Why are there no statistics on how many ships were sunk by carriers in Ww2?

Upvote:-1

Since you're asking why, I'll give the explanation that will correlate with the answer of R Leonard:

When an air attack occurred in WW2, battle damage assessment was difficult: often, the attacker would send recon aircraft but he would not have total air domination and his recon aircraft could be prevented from achieving his duty correctly.

The result: most of the time pilot reports were the only available information and they were wrong, too exagerated.

When you're someone looking for information, it could be difficult to search for battle reports, that could be still classified. But it is way more easy to look after the losses, and why they were losses. This is also far more accurate since, if a ship is sunk, the navy has interest in recording it.

So, in order to find the information you search for, you'd rather to look for losses record and the reason they were lost. The only problem is that you could miss some damages inflicted to a ship by aircrafts if the ship is ultimately scuttled.

Upvote:3

There are a couple of places where one can dive into that sort of information. First there is the Japanese Monograph # 116 "The Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II – A Graphic Presentation of the Japanese Naval Organization and List of Combatant and Non-Combatant Vessels Lost or Damaged in the War,” produced in 1951. One version of this document can be found here. The lists of vessels . . . combatant vessels here and non-combatant vessels here provides information on the source of loss or damage from Japanese records. Unfortunately, unless you’ve a handle on carrier operations, the notation that this or that vessel was sunk by aircraft can be a little vague.

The other good source for this information is the “Japanese Naval and Merchant Shipping Losses During World War II by All Causes” prepared by the Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee circa 1947. This document can be found in a couple of places, for example, here or from here. This document is a little more forthcoming on “aircraft” usually noting where such were carrier based. Again, a knowledge of carrier operations, where and when is helpful. The Naval History Command presentation, with a little effort and thought, can be easily copied/pasted to spread sheets for data manipulation. Using something like that, you can get about 520 or so, naval and merchant, and another 50 or so in combination with surface vessels or land based aircraft.

Atlantic/German Navy sinkings by US carrier planes could probably be counted using both your hands and one of a friend's by tracing the various CVE cruises and operations by USS Ranger off north Africa and Norway.

Most of what you find in the JANAC report concerns vessels of 500 tons or more. Luggers, fishing boats, sampans, barges, etc are not listed. One finds such things in the Aircraft Action (ACA) reports where they are simply noted as, for example, ". . . and two luggers off point XYZ". When you ask about "ships" the USN made only specific note of vessels estimated as being 500 tons or more. The hard part in using ACAs for this type of information is that non-combatant types are rarely named but are referred to by classification, e.g., "Sugar-Baker-Charlie" or "Fox-Tare", etc which refer to the general construction type/profile. Warships were a different matter and were generally identifiable by name or class.

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