4E bombers,greatest bug of all

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: hawker

worr,
i am not talking about quantity,i talk about quality.
If you refer to quantity than Sherman is the best tank of WW2,truth is that "tin can" like Sherman could fire whole day to Tiger only to scratch his paint[;)].Same as aircrafts,ME-262 was too much for P-51 in every aspect of fight,except in numbers.
So,my point is quality not quantity.
You are right,quantity wins over quality but with great losses.
Examples:
-Bismarck against whole brittish "home fleet"
-Sherman,T-34 against any german tank
-P-51 against ME-262
-4E bombers in WITP against anything[;)]
You have countless examples...

Hmmm, I think you could use a little more in depth education about this entire "quality vs. quantity" thing.

For example, the 76mm armed Sherman was as good as or better than almost any German armored vehicle it was *likely* to actually come up against. *Most* german armoroed vehicels were Pz IIIs, Pz IVs, or assault guns built off of those chasis. The Sherman does quite nicely against all of those models. So does the T-34, for that matter. Panthers and Tigers were very rare, Tigers exceedingly so. So "any german tank" is simply incorrect. The majority of German tanks were inferior or at best equivalent to the Sherman or the T-34.

I think this actually illustrates an error on your part in how you look at these issues. There is more to a weapon ability to detroy some other weapon that determines its basic value. Shermans might not ahve been very good at destroying Tigers, but since if they were used properly they would not be asked to, it isn't really a knock on a Sherman. The P-51 wasn't very good at destroying subs, but that doesn't mean it is a crappy fighter.

You rate "quality" ina very narrow sense that does not judge the most relevant characteristics of a weapon system.

[worr]

ORIGINAL: Berkut

The B-17s in Europe were in fact deterred at times from attack.

I take that as an agreement on the issue of "obliteration."

In the game I too must stand down units and cannot sustain a constant attack. So I'm not sure that is what is being put forward in this particular thread.

Actually it was 20% that was considered unacceptable. And they did stand down after Black Thursday....though Eiker to his dying day denied this and claimed it was the weather instead. The 8th USAAF however soldiered on with a 10% loss rate most of the war without standing down.

Worr, out

[Berkut]

I don't mean standing down to the extent that you take an operational pause to replace losses, I mean standing down to the extent that the planners say "Hey, we have to re-think our targets/strategy/tactics because we cannot continue to engage in operations that result in this level of losses".

It was a war of attrition, like almost all of WW2 was (most especially the air war in the Pacific), and the large unescorted B-17 raids into the heart of Germany during daylight hours were simply not sustainable in the manner that the bomber afficionados thought they would be. In a war of attrition, it is essentially losing a particular battle and realizing that you have to change something up. Which they did.

If nothing else, the crews simply would not stand for those kinds of losses. A 10% loss rate means that you ahve almost NO chance of surviving more than a dozen or so missions.

[worr]

ORIGINAL: Berkut
If nothing else, the crews simply would not stand for those kinds of losses. A 10% loss rate means that you have almost NO chance of surviving more than a dozen or so missions.

Yep, and remarkably they flew 25 missions that way without stopping.

Did you know we lost more men in just the 8th AAF than in all the USMC during WWII?

Worr, out

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: worr

ORIGINAL: Berkut
If nothing else, the crews simply would not stand for those kinds of losses. A 10% loss rate means that you have almost NO chance of surviving more than a dozen or so missions.

Yep, and remarkably they flew 25 missions that way without stopping.

Did you know we lost more men in just the 8th AAF than in all the USMC during WWII?

Worr, out

That is becasue they were not suffering 10% loss rates overall - 10% loss on a single mission was very high, and unusual.

[worr]

ORIGINAL: Berkut

That is because they were not suffering 10% loss rates overall - 10% loss on a single mission was very high, and unusual.

Gerald Astor's "The Mighty Eighth" I highly recommend it. Very interesting read.

Not sure where you are getting your information from...but I'll just give you his summation. He documents that 10% was the loss rate for much of 1943 and into early 44. Sometimes it went as high as 20%. Gen Eaker claimed they 8th AAF never stood down due to casualties. Loss rates for the entire war were 7.42% that includes the easy times of 1945.

350,000 airmen served with the Eighth Air Force in England. 26,000 were killed. Us Marines? 3.29 percent. US Army? 2.25 percent. Navy? .41 percent. "Strictly measuring the mortality rate for the 210,000 air crewmen the casualty figure soars to 12.38 percent and in addition 21,000 from the 8th wound up in POW camps. Of those who flew the original twenty-five-mission bomber tour in 1942-43, just 35 percent survived; the twenty five to thirty-mission requirements of 1944 saw 66 completed, and by 1945, 81 percent of the combatants flew their full thirty-five engagements." (P 420)

Astor continues: "The planes themselves averaged a shorter period of survival than their occupants, with the typical bomber listed in service for only 147 days."

It was not an easy life. No such numbers come even close for bomber crews in the pacific. No, the IJA did not have the same means and methods to deal with 4E bombers in the Pacific. Recommended reading, "Fire in the Sky."

Worr, out

[Berkut]

Worr, those numbers do not add up. If the overall casualty rate is "only" 12% or so, there is no way each individual raid could average 10% casualties. That simply does not work. If each raid loses 10% of say 100 planes, after 5 raids you are down to 60 planes, that is a 40% loss rate, after just 5 missions. After ten you are down to 35 planes. Even the "survives a tour" rate would be in the single digits at 10% per mission.

Gen Eaker can claim anything he wants, but the SBS says otherwise. After the ball bearing attacks in August and October, unescorted daylight bombing raids were basically ended. Maybe the 8th never "stood down", but they certainly quit going after deep targets without fighter escort. IIRC, in the first raid they lost just under 20%, and in the later one they lost something like 60 of 230 planes, with the majority of the rest damaged, and many of the damaged ones would never fly again, even if they amde it back to base.

So they were certainly detered, and from a attritional war standpoint, they lost that "engagement". Of course, it did not matter in the long run, because they simply shifted to other, safer targets.

I have read Fire in the Sky, btw. Excellent book, if a bit repetitive and scattered.

[Berkut]

A very quick calculation gives me 7.7% of crews surviving 25 missions with a 10% average mission casualty rate.

Not sustainable.

[Berkut]

I realy should be sleeping, but I just can't resist digging away at stuff like this.

Found a decent site with some good links to official records, and summations from them. Here is what they say about USAAF 8th & 9th Air Forces losses:

The overall heavy bomber loss rate for the 8 & 9 USAAF was 1.7%. In 1943 1036 bombers were lost with an average loss rate of 3.8%. A tour of operations was set at 25 missions so that during 1943 the probability of completing a tour of operations was 38%. In October 1943 186 heavy bombers were lost on 2831 sorties, a loss rate of 6.6%. A tour of operations with the 8 & 9 AAF was at first 25 sorties but in the last year of the war this was increased to 40 sorties,

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/r_m_g.varl ... nsive.html

Like I pointed out in my previous post, a loss rate of 10% was simply not possible. The peak one month loss rate was 6.6%, and that was the month that the 8th hit the Schweinfurt plant and was simply pulverized for its trouble.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: Berkut

I realy should be sleeping, but I just can't resist digging away at stuff like this.

Found a decent site with some good links to official records, and summations from them. Here is what they say about USAAF 8th & 9th Air Forces losses:

The overall heavy bomber loss rate for the 8 & 9 USAAF was 1.7%. In 1943 1036 bombers were lost with an average loss rate of 3.8%. A tour of operations was set at 25 missions so that during 1943 the probability of completing a tour of operations was 38%. In October 1943 186 heavy bombers were lost on 2831 sorties, a loss rate of 6.6%. A tour of operations with the 8 & 9 AAF was at first 25 sorties but in the last year of the war this was increased to 40 sorties,

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/r_m_g.varl ... nsive.html

Like I pointed out in my previous post, a loss rate of 10% was simply not possible. The peak one month loss rate was 6.6%, and that was the month that the 8th hit the Schweinfurt plant and was simply pulverized for its trouble.

Come on guys, you are comparing apples to oranges, the AAA and figher defence of the Third Reich was vastly superior to anything the Japanese could put together in both technology and quality. It does little good to use the European theatre as an analogy for the Pacific.

[ChezDaJez]

Come on guys, you are comparing apples to oranges, the AAA and figher defence of the Third Reich was vastly superior to anything the Japanese could put together in both technology and quality. It does little good to use the European theatre as an analogy for the Pacific.

True, but you can use it to set the upper limit of Pacific possibilities.

Chez

[Honda]

...or maybe we should just get some guys to exchange their phone numbers. It wouldn't make the read interesting, but we may reach a sensible conclusion about WitP.

[Halsey]

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

I also do not see a huge problem with 4-E bomber losses. It seems for every Zero 2-3 Zeros I lose, only 1 B-17 falls. Most of the time, they just sail on through. I routinely have my bases shut down after only 1-2 days of attacks. While depressing, this is a fairly accurate depiction of events from the war.

I agree with you on this point. The B-17 was an extremely durable bomber and very difficult to shoot down but it just wasn't as effective in the Pacific as it was in Europe becuase it was designed for strategic bombing, not the tactical type found in the Pacific. It was effective in Europe primarily because the US was able to mass it against strategic targets. They simply bombed the crap out of everything within a couple of miles of the target. Precise it was not. The Pacific simply did not have a need for hundreds of bombers bombing a single airfield. And from everything I've read, the US was lucky to be able to put more than 30 of them on any one raid. Even then, they were often sent out in long strings of aircraft as they were capable of defending themselves against Japanese fighters for the most part.

I do think they are much too effective in WitP against ships at sea. They would have a better chance of hitting ships docked or at anchor but the ship's dispersion should ensure that only a relatively small number of bombs actually hit. IRL, B-17s never hit any ship that was underway from any altitude above 3000 feet. The were used in a limited fashion to skipbomb but the B-25 and fighterbombers were much more effective in that role due to their maneuverability. They could be very effective against land targets but generally required a large number of them to be so. The B-24 had the same basic limitations except that had a better range and load.

Defensively, I think it is modeled pretty well. It should be able to withstand most fighter attacks. They were often damaged but seldom brought down. My PBEM game (I'm Japanese) reflects this fairly well. I can engage 80 B-17s with 50 fighters and end up downing 1 or 2 B-17s and damage 15-20 others while losing 10-15 fighters. I think that is fairly realistic (much to my chagrin)[:@]

IMO, the problem with B-17s or B-24s isn't their effectiveness against fighters or land bombing so much as it is the abnormally high replacement rate. This rate should reflect what was actually available as replacements to Pacific theater forces, not the USAAF as a whole. A rate of 20-30 per month is probably realistic for the B-17 and 30-40 a month for the B-24.

Chez

4E bombers in "this game" are more potent against naval units because they take up the slack for the submarine routine. If submarines were more effevtive, then I would agree to your asessment. This is a balancing issue, not an historical one.[;)]

[Gen.Hoepner]

Probably the only way to get out of this question is to find an allied opponent who agrees to use 4Es in an historical role...or at least in a way that doesn't unbalance the game and let the japs have at least a chance of fighting if not winning

[Arkady]

Well, I'm japanese fanboy but I think that power of B-17 is almost ok, more problem is quantity of B-17s available in the Pacific, last patches introduced reduction in replacement rate of 4E bomber but it should be reduced more...

and for combat results...there are some of my combat reports from one of current PBEM games

Code: Select all

 1942-10-01
 Day Air attack on Maloelap , at 82,81
 
 Japanese aircraft
 A6M2 Zero x 25
 Ki-43-Ib Oscar x 14
 
 Allied aircraft
 F-5A Lightning x 5
 B-17E Fortress x 60
 
 Japanese aircraft losses
 A6M2 Zero: 6 destroyed, 14 damaged
 Ki-43-Ib Oscar: 4 damaged
 E13A1 Jake: 1 destroyed
 
 Allied aircraft losses
 B-17E Fortress: 3 destroyed, 39 damaged
 
 Airbase hits 2
 Airbase supply hits 4
 Runway hits 18
 
 Aircraft Attacking:
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 28 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 10000 feet
 12 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 10000 feet
 4 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 4 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 10000 feet
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 10000 feet
 

Code: Select all

1942-10-03
 Day Air attack on Maloelap , at 82,81
 
 Japanese aircraft
 A6M2 Zero x 31
 Ki-43-Ib Oscar x 15
 
 Allied aircraft
 Hudson I x 13
 F-5A Lightning x 6
 B-17E Fortress x 83
 
 Japanese aircraft losses
 A6M2 Zero: 9 destroyed, 8 damaged
 Ki-43-Ib Oscar: 7 destroyed, 2 damaged
 G3M Nell: 1 destroyed
 
 Allied aircraft losses
 Hudson I: 4 destroyed, 5 damaged
 B-17E Fortress: 6 destroyed, 34 damaged
 
 Japanese ground losses:
 11 casualties reported
 
 Airbase hits 20
 Airbase supply hits 12
 Runway hits 48
 
 Aircraft Attacking:
 1 x Hudson I bombing at 7000 feet
 9 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 10000 feet
 25 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 4 x Hudson I bombing at 7000 feet
 5 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 2 x Hudson I bombing at 7000 feet
 6 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 10000 feet
 2 x Hudson I bombing at 7000 feet
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 10000 feet
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 10000 feet

Code: Select all

1943-03-12
 Day Air attack on Amboina , at 39,73
 
 Japanese aircraft
 A6M2 Zero x 22
 A6M3 Zero x 18
 A6M3a Zero x 9
 Ki-44-IIb Tojo x 12
 Ki-61 KAIc Tony x 17
 
 Allied aircraft
 B-17E Fortress x 55
 PB4Y Liberator x 1
 
 Japanese aircraft losses
 A6M2 Zero: 3 destroyed, 2 damaged
 A6M3 Zero: 1 destroyed
 A6M3a Zero: 4 damaged
 Ki-44-IIb Tojo: 1 damaged
 Ki-61 KAIc Tony: 2 damaged
 
 Allied aircraft losses
 B-17E Fortress: 7 destroyed, 30 damaged
 PB4Y Liberator: 1 damaged
 
 Japanese ground losses:
 42 casualties reported
 Guns lost 2
 
 Port fuel hits 1
 
 Aircraft Attacking:
 12 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 3 x B-17E Fortress bombing at 15000 feet
 

scenario 15, losses from combat report up to date 15.3.1943 (actual losses in game are slightly different...op losses, etc)

B-17 (C+E):462 destroyed, 2324 damaged from 20705 offensive sorties
B-25 (C+J):277 destroyed, 734 damaged from 11405 offensive sorties

..
Zero (M2, M3 and M3a total): 3423 destroyed, 1108 damaged (only!!) from 26254 offensive sorties
B

[Gen.Hoepner]

Well...it depends on how the allied player plays...55 fortress over Ambonia in late 43 isn't that much!
I'm experiencing, since mid-42 Hordes of 300/400 and more 4Es on 2 different theatres ( Burma and SOPAC)each day

[worr]

ORIGINAL: AlaskanWarrior

Come on guys, you are comparing apples to oranges, the AAA and figher defence of the Third Reich was vastly superior to anything the Japanese could put together in both technology and quality. It does little good to use the European theatre as an analogy for the Pacific.

Exactly.

As for Astor, it was page 420.

Combing the 9th AF changes things since it entered the war when things were going much better for the allies. The web site quoted has sources, so that is helpful, I would also recommend the McFarland book he sites.

Worr, out

[Berkut]

Come on worr, adding the 9th doesn't change the math, and isn't going to shift on overall loss rate of under 2% of sorties flown to anything like 10%, and doesn't change the fact that the peak loss rate for just a single month doesn't approach your claim for the average mission.

What this has to do with WitP anymore, I have no idea, of course. But it makes for insteresting discussion.

I think the root of our disagreement comes from your error of confusing overall casualty rates with individual mission casualty rates.

[worr]

ORIGINAL: Berkut

Come on worr, adding the 9th doesn't change the math

Well, of course it changes things. But your point is does it change it that much?

I was probably posting in reply too quickly. Yea, I'm sure there is something deeper wrong with the math your internet site is using. I think your web site paper is working from another premise than Astor's Work. I didn't read it all, but looking his sources he isn't particularily interested in the American Bomber losses during the war, but rather RAF losses. Since Astor was working specifically with the 8th AAF I would probably lean in his direction. The McFarly book is even better however on facts...though not as interesting a read.

You can pick up either of these books at your library. Better reading than most internet threads! Or Amazon has some used books here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/044022 ... s&v=glance

The book from the Smithsonian institute is more comprehensive, however.

The fact the 8th AAF did soldier on with 10% losses is such a well known fact it probably has passed into folklore more than disputed data. Perhaps that invites some sloppiness in research. If you can refute this settled claim you've got yourself a major history paper or even a PHD dissertation!

Worr, out

[worr]

ORIGINAL: Berkut
I have read Fire in the Sky, btw. Excellent book, if a bit repetitive and scattered.

I'm just finishing it up. But I agree with that. There is overlap, however he goes deeper than most and approaching things from a very unique framework--as in georgaphy, contrast with other theaters, and tactics more than machines. I find this a fresh look.

Every read flyboys? He also frames the picture in a different way, but I found his book far too entrenched in some preset idealogies rather than in history itself.

Worr, out