Air combat

[mogami]

"But it gets worse. No effort to intelligently present this mistaken (and impossible) synergy was made, and so, just for example, in a PBEM turn just completed by me this morning I witnessed a section of Seagulls come onto the board with a CA attached to the Wasp TF rated at 0 fatigue, 35 morale and 60 experience. After transferring this group from its CA to the port of Noumea the group stood at 19/35/60.

Now I don't know what this squadron's experience rating ought to be, though I suppose it might in game terms be well above 60 as the Wasp was not a new ship fresh out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. While it could be that the scenario designer did some deep research and discovered these pilots were all new, I strongly doubt it. I see no other evidence of "deep research" within the game. Getting around that, however, why was this nonsense of having planes in port accrue 19 points of "fatigue" simply transferring from ship to shore allowed to stand with the publication of UV? What could a mechanic that idiotic, that dysfunctional, that simplistic on its face, hope to model from the real world?"

Hi, After reading this I went to check it out. First I never found a CA that arrived with a floatplane detachment with less then 11 fatigue.
Then I transfered the groups to base and back again over and over. I tested every CA I could find that had a floatplane group. They never aquired more the 6 points fatigue when transfering.
Now I suppose you want 0 fatigue? How do you think groups transfer from a ship (by crane that lifts them off the ship and sets them down at the floatplane facility?
I think UV is too easy on transfers between ships and bases.
First I would only allow airgroups from CV to transfer if CV was in a TF and could conduct flight ops. But then because a CV might be damaged and unable to conduct flight ops I'd allow it to transfer aircraft in port but all such aircraft would be damaged while unloading (to represent their needing to be crated for loading on to trucks to haul to airfield.-this is the way WITP will handle aircraft transported by AK)
Imagine the howels when a player forgot to form a TF and transfered CV airgroup to base only to see they are all damaged. (but 0 fatigue aquired)

(Don't trust me. Everyone who reads this stop: Load UV scenario and transfer floatplanes to base)

[TIMJOT]

Explain it? What could be simpler?

At both Coral Sea and Midway it's clear the IJN possessed the more powerful forces. I do hope that's clear. As for the Guadacanal operation, the Americans pulled it off, as it's been said, on a "shoestring." That they were able to count this coup by the good fortune of bringing all they had to bear at the crucial point at the exactly correct moment in time, meanwhile the Japanese twiddled their thumbs, has nothing to do with my statement.

Clear? Really? How do you figure?

Coral Sea OOB

Japan:
-------
2 CVs
1 CVL
6 CAs
7 DDs
Approx. 170 a/c

Allies
-------
2 CVs
7 CAs
1 CL
11 DDs
Approx 150 a/c

Pretty much a dead even if you ask me.



Midway (engaged oob)

Japan
-------
4 CV
2 BBs
6 CA
1 CL
11 DDs
approx. 278 attack a/c
approx. 16 recon a/c

USN
--------
3 CVs
1 Midway (unsinkable CV)
7 CA
1 CL
15 DDs
approx. 292 attack a/c
aprox. 32 Recon a/c

The Midway David and Goliath myth is just that a Myth. Any numerical inferiorty the USN had a Midway was by design. If need be the USN had 7 BBs available steaming off the west coast (all were more than a match against the Nagatos and Kongos). The Saratoga TF and N.Carolina were days away. If the navy had wanted to participate in Yamamoto's "Decisive battle" they could have been even in CVs and outnumbered the IJN in every other major category.


Guadacanal: At the time of the landings USN enjoyed overwelming sea and air superiorty. At no time other than a very small window in August did the US not enjoy airsuperiorty over Guadacanal. At no time in the campaign were the Marines ever outnumbered in men, guns, tanks or any other category other than perhaps swords, on Guadacanal.

If "Watch Tower" was a shoestring operation. What would you call the IJN counter ops? Cerainly, they were equally a shoestring, piecemeal, ad-hoc operation in everyway.

[mogami]

Well of course. What did you think the central theme of my statement was?

Look, I"m not here to analyze these battles to death with regard to the ultimate balance of arms or to count angels on heads of pins and argue all that with you to brutal death into the night. Suffice to say it didn't take much in the larger scheme of things when one just takes raw numers of men and pieces of equipment and tons of war materiel into consideration to stop the Japanese cold. And keep in mind that it was an untried USA and USAAF and USN and USMC going up against a "more experienced" Japanese enemy fighting in "superor equipment" which turned this neat trick.

That essentially was my point. Deal with that. Because the game doesn't very well.

Hello, In the game I crush the Japanese like bugs in scenario 7 and 14.
How about you? (I admire any one who plays the Japanese in PBEM game of scenario 7 or 14. But on the bright side, you can hardly do worse the the Japanese did.)(You really have to work to do worse as the allies)

[TIMJOT]

Of course it isn't going to be simply scrapped. But I hold out small hope the development team will zero-out the multipliers and at least redo this part of the model with an eye to more realistic play.
.

So you are saying you erred in your statment in regards to the game model. (quote) "It needs to be gutted, thought out again, Conceived over completely and from scratch" or was it simply an exercise in hyperbole? Just trying to decipher what you really are advocateing.

[Tristanjohn]

After reading this I went to check it out. First I never found a CA that arrived with a floatplane detachment with less then 11 fatigue.Then I transferred the groups to base and back again over and over. I tested every CA I could find that had a floatplane group. They never aquired more the 6 points fatigue when transfering.

Whatever. I make it all up.

Now I suppose you want 0 fatigue? How do you think groups transfer from a ship (by crane that lifts them off the ship and sets them down at the floatplane facility? I think UV is too easy on transfers between ships and bases. First I would only allow airgroups from CV to transfer if CV was in a TF and could conduct flight ops. But then because a CV might be damaged and unable to conduct flight ops I'd allow it to transfer aircraft but all such aircraft would be damaged while unloading (to represent their needing to be crafted for loading on to trucks to haul to airfield.-this is the way WITP will handle aircraft transported by AK)

This is stupid. Almost as stupid as the game's mechanics throughout.

I'll say it again: with people like you involved in the project there is no hope to make it better. You just babble back to the forum whatever common wisdom holds within your playtest group.

No matter how many times you dip into denial the wedding of fatigue and wear and tear on plane parts makes no sense. Neither would, really, the wedding of physical fatigue and the stress from combat, assuming fatigue were ever described so discreetly by the model. The assignment of 17 points of fatigue in a port for a float plane jumping to shore is dumb. And it happened again to me last night. This time the float plane came with 1 fatigue and ended up with, if I recall, 17, so there we have a 16-point penalty. In one of my PBEM games I also have a section of float planes sitting in Noumea which came to me in terrible shape: I think it was 47 fatigue and 33 morale or some such. After three turns they're still sitting there, quite useless, and will sit there for another week or two until the game model allows them to "recuperate." Good show!

I mentioned the stupid ratings for USN carrier pilots to start "Hard Road Ahead." Are you going to tell me you can't find that in the game, either? I'm the only person who stumbles across this stuff? It's "normal" for everyone else around here?

Who are geniuses who make this stuff up? Are you sure there isn't a bug in the editor or a bug in the main .EXE with its reading of these data files?

The game is screwed up. Anyone with a good knowledge of (and appreciation for) the history of the campaign in the Pacific will have no problem at all logging meaningful laugh time as he paddles his way one day to the next toward Tokyo. My problem is I don't want a wargame for laughs, I want one for a decent simulation of WWII.

[mogami]

Hi in another carrir battle the Japanese demonstrate what their lesser experianced airgroups could do. (Is there a debate that the Japanese were less experianced overall then the USN here?) (and FJF can't be blamed. I think Kincaid and Murray were good officers)

The 2 US carriers with 169 aircraft faced 4 Japanese carriers with a total of 212 aircraft available

Hornet--Fatally damaged by enemy air attack.
Enterprise--Two bomb hits and various damaging near-hits.
South Dakota--One bomb hit on turret No. 1. Some damage to guns of turret No. 2.
San Juan--One bomb hit.
Porter--Torpedoed by a submarine and sunk by our forces.
Smith--Damaged by torpedo plane crashing into No. 1 gun mount, setting heavy fires
(4 hits plus what ever did in Hornet)

CV Shokaku--Four to six 1,000-pound bomb hits (Hornet SBD's).
CVE Zuiho--Two 500-pound bomb hits (Enterprise search planes).
BB Kongo class--Two 1,000-pound bomb hits (Enterprise SBD's).
CA Chikuma (Tone class)--Four 1,000-pound bomb hits (Hornet SBD's).
CA Tone class--Five 500-pound bomb hits (Hornet TBF's).
CA Nachi class--Two to three torpedo hits (Hornet planes).
CL or DD--One 500-pound hit (Hornet plane).
(22 USN hits)(well 22 hits claimed at least)

So USN out hits IJN but still loses a CV. Even rookies can hurt you.

[Tristanjohn]

Hello, In the game I crush the Japanese like bugs in scenario 7 and 14.How about you? (I admire any one who plays the Japanese in PBEM game of scenario 7 or 14. But on the bright side, you can hardly do worse the the Japanese did.)(You really have to work to do worse as the allies)

That's you in a nutshell. Argue game mechanics in one post and then field this sort of gibberish in response.

Mogami, try hard to comprehend what I am about to write.

This is not about who plays the game best. It's about the system mechanics. The mechanics aren't too swift in some areas to say the least; at times these mechanics actually work against one another; stuff which might be helpful to the simulation isn't in the model at all and details which strike me as superfluous to our needs are found all over the place. The result is relative confusion and at end of day a serious gamer is not convinced that he has "simulated" much of anything very closely with regard to World War II in the South Pacific.

Now what shape WitP might be in one day I couldn't say but to judge from UV and from the feedback I've received in this forum from the likes of you the situation doesn't strike me as all that promising.

[Tristanjohn]

So you are saying you erred in your statment in regards to the game model. (quote) "It needs to be gutted, thought out again, Conceived over completely and from scratch" or was it simply an exercise in hyperbole? Just trying to decipher what you really are advocateing.

Dumb.

The game model in a perfect world would be gutted. This isn't a perfect world. It's the real world where these models are made to entertain the unwashed as well as me and I'm outnumbered by a goodly margin.

What I advocate is more intelligence in war games and less idiocy on bullletin boards such as this. I'm not holding my breath.

[Bulldog61]

The bigest challenge I see is that neither players or the AI follows the historic model. There is always that wad of 150 Zeros fling escort out of Rabual for 18 Betties. Of course I'm trying to stop that with 2 or three sqdns of P-39's, Any wonder that you get a 15 to 1 kill ratio in favor of the Zeros?

[mogami]

Hi, OK you managed to whack me but you still didn't address my question. How do you think floatplanes (or Carrier groups) transfer to base. Now floatplanes do not just hop off the CA and CV groups have to FLY OFF. So there is going to be a fatigue hit. As has already been pointed out AD Nausum WITP has reduced fatigue hits.
USN pilot ratings are not a model issue. (you can change them to whatever you wish) Still using those USN pilots you should have no trouble winning scenario 14.

I think the whole pilot rating thing is exaggerated. I'm not sure how much more effective a pilot with a 80 rating is compared to one with a 69. Japanese pilots with below 70 ratings do not defeat USN pilots with 70 ratings. So it is not a JAPANESE thing. Japanese groups are interesting. In Scenario 14 there are Japanese groups with avg rating of 87. 27 aircraft 27 pilots. However only 7 pilots are rated over 87. Overhalf the group is below 80. In the USN groups you quote you find pilots rated over 90. My guess is Enterprise has replacments from after Midway. The other 2 CV have never been in combat (except for attacking shore installations) But still if you look they have good pilots along with the lower rated ones. Also when they need replacments they get at least a 60 while the Japanese replace theirs with a 50 at most.
Since the USN did not win the campaign in one day but required a series of battles why do you want it to be handed over without a fight.
The allies are certain to win the battle in less then a month but you still HAVE TO FIGHT the battles that produced the weaker Japanese airgroups. IN Aug 1942 they were still intact. They had been in combat. They were veterans. You have to kill them, then your pilots will be the best in the South Pacific.
Please stop making this a personal issue and acting like I am the reason for any feature in or out of UV/WITP. I don't get your results when I play. Others post the same thing and you come back at me. If you disagree on pilot ratings thats an OB issue (and like I say one you can change without anyone stoping you)
You are good at pointing out what is wrong but refrain from providing solutions except for "they can be made less stupid"
Now I can tell what you don't agree with. But you give me nothing I can change. What exactly is wrong with the air model? Too many planes engage, not enough planes engage, too many planes shot down, not enough planes shot down (all have been posted before)

Oh whats the use. I'll go back to just conducting my research without you.

[mogami]

Hi, I'm going to go bump up the AAR created during UV development.
It will give you an idea of concerns expressed and addressed while the game was being written. "AAR not as Good as Snigbert" (or something along those lines. Give me a minute and then go to UV/AAR forum it is a long thread but worth reading if you want to see what went on before UV was released.

[Tristanjohn]

The bigest challenge I see is that neither players or the AI follows the historic model. There is always that wad of 150 Zeros fling escort out of Rabual for 18 Betties. Of course I'm trying to stop that with 2 or three sqdns of P-39's, Any wonder that you get a 15 to 1 kill ratio in favor of the Zeros?

There's so much that isn't right in UV I could write about it for a week straight. Mdiehl has apparently been at this for a couple of years (this is what he wrote to me and I believe him--poor guy ) and has gotten nowhere fast. A couple days ago this gentleman likened the model to a science-fiction title and while I always try to be charitable when it comes to Grigsby's games (after all, he has designed a lot of fun games and I'm sure he means well) on balance I must agree that he isn't too far off. Planet Xenon indeed.

Taken as a whole it just doesn't make a lot of sense. When you break the model down into its individual modules it makes less sense still. But at least in that case one approaches a position where he's better able to pinpoint the source of some of the game's more serious issues. But no one wants to hear that. Or hardly no one.

The signal/noise ratio on these boards is so high it reminds me of some of the forums we had on Prodigy years ago, where moderators would come in a daily basis and simply erase entire conversations. In that regard it's better here for my taste, as I hate to see any material, no matter how mean or stupid, be censored, but really, if the majority of the American posters on the Matrix boards hold the franchise then it's little wonder this country is going directly down the tubes. Just pathetic.

As for your specific remark re gigantic air bases of fighters and bombers and where that wants to take us next: the concept of UV as a game is fundamentally and fatally flawed at the start due to the lack of strategic context outside of the map area and the OOBs of the provided scenarios. UV seems to imagine there is no war anywhere else, and instead of offering scenarios with realistically limited assets (relative to forces available historically) the PS2 crowd has decided that it's more fun to cram the map with everything available within two light years and just go for it. Also, the Allies are pretty much forced to attack bases which were passed by in the actual event and for good reason. The result might be good for laughs, depending on one's sense of humor, and as you can see there's plenty of chest-thumping in evidence by the more immature members, but the game system itself closely simulates precious little.

I expect basically the same product when WitP hits the bricks. I'm not happy about that and I intend to keep complaining, but it's on the cards.

[Tristanjohn]

Hi, OK you managed to whack me but you still didn't address my question. How do you think floatplanes (or Carrier groups) transfer to base. Now floatplanes do not just hop off the CA and CV groups have to FLY OFF. So there is going to be a fatigue hit. As has already been pointed out AD Nausum WITP has reduced fatigue hits. USN pilot ratings are not a model issue. (you can change them to whatever you wish) Still using those USN pilots you should have no trouble winning scenario 14.

Novel concept. Float planes (or fixed wing craft for that matter) normally transfer ship-to-shore through the air. And only Mogami could know this. Tsk-tsk.

And then right away you're back on the "win the game" theme, as if that has anything to do with the game's working mechanics.

You're sad.

As for what's wrong with the air model: this has been written down by me at least and anyone with interest could easily find it above in the thread, or over in the two threads in the UV section of the boards in which I participated for some time. But now I have to go through it all over again? Beat my gums in front of the stone-cold post you certainly represent?

I don't think so.

Like I said, you're sad. And the people you work with are sad. And the result of that is a sad product. Lots of news there.

[TIMJOT]

As for bias: I've pointed out a definite bias for (or untter misunderstanding of) Japanese air assets. On the other hand, though I haven't gone into much detail I've also mentioned what I consider to be an undermodeling of Japanese surface assets when it comes to night actions. And so on.

I don't play favorites. I'm neither pro this nor anti that. All I want is a reasonably representative simulation. What we have at present is anything but on balance and sometimes silly.

So did you err in your insinuation that Grisby designs have a "misinformed" built in Japanese bias in all things land, sea, air? Or is it your contention that only the air model the has a built in Japanese biased? I just want to be clear on this. Have you come accross a built in Japanese biased in UV's Land or Sea models?

[TIMJOT]

Dumb.

The game model in a perfect world would be gutted. This isn't a perfect world. It's the real world where these models are made to entertain the unwashed as well as me and I'm outnumbered by a goodly margin.

What I advocate is more intelligence in war games and less idiocy on bullletin boards such as this. I'm not holding my breath.

How is that dumb? You wrote what you wrote. Am I suppose to read your mind on what you really mean when you make such unqualified definitive statements? Write what you mean and maybe you will not get "dumb" responses. I gave no cause to be insulted.

[mogami]

"Novel concept. Float planes (or fixed wing craft for that matter) normally transfer ship-to-shore through the air. And only Mogami could know this. Tsk-tsk."

Hi, If you knew the aircraft had to fly why did you act surprised they gained fatigue?

AND NO, YOU NEVER SAY WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE AIR MODEL ONLY THAT IT IS STUPID OR SILLY. You never suggest a fix except for
"Gut the whole thing and start over"
And you continue to attack me personally. I have just as much right to express my opinion as you do.
As long as you are able to state your case your getting fair treatment.
If you'd ever bother to read threads you would find more then one post by me where I said (long before you arrived) many of the same things concerning Japan and her chances at winning the war. However UV/WITP are warGAMES. Matrix/2by3 are not trying to build the ultimate Pacific War Simulator. They are making a wargame. There is no need for added Japanese enhancements. The war provides them. They are transit. They do not last. The natural course of the war erodes them all away. But the ALLIED PLAYER STILL HAS TO FIGHT THE BATTLES TO ACHIEVE THIS. If the allied player assumes the allies superiority without creating it he is going to get a wake up call. The Japanese in their piece of crap flying machine will drop bombs on your ships if you let them. If you let them do this it is not because they were supermen but only because you let them.
If you play a scenario that places more Japanese on map then in actual situation you must be even more careful and fight that much harder.

It's like talking to a wall. You think you are the only person who knows anything. Anyone who does not come right over to your point of view is an unwashed ape. I wonder how you would react in person if someone looked at one of your creations and set to work tearing it down without ever understanding it. If anything you said was true you would not need to keep blowing your horn and nothing I said could alter that. It burns you up that people enjoy UV and look forward to WITP. They have to be idiots. There is a vast difference in my asking how to improve the model and your "gut it response" You provide nothing useful.

Because you lost a few airbattles, gut the game. Because the Japanese sunk your battle ship, gut the game (I know you don't care about the battleship. You only want the truth and realism and that truth is the Japanese could not sink an unprotected damaged BB.)

The word pompous keeps entering my head. Now I will not claim to speak for anyone but myself. But I wonder why matrix/2by3 people do not respond to your posts. Could it be, you leave them nothing to address?

You are welcome to the Matrix forums. You are welcome to express your opinions. It's a free country. But stop acting like Tristanjohn the baptist
crying out alone in the wilderness.
All GG's games have been built on the ones that proceeded them. Perhaps what you wish for is not going to be WITP. Prehaps it will take another game or another designer to produce it. WITP is limited. There are lists miles long of features and improvements requested. You would be very surprised if you saw the list of items the programmers, designers, and tester have asked for that all agree would be wonderfull if possible but will not be included because they are not currently possible. UV/WITP use very simple models. Many different things influence the results but they are not hard to understand.
These games are not tactical simulations. They will never be tactical simulations. They do allow the players to approximate operational events in the South Pacific or entire war. They can not model the actual events precisley because no one acts precisley like the combatants and the scale is 24 hours per turn.
I'll admit that because they are games players can not do some of the things that were possible and can do some things that were not possible. (if the other player allows. I think in reality if the entire coast of Australia was abandoned it would not have resulted in a Japanese landing)
Finally once again it must be stressed these are games. All they will ever be is games. Please treat them as games. They are not being advertised as anything else and it is unjust to to find fault for their not being what you would like them to be. They are what they claim to be.

[mdiehl]

Man, I respect your argument but you are coming down pretty heavy on people. Mogami and Timjot are both reasonable folkss IMO, so I have found that when they seem not to understand what I'm saying it's usually that there's some logical connection that I forgot to include. And bangin' on heads may open minds (as with a rock), but is not necessarily conducive to convincing the opposition that you're on to something.

[mdiehl]

their aircraft were generally more airobatic than their opposition.

Mike, this is completely incorrect or at least at best a selective reading of the situation. The Japanese a/c and American a/c had fundamentally different optimum flight profiles. At speeds in excess of about 300 mph, in general US aircraft were "more airobatic" (greater climb rate, faster in a 180 degree turn -- and at all speeds ALL single engined Allied a/c had greater roll rates than the early war Japanese planes). Owing to their greater weight, however, the American a/c tended to bleed energy faster while maneuvering. Thus one might be able to initially out-turn a Zero, but if one stayed around for a while, as airspeed dropped, the Zero would become the more maneuverable plane.

Most US pilots were not trained solely in "turning dogfight" tactics. They had already substantially begun to retrain (not just Chennault, although he was much more dogmatic and emphatic because he was the first one in the fight in a sustained way) because of studies of the BoB from summer 1940.

Japanese were likewise not using the best tactics. Despite all their combat experience AGAINST CHINESE the tactics that they employed there (turning engagements) were, in the long run, useless against the US SO IT WAS THE WRONG KIND OF COMBAT EXPERIENCE. Likewise, the 3-plane section, which was outdated by 1939, continued to be used by the Japanese LONG AFTER the US handed them their heads in the air battles of summer and fall 1940, because the 3-plane section had worked well against the Chinese. Their EXPERIENCE actually IMPEDED improvement in their tactics and a/c development.

[pry]

When I first started playing UV as the Allies the Japanese would shoot down my aircraft at something like 3:1 (or worse) and I had serious suspicions that there was a heavy Japanese bias. The same thing applies to players who start out playing the Japanese side Allies shoot down aircraft at 3:1 or worse, now this is an obvious Allied bias. I honestly think every new player comes to one of these conclusions early on and all the threads on that subject seem to confirm that.

After playing for a while and finally figuring out and understanding the relationship between moral, fatigue, experience and rotation, the loss ratios began dropping rapidly to where now I routinely average 1:1 or slightly better 1.1/1.2:1 results. So much for that bias theory, at least in my mind anyway. The only bias I have seen is player ignorance.

I think the biggest problem with UV (and the source of most of the complaints from the allied perspective) is that the new player has the benefit of already knowing the outcome and already knowing more about events than their historical counterpart did, and as a result they play much more aggressively going for what they already know are all the key positions.

They start out hyper aggressive jumping the gun so to speak and the AI and especially a PBEM opponent hands them their head on a plate because they do not take the time to wear down Japanese airpower first. They come here and start crying how flawed the game is and how biased towards the Japanese the game is. The main drum beater in this thread is just another in the long list of folks who has not learned all the game mechanics yet and came here to cry wolf.

More experienced players know from playing that the allied player has to be patient and train his air groups and wear down the Japanese before becoming aggressive, they end up with a much more historical feeling game.

I also do not think anyone can dispute that the Japanese did have an early advantage, that advantage being superior training in both air and naval operations to their allied counterparts and thus higher (and deserved) experience ratings. The Japanese also had the best aircraft in theater (Zero) until the appearance of the P-38 and Corsair but by that time the cream of the Japanese pilot corps had been killed off so the kill ratios wildly swing quickly in the allied favor once these new aircraft models arrive.

I do not think the air model is flawed or broken or even biased one way or the other if you play with a historical reference in mind you will achieve historical results. If you try to bombard Shortland in August 42 without air cover you deserve to have your butt handed to you. What makes one think they can achieve something their historical counterpart would never have even considered in their wildest dreams and would have been lined up against a wall and shot for if they had tried something so dumb.

I do however after 10 months of playing have a few areas of the Air model that do "Concern" me and think should be looked at.

1.) Naval search is far too effective, heck one game I think it even reported a fishing boat with a 50 seagull (birds that is) cap flying overhead…
2.) Torpedo attacks air (both sides) is way too effective with an unreasonably high successful hit rate…
3.) Ability to stuff bases with over 200 aircraft and keep them supplied and operational, I think this is due to the unlimited supply points making it to easy to accomplish this feat. Having to haul in supply in WITP might remove this glitch because in the first couple years of the war a player would be hard pressed to provide that much supply anywhere let alone several bases at once.

Just my observations take them or leave them as you will…

[mdiehl]

I also do not think anyone can dispute that the Japanese did have an early advantage, that advantage being superior training in both air and naval operations to their allied counterparts and thus higher (and deserved) experience ratings. The Japanese also had the best aircraft in theater (Zero) until the appearance of the P-38 and Corsair but by that time the cream of the Japanese pilot corps had been killed off so the kill ratios wildly swing quickly in the allied favor once these new aircraft models arrive.

I can and unapologetically DO dispute that the Japanese advantage in the early going (PI, Malaya, Indonesia, and PM through April) had anything to do with superior aircratft (the performance stats thoroughly crush any silly notion that the Zeke was an all round better performer), training (the Japanese were trained in the use of an inferior tactic --- the 3 plane section) or experience (Japanese experience was largely against opponents with very little training in China after 1938). The Japanese did have some advantages.

In the PI, a gross imbalance in the number of airbases and a/c from which to launch those bases, made worse by the on-ground debacle of 8 December. In Indonesia and Malaya, a suite of inferior a/c (principally F2s, Fokker single-engined radials, and a suite of lesser oddities like the Wildebeest) that in Malaya and Burma were gradually replaced by somewhat-worn-out Hurricrates. In Moresby, repeated instances in which the lack of any sort of warning mechanism (Moresby was in effect blind to incoming strikes until sometime in May 1942 when the 1st radar sets arrived) and the intermittent fortuitous arrival of Japanese a/c that could attack allied a/c out of position.

If you want to talk a/c specs I've crushed the "superior A6M" myth many times in these forums. I'm getting real good at it because I've had lots of practice. If you want to stand by such a manifestly incorrect notion I'd be happy to go over it again. You get to start by telling me what characteristics you think are important in order to determine which of two aircraft is the better fighter.