Japanese Naval Aviation Losses, 41-42

Why did the Japanese lose so many aircrafts?

I have been reading Wikipedia's account of all the major naval battles in PTO, and it struck me as bizarre that the vaunted Japanese air groups were taking disproportionate losses in aircraft and men from Coral Sea to Guadalcanal, even in the battles that they nominally won, such as Santa Cruz; on a similar vein, the Japanese Imperial Navy inflicted severe tonnage losses on the Americans during Guadalcanal, but their loss of aircrafts and manpower was astounding.

In Coral Sea, a USN defeat, the Japanse badly mauled the USN fleet, sunk many ships, and lost only one light carrier and moderate to heavy damage on its own ships. But in that victory IJN lost 90 a/c to 60 USN a/c, and almost 970 KIA to 660 USN KIA.

In Santa Cruz, the IJN had more aircrafts, more ships, and sunk more tonnage than USN. But they lost 90 aircrafts to 80 American and suffered 400-500 KIA, almost 2 times more than the USN.

Eastern Solomon was even worse. 177 IJN a/c did battle with 176 American a/c, zeros versus Wildcats, but IJN not only lost the tonnage war outright, but they also lost 75 airplanes to 25 USN, exactly three times the American losses. USN also killed 290+ Japanese sailors and aircrew, while only losing 90 of their own.

And that's not counting Midway--IJN had 248 carrier based a/c versus 233 USN a/c, and the IJN lost every single one of their 248 and inflicting just 153 losses? Something is very wrong. Thatch Weave had just been invented and hadn't been taught to anyone except Thatch's squadron.

I know the Japanese Navy had negligible rescue and recovery capabilities and their downed pilots and sailors were pretty much on their own. But that does not explain the lop-sided loss of aircrafts even in victorious engagements. What's up with that?

If it's not Hellcats, not Corsairs, not even Thatch Weave, what was the cause then?

 

I've been wondering about those same figures and up to now put it down to better US AA fire, the rather fragile construction of japanese planes and a couple of bad navigation errors .....
But this really cries for hard data, I have a couple of books that between them should list most individual IJN air losses of the 1942 battles (sometimes down to the detail of individual pilot names) but never tried to make a summary of it to get "the big picture".
I will wait to see if some other rogue has already done this otherwise I think it's worth doing to see what comes out.

 

I do think it's due to better AA fire. There is a lot of circumstantial information to support this. Take Santa Cruz for example. Triple C gives 90 as the Japanese aircraft losses. The BB South Dakota alone is responsible for 26 of these or 29% of the total. Radar vectoring of the combat air patrol was another advantage. The 5"/38 was considered the best intermediate caliber dual purpose gun of WWII. The MK37 Gun Director for the 5"/38 was extremely effective. Also the proximity fuze, many historians consider it one of the key advancements that led to allied victory in the Pacific. (I believe it began being used in theatre in Jan 1943).
It is my understanding, from what I've read, that the greatest drain on Japanese naval aviators was the Guadalcanal/Solomons Campaign. The US pilots were close to base and if shot down were often recovered or their damaged aircraft nursed back to base. The Japanese had the long flight back up the slot. Large numbers of aircraft that survived the actual fighting succumbed to damage or mechanical failure on the long flight back to their airfields. Nearby land bases also played a part in a number of Naval Battles. During the Eastern Solomons battle a number of US carrier aircraft landed at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal before returning to their carrier the next day.
I would be very interested in any data that you find.

 

I will have to go with the light construction of the AC. Lack of self sealing tanks and no pilot armor meant minor damage was going to be a severe issue if not right then, then later on.

Another reason for their high losses was an unforgivable attitude among the highest reaches of the IJN command philosophy. Air Sea Rescue was a luxury that was not going to be deliberatly provided unless patrol units (air) were also available and could be spared.

 

I think the answer to your question lies in several little understood factors, but by far the most important was who the Japanese were fighting in the SWPA.

The Japanese air groups made their fearsome reputations mostly against poorly trained pilots operating from ill-equipped bases and supported, if at all, by inadequate early warning systems and incompetent staff work. Many of the pilots the Japanese flew against in the early days of the war had little or no combat hours in the types of planes they flew. Some Allied pilots literally had to learn to fly their planes and fire their guns while also learning the art of staying alive in aerial combat. Opponents like these were easy kills for the experienced Japanese pilots with hundreds of combat hours in type.

But when they entered combat against the US Navy pilots in May and June, 1942, they faced a different kind of opponent. First Navy pilots are the most skillful pilots of all; they have to be just to survive operations from carriers. They also tend to be much better trained in all aspects of flying than the early army pilots. For example, US Navy pilots had extensive training in deflection shooting; neither US army nor Japanese Navy pilots were trained in this art. The result was that US Navy pilots had more options in aerial combat and could make better use of their plane's strengths against the Zero. As for the Thach Weave it was an improvised defensive tactic, but because it worked, it was instantly adopted by naval pilots to counter the greater maneuverability of the Zero.

There were other factors, as well.

Japanese planes were maneuverable only because they were also light and fragile. Put six rounds of .50 caliber in a US fighter and mostlikely nothing would happen; put those same six rounds into a Japanese fighter and you have a good chance of breaking something vital and downing the plane. So it was just easier to shoot down Japanese planes. One factor that I have never seen discussed much is that US bombers shot down a LOT of Japanese fighters. The Japanese never really figured out how to counter the durability and defensive firepower of US bombers.

Another factor, especially in the Solomons campaign, was that Japanese airfields were not up to US standards; lots of Japanese aircraft were lost operationally because of poor taxiways. Planes would run off the edge of the taxi strip into bomb craters and be seriously damaged, or would crack up on landing because bomb damage to the runway had not been properly repaired.

Another factor was the longer range of Japanese planes. Long range is a two-edged sword; it's nice to have lots of gas on a long mission, but it also makes your plane more vulnerable to enemy AA and fighters. Also it means that damaged planes and wounded air crew had longer flights home with more time for things to go wrong. Over water, it is easier to become disoriented, lose one's way, and run out of gas.

The US Navy not only had well trained, naturally very skillful pilots, but it also, in 1942, enjoyed what was undoubtedly the world's best shipborne AA armament. Not that there wasn't room for improvement, but USN ships consistently shot down more Japanese planes than vice versa. This certainly accounted for many of the Japanese aircraft lost in combat in 1942, and became even more of a factor as radar FC and proximity fuses came into common use.

One huge factor in the big air battles was that allied planes carried useful radios whereas most Japanese fighters had been stripped of their bulky unreliable radios in the interest of saving weight. That meant that the Japanese were severely handicapped when it came to using teamwork in aerial combat;the Allies made extensive use of teamwork among pilots and this proved to be a big edge in aerial combat.

I also believe, and this is just my personal conclusion, so make of it what you will, that the US generally practiced superior aerial combat doctrine in 1942. The Japanese pilots fought as individuals in 1942, the US pilots fought as a team. Whatever, it seems clear that the Japanese not only were fought to a standstill in the Pacific in 1942, but were defeated in the air and on the sea despite some of their spectacular early victories.

Interestingly enough, my father flew SBD's in the South Pacific during 1942, and once told me that there never was a time that he and most of his buddies doubted they would eventually win the war.

 

Not correct. Statistics showed that when the Zero or Oscar was up against a Wildcat/Hurricane/P40, the loss ratio was fairly even. Remember that for ALL PILOTS of the US, the pilots were from the depression era and you had to be the cream of the crop when it came to pilot selection criteria. They knew how to fly their aircraft and it didnt take long to make kills once they got the knack of gunnery. The RAF and RAAF pilots also were not slouches.

Ever hear of the AVG? And youre right about a different type of pilot in May and June 1942. The RAAF and the first of the 5th AF fighter groups were starting ops in New Guinea and holding their own.

As for the Army's lack of training for deflection shooting .... you have a source for that?

The Japanese did shoot down four engined bombers with regularity. Not with the efficiency of the Luftwaffe, but they still were something to contend with.

Untill the 40mm mounts replaced the pathetic 1.1 MG's, then the best AAA was with the RN and their usage of the "pom-poms".

The Japanese seemed to fight a samurai type war and for some unfathomable reason, did not listen to the Germans about what was working and what did not work

 

Another contributing factor might be US FDC. Combined with radar and better radios this made a big difference in some of the battles. By later in the war it became an overwhelming factor.

 

I think alot of the factors involve the Japanese combination of largely inexperienced pilots and less-than adequate planes. For example, the Zero was a good fighter, but it was easy to shoot down because it had so little armor. Mixed with a young pilot with little training, and throw more aircraft into the equation, and I think you've found the source for the disproportion.

I'm not trying to put down the Japanese pilots in any way: the Japanese had some outstanding pilots. All I'm saying is that their training was relatively poor compared to the pilots of other nations.

 

The loss of the Shoho against a 2-CV strike accounts for most of the Japanese KIA in the battle, as well as the differences in losses in aircraft (Shoho took down about 27 of the aircraft the Japanese lost).

The loss of the Ryujo accounts for the KIA imbalance. The extra aircraft losses stemmed from the fact that the Japanese hit the US fleet with only about 10 Zeros flying escort (vs about 50 defending fighters), leading to heavy losses.

The Thach Weave? I don’t follow. How were you thinking that any of Nagumo’s carrier aircraft could survive the sinking of the four IJN carriers?

Not in 1942 it wasn’t.

 

Where did you come up with that?

In 1941 and 1942, the IJN pilots were outstanding, and in some catagories superior to the allies.

 

I'll give you two reasons that the Japanese lost aircraft heavily in the carrier battles that took place in 42 and 43:

1. The USN had equal or better pilots (USN pilots of this period were long term veteran volunteers who often had thousands of hours flying time and their training was superior to that given to Japanese pilots. For example USN pilots were just about the only military pilots in the world systematically trained in deflection shooting methods) using far superior tactics. The Japanese attack aircraft flew in loose v of v's type formations that were not optimized for defense against fighters. The Japanese fighters were often not radio equipped and their formation was a lose three grouping rather than the two pair / finger four type of arrangement most leading nations were using.
What this does is leave the Japanese attack groups very vulnerable to interception and wholesale shoot downs. When you add the relatively light protection their planes had this only excerbates the problem. Thus, it became quite normal for USN pilots intercepting an inbound strike to decimate it. It wasn't untypical that a Japanese strike of dive bombers or attack planes would lose 60 to 80% of them before reaching their target to fighters.

2. Carrier controlled interception. This was huge. It is likely the single most important thing the US was doing in that period to create huge Japanese aerial losses. The US started off the Pacific War thinking that 4 fighters on CAP and another 2 ready on deck was sufficent. This quickly rose to 8 then 12 then 20. The US also changed their launch proceedures after Coral Sea to launch everything that could fly and get up prior to a strike arriving.
But, that is a digression. CCI was a system using fighter controllers on each carrier or on a carrier combined with a radar plot to direct the CAP to an interception. This system was what caused the Japanese so many losses. At Coral Sea the CAP was intercepting at 20 or so miles or less from the carrier. At Midway this rose to nearly 40 miles out. By late war with the controllers now on destroyers Japanese strikes were getting worked over at over 100 miles from their targets or more.
As Kimball and Morse point out in their book Methods of Operations Research the distance of detection and interception are critical to effectively stopping an enemy raid on a task force.
They demonstrate that as range of detection and interception reach about 100 miles and the CAP is relatively large, the probability of destruction of an enemy aircraft approaches 100%. I'll forego putting the calculus up that shows this.
Anyway, this system resulted in USN fighters intercepting raids further and further out with larger and larger numbers of fighters. That their individual fighter, the F4F, of the early war period was in many ways inferior to the Zero didn't matter nearly as much. The fighters were in optimal position and had the fire power and capacity to decimate a Japanese strike. After all, they weren't there to shoot Zeros down. They were there to kill the Vals and Kates.
The Japanese never had something equivalent on their carriers. Japanese CAP was launched and largely on their own to spot incoming raids and attack them. Interception usually took place at under 20 miles from their carriers. The CAP pilots also lacked coordination often not having radios in their planes. The result was that US strikes generally got through to their targets, in some cases (Midway with dive bombers) unmolested by the CAP that hadn't spotted them.

As for AA fire: The US was more effective here too. First, they had better directors and guns on their ships than most of the Japanese ships had. They also had a more effective AA round than the Japanese one for larger guns like the 5".
The US also had a far more effective steaming formation. US ships for air defense had the high value target (eg., carrier or battleship) at the center of a ring of escort ships arranged around it at about the distance from the center of the ring that was equal to their major AA gunnery system, the 5"/38 gun.
This meant that a Japanese strike approaching a US formation came under AA fire at several miles from the escort ring and stayed under that fire all the way to their target. More time taking AA fire means more losses.
The Japanese in contrast continued to steam in the early war period in classical surface formations like the line, column of divisions etc. Each ship in the formation was largely expected to use its AA guns in self defense rather than as a coordianted effort to shoot down enemy aircraft.

 

No you are mistaken. Statistics about kill/loss ratios do not disprove that many Allied pilots were ill-prepared for aerial combat against the Japanese. In the book “Buffalos over Singapore”, it is stated time and time again that the British, Dutch, Australian, and New Zealand pilots defending Singapore had little training and some hadn’t even completed basic military aviation training. Some had never even had aerial gunnery courses and didn’t know how to fire the guns in their aircraft. One pilot, flying a Brewster Buffalo, didn’t even know how to lower the landing gear! James Morehead, the author of “In My Sights; The Memoir of a P-40 Ace” relates that he went into combat against the Japanese flying a P-40 without ever having fired the guns of that type of aircraft. So while you may be correct about the kill/loss ratios of certain Allied aircraft, you are NOT correct about all Allied pilots being well prepared to fly their aircraft against the enemy in 1942.

Yes, I’ve heard about the AVG. And nothing I’ve read about them contradicts anything I’ve written. First the AVG was made up of fairly experienced USN And USAAF pilots. Second, they did not face the Zero in aerial combat, and third they had received some instruction in how to combat the Japanese planes and pilots they did face.

Yes, I have a source for the USN’s deflection shooting statement; “The First Team”, Page 458, by John B. Lundstrom.. Also my father, who underwent training as a naval aviator in 1939-40, told me that USN gunnery training was superior to that of every other air force in the word including the USAAF. He implied that the USN taught actual deflection shooting and tactics, and the USAAF merely taught aerial gunners to lead their targets.

Of course they did, but it frequently cost them a LOT of planes and pilots to do so. Their planes in 1942 weren’t really designed as bomber interceptors and the durability and defensive firepower of US bomber aircraft meant that it was extremely difficult to down an American bomber, without taking heavy casualties in return. Eric M Bergerud in “Fire In The Sky”, comments on this issue and says it was a problem the Japanese never really solved.

Not from what I’ve read. The 40 MM mounts were an improvement, but the 1.1, while difficult to maintain properly, wasn’t that bad as an AA piece. In any case, the RN never had the same AA capability as the USN during WW II. The British “pom-poms’ were actually pretty pitiful, being useful only at short range. Of course, you may find some RN enthusiasts willing to challenge that.

Probably because the Germans didn't have such a great track record at aerial warfare. And the Pacific air war was certainly very different from the European air war, different enough to make the Japanese think they knew more about it than the Germans, especially after their early victories.

 

Nobody came up with the sort of "hard data" I had in mind so .... but this is even more work than I thought, took me two hours just for the Indian Ocean raid and a single source, mostly based on Japanese archives. The plan is to cross-check each episode with either Morrison or Roskill on the allied side, according to main allied participant, with Dull and Marder as "last resorts".
Still having trouble with posting tables so here's a bitmap of current layout, comments welcome. I plan to post the excel file as attacment (in Zip format as .xls is not allowed) when complete, maybe as post 1000 .

cheers

View attachment 9282

EDIT: Up to now plane fragility looks like a major issue, the 3 A6M2 losses at Tricomalee were two from a sigle surprise pass from the 3 271 Sq. Hurricanes (that is reported as inexperienced) and a third disintegrating when hit while attempting to strafe. On the other hand a lot of planes are reported as "returning with damage" so it was not "one hit one kill".

 

The only satisfactory interception made by the US Navy in carrier battles in 1942 was probably of Hiryu’s first wave dive bombers at Midway. And that success owed far more to the fact that the Zero escort had wandered off, and thereby allowed the US fighters free reign with the Vals for some time. At Coral Sea, Hiryu’s second wave attack, at Eastern Solomons and at Santa Cruz – in all these actions the US radar-directed intercept experienced serious failures.

The primary difficulty experienced by the Japanese in 1942 was that at no time were they able to deliver more than a 2-carrier punch onto a US carrier task force. This meant that Zero escort was always lacking, which in turn directly caused high losses. Perhaps the best intercept performed in a 1942 carrier battle was the Marine action at Midway Island. However, with 36 Zeros in escort, only half a dozen bombers were shot down.

 

In addition to the fine posts by others might I interject that as mentioned the A6M "Zeros", were flammable and under armored. They also didn’t fare all that well against our (American) F4F Wildcat in reality, and were completely outclassed by the F6F Hellcat.

It has always been common belief that the Japanese Navy's frontline fighter, the legendary A6M Zero, was superior to the Wildcat. And in many ways it was. The A6M3 Zero's top speed was 336 mph (later models reached 354), better then the F4F-4's 318 mph. Although the Wildcat could turn well, it couldn't turn with the extremely agile Zero. The A6M3, with its best climb of 4,500 ft/min., could easily out climb the Wildcat. It also out ranged it, with a range of 1,480 miles to the Wildcat's 770. It's armament was debatably better, two 7.7mm machine guns and two Type 99 20mm cannons (although the latter fired slowly and were only effective at close range).

On the other hand, the F4F-4 had some advantages. It could power dive faster than the Zero; Wildcats could sustain a dive that would shear the wings off a Zero. The Wildcat also had a superior roll rate. Its airframe was sturdier than the Zero's, and it could survive considerably more battle damage. The F4F-4 had self-sealing fuel tanks, which the Zero lacked. American pilots found the lightly built, unprotected Zero would flame easily, and often disintegrate under the fire from their six .50 machine guns. Also, the F4F-4 had a service ceiling of 39,400 feet, the A6M3 topped out at 36,250 feet. And, of course, the F4F had armor to protect its pilot, while the Zero didn't.

See:

F4F WILDCAT

The Navy’s F4F Wildcat, had a nearly 2 to 1 kill advantage over the Zero (I’ve seen about 1.1 to 1, as well as 3 to 1 kill ratios), and when the F6F Hellcat made the scene the A6M Zeke was doomed. The A6M lost maneuverability at speeds over 260 mph (418 km/h) or at altitudes above 15,000 feet, and the Zero’s radial engine coupled with its large propeller generated huge torque resistance, so that its roll rate was much slower to the right than the left as that was against the direction of the prop and engine crankshaft spin. This meant that the A6M could turn on a "dime" to the left (with the torque), but not to the right. It didn't take the allied pilots long to figure this out.

The Zero’s armament was much better on paper than in practice. Although the 20mm cannon shells packed a lot of punch, they were of very low muzzle velocity, reducing their accuracy. They also had a rather low rate of fire. Perhaps this was just as well, given the ammunition load of just 60 rounds per cannon.

Bergerud quotes Sakai Saburo, the second highest scoring Japanese ace to survive the war:

Our 20mm cannons were big, heavy and slow firing. It was extremely hard to hit a moving target. Shooting down an enemy aircraft was like hitting a dragonfly with a rifle! It was never easy to score ... our opponents were tough.
​

(Bergerud, Eric M. Fire in the Sky: The Air War in the South Pacific. Boulder, CO: Westview Press)

 

brndirt1 wrote:

Incorrect, during 1942 to early 1943 the Wildcat kill to loss ratio against the A6M was roughly 1:1. What is interesting is that the Wildcat had the best kill/loss ratio of any american fighter aircraft during this period, all others were at considerably under 1:1. It wasn't until the F4U Corsairs appearance in 1943 that the US had a fighter that equalled or surpassed the Zero. The 3:1 ratio quoted in the article

was for the F4F against Japanese bombers and floatplanes. The overall figures for Dec 1941 to Aug 1945 are also worthless because of extreme kill/loss ratios when Wildcats went up against untrained kamikazes late in the war. (Example: from Sep 1 1944-Aug 15 1945, F4F's (FM-2 variant) destroyed 377 enemy aircraft of all types in combat for a loss of 9 FM-2's)

This is another dig at the Zero that I've often seen, what they don't say is that this is no different from most of the planes the Zero faced. The F4F, F4U, F6F all had radial engines and propellers that produced the torque effect with similar effects to the aircrafts turning ability to one side. In aircraft without radial engines, such as the P-40, P-39, the condition still existed (from propeller rotation) but to a much lesser degree. The P-38 was an exception because,

 

Incorrect, it was 43:1.......if we're not going to cite sources then we could just go back and forth all day...

 

Naval Aviation Combat Statistics—World War II, Office of Naval Intelligence Monograph.

I am sure the poster had seen exactly what he said. The problem is they are for two different situations. The F4F vs Zero during the time frame we are discussing was 1:1. The 3:1 figure is for the timeframe we are discussing but against all other types to include bombers and floatplanes. It is probably the correct figure to use since the topic is about Japanese Naval Aviation losses. However, the poster specifically states that it is for F4F vs Zero, which is incorrect statistically.

 

You may have set yourself an impossible task if what you are looking for is "hard" data on the reasons for Japanese aircraft losses. Many Japanese planes, and not a few Allied planes, in the South Pacific simply went missing without any clue as to the exact reason they were lost. Weather was frequently to blame, but because of the extreme range of Japanese aircraft and lack of radios, no one realized they had flown into an adverse weather front. Other times they were damaged by some enemy agency and simply never made it back to base to file a report. I think Eric Bergerud makes the same point in his book, "Fire In The Sky".

 

I would agree with you if we were talking about the losses of the whole JNAF but the original poster limited the focus to carrier operations in 1941-42 with enphasys on the carrier battles. My main source is apparently based on the unit diaries of the carriers Sento Kodochostro (sp?) and ought to be compete for the japanese side. The battles are detalied often down to individual pilot names, the "attrition" losses from training accidents, failed landings and the like are not in there (I don't have the full originals and can't read Japanese anyway), and we all know they represented a significant number especially for carrier ops that are routinely dangerous, so what we will get is just "what happened during the battles" not the whole picture but it's still a step forward from what I see. Seems to me many published figures compare allied claims (for JNAF losses), like the South Dakota at Santa Cruz, with recorded unit losses (for allies).

Still a long way to go to Santa Cruz, finished Darwin and beginning Coral Sea... curent problem is how to classify an A6M2 that Shokaku attempted to deliver to the Rabaul based Tainan Kokutai on 3 May 1942 and was lost after turning back due to bad weather and another non combat A6M2 loss by Shoho on 2 May during the preparations for the Tulagi landing, are they part of the battle or not? ....

Lies, d*** lies and statistics .... but interesting