ORIGINAL: witpqs
I saw the exchange. I then saw the information you presented, and it simply has too many assumptions in it.
I only made assumptions about the Coral Sea battle, and that was because hard data about the strike is hard to find. But I did post further info that cleared up some of those original assumptions. So what we’re left with is this:
Fact: 69 Japanese planes were in the strike package.
Fact: 27 of these planes were lost.
Fact: 4 of these 27 were lost to SBDs, regular Wildcat CAP played no role in shoot downs because they were out of position.
Fact: That leaves 23 that were flak losses.
So the only thing left we don’t know for a fact is how many of the 69 airframes were zeros. But even if we assume none were zeros and all 69 were strike aircraft, 23 out of 69 is a loss rate of 33%, well within the 30%-60% estimate I gave.
Of course I seriously doubt none of the 69 were zeros, so it was probably closer to 50% of the strike airframes being destroyed by flak. But I freely admit that is an assumption based on an educated guess.
However, nothing above is subjective opinion, it is all based on the actual numbers historically involved in the fight. And more than backs up what I said originally.
Jim
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