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ORIGINAL: Ike99


Hans-

Which is why the Wildcats seriously defeated the Zeroes as soon as the Allied pilots learned to avoid dogfighting them and started utilizing diving slashing attacks instead.

Zeroes were flying torches looking for a place to flame out!

I find making this statement a grand stretch when the kill ratio was around 1 to 1 don´t you?

Which demonstrates time and time again, that you are not capable of think in terms of an "air campaign".

You fixate on individual dogfighting ability, individual ace scores and direct comparisons of kill ratios.....these do NOT constitute the totality of an air campaign.

At Coral Sea the Allies suffered a tactical defeat but scored a strategic victory.

At Santa Cruz the Allies suffered a tactical defeat, but scored a strategic victory.

By holding on to Guadalcanal and NOT losing the air campaign by fighting the Zeros to an essential draw the Wildcats scored a strategic victory....this is what constitues the "serious defeat" I refered to and NOT a direct comparison of kill ratios. Make an effort to demonstrate you are intelligent enough to understand how the direct comparison of kill ratios fits into the broader context of the overall air campaign.

Ike, I screamed because that's what it takes to get through to you.  If the F4F-4 wasn't the model that held the line what was?  The -3 model was being replaced early in the war by the -4.

You don't have a thing for the US?  Then why is it that you've denounced it in so many prior threads?

Argentina didn't have strong fascist sympathies during WW2?  Look a a video of your army from those days as they goose step by the camera in German type uniforms, just to name 1 thing. 

That I questioned what history is taught in schools in your country is because I don't know and you surely seem to be on a different planet than the rest of us in that respect.

Are you even remotely aware how predictable this was. I am surprised it took you so long. Bergerud engaged in the most exhaustive and objective study of the entire air campaign that anyone has EVER produced. His work is recognized world wide as the definitive account and you have the unmitigated gall to label him revisionisrt because the facts he uncovered disprove your irrational claims. You lost even the smallest inkling of credibility you might have been hanging on to.

Hans, we are talking what fighter was better here. Wildcats or Zeros. It´s the Zero.

For almost 70 years everyone has generally agreed the Zero was a better fighter than a Wildcat and for good reason. Because a revisionist comes out with a book saying the Wildcat was a better fighter than a Zero doesn´t make a Wildcat better than a Zero.

Roll rate, smoll rate and flimsy airframe my butt. A Wildcat was not the equal of a Zero. It was an inferior fighter when going against Zeros.

And this is not because of what I say, or what Bergerud writes in a book or what you say. It´s because the people who actually flew the Wildcats and Zeros against one another say. Both American and Japanese pilots agree the Zero was a better fighter.

Major John Smith, USMC
10 November 1942

They had much more performance than we had. I think they did because we just couldn't stay with them at all, and dogfight at any altitude. The only thing we ever tried to do, if they saw us before we saw them, was to turn into them and take advantage of our six guns. Then, if we couldn't shoot them down, we would go right straight ahead and get out of the way, because if we didn't every time they'd be right on our tail in a short time.

Take note Han´s. This is not a revisionist author writing a book from a desk. This is an American pilot putting theory into practice and has no questions about what fighter is better. The Zero. He is basicaly saying the same thing I have been telling you. Zeros are faster, they climb better and they are far more manuverable than your Wildcats. In short, the Zero is the better fighter.

Joe Foss on the Zero: You know, the maneuver's they'd do as far as doing slow rolls, going straight up, and that would tee me off, knowing that they could do that, and had enough power and speed advantage to do that kind of stuff. Naturally it would really rowl me that they would do that.

Once again Han´s, a real pilot who was there and did that describing the performance of the Zero against his Wildcat.

And not only did the actual American pilots feel the Zero was the superior fighter, the Japanese themselves also felt their Zeros were superior to the Wildcat.

Sadamu Komachi "At the outset of the war, our Zeroes were better than the American F4F Wildcats, no question about it."

There was no debate in 1942 about what fighter was superior Hans, Everyone knew. To say otherwise is revisionist, white star on the wing nonsence.

If you want to play the game of denigrating anything said by a historian and only place credence in the words of pilots here is a large dose fo humble pie for you to swallow:

The words of Joel Paris an ace who flew in the 49th Fighter Group:

"I never felt that I was a second class citizen in a P-40. In many ways I thought the P-40 was better than the more modern fighters. I had a hell of a lot of time in a P-40, probably close to a thousand hours...........If you knew what you were doing you could fight a Jap on even terms, but you had to make him fight your way. He could outturn you at slow speed. You could outturn him at high speed. When you got into a turning fight with him, you dropped your nose down so you kept your airspeed up, you could outturn him. At low speed he could outroll you, because of those big ailerons: they looked like barn doors on the Zero. If your speed was up over 275, you could outroll it. His big airlerons didn't have the strength to make high speed rolls; it was like they were set in concrete. He could outclimb you at slow speed, say 90 mph, he could climb real steep. But if you kept it going up to 250 or more you could outclimb him."

Whats this? The much maligned P-40 capable of outperforming the Zero under the right circumstances........surely this can't be true....


All the ballyhoo you make about the Zeros mythical superiority is nothing more than poppycock. The simple reality is that even in areas where it did have superior performance that performance edge was highly situational and could be turned completely on it's head by a change in the circumstances....even the lowly P-40 could outperform it under the right conditions.

Try peddling your poppycock to those gullible enough to buy it......you certainly haven't found anyone here who fits that description.

ORIGINAL: Ike99


flimsy airframe my butt.

"although the craft had no peer in Allied forces in low speed maneuver, a fast, abrupt maneuver near top speed threatened to cause structural damage. More importantly the light airframe made the Zero very vulnerable to battle damage. Blows that would do little harm to a heavier plane could put a Zero in jeapordy. There was little redundancy in construction, and so several points were vulnerable to damage that could cripple or collapse the airframe"

keep talking out your butt there boy....we're all get a real kick out of it.

Paint a flying tiger on that P-40.

The simple reality is that even in areas where it did have superior performance that performance edge was highly situational and could be turned completely on it's head by a change in the circumstances....even the lowly P-40 could outperform it under the right conditions.

Honestly Hans I have always felt the P40 was underated and a better fighter overall than a Wildcat. It´s faster. Depending on model type of course. It just didn´t get the spotlight because it was an Army plane and the Pacific was a Navy show.

BTW, have you ever seen that Japanese gun camera picture of a P-40 being shot down?

There are gun camera shots, if you search hard enough, of every type of plane getting a kill against virtually every type of plane that they faced.

Ike the only thing that you have ever convinced me of is your total disregard of other forum members.  You seem to ignore what you can't try to argue away with your falsehoods and you will not answer questions directed at you.  Those things make you a very rude person.  [:-]

Hans, we are talking what fighter was better here. Wildcats or Zeros. It´s the Zero.

The problem here is that the word "better" is an utterly meaningless pangloss. When you use it, you either have to justify it by talking specifics about the particular models you are comparing and their performance stats, or you have to find a panglossian index for betterness (which for me amounts to kill ratios). In general USN F4Fs driven by carrier-based USN pilots shot down more Zeroes driven by ANY kind of IJN pilot than F4Fs lost to said Zeroes. Thus, empirically, the panglossian index of "betterness" demonstrates that the F4F was a better fighter than the Zero. At Guadalcanal, however, Zeroes shot down more F4Fs than they lost to F4Fs. Thus, the panglossian index of betterness makes the Zero a better plane than the F4F. Taken together, these two empirical facts suggest that the two were "about equal."

Now, if you want to gauge the quality of a consim product, kill ratios strike me as a good standard. If you want to know WHY F4Fs and Zeroes sometimes won and at other times lost individual engagements (taken here to be a fight on the order of a few minutes on a particular day) you have to look at the performance characteristics.

Interesting, the performance characteristics show that the F4F had substantial advantages at high speed and the A6Ms had substantial advantages at low speed. Overall, however, the absence of substantial protection for the pilot and the plane cost the Japanese pilots that they may not otherwise have lost. In contrast, the substantial ruggedness and protection of the F4F saved many USN/USMC pilots who were absolutely beaten and shot down, but who escaped to live another day. Having an F4F on a Zeke's 6 was close to a death sentence. Having a Zeke on an F4Fs six was hugely bad news, but an event that many defeated USN pilots lived to talk about. In that sense, then, which plane allowed its pilot to kill the enemy and come home, the F4F had a clear edge.

For almost 70 years everyone has generally agreed the Zero was a better fighter than a Wildcat and for good reason. Because a revisionist comes out with a book saying the Wildcat was a better fighter than a Zero doesn´t make a Wildcat better than a Zero.

"Revisionist" is an ugly term that is generally associated with lack of sound methods and an a priori agenda. A dissenting historical treatment of a subject is not a "revisitionist" history. Otherwise, all histories of anything would be "revisionist." Bergerud's work is generally sound. In my opinion it relies a little too heavily on anecdotes. Past histories of PTO combat in 1941-1942 likewise relied too heavily on anecdotes -- especially on Sakai's volume. It's a good source on how to fly a Zero. It's a lousy source for knowing how well the two types (F4Fs and A6Ms) matched up against each other.

Bergerud's work is substantiated by parallel work done by John Lundstrom in two volumes, and by Richard Frank's work on Guadalcanal, and Eric Hammel's work on the Solomons Campaign carrier battles. And that gets us back to the start of the conversation.

"Better" is am ambiguous term. If "received wisdom" has taught you that "The Zero was a better plane than the F4F" and "Japanese naval aviators were better pilots" then "The F4F shot down more enemy fighters in CV vs CV engagements, and about as many enemy fighters as they lost through September" 1942, then Occam's razor forces one to conclude that either the received wisdom is wrong or else the word "better" has no utility for understanding anything about F4Fs and A6Ms as employed in the PTO during WW2.

Roll rate, smoll rate and flimsy airframe my butt. A Wildcat was not the equal of a Zero. It was an inferior fighter when going against Zeros.

That claim is not substantiated by losses, nor by the performance specs of the a.c.

Throwing selectively chosen anecdotes around is pretty meaningless because you can find the right anecdote for anything. One of the Guadalcanal F4F drivers, I think it was Thach or Bauer, said to his F4F drivers, "When you encounter a zero, DOGFIGHT 'em!" He was of the opinion that a situationally alert F4F driver who kept his airspeed up could regularly beat a Zeke flown by anyone. And he definitely meant you could turn into the Zeke, roll with it, and flame it. As the foregoing posters, however, have shown, opinion about the relative merits of dogfighting vs boom and zoom vs garden variety mutual support was not uniform on the matter.

That sort of thing is why I find anecdotes to be generally useless for conversations like "is x a better plane than y." Better is so contextually dependent, and anecdotes are so contextually dependent, that it loses any descriptive value.

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

Throwing selectively chosen anecdotes around is pretty meaningless because you can find the right anecdote for anything. One of the Guadalcanal F4F drivers, I think it was Thach or Bauer, said to his F4F drivers, "When you encounter a zero, DOGFIGHT 'em!" He was of the opinion that a situationally alert F4F driver who kept his airspeed up could regularly beat a Zeke flown by anyone. And he definitely meant you could turn into the Zeke, roll with it, and flame it. As the foregoing posters, however, have shown, opinion about the relative merits of dogfighting vs boom and zoom vs garden variety mutual support was not uniform on the matter.

That sort of thing is why I find anecdotes to be generally useless for conversations like "is x a better plane than y." Better is so contextually dependent, and anecdotes are so contextually dependent, that it loses any descriptive value.

Yep it's all about tactics; it's not which A/C was superior but which one was used in a superior manor.

You may be agreeing with me but I'm not not necessarily agreeing with you.

Sometimes a.c. really are hands down superior. Then, if flown competently by rookies, they are far more lethal to the enemy than inferior a.c. piloted by god himself. But that's not the case with Zeroes and Wildcats. Those two types were rather equally matched, and therefore as you say, tactics decided the outcome of a fight.

One of the Guadalcanal F4F drivers, I think it was Thach or Bauer, said to his F4F drivers, "When you encounter a zero, DOGFIGHT 'em!" He was of the opinion that a situationally alert F4F driver who kept his airspeed up could regularly beat a Zeke flown by anyone. And he definitely meant you could turn into the Zeke, roll with it, and flame it.

That was Bauer. He went in and ¨Rolled¨ with a Zero in a Wildcat.

He ended up dead too and ¨no trace was ever found of him.¨

That´s what happened to pilots who said a Wildcat could out turn a Zero.

That's a weird editorial spin you put on it at the end.

Bauer died after completing a head-to-head pass with a Zero and destroying it. Best evidence indicates that the F4F took some battle damage or Bauer was wounded in the encounter either from the Zeke or from the wreckage of the Zeke when Bauer flew through it. He was last observed, by Joe Foss, in the water and waving OK at Foss. Presumedly he drowned or a shark ate him, or he died of injuries, as there are no Japanese records of picking him up.

Thanks for a prime example of why anecdotes are so useless. Not only can they be selectively chosen, they often don't necessarily lead to a non-subjective conclusion.

Empirically speaking, "Bauer's last fight" shows that an F4F could outmaneuver a Zero under the right circumstances, and the loss ratio of 1:1 seems to support the more general contention that the two a.c. were evenly matched.

double post

Empirically speaking, "Bauer's last fight" shows that an F4F could outmaneuver a Zero under the right circumstances, and the loss ratio of 1:1 seems to support the more general contention that the two a.c. were evenly matched.

No Allied commander in their right mind would tell their Wildcat pilots to try and out manuever Zeros. It´s suicide.

Well, maybe ones likes Bauer, who ended up dead.

Pilot interviews are very clear mdiehl as to the capabilities of each aircraft as well we have the specs of each aircraft.

I´ll take the words of the Japanese and Allied pilots, who survived, and actually did the flying and fighting in these machines over desk flying revisionist historians.

Hans- the P40 Warhawk was faster than the Zero. Like I said, I think it was underrated.

No Allied commander in their right mind would tell their Wildcat pilots to try and out manuever Zeros. It´s suicide.

Objectively speaking, it clearly wasn't suicide. At high speed the F4F could easily outmaneuver the A6M. I understand that you don't like that conclusion, but there are dozens of pilot anecdotes that demonstrate the same. Again, I refer you to various works by John Lundstrom, Eric Bergerud, Eric Hammel, among others. I'm not very fond of anecdotes, however, because people tend only to pay attention to the ones that they feel support their version of reality.

Well, maybe ones likes Bauer, who ended up dead.

Lots of people ended up dead. During Bauer's career he shot down some 14 enemy a.c. In his final engagement he out-turned an A6M that had positional advantage on him and shot that a.c. down. I don't see how any objective person could claim that it was "suicide" to try to outmaneuver Zeroes. In many other instances, Wildcats outmaneuvered Zeros, shot the Zeroes down, and return home to fly again and shoot down more Zeroes in the same way. Therefore, I don't think your conclusions vis a vis suicide are supported by the empirical data, by any substantive history, or by the preponderance of the anecdotal evidence.

Pilot interviews are very clear mdiehl as to the capabilities of each aircraft as well we have the specs of each aircraft.

That is not correct. Pilot interviews are only insightful as to the capabilities of the aircraft that they actually flew. They're really not useful for much else. They're poor sources for learning how many enemy a.c. were downed in any given fight. They're poor sources about the opponents' intentions or motivations, training, doctrine, or habits. And they're poor sources about the capabilities of enemy a.c.

I´ll take the words of the Japanese and Allied pilots, who survived, and actually did the flying and fighting in these machines over desk flying revisionist historians.

"Revisionist historians." You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

And he's slectively ignoring posts again.  

I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. It's easy to get into a snarky exchange, especially when you read too much into someone else's posts. But I must admit that the repeated accusation that Bergerud (and, by implications, other historians who've published extensively on this subject in the last 25 years) is a "revisionist historian" is starting to leave me with a negative impression.

A negative opinion!?! 
Well I guess I shouldn't be surprised as it's happened to more than a few forum members as a result of several threads where the accepted truths of history were discarded by our very own nay sayer who at the same time has a knack of selectively ignoring, not answering and offending.