Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

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Pips
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Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#1

Post by Pips » 10 Mar 2016, 06:17

Have just finished reading John Lundstrom's excellent book "The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign".

The figures he provides for losses (on both sides) is extremely interesting. The following is a summary.

a) Between 7 August and 15 November 1942, while operating from carriers and/or land based at Guadalcanal, USN fighters (VF-5, VF-6, VF-72 and VF-10) claimed 193 Japanese aircraft destroyed.

b) Of the 185 pilots who served in the above squadrons, 31 were killed in the campaign.

c) The five squadrons operated 178 Grumman F4F-4 Wildcats, and lost 108 to all causes, including those lost when the Wasp and Hornet sank.

d) In strictly fighter v fighter combat the ratio off loss was approximately 31 Navy F4F's (23 pilots killed) to 25 Reisen.

e) In land and carrier based operations in the Southeast Area (including New Guinea) between the 7th August and 15th November the Imperial Navy lost 119 fighter pilots.

f) In attacks directed against Guadalcanal between those dates the Japanese fighter Squadrons claimed 392 American aircraft destroyed for the loss of 87 Zero's (and 66 pilots).

g) At the same time, during operations afloat in the two carrier battles (Eastern Solomon's and Santa Cruz) and against snooper's Zero Pilots claimed 90 American aircraft for the loss of 19 Zero's ((17 pilots).

Much is made of the Guadalcanal campaign proving to be a meat grinder for the Japanese naval fighter pilots, so much so that the fighter arm never really recovered that lost quality. That being so, given that Japan lost a paltry 119 Reisen pilots (peanuts compared to say the Battle Of Britain), plus those lost earlier at Coral Sea and Midway; it really brings into prospective just how poorly prepared Japan was prepared to fight a major conflict.

The above figures do not include claims by (or losses) sustained by the various Marine and USAAF fighter Squadrons during the Campaign. Nor actual losses by the various Typ1 I Rikko bomber units that operated over Guadalcanal.

If anyone has number on those claims and losses I would really appreciate seeing them. :)

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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#2

Post by Mil-tech Bard » 11 Mar 2016, 23:19

Pips,

Those numbers miss the role of disease in destroying the Japanese Naval Air Arm at Rabaul in the later half of 1942.

See the following on the build up of IJNAF airpower at Rabaul and it's use in New Guinea --

Journal of the Australian War Memorial
Japanese air operations over New Guinea during the Second World War
Issue 34, June 2001
by
Hiroyuki Shindo

https://www.awm.gov.au/journal/j34/shindo.asp
{5} While these operations were being carried out, the Japanese Army and Navy, faced with the unexpectedly rapid success of their operations in the Philippines, Malaya and Netherlands East Indies, had to decide upon their next steps. Briefly speaking, Japan's options included continuing westward into India; invading the Australian mainland; invading New Guinea, the Solomons, Fiji and Samoa, in order to cut off Australia from the United States; and driving eastward towards Hawaii. The Navy High Command wanted to invade Australia, in order to eliminate it as potential springboard for a counter-offensive by the Allies, but the Army balked at this because it would require an excessive commitment of manpower. The Navy therefore settled for the lesser option. The Fourth Fleet, with the XI Air Fleet (the Navy's land-based air force in the Pacific theatre), was ordered to assault Lae, Salamaua in New Guinea, Port Moresby in Papua, and the Solomon Islands.

{6} In compliance with this strategy, Zero fighters of the Chitose Air Corps moved to Rabaul on 31 January. Shortly afterwards, on 2 and 5 February, Kawanishi Type 97 "Mavis" flying boats of the Yokohama Air Corps bombed Port Moresby for the first time, and the air war over New Guinea was underway. On 9 February, Gasmata (on New Britain's southern coast) was occupied, and work begun on an airstrip. To carry out further operations, the 4th Air Corps was newly created, with a nominal strength of 27 fighters and 27 bombers. It was placed under the command of the 25th Air Flotilla, and its headquarters was located in Rabaul. On 24 February, aircraft from the 4th Air Corps began bombing Port Moresby.

{7} On 7 March 1942, the Japanese High Command decided upon the operations which would follow the so-called "First Stage Operations," which had been aimed at the occupation of the Netherlands East Indies and other areas of the Southern Resources Area. The second stage of operations which was thus adopted called for the continuation of major offensive operations in order to secure a long-term, unbeatable politico-strategic situation, after which additional active measures would be taken aimed at forcing Great Britain to capitulate and making the United States lose the will to fight.1 As part of this new strategy, the decision was made to continue the advance in the Solomons and New Guinea area, with the aim of eventually cutting off the supply route between the United States and Australia. The 7 March decision therefore confirmed what was already being executed. Lae and Salamaua on the northeastern New Guinea coast were occupied on 8 March. Two days later, the Tainan Air Corps (one of the fighter units deployed to Rabaul as part of the new strategy) sent eleven of its Zero fighters to Lae, which became an exceedingly busy advanced airbase.2

{8} Until the end of July 1942, the naval air units based at Rabaul and Lae became intensely involved in flying missions over the Owen Stanley Range to attack Port Moresby, or other Allied bases on the New Guinea mainland. Such operations consisted of either bombing missions with fighter escort, or sweeps by fighters alone. The Japanese fighter units at this time were also kept extremely busy intercepting Allied air attacks on the Japanese bases. This phase of the air war was characterized by the lack of clear superiority by either side. Although the Australians and Americans often lost more aircraft in individual air battles, Allied air strength did not diminish significantly. On the other hand, the Japanese, although suffering fewer losses, saw a slow decline in the quality of their forces as highly-trained and experienced pilots were lost and replaced by less and less experienced ones. This period was, therefore, somewhat of a stalemate, as the Japanese could not batter the Allied air forces enough to drive them out of New Guinea.
Guadalcanal was only one of two theaters IJNAF fighters at Rabaul had to deal with.

The Australian RAAF and the USAAF 5th Air Force in New Guinea had a lot to do with the write down of the land based portion of the Imperial Japanese naval air arm in 1942 before Guadalcanal.

They paid a lot for that write down in IJNAF planes and pilots before "The First Team" got it's shot. And they did so deeply inside the Zero's effective combat radius, as opposed to being at the bleeding edge like Guadalcanal was.


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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#3

Post by Mil-tech Bard » 11 Mar 2016, 23:39

I'd also add that this book by Anthony Cooper is extremely useful in seeing how/when that write down happened.

Kokoda Air Strikes: Allied Air Forces in New Guinea, 1942
http://www.amazon.com/Kokoda-Air-Strike ... 174223383X

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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#4

Post by Mil-tech Bard » 12 Mar 2016, 00:13

Here is another related article on the collapse of Japanese airpower before, during and after the Guadalcanal campaign --

Japan’s Fatally Flawed Air Forces in World War II
http://www.historynet.com/japans-fatall ... r-ii-2.htm

This section from the article is about the difference between at-start Japanese logistics and what developed in the Solomon's and New Guinea --
Japan launched its December 1941 attacks from well-developed bases. During the southern advance, the navy’s 22nd Air Flotilla supported the attack into Malaya from three airfields in and around Saigon. Units were at full strength in aircraft and crews. Plentiful quantities of fuel and spare parts were available. The aircraft received excellent maintenance. Zeroes, for example, underwent a thorough overhaul every 150 hours of flight. As Japanese forces moved south, air units occupied, repaired and exploited captured enemy bases. Real problems developed, however, when those units reached undeveloped territories. Getting fuel, food and materiel to those bases determined whether the aircraft flew. Whether a base had been captured or built, however, it was nearly useless if seaborne supplies could not reach it.

Mechanical complexity, battle damage and environmental stresses meant that maintenance was key to an aircraft’s availability, its performance and whether the crew survived. Considering Japan’s stressed economy, it should have been intolerable in terms of production and transportation to accept the loss of equipment that could have been repaired. Amazingly, the Japanese tolerated those losses.

Although a nucleus of well-trained army and navy maintenance men and armorers followed their aircraft south, maintenance units lagged behind during the early advances and were too few even when they caught up with the flying units. The army responded by sending forward individual maintenance units to plug gaps in maintenance coverage. The navy reduced support of homeland air bases to a minimum, so as to reinforce forward bases. Because service personnel arrived late or were too few, maintenance — and even the building of quarters and other facilities — fell to the aircrews themselves. Those tasks sapped the energy of men whose principal duty was flying.

The more mobile a maintenance unit is, the less it can do without heavy equipment. The better a unit is at fixing things, however, the harder it may be to get where it needs to go. The Japanese were chronically short of shipping. Moving heavy maintenance units forward was always a problem. Unloading heavy equipment in locations where there were no piers, docks and roadways made air base maintenance all that much more difficult.
...plus this --
During the advance southward, Japanese pilots fought from unimproved airstrips, most of them small and unpaved. Although Japanese aircraft generally were lighter than Western counterparts and not so much in need of paved strips, occupying enemy airfields was never easy. Gasoline trucks were scarce and could be found at only a few of the large fields. Ground crews ordinarily had to refuel aircraft with hand pumps and barrels — a tedious process that slowed aircraft turnaround and consumed manpower. Even Rabaul’s aircraft were refueled from 200-liter drums rather than from gasoline trucks.
...and the following shows that Japanese pre-war investment in logistical support for airpower was woefully lacking --
Japan had not developed a robust civil engineering infrastructure. It did have power rock crushers, concrete mixers, mobile power saws and mobile well-drilling equipment, but bulldozers, power shovels and other earthmoving machinery were in short supply. Picks, shovels, manpower and horsepower provided the backbone of Japanese engineering activities.

Japan’s prewar military budgets had gone to warships, infantry divisions and aircraft, not to construction equipment. When war came, the hitherto-ignored lack of construction assets affected tactics. For instance, without mechanized equipment to cut dispersal areas, frontline aircraft were vulnerable to attack on the ground.

Japanese planners did have one good reason for skimping on airfield construction units. The normal bearing capacity of most soil was good enough to handle lightweight Japanese aircraft. But Japan lacked sufficient steel to turn out large quantities of steel planking while it concentrated on aircraft, warships and merchantmen, and it was short of shipping to transport it. This meant that Japan depended on manpower to construct airfields. The military used native laborers wherever it could, paid them poorly and fed them little or nothing. They worked more than 2,500 Javanese to death while building a field on Noemfoor Island.
And finally, as far as Japanese military understanding of the human factors in supporting sustained air operations, just forget it -
Food at Japanese airfields was bad. Barracks were jungle slums. There were no laundry facilities, and men washed themselves in rivers, or under water-filled cans. Disease felled pilots and left serviceable aircraft grounded. Physical exhaustion lowered pilot performance, so that lesser-skilled opponents sometimes shot down veteran but feverish Japanese pilots.

Manpower became critical with no tractors, and ground crews wore themselves out pushing aircraft around fields. They worked at night to avoid Allied air attacks, only to fall victim to the malaria mosquito, which was most active at night. Men worked seven days a week in wretched weather at exhausting and mind-numbing tasks. Ground crews became nervous and irritable from lack of sleep. It took longer and longer to accomplish a given assignment. Minor as well as major accidents increased.

Raw human muscle wrestled bombs, cannon shells and machine gun rounds onto aircraft. Mechanics pulled maintenance on baking hot fields in direct tropical sunlight, for there were no hangars. When flooded airstrips dried after rains, dust billowed up in the wake of each aircraft, choking cockpit interiors and eroding engines.

“The maintenance crews are exhausted, but they drag their weary bodies about the field, heaving and tugging to move the planes back into the jungle,” a navy pilot at Buin wrote in July 1943.

Commanders and planners lacked any understanding of the vast numbers of technicians required to support a modern army. Although there had always been shortages of trained mechanics, commanders showed little interest in sending their men to the ordnance school in Japan. The service schools themselves paid little attention to logistics and engineering support of combat forces. Nor did commanders establish schools or training programs at tactical units or in geographic army areas.
The defeat of Japanese airpower was distinctly attritional, and a great deal of that attrition came from the cultural shortcomings of Imperial Japanese Military in recognizing the material/high tech side of aerial warfare.

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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#5

Post by Pips » 12 Mar 2016, 02:17

Thanks for the replies guys, I appreciate it.Good 'background' articles all. No argument.

I'll have to get Anthony Cooper's Kokoda book. I have his Spitfires Over Darwin, a great read.

However in all those articles you have highlighted there are no statistics on actual losses; either through combat loss, poor health and hygiene, accidents etc. They are just full of mother statements.

We know that medically the Japanese were totally ill-prepared for the harsh jungle climate. But by how much?

I'm after hard figures. Lundstrom, to his great credit, provides exactly that. At least for the USN component. There are books that detail Australian and USAAF losses over New Guinea, but they only provide actual losses for the Allied side. I'm really after 'actual' losses on the Japanese side.

Other than Lundstrom's book, that only other book that provides such detail from the Japanese side is "Eagles of the Southern Sky - Japanese Aircraft WW2, Tainan Air Group, Vol.1" by Luca Ruffato & Michael Claringbond. It's a ground breaker in terms of the air action over New Guinea early 1942 prior to the Japanese effort being drawn into the maelstrom that was Guadalcanal. And losses by the Japanese over New Guinea were (in that period) very light.

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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#6

Post by Mil-tech Bard » 14 Mar 2016, 15:11

>>And losses by the Japanese over New Guinea were (in that period) very light.

Light losses mean a great deal when you have a very limited supply of 500(+) hour pilots and planes.

Assuming a 1% combat loss rate over 3-months of early 1942 for 40 Zero fighters at Rabaul, with 20-sorties per plane over the period. You are looking at 800 sorties times 1% = 8 Zero pilots out of 40, or a total force loss of 20%.

And the replacement Zero pilots are not the high flight time veterans. So they will likely have a 2%-to-5% loss rate simply because they are not as good at long range navigation.

The next 3-months sees another 20-sorties per plane/pilot, with the following results.

32 * 20 = 640 sorties times 1% = 6.4 further planes/pilots lost of the original 500-hour Zero pilot cadre.

8 * 20 = 3.2 planes/pilots lost.

Assuming all the replacements are "two-percent" pilots. We have ~25 of the original force of 40 each 500-hour Zero pilots as Guadalcanal kicks off with 15 lessor skilled pilots flying with them.

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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#7

Post by gozerius » 09 Apr 2016, 19:47

Looking at "Eagles of the Southern Sky", focusing on the Tainan AG operations in the New Guinea/ Bismarcks area of operations, We are given the following combat/operational losses by month.
April - 6 pilots
May - 9 pilots
June - 4 pilots
July - 6 pilots
August - 12 pilots (Does not include losses vs Guadalcanal)
Sep - Nov - 5 pilots (Does not include losses vs Guadalcanal)
This does not include pilots invalidated home due to wounds/disease.
This means a further 21 pilots were lost vs Guadalcanal, August to November
In the 6 1/2 months the Tainan AG was in action, April to mid November 1942, it lost 60 fighter pilots and 3 recon crews KIA/MIA/POW.

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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#8

Post by Mil-tech Bard » 14 Apr 2016, 19:14

So...25 of 40 at start pilots dead or missing before August 1942?

And another 12 in August 1942?

And that loss number starts in -April 1942-?!?

Lundstrom's US Navy "First Team" never got to meet the Tainan AG's "First Team" at Guadalcanal, because Tainan AG had suffered 92.5% attrition from operations versus the 5th Air Force and RAAF before its first fight at Guadalcanal.

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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#9

Post by gozerius » 16 Apr 2016, 16:55

That would be an oversimplification. The Tainan Kokutai was reorganaized April 1, 1942, following the conclusion of the conquest of the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. Half the pilots were transferred back to Japan to form cadres for new units, the other half (24 pilots) were transferred to Rabaul, where they absorbed the fighter datai of the 4th Kokutai (22 pilots). The Tainan Ku received a steady stream of replacements throughout its deployment. The replacements were a mix of transfers from other units and pilots fresh out of flight school. Of the 46 pilots that comprised the Tainan Ku in April, 20 had been lost prior to the start of the Guadalcanal campaign.

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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#10

Post by Mil-tech Bard » 16 Apr 2016, 17:29

Losing 20 of 46 works out to a cumulatiuve 43% attrition rate of "at start" high flight time IJNAF pilots in the Tainan Kokutai.

And this:

>> The replacements were a mix of transfers from other units and pilots fresh out of flight school.

Means a lot of the 20 replacements were no where near as good.

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Re: Guadalcanal Campaign Air Losses

#11

Post by gozerius » 19 Apr 2016, 02:10

The Tainan made some operational decisions which certainly played a role in their losses. They elected to not wear parachutes (too clumsy), and removed the radios because they were not very reliable.

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