Talk:No. 1 Wing RAAF

ex officio review
Ian flagged me in the diff message about this, so I figured he wanted someone to take a look for you. Overall it looks good. I have a few picky suggestions
 * first, I took the liberty of changing "larger" to "greater" in the lead. Larger is a size, greater is a number (higher would also have worked).
 * Despite the squadrons' veteran status, many of their most experienced pilots had been posted to other units by the time they left for Australia and only 37 of the 95 pilots in the Wing as at May 1943 had previously seen combat....the mixing of they (squadrons) and they (pilots) is confusing here.
 * complicated verb formations: Following its formation the wing undertook training in the Richmond area until late December 1942.  Following its formation, the wing trained...  This is a repeated problem.  You can find the rest.
 * WTF?: Its performance during these exercises was hindered by tensions between the Australian and British pilots which were exacerbated by the three squadrons being based at different airstrips. The geographic dispersal of three squadrons to other airstrips and tensions between Australian and British pilots hindered performance during training exercises. Is this what you mean?  Or are they two different contributors to poor performance?
 * The wing was ready for combat operations at the end of 1942 and was assigned responsibility for defending Darwin against Japanese air attacks. It departed Richmond in air, land and sea parties during January 1943.[12] No. 54 Squadron's air party left Richmond on 14 January and arrived at RAAF Station Darwin three days later, No. 452 Squadron arrived at Batchelor Airfield on 17 January and moved to Strauss Airfield on 1 February and No. 457 Squadron began operating from Livingstone Airfield on 31 January.[13][14] Conditions at Strauss and Livingstone were primitive and the hot and humid climate was oppressive. The region's remoteness also contributed to supply difficulties, and No. 1 Wing continually suffered from a shortage of spare parts for its Spitfires.[12] The wing's arrival improved the morale of Allied military units near Darwin and allowed the P-40 Kittyhawk-equipped No. 77 Squadron RAAF to be transferred from Darwin to Milne Bay in New Guinea.[8] No. 1 Wing first saw combat on 6 February 1943 when a Spitfire from No. 54 Squadron shot down a Mitsubishi Ki-46 "Dinah" reconnaissance aircraft near Darwin. Another Dinah overflew Darwin the next day but was not intercepted, and no further Japanese aircraft ventured into the area during the month.


 * The wing was ready for combat operations at the end of 1942, and assumed responsibility for the defence of Darwin against Japanese air attacks. It departed from Richmond in air, land and sea parties during January 1943: No. 54 squadron's air party left Richmond on 14 January.... No. 452 Squadron arrived at Batchelor Airfield on 17 January and moved to Strauss Airfield on 1 February (was this a land party?) and No 457 Squadron began operating from Livingstone Airfield on 31 January (this was the sea party?). Their arrival freed the No. 77 Squadron RAAF, with its P-40 Kittyhawks, were transferred from Darwin to Milne Bay in New Guinea. No. 1 Wing saw its first South Pacific combat on 6 February 1943, when a Spitfire from No. 54 Squadron shot down a Mitsubishi Ki-46 "Dinah" reconnaissance aircraft near Darwin. Another Dinah flew over Darwin the next day but was not intercepted, and no further Japanese aircraft ventured into the area during the month.  (there is a MOS somewhere about jargon).  The arrival of the squadrons also improved morale for the Allied military units near Darwin, where conditions were primitive, and the hot, humid climate oppressive. Distance from supply depots meant the No. 1 Wing continually suffered from a shortage of spare parts for the Spitfires.

I've gone through and made some additional copy edits in the following section.

the lead needs expansion to expand the controversy of ratio of kills to losses. I'll get back to this a bit later. Auntieruth55 (talk) 22:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot for those great comments and changes Ruth. I've just edited the article to simplify its prose and (hopefully) address your comments. I'm not sure that there was a controversy over the wing's ratio of kills and losses other than in regards to the 2 May raid - the significant number of other non-combat losses seems to have been regarded as fairly normal. Nick-D (talk) 07:16, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Overclaiming by Allied?
The article says that: ''By this time, the wing had been credited with 63 confirmed 'kills' and a further 13 probably destroyed. In exchange, it had lost 44 aircraft, though only 17 were due to Japanese action''

Frankly speaking, this is a wide exaggeration. All the sources i have indicates that Ki-43s shot down 2 Spitfire vs 1 loss, and the A6M shot down around 21 Spitfire vs only 3 (!) losses, atleast until the summer of 1943. How the numbers in wikipedia were manipulated to reach such level of 'success' is beyond my immagination. The 1 Wing RAAF is a subject well studied by only in Wikipedia you could find such optimistic values for its successes.

As example:

1- 2 march 1943: wiki states 4 japs losses, while i have only two (both by Caldwell)

2-15 march: wiki states 8 japs lost, while i have only 1 (one) japs. Zeros of 202 kokutai won.

3-2 may: wiki states 6-10 jap losses, but i have zero (0) losses, while RAAF lost 13-14 Spitfires (wiki states that 7 of them were repaired, i wonder if it is the case, as the reliability of Wikipedia in this case seems much to desire...)

4- 28-may: wiki says 3-1, while i have 3-2 for the RAAF.

5- 20 june: the biggest lie of all. Wiki says 14 kills for 2 Spitfire. The truth was that JAAF came with 18 Ki-21, 9 Ki-48 and 22 Ki-43-II. The japs had 1 Ki-21 and 1 Ki-43 lost, while the RAAF losses are confirmed.

6- 30 june: wiki says 6 bombers and 2 fighters. My sources says just 1 (one) G4M bomber was lost out 23 plus 27 A6Ms, and only at landing (when crashed). The RAAF losses matches with 6 shot down (but wiki says that 3 of them were lost for 'mishaps' or accidents, how not to believe this unusual rate of accident).

6- 6 july: of course wiki exaggerated claiming 9 kills for 7 losses for various causes. I have instead only 3 G4M (the overall formation was made of 22 G4M and 26 Zeros), and only 3 bombers were shot down, no Zero at all was lost. So even this was a victory for the Zero's despite the long range that they must fly to reach Australia, where the very short range Spit often exausted their fuel before landing...

7- the incursion of 11 november: wiki says 2 G4M but there was only one loss.

8- on the recce side, the 20 august only one of the 4 Ki-46 claimed was confirmed by japs.

9- the 7 september clash saw a Ki-46 escorted by Zeros, but the Spitfire, even being 48 in total, failed to breach the defense of 20 A6Ms, losing 3:1 the match against the Zeros, plus two damaged. What wiki says? 5:3 for the RAAF.

Apparently, it seems that wikipedia is relating to not checked sources about those engagements, taking for good about any claming made by RAAF. So, while the RAAF losses matched with my sources, the JAAF/JNAF are greatly inflated. Sadly to say, but still wikipedia have such parts in which nobody tries to extrapolate any serious fact cheking about the air operations, despite some others, like Bodenplatte are discussed ad nausea. I recommand much better research about those air operation over Australia, the argument is very interesting but the outcome propagandate by wikipedia is not credible or atleast, should be discussed, also becaus it's widely known how any AF in WWII made such large overclamings and RAAF surely did not fare any better than the other airforces. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.11.0.22 (talk) 22:54, 9 December 2016 (UTC)