Thread: PTO Naval Battles

If you look at the very early air combat, probably up to Midway, I think you'd find losses not as lopsided. The Zero came as a real shock to the Americans, as did the skill of those flying it. Ultimately, it was learned that the Zero's outstanding turning performance came at a price... almost no armor, and a fragility that cost the lives of many future Japanese pilots. All of the Japanese aircraft tended to skimp on armor for fuel and pilot.

Once the American pilots learned that "you DO NOT turn with the Zero", they devised combat tactics to deal with it... slashing hit and run attacks.

Overall, the U.S. victories can be attributed to the following, as the war progressed:

1) Robust airframes that could take enormous punishment compared to their opponents. Tactics that took advantage of their own airframe and pilot strengths.

2) Superior radar, and early warning. Their situational awareness going into a fight was usually better than the Japanese

3) The later generation of Navy fighters (F6F, F4U) COULD outperform the Zero in nearly all regimes, AND they still carried the heavy armor and if anything were more robust than the U.S. fighters of 1941 and 1942.

4) Irreplaceable experienced Japanese pilot losses. The U.S. was outstripping the Japanese in quantity and quality of both airframes and pilots.

There is nothing that can replace pilot experience short of a technological leap like a jet. In roughly similar airframes, the experienced pilots are going to absolutely butcher the new guys. The U.S. forces had the mass so raw noobs could be trickled in and gain valuable combat experience on the wings of veterans. In contrast, entire Japanese units were wiped out, then replaced with raw pilots. Elan and Samurai spirit don't help much in a fighter cockpit.

Originally Posted by Triple C

Why did the Japanese lose so many aircrafts?

I have been reading Wikipedia's account of all the major naval battles in PTO, and it struck me as bizarre that the vaunted Japanese air groups were taking disproportionate losses in aircraft and men from Coral Sea to Guadalcanal, even in the battles that they nominally won, such as Santa Cruz; on a similar vein, the Japanese Imperial Navy inflicted severe tonnage losses on the Americans during Guadalcanal, but their loss of aircrafts and manpower was astounding.

I know the Japanese Navy had negligible rescue and recovery capabilities and their downed pilots and sailors were pretty much on their own. But that does not explain the lop-sided loss of aircrafts even in victorious engagements. What's up with that?

Fire In The Sky: The Air War In the South Pacific, Eric M, Buergaurd

Japanese side

A. Japanese designers and planners drew the wrong lessons from China. They thought the key to victory was highly skilled pilots in planes with super maneuverability fighting and winning individual dogfights at low level. This means they sacrificed armament, armor, speed and the ability to fight effectively above 20,000'

a1. Japanese fighters uses a combination of light machine gun and light cannon vs the American preference for massed heavy machine guns. The cannon were slow firing and scored few hits, and the light machine guns had little energy so that the hits they scored did little damage.

a2. A single tracer round could cause a Japanese fighter to explode in a fire ball, and even if the rounds missed the fuel tanks (hard to do since they were so large) the flimsy construction gave them little ability to take damage.

a3. Japanese fighters managed to be on par with speeds at the beginning of the war and kept up ok with the Hellcat. But vs the Corsair, Lightning, Mustang or Thunderbolt they were basically sitting still. The faster plane controls the engagement. Japanese planes also were slow divers. If the Japanese got into a fight, they could not get out of it.

a.3 the Zeros huge wings that let it turn on a dime at low levels became giant handicaps that turn the planes into sluggards. Above 20,000' the zero was a sittign duck. A bit of WWII trivia is that in the East, the B-17 was even more of a fortress and Japanese pilots absolutely hated tryign to intercept it. It was much more heavily armed and nearly as fast. The RB-17 became one of the vital recon platforms of the war in the pacific able to overfly Japanese bases with near impunity.

B. They also never developed teamwork. During WWII large flights of Japanese fighters were called swarms or gaggles because there was no formation. Pilots fought individual battles alone with no wingman or central direction.

C. Japanese pilot was the best, but also the most demanding. They only let the very best in and a lot of good pilots failed out leaving them with no reserve of pilots and the length of training meant they could not churn them out fast enough to replace combat losses. From Pearl to 43 the IJNAF suffered nearly 100% turnover but only graduated 1-2 classes of pilots. This is important because US turnover could be multiple times that, but constant fresh classes meant we stayed at full strength and were not chronically understaffed.

D. After 43 fuel shortages meant pilot training got slashed.

E. Less advanced aircraft, Japanese aviation technology was markedly inferior to the US. What they did with the Zero was genius, but it didn't break any technological barriers. US technology marched forward relentlessly. Going with this was a lack of technologically skilled technicians. Japan could build a fighter, send it to the front, have a single part break and the plane would never see combat because no one knew how to fix it. Thus planes that were highly capable on paper like the Tony were ignored for less capable but repairable designs.

US side

A. US fighters tended to be faster, and more agile above 20,000'

B. US pilots controlled most of the fights- most US fighters could dive/run away and escape from danger, a Japanese plan on the wrong end could twist and turn, but not escape the engagement. The AVG used a hit and run tactic in China that relied on their superior speed. They would slash in, kill and run. For pilots in slow planes who needed a turnign fight to be able to fight it was their doom.

C. US plane gave the US pilot a safety margin- armor, self sealing fuel tanks etc all added up a little bit of wiggle room to recover from a mistake.

D. The US used team work. You really see Japanese losses vs the USN/USMC sky rocket once the thatch weave is adopted.

E. The US settle on a good enough for Government Issue approach to pilots. This means they could be mass produced and then get finishing touches from mentors in their combat units.

F. Proximity fused AAA shells made US AAA the most effective of the war at scoring hits. Add large number of hits with flimsy enemy aircraft and you get slaughter.

G. The car, Americans grew up with cars, tinkering with them, racing them, modifying them etc. America mechanics were comfortable with engines and mechanical systems and had a reservoir of personal experience to draw on out side of the training manuals.

H. Massive pilot recovery operations

I. numbers- WWII was a battle of quantity more than anything, and we had the most stuff. Along with this was the dilution of Japanese combat power by trying to match us everywhere we were and defend where we might end up.

Gents, all of those are excellent points. But the Japanese were losing more heavily than the Americans even before the Hellcats and the Corsairs. In Coral Sea, Midway, East Solomon and Santa Cruz, when they nominally clearly superior in many areas and held their own in other respects.

In Coral Sea, a USN defeat, the Japanse badly mauled the USN fleet, sunk many ships, and lost only one light carrier and moderate to heavy damage on its own ships. But in that victory IJN lost 90 a/c to 60 USN a/c, and almost 970 KIA to 660 USN KIA.

In Santa Cruz, the IJN had more aircrafts, more ships, and sunk more tonnage than USN. But they lost 90 aircrafts to 80 American and suffered 400-500 KIA, almost 2 times more than the USN.

Eastern Solomon was even worse. 177 IJN a/c did battle with 176 American a/c, zeros versus Wildcats, but IJN not only lost the tonnage battle outright, but they also lost 75 airplanes to 25 USN, exactly three times the American losses. USN also killed 290+ Japanese sailors and aircrew, while only losing 90 of their own.

And that's not counting Midway--IJN had 248 carrier based a/c versus 233 USN a/c, and the IJN lost every single one of their 248 and inflicting just 153 losses? Something is very wrong. Thatch Weave had just been invented and hadn't been taught to anyone except Thatch's squadron.

If it's not Hellcats, not Corsairs, not even Thatch Weave, what the hell was going on with the IJN?

Look at what Zraver wrote. P-40s and F4Fs were flying tanks. There is a reason Martin Caidin's book on the air war in the SWPOA in the first six months of the war is called the Ragged, Rugged Warriors....and why Grumman Aircraft Corporation's nickname was the Bethpage Ironworks.

In each of the cases you mentioned the IJN pilots lost more because they:

1. Ran into better TEAMS equipped with tougher aircraft

2. Attacked US fleets equipped with better AAA systems. While the radar may have been early models it was still better than what the Japanese had. And the 5"/38, 1.1 inch and/or 40mm, 20 mm and or .50 cal heavy machine guns were better AAA weapons than the Japanese. They had a various assortment of 3.7 in to 5 in and 25mm...that's it.

3. Much is often made of the experience of Japanese pilots versus US pilots early in the war. But American pilots were just as good as their Japanese counterparts as pilots....but because of the Depression they were unable to practice as much. But also because of the Depression the absolute best of the best became USN/USSAC/USMC pilots. Once they gained experience (which came about with the start of mobilization in 1940) they got really good.

The story of the Cactus Air Force really shows that if the US had early warning and could scramble and they could get altitude over the Japanese (thank you Coastwatchers) and hit them with one and done attacks.

The AN/M2 .50 cal could fire 750-850 RPM. That means on a P-40 you had at least 4500 RPM hitting you...same with the F4F-4 which pretty much was the standard for the Wildcat at the start of WW II.
THAT is a lot of firepower.

US aircraft could get hit and make it home....Japanese aircraft got hit and the pilot got to meet his ancestors.

I guess. It would be interesting to see in what kind of actions the Japanese suffered the heaviest aircraft losses. The USN certainly lost a tremendous number of aircrafts in Midway trying to to attack the Japanese fleet, and they say that the IJN's handling of torpedo planes and bombers were more adroit than the USN for the early period of the war. If so, then the quality of American fighter air crews and AA systems must have been very high indeed.

B. They also never developed teamwork. During WWII large flights of Japanese fighters were called swarms or gaggles because there was no formation. Pilots fought individual battles alone with no wingman or central direction.

I believe this to be critical. As an air battle expands in size, there is a very distinct tendency for it to dissolve into a melee... find a bad guy, shoot at him. This mucking about would rarely achieve results as good as even a modest coordination. If flight leads can recognize inbound threats, ignore "no factor" bandits, and focus a TEAM on a vulnerable group of bandits, then move on to the next, the results are going to be very good indeed.

An odd analogy would be two teams of 12 in a ten acre wood, armed only with bayonets. In WW2 aerial gunnery, only close bandits are a threat. The Japanese model would be to charge the woods in a gaggle and split into ones and twos, looking for a fight. Unfortunately, each of these would encounter a group of 4 to 6 coordinated americans, and isolated but sequential battles would ensue. While the Japanese were blundering about, the Americans would isolate, kill with coordination and numbers, and move on to the next.

But I think of all the points mentioned, it truly is the ruggedness of the Grummans, the general fragility of the Japanese aircraft, and the U.S. ability to accept or decline combat, that created the lopsided victories.

To bring responses to the same question to this forum: On the Second World War forum, contributors are having a heated argument over whether USN CAP doctrine and procedures were sufficiently superior in 41-42 to inflict heavier aircraft losses on the Japanese; do we here think that the USN intercept techniques were also superior to Japan's?