World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE SKIES: The Basic Ratio

U.S. Army airmen destroyed 11,042 enemy aircraft on the world’s battlefronts during 1943, while 2,885 U.S. planes were lost—a basic ratio of 3.8-to-1.

The War Department, which used “extreme caution” in compiling these official figures, counted an additional 6,942 enemy planes as probably destroyed or damaged.

The ratio in various theaters (U.S. Navy figures are not included):

¶In Asia and the Southwest Pacific—6.5-to-1.

¶ In Alaska and the South and Central Pacific—2.8-to-1.

¶ In Western Europe—4.3-to-1.

¶In the Mediterranean—2.7-to-1.

The real meaning of these satisfactory figures was not always clear from the figures alone.

The differences between the ratios in different theaters show variations in the combat efficiency of the enemy as well as of U.S. air forces. Smart as the operations of General Chennault in China have been, and of General Kenney in New Guinea, their ratios might not have been so favorable had they been fighting the still tougher Luftwaffe in Western Europe.

In some cases the ratios have little to do with relative combat efficiency. If the enemy puts up little air opposition but the U.S. air force is active on dangerous missions—such as supporting ground troops in the Mediterranean, bombing a nest of antiaircraft in Rabaul, or flying in fog in the Aleutians—the ratios are deceptively unfavorable.

Where the ratios are largely based on actual air combat, they may also be deceptively encouraging. In Western Europe, for example, a large proportion of the U.S. losses were heavy bombers, each lost plane representing two to eight times as much plane and five to ten times as many men as the typical German fighter which made up the bulk of the enemy’s losses. Concealed in the ratios is the significant fact that 1,579 enemy planes were destroyed on the ground, as against 76 U.S. planes—strong evidence of how firmly the A.A.F. held the initiative last year.

The U.S. Navy, fighting a smaller-scale air war, has maintained an even wider ratio of superiority over the Japs. The Navy’s round figures, which do not include planes destroyed on the ground but do include planes shot down by ships’ antiaircraft fire:

¶Dec. 1941 and 1942—1,134 Japs to 384 U.S., a ratio of 2.9 to 1.

¶1943—2,212 Japs to 351 U.S., a ratio of 6.3 to 1.

¶End of Feb. 1944—970 Japs to 182 U.S., a ratio of 5.3 to 1.