NOTES TO TABLES 1 AND 2

Tables 1 and 2 assemble, for the entire war, all the basic general statistics of Naval and Marine carrier and land-based combat operations included in this report. Table 1 breaks down the data between land-based and carrier operations, and between Navy and Marine aviation; Table 2 consolidates the data by plane model without reference to base or arm of service.

A further breakdown of the carrier figures by type of carrier will be found in Table 8.

Table 1 shows the overall combat effort exerted by Naval Aviation: 284,073 sorties engaging in attacks or aerial combat, or both, and 102,917 tons of bombs, torpedoes and mines expended on targets. Of these totals the carrier forces held a slight edge in number of action sorties, while land-based aviation (with a lesser proportion of fighters to bombers) held a slight advantage in bomb tonnage.

58% of the combat effort, about 165,000 sorties out of 284,000, was by planes attached to Navy units. From carriers, 98% was by Naval planes; from land bases 84% was by Marine aircraft. Of the Navy’s share of the land-based action sorties, about 40% were flown by VPB, the remainder by carrier squadrons temporarily based ashore in emergency or when opportunities for carrier employment were lacking, and by a few land-based Naval support squadrons employed in 1943 and early 1944.

The overall loss rate for Navy and Marine aircraft on action sorties was 1.5 percent. Of the losses on action sorties, 47 percent resulted from enemy antiaircraft, 21 percent from combat with enemy aircraft and 32 percent from operational causes. The loss rate on action sorties by carrier aircraft was 2.0 percent (49% to antiaircraft, 16% to enemy aircraft, and 35% operational causes). The action loss rate for land-based aircraft was only 1.0 percent of sorties; this difference reflects the greater employment of carrier aircraft against heavily defended advanced targets, while a major employment of land-based planes was in clean-up operations against by-passed enemy bases or secondary targets.

Operational losses of Naval and Marine aircraft on flights not involving action (but made by squadrons having other action during the same month) were 3,045 in number; these are chargeable against an estimated 600,000 non-action flights by these squadrons, indicating an operational loss rate of about 0.5 percent on the patrol and search missions which made up the bulk of this non-action flying by combat squadrons. 1313 planes attached to the same squadrons were lost to enemy action or in accidents while not in flight. More detailed analyses of loss rates, for the years 1944 and 1945 only, are given in Tables 9 and 16 of this report.

Over ten enemy aircraft were shot down by Naval and Marine aircraft for each loss in air combat. The great bulk of the destruction of enemy aircraft in aerial combat is credited to the F6F, which shot down 5,163 enemy planes (56% of the total for Naval aviation) in exchange for 270 air combat losses, or over 19 enemy planes destroyed per loss in air combat. The F4U was second, with 2,140 enemy planes to its credit, the F4F, FM, and PB4Y following next in order with 915, 422 and 306 respectively. Only 355 enemy planes were shot down by all other types of naval aircraft combined. It may be noted that all types of bombers combined shot down 650 enemy planes, and lost 243 in combat, a superiority of over 2.5 to 1, evidencing superior equipment, tactics, and gunnery training. Less than 1/5 of one percent of all naval bomber sorties attacking or engaging the enemy were shot down by energy aircraft. (Most of these were in the early stages of the war, as Table 21 will indicate).

For carrying the maximum weight of explosives against the enemy the TBF (and TBM) aircraft was the Navy’s workhorse. Flying only 16 percent of the total action sorties, it delivered 32 percent of the total tonnage (plus 29% of all rockets expended on targets; see Table 50). Dive bombers accounted for 34% of total bomb tonnage, but in a 58% greater number of action sorties than the VTB flew. Fighters, flying over 50% of all action sorties, delivered only 22% of total bomb tonnage; only 30% of this (or 16% of total carrier bomb tonnage) was dropped by carrier-based fighters, which flew nearly 60% of all carrier action sorties. Fighters, however, fired over 138,000 rockets at targets, two-thirds of the Navy total, and fired offensively over 50,000,000 rounds of ammunition, which was also over two-thirds of the total for Naval aviation.

Patrol bombers, flying 6% of the Navy’s action sorties, dropped 12% of the bomb tonnage. Half of these sorties and nearly two-thirds of this tonnage is credited to Marine PBJ attack bombers. The Navy VPB, being primarily search planes, seldom carried or used their maximum bomb loads, and engaged in action against the enemy on only a small fraction of their missions.