Air war against the Rising Sun

[Warlord]

To all of you aircraft buffs out there: Why did the allied air forces in general perform so poorly against the Jap at the beginning of the onslaught in the Orient?

I mean, there are exceptions that escape my question, namely the AVG, but the whole affair until maybe mid ´42 was just a bit more than a turkey shoot.

Was it the equipment? Tactics? Numbers? Racial misconceptions?

[Gotthard Heinrici]

Well There are better people than me who can asnwer this but in the case of the British, the Pacific area was underequipped. The fighters sent out there initially were not on a par with the Japanese planes.

[T. A. Gardner]

I think this is an unfair generalization. True, there were some set backs in the opening days of the war but, beyond those the Japanese airforces did not perform in any particularly efficent manner.
For example, between 7 Dec 1941 and 1 Nov 1942 the US Navy and US Marine Corps using F4F fighters scored virtually equal numbers of kills on A6M Zeros in fighter-on-fighter combat and did considerably better their Japanese counterparts at shooting down attack and bomber aircraft.
In carrier battles US Navy pilots typically inflicted 40 to 70% casualties on raids from Coral Sea on on non-fighter aircraft. This was because the Navy had a particularly efficent CAP control system in place right from the start of the war that got ever more efficent as the war progressed.
For the USAAC / USAAF the problem was one of being equipped with second line aircraft in many cases. Europe had priority so the Pacific generally got P-39 and P-40 fighters early in the war. These proved marginal in capacity due to limited range and an altitude limitation of about 15,000 feet above which these fighters could not really compete. But, even with these limitations the USAAF still managed to run about equal to the Japanese in kill to loss ratio.

In tactics, the USN was considerably ahead of the Japanese. The defensive formation using the Thach Weave first used during the Midway battle was just one evolution of many that made a huge difference. The USN's highly effective CAP control proved its worth right from the start. The Japanese stuck with a loose three plane formation for fighter combat that lacked the flexibility of the four plane flight of two sections the US used.
In training the Japanese had a slight edge compared to USAAF pilots in many cases and were no better and often less well trained than USN and USMC pilots. One particularly effective part of the later's training no other airforce at the time was doing during training was the USN spent considerable time and effort teaching their pilots deflection shooting. Offensive fighter tactics for the USN included using maneuvers and firing passes that made maximum best use of deflection shots.

Japanese attack and bomber aircraft relied heavily on their escorts for defense and flew in a loose V of Vs formation. The US made far more effort for bombers to provide their own defense and had formations that were tighter and more geared to self-defense than the Japanese. This made it dangerous for Japanese fighters to make their typical straight firing runs on such aircraft. More than one story of a few B-17s shooting down a number of attackers exists from the early Pacific War.

In the case of some of the Allied air units the problem often lay with poor early warning systems rather than the aircraft and pilots themselves. Being caught on the ground or trying to climb for an interception at the last minute is often the cause for the Japanese being able to score so well.
To a lesser degree, some of the aircraft themselves were very marginal: The F2B Buffalo was marginal to poor depending on model. The CW 21 was really not suitable for heavy combat. The P-35, obsolesent and pushed into the Philippines as a stop-gap. Others like the P-36 soldiered on in India until fairly late in the war and served reasonably well given its marginal performance and obsolesence. The P-40 and P-39 fought decently, if not spectacularly, until almost the end of the war. Both were more hendered by range than anything else.

For the Japanese, if anything, the IJAF was far worse off than the IJN. Their primary fighter the Oscar was not only flimsy and highly vulnerable to fire but unlike the Zero it lacked firepower (2 x 12.7mm machine guns at most) and didn't match the Zero in climb rate being less well powered. Japanese Army bombers likewise were generally poorly armed too. Most had 3 or 4 7.7 machineguns for armament. At least the IJN bombers had gained something resembling a real defensive armament having several 7.7 machineguns, one or two 12.7mm and like the G4M even a 20mm cannon or two for defense.
So, in the CBI and SWPA the IJA was more often the opponet than the IJN. There the Allied air forces often found a target rich enviroment that really couldn't compete with even the early war Allied aircraft.

[freebird]

The question I wonder is why the Japanese air forces were so "fragile"? It seems that there were so few trainee's that a few hundred fighter pilots lost and the Japanese couldn't train replacements. Or is that not correct? It seems like the Germans lost far more aircraft yet continued to operate effectivly

[spidge]

Originally Posted by Warlord

To all of you aircraft buffs out there: Why did the allied air forces in general perform so poorly against the Jap at the beginning of the onslaught in the Orient?

I mean, there are exceptions that escape my question, namely the AVG, but the whole affair until maybe mid ´42 was just a bit more than a turkey shoot.

Was it the equipment? Tactics? Numbers? Racial misconceptions?

You are speaking of the CBI theatre distinctly aren't you and not the Pacific.

Equipment initially, except for the AVG were relics. The British were not prepared for war in the east and as such were supplied aircraft (The Buffalo etc) most of which were still in crates when Singapore fell.

IMO they were thrashed initially by superior aircraft and planning however after the first 6 months, (your mid 1942) they became the turkeys as organisational skills, planning and increased volumes of aircraft were made available.

[General Mayhem]

Originally Posted by spidge

You are speaking of the CBI theatre distinctly aren't you and not the Pacific.

Equipment initially, except for the AVG were relics. The British were not prepared for war in the east and as such were supplied aircraft (The Buffalo etc) most of which were still in crates when Singapore fell.

IMO they were thrashed initially by superior aircraft and planning however after the first 6 months, (your mid 1942) they became the turkeys as organisational skills, planning and increased volumes of aircraft were made available.

As I have read too. Many people underate the zero which I some military historians rate as one of the best fighters of the war. Not equalled in overall performance until much later and unsurpassed (they say) for cost value prodcution ratio whatever that means. According too a documentary on "weapons of war..the fighters" so far as the Americans were concerned in every war they took part in the intial loss to kill ratio was very very poor and was only later corrected by better training, experience, tactics and better aircraft. It would be impossible to believe or expect the Americans to have outclassed the Japanese in the wars opening years when thy started with a very small very under equipped and under trained inexperienced forced against seasoned pilots used to success. As to the dirth of pilots the Japanese experienced during the later lart of the war. Well from what I have read this was not just a problem the Japanese experienced. Apparently the allies were facing this problem as well and not just in pilots, but also in armor. The length of training for pilots and tanks or specialized forces is far longer than for the other branches. Allied pilots in the later part of the war experienced far lower losses, despite green crews because both in Europe and the Pacific they were facing far less opposition. In the last year in both theatres, bombers could hit targets without any of enemy fighters. Just flack. (okay bad enough, but you know what I mean.) The Japanese (criminally mind you) sacrificed the remains of their fleet (Yamato included) in a suicidal attack without any air cover or rational hope of success. Similarly the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot) Allied planes in the last year of the war were operating with impunity.
or so I've read (chuckle)

"Always remeber that there is always something or someone out there more clever than you are." Merlin

[Warlord]

"You are speaking of the CBI theatre distinctly aren't you and not the Pacific".

Well, I was more referring to ABDA and China than anything else, because the main Jap push took place there with all its weight and fury. Wasn´t really thinking about the fight of the USN and USMC in the Pacific, because apart from Wake Island, I consider it as a side show in the effort against the Jap push until the Coral Sea, mostly consisting on "we are still alive" raids in which they had the advantage of terrain and iniciative, something which compensated for the inferiority of the fighters at hand, beginning with the stubby looking F4F. Maybe as a hint towards the answer I (we) am looking for here, it can be said that for Allied forces, there was a true world of difference between fighting on one side of the world and the other, the big and fairly quiet Pacific in between (remember the Pensacola convoy?).

Now, to put it plainly, I would like to ask that, if the reason was equipment, why was it; if it was numbers, why was it, and so on with all that we may come up with, until maybe, just maybe, we can agree on some sort of answer (or set of).

[syscom_3]

There was also a mindset that the Japanese were inferior and were not a match for the allies.

That attitude was put to to rest soon after they ran roughshod over everyone.

[Warlord]

When I mentioned "racial misconceptions" at the start of the thread, one of the things I was thinking about, among others, was a 1941 issue of Reader´s Digest, in which the author of a certain article mentioned (more or less) that "...because of the slanted shape of their eyes, the Japanese have defficient depth perception and virtually no night vision capability, something that makes them mediocre pilots..."

Were Saburo Sakai and company aware of that...?

[4th wilts]

one bloke on the world at war series saiid the japs needed glasses,because they could not see.awful,because he got captured at singapore.yours,lee.