Thach Weave Bonus vs Zero bonus???

[Nikademus]

By the way,

I finally heard back from the surviving AVG Organization (that is all the members still living), and the 18 P-40s lost in combat between 12/8/41 and 1/31/42 is incorrect if those P-40s lost are all attributed to the AVG:

Thats nice. Given that Shores work is the result of many years worth of research and consults both Allied and Japanese records, i'll go with it.

[Demosthenes]

Suit yourself, if you think these guys are hiding something! LOL!

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

By the way,

I finally heard back from the surviving AVG Organization (that is all the members still living), and the 18 P-40s lost in combat between 12/8/41 and 1/31/42 is incorrect if those P-40s lost are all attributed to the AVG:

Thats nice. Given that Shores work is the result of many years worth of research and consults both Allied and Japanese records, i'll go with it.

[treespider]

Planning, hard work, and persistence are harbingers of 'Good Luck'...translated to Midway...planning - Nimitz's overall strategy for the Battle ... Hard Work - American Dockworkers working round the clock to ensure Yorktown's presence on the battlefield....Persistance - American codebreakers cracking of the Japanese code...All of these elements combining to provide the 'Good Luck' of several disparate and uncoordinated strikes coming together within a matter of minutes to deliver a catastrophic and decisive blow to the japanese.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Demosthenes

Suit yourself, if you think these guys are hiding something! LOL!

I don't recall suggesting such. However i have noted that what constitutes an "accident" or "operational" loss in some accounts can be highly interpretational. For example, if a P-40 that has been shot to pieces by an enemy force lands in a paddy field, would it be classified as an op loss or a kill?

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: Demosthenes

Suit yourself, if you think these guys are hiding something! LOL!

I don't recall suggesting such. However i have noted that what constitutes an "accident" or "operational" loss in some accounts can be highly interpretational. For example, if a P-40 that has been shot to pieces by an enemy force lands in a paddy field, would it be classified as an op loss or a kill?

Or another example would be all of the footage showing b-17s crashing upon returning to base after having been shot to pieces.

[Demosthenes]

It most certainly does put a question mark Shores work.
The numbers don't add up no matter how you slice it 9+6=15 not 18. And they made no bones about it:

There also were 8 accidents or crash landings (due to weather and/or fuel exhaustion) with some minor injuries. On 1/8, Ken Merritt was killed when a
P-40 had a landing accident and crashed into the car where Merritt was
sleeping. The pilot was not injured.

So believe what you want, but I don't see where Shores (or Ford for that matter) would have gotten different records on their losses (not claims of kills)


Demo

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: Demosthenes

Suit yourself, if you think these guys are hiding something! LOL!

I don't recall suggesting such. However i have noted that what constitutes an "accident" or "operational" loss in some accounts can be highly interpretational. For example, if a P-40 that has been shot to pieces by an enemy force lands in a paddy field, would it be classified as an op loss or a kill?

[Nikademus]

It most certainly does put a question mark Shores work.

Welcome to the world of sources that don't always match up. It has been implied several times that Ford's numbers don't match up either. (assuming your "source" isn't using Ford directly) It doesn't mean that Shores is suddenly wrong.

So believe what you want, but I don't see where Shores (or Ford for that matter) would have gotten different records on their losses (not claims of kills)

I thank you again for allowing me to have an opinion. Your generosity and deductive logic are again noted.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: treespider

Or another example would be all of the footage showing b-17s crashing upon returning to base after having been shot to pieces.

You should pick up Salacker's book sometime (used i recommend) "Fortress against the Sun" The B-17's were shooting down so many Zeros i eventually stopped recording them given they were exceeding the total number of Zeros deployed to the region by a factor of 5.

[mogami]

Hi, No mention of Paul Greene who was shot down over Rangoon on Dec 23rd but returned to duty. There are 2 other AVG pilots listed by name as being shot down over Rangoon on Dec 23rd but returning to duty.
And AVG members still clain Japanese divebombers as Japanese fighters.

People can be totaly honest and still be incorrect.
Pilot "A" has a experiance and relates it later to pilot "B" who recounts it word for word at a later date. Only problem is Pilot "A" was not correct in his report (which he believed 100 percent correct)

One example is the Sally over Rangoon on 23 Dec. Hit by AA it had a fire in engine and was trailing smoke. Pilot dived out over water and fire went out . Plane was attacked by at least 2 Buffalo and 3 P-40. All these aircraft claimed the kill for this Sally (aircraft was photographed several times) This was 5 confirmed Allied kills (plane went down over water)
Only problem...The Sally returned to base. (Japanese pilot reported all the attacks)

But to this day there are pilots present and who had event related to them who think 5 Sallies were shot down. (and the various Allied airgroups were credited with these "confirmed" kills)

[Demosthenes]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, No mention of Paul Greene who was shot down over Rangoon on Dec 23rd but returned to duty. There are 2 other AVG pilots listed by name as being shot down over Rangoon on Dec 23rd but returning to duty.
And AVG members still clain Japanese divebombers as Japanese fighters.

Interesting, what is the source of this info - and I will pass that along to get an answer

Demo

[Nikademus]

yeah....funny that. [;)]

[mogami]

Hi, The web site you used to start this debate. Dan Ford.

[Demosthenes]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, The web site you used to start this debate. Dan Ford.

Passed along, awaiting an answer

[mogami]

Hi, even after we post the names and dates for every Japanese fighter pilot lost in Burma in period AVG existed people will still claim AVG shot down over 100 Japanese fighters in Burma.
did you know at least 1 Japanese daitai had over 100 confiremd kills over Java for the loss of 2 aircraft?
did you know the A6M2 in China (prior to AVG) had shotdown 100 Chinese fighters for the loss of 2 A6M2 to AA?
Records that compare quite favorably with AVG. But this does not dimish the record of AVG only that they were not alone.

[mdiehl]

Read a little closer next time when you respond to what I post. I made no such claim, I merely asked you to explain why you say "the US could have hardly had worse timing"

You implied it and you intended to. Your only knowledge of the battle seems predisposed to the "US got lucky side of the equation."

You could only make this statement and it hold any water if you are referring to the uncoordinated US strikes raining down on KB from various vectors simply because they were uncoordinated and nothing else.

I can make the statement and have it hold water for a variety of reasons. Let us count the ways.

1. The strikes from the US CVs arrive in an uncoordinated fashion.
2. Two groups of F4Fs and one of SBDs never find the target.
3. #1 and #2 above happen because the Japanese fleet makes a very fortunate sudden northward turn.
4. Tone #4 plane finds a US carrier because she flies a search pattern that was NOT the one the Japanese operational plan called for. Had she flown her planned route, the US CVs would not have been observed.
5. The surviving Japanese CV through a series of maneuvering decisions winds up separated from the rest of the Japanese CVs and is thus not targeted in the initial set of US SBD strikes.
6. Same CV then manages a strike launch that dogs the heels of one of Yorktown's homeward-bound strikes, allowing the Japanese strike to penetrate the US CAP and hit Yorktown.

Despite all of the above, the US basic operational plan succeeds in springing a trap on the exposed Japanese CVs. In this trap, the equivalent of 2 CVs worth of SBDs sink 4 CVs and a CA. So the US operational plan had sufficient force and then some redundancy that allows the plan to succeed despite the operational friction that attends to any battle plan once battle is joined.

The Japanese operational plan was the mother of all bad plans. To begin with, the first major error was in sending 4 CVs to simultask the jobs of 6 CVs (or 8 CVs if you want some redundancy in your plan). The Japanese knew this. Their own pre-operational wargames demonstrated that even one US CV in the area at the wrong moment could give them a real bad day. That is why their operational plan required pre-contact recon at Pearl Harbor and why their battle plan assumed that at most one US CV might show up to oppose them. That the Japanese chose to ignore the failed recon element of their plan just made the whole plan worse when it came to execution of the operation.

Knowing the Japanese invasion plan enabled the US to be in the right place at the right time to ambush....and I would call that good timing.

Yes but this is not what you were referring to when you mentioned US fortunate timing initially. You were referring to the events of the battle. If you want to invoke cracking the Japanese code as a matter of fortunate timing then you could as easily say it was unfortunate timing that the codes weren't more substantially decrypted 8 months earlier. You can "game the argument" all you want but if you do you license anyone else to do the same.

Ridiculous claim. KB was unable to spot, much less launch strike a/c due to the continuous US uncoordinated attacks from the TF's afloat and Midway.

That claim is not substantiated by the facts.

Add the fact that the Midway strike needed to be recovered and struck below before any strike a/c could be spotted much less launched.

That indeed was a matter of good timing but it was not lucky or accidental good timing. The US air strike was deliberately timed to arrive as the Japanese were recovering their depleted shot up air craft from the Midway strike. It was part of the US operational plan to catch the Japanese CVs in a vulnerable tactical position. I submit that when you make the timing work for you it is not "fortune" it is good operational planning.

Add to that the need to recover and the pressing need to launch and recover an ever increasing CAP due to numerous US uncoordinated attacks.

That's what happens when you send an inadequate force to accomplish the mission. A major land installation is difficult to suppress and poses a constant threat to any TF that wants to seize it. That was the way of the Pacific War especially in 1942.

The US uncoordinated attacks were not "lucky" but they were certainly fortuitous. They kept KB from launching it's own strike against the US TF's, plain and simple.

No they did not, plain and simple. For most of the battle these ships did not have an obvious naval target against which to launch. They only received the critical information about US CV position as the US SBDs were starting their pushovers. They might have launched earlier but then had they done so they might have found nothing (and lost a great many more veteran pilots in the process).

It was a case of "bad timing" that turned out a good result because the strikes were numerous, continuous, and came in from a variety of vectors KB couldn't cope with and it eventually caught up with them.

The results would have been substantially the same if all the US a.c. had arrived all at once.

So was it really "bad timing" to have multitudes of uncoordinated attacks?

Yes absolutely.

[Demosthenes]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, No mention of Paul Greene who was shot down over Rangoon on Dec 23rd but returned to duty. There are 2 other AVG pilots listed by name as being shot down over Rangoon on Dec 23rd but returning to duty.
And AVG members still clain Japanese divebombers as Japanese fighters.

Can you provide a link?
I went back to the website and could not find the names you referenced above

[mogami]

Hi, It is in the Japanese narrative
7th Hikodan to Rangoon Dec 23

"For their part, the Japanese pilots and gunners evidently were credited with shooting down 41 Allied fighters--more than were stationed in Burma on December 23. In fact, no Buffaloes went down that day, while two AVGs (Neale Martin and Hank Gilbert) were killed and another (Paul Greene) had his airplane shot from under him but parachuted to safety. "
Now this is strange because in the Buffalo story several are listed as being shot down (I take that back they were shot down on 25 Dec not 23 Dec)

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

Not at all. Your claim was that the US had "lucky" or "otherwise good" timing. My observation was that despite BAD timing all around the US plan succeeded because it was a robust plan. There was no fortuitous timing in favor of the US at Midway. None whatsoever. Had the timing been modestly fortuitous, good, or "lucky" for the US, the Japanese would have suffered a substantially greater loss and achieved less. At a minimum no US ships sunk and perhaps the Japanese would have lost more CAs.

I don't buy it. You could paraphrase your statement to: "Had the timing been modestly fortuitous, good, or "lucky" for the Japanese, the US would have suffered a substantially greater loss and achieved less." and have it be just as applicable. Both sides suffered from bad coordination, bad planning, bad timing, fortuitous timing, and both good and bad luck. To say that the US had it substantially worse than the Japanese is to ignore all of the operational and tactical errors commited by the Japanese.

To say that the US had no fortuitous timing is to simply put spin on the actual events. Bad coordination and timing is what led to the demise of VT-8, fortuitous timing was the arrival of the SBDs as VT-8 was being slaughtered by the CAP. You can call it luck, you can call it fortuitous timing but the attack wasn't planned to unfold in this manner. The US hardly had a "robust" plan because the plan itself failed and what resulted was a series of uncoordinated strikes that did manage to achieve the goal of the original plan.

The Battle of Midway was basically a clusterf--k which was decided during a 5 minute time period by a fortuitous event, the arrival of the SBDs while the CAP was engaged elsewhere. Period.

Chez

Once the SBDs reached their dive point, there was nothing the Zeros could do to catch them, so the KB CAP had to be up high and out a ways from the ships in the direction of the attack to do anything useful. For full coverage, the KB needed three groups of fighters some distance out at 120 degree intervals. I don't think their command and control in the air was that good.

[Drongo]

ORIGINAL: Demosthenes

By the way,

I finally heard back from the surviving AVG Organization (that is all the members still living), and the 18 P-40s lost in combat between 12/8/41 and 1/31/42 is incorrect if those P-40s lost are all attributed to the AVG:

XXXX,

I have checked the AVG diary for the dates between December 8, 1941, and
January 31, 1942. There were five pilots killed in combat during that
period: 12/24, Gilbert and Martin; 1/23 Christman; 1/26 Hoffman; and 1/30
Cole. The only one shot down in combat, where the pilot survived, was 1/8
Mott (who became a P.O.W.).

There also were 8 accidents or crash landings (due to weather and/or fuel
exhaustion) with some minor injuries. On 1/8, Ken Merritt was killed when a
P-40 had a landing accident and crashed into the car where Merritt was
sleeping. The pilot was not injured.

I hope this helps.

Jo Neal

and:

I forgot to add one: Mangleburg was killed 12/23 but it was not in combat.
Weather-related forced landing, and he crashed into an embankment.

Jo

So the total combat losses for the AVG in that period was 6 lost in combat, and 9 aircraft lost to non-combat causes, ie..not shot down.

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

The groups that attacked Rangoon on the 23rd had attacked Singpore earlier and were moved to attack it again after Rangoon. (Singapore appears to have gotten the better Japanese fighters while the Nates escorted the Rangoon attacks)

Correct. The Allies initially thought that they'd won a major victory over Rangoon after they accessed claims coupled with the fact that the JAAF did not return initially so assumed that they must have lost alot of planes (believe the estimate was 40-60) In fact only around half a dozen had been lost but the JAAF had to return to targets in Malaya. There were only several Ki-43's present, the rest were Ki-27's which made shouldered the load for the 1st Burma phase.

The groups that attacked Rangoon on the 23rd had attacked Singpore earlier and were moved to attack it again after Rangoon. (Singapore appears to have gotten the better Japanese fighters while the Nates escorted the Rangoon attacks)

A2A exchange rate: 18 P-40's + 8 Buffalos for 17 Ki-27 and 2 Ki-43 (12/8/41 and 1/31/42)

Demo,

Are you sure you understood what Nikademus was talking about? The figures he mentioned are the number of AVG P-40 aircraft lost through combat according to Shores. This is aircraft lost, regardless of whether the pilot was killed, wounded or captured or none of the above.

Your figures that have come from the AVG website appear to only be a list of pilots killed or MIA in combat + the number of non-combat related accidents where the pilot was either killed or suffered some form of injury (incl. minor ones). This is not an indication of total AVG P-40s lost through combat at all.

Cheers

[Demosthenes]

ORIGINAL: Drongo

Demo,

Are you sure you understood what Nikademus was talking about? The figures he mentioned are the number of AVG P-40 aircraft lost through combat according to Shores. This is aircraft lost, regardless of whether the pilot was killed, wounded or captured or none of the above.

Your figures that have come from the AVG website appear to only be a list of pilots killed or MIA in combat + the number of non-combat related accidents where the pilot was either killed or suffered some form of injury (incl. minor ones). This is not an indication of total AVG P-40s lost through combat at all.

Cheers

Oh yes, I am quite sure I understood Nikademus. What I asked the AVG folks was how many aircraft were lost in combat 08/DEC/41 - 31/JAN/42...but where the pilot lived - not died.
That's what I am trying to reconsile and get to the bottom of.

True non-combat losses due to weather, lack of fuel, or crashes on landing NOT due to combat damege should be seperated out as operational losses in my mind - not lumped into losses due to enemy action.