Japanese Loss Records - Fact Or Myth??

[JoeB]

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

The early allied overclaiming is fairly consistent, with the exeption of the AVG together with US defensive gunners and Dauntless claims. Japanese overclaiming is generally high.

However Ford is quite flawed in his sugarcoated article.

Instead of ending his argument based on a/c lost in air to air combat, combat losses on the ground and non-combat operational losses, he compares AVG pilot lost in combat with (all) Japanese air crew combat losses.

Tabulating results from Shores, Ford, Lundstrom, Bartz and other books I think AVG claims were pretty much in line overall with other Allied fighters units in that theater/period, maybe less exaggerated. I don't know that non-US defensive gunners were more accurate than US ones, most defensive gunners were US in that theater, but all defensive gunners in WWII pretty much were very inaccurate in claims.

One driver of overclaims, among many, is actual success I think: successful air units tends to overclaim less. As 1942 went on the AVG established a definite advantage over the JAAF fighters and the overclaim ratio declined. One incident (also invovling the RAF) in Dec 1941 repeated a lot in implying the AVG overclaimed abnormally. AVG's overall real fighter v. fighter exchange ratio was by far the highest of any Allied unit in sustained combat against the Japanese in 1942, per those modern two sided books ~2.5-3:1 (and not much different between Ki-27's and -43's adding up Ford's incidents). I'm speaking of air combat only, fighter-fighter. USN/USMC F4F's were next at right around 1:1 v. landplane A6M's (most of their opposition, not counting a few more successful engagements w/ A5M's and float fighters, they faced more formidable opposition than AVG overall), almost all others were on the short side sometimes by a huge amount, with actual Japanese air combat losses often so low ratio's become a questionable measure. Eg. over Ceylon April 1942, Hurricane v. A6M 19:1, if really 19:2 that's a big ratio difference, but not much practical relative effectiveness difference. No AF being beaten 19:1 is going to claim at all accurately. Likewise from Shores a number of JNAF claims especially were not that wild in the period they really had their way, 2:1 or less overclaim. When facing tougher going against F4F's later in '42 their overclaims did balloon.

I agree Ford's article (mentions same in book) point about comparing crew losses isn't convincing, but it's one measure; there isn't any single totally correct measure. And he does give all the incidents (he could find info for, most) in his book, so I wouldn't really fault him too much on that. In fact when B-17's fought single fighters (incl in '42 PTO) raw exchange ratio was not a very relevant number either, 1:1 certainly a win for the Japanese fighters at that particular point. Also when the Japanese started taking significant losses, eg. Guadalcanal campaign, their lower survival rate among aircrews was actually a quite significant factor for later events. I agree basically though, old style one sided books of many AF's will compare their pilot losses to the enemy's claimed plane losses, quite bogus, and the Ford argument in the article had a bit of that flavor.

Joe