Allied fighters suck

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TheElf
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by TheElf »

ORIGINAL: Shark7

As I read this what seems to be the running theme is: Allies should be better in A2A starting in the second half of 1942, without regaurd to any facts. In the real war, yes in general late 1942 and into 1943 was the turning point due to attrition losses in the Solomons.

However, if people are trying to argue that the Allies in game should automatically start being better than Japanese fighter pilots starting in 7-42 then they are way off base. The game has a major difference to history, that being my input as a player. And if I can avoid the disaster at Midway or the grinding campaign in the Solomons then there is absolutely no reason I should have weaker fighter squadrons going into 1943 or even 1944.

Basically, the Japanese player should not be automatically put at a disadvantage especially if the Japanese player has done good management of his fighter corps and pilot pools.
This is precisely why I removed the Zero bonus and the P-39 penalty. Hard coding failures that were the result of many contributing factors across the spectrum is bad form. Better to allow what factors we have represented in the game do that for us.

BTW, from this point on I will fore go posting in a thread that is titled "XYZ sucks..."
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witpqs
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by witpqs »

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

The beam defense was Flatley's term for Thatch's "weave" which was first used at Midway, not Oct 1942 as you state.

Also cited and related in some detail in Shattered Sword. IIRC it being much to the consternation of the IJN fighter pilots facing it.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by mdiehl »

I wrote specifically of CV engagements, not CV LRCAP engagements. It matters because of the business about warning that you mentioned.
For the entire Guadalcanal campaign, 31 Wildcats were shot down by Zeros. Wildcats shot down 25 Zeros in return. After 7 Aug 42, losses tended to even out.

The totals for the campaign more or less evened out. But the 7 August Japanese victory was offset by an equally crushing victory later in the same month for the F4F drivers. The slightly favorable loss ratio enjoyed by the Japanese was probably due to the frequent instances of lack of warning for the F4Fs; in A2A combat in WW2 absent radar or other early warning, the advantage tended to lie with the attacker because the attacker could choose the time, place and numbers engaging. An attacker went into a fight knowing when the fight would begin (assuming the attacker knew where he was). The defender basically just waited on the ground until trouble showed up, or endeavored to maintain a small number of a.c. as top cover.

7 August has alot in common with the Darwin strike and one of the (IIRC) Soerbaja engagements where a bunch of Japanese a.c. got into a formation of landing P-40s.
I would agree that US NAVY pilots were as well trained as Japanese NAVY pilots. What was lacking was experience in combat which was gained throughout 1942. As to deflection shooting, Japanese pilots were every bit as good at deflection shooting and numerous examples are detailed in Lundstrom's book.

Except that the examples don't support that. What they show is that IJN pilots tended to wait for straight stern approaches then overtake and pull up after passing the target. The problem for many Japanese was that they pulled up much too close to the F4F and got hammered into the ground when the F4F turned inside them long enough to put enough ammo on target for a kill. Everyone quotes Thach when he wrote disparagingly of the F4F but they leave out the part where Thach says "yet we're beating them because their pilots are inferior."

As to the business about experience in combat... if that mattered, then the Japanese should have done much better at Coral Sea and Midway against F4Fs. But they didn't. USN F4F drivers with NO combat experience started beating Zeroes the first time they fought against Zeroes.
The Japanese also tended to have more experience in type aircraft in that they tended to stay in fighters once assigned during training.


Based on their results, it does not seem like it helped them very much.
One fact everyone overlooks is that deflection shooting wasn't part of the US Navy flight training program prewar.

Yes, it was. They just didn't put special emphasis on its importance in the context of dealing with A6Ms.
The use of .50 cal MGs is what allowed US pilots to hit with great effect at long range. The 7.7mms MGs on the Zero couldn't provide the same punch. Deflection shooting had little to do with that.


Most Japanese a.c. weren't shot down at long range. They were shot down at close range by F4Fs that often turned inside the Zeros. The reason why the .50 was a great A2A weapon was not because of its range. It was because it had a high r.o.f. and each bullet literally hit with the force of a mercedes dropped onto the enemy plane from a height of six feet.
As for Koga's Zero, intelligence first began to be released to fleet units in Spetember 1942. Flight testing results were released in November 1942 and comparison testing vs US fighters was released in December 1942.


Long after it mattered to the IJN. Their carrier pilot force was gutted by then.
Flatley saw preliminary flight testing data prior to arriving in the Solomons in OCtober 1942.

By October 1942 the 25th Air Flotilla had likewise been gutted of its most experience combats due to casualties.
The beam defense was Flatley's term for Thatch's "weave" which was first used at Midway, not Oct 1942 as you state.


I did not state it was first used in Oct 1942. I said it was first regularly used in Oct 1942. You need to read more carefully. VMF pilots noted that they had not heard of it and were not trained in it before deployment to Henderson. That also is in Lundstrom's First Team series.

Partially incorrect. Aluminum is generally considered a non-sparking material except when in powder form.


You are partly incorrect. Aluminum partially pulverizes when struck by a 700 grain projectile moving in excess of 2,000 fps. It also burns. Perhaps some more materials science study is needed in your background.
The tanks generally did not burst but were punctured which allowed fuel to stream from the aircraft.


Many of them burst. That spray that you see (which is often followed by the wing falling off) is the tank bursting under the impact.
My bad. I could have swore you said 1942.


I did. I also said "in Carrier engagements." So it was still your "bad" (as usual) although not for the reason you pretended.
Of course, we are forgetting that Zeros owed their extremely long range to very low power settings as well.


No. They owed their range to their very light weight.
And we are overlooking the fact that at Guadalcanal, Zeros were often forced to fight with belly tanks attached due to a lack of fuel at range. Which, in effect, puts them under the same limitations you claim for the Wildcat at Coral Sea.


No, it doesn't. I think you're just grabbing at desperate excuses to rationalize Zero losses.
And, Rabaul, of course, was the equivalent of the Hilton.


Well, it didn't feature regular bombardments by USN naval gunfire, emplaced land based artillery, US snipers, or US infiltrators, so by comparison with Henderson Field it might as well have been the Hilton.
But it wasn't due to losses at Midway.


Midway, Coral Sea, and Eastern Solomons. Each engagement had the effect of gutting the strike types of the IJN CV based forces, and substantially attriting the A6M types.
And it's pretty much an unavoidable established fact, at least according to Lundstrom, that Zeros shot down more Wildcats than they lost.


That is incorrect. Lundstrom does not say that. Indeed, if you go by tally, Zeroes lost more against F4Fs than they shot down against F4Fs in CV vs CV combat. Zeroes enjoyed a slightly favorable kill ratio over Guadalcanal, a fact that can be attributed partly to having the initiative in most of that campaign, and partly due to the mission complexity of the defending F4Fs. It's easier to shoot down an F4F with a Zero when the F4F is ignoring the Zero and trying to shoot down a G3M or G4M.

When the Japanese tried "fighter sweeps" which were by definition A6M vs F4F they lost badly.
Without being on a defensive posture, without long range early warning, and without team tactics, the Wildcat would not have been as effective as it was. Zeros had none of these advantages.


[8|] Or, in other words, taking your JFB apologist spin out of it, "if it weren't for American pilots doing a better job flying their a.c. than the Japanese did flying their a.c., the Zeroes might have regularly defeated the F4Fs."
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by FatR »

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

You are incorrect.

I was commenting about Zero losses in the Coral Sea and Midway campaigns, not counting Zeros that went down with their ships.
Losses of Zeros and pilots in air combat at Coral Sea and Midway were quite insignificant, in the grand scheme of things. And Midway was the most abysmal performance of USA naval fighter aviation ever, with Wildcats systematically failing to connect with raids or stop small Japanese strikes. While heroics of Thatch little group likely were one of the factor that enable the last-chance reversal of fates, but had the rest of escorts not failed in their duty, US forces could have won without only snatching the victory by the last-chance reversal of fates, or taking horrible losses in torpedo squadrons.
ORIGINAL: mdiehl
F4Fs in both those campaigns were mostly operating at the end of their range. One of the Coral Sea sub-engagements only turned out favorably for the Zekes because the F4Fs went into the battle at relatively low power settings due to lack of fuel at range.
4 (four) Wildcats at Midway actually fought at the end of their range, the rest of air combats were around Yorktown. Similarly, most of air-to-air action at Coral Sea happened around American carriers. Which CAP failed to protect. A2A losses were 6:4 in favor of Zeros on the second day. Three more Zeroes from Shoho were lost in air combat on the first day (another three ditched later), but, well, they were against the overwhelming force.
ORIGINAL: mdiehl
No one needed to mention it. All that was and is needed is to look at the losses they took in A2A combat in April and June 1942. The better part of four carriers worth of pilots was basically erased.
Fist off, Coral Sea happened in May. Second, wrong again. Midway was relatively light on IJN pilots, if not on their planes, considering the scale of the battle. Most of them were below decks when their carriers were bombed and survived. So most fatalities happened during Japanese attacks, and those faced inept opposition (Midway) or were small (attacks against Yorktown). The cost of Coral Sea at pilots was fairly heavy, but largely because the heaviest combat and most losses happened around American carriers, not because Japanese fought poorly in the air.
ORIGINAL: mdiehl
The pilots that filtered into the IJN replacement pool weren't as good as the ones the USN shot down at Midway and Coral Sea. Japanese sources make note of that.

Which sources?
ORIGINAL: mdiehl
USN sources make note of that. It's pretty much an unavoidable established fact that the Zeroes tended to lose, from the outset, when they faced F4Fs.

Except when they didn't.
ORIGINAL: mdiehl
Things just went from bad to worse for the Zeroes when the F4F drivers started using the beam defense. About the only Allied a.c. that the Zero could regularly defeat without the element of surprise were the P-39, The F2, and the Hurricrate.
Zero could regularly defeat every Allied aircraft before Hellcat, because Zeros regularly defeated them. And there are estimations that up to 80% percent of fighter A2A losses in WW II were caused by attacks from enemies that pilots did not see until their planes were hit (and, for a specific example, a P-38 ace interviewed for Fire in the Sky - forgot his name - was of the opinion that the only reliable way to shot down a fighter is to sneak upon it from behind and shoot from extreme close range - and P-38 was the most stable and accurate weapon platform Allied had), so "without the element of surprise" is meaningless as a clarification.
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Nikademus
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by Nikademus »

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

My bad. I could have swore you said 1942.

Of course, we are forgetting that Zeros owed their extremely long range to very low power settings as well.

And we are overlooking the fact that at Guadalcanal, Zeros were often forced to fight with belly tanks attached due to a lack of fuel at range. Which, in effect, puts them under the same limitations you claim for the Wildcat at Coral Sea.

And, Rabaul, of course, was the equivalent of the Hilton.


lol. Nice one Chez....i'd only add that you forgot to mention the simple fact that half of the Wildcats shot down at Coral Sea occured while they were defending their home carriers.....not as alleged, while straining at max range under "low power" while being unfairly attacked by Zeros (Is there such a thing as unfair a2a combat??!) Lundstrom in fact mentions only one specific situation whereby two Wildcats reving at cruise speed got attacked, neither plane was lost. If one is going to nitpick on what constitutes "fair" a2a combat (lol) then i guess it should be mentioned that the first Zero shot down by a navy Wildcat was at "low power", low altitude and was bushwacked from behind, the pilot never seeing his attacker. oops. One can also add the two F4F's shot down over Wake by Zeros for no return losses. Wildcats always winning? I know of no plane that won every single air engagement numerically speaking.

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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by mdiehl »

No one brought "fairness" into it until you did, Chumbly. But the Jap fanboy apologists like yourself have been whining for years about the situational factors weighing against the zero vis a vis range, at Guadalcanal, and ignored the same factors when range worked against the USN, as at Midway and Coral Sea. The fact that your "facts" never happened just makes this conversation the more amusing.
I know of no plane that won every single air engagement numerically speaking.


I know of no one who said that any type won every single engagement. I only know people like yourself who claim that Zeroes swept the skies of the opposition throughout 1942 despite the fact that they almost never broke even against F4Fs. I also know a guy who claimed thousands of B-29s were lost to "explosive decompression" but that's another argument.
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witpqs
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by witpqs »

Why the name-calling?

As for your claims of facts, I'm sitting here with at least one researched historical work that sharply contradicts your claims of losses at Midway.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by Nikademus »

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

No one brought "fairness" into it until you did, Chumbly.

Which explains why you continually post false information about Wildcats always winning unless they are at "low power" and "extreme range" [8|]
The fact that your "facts" never happened just makes this conversation the more amusing.

The fact that you keep coming back to a forum of a wargame you've never owned or played spinning the same misleading spiehl is even more amusing Diehl.

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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by mdiehl »

4 (four) Wildcats at Midway actually fought at the end of their range, the rest of air combats were around Yorktown.

That is incorrect.
Similarly, most of air-to-air action at Coral Sea happened around American carriers.

That is incorrect.
Which CAP failed to protect.

That is incorrect.
Fist off, Coral Sea happened in May.

That is correct.
Second, wrong again.


That is incorrect.
Midway was relatively light on IJN pilots,


And that also is incorrect.
The cost of Coral Sea at pilots was fairly heavy, but largely because the heaviest combat and most losses happened around American carriers, not because Japanese fought poorly in the air.


And that is first order excuse-making.
Zero could regularly defeat every Allied aircraft before Hellcat, because Zeros regularly defeated them.

Your claim is incorrect. Zeroes did not win ANY CV vs CV engagements ever during the entire war. They tended to lose, in battles, although in some elements of battles they won. The USN F4Fs shot down more A6Ms in EACH of the Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz engagements than they lost. It's an established fact.
Losses of Zeros and pilots in air combat at Coral Sea and Midway were quite insignificant, in the grand scheme of things.


That is incorrect.
And Midway was the most abysmal performance of USA naval fighter aviation ever, with Wildcats systematically failing to connect with raids or stop small Japanese strikes.


That is incorrect.
While heroics of Thatch little group likely were one of the factor that enable the last-chance reversal of fates,


That also is incorrect.
but had the rest of escorts not failed in their duty, US forces could have won [without only snatching the victory by the last-chance reversal of fates,] or taking horrible losses in torpedo squadrons.


Correct, apart from the part in brackets. The US victory at Midway was the most likely outcome given the forces each side deployed. Partially it comes from the Japanese having the worst, least fault tolerant, most operationally complex battle plan in the history of naval aviation, and partly it comes from the USN having a very fault tolerant battle plan that succeeded despite many turns of bad luck against the USN and despite some rather botched execution.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by Nikademus »

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
I know of no plane that won every single air engagement numerically speaking.


I know of no one who said that any type won every single engagement.

post 87
ORIGINAL: mdiehl

So here's what happened. In face to face engagements in 1942, USN F4F drivers defeated A6M drivers in every battle, when you measure "defeat" in terms of number of wildcats and zeros shot down.

whoops
I only know people like yourself who claim that Zeroes swept the skies of the opposition throughout 1942 despite the fact that they almost never broke even against F4Fs. I also know a guy who claimed thousands of B-29s were lost to "explosive decompression" but that's another argument.

Sure i have.....all you have to do is show where i said it in this thread. Do it.....what's stopping you?

oh and the "guy" you refer to is Chez....and i'll let him demolish your claim ...again, if he wishes to bother.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by mdiehl »

Which explains why you continually post false information about Wildcats always winning unless they are at "low power" and "extreme range"

I never claimed that, but since dishonesty and straw man arguments are pretty much the only arguments you've ever had, it doesn't surprise me to hear you make the claim.
The fact that you keep coming back to a forum of a wargame you've never owned or played spinning the same misleading spiehl


Maybe if the designers had fewer people like you around trying to revise history they'd get the game design right. There's nothing misleading about what I've written. There's just mokes like you who can't handle history.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by mdiehl »

Nice usual straw man argument, Chumbly. You said "engagement." I said "battle." I already noted that there were elements within battles in which Zeroes had a favorable kill ratio. Try addressing the actual things I wrote, rather than the things you wish I wrote. Of course, you won't, because if you tried, you'd find yourself outgunned. Again.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by Nomad »

Are we back to the Zero vs F4F-4 argument again? For what, the 25th time or more? [&:]
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by mdiehl »

Yes I suppose we are. We'll keep having it as long as people who assert that the Zero was a better plane flown by better pilots and regularly defeated F4Fs keep making that claim. The evidence doesn't support that claim.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by mdiehl »

As for your claims of facts, I'm sitting here with at least one researched historical work that sharply contradicts your claims of losses at Midway.


Then that wouldn't be The First Team by John Lundstrom or Parshall and Tully's Shattered Sword.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by Nikademus »

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

I never claimed that. <snip>

of course you didn't.

ORIGINAL: mdiehl post 87
So here's what happened. In face to face engagements in 1942, USN F4F drivers defeated A6M drivers in every battle, when you measure "defeat" in terms of number of wildcats and zeros shot down.

wrong.

I'm still waiting for you to show proof of the below:
:ORIGINAL: mdiehl

I only know people like yourself who claim that Zeroes swept the skies of the opposition throughout 1942 despite the fact that they almost never broke even against F4Fs. I also know a guy who claimed thousands of B-29s were lost to "explosive decompression" but that's another argument.

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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by mdiehl »

I know of no plane that won every single air engagement numerically speaking.


I never said "every engagement." I said "Every Battle" specifically when referring to USN VF vs IJN VF carrier vs carrier battles. Find one carrier battle in 1942 where Zeroes shot down in direct face to face engagements more Wildcats than they lost in Zeroes. You can't because there is not one instance in which that happened.

There are elements of those carrier battles in which Zeroes won in confrontations against F4Fs. But there are MORE elements in those battles in which F4Fs won in confrontations with A6Ms. No matter how desperately you cling to your belief of overwhelming Zero supremacy, the facts do not support your claims.

As for range, it's pretty typical of guys like you to find every possible excuse to dismiss losses of Zeroes as some kind of accident of circumstance, while ignoring the same constraints when they affected Allied a.c. That's why you continually harp and whine about range and pilot fatigue effects that worked against the IJN in the Guadalcanal campaign, and yet you ignore the range effects that USN pilots encountered during the CV battles and you ignore the fatigue effects on US pilots stationed IN an active ground combat zone.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by mdiehl »

As I read this what seems to be the running theme is: Allies should be better in A2A starting in the second half of 1942, without regaurd to any facts. In the real war, yes in general late 1942 and into 1943 was the turning point due to attrition losses in the Solomons.


I don't know if that is someone else's idea. My claim is that at no point during the war should IJN A6Ms regularly produce kill ratios greater than 1:1, not even during 1942 against F4Fs. If you're regularly seeing F4Fs (or, for that matter, P38s) losing to A6Ms, then something has been modeled incorrectly. Since it's relatively EASY to find objective data on airplane capabilities, it is probably the case that USN and USAF exp levels have been set too low in the OOB.

The period of Japanese aviation dominance in WW2 lasted until roughly May 1942, and mostly occurred in areas where the Japanese had a superior logistical position, superior numbers, a well conceived operational plan, and the element of surprise. The CV vs CV engagements lacked these characteristics, and the Zeroes did not fare well. The Guadalcanal campaign was rather more complex, started well for the Japanese (at least in air combat) and ended poorly for them.

In my view "Better EXP" wasn't why the Japanese did well through May 1942 (except at Coral Sea, where they did not do well). It was all about hitting small detachments of relatively isolated Allied a.c.
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by stuman »

ORIGINAL: LoBaron



Interesting...I think you both have some good points...


I think they are both double-deadwrong.

Sort of like " double-secret probation " [;)]
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RE: Allied fighters suck

Post by canuck64 »

Good GOD, man- tell us you play the game, at the very least.

Otherwise your very presence here is the epitome of a "straw man" argument, only Monty Python style to boot. Smells mustily like ego on display, and nothing but.

...'just sayin. F4F vs Zero arguments notwithstanding.
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