2nd best fighter under 4,000 lbs (empty)?

The Zero beats them all, but which is second best ww2 fighter weighing under 4,000 lbs. empty? These would include the following:

• Koolhoven F.K.58
• Fokker D.XXI
• Heinkel He 100
• Curtiss-Wright CW-21
• Caudron C.714
• Ambrosini SAI.207
• Polikarpov I-16
• Dewoitine D.500
• Gloster Gladiator
• Fiat CR.42
• Nakajima Ki-27
• Mitsubishi A5M
• PZL P.24

Apparently the Ambrosini when first flown in 1940 was well regarded as very agile. Its 1941 follow-on had a top speed of nearly 400 mph, armed with two cannons and two mgs.

Why does it matter ?
A aircraft with no fuel, no ammo, AND no pilot, is sitting on the ground doing nothing.

tyrodtom said:

Why does it matter ?

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I would suggest that to you, it doesn't.

To me, I find it interesting when engineers and designers are pushed to the limits to make a fighter that is very light weight (both before and after adding fuel, ammunition and pilot) whilst still expected to mix it with much heavier and more powerful fighters. It's about doing the most with the least, same for Walter Günter, Erich Schatzki et al as it was Jiro Horikoshi.

It is a rather arbitrary list.
The He 100 barely makes the list (or might not)
many of these are low production or little more than prototypes.

a few are in a whole different class.

The Caudron 714 went 4,145 lb fully loaded (Wiki, other sources may differ) and is hardly going to compete with a 5500lb loaded airplane.
and some are just old.


entered squadron service in 1935.

The information on the Ambrosini is suspect.

Some sources say the S.A.I 207 entered squadron service in July of 1943. or eight years after the D 500 making any comparison of the two types rather ludicrous.

the older planes were not built down to a weight but rather they were limited by the available power of the engines. a few of the later planes were deliberate attempts to make a light (read cheap) fighter and most, if not all of these, were dismal failures.

Admiral Beez said:

I would suggest that to you, it doesn't.

To me, I find it interesting when engineers and designers are pushed to the limits to make a fighter that is light weight (both before and after adding fuel, ammunition and pilot) whilst still expected to mix it with much heavier and more powerful fighters.[/QU[/QUOT

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Some of the aircraft on your list have gross weight under 4000 lbs.
A Zero coming back from a mission with a tired pilot, almost dry tanks, and no ammo, would be close to 4000 lbs, it'd probably get waxed by about any aircraft on that list

Admiral Beez said:

engineers and designers are pushed to the limits to make a fighter that is very light weight (both before and after adding fuel, ammunition and pilot) whilst still expected to mix it with much heavier and more powerful fighters.

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from your list the

• Polikarpov I-16
• Dewoitine D.500
• Gloster Gladiator
• Fiat CR.42
• Nakajima Ki-27
• Mitsubishi A5M
• PZL P.24

were NOT expected to mix it up with much heavier and more powerful fighters. They were the heavy and powerful fighters of their day. unfortunately for them their day had come and gone by the time WW II started.

• Polikarpov I-16 first flight 30 December 1933

Dewoitine D.500 first flight 18 June 1932

• Gloster Gladiator first flight 12 September 1934
• Fiat CR.42 first flight 23 May 1938
• Nakajima Ki-27 first flight 15 October 1936
• Mitsubishi A5M first flight 4 February 1935
• PZL P.24 first flight May 1933

Only the CR 42 was after 1936 or less than 3 years old when WW II started in Poland. Some were 6 years old. The two Japanese planes were being replaced in 1940-41 which shows they were NOT designed to mix it up with much heaver planes.

Fokker D XXI first flew 27 March 1936

B239

Two obvious additions are the Nakajima Ki-43 and the Messerschmitt Me 163. The Me 163 would certainly win any contest based on climb rate but isn't going to be effective as an escort fighter. The Ki-43 in its initial versions lacked structural strength and even without armour, the Ki-43 and the Zero needed thicker skinning to be able to follow enemy aircraft in a dive.

Edit: I checked and the Me 163 doesn't qualify. I was looking up the Ki-43 and I actually looked at the Mitsubishi J8M1 Shusai. The Japanese copy was well below 4,000 lbs empty but the German original was too heavy to qualify.

cherry blossom said:

Two obvious additions are the Nakajima Ki-43 and the Messerschmitt Me 163. The Me 163 would certainly win any contest based on climb rate but isn't going to be effective as an escort fighter. The Ki-43 in its initial versions lacked structural strength and even without armour, the Ki-43 and the Zero needed thicker skinning to be able to follow enemy aircraft in a dive.

Edit: I checked and the Me 163 doesn't qualify. I was looking up the Ki-43 and I actually looked at the Mitsubishi J8M1 Shusai. The Japanese copy was well below 4,000 lbs empty but the German original was too heavy to qualify.

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I have to give credit to the Japanese for getting such weaponry into such a lightweight machine. But the Mitsubishi J8M1 would have trouble taking on any of the aircraft on the list. Looking at Wikipedia, it's 434 mph cruise speed is faster than them all, though the 420 mph Heinkel He 100 comes close. Once the J8M1 becomes a glider, the Gloster Gladiator or any of the obsolete lightweights can take it on.

Admiral Beez said:

I have to give credit to the Japanese for getting such weaponry into such a lightweight machine. But the Mitsubishi J8M1 would have trouble taking on any of the aircraft on the list. Looking at Wikipedia, it's 434 mph cruise speed is faster than them all, though the 420 mph Heinkel He 100 comes close. Once the J8M1 becomes a glider, the Gloster Gladiator or any of the obsolete lightweights can take it on.

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Once the J8M1 used it's fuel it may become a glider, but it's going to be a mighty fast glider, and very agile with all that wing area and no weight.
But it'd probably be combated the same way the Allies did the ME-163, catch it when it was approaching the landing field.
Just not too close because the landing field itself had heavy AA defenses.

tyrodtom said:

Just not too close because the landing field itself had heavy AA defenses.

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Japanese AA, while dangerous, was nowhere near as dangerous as German AA. In part due to sheer numbers. The Japanese came nowhere near producing the amount of AA guns the Germans did. Granted they didn't have the East Front sinkhole to lose many of them in.

The Japanese light AA guns also just weren't that good. Small magazines, low rates of fire (and the small magazines meant practical rate of fire was much lower than the cyclic rate of fire)
manual traverse and elevation, poor sights, excessive vibration (especially on the multiple mounts).

Basically you had whatever RCMGs could be scrounged up and mounted on a pintle mount.
The Army had no heavy machine guns unless some airfields had some spare Ho-103 guns on crude mounts.
The Army had a single barrel 20mm gun in small numbers (2500 built during the war?) with a 20 round box magazine and a low rate of fire.
The Army then jumps to a 75mm AA gun.

The navy had the RCMGs plus the 13mm Hotchkiss guns. fired slower than a US ground .50 cal gun (about 7-8rps) and was fed with 30 round box magazines.
Then the Hotchkiss 25mm AA guns and a few old British 2pdr pompoms and copies. Then the usual 75mm type AA guns.
The US did loose quite a number of planes to Japanese AA fire but the numbers could have been much worse if the Japanese had even halfway decent 37-40mm guns in numbers.

Actual effective ranges for most of this stuff was a lot closer to 1000yds/meters than the book 3000-4000 meters. The shells would fly even further but the time of flight means your are trying to aim a number of seconds ahead of where the airplane is at those long ranges.