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IL-4 can make the trip easy but is best confined to night bombing
I doubt that there would many in the Japanese leadership who would ever think of taking on the USA and Russia at the same time.
RICHARD OVERY: Again there's a long list. If I had to choose one I think it's the Japanese decision to attack the United States in 1941. You read the discussions about it, the fact that everybody knew that it is nonsense and it shouldn't be done, the fact that the Emperor can't intervene sufficiently to say this is nonsense, 'please don't do it' and so on. The fact that the naval leadership has this exaggerated sense of honour to the nation, all of these things feed into a decision which is fundamentally irrational, and most of the people who were interviewed after the war by American interrogators can read between the lines, and you can see that they think this was an irrational decision. Yes, it was the wrong decision. If they'd acted differently the Japanese might have extracted more in the end.
The Yak-9U was not fielded in thousands, the unreliable engine being the major hurdle. The Japanese did have the Nakajima Homare in fighters, not the most reliable engine, but aganin not that troublesome as the late Klimov engines.
The engine in Mitsubishi Raiden was reliable, far more than late Shvetsovs and Klimovs? Homare being as reliable as those Soviet engines?
The engine in the Raiden was as unreliable as others installed in advanced Japanese fighter.
Alejandro, do we have the numbers that would address the reliability issue, like how many work hours the engines would stand before overhaul? Yakovlyev was going through trouble to redesign the Yak-3 to accept the ASh-82, that would point us that late Klimovs were really problematic.
I'm especially interested in this.
At high revs vibrations were too strong. It also produced too much smoke and the fuel injectors were unreliable.
Any luck in pointing me to the good source about Mitsubishi Kasei?
Now to the topic's subject: the Soviets had indisputable advantage over the Japanese in aircraft development and production during WWII. While the Japanese were starting to produce the Ki-84 in 1944, the Soviets already had thousands of Lavochkins, which was a similar plane.They also already had much more Yaks, the Yaks 1 and 7 were better than the Zero and the Ki-43, and the Yak-3 and the 9U (perhaps the 9D also), were equal or superior to the Ki-84 (actually in theory, the Ki-84 was one plane in theory, other in practice due to it's engine problems).
I should say in spite of being from Russia I appreciate Japanese designs. On paper Ki-84 (and naval Siden) are better planes than La-5FNs and equal to La-7, and Ki-61-II Ki-100 is equal to late Yak-9's. All japanese fighters (both naval and army) had as a rule better endurance than soviet with stricly comparible (and for some fighters better) performance.
In terms of interceptors, I think the Mig-3 was comparable to the Ki-44, while the J2M was superior to both of them.
Production of Mig-3 was ceased early in war. Industry hadn't got capacities to produce simultanously engines both for Il-2 and Mig-3.
In terms of strike aircraft total Soviet advantage, the IL2 cannot be compared to the Ki-51.
Yes, but Il-2 is a special aircraft and in many air forces its role was played by fighter-bombers and light and dive bombers.
In terms of bombers, the Soviets had a much larger quantity of modern bombers produced. The Pe-2 was a very good bomber, and it also could dive bombing, it was an aircraft that would give the Japanese fighters a lot of troube if they had to deal with it. The P1Y was comparable to the Pe-2, but arrive too much late. The Tu-2 had the Ki-67 as a comparable Japanese model, but in terms of production the Tu-2 surpassed the Japanese plane.
The Japanese had adequated personal and technology to have better planes. Unfornately for them, their senior officers prevented the country to have projects in the same level as the ones from the West and Russia in adequated time.
I should say that Japanese industry in some areas concerned air force surpassed SU industry. For example Japanese designed more powerful air-cooled engines, and only destruction of some factories prevented them to start production Mitsubishi 2200 hp engines, 1900 hp engine on Ki-67 hadn't got a soviet equivalent etc.
As for matter of durability - as far as know - Vk 107 (M 107) didn't reach a maturity in terms of durability until the end of the war (reports of enf of 1944- the beginning of 1945 are a bit optimistic).
As for ASh-82FN - the engine became truly reliable only in batches produced in autumn 1945 and aircrafts (late batches of La-7) with those engines installed didn't take part in fights.
In 1944 it seemed that all the problems with overhitting, oil leakage and burnout of cylinders were solved but as it appearred only on La-5FN. With redisignd oil cooling system on La-7 the same problems returned and were sold finally only with some changes in design including re-forming of cylinder barrels.
By january 1943 the VK-107 tested had a life of 50 hours*. Usually a VK-105 would be send for overhaul after 100 hours. VK-107 issues were that it tended to overheat in first series, and limited the type's performance. By late 1944 it (Yak-9U) was described as extremely reliable and simple to operate. In Stepanets book you can find a chapter on the type, and the work done to solve the issues.