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Well, here is another good picture of the V-143.
I realize that most of y''all are not engineers and that probably no one else here has worked in the Pentagon dealing with Technology Transfer issues and certainly has not testified before a Congressional Investigating Committee on the subject. But suffice to say, not copying a design rivet for rivet does not mean that you cannot derive considerable technical benefit from it., The A6M was a hell of a lot more like the V-143 than was the A5M, or for that matter, the TWENTY two seat export P-35's that the Japanese also bought.
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Not so sure it is racism. I might accuse Myflier of being incorrect, but not racism.Or, alternatively, Jiro Horikoshi was just a great aircraft designer who created one of the best fighter aircraft of the early 1940s without ANY significant contribution from the US aviation industry.
Given the different design constraints between a land-based fighter -vs- a carrier-based fighter, I struggle to see how the V143 could have such a marked impact on an airframe with a fundamentally different set of operating constraints. Oh...and the V143 had a maximum speed that was only 20 mph faster than the A5M which had entered service in 1936.
Personally, I find this sort of nationalistic racism reprehensible in this day and age. I could understand such excuses in the 1940s as pseudo-explanations for the relative poor performance of US aircraft against the Zero early in the war. The subtext in this day and age that the Japanese couldn't develop high-quality aircraft on their own is, frankly, ridiculous....and that's aside from the obvious attempt to diminish Horikoshi's design genius.
Not so sure it is racism. I might accuse Myflier of being incorrect, but not racism.
More likely repeated tales from several sources along with a superficial resemblance in the two aircraft. But, most single-engine radial fighters with a monoplane low wing resembled each other since all the same parts were being used.