Early war air power

[tsimmonds]

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

Nik...let the protein molecules from your peanut butter and jelly sandwich work its' magic on your cranial needs, and re-read his threads!

[puts on best Homer Simpson voice] "mmmmmm......Peanut butter and Jelly sandwich.....aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh...(drool)"

[;)]

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

BILLY GOAT GRUFF!!!!!! My gosh, it has been years!!!!

[tsimmonds]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

BILLY GOAT GRUFF!!!!!! My gosh, it has been years!!!!

Same here; for some odd reason this thread brought it to mind[;)]

[Nikademus]

[;)]

[jwilkerson]

Hey guys don't we think this thread is done?

Give it a rest.

[Nikademus]

True....i thought it was done by page 4 myself.

[rtrapasso]

..

[niceguy2005]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

..

[:D][:D][:D]

Now I know who to go to when I need one of these.

[mdiehl]

More or less indicates that even five full months into the war the USN's F4f pilots either hadn't "gotten the word" about the Zero's astounding manueverability..., or hadn't believed it. Seems to support my guess that no pilot would believe it until he'd seen it for himself.

It also indicates that withing minutes of their first engagement against a zero pilots came up with a solution that was effective for dealing with them. The interval of shock n awe & allaged paralytic demoralization fabricated of whole cloth as an excuse for the ZB seems to have been vanishingly brief.

Don't worry though I'll accumulate all manner of cherry picked quotations that illustrate the difficulties that the Japanese had with Allied planes on first encounters, many of which may also be found in 1stTeamV2. Then we can get back to quantitative analysis vs, well, whatever it is that Axis Fanboys imagine themselves to be doing when they attempt rebuttal.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

More or less indicates that even five full months into the war the USN's F4f pilots either hadn't "gotten the word" about the Zero's astounding manueverability..., or hadn't believed it. Seems to support my guess that no pilot would believe it until he'd seen it for himself.

It also indicates that withing minutes of their first engagement against a zero pilots came up with a solution that was effective for dealing with them. The interval of shock n awe & allaged paralytic demoralization fabricated of whole cloth as an excuse for the ZB seems to have been vanishingly brief.

WHAT? Did you even READ the quote? What it says is that a month after Coral Sea, while waiting for action at Midway, the best the pilot could think of is a totally defensive manuever. Taking the fight into a vertical "zoom and boom" attitude hadn't worked itself into the doctrine yet.

"I had been shocked by the performance of the Zeros in the Coral Sea. They had flown around me like a swarm of bees. With that in mind, while we waited, I told my inexperienced new wingman, Ensign Mark Bright, 'We will fly abeam of each other and I'll shoot them off you and you shoot them off me.' It was the only tactic I could think of. There was no way to out maneuver the Zero, one on one - especially without the altitude advantage."

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl


It also indicates that withing minutes of their first engagement against a zero pilots came up with a solution that was effective for dealing with them.

Indeed. If alone....dive out of combat or look for a nearby cloud.

Don't worry though I'll accumulate all manner of cherry picked quotations that illustrate the difficulties that the Japanese had with Allied planes on first encounters, many of which may also be found in 1stTeamV2. Then we can get back to quantitative analysis vs, well, whatever it is that Axis Fanboys imagine themselves to be doing when they attempt rebuttal.

As opposed to making sweeping and inaccurate generalizations without source material such as "they were all in a landing pattern when the Zeros attacked" or "F4F's always shot down more Zeros than they lost in every encounter"......Then calling people who dispute them and actually quote source to back it up "Axis Fanboys." Very mature.

[Rainer]

This really isn't fun anymore [:@].
And mdiehl probably isn't prepared to understand what people are trying to tell him.
This is, as I understand it, a forum to exchange oppinions and to learn something from others, but the forum is not designed to be a Kindergarten.
Can a moderator please shut the whole thing down (the thread, not the forum)?
Rainer

[Big B]

I would humbly submit that there should be nothing to fear from discussion, nor should there be anything to get upset over. That is the Western Tradition of Inquiry, and without debate and inquiry we would never have learned anything over the ages. I would respectfully ask the mods not to lock this thread unless name calling becomes a problem (I hope not). There is still much to learn here, and all the facts and arguments are not all in.

Brian

[mdiehl]

Then calling people who dispute them and actually quote source to back it up "Axis Fanboys." Very mature.

I never shoot first, but I will eventually shoot back. If you got aproblem, whine to the mods or direct your indignation to the people who give first offense. If you won't, tough luck to you.

Vis a vis this discussion, anecdotes aren't worth crap. What matters is good data. It's one thing to pick an American fighter pilot's comment and conclude he was concerned about the zero's maneuverabiulity. It is quite a leap of imagination to go from there to concluding that Allied pilots did not rapidly have solutions to that problem that worked. The way to know whether or not they worked is to look at the loss ratios. I have. Now I'm going to go further and dissect the numbers both in terms of gross loss ratios but also with an eye towards the other intangibles beyond the presumptive claims about "shock and awe" or "inability to cope with a new enemy a.c. type."

It's already been drawn to my attention that Shores seems quite inaccurate both as to allied and japanese losses. I am told his tallies for the AVG's kills (57) don't even come up to the number of Japanese wrecks that British divers pulled from Rangoon harbor alone (60). And he's apparently on record counting 7 P-40s shot down by the Japanese on 19 February where the actual Allied unit records indicate 3 shot down in return for 1 Japanese zero. Not bad for an engagement that started with the P-40s outnumbered 4:1. So now Shores v1 is on his way, and I'm not only going to take down his numbers but apparently fact check them against other sources. It's gonna be a long project folks.

At Darwin, of the 10 Allied P-40s engaged, 5 were destroyed taking off and 5 in the air. Outnumbered roughly 6:1, at the very least ANY intellectually honest person would look at that and wonder whether or not being vastly outnumbered, rather than the idioic and downright nebulous attribution of "shock and awe" or "dismay" or "inexperience against the zero" was deterministic in that battle.

The point here is that what matters is a good statistical analysis of the best quantititative data available, rather than some jury rigged, grab ass, grab bag of "anecodotal truisms" that are selectively chosen a priori to prove a claim that does not really seem warranted by the extant data.

[jwilkerson]

Well I wanted to give M. one more chance to reply - he has now done that - I earlier suggested this one had outlived its usefulness.

If you guys want to start fresh - go ahead - but I'm gonna lock this one down.