Hawker Hurricane Mk. IIB vs. Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by alejandro_

Does anyone konw the victory/loss ratio of the Wildcat against the Zero? Overall the victory ratio for the F4F is ~5:1. Apparently it is close to 1:1.

Regards.

I think you'll find its way higher than that, more like 7 to 1. Against the Zero it would be about 5 to 1.

[plan_D]

I would like to add to this that although I agree that .303 cal do lack hitting power - during Operation Torch Hawk-75s of the Vichy French managed to shoot down a fair few Wildcats of the USN and they only had six .303 cal MG.

[alejandro_]

I think you'll find its way higher than that, more like 7 to 1. Against the Zero it would be about 5 to 1.

Are you sure you are not mixing the Wildcat with the Hellcat? IIRC the victory ratio for the Wildcat is 5.2:1, you can check it in this forum, in the request section, where there is a topic on kill ratios.

I would be especially interested in the F4F kill/loss ratio against the Zero, especially during the first months of the Pacific War. Most people argue the Zero was a superb fighter but it never achieved full supremacy against the Wildcat, which is considered to be totally obsolete. I just dont agree with this.

Regards.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by alejandro_

Are you sure you are not mixing the Wildcat with the Hellcat? IIRC the victory ratio for the Wildcat is 5.2:1, you can check it in this forum, in the request section, where there is a topic on kill ratios.

I would be especially interested in the F4F kill/loss ratio against the Zero, especially during the first months of the Pacific War. Most people argue the Zero was a superb fighter but it never achieved full supremacy against the Wildcat, which is considered to be totally obsolete. I just dont agree with this.

Regards.

No - Depending who you want to believe the Hellcat Kill ratio was between 10 to 19 to 1! Hellcats claimed 6000 air-to-air kills.

A kill ratio of 6.9 to 1 was claimed for the Wildcat in the pacific: 178 lost, for 905 'confirmed' kills. The most successful Wildcat pilot was Joe Foss, with 26 kills, all on the Wildcat.

[R Leonard]

Claims to losses is a sticky subject. If you’re looking for an analysis of actual, verifiable victories to actual verifiable losses, that’s real hard to do. That being said, when talking about F4F’s vs A6M2’s in the first year of the war in the Pacific, the best place to go is two books written by John Lundstrom, “The First Team – Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway” and “The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign”. Both are pretty thick books with real small print. John was probably the last researcher to get to most of the USN and USMC pilots while they were still with us. As an example, from VF-42 he was able to speak to ten of the squadron’s pilots who flew at the Battle of the Coral Sea. There’s only two left today. John went to the Japanese records to reconcile claims to actual victories. I have not personally gone through the books page by page and made a stick count, but I can think of a few of guys who have and all agree that the ratio of F4Fs to A6Ms is damn close to about 1 F4F lost for every 1 A6M in the first year.

Personally, I like to work with the official reports. If you look at the roll up reported by the USN in 1946, you quickly find that it divides aerial victories into enemy bombers and enemy fighters, which, of course leaves out quite a few other players (float planes and the like) and leaves us wondering which fighters are they talking about. The only way to determine who is who is to look at the actual reports from the squadrons. I can do that with the Navy squadrons, I don’t have the information from the reports of the Marine squadrons.

Overall it looks like this (and just for F4F’s; FM-2’s are another story all together, with one of the highest kill claim to loss ratios of the war):

Carrier based F4Fs flew 1,104 combat sorties. Within these combat sorties, 17 F4Fs were lost to AA fire and 47 to enemy aircraft. There were 32 combat related operational losses (that is losses that occurred during a combat sortie but were not caused by combat damage; these are usually due to fuel exhaustion or flight deck accidents), 49 losses on non-combat related flights, and 22 were lost in the sinkings of Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, or Hornet. On the claims side, there were a total of 302 enemy planes reported destroyed in combat, 190 bombers and 112 fighters.

USMC land based F4Fs flew 1,074 combat sorties. Within these combat sorties, 4 F4Fs were lost to AA fire and 75 to enemy aircraft. There were 11 combat related operational losses (these are usually due to fuel exhaustion or airfield accidents), 34 losses on non-combat related flights, and 26 were lost on the ground, at Wake or Guadalcanal. On the claims side, there were a total of 356 enemy planes reported destroyed in combat, 175 bombers and 281 fighters.

USN land based F4Fs flew 450 combat sorties. Within these combat sorties, 3 F4Fs were lost to AA fire and 56 to enemy aircraft. There were 7 combat related operational losses, 29 losses on non-combat related flights, and 20 were lost on the ground, at Wake or Guadalcanal. On the claims side, there were a total of 147 enemy planes reported destroyed in combat, 53 bombers and 94 fighters.

So, from the USN statistics, there were a total of 178 F4Fs lost in aerial combat versus about 905 claims, of which 487 were fighters. As much as I am an F4F booster, those numbers are a little hard to swallow, although I was interested to read in Herbert Bix’s “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan” on page 461 reports 892 airplanes and 1882 pilots (and, one presumes, crewmen) lost between August 1942 and February 1943 in the struggle for Guadalcanal. General Yamada Otozo who was on Hirohito’s staff noted that this was “ . . . two and a half times the number of planes and fifteen times the number of pilots lost at Midway.” Certainly the F4F pilots did not shoot down all the Japanese planes lost during that period, but they did shoot down a goodly number, if not a majority. Gives one some pause to think, anyway.

Navy statistical records indicate that F4F’s were out of combat by October 1943, but the last two squadrons in action were VF-11 and VF-21 operating out of Fighter I on Guadalcanal. They left combat in July 1943. There may have been some F4F-4s mixed into with FM-1 squadrons operating from CVE’s between July and October, but they scored no victories of which I am aware.

So much for the gross numbers. If you look at the results culled for reports you can get a better feel for actual types shot down. Since I only have the information on Navy squadrons, you can draw your own conclusions on the Marines. The results I have tabulated for the Navy F4F squadrons looks like:\

Navy F4F-3 pilots were credited with 68.5 victories/10 Probables/7 damaged. Navy F4F-4 pilots were credited with 453/74/34, for a total of 521.5/84/41. Also of interest is that only 494 of these credits were for Japanese planes. Two of them were for German types and 25 for Vichy French (all from the F4F-4 total). If you compare the USN victory credits from the 1946 statistical report you can see that the statistical report has 449 credits for USN F4Fs for just enemy fighters and bombers in the Pacific. That would mean that some 45.5 of the Japanese aircraft shot down were NOT included in the statistical study as they were neither fighters (VF) nor bombers (VB). Counting up the non VF and non VB types listed gives a total of 33 victory credits or 12.5 less than the calculated value. On the other hand, the by squadron count shows 226 Japanese VB types credited and 233 Japanese VF types compared to the 1946 statistical report’s 243 and 206, repectively. My list of enemy types shot down by Navy F4Fs, based upon what was actually reported by squadrons, looks like this:

Japanese:
219/33/19 - A6M Mitsubishi A6M series Type 00 Models 21, 22, & 52 VF (Zeke)
6/0/0 - A6M2-N Nakajima Type 2 Float VF (Rufe)
1/0/0 - A6M3 Mitsubishi A6M series Type 00 Model 32 & 22A VF (Hamp)
58/14/6 - B5N Nakajima Type 97 VTB (Kate)
115/22/14 - D3A Aichi Type 99 VB (Val)
4/0/0 - E13A Aichi Type 00 2/Float VSO (Jake)
4/1/0 - E7K Kawanishi Type 94 VSO (Alf)
1/0/1 - E8N Nakajima Type 95 Float VSO (Dave)
7/1/0 - F1M Mitsubishi Type 0 Float VSO (Pete)
60.5/5/1 - G4M Mitsubishi G4M series Type 01 2/E VB/VR (Betty)
14/0/0 - H6K Kawanishi Type 97 4/E VP FB (Mavis)
2/0/0 - H8K Kawanishi Type 2 4/E VP FB (Emily)
1/0/0 - U/I 4/E VP Unidentified Japanese Patrol Aircraft
0/1/0 - U/I aircraft Unidentified Japanese Aircraft
2/2/0 - Me-109 Pacific Action Mis-ID, Probably A6M Mitsubishi Type 00 VF (Zeke, Zero)
494.5/79/41 – Japanese Total
German:
1/0/0 - He-115 Heinkel S/E Twin Float VSO
1/0/0 - Ju-88 Junkers Ju-88 Series 2/E VB
2/0/0 – German Total
Vichy French:
1/0/0 - B.174 or P.63/11 Bloch Type or Potez Type 2/E Lt VB
4/1/0 - D.520 Dewointine Type VF
8/0/0 - D.520 or H.75 Dewointine Type VF or Curtis P-36 type VF
8/4/0 - H.75 Curtis P-36 type VF
1/0/0 - LeO.45 Loire et Olivier Type 2/E Med VB
3/0/0 - Martin 167 or LeO.45 Martin 'Baltimore' or Loire et Olivier 2/E Med VB
25/5/0 – Vichy Total
521.5/84.0/41.0 – Grand Total

For what it’s worth.

Rich

[plan_D]

I think your Vichy French kills are a little out there - RL. I say that because I've read in many places that in one combat sortie 15 Hawk-75s were brought down by Wildcats - with a loss of seven Wildcats and Dauntless.

I think the Vichy French kills would be higher than 25, to be honest.

[FLYBOYJ]

And it looks like we're still looking at 4 to 1 with the Wildcat vs the Zero.

[alejandro_]

R Leonard

Thank you for your message, very interesting. I was somewhat surprised that the USN did not fully compare their kill claims to the actual japanese losses, I guess some of the files were losted or destroyed at the end of the war.

And it looks like we're still looking at 4 to 1 with the Wildcat vs the Zero.

If that is to the Wildcat it is too high in my opinion. During the first 6 months the USN losted quite a few airplanes at the hands of the Zero. The fact that no information was available and the wrong tactics were being applied didn't help the USN crews.

Regards.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by alejandro_

If that is to the Wildcat it is too high in my opinion. During the first 6 months the USN losted quite a few airplanes at the hands of the Zero. The fact that no information was available and the wrong tactics were being applied didn't help the USN crews.

Regards.

What's your defination of "quite a few." As R. Leonard stated "from the USN statistics, there were a total of 178 F4Fs lost in aerial combat ." Face it Alejandro, the US Navy Claimed almost 7 to 1 in favor of the F4F against the Zero, numbers actuallu show more like 4 to 1. At even 3 to 1 the F4F, for being outclassed stomped on the Zero!

[alejandro_]

FlyboyJ

At even 3 to 1 the F4F, for being outclassed stomped on the Zero!

But is this for the first 6 month of for a whole year? i am extremely surprised to find such a high ratio, and it has been compared with actual japanese losses...

Regards.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by alejandro_

FlyboyJ

But is this for the first 6 month of for a whole year? i am extremely surprised to find such a high ratio, and it has been compared with actual japanese losses...

Regards.

This is for the whole 4 1/2 years of combat! At Coral Sea, the Zero had about a 2 to 1 kill ratio over the F4f. At Midway the F4F had a 1.5 to 1 kill ratio over the Zero. At Guadalcanal it went to 2.5 to 1. See the links;

http://centurytel.net/midway/appendi...n_usvftac.html

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Aces/

Bottom line, only 178 F4Fs were lost in combat!

[alejandro_]

Thank you very much for the info, FLYBOYJ, that was exactly what I was looking for. I just don't understand how the Zero can be considered one of the greatest fighter in the PTO when it only achieved a 2:1 kill ratio when all the factors were against the Wildcat, and withing one year it had become totally obsolete.

Regards.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by alejandro_

Thank you very much for the info, FLYBOYJ, that was exactly what I was looking for. I just don't understand how the Zero can be considered one of the greatest fighter in the PTO when it only achieved a 2:1 kill ratio when all the factors were against the Wildcat, and withing one year it had become totally obsolete.

Regards.

You're quite welcome Alejandro!

[R Leonard]

I’ve revisited the Operation Torch results. There were a total of 26 victories claimed by USN pilots, 25 by F4F pilots and 1 from an SBD pilot.

Looking at just the 25 F4F claims, two of these (a D.520 and either a Martin 167 or LeO.45) were reported in the USS Sangamon (CVE-26) report, but did not specifically identify pilots involved. By the time of the action reported, these victories would have stemmed from Mission A-02, which involved one 6-plane division and one 4-plane division, all catapulted off between 0610 and 0720 in conjunction with Missions A-01 (8 TBFs in two 4-plane divisions) and A-03 (8 SBDs in two 4-plane divisions). The only F4F pilot I show as identified was Lieut. Fitzhugh Lee Palmer, Jr., the F4F mission leader, who submitted a claim for a Martin 167 in action over the Port Lyautey airdrome at approximately 0800. As noted, the other victories claimed, which reportedly occurred in the same action as Palmer’s, were not credited to any other particular pilot. The information on the activities of VGF-26 typically does not mention actual pilots, in fact, Palmer is the only F4F driver mentioned by name; in the listings I have only 9 pilots are actually named out of 92 sorties. Anyway, we have Palmer with a M.167 and then the two mystery pilots with the D.520 and the M.167/LeO.45. And just to keep things confusing, VGF-26 had one other unidentified Vichy VF and two other unidentified 2E Vichy VB were reported as probables. Again the VGF-26 pilots are not identified.

There also appears to be a problem over in Ranger’s VF-41 on the morning of 8 November in identifying H75As versus D.520s. Across the intervening 63 years we might ask ourselves “how could they not be able to tell the difference?” but I’d suggest that with pilots in their first action, such confusion would be inevitable.

The credited results for aerial combat in F4Fs were:
Lieut.(jg) CV August of VF-41 (USS Ranger) on Nov 8 with 2 H75A
Lieut. MM Furney of VF-41 on Nov 8 with 2 H75A or D520
Lieut.(jg) BN Mayhew of VF-41 on Nov 8 with 2 H75A or D520
Ens. AD Conner, Jr. of VF-41 on Nov 8 with 1 H75A
Ens. W Taylor of VF-41 on Nov 8 with 1 H75A or D520
Lieut. Comdr. CT Booth of VF-41 on Nov 8 with 1 H75A or D520
Lieut. EW Wood, Jr. of VF-41 on Nov 8 with 1 D520
Lieut.(jg) CA Shields of VF-41 on Nov 8 with 1 H75A
Lieut.(jg) CA Shields of VF-41 on Nov 8 with 1 D520
Lieut.(jg) GM Harris of VF-41 on Nov 8 with 1 D520
Lieut. EW Wood, Jr. of VF-41 on Nov 9 with 1 D520 or Me109*
Lieut. Comdr. JA Raby of VF-9 (USS Ranger) on Nov 8 with 1 P63
Ens. LA Menard of VF-9 on Nov 9 with 1 H75A
Ens. MJ Franger of VF-9 on Nov 9 with 1 H75A
Lieut. Comdr. J Raby of VF-9 on Nov 9 with 1 H75A
Lieut. KC Childers, Jr. of VF-9 on Nov 9 with 1 H75A
Lieut.(jg) HE Vita of VF-9 on Nov 9 with 1 H75A
Lieut. LF Palmer, Jr. of VGF-26 (USS Sangamon) on Nov 8 with 1 M167
<Unidentified> of VGF-26 (USS Sangamon) on Nov 8 with 1 M167 or LeO45
<Unidentified> of VGF-26 (USS Sangamon) on Nov 8 with 1 D.520
Ens. BD Jacques of VGF-29 (USS Santee) on Nov 10 with 1 Potez 63
* This may have been a photo-recon Spitfire that failed to return from a mission. There was one Vichy D.520 in the area but the pilot reported no enemy contact. There were no German fighters involved in any of the Torch actions.

The lone SBD victory was a DB-7 scored by Ens. DA Pattie of VGS-29 (USS Santee) on Nov 10.

Probables claimed were:

Lieut. TA Grell of VF-41 - 1 D.520 on Nov 8
Lieut. Comdr JA Raby of VF-9 - 1 H75A on Nov 9
Lieut. KC Childers, Jr. of VF-9 - 1 H75A on Nov 9
Ens LA Menard of VF-9 - 1 H75A on Nov 9
Ens MJ Franger of VF-9 - 1 H75A on Nov 9
<Unidentified> of VGF-26 - Unidentified S/E VF on Nov 8
<Unidentified> of VGF-26 - Unidentified 2/E VB on Nov 8
<Unidentified> of VGF-26 - Unidentified 2/E VB on Nov 8

Combat losses were
- In aerial combat:
OS2U (from USS Massachusetts) - Ens C Dougherty & ARM RC Ethridge to H75A, both POW
F4F (VF-41) Ens CE Mikronis to H75A, WIA, POW
F4F (VF-41) Lieut.(jg) CA Shields to H75A, POW
F4F (VF-41) Lieut GH Carter, ditched due to damage from H75A, rescued
F4F (VF-41) Lieut. MT Wordell to H75A, POW

- to AA fire
F4F (VF-9) Lieut.(jg) E Micka, KIA
F4F (VF-9) Ens TM Wilhoite, KIA
F4F (VF-9) Lieut.(jg) SM Amesbury, KIA
F4F (VF-41) Lieut. TA Grell, ditched, AA damage, fuel exhausted, rescued
SBD (VS-41) Ens CE Duffy & ARM3c GE Briggs, both KIA
F4F (VF-41) Lieut.(jg) CV August, POW
F4F (VGF-29) Ens WP Naylor, forced landing, POW
TBF (VGS-29) Lieut(jg) DC Rodeen, ARM DE Balkey, & AMM3c EP Tarsilla, forced landing, all POW
F4F (VGF-29) Ens RW Peterson, forced landing, POW
F4F (VGF-29) Ens E Van Vranken, forced landing, POW
F4F (VGF-29) Ens UL Fretwell, forced landing, POW
TBF (VGS-27) Lieut(jg) RE O’Neill, AOM3c WS Gorka, & AOM3c J Carter, all KIA

- Missing in Action
F4F (VGF-29) Lieut.(jg) GF Trumpeter, Aborted mission with oil leak, MIA

There were also numerous operational losses, takeoff crashes, landing accidents, ditching from fuel exhaustion, or engine failure. I've got all that, but they're not really relevant to the topic.

Some folks involved in this operation. CO of VGF-29 was Tommy Blackburn, later CO of VF-17. TA (“Tag”) Grell was one of my father’s USNA classmates, we used to go to his annual Army-Navy Game parties. MT (“Mac”) Wordell was XO of VF-41; he went on to command VF-44 in the Pacific. CV (“Chuck”) August went on with Mac Wordell to VF-44, was shot down in January 1945 over Formosa and taken prisoner, thus becoming one of the very few to be held as a POW by two different belligerents. Wordell also co-wrote “Wildcats over Casablanca” about his squadron, generally, and his adventures, specifically, in this operation. CT (“Tommy”) Booth went on to become an Admiral, lived a couple of quarters down the street from us at Norfolk NAS in the early 1960s. MJ (“Marv”) Franger was at TacTest with my father in the 1946-1948 period and then later was in VX-3 when my father was XO. Lieut TH (“Hugh”) Winters flew with VF-9 and was slightly wounded, went on to command VF-19 in the Pacific; Winters wrote "Skipper - Confessions of a Fighter Squadron Commander, 1943-1944," a fairly straight foreward account of VF-19. Ens. LA (“Lou”) Menard later flew in VBF-12 and has the distinction of being the first USN fighter pilot to bring down an enemy plane with a rocket, a deed done in February 1945. Lieut.(jg) DS (“Diz”) Laird (VF-41) did not score over North Africa, but later scored 1.5 victories over Luftwaffe snoopers off Norway in Operation Leader; added to his later victories over the Japanese made him the only USN ace with victories over both German and Japanese aircraft. Laird was in VF-171 when my father was CO in the 1948 and the squadron was the Navy’s first operational, carrier qualified, jet squadron. Hamilton McWhorter was in VF-9; went to the Pacific to become the first F6F ace. Lieut. John R Sweeny, another of my father’s classmates and long time family friend flew for VF-41; he passed along to me pieces of the Zero that crashed into USS Natoma Bay. Another classmates was Lieut. HB (“Brink”) Bass, XO of VGF-29, later KIA as CO of VF-74 in Operation Dragoon; Other classmates and long time family friends were Lieut HJ (“Hank”) Weiler (VF-41); Lieut. KG (“Cagey”) Hammond (VF-41); and Lieut. CV Johnson (VS-41).

Rich

[FLYBOYJ]

Interestiong stuff RL! It seems the F4f did well based on this information and all F4F kills were from H75As'. Interesting!