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."
Show me a fellow who rejects statistical analysis a priori and I'll show you a fellow who has no knowledge of statistics.
Didn't we have this conversation already?
