RE: Noosing the Bull: Scn.9, Toraq vs Timtom
Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 12:46 am
The number of Allied aircraft lost comes to 761 against 673 Japanese. The topscorer is the A6M2 Zero with 160 aircraft lost, followed by the P-38 (120), the A6M3 (110), the B-25 (109), and the P-40 (80). 93 Allied heavy bombers were lost, if the 10 PB4Y's lost are included. Somewhat curiously, the 6th most lost aircraft type is the D3A Val (64), even though they didn't make much of a spectable of themselves. Similarly, 43 F4U's were lost, all but one or two on the ground or operationally. Bringing up the rear is the Wirraway (2), which only saw deployment defending ports and airfields in Australia from potential long-range surprise attacks.
Losses were about equal, except to AAA, where, no surprise, I lost about a hundred more than Tony. The fact that Tony's losses were concentrated in fighters and my in strike aircraft naturally reflects the general nature of the scenario, but also the care with which Tony deployed his available bombers. The only anomality is in our respective losses in recon aircraft, where Tony's proportion of losses is in fact higher, as he frequently deployed his Betty's in the ASW role. Tony has already touched upon this, but I might add that the Japanese have more recon sqd's available and that Tony flew them harder and differently than me - he frequently deployed floatplanes as transports, fx. SOPAC's F4U's shot down 59 aircraft between them, while all other SOPAC fighters got 9 kills (!) in total. There was no A2A combat in the Solomons to speak of, and I'd hazard that 75% of kills were of recon types. However the recon planes flying opposite SWPAC suffered almost as badly. I fly naval search at between 10,000-15,000 feet in forward areas and find that that cut losses markedly. I always fly recon missions at the aircraft's max altitude and that helps too. Fx, even at 35,000 feet, I was loosing a F5A every 1-2 missions, which dropped to one every 5-6 missions at 40,000 feet.
Losses were about equal, except to AAA, where, no surprise, I lost about a hundred more than Tony. The fact that Tony's losses were concentrated in fighters and my in strike aircraft naturally reflects the general nature of the scenario, but also the care with which Tony deployed his available bombers. The only anomality is in our respective losses in recon aircraft, where Tony's proportion of losses is in fact higher, as he frequently deployed his Betty's in the ASW role. Tony has already touched upon this, but I might add that the Japanese have more recon sqd's available and that Tony flew them harder and differently than me - he frequently deployed floatplanes as transports, fx. SOPAC's F4U's shot down 59 aircraft between them, while all other SOPAC fighters got 9 kills (!) in total. There was no A2A combat in the Solomons to speak of, and I'd hazard that 75% of kills were of recon types. However the recon planes flying opposite SWPAC suffered almost as badly. I fly naval search at between 10,000-15,000 feet in forward areas and find that that cut losses markedly. I always fly recon missions at the aircraft's max altitude and that helps too. Fx, even at 35,000 feet, I was loosing a F5A every 1-2 missions, which dropped to one every 5-6 missions at 40,000 feet.
