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

AIR SUPERIORITY
In achieving de fucto air superiority, through a combination of Allied
power and Japanese default, the ultimate victors were able, as General
Arnold asserted, to dispatch a lone aircraft carrying an atomic bomb into
enemy airspace, during broad daylight and without fighter escort, on its
fateful mission to Nagasaki. Japanese commanders, holding back 10,700
operational planes, half of them kamikazes, from a total stock of nearly
18,000 aircraft, had had another ending in mind. The impressive statistics
of Japanese military and naval assets at such a late date, however, do not
detract from the achievements of the Allies in having knocked out 20,000
enemy aircraft in combat, but they shed decisive light on the indispensability
of having finally projected air power deep into the innards of Japan’s last
perimeter of strategic defense.
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