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My understanding was that the "beginning of the end" for the IJN were the Battles of Midway and Guadacanal. I don't dispute that the the F6F and F4U sped the destruction of the IJN (and IJAAF in New Guinea), but arguably pilots flying the P-40, P-39/P-400 and F4F paved the way.
In particular, after Midway and Guadacanal, the Japanese supply chain was never as secure as it should have been, so Japanese planes and pilots never got the support they really needed. Japanese policy towards its pilots was also, quite frankly, brutal, which didn't help matters either. All that led to a loss of effectiveness.
But, then maybe that's too much revisionist history on my part.
What is indisputably is that by 1944, when the the F6F and F4U really sealed their reputations, the Japanese were desperate and there was just no comparison between pilot quality and technical support. But, I say that without meaning to detract from the reputation of either plane, or the men who flew them. I think that you're right that 1943 was the year that the tide really turned, and both the F6F and F4U helped to do do that.
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The Guadalcanal campaign didn't end until late spring/early summer of 1943, after the first several squadrons of Corsairs had deployed. Combined with Midway, the cream of the IJN's fighter force were eliminated, but Rabaul remained a menace in the Solomons into the following spring of 1944, due in part to the IJA's addition to the mix there. In addition, the IJN's carrier forces were still formidable; they gave the USN a pretty good thumping at Santa Cruz in '43, which led to our being a lot more cautious until the new carriers got in-theater in late summer '43.
The arrival of the new fast carriers equipped with the significantly superior Hellcat, coupled with the land-based Corsairs along the Solomon chain is what tipped the scales.
I'll give plenty of credit to the P-40 and P-38 (which entered combat in New Guinea in November of 1942), but the P-39 was a disaster in the Southwest Pacific. Poor support, bad documentation and poorly prepared pilots and maintenance personnel rushed to the theater doomed it and ruined its reputation, regardless of its capabilities on paper. It was almost strictly a ground support aircraft in the Pacific the moment a viable alternative became available.
The P-40 and the Wildcats gave the USN and USAAF parity at best, and the P-38s were never available in adequate numbers anywhere until the middle of1944. The F6F and the F4U (which had its own production issues early on) were the keys to the turn around.
cheers
horseback