Best Pacific Fighter?

Best Pacific Fighter?

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cheddar cheese said:
Looks like this poll is stabilizing a bit now. Im surprised the Hellcat doesnt have more votes.
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The Hellcat was made to defeat the Zero, which it did very well. It was tough and it was easy to fly from carriers, but it was not a match for the F4U or the P-51 or even the Frank or George.

=S=

Lunatic
 
Lunitic, nice to see you. When we talk of Aircraft and have left off the P-47 or feel that the P-38 lost the glory to the F4F or F6F please remember that there were US aircraft fighting in India, Burma and China even before 1941. That yes they were mostly P-40s, but the AVG did have P-47 and P-51s latter in the war. As for the IJA they were fighting in China and in support of operations aginst Port Morsby. So please remember that the Pacific was not just the big carrier battles!

P-47s flew off carriers in support of Sipian and were very well liked.
 
I say the N1J , it was quite strong , and had some good armament , in the form of 4 20mm's ( I think ) . it was originally a floatplane i think but they desided it was better as a fighter .
 
Yeomanz said:
I say the N1J , it was quite strong , and had some good armament , in the form of 4 20mm's ( I think ) . it was originally a floatplane i think but they desided it was better as a fighter .
Click to expand...

Those 4 x 20mm's were powerful, but fired slow at 490 rpm. The Army's Ho-5 however, fired a smaller round but at a high Rof of ~800 rpm.

type round prj. wt RoF mv ke/s
Ho-5 (Type 2) 20 x 94 96 750-850 715 43.0
Type 99-2 20 x 101RB 128 490 750 30.7

From the data above you can see that the Army's Ho-5 was probably the better gun, certainly for fighter combat. It's 96 gram round does not hit quite as hard, but it put out about 2/3rds more volume of fire. Comparing the George's 4 x Type 99-II's to the Frank Ib's 4 x Ho-5's, this is a huge difference. The George would put out 32 rounds per second, the Frank would put out about 53 rounds per second.

But the real issue is the planes themselves. All the info we have from Allied pilots says the Frank was the most feared Japanese fighter of the late Pacific war. And there were a lot more Franks built than George's.

Oh, and even as a float plane the George was always a "fighter".

=S=

Lunatic
 
GermansRGeniuses said:
It was the first aircraft to defeat the Zero in all areas: manoverability, armor (what didn't?), speed, armament, range...


Who said this?

Why, none other than the Zero's designer...
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Was it really more manoeverable? I thought the Zero was the most manoeverable plane of the war...
 
The Zero was very manuverable - at about 180 IAS. By 225 it was getting very stiff, by 250 it was a total dog.

Starting with the F6F, US fighters were designed to simply fly faster than the Zero could be competitive. The F6F was simply designed to fight at speeds of 250-275 IAS, which was sufficient to ensure it had all the advantages over the Zero. All the Zero could do was turn, and in doing so it lost speed and energy, giving even more advantage to the enemy who would simply zoom off and come around for another high speed pass. The Zero's were pretty much helpless as long as the Allied pilot did not actually slow down and try to turn with them and stay on their six.

The F4U was a carrier plane, it just took a while (and some innovation by the Brits) to develop the techniques needed to use it effectively as such. By late 1944, the Corsairs were operating off Carriers quite effectively.

=S=

Lunatic
 
I was gonna say about the Zero only really manouvering at low speeds, which is why you never get into a low level turning dogfight with one, you wont win..............
 
dude your name makes do difference ot a dogfight, if anything the extra paint used to paint your name on the side of a plane only slows you down...................
 
The Zero was very good, but the Ki-84, and Ki-64 were better and designed for higher speed and had the armor to fight. Also remember that by 1943 the IJN had lost its carrier force and the Navy was not building carrier aircraft as fast as Army planes. Home deffence was most important.
 
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