirmed kill'; but both in the final analysis are the perception of *one side* of its successes, to be distinguished from victories actually cross referenced in the other side's loss records. When I say 'claim accuracy' I mean 'confirmed victory accuracy', if you prefer that term.

See drgondog's post, but another example is victories awarded to Me-262 pilots against Allied fighters in '44-45: highly overstated according to Allied records, as apparent in published sources, apparently more than in the cases drgondog mentions. And note, my previous example of the 1943 P-39 case (7 real losses, 20 victories) is also based on the Tony Woods lists.

Also while we could quibble about what exactly *was* a 'confirmed kill' in the dying days of the Luftwaffe, many books and other sources quote these quite overstated German fighter pilot accounts of victories in '44-45, so they were not 'raw claims' which were simply disallowed and forgotten: people still draw (sometimes misguided) conclusions based on them even today.

But again, this contrasts sharply with remarkable German claim ('confirmed victory') accuracy at times in the war, and at other times their accuracy was neither especially accurate nor inaccurate: it varied.

And the key point again is that the nominal procedure of confirming claims did not determine the claim accuracy. Again, the Soviets in Korea on paper followed a procedure similar to the Luftwaffe's in WWII: required two pilots testimony, gun camera, and statement of allies (1950-51) or own wreck team results ('52-53) of the crash and still their 'cofirmed victories' exceeded UN air combat losses by a factor of around 6; and that's based on pretty extensive examination of particular Soviet credits, knowing the places and times, v. original US records, which almost always show a combat *did* happen at that place and time, but pretty consistently fewer losses, and corroborated in all kinds of other records (those of individual a/c, sdn maintenance records, etc etc) so not much doubt about it. I'm not directly comparing the Soviet and German claim accuracies, I'm just saying the procedure on paper didn't entirely determine the accuracy, for *any* AF.

Joe

On the topic of P39s.

Here is an interesting site that gives some clues as to why the Soviets might have liked the P39.

Airacobra I for RAF, P-400

One advantage the 109 and 190 had over all Soviet fighters, was dive speed. Soviet pilots complained that the German pilots could always disengage and dive away, and there wasn't a lot they could do about it.

P39's could dive. 836 kmh(535 mph) according to the pilots handbook for the P39Q. Max dive speed for 109G2 (according to Finnish manual) is 750 kph.

One other advantage the BF109 FW190 also enjoyed was much better performance over the whole height band. Additionally the FW190 enjoyed a huge advantage in agility at high speed, being able to pull excruciatingly high G pull outs. (But this was true against all other Allied fighters as-well)