Like you, I’d rate those four as about equal, in terms of fighting qualities. But the P51 and P47 could fight on equal terms over Germany, having flown from bases in England. The 190 and 109 could barely manage a cross-Channel mission.
Another factor is, while American pilots would be sent back to the US to train other pilots or sell war bonds, German pilots flew until they died.
Richard Bong was the top American ace with 40 kills, all in the Pacific theater. Ironically, he was a test pilot and was killed days before the victory over Japan. While 40 sounds impressive, it pales in contrast to the 352 kills of Germany’s top ace, Erich Hartmann. As you said, virtually all the kills were against the Soviet Air Force.
Regarding Japan’s industrial technology.
They had a reasonable level of competence in terms of technology. They could build pretty nice weapons.
The issue was mass production. They just couldn’t churn out tanks, planes, etc. anywhere near the numbers of the US, Germany or the Soviet Union.
Here’s a Wikipedia article giving wartime production numbers. Germany produced over 10 times as many tanks as Japan. The US was eventually building more carriers per year than Japan ever built. Etc.
Hence the Japanese strategy: quick knock out, get a peace treaty confirming gains. Hence the US and British strategy: keep the war going.
Did any US Marines fight in Europe ? Maybe they did in small numbers. Seems almost all were in the Pacific .
90% of the U.S. war effort was half mental.
In Ike’s memoirs, he mentioned he had the Fleet Marine Force Marines (the ones normally manning guns on ships) take a small island as part of the invasion of Sicily. They seem to just have wanted to get in the fight. I have no cite. I know Ike was not there for Husky.
All those factors, lots of action v Soviet Air Forces, more targets for outnumbered German fighter units, and fight to the end of the war if not killed first, were factors in very high claimed scores by German pilots. Which in many cases were reasonably accurate. Hartman’s claims have been disputed more than some others, but unfortunately political/nationalistically tinged air warfare research is more common in Russia than some other places (not the traditional form of national bias of simply believing one’s ‘own’ side’s claims and never bothering to look into the opposing records, but looking then fudging, which is worse IMO, it’s also been done wrt conflicting US and Soviet claims in Korea).
But just to note exceptions, some very high scoring German pilots fought mainly in the West. High scoring nightfighter crews for example mainly did, and their claims are as a rule quite accurate (less confusion in one on one nightfighter v bomber actions than swirling daylight fighter v fighter combats, even despite it being in the dark). But in the other direction German daylight fighter claims late in the war were quite inflated, more more so than earlier on. For example the German jet claims, some by previous high scoring prop pilots, can’t be taken at anything like face value.
There were also some pretty high claiming Japanese pilots by Western standards but their overclaim rate was generally pretty high (as in fairness was the Allied rate against them for a lot of the war).
All in all though in the bigger picture, the high scores of German fighter pilots compared to the distinct advantage in overall fighter v fighter exchange ratio for the Allies (which tended to mean the 8th and 15th AF’s, most other Allied fighter units by then had a shortage of opponents) from mid 1944 shows that individual pilot scores aren’t nearly all there is to it in having the more effective fighter force.
I’m sure you’ve seen this, but to reinforce your post about how the Germans were, despite their reputation and early successes, totally fighting out of their weight class, this Wiki summary of Allies vs. Axis war production is illuminating:
Even the tanks you mentioned as having a technological edge, well, quantity is a quality of its own:
Tanks, self-propelled artillery, vehicles
Allies: 4,358,649
Axis: 670,288
Artillery, mortars, guns
Allies: 6,792,696
Axis: 1,363,491
Oil:
Allies: 1 billion metric tonnes
Axis: 66 million metric tonnes.
I’d like to see a cite too, but clearly the US focused most of it’s resources in the early stages of the war on the European theater. We supplied staggering numbers of trucks, jeeps, tanks, planes, equipment, munitions, food, clothing, etc etc to the Russian’s and the British which probably accounts for a lot of the 90% claim just in that. Then there was the build up of the Atlantic fleet as well as building the logistics and transport ships to move all that stuff in greater and greater volumes to the European theater. By contrast, the US didn’t really supply many of our allies in the Pacific theater during the war, so mainly it was a matter of supplying ourselves there. We built a rather large fleet in the Pacific and built up a ground force and the logistics to support it, but until the end of the war we weren’t really supplying forces on the same scale as those operating in Europe. Often what the US did for Russia alone to keep them supplied is glossed over or handwaved away, but a very large percentage of Russian logistics vehicles and supplies were given to it by the US…and the Red Army by '43 on was massive and doing large scale offensive operations. We were also building up for our own contribution in North Africa, Sicily and the invasion in Western Europe, as well as supplying the British (and some of their commonwealth allies) as well. Most of the island hopping forced entry attacks the US did in Japan were on smaller scales than the huge armies moving in Europe.
Whether it was actually 90% or something smaller I couldn’t say. I’m not clear on exactly what we are measuring. Total military production? Money spent? Personnel in the field? Combat operations done?
Using the A-bomb absolutely was controversial. Even at the time, people wrote letters to Truman stating they were angry about it.
Even in World War II, the slaughter of enemy civilians was something that a lot of people were opposed to. In fact, even some top military leaders felt the use of the bomb was immoral; Admiral Leahy referred to it as “barbarous” and Eisenhower strongly opposed its use.
I guess Dwight had reasoning why firebombing Dresden, Tokyo, et al was much better than a-bombing Hiroshima, but after all this time, I’m not too sure what it could be.
True, the Germans took a while to develop good drop tanks.
Firebombing of Dresden, Firebombing of Tokyo. The A Bomb was no worse and not regarded as any worse than those.
FYI, the US didn’t firebomb in Europe- that was the British.
And the reason they firebombed in Japan was because it was the most effective way to go about bombing Japanese cities- they were made of wood and paper and burned readily, while German cities were stone and brick mostly, and didn’t ignite nearly so easily as Japanese ones.
And FWIW, the firebombing of Tokyo killed MORE people than Hiroshima did.
I think the amount of controversy that actually existed has been overplayed and also the motives behind at least some of that controversy are never fleshed out. It’s true that several military leaders opposed the bombings, but at least some of that was because that meant there wouldn’t be an invasion or blockade…both of which would have actually ended up costing a hell of a lot more lives on both sides than the use of the atomic bombs did.
That would be historical revisionism. The allies had no qualms about firebombing Dresden, and that killed white people in numbers of the same order of magnitude as the nuclear bombs.
The most destructive single bombing raid in history was not one of the nuclear blasts, but the firebombing of Tokyo, which killed 100,000 people. And Germany was getting firebombed as well.
This was total war. Had Germany still been powerful and a threat to the world when the bomb was developed, it’s just as likely that it would have been dropped on Germany. Bomber Harris certainly would have done it, as he was busy bombing German cities into oblivion anyway.
Nuclear bombs were just a way to deliver the same amount of devastation without risking the crews of massive bombing raids. Japanese cities had large numbers of wooden structures, and were all susceptible to firebombing. The shock of being able to do similar amounts of damage with a single plane ultimately brought about Japan’s surrender and saved millions of lives - most of them Japanese.
The Japanese in 1945 had no decent airpower, their experienced soldiers and pilots were dead, their logistics were a mess, and Japan was already reeling and on its knees. The Soviet attacks were little more than a land grab against a weak foe in the waning days of the war.
The main reason German fighter pilots racked up such large numbers of kills is because early in the war they fought against extremely outdated aircraft flown by poorly trained pilots. The early German air campaigns were essentially turkey shoots.
Then, by the time the allies joined the fight the Germans simply had more combat experience. But it didn’t take long for the allies to catch up in both experience and equipment. And towards the end of the war the tide turned as many of Germany’s experienced pilots were dead, and American aircraft like the P-51, P-38, and P-47 were easily a match for German fighters.
Also, IIRC, they often fought until they were killed, as opposed to most allied air forces which would rotate pilots out to do a stint as training cadre to impart their experience back to the new pilots coming up. The Germans didn’t do this as often, so pilots fought and flew until they couldn’t anymore because they were dead or so wounded they couldn’t fly anymore. Towards the end of the war this definitely had an impact on the overall performance of their forces.
The Japanese had (again, IIRC) similar issues because they had a similar policy.
Another reason for the Germany First policy was the reality that it would take a fair amount of time for the U.S. to build the ships and aircraft needed to take on Japan. The U.S. had no airbases close enough to seriously damage Japanese infrastructure, and only a stunt like Jimmy Doolittle’s was capable of hitting the mainland - ineffectively. It was PR stunt only.
The truth is that the U.S. needed to start a laborious campaign of capturing islands and airfields until it could get close enough to Japan to actually attack it, and it just didn’t have the ships to do so. That’s what Japan was counting on Pearl Harbor achieving. Had the carriers been in port, it might even have worked - for a while.
As of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had a total of eight aircraft carriers. Only one more (the Essex) was commissioned in the next year. That represents all the carriers that were in the pipeline when the war broke out. But in 1943, FIFTEEN carriers were commissioned, and twenty three more were under construction.
That’s a hell of a lot of resources. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the ships needed for a complete carrier group, plus the huge train of logistical ships required to keep them oiled and the airplanes fueled.
The U.S. also commissioned ten battleships during WWII, including the four giant Iowa class battleships commissioned in 1943 and 1944.
The U.S. could have built even more carriers and battleships, but by 1943 the writing was already on the wall and after the battle of the Phillippine Sea in 1944 (‘The Marianas Turkey Shoot’) Japan lost its ability to fight carrier wars and production of new ships in the U.S. was scaled back.
I don’t know the numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the U.S. spent more money fighting Japan, but sent more men to Europe. Fighting on the water is incredibly expensive.