B24 takes pic of emily while attacking it

[Ack-Ack]

I was always under the impression the IJN lost these precious air craft due to their silly insistence on using them as scouts for USN CV groups. They seemed to underestimate American radar and the USN fighters were vectored in on top of them before they even knew what was going on. I would bet long range P-38s played a part as well. I'd be interested to know what the kill ratio was Emilys vs CV born fighters.

Were lucky the IJN didnt use these dangerous flying boats the way they should have been used. USN submarines sunk 1/2 the Japanese convoy fleet and if these Bombers would have been used more again our subs we would have taken much heavier losses. It seems they just hung their convoy tonnage out to dry and hoped for the best and its often hard to understand exactly what they were thinking.

The IJN's WW2 submarine doctrine was guerre d'escadre (fleet vs. fleet warfare) and were used mostly in the offensive role against Allied warships, which was in contrast to their earlier submarine warfare doctrine before the war.  At the end of WW1, IJN's submarine doctrine was based off of Germany's use of submarines as commerce raiders.

ack-ack

[BnZs]

My remark was a reference to the game Bozon, sorry I did not make that clear. A 110 pilot who wishes to be annoying can always go auto-level and do some real damage to your plane, albeit he'll loose that slug fest. He can do this for the same reason the single rear gunner of an F2B can actually be dangerous to two-gunned Camels and Drs in the WWI arena, because in AHII with auto level flex guns are essentially as stable as ground-mounted guns.