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Originally Posted by Smudger Smith
Gents
However the subject was raised about our own FAA and it’s supporting role in the Pacific and Indian Ocean campaign. I was somewhat taken aback when the same mild mannered Hellcat pilot stated that our FAA was badly lead, used inferior tactics against the Japs and our pilot’s training left a lot to be desired. The most critical remarks we left for the Seafire.
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I think you mainly have to take that for a piece of oral history from a real participant, for what it's worth. Do you doubt an FAA vet would disagree?
I assume from a fighter pilot these were mainly fighter capability comments.
The FAA didn't operate against the Japanese in prolonged large scale combat before the British Pacific Fleet ops in 1945, only a bit more action before that in real combat than USN non-jeep carriers saw in the Atlantic. Anyway I'm guessing this period is the likely point of reference of this pilot's personal experience.
Most of the BPF carriers had Hellcat or Corsair fighter contingents. Usually it was Indefatigable w/ Seafires and 3-4 others F6F/F4U. So Seafire not a central issue. It was an inferior offensive carrier fighter to the US types because of short legs, but a potentially useful one for defence.
The lower vulnerability of the BPF carriers themselves to kamikaze hits is often remarked on, but I don't know an objective assessment saying the BPF fighter/radar teams were better or worse than USN ones on defence. On offense, the BPF carriers didn't meet much Japanese fighter opposition, especially in the last stage of ops when they operated with the USN off Japan proper in the last weeks of the war. Brown's "Carrier Operations of WWII" mentions only 2 real fighter scraps by the BPF, over Palembang in Jan '45 and one over Japan right at the end of the war. FAA claimed victory in both, but even with benefit of real Japanese losses in each (I don't know them) it seems way too small a sample to analyze v. hundreds of air battles by USN fighters in 44-45.
Generally late WWII USN pilots had more hours upon entering combat than other air arms, often 450hours. I've seen personal accounts of pilots who had 700. I don't think it means FAA pilots were "poorly trained". I don't know the cross section of experience levels in the BPF air groups. I'm going to guess they were generally similar to new US carrier wings at that time, mostly new men, leavening of returning multitour men. But as far as returning men the USN had many more and a much higher % who had seen heavy fighter-fighter combat by 1945 than the FAA had, especially against the Japanese which the FAA had encountered only a handful of times before 1945. Plus other US air groups around when the BPF joined up with the US fleet had seen months of furious combat and were ready to rotate home; I don't doubt those seasoned groups were much more effective than BPF groups, or green US ones (except again the "green" US groups had the benefit of a much larger pool of men who'd seen extensive air combat against the same adversary).
Joe