Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Terrible on August 11, 2015, 03:14:48 PM
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I have been looking around trying to find out how b-29's were shot down, I am finding wild numbers from 700 to 150 from different places, I was also surprised that some said the B-29's also operated from China? and that they were very ineffective in the beginning
I also heard that the k-45 had some success against them?
I was just wondering if anyone knew how many b-29's we lost to fighters and how Japan tried to deal with them.
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http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,369829.0.html
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http://www.econseminars.com/6th_Bombardment_Group_Tinian/Risks.pdf (http://www.econseminars.com/6th_Bombardment_Group_Tinian/Risks.pdf)
Supplemental to the above. Statistically it shows that there were a *lot* of milk runs interspersed with a few "bad days" where losses would be considerably higher.
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Thanks that was insightful, those reads.
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Most of the B-29 losses during the war were from AAA and mechanical breakdowns (usually engines)
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Didn't the ki43 score the most b29 kills?
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I always thought it was the Nik1.
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Tony Williams and I discussed this topic on here many years ago. I asked how B-29s could be shot down by Japanese fighters (inferior to German fighters), with their advanced turrets and fire control systems. He said that even as advanced at the B-29s gun system was, defensive guns were at an inherent disadvantage. Also, no turret system is truly effective at aerial gunnery. I will try to dig up the thread, I am sure I'm misquoting him horribly.
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Certainly training was important. It is also worth noting that guns in a good, powered turret were far more accurate than hand-held ones (the waist guns on US bombers were really waste guns :)).
Even accepting their claims (and the claims for shootdowns from US bombers were way, way over reality) guns mounted on fighters were about ten times as effective in terms of number of bullets fired for each kill.
Tony Williams
Author: "Rapid Fire: The development of automatic cannon, heavy machine
guns and their ammunition for armies, navies and air forces"
Details on my military gun and ammunition website:
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Most of the B-29 losses during the war were from AAA and mechanical breakdowns (usually engines)
Stand corrected, both the 20th and 21st Bomber Command B-29s suffered more losses due to "other" (weather or mechanical failure) than combat action.
20th BC
80 total losses
22 due to fighter
7 from AAA
51 from "other"
Interesting to note that the 20th BC suffered 70 losses in 1944 while only 10 in 1945.
21st BC
334 total losses
52 due to fighters
47 from AAA
19 from fighter/AAA
216 from "other"
In 1944, the 21st BC only suffered 25 losses while in 1945 losses jumped up dramatically with 309 losses with the majority due to "other".
Looks like the most dangerous thing about B-29 missions where the B-29s themselves.
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Tony Williams and I discussed this topic on here many years ago. I asked how B-29s could be shot down by Japanese fighters (inferior to German fighters), with their advanced turrets and fire control systems. He said that even as advanced at the B-29s gun system was, defensive guns were at an inherent disadvantage. Also, no turret system is truly effective at aerial gunnery. I will try to dig up the thread, I am sure I'm misquoting him horribly.
Maybe but the defensive gunnery of the B29s were respected by the Jap pilots. Whom BTW simply werent as "good" as the German ones nor did they have equal aircraft or cannon. Add to that the 29s were so fast and often flew so high the Japanese pilots didnt have the head on opportunities the Germans did against the 17s and 24s. Nor did they have the high altitude performance of some of the German fighters.
I'd like to know the true numbers lost to individual type aircraft but unfortunately we'll never really know. They often flew into bad weather or drifted away at night and nobody ever found out why. But I'd put Japanese interception at the bottom of the list. We lost enough to mechanical issues, flying into mountains, and getting lost at sea. The Jap fighter forces were never a serious threat to the B29s.
I think Jap claims of kills to be the worst exaggerations of the war. The fact is there is only one reason the B29s were able to reduce their industry's, cities, and vital sea lanes to rubble and thats cause they were able to.
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I think Jap claims of kills to be the worst exaggerations of the war. The fact is there is only one reason the B29s were able to reduce their industry's, cities, and vital sea lanes to rubble and thats cause they were able to.
American bomber gunner claims are even worse.
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I think Jap claims of kills to be the worst exaggerations of the war. The fact is there is only one reason the B29s were able to reduce their industry's, cities, and vital sea lanes to rubble and thats cause they were able to.
as KArnak pointed out, American buff gunners in ETO 1943 where not any better than the Japanese in that respect.
If a German fighter got shot down by defensive fire of the combat box of B17s, many of the gunners could have sworn it was just him who got the German plane.
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American bomber gunner claims are even worse.
I would generally agree but would point out with 3 or 4 bombers shooting at a single fighter its easy to make the honest mistake of thinking it was "your" guns that did it. Fighter vs bomber it was easier to tell.
I believe much of the reason the JAAFs claims were accepted was to upp morale on the home front. Then again with the terrible losses suffered by the 8'th AF in Europe it could be argued kill claims were allowed to be exaggerated for morale reasons too. I just read a book that had the remembrances of some of the very few JAAFs fighter pilots that survived the war, most of whom started fighting in China and somehow survived the entire conflict. They themselves knew at the time their own kill claims by their Air Forces were ridiculous.
But they had the added problem of fighting while outnumbered against extremely well built enemy fighters, most of whom when hit were probably able to make it back to a CV or strip. There was no way they could have waited to see if the Hell Cats or Corsairs fell into the sea because they would have been dead had they waited to do so. American fighter pilots exaggerated kills also.
Again if anyone has a link to a factual loss list of 29s against various JAAFs fighters I'd love to see it. It was common for the Japanese Govt. to claim 100 29s shot down in a single attack but I doubt 100 were shot down by their fighters in the entire war.
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Oh no - the Japanese definitely got some B29s. The speed and high-altitude of the B29s made it difficult for Japanese fighters to catch them and even when they did it took a lot of fire to shoot one down. That is why they quickly learned to KAMIKAZE RAM the B29s - the loss of 1 fighter and pilot for 1 B29 and 11 US airmen was a win for them.
http://b-29s-over-korea.com/Japanese_Kamikaze/Japanese_Kamikaze10.html (http://b-29s-over-korea.com/Japanese_Kamikaze/Japanese_Kamikaze10.html)
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I am just about to finish Max Boot's "War Made New" it's a great read about how the proper implementation of cutting edge technology at the time helped otherwise evenly matched opponents gain a lopsided victory based on the newer technology.
He writes a bit about the B-29s operating from China simply because they didnt have any bases close enough to Japan at the time. The airfields in China depended on supplies being flown over the "Hump". IIRC he says that it took somewhere around a month of supply flights to stockpile enough supplies to fly 1 B-29 mission from China.
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You've peaked my curiousity. Does his thesis include the supposition that Japan and the Allies were otherwise evenly matched?
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No not really. The chapter on WWII in the pacific is kind of an oddball in the book.
You've peaked my curiousity. Does his thesis include the supposition that Japan and the Allies were otherwise evenly matched?
He is comparing the differences in tactics in strategic bombing in the ETO versus the PTO, and why it could work, at least better in Japan than in Europe. Mostly the change from daylight precision bombing to the firebombing of Tokyo.
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You've peaked my curiousity. Does his thesis include the supposition that Japan and the Allies were otherwise evenly matched?
I'm sorry.. but I must! When you post with such words as thesis and supposition and otherwise, but you type "peaked" instead of "piqued"... I must correct!
To pique one's interest is to excite or arouse one's interest in a subject. Just FYI.
In terms of the book: I haven't read it myself but also am highly dubious on that phrasing alone. There was nothing equal about the matchup, not at all. Especially at that phase in the war when the war was all but OVER. The Japanese had been driven back to their homeland and the remaining planes were beat, broken, underperforming, and they had so few pilots they weren't even training new ones. They were training kamikazes because that was faster.
I question the tone of the book, if not the actual facts. Sounds a bit revisionist.
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I'm sorry.. but I must! When you post with such words as thesis and supposition and otherwise, but you type "peaked" instead of "piqued"... I must correct!
To pique one's interest is to excite or arouse one's interest in a subject. Just FYI.
In terms of the book: I haven't read it myself but also am highly dubious on that phrasing alone. There was nothing equal about the matchup, not at all. Especially at that phase in the war when the war was all but OVER. The Japanese had been driven back to their homeland and the remaining planes were beat, broken, underperforming, and they had so few pilots they weren't even training new ones. They were training kamikazes because that was faster.
I question the tone of the book, if not the actual facts. Sounds a bit revisionist.
Having re read my post, I didn't relay the message of the book very well. At no point does he argue that the two sides were anywhere near evenly matched. He is only describing a change in strategic bombing tactics; how strategic bombing could work in Japan in ways that it could not in Germany. The chapter simply points out a way to use the B-29s in a way that they were not necessarily designed for, to achieve the same result. I.e, end the war through strategic bombing by crippling the enemy's infrastructure.
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Fair enough. I won't let my previous thought prejudice me against it. :cheers:
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I read someplace that some B-32's were shot down by N1k2's.
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A good book that contains a lot of B-29 information and action is "Whirlwind," by Tillman.