Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

AIR SUPERIORITY
more modest report of downing 9 U.S. Navy carrier planes accords with
the U.S. Navy’s admission. Spruance noted that “this time again the Japs
made no attempt whatsoever to attack us either while we were there or on
the run out. This is very different from the way they used to be, when they
threw everything at you they could as long as they could reach you.” In all,
Task Force 58 claimed to have destroyed 393 Japanese planes in the air and
more than 250 on the ground between February 16 and March 1. Though
Japanese records are incomplete, their actual losses in this period
amounted to perhaps 15 or 20 percent of the totals claimed by the Americans.
During the same period, 84 U.S. aircraft (with 60 pilots and 21 crewmen)
where lost in combat, and another 59 aircraft (with 8 pilots and 6
crewmen) were lost for other reasons.48 These figures, too, are far lower
than Japanese counterclaims.
Approaching the Climax
Once the Marianas had been seized in 1944 and the B-29 Superfortresses
became available in quantity, the Army Air Forces could close
down the difficult China-based bombing raids and set up shop in the Western
Pacific. In personal command of Twentieth Air Force since its activation
in Washington, D.C., in April 1944, General Arnold was finally able to
apply his basic principle in practice against Japan; i.e., that “the main job
of the Air Force is bombardment,” employing large formations of bombardment
planes to hit the foe. The Japanese homeland could now be struck
directly and often. As U.S. analysts later remarked, “nowhere could the
Japanese air forces prevent the concentration of Allied forces relatively
close to their objective or force the costly disperal and other defensive
measures which attend the threat of heavy and sustained air attacks.” General
Arnold put it simply: “In the air war with the Japanese, our strength
constantly increased; theirs steadily diminished.”@
The emphasis on bombardment aviation, to which Arnold alluded,
affected the way the battle for air supremacy against Japan was fought in
1945. “One of the basic premises of Army Air Forces doctrine,” air historian
Robert Futrell observed, “was that its heavy bomber aircraft, flown in
massed and self-defending formations, could successfully penetrate enemy
defenses and perform precision-bombing attacks in daylight hours.” In
addition, prewar AAF doctrine evinced “little concern for the effect that
hostile antiaircraft artillery fire might have on strategic bomber missions”
because of the high altitudes at which the bombers operated. The most
severe Japanese fighter interception against Marianas-based B-29s took
place between November 24, 1944, and February 25, 1945. During that
period, the Japanese concentrated fighters to defend several key areas
where most of the priority industrial targets were located. Since the B-29s
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