Allied Opinion of IJN vs. IJA Fighter Pilots

[GuerraCivil]

I have read that the Japanese fighter most successfull in terms of downed enemy planes is Oscar (Ki-43) - and this could show something about the abilities of IJA fighter pilots! Of course there is a problem to figure out how many of the claims of Ki-43 pilots are legitimate (to be verified by Allied loss records). And the same problem goes also for the claims of Allied pilots vs. Ki-43.

When it comes to airwar, more interesting is my opinion the turning point in late 1942 or early 1943 than to analyze the rather onesided airwar of 1944-1945. At the late stage of war Allied had all the advantages: better planes, more tech and human resources, better average pilots etc. Only the very few remaining Japanese aces were still able to survive from combats and score occasionally.

Japanese as well as Germans were broken down by the war of attrition against superior enemy. One thing to add to Japanese misery was the prewar combat training program - in IJN case it was focused to produce small number of professional combat pilots but neglected the need to train decent reserve pilots for the long term war (the idea was that war would be a quick win so small number of elite pilots was enough). When this mistake was realised, it was already too late. When experienced pilot was lost, there were no decent replacement but only little trained novices available.

At the late point of Pacific War the average skill of IJA/IJN pilot was already so low that from the Japanese point of view it did not make much difference to send hastily trained novices to normal combat mission (in which they would be shot down in first air combat) or to kamikaze mission.