Herald

 

 

From Wiki

 

"In the following two weeks, there were almost 1,600 further sorties against the four cities, destroying 31 square miles (80 km²) in total at a cost of 22 aircraft. "
That is a loss rate of 1.375% per sortie...not bad.

 

"By June, over forty percent of the urban area of Japan's largest six cities (Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama, and Kawasaki) was devastated. LeMay's fleet of nearly 600 bombers destroyed tens of smaller cities and manufacturing centers in the following weeks and months."

600 a/c huuuu'uuuum that means that the 24 a/c destroyed in the Japanese air raids inflicted a loss rate of 4% of the force...not bad, but not the end of the world either and the raids were not repeatable by the Japanese as their loss rate was 100%.  That's an exchange I'll take.

 

The Japanese did not commit their fighter force to bomber defense.

 

Why?

 

DOWNFALL. They needed to hoard fuel and aircraft to generate the 10,000 kamikazi sorties they thought they needed to have a chance when MacArthur came for them.

 

That is one of those inconvenient facts you don't consider when you cite the numbers, JFKY . 4% bomber losses under those corrected wartime conditions per specific raid would be considered AWFUL.

 

Herald

it means it was INEFFECTIVE...the Japanese did not inflict losses severe enough to curtail operations....It's not hard to grasp, sustained losses over 6% bomber operations are reduced or halted...effective air defense.  Japan could NOT inflict that level of loss, they gave up trying and instead hoarded their a/c...the USAAF WON the air campaign, by default.  They gave up trying to defend Japan and concentrated on hoarding their surviving a/c for a massive suicide operation to inflict casualties. 

 

Another point, you create a LIQUID-COOLED radial....doesn't that defeat the best feature of the radial, it's simplicity and ruggedness?  Seriously, isn't the advantage, that in ground attack especially, the lack of radiators and the like made them less vulnerable to ground fire.  And that once hit, they could absorb more damage?  So is the development of a radial, liquid cooled engine really a step forward?  How do you justify it?  Horsepower, horsepower per pound, or the like?  I'm just wondering.

That 4% loss rate was from a series of PIN PRICK raids...which cost the Japanese FAR MORE than 4% loss rates...the 24 a/c destroyed probably didn't lose their crews, the most valuable resource.  Apples to oranges.  I see you don't note the less than 2% loss rate for actual bombing sorties, in the Tokyo and four later raids.

 

Again figures don't lie, but prevaricators figure....or at least spin the numbers, right?

I'm coming to the party late, but according to the sources I've read, the Japanese interceptors also had a very tough time getting to the B-29's altitude.  Had we used the B-29 over Europe, the Bf 109 and Fw 190A couldn't have gotten high enough to intercept.  Some Japanese interceptors (like the Raiden or the Toryu) could make it up to the B-29's height, but not easily.  This was less a problem when the B-29s switched to low-level night incendiary attack.  It is worth mentioning, however, that LeMay thought Japanese fighters were enough of a threat that P-51s were based on Iwo Jima as quickly as possible.

 

Another factor might be that the Japanese, as Herald mentions, were very short of aviation fuel and also faced an engine shortage in mid-1945.  Most of their engine factories were either burned out or wrecked by earthquakes (Japan just couldn't get a break in 1945, could they?).  Moreover, what gas they had was poorly refined and tended to gum up engines.  Captured Raidens given 110 octane American fuel outperformed anything in the inventory and could keep up with a Bearcat.

 

You might want to stop while you are way behind. I already consigned you to list two. List three i9s not that far off.

 

 Herald

 

Obviously doesn't even read his OWN material..Chuckie....the "24 a/c" raid is the raid(s) YOU YOURSELF BRING UP, by the Japanese on the US Air bases, not losses sustained over Japan...and hence Apples to Oranges...

 

You need to keep up with your own stuff...before I consign YOU to some second rate list...stick with the stuff yo know...technical details...leave the wider historical record to others...or at least argue consistently in your own postings.

Obviously we now debating the NECESSITY rather than the DESIRABILITY of fighter cover for the bombing of Japan.  We have moved past the Herald Canard discussion.

 

One raid suffered 5% losses, 5 raids sufered a loss rate of 1.375% I still argue that the evidence shows that XXI Bomber Command did not feel air cover was NECESSARY for the Home Island Campaign, as they never curtailed operations over Japan.

 

Much of the campaign occured at low level at night, where fighter cover was IRRELEVANT...

 

And Herald on the 5% loss raid, what is the break down of loss, how many to Flak how many to fighters...Without that, well we can't say whether fighters were necessary.

 

You are on solid ground when you're talking tech, not so solid ground when it comes to talking HISTORY or analysis.

Wrong on all counts, JFKY, as usual..

 

 Herald

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1)  By your own admission the Japanese were not using their air assets, but hoarding them, so by your own theory fighters were NOT going to defeat the Japanese air assets as they weren't flying...try to keep up with your OWN arguments.

2) Counter-air is best achieved by BOMBING the air fields, not by aerial combat...so as long as we cold put bombs on target we didn't need fighters.  I will say that the Japanese really did a great job of camouflaging their air craft.  We weren't going to bomb their kamikaze force out of existence.

 

 

Several rais (3) suffered mortew than 3% losses. Those were big raids. Yes I did look at my data. 

 Good what inflicted the losses...fighters, flak, or operational causes?  See without that you can't say anything about the value of fighters, unless you're going to claim fighters were going to defeat flak or over-heated engines.  Again, you're "spinning" your data.

 

Yeah, low-level AT NIGHT...where they didn't fly fighters and our fighters were ineffective, because they weren't NIGHT FIGHTERS.

 

So I guess rather than being wrong on all counts..I'm doing pretty good and Herald just keeps spinning the same answers over and over..kinda of like Blue Wings, you keep saying the same thing over and over...whether or not it supports your cause.

 

I don't dispute the utility of P-51's over Japan, but I dispute their NECESSITY.  And you have yet to demonstrate the necessity of their presence, especially as the most devastating raid occurred before fighter cover was available.  that would be the Tokyo Fire Raid.  Fighters couldn't participate and even had they been in range they still couldn't have aided the raid, as it was run at night.  And it was run by INDIVDUAL a/c not Boxes of a/c...so the night and the bomber stream really negates the utility of any US fighter a/c.

Let's see if I can help out a bit here--according to Richard Frank's Downfall (an excellent book, BTW), Japanese nightfighters at first were pretty poor stuff, but got better.  On the 9-10 March 1945 mission to Tokyo (the first of the low-level incendiary raids), 14 B-29s were lost to either flak or mechanical failure.  On the second raid, 25-26 May, 26 were lost, half to nightfighters.  The Japanese learned quick and adapted their Toryus to carry upward-firing cannon, similar to the German schrage musik.  The loss of so many B-29s in the May mission caused the USAAF to switch to daylight raids for the remainder of the firebombing campaign, until 15 June.  LeMay required P-51 escort from Iwo Jima for these missions to give the B-29s some help against Japanese interceptors. 

So the Japanese fighter arm was not wholly devoted to kamikaze or were being held back for those missions.  Average losses for the daylight missions were about 10 B-29s and five P-51s a raid, which isn't bad by the standards of, say, Schweinfurt.   Average losses for the night raids not on Tokyo were ridiculously low--24 aircraft between March 9 and March 25, 1945, with no losses over Nagoya and only one over Kobe.

 

At the request of the Navy, B-29s were sent to attack kamikaze bases, but these raids were failures--runways are harder to hit and knock out than area bombing cities, and the weather conditions over Japan made pinpoint bombing very difficult (one reason why LeMay decided to try low-level night raids).

 

I suggest you rethink your statements, your assumptions and actually READ the history again this time with an attention toi detail and with objectivity.. 

 

Herald