I didn't claimed that 8 .303s were ideal armament, though that kind of battery had it's good sides and proven to be a right choice for the early RAF fighters. Having the 2-3 times the duration of fire vs. the cannon with 60 rounds can make plenty when the enemy bomber must be stopped before reaching the carrier. Going through the 'Shattered Sword', the low cannon ammo count was highlighted as a serious shortcoming.
It was, even in Japanese memoirs that is often recalled. And it was addressed as by mid to late 1942 A6M2 and A6M3 were receiving a 100 drum magazines.
Thank you.
Looks like Kawasaki was able to come out with a fair product despite the inexperience with radial engined aircraft.
Yes, though the concept was a bit outdated and instead of escort fighter it was rearmed and reassigned as a night fighter or "bomber hunter". Nick was an interesting aircraft, rather a small size for a twin engine and decent power provided by engines gave it fairly good performance at the time of introduction.
But that is thanks to Takeo Doi, who proved to be a very good engineer having time to work around Ki-45, Ki-60, Ki-61, Ki-61-II and eventually Ki-100.
Shame we dont have any good books about Japanese engineers in english, you can find a lot of information about R. Mitchell, Willy Messerschmitt or Kurt Tank but except for Jiro Horikoshi, nothing can be found about other aeronautical designers. And they sure had some achievements in aviation. Also, reading about them would reveal some decisions and why they were made during design, testing and so on.
Of course such books exist, but are only available in Japanese language.
The whole fuselage does not need to be enlarged when replacing a radial with a little bigger radial, after all such major surgery was not needed when LaGG-3 become La-5, no when Ki-16 become Ki-100.
Yes, but that sacrificed some of the features LaGG had. In this case the power produced by the engine was sufficient to overcome the drag penalties and increased engine weight. Other thing that should be noted was the lack of range requirement, thus no additional fuel had to be carried. Zero on the other hand was expected to possess a specific range.
And yes, Ki-100 is a good example of an airframe designed over inline engine that was effectively replaced by radial. But in this case it was influenced by the analysis of FW-190 and employing this technology into existing design. Also Ki-100 in fact was lighter than Ki-61 as some of the added weight, particularly in the rear section of the fuselage to balance the aircraft and create a good Center of Gravity was removed in Ki-100. This still did not give anything more than achieving a similar performance - Ki-100 achieved top speed around 590 km/h while Ki-61-II 610 km/h (despite Ha-112 producing 50 HP more than used previously inline, Ha-140) and it had same time to altitude. Of course pilots praised the changes as machine was in this case lighter and very favorable flight characteristics were apparent.
Now look again at A6M8, 500 HP more gained giving no performance increase and decrease of flight characteristics.
Instead of simply trying to add more and more, I'd go for designing a new fighter aircraft built around 1500-1600 raidal engine. Such engines were available from mid or late 1942.
With what A6M5 sub-type? The one with drum fed cannons, the one with belt-fed cannons and more ammo, with or without HMGs and their ammo, the one with or without fire extinguishers, with or without protection?
There were no significant differences between A6M5 model 52, model 52a and model 52b - with second having thicker wing skin and carrying those 50 more rounds for cannons, and last one replacing a single 7.7 mm with 13.2 mm HMG. The performance changes were not as drastic as in regard to A6M5 model 52c which gained a lot of weight from incorporating additional two HMGs, armor, rocket racks, etc.
The Kinsei was direly needed to restore back the performance for the Zero having all the best features
No, it managed to restore the performance of the earlier A6M5s only while further decreasing flight characteristics. A6M8 weight almost 3800 kilograms, that is more than Ki-84 which was powered by a 2000 HP engine.
Is there a firm data on weight between A6M2, -3, -5 and -5c?
You mean the aircraft weight ? Or the fuel load weight ?
A6M2 carried less fuel, due to absence of outer wing fuel tanks but Sakae 11 consumed less fuel as well. The replacement of Sakae 11 with Sakae 21 (which had differently placed air intake for supercharger) resulted in reduction of amount of fuel carried by fuselage fuel tank, engine consumed more fuel and at the end A6M3 model 32 had shorter range while being a bit heavier.
But yeah, I got weight data. Quite detailed actually, what you need specifically |