Hi all,
ORIGINAL: mdiehl
But when did that advantage evaporate?
1942?
1943?
1944?
1945?
IMHO this is not good argument...
"IMHO this is not a good argument" is non sequitur, as it does not address the material facts or offer any specific countervailing information. I believe Monty Python did a spoof on your sort of "rebuttal" once.
In answer to your question, I'd say late 1944, after the US landings on Davao. At that point the US had sufficient airbases in range of objectives to obtain air superiority, perhaps even air supremacy, along much of Japan's lines of communications. Prior to the actual conquest of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, the Japanese had the edge in land based air facilities, but the USN had sufficient striking power that a well planned, snappily executed attack could overwhelm local aerial resistence using CV based air. Still, I think the real turning point was the conclusion of the USN Marianas campaign; anything could have happened there.
Now wait a minute here... you wrote that Japanese had early success because their armed forces vastly outnumbered Allies....
So I asked you when you think this advantage evaporated in the theater of operations.
Don't you think that the 1944 is wrong (historic) answer?
I agree but even in late 1942 US poured so much men/equipment/supply into theater that this also is not good argument
I do not understand your objection. First, by late 1942 the ONLY Japanese conquered piece of ground that the US had a foothold on was Guadalcanal, and NONE of the Japanese pre-war mandates were under US control. As to "so much men" etc, I do not agree. Numerically the Japanese had the allied outnumbered in the Solomons, New Ireland, New Britain, New Guinea area. The Japanese had more CVs, BBs, CAs, and DDs in Truk and Rabaul than the USN had from Pearl Harbor to New Caledonia until 1st quarter 1943. Even then, the Allies were just getting started on pushing on the edge of the Japanese perimiter.
My objection was to your original assessment of Japanese advantage at the beginning of war.
I asked you when that advantage evaporated and offered info that even by late 1942 US has poured so much material in theater that even by then it had
_MORE_ than Japanese ever had.
I am sure that by late 1942 US had much more material than Japanese in theater.
Well, on that score you are 'surely' incorrect. And that Solomosn campaign certainly had no effect on the advantageous strategic position held by the Japanese (interior supply lines).
We were talking in absolute numbers (please see above).
Sure thing... but those places could have been bypassed (as many were). What Japan conquered in 1941/1942 had to be fortified new...
? Bypassed? Leo, there's no getting to Japan without going through the Marshalls, and no bombing Japan without taking Guam, Tinian, and Saipan, and no getting to the Philippines without the Palaus. The *only* Japanese conquered islands apart from Luzon that had not been fortified by the Japanese for 20 years were Guam, Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and the vicinity of Rabaul. And the Japanese managed to fortify the shit out of Rabaul and Guam.
This was all in regard to claims that Japanese were inferior in everything except number at beginning of the war. If such claim was true (and it wasn't) then the US could have done "direct approach" in 1942.
But, as we know, this was not the case and Japan had to be beaten step-by-step.
So, what you wrote is, essentially, confirmation of what I wrote... [:D]
They flew it, but they lacked time to acquaint themselves 100%.
Please define "sufficient time to train acquaint onself 100%."
According to many books pilots become very good (if they survived of course) after they spend 1+ years in 1st line squadron (i.e. they were veteran experts knowing almost all about themselves and their aircraft).
If, for example, some middle ranking officer in USN flew biplanes 10x longer than his brand new Wildcat (or whatever else aircraft) then certain things he learned, practiced to perfection and loved to do in his biplane were almost unusable in new aircraft...
I really do not believe you have read much at all on the matter. You seem to have this notion that human cognition is equivalent to some sort of dumb automata, and that new skills or information can't be absored. If your only specimens were US presidents I might agree, but the data from USN combats clearly demonstrates otherwise. As I stipulated before, if you wanted to model the learning trajectory of US air units you'd want something like a viral model for information transmission.
Like I wrote in one of my previous posts I have read memoirs from:
- German WWII fighter pilots
- Japanese (IJN) WWII fighter pilots
- UK WWII fighter pilots
- Russian WWII fighter pilots (and Il-2 pilots)
- USAAF WWII fighter pilots
The one I still looking for is (are) USN fighter pilot memoirs.
At the end war made pilots on all sides to adjust or die really quickly...
At the war's beginning, Allied pilots made such adjustments with blazing speed. Most USN pilots had made some of the necessary adjustments, like being much better at deflection shooting than their opponents, before the US was in the war at all.
Then we agree - isn't this exactly what I wrote before (i.e. they adjusted or they were killed - there wasn't anything in between)?
BTW, again, this was the same for all warring sides.
Great list and dates (I knew this of course from my books as well) but let's concentrate on most important one:
1941: Grumman F4F-3
This is what I was writing about - the aircraft was almost brand new when war started and all the USN pilots had of modern design (if you can call it) before it was Brewster. All aircraft before were biplane...
True... not biplanes of WW1 but still biplanes...
Well, your claim was that: 'the models prior to the F4F3 were so radically inferior that their flight profiles were incomparable, and that closing rates of speed in earlier models so inferior that despite decades of emphasis on deflection shooting, pilots who had flown F4Fs for more than a year were still no better on the whole at deflection shooting than their opponents.' That is a paraphrase of your argument. And your argument is flat out wrong on the basis of the performance characteristics of the F2A2, F3A1, and F4F3.
C'mon... now you really overdone yourself...
If F2 or F3 were such great success stories why didn't USN just stick to them?
Do you seriously believe that F4 wasn't 10x better than F3 or F2?
BTW, after Midway, Admiral Nimitz himself wrote in official report that Wildcat (and not Brewster) is inferior to Zero (speed, acceleration, rate of climb) and that improvements must be done immediately (although not in a way to lower the flow of existing fighters into units).
I never said the F4F was a better plane than the Zero at speed, acceleation and rate of climb. I said that the F4F drivers were sufficiently better at deflection shooting that they canceled out the general advantage that the Zero had. I also suggested that the 1.4:1 favorable to the USN kill ratio of F4Fs vs Zero seems to support my point of view. By teh way, the same report that you cite was based on Thach's assessment. In that report, USN superiority at deflection shooting is specifically mentioned as the reason for the success, to date, of the F4F vs the A6M. Also, you should understand that the CinCPac thought that the actual kill ratio was three dead zeroes per wildcat shot down *and he was not satisfied.*
Any other nation would have looked at a 3:1 favorable kill ratio battle assessment and said "We're winning." The US looked at that ratio and said "We can do better yet."
When I read that report I read that Wildcat was better package than Zero although it was inferior in performance.
Here we go again... yes they have trained it for 20 years but with aircraft that were 100% different than ones used in WWII. Entering combat with 200 mph or 400 mph is vast difference...
Well.. you seem not to understand the difference between IAS, ground speed, and speed relative to the target. Until you can come to grips with the fact that the single most important speed consideration in deflection shooting is the closing speed, you will not really be able to understand how training in an F2 moving at, say, 300 mph, vs a towed target moving at 180 mph, is quite similar to training in an F4 moving at 310 mph vs a towed target moving at 190 mph. Until you get it, you won't "get it."
ROFL
Let me tell you one thing... aircraft in general, piloting and flight simulations are my hobby for past 15+ years (in addition, of course, to great wargames like TOAW, UV, WitP, HTTR)...
Before, when I had more time, I participated a lot in on-line flying and I was, well, very very very good (in some of the flight sims I was for the long time at the top of ladder)...
BTW, did I mention that I participated in development of most good flight sims in past years (every Flanker v1.x, Flanker v2.x, Lock-On, every MS Flight sim, every MS Combat Flight sim, Jane's F/A-18, Falcon 4.0)...
So... telling me that I don't understand aircraft is, well, you know what...
As for saying "F2 moving at, say, 300 mph, vs a towed target moving at 180 mph, is quite similar to training in an F4 moving at 310 mph vs a towed target moving at 190 mph" - what can I say - you obviously have no idea what you are talking about here... [:-]
Most pilots (all sides) were not expert at deflection shooting, that's why thousands of pilots (all sides) fly their tours but never shot down a plane, becuase they just didn't have a) shooting eye and b) hunter instincts. Of course the pilots that had those skills, became legend(foss, Yeager, campell, sakai, hartman, etc.,). Even Eric Hartman, said that strategy was to manuever the plane really close(preferably rear) before openning up.
Eric Hartmann's comments are specific to German doctrine. They did not train as intensively at deflection shooting as the USN pilots did. From Lundstrom's comments he makes it clear that the USN was rather unique in honing their pilots skills at this talent. Of course, in any situation it was desirable to have a low deflection shot (which means an approach from the enemy's six), but if your opposition isn't asleep, then being better at deflection shooting means that you can make killing shots that your enemy, not being trained at the skill, will be less likely to make.
But the proof is in the actual combat results in the Marshalls Strikes, the Coral Sea, Midway, and Solomons CV battles in which USN F4F pilots in a slower, less maneuverable aircraft, shot down more Zeroes than F4Fs were lost to Zeroes.
Let's leave Hartmann out of this.
What is important in that quote "caslug" wrote is the following:
Most pilots (all sides) were not expert at deflection shooting, that's why thousands of pilots (all sides) fly their tours but never shot down a plane, becuase they just didn't have a) shooting eye and b) hunter instincts. Of course the pilots that had those skills, became legend(foss, Yeager, campell, sakai, hartman, etc.,).
This is historic reality (fighter aces and experts were very very small minority)...
Leo "Apollo11"
