I reread Samurai!, by Saburo Sakai, the highest scoring (64) surviving Japanese pilot of the war, and something struck me.
One of the stories (legends?) often told (in American sources) is about how the American pilots, after early disasters, were retrained to fight as pairs, and were able to defeat Japanese pilots, who fought as individual warriers.
Reading Sakai’s account, I see no real evidence of this behavior among the Japanese pilots. According to him, they flew with wingmen, and they protected each other. On the other hand, his account is the only one I have of Japanese pilot behavior. And I’ve seen a lot of stuff echoing the “team vs. individualist” line.
Can anybody point me to more info. I sem to recall that the attack lead pilot on Pearl Harbor survived the war, but I can’t remember his name. Did HE write a book?
I may be offline for several days as I relocate, but I will be full of thanks (and I hope new reading material) when I return.
Sorry I can’t answer some of your specific questions, but I did want to address the second paragraph. The Americans had superior aircraft; faster, more powerful, more heavily armored. But the Japanese could outmaneuver them because the Japanese aircraft were lighter and more nimble.
I think the change in doctrine was not to fight in pairs (which I believe they were doing already), but to use the aircraft’s strengths instead of allowing the Japanese to play on it weaknesses. That is, “Never try to turn with a Zero.”
Another factor is that as the war went on, the Japanese were losing their better pilots and their war materiel. I saw a documentary once in which a Japanese mechanic said he knew the war was lost when they would recover downed U.S. aircraft and each one was better than the last.
So the American pilots learned not to play into the Japanese strengths, the Japanese suffered from attrition, and the U.S. continued to produce more and better aircraft.
That’s true a bit later in the war, I think. In the first year and a half of the war, the Zero was superior in every way to any American fighter, except for armor protection and speed in a dive. Not til the Corsair and P38 came along did America have a plane that the Zero couldn’t outrun in level flight, except at very low altitude.
I recall in the US Navy they developed a protection scheme called the “Thach Weave” in the early months of the war so the Wildcat pilots could protect each other’s tail. It is my understanding that this was the American inauguration of wingman concept, but the AAF may have developed a similar doctrine earlier.
The “fight to your airplane’s strength and the enemy plane’s weakness” was a pre-war doctrine developed by Claire Chennault (who was familiar with the performance of the Zero) and conclusively proven as correct by the Flying Tigers. It was later adapted into AAF pilot training.
I’ve read scads of stuff on American doctrine, and the aircraft on both sides. But I know almost nothing of Japanese doctrine.
Oh yes, there was a story in one of Martin Caidin’s books, The Ragged, Rugged Warriers, I THINK, about the Flying Tiger’s transition from a mercenary organization to an official branch of the US military. The AAF was trying to get the pilots to stay on the the new official unit (10th Air Force?). They chose their recruiters badly. Only about a dozen of the original 100 stayed on.
As an example of the animosity between the two, he tells the story of an AAF Major who claimed in front a bunch of Chennault’s pilots that he could take on the best pilot in the Tigers and kick his ass in the air. Supposedly, the mercs reached into their pockets, came up with ten grand, and offered a bet that their WORST pilot could kick the major’s ass. Apparently the major declined the bet.
Has a real ring of UL, doesn’t it? Still, a great story.
As much as everyone likes the F4U Corsair, the F6F Hellcat shot down many more enemy aircraft. I’d have to do a search on the numbers, but IIRC the Corsair shot down 2,139 aircraft and chopped one down with its prop. IIRC the Hellcat downed something like 12,000 enemy aircraft. The numbers may be off, but I think the proportions are about right.
Yojimboguy,
Dunno much about your very precise questions on Japanese strategy, but you might find detailed accounts in one of the books that David Kennedy presents in the bibliography to his Freedom from Fear, a survey(800+ pages) of the Depression and WWII. His very readable accounts don’t go into the detail that you want, but he does use a book by Ronald Spector (Eagle Against the Sun) and lists over a dozen sources on p868 for the naval and air war; unfortunately, no autobiography by Japanese fliers. But, you might find further references in any of these.
Kennedy does provide an interesting side-note that during the Battle of Midway, Nagumo had part of his fleet feint towards the Aleutians, where a Zero crash-landed but was virtually intact. Grumman’s engineers thoroughly analyzed it, and this led to the development of the F6F Hellcat. But you knew that already.
Good luck on your move!
True, but the point was not that the Corsair was a better dogfighter. The point was that until the Corsair showed up, no Navy pilot could get away from a Zeke once engaged. The F4U could significantly outrace an A6M in level flight, allowing the U.S. pilot to survive long enough to re-engage in hit-and-run tactics. In the Wildcat, one could hit and run once, and then the pilot was stuck while the Zeke chewed him up. The P-38 could not dogfight a Zeke, either, but it could do everything except outturn one, so if a pilot concentrated on making screaming passes, he stood a chance.
(The other aspect of the kill ratio, of course, involved mission deployment. Most Corsairs were given to the Marines as close-support ground attack weapons while the Hellcat was used nearly exclusively as an air superiority fighter with almost no ground attack assignments.)
Regarding the OP, I had never heard the story about pairs fighting vs individual fighters. In fact, the earliest formations were of four allied fighters and I always thought that it was the the breaking of that diamond into the “fingertip” pattern of pairs to allow more flexibility that actually improved Allied success rates. The Japanese formation was actually a flight leader and two wingmen (although they did get separated on occasion, as when Sakai attacked a formation of TBFs only to discover that neither of his wingmen were still with him–thus encouraging all 16 Avengers to chew on him at will, which they did).
First, we had all graduated from American Military Flying Schools, I feel was the best in the world, where students that didn’t meet the strict standards of pre-war military pilots were eliminated. Second, the knowledge Chennault imparted to pilots of the American Volunteer Group contained detailed information on all the Japanese aircraft including performance, type of aircraft, size of armament, strength and weakness of the Japanese planes and crew. He pointed out the vulnerable spots from which to attack, and their blind spots, type of attacks to make, and those to avoid, strong points of the P-40 and its weaknesses.
The third reason for our overwhelming success is overlooked. We only attacked when we had the advantage over the Japanese, avoided combat if we didn’t. Chennault was an advocate of hit and run tactics, that some commanders considered acts of cowardice. Even though Erich Hartman, Germany’s leading Ace had 352 confirmed victories and used this same tactic exclusively. We were on the defensive, our only objective was to shoot down as many enemy bombers as possible with the smallest possible loss to ourselves.
The Japanese fighter’s job was to defend their bombers. They couldn’t run even when in difficulty. Leaving the bombers defenseless would have been considered cowardice on their part, and their pilots would probably be shot for such action. Our primary job was to destroy the bombers in their attempt to destroy ground installations. However, if we were in trouble, we were free to leave the area having sufficient speed to escape, they didn’t. We would return to the fracas only when we had the advantage. Japanese fighter pilots didn’t have the luxury of such tactics.
The fourth reason was that all of Japan’s aircraft, including the much vaunted Zero, were inferior in every respect to ours with one exception: the ability to turn in a small circle. However this was of little military value, if the pilot avoided the so called dogfight, or turning combat, but used hit, and run tactics which Chennault had taught us in the AVG.
I just read an article about the Thatch Weave and when the Japanese realized that they couldn’t attack a plane in this maneuver without another plane taking a shot at them they started to use a plane to use a bait. They would have a plane fly alone, slow and below the Americans to try to get someone to break out and attack at which point the 4 or 5 Japanese planes trying to hide in the sun above the Americans would sweep down. Discipline kept the pilots together for protection. Formations were the norm since WWI, WWII brought the “Finger Four” and other larger formations into standard use. In most theaters throughout the war an individual pilot would not last long, so formations were the norm.
I don’t know about the actual Pacific War, but when you’re flying them in “Warbirds,” the Hellcat kicks ass. Kicks the Corsair, the Zeke, and everything else you can throw at it. The Zero’s okay, but underpowered by comparison.
And that’s the closest I have ever come to air combat.
As an interesting side-note, the F6F, the F4U, and the P-47 (and the B-26 as well) all shared variants of the Pratt & Whitney R2800 Double Wasp powerplant.
That engine was too large and produced too much torque to be placed into the stubby F4F Wildcat, but the Wildcat was retained throughout the war for use on escort carriers, both American and British (who called it the “Martlet.”)
I recall reading that the Hellcat allowed fleet carrier pilots to radically change their tactics, but precisely how those tactics changed I do not know. From what I gather, extra-formation combat again became a possibility.
I’m not sure which one, the Hellcat or the Wildcat, can actually lay claim to the most “victories.” Several sources claim that the F6F had the best kill/loss ratio of any American plane in the war, but the Wildcat served for eighteen months longer than the Hellcat, and may have claimed more Japanese planes.
I worked for Mitsubishi petrochemical’s medical sciences lab in Tokyo about 20 years ago. One day we had to go to Headquarters for some meeting. As we entered the grounds, I couldn’t help noticing, and mentioning, that the driveway was the longest, widest, and straightest I head ever seen.
The car got very quiet, as all my Japanese co-workers gave each other uncomfortable, slantendicular glances. Finally, my section chief coughed nervously and explained that it used to be a runway from which Japanese pilots took off to practice low-level flighing in preparation for Pearl Harbor.
FADE IN: PACIFIC OCEAN, DAY. Mitsubishi “Zero” fighters take off from an aircraft carrier.
NARRATOR: “On December 7th, 1941…”
EXT. PEARL HARBOR, DAY. Japanese aircraft bomb and strafe the naval base.
NARRATOR: “Mitsubishi had a surprise for America. In 2003…”
EXT. COASTAL MOUNTAIN ROAD, DAY, MONTAGE. A new Mitsubishi convertible zips along a beautiful green costal road, a scene sure to excite anyone who sees it.
NARRATOR: “Mitsubishi surprises America again. The new 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder. See it at your Mitsubishi dealer.”
