Nice summary Jeremy. The point where all this gets back to "the point" is where you apply it to a wargame. If the combat engine takes insufficient account of these non-training, non-exp factors and if EXP becomes deterministic despite other circumstances, it's a crappy model. So, the alternatives are to totally rewrite the combat resolution system or to fudge it by setting the EXP (whatever that is supposed to be) levels in a way that it produces realistic attrition ratios.
Mdiehl, I don't understand your arguements about Japanese training and experience being wasted.
Not "wasted" per say. Just really overrated in wargames and in many histories, in light of evidence to the point that the USN consistently out-won the IJN in the first six months of the war. Look at the basic elements of The Myth:
The A6M was a more combat worthy a/c than anything fielded by the Allies.
The IJN had more training.
The IJN had more experience.
At Coral Sea and Midway, in direct engagements between A6Ms and F4Fs, at ranges that (if any bias was introduced) favored the IJN, with comparable numbers of a/c engaged, lost more a/c than they shot down, against pilots who were, according to the myth, less well trained, flying inferior a/c, and (and this is partially true), less "experienced." At some point you have to confront the basic facts and ask yourself which of the assumptions of The Myth is not correct.
A large part of training is how to get the most out of your aircraft. The intense Japanese training achieved that.
As Jeremy and others have pointed out, the question is not (probably) one of linear relationships. 10,000 hours of training and flying familiarity is not necessarily better than 1,000 hours. So, the Japanese pilots were intensively trained, as were USN/USMC pilots. Both were sufficiently trained as to be quite knowledgable and familiar with the a/c that they flew, for the most part. There's nothing about Japanese air time or intensity of training that would necessarily make an IJN pilot better than a USMC/USN one.
Experience would only improve this.
Quite so. The question is how great an improvement is combat experience relative to intensive training? Seems to me from the *many* accounts that I have read that most pilots in retrospect felt that particular dogfights were won or lost more or less before they began: initial conditions dominated the outcome. One can train pilots to recognize adverse initial conditions and to avoid engagements on those terms. In general, the pilots with the faster or more rugged planes (that allow them to disengage at will and that give them a slightly longer initial grace period by a few seconds when "bounced") are the ones that win.
iven the way that air battles tend to degenerate often into one on one encounters
I disagree with the premise. You've read at least one of Lundstrom's books. Please read it again. Look at all the instances where two or three USN or IJN pilots made siultaneous approaches on a single plane, each claiming the kill. (Never mind the instances where they all claimed a kill when in fact the target escaped!!!)
how would the experience and solid training of a Japanese pilot be wasted?
It's a matter of expectations. If you expect your opponent's machine to perform like the ones you've previously engaged, then tactics developed for use against a different machine may not work as well in the novel situation. Likewise if you expect the next pilot to fly the same way as the last one, and he does not (but instead follows a tactical doctrine that is a radical departure from anything you've met before), much of what you learned about dealing with enemy a/c and their tactics is out the window. It does not mean you've forgotten how to fly your A6M, it just means that the ways you deal with the novel situation may be radically different from your prior experiences.
The Japanese certainly trained in tactics.
Of course they did. As did the Allies. USN tactics were different, however.
Lundstrom particularly singled out the JNAF for its excellent tactical cohesion in combat during '42. That would indicate that early war Japanese pilots seem to have the do's and don'ts of multiple a/c combat combat understood.
Which Lundstrom? In The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign he notes that Japanese cohesion was mixed. Sometimes Japanese sections were very cohesive and some times they were not.
Since you keep mentioning it, what was actually wrong with their tactics? They had no need for a Thatch weave. For the aircraft they flew, why weren't their tactics suitable? I do accept the fact that as a lot of their early aircraft rarely had functioning radio's and that they used the outdated vic formation would restrict their options.
Ah. I won't argue the point as to whether their tactics were suited to their a/c. I will note that Japanese attacks by a single section tended to involve planes making a linear series of passes at the target. You can read this in Sakai, for example, in the attack on Kelly's B17. For a rugged monster like a B17E this meant minimizing the concentration of firepower and allowing your target to engage you in detail. For fighters like the F4 and P40 it meant that the American pilot was able to use his extensive knowledge of his a/c to thwart the approach run of each IJN a/c in detail, presenting them with deflection shots at higher speeds (something to which the IJN pilots were *not* used, because the CNAF pilots were not up to the same level of training as the Allied ones). Since the Japanese were manifestly worse at deflection shooting (they were much less rigorous in training at that skill), the novel situation reduced their effectiveness. The Japanese also lost several veteran pilots around cactus using maneuvers that worked against Polkarpovs and Curtiss Hawks flown by the CNAF: one of these was common if an IJN pilot overshot its target. Easy to do even for veterans. Pulling up in front of your target and using superior speed and climb to get above around and behind a Pk or P36 is not so dangerous because the CNAF pilots were not very well trained (lousy deflection shooting skills among these) and the a/c had popgun armament using standard rifle caliber guns. The same maneuver used against an F4F could easily get your plane shot out because the USMC/USN pilots were outstanding deflection shooters and because the .50 has longer range and much more hitting power.
The failure of the JAAF and JNAF to counter the allied energy tactics was heavily influenced by the limitations of the zeros and oscars that they flew.
Quite so. Indeed, mvr was the only way to fight in an Oscar because it was the only card in the Oscar's hand.
Have you read of the way the Japanese pilots used aircraft like the Jack, Tojo and Tony?
Through the first half of 1943 they used them for the most part the same way the mvr fighters were used. Seeking out solo turning engagements. The IJAAF seems to have been less reluctant to shift tactics (read in Lundstrom ~@Guadalcanal the final ch in which one of the interviewed IJNAF pilots laments that in 1943 group commanders were still downplaying team tactics). Of course, because the Tony was basically an ME109 with more service problems, its best play was boom and zoom.
You seem to put a lot of faith in US training and tactics. I've read plenty of accounts indicating a tendency for new US squadrons to tend to go for dogfighting rather than energy fights (especially the USAAF).
I've read plenty of histories, mostly dating through until about 1980 where this was asserted to be correct. Lundstrom's research substantially eliminated this claim for the USN/USMC. Put it quite to rest, really, and the point is not worth debating for teh USN/USMC.
My understanding was that the USAAF were still training their pilots with an emphasis in dogfighting until '43.
I'm not aware of that claim in detail. I believe it *may* be correct for USAAF pilots trained through mid 1941. The USAAF began training pilots in mutual support largely because of analyses of the Battle of Britain. It may have taken a year for better advice to filter down through the knottiest points in the bureaucracy. Undoubtedly some USAAF pilots trained in 1941 (and veterans) had got the word via Chennault and the analyses of the BOB and had changed their style. The USN revised its doctrine earlier, although the "Thach Weave" as a specific maneuver (one of many mutual support maneuvers) did not gain doctrinal importance until June 1942.
Experienced combat leaders often had trouble stopping their new charges from doing it. Even the USN/USMC in late '42 had a lot of trouble with their new pilots (despite energy training) doing the same thing.
No training program was perfect. Undoubtedly there were many late war 1944-45 Japanese pilots flying better a/c, including IJAAF veterans (whose attrition rates had not been as egregious as the IJNs) who were flying to the wrong tactics. For me what is important is the central tendency.
Finally, could you also explain the actual details of the US Advanced Fighter Training (and when it came into common practice).
Mid 1942. It was (ironically) instituted as a response to "high" loss rates among USN/USMC pilots. This says, I think, more about sensitivity to casualties and initial expectations than it does about loss rates. The USN/USMC expected an easy time of it, and found the reality different from their expectation. Of course, it was not until mid-1942 that the US was able to field combat vets to training programs that could really enhance the training program. Moreover, the Allies constantly strove to reduce loss rates, whatever the cause. IMO the Japanese were a bit more fatalistic about losses or perhaps merely nonplussed. They certainly were very slow to react to novel contexts. Of course, if you really *believed* you were shooting down 4 hostiles for each of your own pilots that you lost (rather than 1:1 and later 1:2 or worse) then you might not even know you had a problem.
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?
