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mdiehl -> RE: Übercorsair and übercap (9/11/2007 8:17:46 PM)
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@various: (to find my reply to you, pick yer quote out of the list)
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But you're right... I am ignorant of your version of WWII history... you know, your version of history that says the Japanese should never have won a single battle anywhere, anytime or in anyway. To hear you tell it, Pearl Harbor should have been a resounding Amercan victory. And to think the rest of us have been reading all those lies by Lundstrom, Shores, Bergstrom, Parshall et al.
I've never made any of those claims or anything remotely like 'em. If you could provide a quote, your credibility may be restored.
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(Speaking of Shores, where is that breakdown of aerial losses you promised us from Shores books? I can only assume that your failure to post it must have been because it didn't support your version of history. Could that be it? Or were you just lying about doing the work?
Asked and answered. There are numbers, then there are accurate numbers. Shores et al. are proving difficult to verify.
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Ah.. So that's what's going on. Oh, I see the plan now... discredit the sources first... good idea!
I see no need to "discredit the sources." Vis a vis Guadalcanal and the early war campaigns my posts on Richard Frank's and John Lundstrom's works proves the point that the A6M+pilot vs the F4F+pilot combinations were pretty much equals. I've never made any other claim than that. The USN vs IJN naval battles have the F4Fs winning by a margin of about 1.5:1, but as these are small actions I am not sure one can even claim they are "statistically significant." The Guadalcanal actions put the zero ahead at a rate of about 1.2:1. The challenge, then, is to figure out how other intangibles such as force ratios, perceived mission (fixation on intercepting bombers to the detriment of defending self, and that sort of thing), range, secure non-combat area, &c, fit into the mix. It's not the sort of thing one does in a few months, not even if one limits oneself to the USN campaigns and Guadalcanal, unless one does this sort of thing for a living.
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Oh, can't have that can we? Got to throw out any fact that slews the result away from your preconceived notion, right? Just like you wanted to throw out the air combat over Darwin with the P-40s and Zeros.
Look, we all know that you are adept at attempting character assasination, even though you make a poor job of it. But the fact is I never said I wanted to throw out the air combat over Darwin. Find any place where I did. What I said was that there are intangibles. You and, as I recall, Nik, seem to think that Zeroes operating at long range to Guadalcanal was an important intangible that subtantially adversely affected A6M performance there. It is a reasonable claim to make, albeit one that I think is overstated based on the evidence. But if it is fair game to note such intangibles, where they adversely affect the Japanese, it is also fair game to track the ones that adversely affected the Allies.
As to Darwin, see: http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/darwin02.htm
By my reading that's 36A6Ms at full power setting attacking a CAP of 5 P-40s, with 5 more P-40s on the ground refueling, and five P-40s bounced while scrambling to take off. Not exactly any intelligent person's idea of a meeting engagement or even a meeting of aircraft on roughly even terms, even if we ignore the 7:1 initial force ratio advantage favoring the Japanese.
That's why intagibles matter.
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What do you call someone who fails to produce those statistics that he said he would?
A busy person, doing a careful job.
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(oh, darn... and I was going to take the high road!)
Why would you start now? It's against your nature.
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The vast majority of Japanese naval pilots lost after 1943 were very inexperienced, most having only 10-20 hours in type upon leaving flight school.
That is not correct. In any case, in the Marianas engagement most of the Japanese pilots from the IJN CVs were extensively trained. Not as extensively experienced as their forerunners of the Kido Butai of 1941-1942, but substantially trained nonetheless. How they compare in training vs the slight experienced and highly trained American pilots who comprised TF58/38's regular air crews is not easy to quantify.
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These were the pilots that were slaughtered in places like the Marianas and the PI and that was due more to their lack of training than any major deficiency in their aircraft.
The Zero was an utterly deficient aircraft by 1944. Dangerous yes, but deficient as well. A Sopwith Camel would be a dangerous aircraft too, under the right circumstances, but you would not want to fly in one against a well trained CV pilot of any era. The plain fact is that a Zero in 1943-1945 had a couple of cannon that were, when brought to bear at close range, quite lethal if they could stay on target long enough. But during the same interval, the likelihood of a Zero being in a good position to attack a USN fighter was low, under "normal combat circumstances." I don't doubt that a Zero could shoot down an A-10 warthog if the Zero was in a high energy dive and the A-10 just taking off. The "danger" thus imposed by Zeros in the late war was even more contingent on the need for favorable position than it was in the early war.
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Pilots like Sakai, Iwamoto, Okumura, Okabe and Kanno all held their own against the best the US had to throw at them in 1944 and 1945 and they were flying these antiquated Zeros.
Many of 'em lived. I'm otherwise not sure what you mean by "hold their own." Their units were slaughtered around them, and their late war successes seem to have been few.
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Of course, you probably won't do that because it doesn't fit your preconceived notions that thinks inexperienced US pilots blasted every experienced Japanese pilot in every encounter.
Define "inexperienced." So far I've pretty much limited my discussions in the WitP and GGPW fora to 1942. The only claim I have made (contra the boldfaced part of your straw man assertion, above) is that the USN F4F pilots achieved a favorable kill ratio against A6Ms in the 1942 campaigns, and the USMC a slightly inferior kill ratio. I've stated that if it is true that Japanese pilots were substantially better combat pilots than American ones, and if the A6M was a substantially better plane than the F4F, then one would expect the kill ratios to substantially favor the Japanese. Yet they do not. It logically follows that one or both of the assumptions (that the Japanese pilots were better combat pilots, or the Japanese planes were better combat planes) is incorrect.
I suppose a third option is that guys like you think an unfavorable loss ratio against an opponent that you know can vastly outproduce you and outlast you in a long war is a metric predictive of a successful conclusion.
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And you would know about WitP ubercap in every iteration how? What is your experience with mid-late war ubercap? Just from reading the forum probably... certainly isn't from playing the game.
I know it's an early war problem by experience. I know it's a late war problem by reading the AARs. Deny it if you like. But the AARs and pretty much the constant discussion of the Uber Cap problem are there for all to see.
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The problem with WitP is that it doesn't matter how large the strike is against a US carrier TF once the Corsair arrives. 10 planes or 500 planes attacking.
What makes you think the Japanese could have coordinated anywhere at any time in WW2 a single airstrike of 500+ planes?
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They will all be shot down regardless of the experience level of the pilots involved and that my dear uninformed friend is the crux of the problem with the game.
Again, I don't view them all being shot down as a historical error. I might agree that fewer of the a.c. should be shot down by Corsairs and more of them shot down by flak, but I think the ballpark results vis a vis Japanese losses are correct. I think the Allied losses in the engagement that initiated this thread are generous to the Japanese, by comparison with historical outcomes.
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You claim that the "Kido Butai Death Star" in WitP has the same effect in 1942. I submit to you that you don't know what you are talking about. You have no basis for comparison, certainly no personal experience with which to compare. KBDS can be deadly to be sure to those players wishing to impale themselves upon its sword.
In other words, KBDS *does in fact* have the same effect in WW2, or at least it can. I am not sure what you mean by "players wishing to impale themselves on its sword." Coming from you, it seems like you are suggesting that the Allies should never challenged Kido Butai. As a matter of game mechanics and outcomes, I think you are correct, if that is what you are saying. But at no time during WW2 did the USN fear the KBDS as the Allied player MUST in WitP, and there is no reason to believe that six Japanese carriers massed in early 1942 could be as effective as they are in WitP. Save Pearl Harbor. A surprise attack on a suite of airbases with no warning, no combat air patrol, and a harbor full of parked ships. If that is your idea of a typical meeting engagement... well.. nuff said.
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But KB's CAP is not invincible at any point in the game, unlike the late-war US CAP which is impervious to all strikes of any size.
How many aircraft did the Japanese lose in the Battle of the Phillippine Sea? Four hundred something? How many US aicraft shot down during the same interval? The facts seem to indicate that late war US TF38/58 was rather impervious. If your complaint is that not enough picket ships and the occasional CVE and very rarely an Essex Class CV get sunk, you probably have a fair point. But I do not see that being particularly problematic, given the relative invulnerability of early war Japanese massed-CV TFs.
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BTW, did you ever return that copy of WitP you "borrowed" and delete the game from your harddrive?
Yes.
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I assume that this is a comprehensive compilation that you are willing to post online in this forum for all to see.
I've already covered, in detail, with page numbers and exact tallies, the 1942 USN and Guadalcanal actions in these fora (including GGPW). Twice now actually. The rest will be covered in the Steakhouse Council of War forums, where rules of decorum are enforced.
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I also assume that if you have such a comprhensive compilation that it includes date, time, place, pilot, aircraft flown and most importantly your references so that we may see you aren't using just Martin Caidin???
Indeed it will. That is one of the reasons why this is such a large endeavor.
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But to say that experienced Japanese pilots in A6Ms could not be successful against Hellcats and Corsairs is to ignore history as Sakai along with several other aces demonstrated on several occasions over Iwo Jima and the home islands in late 44 and 45.
I never said they could not be successful. I said that the balance greatly favored the Allies. I would be the first to concede that a combat pilot veteran of the previous six years of war could shoot down an American a.c., even in a Zero. But the number of late war victories, even for guys like Sakai, wasn't very great.
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The Hellcat and Corsair were outstanding aircraft and when piloted by experienced aircrews were something to be feared by the average Japanese fighter pilot. These aircraft however were not invincible.
No one said they were. But outcomes like the Battle of the Phillippine Sea aren't events that I have made up just to get into an argument with you. 400+ Japanese a.c. shot down vs, IIRC, 29 American a.c. shot down isn't "invincibility" -- but it is compelling just the same.
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Indeed the US lost 189 Corsairs to the IJNAF in air-air combat in 1944 (This does not include losses to AA or ops).
I'd like to see the detailed combat by combat breakdown on that.
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Japanese standards for pilot applicants were far more rigorous than were those in the US and the IJN pilot training program took over 2.5 years to complete whereas the prewar US pilot training program was less than 2 years.
That is true. What is missing here is any rational analysis that indicates that the Japanese rigoruous standards necessarily gave them better pilots. There is no compelling evidence to support that claim at least not in WW2 real life combat stats vs the USN.
Japanese standards of pilot "acceptability" seem to dwell properly in part on the characteristics of good pilots, and in substantial part also on some strange concept of the invincible superman samurai. The stature, bearing, and PT routines seem to me not to be the criteria necessary for produciong acceptable pilots, but over the top constraints that merely hampered the Japanese war effort without producing a substantially better product. They remind me of all the astronoaut "fitness tests" that were conducted in the early days of the Mercury program... criteria and tests imposed, according to Deke Slayton, not because anyone knew that these tests made for better astronauts, but rather because no one knew what would make for a good astronauts. That's rather how I view the "selection criteria" of early war Japanese pilot recruitment and training programs.
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It wasn't until mid-42 when the Japanese loosened applicant standards and cut their pilot training program down to 10-12 months that US pilot training equalled the Japanese.
I think you have conflated unrelated phenomena. Yes, it was only mid 1942 (or even later, perahaps, IIRC) that the Japanese loosened the application and retention standards. But USN pilots trained in 1939-1942 were as well trained as any Japanese naval pilot at any time in the history of the Japanese navy.
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And once the US advanced fighter schools opened in late 42, the Japanese pilot training program would never again be comparable to the US.
On that at least we agree. The advanced fighter schools had a general elevating effect on the combat performance of rookies that the Japanese never attained at any time.
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