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Originally Posted by Nicholas
Er . . . . OK. I agree that factual losses (and linking actual losses to claims) for both sides is fundamental. But the starting point has to be available and accurate records.
...The study is therefore still important to a full understanding of the situation, even without the accurate Japanese records.
A classic example of this is Schilling's AVG P-40 thrashing Brandt's RAF Buffalo, an incident much touted by the anti-Buffalo/British faction but about which 'Kitchie' Bargh's recent biography throws new and surprising light.
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But, who says accurate (from their viewpoint) Japanese accounts don't exist for many episodes of the Pac War? That's also a common conjecture it seems. Available, OK, it's sometimes surprising how in the "hi tech modern" world basic language and culture barriers are still an obstacle. OTOH most of the best two sided books on the Pac War I've read were written by non-Japanese speakers (AFAIK) who nonetheless perservered to get that info. Another aspect from what I've read is that Japanese info accessed in English is usually not literally original records but often from Japanese official histories written well into the post war period, such as the Senshi Sosho (~"war history collection" 102 volume series) including info from original records. Maybe Rdunn could comment on the details of the historiography, but I know of no contention from scholars on the topic that those histories are seriously inaccurate for the periods and campaigns for which they give detailed operational info, which is quite alot of the war though not all.
I'm not familiar with the particular aspect of AVG you are referring to, whether Schiller himself outflew a Buffalo in some practice fight, or said the AVG did much better than Commonwealth units in SEA in the same period against the JAAF. The latter is a fact. However, ironically the book best documenting that fact, "Flying Tigers" by Ford was (and its author was) very unpopular with Schilling, a prolific internet poster in his last years. Because though the AVG had by mid '42 very much the measure of the Japanese fighters they faced (~3:1 real ratio v strictly JAAF fighters all in Dec '41-June '42, far better than other Allied units of the time), they shot down a lot fewer than they claimed (though not especially worse on average than other Allied fighter units of the period in that regard). Schilling insisted the Japanese records Ford used were "inaccurate" and "incomplete" but that was fairly obviously his conjecture based on his subjective recollections, and personal feelings about having AVG claims questioned. That's seems to be the case when records are challenged in most cases, especially by veterans of the actual combats. We want to and should respect them, and understand why they feel that way, but there are still too many lines in too many books saying "the enemy records don't admit these losses" when there's no evidence the supposed losses happened except claims. Wrecks are sometimes mentioned as evidence, almost uniformly without actual documentation of specific cases that prove the enemy loss records incomplete. That's a common factor in four of the cases we've touched on: the main topic, Commonwealth in SEA, AVG in China, Soviets in Korea. I've seen general statements in published works on each of those that wreck finding proved the enemy understated losses, but nothing that shows such statements to really pan out in any of the cases.
Once again, far back up in this thread sources are cited (chapters or articles, not whole books) detailing the OOB, claims and losses of the Japanese in fair detail for the Darwin campaign; no real evidence they are seriously incomplete AFAIK.
Joe