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

WAR AGAINST JAPAN
1945, over the requirements of the homeland itself. Assigned to the defense
of Japan between January and March 1945 were only about 375 interceptors-slightly
less than 20 percent of the entire IJAAF and IJNAF combined
inventory. The 450 fighters allocated in April constituted the largest
percentage of fighters used to defend Japan during the entire war, but still
amounted to merely 26.5 percent of the operational total available. Indeed,
by the time the absolute number of assigned fighters finally exceeded 500 in
July and August, the percentage of the fighter inventory they represented
had declined to about 16.5 per~ent.~’ It was largely a matter of priorities,
and Imperial General Headquarters had essentially opted to allow the cities
to be reduced to ashes and the civilian populace to be terrorized, in favor
of the employment of precious fighter assets on the fronts east and south of
Japan.
Provided with a small number of fighters, replete with qualitative
shortcomings and frugally committed to battle, Japanese air defense units
could only mount a low-scale effort against the B-29 raids. According to
XXI Bomber Command data, in the authoritative U.S. Strategic Bombing
Survey (Pacific), the average number of Japanese fighter attacks per bombing
mission fell off from a high of 7.9 in January 1945 to 2.2 in February,
and to considerably less than I thereafter: March-0.2. April-0.8, May-
0.3, June-0.3, July-0.02, August-0.04.6x
The Japanese interceptors’ combat performance against the B-29 was
consequently unimpressive. The loss rate of the Twentieth Air Force in the
Pacific theater was approximately one-third of the rate incurred by the U.S.
Eighth Air Force against German interceptors. Again, according to the
U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific), the worst rate of loss of Eighth
Air Force heavy bombers, in April 1943, was more than 3.5 times that of
the Twentieth Air Force.hy The highest number of B-29s lost to fighters
occurred in January and April 1945, when 13 bombers were brought down
per month. But the percentage as a factor of sorties flown was only 1.29
percent of 1,009 sorties and 0.37 percent of 3.487 sorties respectively. The
8 B-29s lost to fighters in May and June were 0.18 percent and 0.14 percent
of 4,562 and 5,581 bomber sorties, respectively. In the first half of
August, when hostilities in the Pacific War were finally terminating, only
1 B-29 was lost to interceptors-0.03 percent of 3,331 sorties. In all, the
Twentieth Air Force attributed 74 of its B-29 losses to enemy fighter
action between June 1944 and August 1945, a loss of 0.24 percent out of
31,387 The fact that B-29 losses to fighters remained well under
1 percent from February 1945 until war’s end caused American
analysts to judge that “the final measure of the effectiveness of the
Japanese fighter defense system was no more than fair on paper and distinctly
poor in practice.”’’
Once the Japanese abandoned the contest for air superiority over the
homeland and husbanded their remaining planes for use against a land
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