Kill Ratios (2 Viewers)

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Is this an oxymoron? How long did it take to roll one on the flight line?!?!?

There were more than one in production at any one time,I have no idea how many but there would be several aircraft in various states moving through the plant.

For the second part I'm only repeating what I was told. Each aircraft took more than a year to produce.

This isn't my field,it is my brother in law who worked (retired earlier this year) for Bae systems and its predecessors,in his case British Aerospace, for 35 years.

It's a family affair,his cousin and nephew both still work at Samlesbury/Wharton. Maybe not for much longer the way things are going.

Cheers

Steve
 
There were more than one in production at any one time,I have no idea how many but there would be several aircraft in various states moving through the plant.

For the second part I'm only repeating what I was told. Each aircraft took more than a year to produce.

This isn't my field,it is my brother in law who worked (retired earlier this year) for Bae systems and its predecessors,in his case British Aerospace, for 35 years.

It's a family affair,his cousin and nephew both still work at Samlesbury/Wharton. Maybe not for much longer the way things are going.

Cheers

Steve

All good - I worked for BAE as well....

Bottom line, if the MOD needed the production line to move faster I'm sure that BAE "Could Have" built more than one Tornado a year.

BTW, the first F-22 was delivered in 2003, the last one in 2011. 183 aircraft were produced - do the math! And I would bet a weeks' pay that the F-22 was way more complicated to build than the Tornado.
 
on GregP question on samples dimension
it's not the number of airplane built/delivered the important number, but the number of missions fly and i think that finnish buffalos flying more missions of dutch buffalos
 
The F6F Hellcat did have a 19 : 1 kill ratio. It was the best piston fighter kill ratio of all times. The next best was down around 12 : 1. That was the Corsair.
Our planes shot down some 6500 Japanese planes and some 80% of those were at the hands of our F6Fs in just the two years the F6Fs saw combat. That's unprecedented.
 
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How do you know that? Ive seen a list of British aces, but the list shows names, not what plane they flew. Most aces who made kills generally flew more than one type fighter in combat ... if they survived that long.

If you have a list of what planes were flown by whom and how many died in them and when, could you post it so we can see the data? I've been looking for data like this for years ...
 
Some of these super high kill ratios I am reading about here are surely 'claims' rather than confirmed kills or kills confirmed by post war research that had access to the former enemies records and personnel. A claimed kill typically reduces to 50% when matched up against actual losses in the European theatre.
 
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The only nation that did a post-war study to validate aerial victories was the U.S.A.. It is detailed in USAAF Study 85 and by a Navy study document. In the PTO, it was MUCH easier to keep track of victories since it was usually 4 - 8 versus 4 - 8 - 12 rather than many hunderds of planes going at each other as in the ETO. It was determined that the verified victories over the ocean, with fewer distractions was quite accurate atfer the early days.

So the kill ratio of the Hellcat is almost certainly VERY accurate since the Hellcats were mostly engaged in the PTO with many fewer enemies than were the P-51's in the ETO with not only many enemies, but also competition from bomber gunners and AAA.

The 19 : 1 kill ratio is real and is formulatged from a population of more than 90% of all Hellcats operated in the war. You should not look a a kill ratio for a mission or a group, but for a type that is represented by more than 50 - 60% of the planes flown in the war.

A sinlge plane flown by a single man can have 1 or more kills and still retun home for an infinite kill ratio. But 60+% of the planes of that type will not have that same luck. Take a "representative sample" and go from there.

The apologists for the Finns' record with the Buffalo fall into a classic mathematical trap ... the sample consisting of just the Finns is NOT a random sample, rendering the math completely invalid. The only way to get a random sample is to actually collect all the sorties flown by the Buffalo and choose some random sample from that population. I'd want any sample more than 50% to put a lot of faith in it, but even a 20 - 30% sample will show what the Buffalo did in much more real terms than choosing the Finnish Air Force alone.

Ditto the FM-2. It belongs in the sample of results from Wildcats since it was a Wildcat.

If you follow correct procedures, the Hellcat emerges on top ... at least until the F-15 Eagle showed up.
 
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What was the contract flow rate? What was the production flow rate if the line was accelerated? Lockheed by contract was told to accelerate the P-3C production flow around 1981 if I remember correctly. We could have done as many as 4 a month if long lead time items were available. Normally we would deliver one every 45 days.

Just because a company is only producing one aircraft a year doesn't mean it could not be produced quicker. Production flow rates are contract driven depending on lead time times and the customer's ability to deliver progress payments for the aircraft being produced.

BTW, I worked on the P-3, L1011 and B-2 production lines so I speak from personal experience.

Contracts are often set by Government annual budgets. These sometimes seem absurd: for instance cutting down production of an aircraft by 20% in order to achieve at best a 5% reduction in overall cost. If the program is then stretched over a longer period, another tactic, the per unit cost of the aircraft goes up and the only thing that has been achieved is a reduced rate of deliver, higher cost although annual budget requirements may have been met. Overall it must be a bad bargain but it's probably done to keep a program intact as much as possible.
 
From 15 years in the industry, it certainly IS done for that reason, with a LOT of justification.

Take the F-22 Raptor for instance. They shut down the line and reassigned or released the workers. If they wanted to restart it for some reason, it would be a whole new learning curve with very little in the way of productive savings from any previous knowledge accrued since the people who accrued that knowledge are not avilable, for the most part, to the new program.

Dito the C-17. When it shuts down, restarting it is as expensive as a new design with the exception of tooling, and that, as expensive as it is, is not a very big part of a production program.
 
How do you know that? Ive seen a list of British aces, but the list shows names, not what plane they flew. Most aces who made kills generally flew more than one type fighter in combat ... if they survived that long...


Simply going to squadron and wings data, ORBs and combat reports e.t.c. And in e.g. Chris Thomas' Christopher Shores' The Typhoon Tempest Story (1988 )there are all Typhoon and Tempest claims, some with info on the real LW losses, plus T T losses. 2 TAF claims and losses with some info on the LW real losses can be found from the more recent 2nd Tactical Air Force (4 vols) by the same authors. And then there are John Foreman's Fighter Command War Diaries (at least 5 vols) etc.
 
In the PTO, it was MUCH easier to keep track of victories since it was usually 4 - 8 versus 4 - 8 - 12 rather than many hunderds of planes going at each other as in the ETO. It was determined that the verified victories over the ocean, with fewer distractions was quite accurate atfer the early days.

At face value your initial statement is logical, and certainly there was less opportunity for pilots from different units to claim the same enemy aircraft. However, positive confirmation of a victory over the ocean isn't any easier because all aircraft shot down disappear into the depths. Did the Navy study review Japanese loss records in formulating its assessment? If not, then the study is still flawed. Of course loss records aren't always available, particularly Japanese records of which many were destroyed during WWII. This means that any kill/loss ratio will have considerable margin of error.

So the kill ratio of the Hellcat is almost certainly VERY accurate since the Hellcats were mostly engaged in the PTO with many fewer enemies than were the P-51's in the ETO with not only many enemies, but also competition from bomber gunners and AAA.

Maybe MORE accurate but not necessarily VERY accurate. The ratio is still prone to overclaiming by pilots who "saw" the enemy aircraft go down in flames but for which no loss was reported by the opposing side. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, people often see what they want to see. I'm not criticizing or demeaning personal accounts but they are, by their nature, flawed. There are numerous accounts of fighter pilots seeing a puff of smoke then the enemy aircraft dive down and so they claimed a kill when, in reality, the puff of smoke was from the application of power by the enemy pilot and the dive was simply an evasion manoeuvre.

The 19 : 1 kill ratio is real and is formulatged from a population of more than 90% of all Hellcats operated in the war. You should not look a a kill ratio for a mission or a group, but for a type that is represented by more than 50 - 60% of the planes flown in the war.

Sadly no more real than any other kill/loss ratio - more of a claims/loss ratio.

The apologists for the Finns' record with the Buffalo fall into a classic mathematical trap ... the smaple consiting of just the Finns is NOT a random sample, rendering the math completely invlaid. The only way to get a random sample is to actually collect all the sorties flown by the Buffalo and choose some random sample from that population. I'd want any sample more than 50% to put a lot of faith in it, but even a 20 - 30% sample will show what the Buffalo did in much more real terms than choosing the Finnish Air Force alone.

Firstly, I'm not sure why anyone needs to be an apologist for the Finns' fighting record during WWII. They were brave, resourceful and supremely effective.

I agree we shouldn't take the Finns as a representative group but, unfortunately for your argument, even when you throw in the Brits, the Dutch and the US Marines, the poor old Buffalo still comes out with a claim/loss ratio of around 23:1. That said, all such claim/loss statistics still have a wide margin of error and are so dependent on local operational and tactical conditions as to be of little real value.
 
Combat reports are claims, not vetted, real victories. Typhoon and Tempest story is probably pretty good about the planes, but the kills are claims from the British side. And since there are NO studies done of Germany's REAL losses, how can John Foreman's volumes be anything but claims? I have a list of German claims that is basically as complete as yoiu can get, but some have been lost. For instance, I can verify most of Erich Hartmann's claims, but not all from the claims list.

If there are vetted lists of German, Japanese, and Soviet losses and/or victories ... I'd surely like to see them or purchase a copy for myself. Heck, I'd like to see an authoritative list of losses and victories from France, Finland, Poland ... any country other than the U.S.A.

I already have the U.S.A.'s vetted lists in the form of the official military reports, and they aren't everything you'd want. The USAAF Report doesn't list the plane the victor was flying or the victim type and the Navy report is not exactly hopeless, but doesn't list kills by name ... only by type. So they vetted wqhat the Hellcat shot down, for instance, but do not have a list of victories credited to particular pilots. You can back into that list other ways, but the totals, though close, are not entirely equal. You can see what was the probably overall truth, but it's tough to attrubute exact U.S. Navy kills to individuals like you can with the USAAF Report 85.
 
Combat reports are claims, not vetted, real victories. Typhoon and Tempest story is probably pretty good about the planes, but the kills are claims from the British side. And since there are NO studies done of Germany's REAL losses, how can John Foreman's volumes be anything but claims? I have a list of German claims that is basically as complete as yoiu can get, but some have been lost. For instance, I can verify most of Erich Hartmann's claims, but not all from the claims list.

If there are vetted lists of German, Japanese, and Soviet losses and/or victories ... I'd surely like to see them or purchase a copy for myself. Heck, I'd like to see an authoritative list of losses and victories from France, Finland, Poland ... any country other than the U.S.A.

I already have the U.S.A.'s vetted lists in the form of the official military reports, and they aren't everything you'd want. The USAAF Report doesn't list the plane the victor was flying or the victim type and the Navy report is not exactly hopeless, but doesn't list kills by name ... only by type. So they vetted wqhat the Hellcat shot down, for instance, but do not have a list of victories credited to particular pilots. You can back into that list other ways, but the totals, though close, are not entirely equal. You can see what was the probably overall truth, but it's tough to attrubute exact U.S. Navy kills to individuals like you can with the USAAF Report 85.

Not sure how you can discuss statistical and measurement errors and "truth" in the same breath. The USAAF and USN reports are statistical summaries not "truth" (whatever that means). They may indicate a general trend or identify issues of note but to define the numbers as a "truth" is stretching things considerably. The data just aren't there to support the claim. If the reports had 100% of all records from both sides, and all records were 100% accurate then we could claim it as truth...but this is the real world and I'd say to claim we have even 60% of the necessary data is an overstatement.
 
USAF Historical Study is available here

http://www.afhra.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090601-121.pdf

and it's a list of approved claims, not of claims which were later linked to actual losses.

Frank Olynyk's books are more complete (aircraft type etc), but a) it's still claims as approved and b), Olynyk's books are as rare as hen's teeth, though apparently he may re-publish at some point.
 
Not sure at all where you're coming from, Buffnut.

The USAAF Study 85 and the Navy report are the ONLY reports done after WWII thaht even tried to connect the claimed victories with enemy admitted losses. If they aren't as close to truth as you can get given the circumstances of WWII, then there are NO true victory files anywhere in the world, and discussing it is worthless.

I know of no other studies done by any other country that approach the USAAF and US Navy reports. I DO have claims files for all the other countries except for four. But claims are very inaccurate in theaters where large number of aircraft were engaged with one another in conjunction with bomber gunners and AAA.

If you don't think these reports are at least very close, you have no argument on anything concerning victories anywhere at all. I definitely think the US Navy report is VERY close and the USAAF Studay 85 report is as close as they can come given the evidence they could look at. That is, almost by definition, as good a victory list as can be generated by a miltary service or by anyone else. They looked at claims, admitted losses, dates, positions, times, altitudes, and correlated them as best they could. Can't think of a better way to do it even now.
 
Greg,

I'm simply taking issue with some of the terminology you're using. I'm not disagreeing that the reports may be as good as anyone is going to get...but they have some major holes and "close as you can get" may still be a very, VERY long way from "truth", "accurate" or "real". You "think" the Navy report is very accurate but what is that belief based on? Does the report quantify where gaps existed in the data?

Personally, I do find kill/loss ratios meaningless because comparing the Hellcat's ratio with that of the Me109 doesn't actually tell us anything about the relative performances of the 2 types. There are so many variable factors that reducing combat capability to a simple ratio seems trite (to me at least).

Cheers,
B-N
 
The ETO approach to claims review IMO was the best with respect to packaging the Encounter reports and available film and sending them to the Victory Credit Board to personally verify based on third party and theoretically objective review. The 8th VCB downgraded destroyed claims to Probable or Damaged and in some cases Nada when either a personal witness failed to attest to the observed destruction or the film failed to confirm a blow up, a ball of fire, a loss of wing or fuselage break up - or pilot bailed out.

The 8th AF VCB did contain not only all the claims by pilot name, serial number, date, enemy a/c type and associated award from the board as well as the VCM Report number. The USAF 85 packaged all of this and parsed the 8th VCB for duplicates (many but not massive to the overall total of records) then extracted what was left into 85 for the ETO. In my long and personal deep dive into the 8th and 9th AF as well as comparison to the Tony Woods LW Victory Credits compilation as well as parsing the many squadron histories of Dr. Prien, I would estimate about a 90% match of AAF ETO VC's (fighters) to losses reported by the LW through 1944.

I am not aware of any theatre, or combat org that was as rigorous as the ETO VC boards and that includes especially the USN/USMC for which I have not seen evidence of a documented process undertaken by each of the command authorities to perform the same evidence gathering, and absent film documentation, a sworn statement by a witness on a documented Encounter Report.

Nor were the LW VC's even close for their awards when matched to our losses - with ratios of 2:1 over claiming not uncommon for either bombers or fighters. I produced a specific sample of the matching process for the April 24, 1944 mission in which I documented a/c, crew, location, serial number/werk number, unit for every single credit and loss - for which the US Fighter awards were about 90% of the destruction claims, and were approximately 95% of the documented LW losses - leaving room for bomber claims.

The Luftwaffe had a method of damage assessment that in my opinion explains some of the gaps between a US VC award and a LW recorded 'lost or written off'. If a US pilot chased a German plane to the ground and observed it to belly into a field, it was claimed as destroyed and so accounted, but the a/c may have had less than 60% damage and deemed Damaged by the LW in their accounting.

I am not picking on the USN/USMC award process because other AAF theatre processes were just as suspect with respect to formal documentation and review, particularly in 1942 and 1943.

Greg - you are more knowledgeable about USN review and award processes. Can you shed light on a.) encounter report requirements, intelligence de-briefing, review and assessment - then b.)formal reporting similar to a VCB in the ETO. Can someone go to the source documents and where may they be found today?

Did the USN require confirmation by a witness when film not available or inconclusive? I do know that there are so many IJN and IJA records of losses that are far lower than our awarded victory credits for many engagements and the Marianas Turkey Shoot is one such specific example.
 
Contracts are often set by Government annual budgets. These sometimes seem absurd: for instance cutting down production of an aircraft by 20% in order to achieve at best a 5% reduction in overall cost. If the program is then stretched over a longer period, another tactic, the per unit cost of the aircraft goes up and the only thing that has been achieved is a reduced rate of deliver, higher cost although annual budget requirements may have been met. Overall it must be a bad bargain but it's probably done to keep a program intact as much as possible.

And that's being done right now with the F-35 and F/A-18 Growler.
 

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