Small Scale Military Headquarters

was watching "tora tora tora" yesterday on the Hist channel with the old man, and he said that even if our fighters (more than 2 that is) got off the ground it still wouldnt have made that much of a difference at pearl because the japanese planes were so much better

now my thought was maybe, but if i remember correctly didnt those 2 planes shoot down a lot of planes on their own,

and secondly since it was mostly a bombing/torpedo run, were there any actual japanese fighters out there, other than a few as escorts?

i figured i would defer to the more knowledgeable WWII buffs of the board

I think it definitely would have made a big difference if we had gotten our P-40s into the air at Pearl Harbor.

Taylor and the other guy did get a few planes and just having US fighters in the air would have distracted the attackers bomb or torpedo runs.

The Flying Tigers did OK with P-40s (after learning how to use its ruggedness and dive speeds), so I would not discount what we could have done with warning at Pearl Harbor.

07Dec41 . 06:00 First air attack wave launched consisting of: 51 Val dive bombers, 49 Kate horizontal bombers, 40 Kate torpedo bombers, and 43 Zero fighters.
07Dec41 . 07:00 Second attack wave launched consisting of: 78 Val dive bombers, 54 Kate bombers, and 35 Zero fighters.

digger wrote:07Dec41 . 06:00 First air attack wave launched consisting of: 51 Val dive bombers, 49 Kate horizontal bombers, 40 Kate torpedo bombers, and 43 Zero fighters.
07Dec41 . 07:00 Second attack wave launched consisting of: 78 Val dive bombers, 54 Kate bombers, and 35 Zero fighters.

Exactly. Even if we got our fighters in the air, we wouldn't of made that much of a dent. I believe a wave or 2 even turned back due to lack of targets!!

-Ski

Actually, the third wave was cancelled due to the damage reports being brought back.

The third wave was supposed to target the submarine base and the tank farms.

If I remember our two pilots shot down about 20 Japs. Two guys.....woken out of a sound sleep and jumping in a car to race to a aux field and up.

What would have happened if 50 P-40's had gotten up? Even 20. What would have happened if the flight of B-17's had been armed? at least with MG's. Or if the moron 2Lt who wrote off the radar signature of a huge number of plane inbound as the flight of expected B-17's and he had instead called for an air attack.

History is full of unexpected mistakes and full of people taking advantage of those mistakes.

If the Jap commanders at exploited PH to the fullest, they would have invaded the Left Coast and historians say they would have gotten to the mid-west before we could have pushed them back. The result would have had the same ending but taken how many more years.

TTT

The Japanase lost 29 aircraft during the raid on Pearl Harbor. According to US military records, only 6 of these were downed by air to air combat- 4 for Welch and 2 for Taylor.

Ok AJ, all I'm saying is if 2 guys got 6, if we had 20 P-40's up the Japs may not have been able to take out as much of battleship row while tending to our P-40's.

TTT

29 out ov about 350 aircraft attacking a primary US installation (even if by surprise) is a pretty good ratio. The Japanese suffered a loss rate on that attack of only about 8.3% of their total applied force. This is based off the stats gleaned from the earlier posts.

I'm sure that if we got more than two P-40s in the air, it would have upped the number of Japanese aircraft shot down, say perhaps to 20-25% of the total force. However, one must account for the fact that the US pilots, trained as they were, would not have yet gained combat experience (the Japanese already had some experience in China) and would have been totally unprepared for dealing with the manuverability of the Zero as well as what may have amounted to superior training for the Japanese pilots. So we may have been able to get a number of P-40s or other planes into the air and they may have been able to shoot down more Japanese planes, but in the end they may have turned into cannon fodder.

TTT

The US managed to get about 20 planes aloft on Dec. 7th but 5 of them were the P-35 (very obsolete). I would agree with you that if we had managed to get most of our front line fighters (not the P-35s) in the air and at altitude before the attack, the outcome would not have been nearly the same. However, with the airfields under attack throughout the morning it would have been virtually impossible to refuel and rearm that many of the planes.


A

Keep in mind, too, with the P40s of the Flying Tigers that their commander drilled into them how to fight the Japanese fighters with P40s (no turning maneuvers, use the P40s diving and climbing speed). There's no guarentee our boys at Pearl wouldn't have tried to get into a plane-to-plane dogfight, where the P40 would have likely lost. Still, a few more Japanese would have either been shot down or had unmolested bombing runs.

Moving this to the reference forum...

It's been asked before by others and now I'm sounding off, my wife is Japanese and my oldest reads this board from time to time so lets refrain from the slur "Jap". It's not 1941 anymore so lets be civil!