Was Operation Pedestal a greater Axis air attack than any faced by the USN in 1942?

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

Here are Spitfire Mk.Vc claims (destroyed) against Ki-43's (from Listemann's vol.3)

136 sqn
26-12-43 2x Ki-43

Shores has a lot on this one.

152 Sqn Spitfire VIII claimed to have shot down a Ki-46, but Shores cannot confirm this.

Then Ki-21a from the 12th and 98th Sentais, escorted by 78 (!!) x Ki-43s from the 33rd, 64th and 204th Sentais were sent to attack Chittagong.

They were to be met by 12 Spitfires from 136 Sqn, 12 from 615 Squadron, and 13 more from 607 squadron, plus 11 Hurricanes from 60 Sqn, 5 from 79 Sqn, 3 from 134 Sqn, 14 from 261 Sqn, and 12 from 258 Sqn. Total 37 Spitfires and 45 Hurricanes if I'm counting right.

The incoming JAAF raid was initially spotted by two Spitfires from 615 Sqn which had been scrambled earlier to catch another Ki-46. There is a long diary entry from one of these guys, but I'll quote the last part:

"I was always struck by the beautiful paintwork and turn-out of the 'Oscars', they looked like beautiful oversized toys and it was hard to think of them as lethal, but they were, and could out-turn us. It was most unwise to tangle with them without a height and speed advantage"

Here once again we can see that the hit and run tactics seem to be well known. These two guys (from 615) claimed three bombers and one fighter.

Apparently many of the British fighters failed to make contact with the raid, but 136 Sqn made the two claims - for Ki-21a, before being "shot up" and force landing, then ground looping and wrecking the plane. Some more 615 Sqn pilots found the JAAF formation and chased them a long way, before being jumped by the Ki-43 escorts, RCAF pilot Sgt. D.L Wright being shot down.

Shores says all in all 3 Ki-21s were shot down, and three Ki-43s were lost, plus another crash landed due to engine trouble. Seven lost total. All the claims were by Spitfires from 615 and 136 Sqn, the Hurricanes made no claims. Shores credits the Japanese with 1 Spitfire destroyed (the crash landed one he considers 'damaged')

31-12-43 3x Ki-43

JAAF raid with 6 x Ki 21 and 9 Ki-43 from 64th Sentai, 3 of which had bombs, going after mine sweepers near Akyab. They were intercepted by 136 and 615 Sqn Spitfires, but once again only a few of the Spits made contact, though as Shores puts it, "with telling effect"

The raid was basically wiped out: 3 x Ki-21s were shot down and 2 more had to force land, and the sixth was heavily damaged.One Ki-43 was also forced to crash land. One Spitfire was crippled by defensive gunners on a bomber and had to force land, and two more Spits were damaged by Ki-43s but made it back to base. So call this 6 victories including 1 Ki-43- all to 136 Sqn.

15-1-44 5x "Zero" most likely Ki-43's

This was a fighter sweep by 64th Sentai, consisting of 8 x Ki-43s, who ran into Spitfires from 136 Sqn, who claimed 5 "Hamps"

Looks like 136 Sqn lost 1 Spitfire shot down with pilot killed, and one more crash landed. Then a second sweep of 8 more Ki-43s came through, and were intercepted by 607 Sqn, who claimed 6 'Hamps'. Looks like 3 Oscars were shot down.

Then a third sweep of 8 more Ki-43s came, and ran into Spitfires from both squadrons, claiming 4 Spitfires but losing one fighter and pilot. 136 Squadron claimed 6 more 'Hamps' destroyed.

Looks like RAF in total claimed 16 Hamps, 6 probables, and 17 damaged, but the actual JAAF losses were 5 x Ki-43s. The JAAF claimed 8 Spitfires in total, and actually shot down 2, though a TACR Hurricane which blundered into the fight was also shot down.

This incident was considered a disaster for 64th Sentai.

20-1-44 5x Ki-43
6 Spitfires lost to Ki-43's

11 Spitfires from 136 Sqn and 12 Spitfires from 607 squadron were scrambled (2 returning early) to engage with a large JAAF air raid.

136 Sqn lost Flgt Sgt P.F.. Kennedy who was hit, tried to bale out, and was hit again and killed. 607 Sqn claimed 2.

Overall 204 Sentai claimed ten Spitfires and P-51s. Only one Ki-43 was lost, Cpl Hori' force landing and was later rescued. I only see two Spitfires shot down, one from 136 and one from 607 Sqn, with four others damaged.

607 sqn
15-1-44 6x Ki-43
20-1-44 2x Ki-43

See above for these

22-2-44 1x" Zero"
2 Spitfires lost to Ki-43's

I see a fight on 4-2-44, 136 and 607 Sqns got engaged, claimed a probable, but lost one force landed. There were no Ki-43 losses.
On 5-2-44 in another engagement a Spitfire from 136 Sqn was shot down. Spitfires claiming one damaged.
On 9-2-44 I see what looks like a fighter sweep or strafing attack by Ki-43s, which was attacked by Spitfires from 136, 607, and 615 Squadrons, plus Hurricanes from 261 Sqn.
These Oscars were from 204 Sentai and 64th Sentai. I see one Spitfire (MA367) shot down with pilot killed, one more making a forced landing. Spitfire pilots claimed 2 Ki-43s. A Hurricane pilot also claimed one. Looks lke 2 Ki-43s, including the 204th Sentia commander Maj Hajime Tabuchi were actually lost. They also lost one more to AA.

615 sqn
26-12-43 1x Ki-43
9-2-44 1x "Zero"

See above

17-6-44 2x Ki-43
4 Spitfires lost to Ki-43's

Spitfires from 607 and 615 sqn scrambled, or were already on patrol, as were spitfires from 81 Sqn. They met a fighter sweep with 14 x Ki-43s from 50th and 204th Sentais.

Six Ki-43s were claimed by the three RAF units, and 4 probables. Actual losses were 5 x Ki-43s, including Sgt Maj Tomesaku Igarashi, a notable and popular ace and "P-38 killer". JAAF claimed 2 Spitfires, only one was acually lost. Id on't know where the other three lost Spits come from I don't see them here.

Total - 28 Ki-43's/ 12 Spitfire Mk.Vc
Not sure of his sources (none listed in the book) but would be interesting to compare them to Shores and match up actual Japanese losses.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

I should add, I think there are some more on other dates besides these. If and when I have more time I'll go through systematically and post totals.

 

[Mike Williams]

Context from Squadron records: 607 Squadron - Spitfire VC

15 January, 1944
2 HAMPs destroyed.
1 HAMP probably destroyed.
6 HAMPs damaged.
6 "JOHNS" destroyed (ARMY 2).
1 "JOHN" probably destroyed.
5 "JOHNS" damaged.

20 January 1944
2 "Hamps" destroyed
2 "Oscars" probably destroyed
1 "Hamp" probably destroyed
2 "Hamps" damaged
1 "Oscar" damaged
"Spitfires were outnumbered about four to one."

5 February, 1944
4 "HAMPs" damaged (awaiting results of combat film).
"Our A/C were greatly outnumbered and were likely to be attacked by 2 or 3 E/A's whenever themselves making an attack."
1 Dinah destroyed.

9 February 1944
2 HAMP probably destroyed.
"Greatly superior numbers of enemy fighters estimated 50 plus in the Area."

10 February 1944
1 Hamp damaged
1 Oscar damaged
"Again there were a greatly superior number of E/A in the combat area and attacks by our fighters could not be carried to their fullest conclusion without the pilot becoming in danger from attacks by many E.A."

15 February 1944
1 HAMP probably destroyed.
1 HAMP damaged.

21 February 1944
1 OSCAR probably destroyed.
8 OSCARS damaged.

22 February, 1944
1 ZEKE destroyed

 

[GrauGeist]

6 "JOHNS" destroyed (ARMY 2).
1 "JOHN" probably destroyed.
5 "JOHNS" damaged.

What type was the "John"?

 

[buffnut453]

Ki-44...apparently.

 

[GrauGeist]

Ki-44...apparently.

Thanks - I wasn't aware the Tojo had an alternate code name.

 

[buffnut453]

Thanks - I wasn't aware the Tojo had an alternate code name.

Neither did I. Had to google it.

 

[Shortround6]

A lot of times we get fixated on the "box scores" of the aircraft, wins/losses but air combat is not football or baseball (Or other sports)

There is no regulation size field. Most times there is a disparity in numbers, no 9 or 11 combatants on each side, or other rules to make things equal.

Pilot training, health (food, sleep, illnesses) warning times, maintenance of aircraft and other things can make a large difference.

And numbers do make a huge difference over time. Lancaster's equation says that the power of a force goes up with the square of the numbers. A force 30% larger will have almost a 70% advantage over time is every thing else is equal. This is why we often see see-saw campaigns for long periods of time (with reinforcements but not always enough) and then a rapid collapse. One side cannot maintain either quantity or quality or both. Once they go too far down the slope it is very hard to stop let alone come back up.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, and I see these claims of the Hurricane (and Spitfire) units always being outnumbered, but I don't really see that in the operational history. It was, over time, the RAF which eventually clearly had the numbers. The Japanese started grouping together in larger formations when attacking British bases, but they also did the same thing to the Americans. It was a often challenge to form up interceptors in sufficient numbers and hit the Japanese formations in a coordinated fashion so that odds were relatively even, but that worked both ways.

I realize that war is not sports, and incidentally when discussing claims for enemy aircraft destroyed, I use the term "victories" rather than kills, because some WW2 veteran pilots I met years ago told me that is what they preferred. So it's out of respect for them, not out of any sports analogy.

I also recognize that war is not a clinical, statistically pristine test arena in which you can make pure statistical analysis. There is a lot of gray area, fuzziness, chaos, fog of war. A million reasons for every thing. That's what we are always exploring on this board.

But when you are talking about thousands of sorties over 2, 3, or 4 years, you can see patterns emerge. Of course you can. This is how the reputation of so many aircraft types became established. Does anyone doubt that the Fw 190 owned the Spitfire Mk V in 1942? Does anyone doubt that the A6M owned the Brewster Buffalo? I know some of these questions are close enough that they can be debated forever (like Spit vs Bf 109), but you can see those numbers too.

The same pilots in those Spitfire units whose relatively successful wartime exploits I transcribed earlier today - 135, 607 sqn etc., had previously flown Hurricanes. I can promise you the rate of success - and more important to the pilots themselves I suspect - survival, went way up when they swapped out their Hurricane IIs for those Spit Vs, (even though the latter were also a bit long in the teeth by then as a design). Sometimes the same men flew both types, and their enemy was largely the same too - 64th Sentai etc.

And I'm pretty sure the pilots of those Mohawk IVs knew they had a better chance of surviving fights with the JAAF than their mates flying the Hurris.

The US units like the 51st FG and 80th FGs which flew P-40s until late 1944, the various P-47, P-51 and P-38 groups in India, and the 23rd FG in China, all faced the same enemy as the RAF, under basically identical conditions, and flew the same exact missions - fighter sweeps, armed reconnaissance, bomber escort, transport escort, interceptions. The outcomes were clearly different, until the RAF got better planes into action.

I realize it's not mathematically pristine, but I also think it's ludicrous to pretend that you can't see that the operational histories do, obviously, have a story to tell. The commanders in the field needed to be able to evaluate this. For some reason in the MTO they realized they could not keep relying on Hurricanes as front line fighters by mid 1942 at the latest. I think it's a valid question as to why they lingered for so long in the CBI, because they had the same problem. One of the claims used to be that the Ki-43 was a pushover fighter, (along, I guess with the Ki-61 and Ki-44 which were also active in the Theater). But I think I've shown in another thread the extent to which that is an utterly ridiculous and unfounded belief.

The flip side is that trying to assess aircraft purely on a technical basis is also often misleading, because all it takes is one detail being left out, and you are off into magical trope land. I've certainly seen that a million times in here, and it happened during the war too.

 

[buffnut453]

The commanders in the field needed to be able to evaluate this. For some reason in the MTO they realized they could not keep relying on Hurricanes as front line fighters by mid 1942 at the latest. I think it's a valid question as to why they lingered for so long in the CBI, because they had the same problem.

Again, the commanders probably did realize it...but if you're at the bottom of the priority list, you have no choice but to solidier on with whatever equipment you have on-hand. I think it's that straightforward. Did the CBI leadership want Spitfires or something better? I think that can be answered unequivocally in the affirmative. Were they able to get it? Somewhat. However, they often got aircraft that weren't used/needed elsewhere. For example, the RAF didn't use the P-47 in numbers anywhere else in the world. That's probably why they were sent to the Far East.

One of the claims used to be that the Ki-43 was a pushover fighter, (along, I guess with the Ki-61 and Ki-44 which were also active in the Theater). But I think I've shown in another thread the extent to which that is an utterly ridiculous and unfounded belief.

The one factor you aren't considering here is that we have at least some understanding of the actual losses suffered by the Japanese. Leadership at the time didn't have that luxury. The overclaiming that we now all know was rampant undoubtedly painted a rosier picture than what was actually happening. Thus, everyone, including pilots, squadron commanders, and senior leaders, may have genuinely felt that they were succeeding when, in reality, they were barely holding the line.

It's all to easy, when we have excellently researched volumes like "Bloody Shambles" to forget that the men on the spot in 1942-1945 didn't have the luxury of knowing how many aircraft the Japanese actually lost.

 

[yulzari]

One thing to remember, when looking at timings for introducing new types, is that whilst the airframes can be flown out, the support infrastructure has to go by sea. In the case of Burma to India and then trans shipped to Burma. If the RAF decided to use Spitfires in Burma it would be at least four months before they appear on the sky in squadron numbers. Actually the airframes also typically went by sea. This means there has to be enough shipping (in the last half of 1944 ships were stacking up waiting for many days outside the available ports in NW Europe for example to be able to unload). Once loaded they had to await a convoy forming to the right destination which convoy would sail at the speed of the slowest vessel and travel down into the South Atlantic, around the whole of Africa and across the Indian Ocean before diverting to an Indian port. Off loading to a maintenance unit, reassembling everything etc. and then taken back to a port for shipping across to Burma or North India whilst the airframes, now assembled with engines etc. can be flown to a front line airfield once the supporting kit has arrived. Then the pilots have to learn to fly the things and the ground crews how to get and keep them in the air. Hurricanes already had the infrastructure in place to make use of them straight away. If you want Spitfires to be in squadron service in August 1944 you have to make the decision in the lead up to Overlord in April 1944 and brand new Hurricanes are still coming off the production line whilst the new Spitfires are spoken for already. It explains why the RAF had Vengances and Thunderbolts all sent straight to India from America whilst Mustangs went to Europe and Kittyhawks to Australia and New Zealand. Air Chief Marshall's are looking at that big a picture. Air Vice Marshall's are looking at the theatre wants and asking for what they want but coping with what they can get.

In the case of the reported conversation a few posts earlier I suspect that a decision had already been taken to send Spitfires but the ACM knew how long it would be before the squadrons actually would get them and did not want to lower the morale of his pilots by reinforcing the view that they were still flying a type that was too long in the tooth.

 

[Shortround6]

Does anyone doubt that the A6M owned the Brewster Buffalo?

I can promise you the rate of success - and more important to the pilots themselves I suspect - survival, went way up when they swapped out their Hurricane IIs for those Spit Vs,

The equation assumes that things are equal. If not, like Plane A is valued at a 10 and Plane B is valued at 11 things need adjusting. Same for pilots.
The A6M "owned" the Buffalo for a few minutes on one day of war a small number of planes.

Perception of the Buffalo is not helped by writings like this.

Shown by the experience of Midway to be no match for the Zero,[2] the F2A-3 was derided by USMC pilots as a "flying coffin".[9] Indeed, the F2A-3s performance was substantially inferior[10] to the F2A-2 variant used by the Navy before the outbreak of the war despite detail improvements.

The "detail improvements" were things like self sealing tanks and armor plate. And let's look at the "box score" for that one day.

20 (19?)Buffaloes engaged, 13 losses = 65%
6 Wildcats engaged, 4 losses (2 write offs after landing) = 66%
Somebody call Greg, the Buffaloes were as good or better than the Wildcat

Now a closer look reveals, not that the F2A-3 was great, but they used older tactics, they were attacking the bombers and got bounced by the A6Ms, there were a few maintenance issues and a few other things. I have no idea of what the expectations were. 25 US fighters attack a Japanese strike force of 108 aircraft (?), with 36 A6Ms(?). Depending on sources the Japanese admit 9 planes lost and 34 damaged. Not great but not bad for a group of pilots with little actual combat experience.

As far as the Hurricane vs Spit things goes, they knew in Aug/Sept 1940 that Spitfires offered better survival rates for the pilots than Hurricanes. Not a lot but everything helped.
You want better planes, you want better training, you want better tactics and you want more planes in the air. Numbers help but if the pilots are not trained and if they use bad tactics the large numbers take an awful long time to wear down the enemy. Ask the Russians.

Training and tactics can be force multipliers. So can early warning systems, Just getting aircraft up early enough so they can be at altitude and speed before the intercept. Take another look at climb to altitude. That tells you how long it takes to get altitude, the fighters are not ready to fight yet, they are doing around 200mph or less when they level off from the climb. They now have to accelerated up to patrol speed or attack speed. Ideally they want to be several thousand feet higher than the force they are intercepting so they can convert altitude into even more speed.

It is all of things and more ( a lot more) that go into those "box scores".

 

[buffnut453]

Not great but not bad for a group of pilots with little actual combat experience.

Not only that, but VMF-221 had recently been divided in half to form a new squadron, and a fair number of the backfills into VMF-221 were straight out of training. The USMC was undergoing massive expansion during 1942, which drove the squadron split. The result was that a cohesive VMF-221 team that had been flying together for months suddenly had to integrate 50% newcomers. That's never good for operational readiness.

Gave you a bacon for your post because it's an outstanding outline of the many variables that affect the outcome of air-to-air engagements. Were both sides able to form up before the engagement or was one side committed in dribs and drabs? Who had the height advantage and which side spotted the enemy first? What were the relative sizes of the opposing forces? Thanks for putting together such a well-considered post. Awesome!

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

The equation assumes that things are equal. If not, like Plane A is valued at a 10 and Plane B is valued at 11 things need adjusting. Same for pilots.
The A6M "owned" the Buffalo for a few minutes on one day of war a small number of planes.

Perception of the Buffalo is not helped by writings like this.

Shown by the experience of Midway to be no match for the Zero,[2] the F2A-3 was derided by USMC pilots as a "flying coffin".[9] Indeed, the F2A-3s performance was substantially inferior[10] to the F2A-2 variant used by the Navy before the outbreak of the war despite detail improvements.

The "detail improvements" were things like self sealing tanks and armor plate. And let's look at the "box score" for that one day.

20 (19?)Buffaloes engaged, 13 losses = 65%
6 Wildcats engaged, 4 losses (2 write offs after landing) = 66%
Somebody call Greg, the Buffaloes were as good or better than the Wildcat

Now a closer look reveals, not that the F2A-3 was great, but they used older tactics, they were attacking the bombers and got bounced by the A6Ms, there were a few maintenance issues and a few other things. I have no idea of what the expectations were. 25 US fighters attack a Japanese strike force of 108 aircraft (?), with 36 A6Ms(?). Depending on sources the Japanese admit 9 planes lost and 34 damaged. Not great but not bad for a group of pilots with little actual combat experience.

Yeah Ok, I don't disagree with that, except for one huge thing. We are not assessing Buffalos based on one day. We can see them fighting on many days in Malaya, Java, Burma, albeit not always fighting against A6Ms exclusively, but still losing pretty much constantly whether against Ki-27, Ki-43, or A6M. In Burma we can see them performing very poorly right alongside American pilots flying Tomahawks who were doing well (and before the latter were fully utilizing the hit and run tactics).

Just as we can, in North Africa, assess the Hurricane vs Tomahawk and Kittyhawk, with literally the same pilots with the same training in the same air force flying the same missions out of the same fields against the same enemy, across two years and more. And we can see very different outcomes.

All major Allied fighter types suffered from the addition of more armor, more bullet proof glass, self-sealing tanks, bigger guns and more ammunition in the 1941-42 period... the Spit V, the Hurricane, the Tomahawk and Kittyhawk, the Wildcat, the P-39. The Yak-1 and LaGG-3.

The Buffalo only seemed to perform well in it's original lighter configuration, the others were made to work to a greater or lesser degree, in spite of the extra weight larded onto their not yet improved engines. Some pilots and some units made field modifications to them in Malaya, and managed to get a better fight out of them, but the type did not have 'room to grow', and the USMC was wise to switch to the Wildcat, for all it's faults. The Buffalo had hit a wall even in the earliest days of the war.

As far as the Hurricane vs Spit things goes, they knew in Aug/Sept 1940 that Spitfires offered better survival rates for the pilots than Hurricanes. Not a lot but everything helped.
You want better planes, you want better training, you want better tactics and you want more planes in the air. Numbers help but if the pilots are not trained and if they use bad tactics the large numbers take an awful long time to wear down the enemy. Ask the Russians.

I certainly understand the tradeoff. And in 1940, I also note, the Hurricane was still very much a competitive fighter. The Spitfire was a bit better, and had a bit better survival rate, but the Hurricane was clearly still doing the job, as I have pointed out over and over. It also did well in Greece and North Africa through 1941. It just eventually hit a wall. By 1943 you really did not want to be flying a Hurricane in any major Theater of the war, whether over Sicily, or over Leningrad, or over Rangoon.

Training and tactics can be force multipliers. So can early warning systems, Just getting aircraft up early enough so they can be at altitude and speed before the intercept. Take another look at climb to altitude. That tells you how long it takes to get altitude, the fighters are not ready to fight yet, they are doing around 200mph or less when they level off from the climb. They now have to accelerated up to patrol speed or attack speed. Ideally they want to be several thousand feet higher than the force they are intercepting so they can convert altitude into even more speed.

Again, we can see aircraft operating both in 'close to worst case conditions' - like 75 Sqn RAAF at Port Morseby and Milne Bay, or 49th FG in Dawin, with pilots who had no training on type, mostly suffering from disease, indadequate barracks, supplies, food, maintenance etc., facing well trained enemy units in greater numbers - or in 'closer to ideal conditions', with good training, good support, good maintenance, plenty of spare parts, adequate housing, appropriate medicine, food etc. For both the Hurricane and the P-40 we can see the results in both situations.

It is all of things and more ( a lot more) that go into those "box scores".

As a 'context guy', I am very well aware of all of that. I still say it's infantile to suggest that you just ignore the operational history on that basis. Obviously they could not afford to ignore the operational outcomes during the war. And it's a big part of how we assess all the major fighter types of WW2 - the Bf 109 and Fw 190, the Spitfire, the A6M and Ki-43, the Macchi 202, the Mustang, Lightning, and Thunderbolt, the Wildcat and the Hellcat. They didn't make their reputations based on raw technical data.

Technical data can be every bit as misleading as operational history data, especially when you are either intentionally or accidentally leave out some key piece of the puzzle. Which is very easy to do. In both cases you just have to do your homework.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

I never said anything about Spit VIIIs. I said Burma was a low priority for EVERYTHING. There's a reason it's known as the "Forgotten War." London set priorities for ALL assets of every kind going into the operational theatres. Burma was bottom of the pile. Providing any more modern aircraft earlier would require a change of those priorities. If there were so many excess resources available, where would you take them from to re-equip the Hurricane units in Burma?

I hear this a lot, and yet, and I want to admit up front, I don't know that much about this Theater aside from the American air units in China. So maybe Burma is a low priority for the British Empire. I know enough that I can categorically say India was not a low priority, and Burma was already captured by May of 1942.

By that point India was clearly under threat from the IJA. In fact the IJA did start to cross the borders in 1944. And India was a major strategic asset for the British.

Correlation does not mean causation. Hurricane orders were being cancelled/reduced from mid-1943 onwards, so it's not like Hurricane production was proceeding at full pelt. it's also worth considering the differing conditions over time. I can entirely agree that Hurricane production went on for too long. Also, in an ideal world, the Hurricanes in Burma would have been replaced earlier. However, the world isn't an ideal place. Decisions must be made based on priorities and the finite resources available.

My understanding is that there were large number of Spit Vs in England by 1942. Certainly by 1943, if not earlier, there were more than adequate numbers of Kittyhawks available, as some RAF units in the Middle East were transitioning to Spitfires. I don't buy the notion that they just didn't have aircraft.

The only other explanation is that senior RAF leaders didn't care for the lives of their men and glibly persisted with types that were entirely unsuited. That simply doesn't work for me, not least because those same leaders had operational missions to achieve. If the assets available couldn't achieve the required missions, then we'd lose the war. Ok...that's a stretch but my point should be self-evident. If better types were available, I think it highly unlikely that they'd be refused without solid reasons. And perhaps--just perhaps--the concerns about Spitfire fragility were valid given the state of airfields in the theatre in 1942-43.

Here is where we really veer off into very different perceptions of the war. Again, I don't want to overstate my knowledge here, I am not very well read on the war overall in Burma and India. But I have read in a lot of detail about the war in many other Theaters, and I think your assessment up above is nice, and sounds patriotic, I don't think it's necessarily accurate.

In general, Allied leadership, certainly US leadership, was fairly hit and miss during the war. This is why (luckily) we had a system in place to fairly rapidly replace them. I know that many British leaders were also sacked and replaced in the Middle East, and I have no reason to assume that it was different in India or Burma.

This gets into the whole issue of being able to tell what the exact reasons are for a unit not performing well. Allied leaders didn't always know. But if it wasn't working they would often replace the leader. This did not necessarily mean career death, as these leaders were often given another chance, precisely because there may have been some circumstances which prevented them from doing well in a given posting.

But clearly some of them were fools. Not all of them were smart people, or at least not smart in terms of military strategy or administration. Some of them who were smart were still convinced of bad ideas. I am mostly familiar with US examples of this, but I know of some British ones too. I'll hold off on naming names for the moment for fear of triggering another eruption of outrage.

The truth though is that all armed forces in WW2 had some bad leaders, and also some good leaders who made big mistakes. Assuming they always had good reasons for everything they did is a mistake, IMO.

It's easy to Monday-morning-quarterback decisions from WW2. However, the men on the spot weren't, as a rule, idiots. Things that seem inexplicable to us might have been based on the very best knowledge and insight available at the time.

Some of them clearly were idiots, or their intelligence was more related to advancing through the ranks rather than actually leading military units in war. But you do raise a good point about the different levels of knowledge then vs today, I'll circle back to that in another reply.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

One thing to remember, when looking at timings for introducing new types, is that whilst the airframes can be flown out, the support infrastructure has to go by sea. In the case of Burma to India and then trans shipped to Burma. If the RAF decided to use Spitfires in Burma it would be at least four months before they appear on the sky in squadron numbers. Actually the airframes also typically went by sea. This means there has to be enough shipping (in the last half of 1944 ships were stacking up waiting for many days outside the available ports in NW Europe for example to be able to unload). Once loaded they had to await a convoy forming to the right destination which convoy would sail at the speed of the slowest vessel and travel down into the South Atlantic, around the whole of Africa and across the Indian Ocean before diverting to an Indian port. Off loading to a maintenance unit, reassembling everything etc. and then taken back to a port for shipping across to Burma or North India whilst the airframes, now assembled with engines etc. can be flown to a front line airfield once the supporting kit has arrived. Then the pilots have to learn to fly the things and the ground crews how to get and keep them in the air. Hurricanes already had the infrastructure in place to make use of them straight away. If you want Spitfires to be in squadron service in August 1944 you have to make the decision in the lead up to Overlord in April 1944 and brand new Hurricanes are still coming off the production line whilst the new Spitfires are spoken for already. It explains why the RAF had Vengances and Thunderbolts all sent straight to India from America whilst Mustangs went to Europe and Kittyhawks to Australia and New Zealand. Air Chief Marshall's are looking at that big a picture. Air Vice Marshall's are looking at the theatre wants and asking for what they want but coping with what they can get.

In the case of the reported conversation a few posts earlier I suspect that a decision had already been taken to send Spitfires but the ACM knew how long it would be before the squadrons actually would get them and did not want to lower the morale of his pilots by reinforcing the view that they were still flying a type that was too long in the tooth.

This is all true but I think overstated. Clearly they were able to bring many new aircraft types into the Theater, and quite a few of them very early on. The British brought in Mosquitoes, Beaufighters, various recon Spitfire types, the Vengeance. The US brought in P-51As, P-38s, B-24s, all very early, and brought in fairly large numbers of P-40s, P-66, P-43, Hudsons etc. for the Chinese units. Some of those could have gone to the RAF.

The US already had infrastructure in place for Kittyhawks since early 1942. I would agree that the Thunderbolt would take some more logistical support, but I think the Spit V was a fairly well known quantity and could have been in place and ready for action much earlier, as could the Kittyhawks.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

Again, the commanders probably did realize it...but if you're at the bottom of the priority list, you have no choice but to solidier on with whatever equipment you have on-hand. I think it's that straightforward. Did the CBI leadership want Spitfires or something better? I think that can be answered unequivocally in the affirmative. Were they able to get it? Somewhat. However, they often got aircraft that weren't used/needed elsewhere. For example, the RAF didn't use the P-47 in numbers anywhere else in the world. That's probably why they were sent to the Far East.

P-47 was probably a pretty good fit, though with a pretty good sized logistics chain and learning curve, and required long flat fields. All of which probably contributed to their arriving in Theater fairly late, especially for British units.

Spit VIII was better but I gather they didn't make that many of them.

The one factor you aren't considering here is that we have at least some understanding of the actual losses suffered by the Japanese. Leadership at the time didn't have that luxury. The overclaiming that we now all know was rampant undoubtedly painted a rosier picture than what was actually happening. Thus, everyone, including pilots, squadron commanders, and senior leaders, may have genuinely felt that they were succeeding when, in reality, they were barely holding the line.

It's all to easy, when we have excellently researched volumes like "Bloody Shambles" to forget that the men on the spot in 1942-1945 didn't have the luxury of knowing how many aircraft the Japanese actually lost.

I think that is a fair point. I will concede that today we do have a clearer idea of what happened at the time today than they did during the war. Fog of war, overclaiming etc. were definitely a problem, and acquiring a good sense of what is really going on, and responding to it in a timely fashion, was certainly a major challenge.

But I would also say, that is what separates a good leader from a bad one. In part it's listening to the pilots. The pilots, particularly some of the Australian and other Commonwealth ones, were a bit disgruntled by the SOP in North Africa. The British leadership ultimately took a cue from their lower ranking officers several important issues, and eventually improved the situation dramatically. This was also in large part what happened with General Kenney and the 5th Air Force in the Solomons.

CBI may have been a low priority, but if India fell it would have been catastrophic. I suspect that they could have fixed many things, including replacing / upgrading the aircraft, much faster than they did. But I'll grant you, I don't know. May need to read some more books on this Theater once I finish getting through Bloody Shambles.

 

[buffnut453]

I hear this a lot, and yet, and I want to admit up front, I don't know that much about this Theater aside from the American air units in China. So maybe Burma is a low priority for the British Empire. I know enough that I can categorically say India was not a low priority, and Burma was already captured by May of 1942.

By that point India was clearly under threat from the IJA. In fact the IJA did start to cross the borders in 1944. And India was a major strategic asset for the British.

India and Burma were at the same level of priority...in other words, they came after everything else. Just because a region is threatened doesn't necessarily change its priority in the grand strategic scheme of things.

India may have been under threat but the IJA lacked the ability to do much other than some minor border raids. The logistical challenges coupled with lack of resources simply meant that, once Japan took Burma, they couldn't go any further.

My understanding is that there were large number of Spit Vs in England by 1942. Certainly by 1943, if not earlier, there were more than adequate numbers of Kittyhawks available, as some RAF units in the Middle East were transitioning to Spitfires. I don't buy the notion that they just didn't have aircraft.

The Middle East got Spitfires first because it was deemed a higher priority than Burma/India. I can't help whether or not you buy the notion but the simple fact remains that aircraft (and all war materiel) was assigned in line with the strategic priorities...and the Far East came last.

Here is where we really veer off into very different perceptions of the war. Again, I don't want to overstate my knowledge here, I am not very well read on the war overall in Burma and India. But I have read in a lot of detail about the war in many other Theaters, and I think your assessment up above is nice, and sounds patriotic, I don't think it's necessarily accurate.

In general, Allied leadership, certainly US leadership, was fairly hit and miss during the war. This is why (luckily) we had a system in place to fairly rapidly replace them. I know that many British leaders were also sacked and replaced in the Middle East, and I have no reason to assume that it was different in India or Burma.

This gets into the whole issue of being able to tell what the exact reasons are for a unit not performing well. Allied leaders didn't always know. But if it wasn't working they would often replace the leader. This did not necessarily mean career death, as these leaders were often given another chance, precisely because there may have been some circumstances which prevented them from doing well in a given posting.

But clearly some of them were fools. Not all of them were smart people, or at least not smart in terms of military strategy or administration. Some of them who were smart were still convinced of bad ideas. I am mostly familiar with US examples of this, but I know of some British ones too. I'll hold off on naming names for the moment for fear of triggering another eruption of outrage.

The truth though is that all armed forces in WW2 had some bad leaders, and also some good leaders who made big mistakes. Assuming they always had good reasons for everything they did is a mistake, IMO.

And yet Peirse remained in post from 1942 thru 1945. If he was an idiot, why wasn't he replaced? He was considered the architect of bolstering the air forces in India. The idea that senior officers were idiots has echoes of the "lions led by donkeys" trope from the First World War. That particular epithet, thankfully, seems to be waning as a new generation of historians take a more balanced, and evidence-driven approach.

Ultimately, the performance of an individual squadron has nothing to do with Peirse...indeed, even firing a squadron commander would be below Peirse's level. And, again, based on claim-vs-loss statistics, units that we now consider sub-par may have appeared at the time to be doing quite well.

Some of them clearly were idiots, or their intelligence was more related to advancing through the ranks rather than actually leading military units in war. But you do raise a good point about the different levels of knowledge then vs today, I'll circle back to that in another reply.

Typically, rather than an individual being an idiot, I think it's more common that they simply made some wrong decisions. If things had gone differently, perhaps we'd be lauding someone we now consider a failure, like Percival, rather than Monty. Ultimately, senior leaders are making decisions, often in an information vacuum. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. Personally, I'd be very careful about labelling anyone an idiot...the whole "walk a mile in my shoes" thing.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

Well we just fundamentally disagree on the nature of war, it seems. I would add politics and the corporate world too for that matter. In my personal experience, and from reading many, many books and primary sources from a wide range of historical periods well beyond WW2. I think it's very clear that quite a few senior officers were definitely idiots in terms of skills or capability to lead in war. Just because an officer remained in their position for a long time doesn't mean they were competent either. Not all forces, and not all areas, necessarily cleared out the dead wood in an expedient manner, or even at all. Stupidity, delusion, and terminal cynicism are definitely not rare in the senior ranks, in my view.

But that's Ok, we can disagree.

At least we know where we differ, and I think I understand your position. From your point of view, it's almost impossible for the senior RAF leadership in Burma to have made terrible decisions vis a vis the Hurricane, because they were wise and intelligent men doing their best. Therefore the replacement fighters arrived as soon as they could.

I stand by my assertion that officers delayed bringing in the new fighters far longer than they should, and I think I have shown sufficient evidence to support it as an assertion. I won't claim it as proof, as none of us has a time machine (yet! who know maybe Elon Musk will make one...) And as you noted, we were not privy to all the private discussions and so on.

 

[buffnut453]

Well we just fundamentally disagree on the nature of war, it seems. I would add politics and the corporate world too for that matter. In my personal experience, and from reading many, many books and primary sources from a wide range of historical periods well beyond WW2. I think it's very clear that quite a few senior officers were definitely idiots in terms of skills or capability to lead in war. Just because an officer remained in their position for a long time doesn't mean they were competent either. Not all forces, and not all areas, necessarily cleared out the dead wood in an expedient manner, or even at all. Stupidity, delusion, and terminal cynicism are definitely not rare in the senior ranks, in my view.

But that's Ok, we can disagree.

I'd be interested to know how many senior officers you've actually met? I've worked with, a LOT of very senior officers - British and American (6 in the past month alone) - and I've been in or supporting armed forces for 35 years. In all that time, I've probably met, maybe, 2 that should have been put out to pasture. All the rest have been capable, informed, aware, and solid leaders.

Perhaps something fundamental has changed in how senior officers are selected today compared to 80 years ago...but I doubt it. Certainly in my former service, the same traits lead to promotion today as did back then. In my experience, it's not unusual for junior officers to be critical of their seniors...right up to the point where those junior ticks have to make decisions themselves. It's rather like teenagers who think their parents are idiots but then, as they mature to the age of 25 or so, suddenly realize that Mum and Dad were perhaps smarter than they gave them credit.

At least we know where we differ, and I think I understand your position. From your point of view, it's almost impossible for the senior RAF leadership in Burma to have made terrible decisions vis a vis the Hurricane, because they were wise and intelligent men doing their best. Therefore the replacement fighters arrived as soon as they could.

I'm so glad you grasp my point of view (that's sarcasm, BTW). For someone who constantly critiques the "received wisdom" of others, you're more than willing to make sweeping generalizations yourself. I never said bad decisions weren't made. I was simply pointing out some of the factors that may have prevented better decisions. Conversely, you seem unwilling or unable to accept the complexities of the situation, or even understand where decisions were made regarding a given theatre (e.g. priorities levied by London).

I stand by my assertion that officers delayed bringing in the new fighters far longer than they should, and I think I have shown sufficient evidence to support it as an assertion. I won't claim it as proof, as none of us has a time machine (yet! who know maybe Elon Musk will make one...) And as you noted, we were not privy to all the private discussions and so on.

Which officers delayed the introduction of more modern fighters? By all means make an assertion but back it up with specific instances and demonstrate that better aircraft were available, but were turned down by one of those named officers. Second-hand commentary by a squadron commander who took no part in the conversation isn't evidence, IMHO.

If we go back to the origin of this entire discussion, you were complaining about the sweeping assertion that Japanese aircraft were good at the start of the war and bad by the end. AFAIK, nobody participating in this thread (or the Ki-43 one) has made any such assertion. We have explored the nuances of aircraft development and availability. Unfortunately, you seem predisposed to ignore those complexities.