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thewood1 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 12:32 am I think the Korean War is a great benchmark for this discussion. From F4U Corsair Units of the Korean War from Osprey with data scattered across multiple pages, but most on Page 50.

USN total sorties was 255k sorties. 75% of sorties were ground attack and 1/3 of those were direct CAS. So 191k sorties were ground attack. These were all low-level attacks with AD-1s and F9Fs. No high-altitude with pull up altitudes measured in hundreds of feet. Total combat losses were 358. 90% attributed to ground fire. It was stated that the majority of that was 20mm or greater. So lets say that 260 losses were to 20mm or greater. That leaves, at most, about 100 losses to rifle caliber rounds. So now you have to assume a large number of those were actual AA machine guns. But lets say all rifle caliber rounds were soldiers firing into the air. That means out of almost 200,000 separate sorties, you have at most 100 losses that can even remotely be caused by rifle rounds. Even that is an over-estimate. Even if you assume double that had enough damage for a mission kill with an aircraft returning to base, that's still a total of only 300.

Keep in mind that the AD-1 and the F4U flew very low and relatively slow attacking large concentrations of troops. I'll also point out that the USN has 1.5 times as many operational accident losses in combat aircraft than in combat losses. That means you were more likely to go down due to accident than with a rifle caliber round.

In fact, a quote in that same book had one squadron leader state that pilots feared 37mm and greater flak over any other type of AAA. Thats because those dedicated AAA guns had the sighting, traversing, and training to be a real threat.

thewood1 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 12:43 am "It doesn't matter the loss reason because they would die anyway. Obviously if a SAM hits them first, but they would die of rifles anyway, the SAM gets the kills. Same as the Arab Israeli wars were Egypt got zero air kills because all the sams killed everything immediately.

It's like saying if you get hit by a truck and die, you would never die of a car. No, the truck got you first, you would die anyway. The important conflicts are stuff like indochina were only rifles were available. Wikipedia claims zero losses which is absurd and obviously a omission."

What? There were 0 SAMs in Korea. So you didn't know that? The only threats to CAS aircraft was ground fire. Migs were a threat for only a very short time. A number of A-1s were lost to shoulder-fired SAMs in Vietnam. I'm not even sure what you are talking about.

thewood1 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 1:00 am I didn't ignore damage. 100 shot down, 200 damaged enough for a mission kill.

thewood1 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 1:06 am OK, where is your source for that. You are just making numbers up. In that same book, they state specifically that the majority of damage, repairable and unrepairable was 37mm or greater. And thats with a large number of attacks being against troop concentrations numbering in the thousands.

Why would they state their biggest fear was AAA cannon and then state the majority of damage being from that same type of weapon?

thewood1 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 1:10 am I really don't know what to say. You make up your own numbers. Have no quantifiable sources. And speak in riddles.

thewood1 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 1:30 am No, I estimated it from sources. The Osprey book on F9Fs had a USN estimate that for every downed aircraft, two come back with damage. I don't think you really understamd the logic.

thewood1 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 1:55 am And how many rifles got a hit? Can you not read? I counted the damaged in the 300.

thewood1 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 1:59 am In either the F9F book or the F4U book, the USN stated that 10% of combat aircraft were lost as total write offs. That includes accidents, damage, and shoot downs. It was 750 or so to non-combat accidents and over 300 to combat-related effects. Thats either lost in the air or on return with enough damage to be a total write off. You can do the math.

thewood1 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 2:05 am No they weren't.