Saburo Sakai

[R Leonard]

Sorry . . . revised to include the USMC in above totals . . . Pacific Theaters of operations:
Lost to enemy A/C = 1,222
Lost to enemy AAA = 2,180
Lost Operationally = 1,535
Lost Other Flights (not combat related) = 3,619
Lost on ground or aboard ship = 1,419

[knusel]

Originally Posted by R Leonard

Sorry . . . revised to include the USMC in above totals . . . Pacific Theaters of operations:
Lost to enemy A/C = 1,222
Lost to enemy AAA = 2,180
Lost Operationally = 1,535
Lost Other Flights (not combat related) = 3,619
Lost on ground or aboard ship = 1,419

Hello Leonard,

that makes 2.666 US planes lost in aerial combat against the Japanese.

Another naive fallacy:

• The Americans scored ~14.000 kills against the Japanese.
• That makes a kill-loss-ratio of the Americans against the Japanese of ~5:1.
• Thus, if we ignore the shot-down Commonwealth planes we might expect that the scores of the American top aces were five times higher than the scores of the Japanese top aces.
• Thus, the Sakai score of 6 suggested by Luftwaffle8 indeed seems more realistic than a score of 64.

Michael

[Laurent Rizzotti]

You are comparing real US losses with US claims. US pilots did not overclaim as much as Japanese, but still did overclaim.

As for using the overall figures to guess the top aces score, it seems false to me. Thousand of US kills were claimed against Japanese rookie pilots, especially kamikazes in the last year of the war, while Japanese aces were always facing US pilots with a good amount of training. Probable result will be that most American pilots in a given unit may score kills or claims while on the Japanese side a few trained survivors will do most of the claims while the badly trained replacements will often be quickly lost without scoring.

[knusel]

Good evening Laurent,

yes, that's why I called it naive fallacy. I found that word in a vocabulary, the German term for that is "milk maid's bill".
I wanted to gain an impression about the magnitude level of Japanese scores.
By the way, did you know that the Japanese overclaimed by the factor 6 in the Nomonhan conflict ?

Have a nice evening,

Michael

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by knusel

Hello Leonard,

• That makes a kill-loss-ratio of the Americans against the Japanese of ~5:1.
• Thus, if we ignore the shot-down Commonwealth planes we might expect that the scores of the American top aces were five times higher than the scores of the Japanese top aces.

Michael

There is no reason to expect that. It is quite possible that in hypothetical "Airforce A", a few pilots will achieve very high scores while the rest achieve little or nothing. In "Airforce B" (which, incidentally, is much larger and far better trained and equipped), very many pilots achieve a victory or two but no individual achieves a huge number. "B" nevertheless achieves the highest overall total.