USN air combat data from Office of Naval Intelligence

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

<snip>

Anyone know of a planned new BB (WW1 or 2, or even pre ww1) game?

<snip>

There is one in making by Norm Koger (author of TOAW):

The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905

http://home.austin.rr.com/normkoger/RJW.html


Leo "Apollo11"


P.S. before UV (and WitP in future) the TOAW was my best game (I own TOAW-CoW).

[Tristanjohn]

Please humour me and explain why someone stating (whether he was right or wrong) that the Zero was a better fighter aircraft than the F4F makes him an apologist for the NAZIs?

Within the context of this forum . . . for the reason that Mdiehl has been hard at it for, I'm told, about two years now trying to explain in BIG BLOCK LETTERS why that notion is mistaken. As there can be no argument Mdiel writes proficiently, in the case of the "Zero" issue at least has his facts in order, would bend over backward so as not to "offend" the sensibilities of anyone in this curious forum . . . yet up until the last time I checked this gentleman seems to have made little headway, if any at all, with the pro-"Zero" crowd. From that I just naturally deduce that these people are either dirt stupid and/or entertain some agenda other than the pursuit of truth for its own sake.

Now tell me, which do you believe it is?

[Nomad]

But Tristanjohn could you answer the question asked? If a person feels/believes that the 'Zero' was a better aircraft than the F4F, why does that make that person an apologist for the NAZI/Axis? That person may be right or wrong( I am not trying to argue that) but that certainly does not make him an apologist.

[Mike_B20]

The following link to the diary of Ensign F.R. "Cash" Register, Wildcat pilot with VF-5, makes interesting reading.

http://www.daveswarbirds.com/cactus/diary.htm

Ensign Register was one of about 14 airmen who personally received Distinguished Flying Crosses from Admiral Nimitz during Nimitz' visit to Guadalcanal on September 30. He is credited with eight kills during his time in the Solomons, but was shot down during the Aleutian campaign in the battle for Attu Island.

Of interest is his entry for August9, 1942, in which he states,
"We can't compete with the Japs in the F4F.".

Also, I recall a saying amongst Cactus flyers,
"If you come across a zero and you are alone...run like hell, because you are outnumbered".

The perceived inferiority among Wildcat pilots of the Wildcat when confronted by the Zero seems at odds with the combat stats but may be explained by the relative designs.
Whereas the Zero had great maneuverability at low speeds it was achieved at the expense of protection. The reverse being true for the Wildcat.
Over Guadalcanal the Japs were a long way from their base and any damage to their aircraft could prove fatal, while the Wildcat pilots could attempt a ditch close to base or a deadstick landing.
The Wildcats stood a good chance of being shot up and surviving, while the Zero stood little chance if shot up.
The Zero pilot may have felt superior in the dogfight 90% of the time but died in a freball the other 10% of the time.

[Mr.Frag]

yet up until the last time I checked this gentleman seems to have made little headway, if any at all, with the pro-"Zero" crowd.

Thats generally because his premise is flawed because it has nothing at all to do with these two planes. These planes did not fly alone. They flew in specific roles during the early months, with the Zero up on top pouncing down as the F4F's fought against *other* aircraft giving up whatever advantage it happened to have in a straight dogfight.

Once relieved of the burden of being a bomber intercepter and able to use it's advantages, the tables turned. This also happened to come at a time when Japan's pilots were stripped down coupled with new USA performer aircraft and wider effective use of radar which put planes in contact with each other in a more favourable position for the USA.

Together, the result was ratios up to 20 to 1. 10 from pilot skill, 10 from plane performance. You can not look at the numbers and simply say the F6F was 19 times better then the Zero as it was not. You have to factor decreasing Japan skill, Radar, AND aircraft performance and morale into the discussion and not just look at the plane statistics which is why no one agrees with one liner "plane x better then plane y" statements.

For the millionth time, you can not take aircraft in isolation of their surroundings and mission types flown and compare statistics. As long as you do, you will come up with the same flawed premise again and again.

This by the way is exactly the same results seen over the skys in England. Fighters when doing what they were supposed to which was stop bombers from reaching the target did not fare well against other fighters because they were busy making sure they had a base to land at. Once the roles were reversed, so too were the results.

Perhaps some of this type of mission logic effectiveness can be built into WitP instead of globally adjusting aircraft performance, but really it in not going to make any difference as the USA steamrolls their way over Japan.

It has absolutely nothing to do with being Pro-Zero, it has to do with being tired of American boasting how they are so much better then everyone else on the planet and how on earth could ANY pilot shoot down a magic American Pilot in their magical invulnerable planes.

Keep in mind, everytime you put your point forward, you are insulting the American pilots who fought and died during WW2 against your "pathetic" aircraft that should have simply been falling out of the skys.

Just some basic statistics from the posted tables:

sortie vs loss rate: F4F 13.8%, FM 3.3%, F4U 2.3%, F6F 3.1%

The average of all aircraft sorties vs lost is 2.5%. As you can see the F4F is rather high due to when it flew under the conditions of the time. It does not mean the F4F was no good, it just means the odds where stacked against them during the early war. If you cannot understand this above all else looking at the USA stats by themselves, it is a lost cause.

[IronDuke_slith]

Within the context of this forum . . . for the reason that Mdiehl has been hard at it for, I'm told, about two years now trying to explain in BIG BLOCK LETTERS why that notion is mistaken. As there can be no argument Mdiel writes proficiently, in the case of the "Zero" issue at least has his facts in order, would bend over backward so as not to "offend" the sensibilities of anyone in this curious forum . . . yet up until the last time I checked this gentleman seems to have made little headway, if any at all, with the pro-"Zero" crowd. From that I just naturally deduce that these people are either dirt stupid and/or entertain some agenda other than the pursuit of truth for its own sake.

Now tell me, which do you believe it is?

As Nomad suggests, you haven't answered the question, merely done what you are prone to do and concentrate on a separate part of the issue you feel more comfortable about. I would echo his request you home in on the central question I asked and answer that.

Your post betrays your singular biggest problem which is your insistence that anyone who contradicts you must be either stupid or lying in support of another agenda. This is nonsense but does mean it is impossible to debate with you.
The most telling line is "From that I just naturally deduce that these people are either dirt-stupid and/or entertain some agenda other than the pursuit of truth for it's own sake." There is no indication here that the third possibility (which does "naturally" occur to the rest of us) that others may have read the same facts and drawn another (perhaps better) conclusion has so much as occured to you. My direct answer to your direct question, therefore ("Which do you think it is?") is "neither" because I don't accept there are only two possible answers.

Even here you've not felt able to pay Mdiehl an unqualified compliment for his views where they agree with your own. You have qualified it by saying "in the case of the zero issue at least has his facts in order". Once again, we are drawn to assume that elsewhere, you have taken exception to his views, but unable to accept disagreement you have decided his contrary argument is caused by him not having his facts in order, not that he has merely interpreted the same facts differently. My experience of Mdiehl is that, whilst I think his arguments could sometimes be more sympathetically worded, facts are not an issue, he doesn't turn up without them.

This, in essence, is why it is not unknown for your threads to lose sight of the debate and become a tad fractious.

Returning to the topic in hand, MikeB20 and Frag have made valid points. For myself, I would only say that elsewhere on these forums Mdiehl has suggested that an exchange rate of around 1.1 in dogfights between the Zero and Wildcat is not wildly out of tune with history. Everything else I say, therefore, accepts this starting point as I'm happy to accept his facts are in order.

Now, since the armour and armament of the Wildcat was heavier than the zero, logic suggests that far more Wildcats survived hits from a Zero than Zeros survived hits from a Wildcat during combat manouevres. (I don't want to get into a discussion about what constitutes Dogfighting). Therefore, to achieve a kill ratio of roughly comparable proportions suggests (not proves, merely suggests, this is a debate after all) that Zeros must have hit more Wildcats than Wildcats hit Zeros since Wildcats would have survived such hits more often.
Mike's point about Homebase distances over Guadalcanal further accentuates this point.

Whether this was down to Pilot skill or aircraft handling characteristics, I don't know for sure. I tend to agree with those that suggest that the loss of the early war Japanese pilots must have had an effect on the kill ratios. That is not the same as suggesting those pilots would have won air superiority armed with the later generation Japanese planes, merely that they would have given a better account of themselves.

My apologies in advance if my comments sound as if they are attempting to excuse the actions of the wartime AXIS leadership. That is not my intention.

Regards,
IronDuke.

[PzB74]

I'm not sure why this never ending debate goes on and on and on.....
Since The Wildcat and Zero fought each other on rather equal terms - each having advantages over the other - it all comes down to personal preferences.

An example: Some German pilots liked the Me-109 better than the FW-190 and kept flying it. The latter plane was superior to the first in most instances, but this doesn't mean that it was all black and white. One have to make room for personal preferences.

From my point of view, the extreme long range of the Zero is what made it so suitable for operations in the Pacific. Together with being agile and fast, these qualities made it a superior fighter in its own terms. Escorting long range bombers over vast oceans made it possible to strike targets further away than ever before.

That others see things from another point of view, I don't have any problems with. Most resources I've put my eyes upon - and that's not few - support the view that the Zero had an edge over the Wildcat. The only chance of getting the Matrix team to tune down its capabilities would be to provide enough hard facts to convince them that they've given it to much of an edge.

Debates over such issues are never ending, just search the web for 'the best fighter plane of WWII' and you're on!

Throwing in terms like Axis sympathesizer and other irrelevant phrases only pi$$es people of. I've not read a single statement that can be said to support such attitudes regarding this discussion yet.

I have learned a lot about the Zero, Wildcat and other facts related to them and the airwar in the Pacific from in these threads, so such discussions are educating as long as they are kept on a serious and well formulated level.

[Mike Scholl]

I'm not sure why this never ending debate goes on and on and on.....
Since The Wildcat and Zero fought each other on rather equal terms - each having advantages over the other - it all comes down to personal preferences.

An example: Some German pilots liked the Me-109 better than the FW-190 and kept flying it. The latter plane was superior to the first in most instances, but this doesn't mean that it was all black and white. One have to make room for personal preferences.

Just for infomation purposes. One thing that seems to escape a number of
players and designers is that the Fw-190A and the Fw-190D were almost two
different aircraft. The A model was terrific at low to medium altitudes, but it's
performance fell off badly above that. It stayed in production virtually to the
end of the war (even when the "D" design went into production) because it was
and excellent fighter-bomber---which the 109 and the Fw-190D weren't. The
D model used an in-line engine (unlike the A's radial) and was optimised for high
altitude combat---cumulating in it's final varient, the renamed Ta-152. The
Me-109 stayed in production to provide the "high" to the 190A's "low", and
because the models continued to improve. They were also already in large-
scale production and Germany's situation was growing desperate enough that
the thought of shutting down a fighter production line for several months of
re-tooling just to get a marginally better airplane just wasn't in the cards.
Many of you probably already knew this, but I thought I'd mention it for the
rest...

[mogami]

Hi, The majority of USN after action reports I've read say two things
USN pilots are better then Japanese (The writer could hardly say anything else)
USN pilots need a new aircraft to fight the Zero with.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

Still no comment of my quick and dirty calculations regarding thousands of
"missing" / "unaccounted for" F6F using data from PDF statistics document
"TristanJohn" posted in 1st message of this thread?

BTW, I originally calculated that there are 9000 "missing" / "unaccounted for"
F6F but this can be rounded down to 8000 since I found out that 930 were
supplied to UK via Lend-Lease agreement.

Again, any ideas why this huge (now 8000) discrepancy from official numbers
posted in PDF and actual production and Lend-Lease?



Leo "Apollo11"

[Tristanjohn]

But Tristanjohn could you answer the question asked? If a person feels/believes that the 'Zero' was a better aircraft than the F4F, why does that make that person an apologist for the NAZI/Axis? That person may be right or wrong( I am not trying to argue that) but that certainly does not make him an apologist.

Well, repetition doesn't work.

Let me try to say the same thing only somewhat differently: I can't see an alternative to the two possible reasons I've cited for this behavior on the part of the pro-"Zero" crowd.

These people have been presented with not only excellent but in my mind irrefutable argument against their position that the "Zero" was on balance an inherently superior aircraft to the Wildcat and P-40 (this in conjunction with the same group's steadfast notion that Japanese piloits were better trained and more experienced than their USN/Marine counterparts to boot--remember, both these questions revolve wholly within the framework of the UV model, which happens to have it pro-Japanese both ways) yet refuse to yield to this reason.

Ergo, these people must be obstinate and/or delivered to special-purpose.

At a given point in time any conversation either reverts to the use of plain English and addresses truth before it, or is turned away from by men of reason as something devoid of hope.

[mdiehl]

Thats generally because his premise is flawed because it has nothing at all to do with these two planes. These planes did not fly alone. They flew in specific roles during the early months, with the Zero up on top pouncing down as the F4F's fought against *other* aircraft giving up whatever advantage it happened to have in a straight dogfight.

You are incorrect. My premise is not flawed and your assessment of the circumstances in which F4Fs fought Zekes is simplistics. The stats to which I have payed closest attention are the outcomes of engagements F4Fs fighting Zekes, not Zekes pouncing on F4Fs as F4Fs engaged in intercepting other a/c. That did happen, but those are not the data points in which I have been interested, because MISSION necessarily affects the assessment. I guess that's your point, but I have never suggested otherwise, and have attempted to eliminate the mission factor from my quantitative analyses.

You can not look at the numbers and simply say the F6F was 19 times better then the Zero as it was not.

It is illogical to suggest that the F6F was NOT 19 times better unless you stipulate what you are using to calculate your index.

It has absolutely nothing to do with being Pro-Zero, it has to do with being tired of American boasting how they are so much better then everyone else on the planet and how on earth could ANY pilot shoot down a magic American Pilot in their magical invulnerable planes.

This is where you tip your hand, Axis Fanboy. No one in these forums has made that claim or anything like that claim. Your only recourse seems to be to misrepresent the POV of your opposition in this debate or studiously avoid talking about anything real by subsitituting undefined, vague preciousities for facts about losses, aircraft performance characteristics etc. I quite agree woth your contention that MISSION affects results. I also think that one of the overlooked factors in examining early war Japanese successes is the considerable advantage held by the attacker and the rather compelling early war Japanese numerical superiority in the PI, Malay-Burma, and NEI areas.

Keep in mind, everytime you put your point forward, you are insulting the American pilots who fought and died during WW2 against your "pathetic" aircraft that should have simply been falling out of the skys.

I don't think it insults American pilots to suggest that their aircraft were better in some ways than the Japanese ones.

It does not mean the F4F was no good, it just means the odds where stacked against them during the early war. If you cannot understand this above all else looking at the USA stats by themselves, it is a lost cause.

Again, you have to get down to rather more precise details than simplistic phrases like "the odds were stacked against them." The numerical odds? The logistical odds? One major problem with losses over cactus (which affects the sortie to loss ratios you mention) has to do with the near absence of spare parts for the aircraft staioned there for the first eight weeks of the campaign. Some of the flyable F4Fs were known lemons because of problems that would have been corrected at a base like Pearl or even Port Moresby. Now that's a tribute to the American pilots who flew them in combat despite their known problems. Another major factor is the circumstances from which they flew. Through the end of 1942, most F4Fs flew from CVs -- necessarily with higher operation losses. F4Us in contrast largely flew from land bases until late '44 early '45. F6Fs flew from roughly even split of CVs and land bases.

[gus]

Hi all,

Still no comment of my quick and dirty calculations regarding thousands of
"missing" / "unaccounted for" F6F using data from PDF statistics document
"TristanJohn" posted in 1st message of this thread?

BTW, I originally calculated that there are 9000 "missing" / "unaccounted for"
F6F but this can be rounded down to 8000 since I found out that 930 were
supplied to UK via Lend-Lease agreement.

Again, any ideas why this huge (now 8000) discrepancy from official numbers
posted in PDF and actual production and Lend-Lease?

Leo "Apollo11"

Hey Apollo 11,

While I can't comment on your production numbers I can tell you that production will always outstrip by a wide margin the number of operational a/c at any given moment in time as long as the war is going well and by mid/late1943 as we all know the war was going very well for the Allies.

The 8-1 production/operational ratio does appear to be quite high IMO but it would be interesting to see if this ratio holds true for other similar a/c in both the Pacific and in Europe. If it does I think you will have your answer.

-g

[Mr.Frag]

This is where you tip your hand, Axis Fanboy. No one in these forums has made that claim or anything like that claim.

No, you have just proven my point beyond belief. Anyone who happens to take any view other then your (and Trist's repeating of your) *facts* must be an Axis fanboy. Personally, you just did more damage to yourself with that statement then anything I could have put forward to discredit your views.

You have stated in your reply that your sample used specific air to air encounters of a dogfight only variety and you eliminated other aspects of air combat as it happened during UV timeframe (in other words you eliminated the majority of the fighting that happened in the Pacific). You expect people to go forward and use your absolutely biased data (and I quote)

The stats to which I have payed closest attention are the outcomes of engagements F4Fs fighting Zekes, not Zekes pouncing on F4Fs as F4Fs engaged in intercepting other a/c. That did happen, but those are not the data points in which I have been interested

What possible purpose is this other than to shift the realities into your own little world when now USA aircraft perform better then they actually did because you ONLY sampled engagements where the aircraft happened to be in it's peek element? If I was this Axis "Fanboy" as you state, I would take the exact opposite sample set and portray the USN in their worse possible light and show them to be horrible. This accomplishes nothing as we would end up with the opposite extreme to your data which is completely pointless for the game where we need a balanced result taking ALL FACTORS and MISSIONS into play to result in something useful.

I fail to understand your logic or purpose other then to debate selective facts that really have no bearing on the realities of either UV or WitP. This does not imply that your particular sample data was incorrect nor does it imply that your conclusions about aircraft capabilities are incorrect. The point that you and your followers gloss over is the realities of the early Pacific war, trying instead to produce some altered version of the game where real hardships faced by the Allies simply vanish with your *special* data sample.

[Nomad]

Well, repetition doesn't work.

Let me try to say the same thing only somewhat differently: I can't see an alternative to the two possible reasons I've cited for this behavior on the part of the pro-"Zero" crowd.

These people have been presented with not only excellent but in my mind irrefutable argument against their position that the "Zero" was on balance an inherently superior aircraft to the Wildcat and P-40 (this in conjunction with the same group's steadfast notion that Japanese piloits were better trained and more experienced than their USN/Marine counterparts to boot--remember, both these questions revolve wholly within the framework of the UV model, which happens to have it pro-Japanese both ways) yet refuse to yield to this reason.

Ergo, these people must be obstinate and/or delivered to special-purpose.

At a given point in time any conversation either reverts to the use of plain English and addresses truth before it, or is turned away from by men of reason as something devoid of hope.

Then I think I can see the basic problem here. You state that you or someone else has provided an 'irrefutable' argument that the "Zero" was not superior aircraft to the P-40 and F4F. And exactly what do you base this on? Your 1946 kill ratio link? Kill ratios do not tell the whole story about how effective a fighter is. Many of the P-40 and F4Fs sustained damage that took them out of the fight but they would not be counted as a 'kill.' That would be a credit to their design, they were very robust compared to a 'Zero.' A fighter that has to return to base becasue of damage doesn't shoot down many bombers, therefore, they are not effective for that mission.

I find it somewhat odd that you will ignore the writtings of the pilots that were there and call anyone who doesn't accept your interpetation stupid, NAZIs, Axis Fanboys, etc.

As far as pilot training goes, the IJN pilot were well trained. Many of them had been in air to air combat before May 1942. Even combat against inferior aircraft provides the pilot with some experience. It can also give a false sense of superority, but at least they had been shot at before. Many(most?) of the USN/USMC pilots had not been in air to air combat before this. Read their memoirs and diaries, they were uncertain how they would do. A pilot that is unceratian about his abilities will not do as good the first fews times in combat. They USN/USMC pilots were well trained, some of them very well, but you would also have to consider the situation at the time. The IJN First Mobil Fleet had just bombed Pearl Harbor, sailed around the Indian Ocean sinking a number of ships, supported the DEI operations, and bombed Darwin. The Allies had seen the Japanese pretty much go anywhere they wanted and sweep all oposition aside. I think it is too bad that UV only uses 'experience' to measure pilot effectiveness. If they had included training and maybe some global variables to refelect tactics we would have a better game/simulation.

[TIMJOT]

I also think that one of the overlooked factors in examining early war Japanese successes is the considerable advantage held by the attacker and the rather compelling early war Japanese numerical superiority in the PI, Malay-Burma, and NEI areas.
.

Mdiehl,

I would agree that the inherent advantage of the attacker was a factor. Although as the BOB demonstrates,the attacker does not always have the advantage. In the BOB the attackers advantage was mitagated by an effective early warning system. It was the lack of such a system in the PI, Malaya, NEI, was the single most significant disadvantage faced by the allies in the early months of the war. One of the reasons the AVG faired as well as they did was that they had a fairly effective if primitive early warning system in place at the outbreak of the war.

I would not agree that the IJN had a compelling early war numerical superiorty. In the PI campaign the IJNs Tinian and Takao Kokutais could field about 80+ Zekes and pilots capable of the exteme long range mission from Formosa to central Luzon. Correspondingly the U.S. FEAF had 72 P-40s operational in the PI at the outbreak of the war. In Java/Sumatra the the 1st Tinian never had more than 54 operational Zekes deployed. Discounting inferior a/c the allies did deploy 34 P-40s and 50 Hurricanes in the NEI campaign. In Malaya again discounting inferior a/c the Brits were able to deploy an additional 50 Hurricanes over Singapore, while the only IJN figher unit (Yamada detachment) deployed no more than 25 operational Zekes. However in Malaya at least there were additional IJA fighter units, but they were not a factor over Singapore until the very end.

Besides the lack of early warning systems, by far the biggest factor was huge operational losses due to pilot quality, lack of spare parts and in some cases operating from primitive fields. If you want to model the game historically these factors have to be taken into account.

[mogami]

Hi, Going over a list of USN serial numbers for F4F-4's I find 10 listed as lost on Aug 7th, 1942 (VF-71 and VF-6) 1 listed as lost Aug 42 without date. And then more lost on Aug 24 1942. I've never seen anyone mention USN loses on Aug 7th but always point out the Japanese shot down that day.

This site has record of USN aircraft by serial number from pre WWI to present.

http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/

[IronDuke_slith]

Mdiehl,

I think I said this at some point last year, but the term AXIS FANBOY does you no credit. The best that can be said for it is that it's not as bad as AXIS apologist (over which My and Nomad's question still remains unanswered). That said, I don't want to get into an argument about it, because as you've noticed it only serves to inflame rather than inform the debate, and pretty soon the whole thread gets into problems.

I also think you have developed a small inconsistency which betrays a bias of your own. My understanding of the separate KI-100 thread and the side argument it developed over the Me262, was that you wanted to widen the range of situations of 262/Allied fighter interaction in order to include in the ratios/discussion the shooting downs of 262s that occured when they were at low altitude preparing to land at their most vulnerable. This was because you felt it was ludicrous (your word not mine) to only include that fighting which occured when the 262 was at its best. That, you felt, allowed you to state the 262 was no better than the best Allied piston engined fighterrs of the day.

Here though, you seem to be restricting (not widening) the number of engagements to be considered. The effect of this is once again to improve the argument in favour of the Allied weapon. Such restrictions may not be fully valid if Timjot is right about relative numbers in early war situations, but regardless of that point, your only consistency seems to be in improving the terms of the argument for the Allied weapon system. I won't use any particular term to attempt to describe this.

Regards,
IronDuke.

[TIMJOT]

Hi, Going over a list of USN serial numbers for F4F-4's I find 10 listed as lost on Aug 7th, 1942 (VF-71 and VF-6) 1 listed as lost Aug 42 without date. And then more lost on Aug 24 1942. I've never seen anyone mention USN loses on Aug 7th but always point out the Japanese shot down that day.

This site has record of USN aircraft by serial number from pre WWI to present.

http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/

Mogami

Actually I have pointed it out numerous times back when I was debateing Tristanjohn on the testing of historical Lunga invasion results over at the UV forum. IIRC the USN actually lost 9 F4Fs to air to air combat and 2 operationally on August 7th 42. While the IJN lost 2 Zekes that day.

[mogami]

Nevermind I quess we can't use Aug 7th as example for IJN versus USN aircombat.