Hellcat Vs The Zero

[Jank]

JoeB said, "But, as a general rule people often do say 'this plane claimed X:1 and this one 2X:1, it did twice as well' when in reality the claims might have been overstated only 50% in the first case, and 300% in the second case."

Joe B, you are right of course, we are all aware of both the bias and "fog of war" that led to errors on all sides. To quote FlyboyJ, "I was making a point." I should have mentioned that the kill/loss claim I cited was illustrative of that point.

In furtherance of that point, the P-47N's out of Le Shima were not flying top cover for B-29's at 30,000ft and were not engaging the enemyat high altitude. The P-47N, utilized with with boom and zoom tactics, could not be touched by the Japanese. It outclassed the P-47D by a considerable margin.

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/p-47/p-47n-zoom.pdf

"The Japanese Navy 343rd Air Group, flying the N1K1J George, a roughly comparable plane to the Ki-84, went about 1:3 v. US fighters in 1945 in real results."

Since we are on the subject of nitpicking, if "real" is intended to mean actual or otherwise accurate, where exactly was this figure compiled from if not from inherently unreliable claims?

[Soren]

About the N1K2J, a cool feature is the automatic flaps. Pretty smart by the Japanese considering the situation they were in !

[lesofprimus]

As my Grandfather said numerous times, the N1K2J was the best performing aircraft in the Pacific, and he test flew one of em.....

[syscom3]

Any way you look at it, the Japanese were 1 to 2 generations behind the allies.

Consider a late 1945 hypothetical battle against the US.

P80, F7F, F8F and F4U-4's against the Ki-84.

[Civettone]

Or against the Ki-83, Ki-201, Ki-202 and the J7W Shinden...


None yet ready for production in 1945 but then again, I don't immediataly see a P-80 flying missions over Japan...

Kris

[syscom3]

Originally Posted by Civettone

Or against the Ki-83, Ki-201, Ki-202 and the J7W Shinden...


None yet ready for production in 1945 but then again, I don't immediately see a P-80 flying missions over Japan...

Kris

P80's were being deployed in Europe in Aug 1945. Had the war not ended that month, there would have been a couple of groups flying them in the Pacific within a couple of months.

[Jank]

I agree Syscom. The P-80 certainly would have been the horse to watch. On the prop plane front, they could have also reinstated the production of the P-72, an honest 490mph prop job suitable for high altitude escort duty. The P-51H was an impressive performer. By the late summer of 1945, some P-51Hs had been issued to a few operational units. These units were in the process of working up to operational status when the war in the Pacific ended with the Japanese surrender.

The Shinden's range was about 525 miles. You can't win playing defense.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by JoeB

Even the same plane looked at from two sides. My personal favorite, that's inspired me to research it, is MiG-15 v F-86 in Korea; 10:1 according to the US side, 3:1 according to the Soviets, *in the opposite direction*. If you take the approach, "oh well you can poke holes in anything but...let's just ignore that and use the claims" you get opposite results. One of those numbers has to be wrong, and of course in reality both are.

The Soviets claimed 650 F-86s over Korea - 660 actually rotated through from 1950 - 1953. That means the Russian shot down all but 10 F-86s....

As I posted earlier, do the math - even with the skewed numbers included and including F-86 losses from "all causes" there is still at least a 4 to 1 kill ratio for the Saber when you include the Koreans and the Chinese. The Russians like to separate themselves from their Korean and Chinese comrades so we will never know what the real USAF F-86 vs USSR MiG-15 kill ratio was but having worked on both aircraft and in speaking to pilots who flew both aircraft I would firmly believe the F-86 walked away the victor.

As far as WW2 - we all know the ratios are higher than history ultimately revealed to us, but then net result was still the same...

[JoeB]

Originally Posted by Jank

Japanese Navy 343rd Air Group, about 1:3 v. US fighters in 1945 in real results[/i]."

Since we are on the subject of nitpicking, if "real" is intended to mean actual or otherwise accurate, where exactly was this figure compiled from if not from inherently unreliable claims?

Henry Sakaida's book "Genda's Blade". He matched up the 343rd's combat accounts with those in US records, and that was the approximate total result. Naturally it was more favorable to the 343rd just based on their claims and losses; and more favorable to their US opponents just based on *their* claims and losses.

Joe

[JoeB]

Originally Posted by FLYBOYJ

As I posted earlier, do the math - even with the skewed numbers included and including F-86 losses from "all causes" there is still at least a 4 to 1 kill ratio for the Saber when you include the Koreans and the Chinese. The Russians like to separate themselves from their Korean and Chinese comrades so we will never know what the real USAF F-86 vs USSR MiG-15 kill ratio was but having worked on both aircraft and in speaking to pilots who flew both aircraft I would firmly believe the F-86 walked away the victor.

As far as WW2 - we all know the ratios are higher than history ultimately revealed to us, but then net result was still the same...

It's really nothing to do with working on planes or knowing pilots to calculate the ratio, but a matter of what the real losses were on each side. My point is you can't use 10:1 as innumerable books and articles have, you can't use 2-3:1 in MiG's favor, as many Russian books and articles do. What's the right number? you need the real losses for each side.

There's no reason to overstate the MiG success by counting F-86 losses to non-MIG causes; and you just can't use the F-86's claims (you seem to use the F-86's claims of around 800 MiG's to their losses to all causes of around 224 F-86's to get around 4:1, that's not a meaningful ratio).

In that particular case the actual number of MiG's downed was not hugely less than what the F-86's claimed (all three MiG AF's, Soviet, Chinese and NK together lost around 550, anyway probably <600, MiG-15's in combat to F-86's). The claims by the MiG's were much more overstated (900 F-86's claimed by all three, v around 90 F-86's actually downed by MiG's the official 78 was a slight understatement). As to ratios individually v Soviets or Chinese/NK MiG's, there's enough detail to estimate that, actually, since we know how many F-86's each claimed, and there are enough examples of specific combats to compare the general accuracy of claiming between the Soviets and Chinese (not greatly different). The NK's are known to have been a fairly minor factor so don't have huge impact on any of those numbers.

But the point is we don't know any of the above that till we know the real losses, nor in any other case. We went through recently, how per USAAF stats digest, based on US claims, the P-39/40's in the early months of the Pacific War were outscored slightly; in reality Japanese fighters had the better of it 2-4:1. That's a serious difference. The US claims were a lot less accurate in that case than in Korea. Or back to Korea, B-29's were credited with 28 MiG-15's; they probably shot down 3 (2 Soviet, 1 Chinese). There's no way to know that difference in claim accuracy on one side, without knowing the real opposing losses, or at least having examples of them.

Don't firmly conclude anything quantitative in air combat success, using claims. Good general rule IMO.

Joe

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by JoeB

It's really nothing to do with working on planes or knowing pilots to calculate the ratio, but a matter of what the real losses were on each side. My point is you can't use 10:1 as innumerable books and articles have, you can't use 2-3:1 in MiG's favor, as many Russian books and articles do. What's the right number? you need the real losses for each side.

Agree - but I could still consider the US claims a lot more accurate than the Soviets for the simple reason, we could debut the issue and openly discuss and research it, we've been able to do this for years. Although its basically the same in Russia today, many of the surviving VVS pilots who flew in Korea will still hold on to the stigma that the VVS squadrons in Korea shot down 650 F-86s - Stalin propaganda that is hard to let go.

Originally Posted by JoeB

There's no reason to overstate the MiG success by counting F-86 losses to non-MIG causes; and you just can't use the F-86's claims (you seem to use the F-86's claims of around 800 MiG's to their losses to all causes of around 224 F-86's to get around 4:1, that's not a meaningful ratio).

OK agree....

Originally Posted by JoeB

In that particular case the actual number of MiG's downed was not hugely less than what the F-86's claimed (all three MiG AF's, Soviet, Chinese and NK together lost around 550, anyway probably <600, MiG-15's in combat to F-86's). The claims by the MiG's were much more overstated (900 F-86's claimed by all three, v around 90 F-86's actually downed by MiG's the official 78 was a slight understatement). As to ratios individually v Soviets or Chinese/NK MiG's, there's enough detail to estimate that, actually, since we know how many F-86's each claimed, and there are enough examples of specific combats to compare the general accuracy of claiming between the Soviets and Chinese (not greatly different). The NK's are known to have been a fairly minor factor so don't have huge impact on any of those numbers.

Again agree....

Originally Posted by JoeB

But the point is we don't know any of the above that till we know the real losses, nor in any other case. We went through recently, how per USAAF stats digest, based on US claims, the P-39/40's in the early months of the Pacific War were outscored slightly; in reality Japanese fighters had the better of it 2-4:1. That's a serious difference. The US claims were a lot less accurate in that case than in Korea. Or back to Korea, B-29's were credited with 28 MiG-15's; they probably shot down 3 (2 Soviet, 1 Chinese). There's no way to know that difference in claim accuracy on one side, without knowing the real opposing losses, or at least having examples of them.

You may be right about the B-29 kills although when a B-29 did hit a Mig, sometimes you had dozens of airmen seeing the actions. At the same time, I would guess that the NCO's manning the guns within the -29s were not the most reliable source (taking nothing away from NCOs). My Uncle Bill did about 10 missions in Korea before his B-29 crashed. I could remember him telling me that on 2 occasions they "thought" they got some MiGs because of "fireballs" sighted in the direction his firecontrol officer was shooting (and that was when they were even "allowed" to fire their weapons at night).

Originally Posted by JoeB

Don't firmly conclude anything quantitative in air combat success, using claims. Good general rule IMO.

Joe

Agree - all those tables and charts are just a very loose "fuzzy" picture of what might be "somewhat accurate."

[Jank]

"Henry Sakaida's book "Genda's Blade". He matched up the 343rd's combat accounts with those in US records, and that was the approximate total result. Naturally it was more favorable to the 343rd just based on their claims and losses; and more favorable to their US opponents just based on *their* claims and losses."

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The "combat accounts" should be the "US records" except where a pilot claims a kill but it isn't officially credited as such. The 318th's 79:1 record was based on the official 318th's accounts which were also the US records for the 318th.

My point here is that the we are never talking about "real results" to coin your phrase. (You now say approximate total result) You tore into my example of the 318th having a 79:1 kill ratio by June 1, 1945 (It was actually June 8th) as obviously inaccurate due to the fact that we can't ever really know the actual ratio due in part to bias and other error causing factors (on which I agree) and then you respond with a 1:3 number for the George that you deem a "real result."

I don't care what book the numbers came from. Again, to the extent that by "real result" you mean that it is an actual, accurate and real ratio, I am afraid you are mistaken. Any kill ratios formed from records of pilot accounts, official credited kills and records of aircraft losses are quite obviously not "real results."

The reason is quite simple. Any sources from which such conclusory data is formed are full of errors.

The 318th's 79:1 kill ratio by June 8, 1945 probably was an "approximate total result." You have P-47N's using boom and zoom tactics against relatively inexperienced pilots and many of the kills were of kamikazes who were preoccupied with simply delivering their aircraft to a ship and not engaging American fighters.

May 25th -

The 318th had encountered over 60 enemy planes engaged in a kamikaze strike and destroyed 34 without a single loss. That stands to this day as the reigning a record for a single group in a single action.

That number is obviously an error. More than one pilot probably claimed the same kill. Many of the Japs took little evasive action. yada yada ... It still points to an overwhelming lopsided kill / loss ratio which was my inartfully plead point to begin with.

[Civettone]

Originally Posted by syscom3

P80's were being deployed in Europe in Aug 1945. Had the war not ended that month, there would have been a couple of groups flying them in the Pacific within a couple of months.

How are you going to get them flying over Japan? Put them on a carrier?
That's why I said I don't see them flying OVER JAPAN.

Kris

[Soren]

Originally Posted by lesofprimus

As my Grandfather said numerous times, the N1K2J was the best performing aircraft in the Pacific, and he test flew one of em.....

He must have been very impressed by the aircraft's handling, performance according most sources wasn't anything special, however with 130/150 grade fuel the performance would've also been better than what it was in Japanese service.

[lesofprimus]

Exactly Soren...