Japanese aircraft were behind in timing to Allied aircraft.

Shortround6 · Jul 20, 2023

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
Well, I think that is part of the 'who has a better aircraft industry' debate. They probably should have made a dedicated recon plane. The F-4 and Pe-2R and Bf 110 all did rather poorly in the recon role for a variety of reasons. The Germans and Italians were definitely suffering for a lack of an aircraft like this in the MTO.

Recon is really the first mission of military aircraft, prior to sputnik at least.

There is a Soviet pilot who was supposed to have photographed 20 Eastern Europe cities using an A-20. Granted a lot of German Allies didn't have the best air defense but I would like to see why the F-4, Pe-2R and Bf 110 did so poorly? Compared to what?

A Lockheed F-4 was supposed to be able to cruise at 310-340mph between 20,000-30,000ft while carrying drop tanks and using around 130 gph.
Max cruise with tanks was 350mph and used around 180gph.
the drop tanks were worth 20-30mph depending on altitude and speed.

Wild_Bill_Kelso · Jul 20, 2023

Shortround6 said:
There is a Soviet pilot who was supposed to have photographed 20 Eastern Europe cities using an A-20. Granted a lot of German Allies didn't have the best air defense but I would like to see why the F-4, Pe-2R and Bf 110 did so poorly? Compared to what?

A Lockheed F-4 was supposed to be able to cruise at 310-340mph between 20,000-30,000ft while carrying drop tanks and using around 130 gph.
Max cruise with tanks was 350mph and used around 180gph.
the drop tanks were worth 20-30mph depending on altitude and speed.

Just a combination of issues with getting shot down a lot, as recon planes typically did, and teething issues which seemed to plague some especially the F-4. The French Bloch 174 seems to have been an unusually successful design in the sense that for whatever reason, the Germans didn't shoot that many down during it's (brief) operational period. They only lost three of them.

PR flights on either side in the Med were almost seemingly a death sentence. Pacific was slightly more forgiving because the crazy unpredictable weather often provided opportunites for even slow ungainly aircraft like flying boats to escape.

They did lose a lot of Ki-46, but not perhaps as many as the US really needed them to lose, and the JAAF were able to get recon photos quite often. Maybe somebody knows the relevant loss rates.

One issue with the Ki-46 is that unusually for a Japanese plane, it was not maneuverable. A Mosquito, F-4 or a Bloch 174 still had a chance to evade a fighter if they were intercepted, the Ki-46 was basically doomed if it got caught.

Shortround6 · Jul 20, 2023

For the Ki-46 there may (or may not?) have been some manufacturing difficulties.

They built 1093 of the Ki-46 IIs from 1940 to 1944
They built 609 of the Ki-46 III from 1942(?) to 1945 and that includes fighter conversions.
They only completed the 2 prototype IIIs in Dec of 1942.
Apparently there was a problem with with fuel injection on the engines used in the III which did not get fully sorted out at first but mostly affected performance above 8,000 meters.

eagledad · Jul 20, 2023

Gentlemen

As to the speed of the B-25A, please see the following:

B-25 History Project

B-25A-NA Mitchell bomber technical specifications and history

b-25history.org

Eagledad

The A and B versions appear to be the fastest, the C and D versions are in the 270-280 range.

Edited speed range from 260 to 270.

Shortround6 · Jul 20, 2023

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
The French Bloch 174 seems to have been an unusually successful design in the sense that for whatever reason, the Germans didn't shoot that many down during it's (brief) operational period. They only lost three of them.

Maybe because they didn't fly many of them.
Wiki claims that the 50th airframe came off the line in May of 1940. Getting the planes from the factory to operational unit and getting them into the air on a mission means they had less ( a lot less?) than 50 to actually fly operations with.

BarnOwlLover · Jul 20, 2023

I'm comparing recon aircraft to recon aircraft--and note that this is concurrent. And again, I have to agree with SR6 over the Japanese being a year or two behind as far as their best being behind the Allies' best

I also have a thread talking about/asking about recon aircraft (mainly tactical recon, but still recon), and the reason why the RAF relied so much on the Spitfire, Mustang and Mosquito (depending on role, and the first two were converted fighters, with the Mustang and some Spitfires usually operating as an armed fighter/recon aircraft) was to keep losses low. Early attempts at recon aircraft did result in heavy losses. The RAF in their first 18 months of use lost only 8 Mustangs on Rhubarb raids, which often featured armed recon raids). I think that's a pretty good record given how hazardous such low altitude raids were.

And also, the USAAF didn't have a dedicated (non-fighter or -bomber based) recon plane until post war with the F-15/RF-61.

Even the German's Ju-86P/R high altitude recon plane was based on the Ju-86 bomber, and the Ju-188 recon/Ju-388L recon planes were based on the "schnellbomber" variants of those aircraft.

And, again, it does seem that the IJA and IJN were about a year or two behind the USAAF and RAF ultimately in almost every aviation field. That's not nationalism or westernism speaking. It's stats, performance and effectiveness at the end of the day. There were hurdles that the Japanese simply couldn't overcome at the time. And time certainly wasn't on their side, either, once the Allies gained the initiative.

Wild_Bill_Kelso · Jul 20, 2023

BarnOwlLover said:
I'm comparing recon aircraft to recon aircraft--and note that this is concurrent. And again, I have to agree with SR6 over the Japanese being a year or two behind as far as their best being behind the Allies' best

I also have a thread talking about/asking about recon aircraft (mainly tactical recon, but still recon), and the reason why the RAF relied so much on the Spitfire, Mustang and Mosquito (depending on role, and the first two were converted fighters, with the Mustang and some Spitfires usually operating as an armed fighter/recon aircraft) was to keep losses low. Early attempts at recon aircraft did result in heavy losses. The RAF in their first 18 months of use lost only 8 Mustangs on Rhubarb raids, which often featured armed recon raids). I think that's a pretty good record given how hazardous such low altitude raids were.

They routinely used Hurricanes in the Med for PR and almost every one of them seems to have been shot down. So were most of the Spit IV etc.

BarnOwlLover said:
And also, the USAAF didn't have a dedicated (non-fighter or -bomber based) recon plane until post war with the F-15/RF-61.

Even the German's Ju-86P/R high altitude recon plane was based on the Ju-86 bomber, and the Ju-188 recon/Ju-388L recon planes were based on the "schnellbomber" variants of those aircraft.

And, again, it does seem that the IJA and IJN were about a year or two behind the USAAF and RAF ultimately in almost every aviation field. That's not nationalism or westernism speaking. It's stats, performance and effectiveness at the end of the day. There were hurdles that the Japanese simply couldn't overcome at the time. And time certainly wasn't on their side, either, once the Allies gained the initiative.

I think you can only believe this if you started out believing it.

A6M and Ki-43 clearly were not behind and were in fact highly competitive with the best US and European designs up to 1943. What do I base this on? They shot the British and US fighters down at a quite high rate. Even when you get into F4U etc. we can see the numbers were still pretty equal. Only the F6F seems to have had a notable advantage. And US and British types which faced both German and Japanese (like the P-39, Hurricane, P-40, Spitfire Mk V) did about the same in the Pacific vs MTO and Russian front. Which to me implies equivalency.

The early war Japanese types were not as heavily armed, but they had the range needed for their Theaters.

The N1K1, Ki-61, Ki-44, and Ki-84 were all clearly competitive with foreign equivalents. They just didn't make enough of them and / or had too much trouble maintaining them in Tropical conditions.

G4M, despite all the alleged defects, compares quite well to equivalent Allied, German and Italian bomber types of this period. It was a very effective ship-killer.

Ki-46 was at least the second best recon plane in the world.

B7A was certainly the best naval strike aircraft design in the war, and probably until 1947.

Reluctant Poster · Jul 20, 2023

BarnOwlLover said:
I'm comparing recon aircraft to recon aircraft--and note that this is concurrent. And again, I have to agree with SR6 over the Japanese being a year or two behind as far as their best being behind the Allies' best

I also have a thread talking about/asking about recon aircraft (mainly tactical recon, but still recon), and the reason why the RAF relied so much on the Spitfire, Mustang and Mosquito (depending on role, and the first two were converted fighters, with the Mustang and some Spitfires usually operating as an armed fighter/recon aircraft) was to keep losses low. Early attempts at recon aircraft did result in heavy losses. The RAF in their first 18 months of use lost only 8 Mustangs on Rhubarb raids, which often featured armed recon raids). I think that's a pretty good record given how hazardous such low altitude raids were.

And also, the USAAF didn't have a dedicated (non-fighter or -bomber based) recon plane until post war with the F-15/RF-61.

Even the German's Ju-86P/R high altitude recon plane was based on the Ju-86 bomber, and the Ju-188 recon/Ju-388L recon planes were based on the "schnellbomber" variants of those aircraft.

And, again, it does seem that the IJA and IJN were about a year or two behind the USAAF and RAF ultimately in almost every aviation field. That's not nationalism or westernism speaking. It's stats, performance and effectiveness at the end of the day. There were hurdles that the Japanese simply couldn't overcome at the time. And time certainly wasn't on their side, either, once the Allies gained the initiative.

The F-15 was fighter based. The first 2 prototypes were converted from a P-61 E and a P-61C. It actually used the same fuselage as the P-61E. The Republic XF-12 was designed from scratch as a recon aircraft.

GrauGeist · Jul 20, 2023

We've strayed a bit from the core comment regarding how the Japanese were so far behind Western designs.

What I find interesting, is that when the KI-46 or KI-83 is brought up, they're immediately waved off by the P-38 or Mosquito as being superior.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, the Japanese were not a European nation. They were not situated on a land mass, surrounded by other nations. They were a maritime Empire that was surrounded by vast expanses of water with little in the way of aerial opposition.

This created an entirely different set if needs for their naval and army air arms.

Once they were up against contemporary aircraft types, they adapted as best as their industry could manage.

The fact remains, though, that they were not "behind" or second rate.

Thumpalumpacus · Jul 20, 2023

BarnOwlLover said:
And also, the USAAF didn't have a dedicated (non-fighter or -bomber based) recon plane until post war with the F-15/RF-61.

That was based on the P-61.

ETA: RP got there first.

Wild_Bill_Kelso · Jul 20, 2023

eagledad said:
Gentlemen

As to the speed of the B-25A, please see the following:

B-25 History Project

B-25A-NA Mitchell bomber technical specifications and history

b-25history.org

Eagledad

The A and B versions appear to be the fastest, the C and D versions are in the 270-280 range.

Edited speed range from 260 to 270.

I stand corrected! Which versions were they using in the New Guinea area, do you know?

Just Schmidt · Jul 20, 2023

First, I'm d like to point out that I do not disagree that the Japanese were somewhat behind, though behind who exactly is a good question. Behind in some areas, a lot at times in a few, and somewhat on average.

Certainly not 3 years as was claimed in another thread.

There are a lot of reasons for this, some to do with philosophy, some to do with size, some to do with, well, reasons. In absolute terms, they fielded fewer of the best, however we may define the best, than the USA. On the other hand more than Holland, and arguably larger numbers of useful aircraft than the Italians.

In a few instances, they left everybody else behind. The Ki 46 is discussed above, I don't see that as really behind, even if the mosquito may be better soon, and nobody else wanted to spend resources on 'just' a recon aircraft.

The world beating of the H8K cannot be disputed, and indeed I don't t remember anybody doing it. The floatplane fighters left everybody standing, if only because few else saw the point. And indeed the other power with a real need, might as well build another carrier instead and send it to wherever fighter cower was needed.

The Olga, MXY7, had no counterpart. I know it looks insane, but when you realize a conventional attack on a task force will claim 80 or 90 percent of the attacking planes, it makes sense to build a faster plane with less frontal area than whatever plane you can scrape together.

Nobody else built it, as they did not have the need and the desperation, still it's s not behind.

Built for a role nobody else saw the need to fill with a special design, no argument there.

That said, I don't think aircraft as the B6N were really behind, nor the D4Y-3.

EwenS · Jul 20, 2023

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
I stand corrected! Which versions were they using in the New Guinea area, do you know?

Started on C/D supplemented later by G/H before moving too -J in 1944. Take your pick.

Shortround6 · Jul 20, 2023

GrauGeist said:
They were a maritime Empire that was surrounded by vast expanses of water with little in the way of aerial opposition.

This needs a closer look.

Granted the Chinese did not have a lot in the way of an air force.
But any way that the Japanese wanted to expand was going to need aircraft.
And good aircraft were a way to move forces around their empire in very short periods of time.
Expecting the opposition to always have inferior or dated equipment is short sighted.
Now in 1939/40 what was world standard was pretty fuzzy.
Polish P.11
Italian Cr 42 and G 50
French MS 406 and so on.
It got a lot clearer in late 1940 and in 1941.

Summer of 1941 to Dec 1941 is not enough time to change much somebody was not paying attention in the Battle for France, the BoB and the Mediterranean/North Africa battles before the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, However the Japanese had fought Soviets for a number of months in 1939 and were having trouble with the Soviet 1939 aircraft.

Building bombers that carried under 1 ton of bombs and needed 5-8 men to do it and defended themselves with either Lewis guns or Lewis guns+25% were a poor return on investment no matter how well they may have performed against Chinese cities.

Just Schmidt · Jul 20, 2023

Just Schmidt said:
First, I'm d like to point out that I do not disagree that the Japanese were somewhat behind, though behind who exactly is a good question. Behind in some areas, a lot at times in a few, and somewhat on average.

Certainly not 3 years as was claimed in another thread.

There are a lot of reasons for this, some to do with philosophy, some to do with size, some to do with, well, reasons. In absolute terms, they fielded fewer of the best, however we may define the best, than the USA. On the other hand more than Holland, and arguably larger numbers of useful aircraft than the Italians.

In a few instances, they left everybody else behind. The Ki 46 is discussed above, I don't see that as really behind, even if the mosquito may be better soon, and nobody else wanted to spend resources on 'just' a recon aircraft.

The world beating of the H8K cannot be disputed, and indeed I don't t remember anybody doing it. The floatplane fighters left everybody standing, if only because few else saw the point. And indeed the other power with a real need, might as well build another carrier instead and send it to wherever fighter cower was needed.

The Olga, MXY7, had no counterpart. I know it looks insane, but when you realize a conventional attack on a task force will claim 80 or 90 percent of the attacking planes, it makes sense to build a faster plane with less frontal area than whatever plane you can scrape together.

Nobody else built it, as they did not have the need and the desperation, still it's s not behind.

Built for a role nobody else saw the need to fill with a special design, no argument there.

That said, I don't think aircraft as the B6N were really behind, nor the D4Y-3.

Wrote that on my phone, should know better...

GrauGeist · Jul 20, 2023

Just Schmidt said:
Wrote that on my phone, should know better...

Welcome to my world!

Wild_Bill_Kelso · Jul 20, 2023

Shortround6 said:
This needs a closer look.
View attachment 730538
Granted the Chinese did not have a lot in the way of an air force.
But any way that the Japanese wanted to expand was going to need aircraft.
And good aircraft were a way to move forces around their empire in very short periods of time.
Expecting the opposition to always have inferior or dated equipment is short sighted.
Now in 1939/40 what was world standard was pretty fuzzy.
Polish P.11
Italian Cr 42 and G 50
French MS 406 and so on.
It got a lot clearer in late 1940 and in 1941.

Summer of 1941 to Dec 1941 is not enough time to change much somebody was not paying attention in the Battle for France, the BoB and the Mediterranean/North Africa battles before the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, However the Japanese had fought Soviets for a number of months in 1939 and were having trouble with the Soviet 1939 aircraft.

Building bombers that carried under 1 ton of bombs and needed 5-8 men to do it and defended themselves with either Lewis guns or Lewis guns+25% were a poor return on investment no matter how well they may have performed against Chinese cities.

Encounters with the Soviet aircraft are what prompted the Japanese to start relying more on their own designs than on what they could get from Europe. Like the pretty but not very effective Fiat BR 20 bombers.

The question for 1940-41 is could a Spit V, Hurricane II, Bf 109F, Bf 110C /D, LaGG-3, Yak -1, P-39, P-40, MC 200, MC 202 etc. do well in the region. In my opinion no they could not. In some of these cases we know for sure that they didn't.

I think the crux of this debate lies in measuring the Japanese by a Battle of Britain + 8th Air Force bomber offensive yardstick. Both in terms of mission and operational theater, and in terms of time periods.

Shortround6 · Jul 20, 2023

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
I don't think the B-25 is bad, to the contrary I think it turned out to be a very verstatile design, but it was not really built for speed. No turrets wasn't real as far as a US combat design. It certainly ended up being a very effective strafer and low-level bomber.

If you have data showing that the B-25A as deployed in the Pacific made 300 mph, I'll stand corrected.

But I give the Ju 88 the nod for this period (1941-43) basically due to the combination of payload, speed, range, and dive bombing ability.

Until they worked out the strafer masthead altitude bombing 'system' (which involved several aircraft playing different roles together) and things like parafrags et al... the B-25 just wasn't as good at destroying targets as a Ju 88 was. By later 1943 though I'd start to give the nod to the B-25 and A-20. And maybe the Martin 187.

They never deployed any of the B-25As
the B-25 peaked at about 15,000ft.
The B-25C/D in factory condition (upper turret and retracted lower turret) was good for 280mph at Max cruise (2400rpm) at 15,000ft, in low gear at 3000ft it was good for about 265mph at 2400rpm. Military power was 2600rpm.
If you are flying low level then, just like most other airplanes, you don't get to max speed.
In 1940 it was built for speed, but like many other aircraft, it wasn't quite fast enough to operate with minimal armament and changing conditions required more guns.

What the B-25 did have was the size and power to handle adaptation well.
The B-25 could hold about 3000lbs of bombs inside, not outside like the Ju-88 so the Ju-88s speed is something of an illusion. at least on the approach.
B-25s carried about 558imp gallons of fuel in the wings, vs the JU-88 blocking off 2/3rds of the bomb bay to get a bit over 600 imp gallons.
So the Ju-88s range is also a bit of an illusion. Jam it full of fuel and it could go quite a distance, but then all the bombs are outside and the drag goes up.
JU-88 also had up to four of it's guns manned by one man so actual fire power is also an illusion.
B-25s that ditched the lower turret got and additional fuel tank.

Shortround6 · Jul 20, 2023

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
I think the crux of this debate lies in measuring the Japanese by a Battle of Britain + 8th Air Force bomber offensive yardstick. Both in terms of mission and operational theater, and in terms of time periods.

So don't measure it by 8th Air force standards.

Japanese bombers couldn't carry much for bomb loads and carried crap for defensive guns.
Standard Japanese Navy defensive gun.

I am not joking when I say it is a Lewis gun. Except for the trigger guard it is 99% Lewis gun.
At least the British tried twin mounts in WW I.
Standard JAAF defensive gun.

fires the same round at 750rpm instead of 600 but uses a 69 round drum instead of 97 rounds.
They used up a lot of man power for little on the ground results and for large losses in the air.

Now the thing with aircraft design is how big do you make the fuselage to hold 2-3 men whose only job is to use these popguns?
Either make the bomber smaller and faster and use a 3-4 man crew or put in enough guns to at least make some attempt at fighting (If B-17s couldn't do it then nothing the Japanese could do was going work, but they didn't even try)
British gave up on daylight bombing in 1939 when Wellingtons with two twin power turrets with 1200rpm belt feed guns could not hold off German fighters. about 3 years before the first 8th Air force mission.

Japanese got better later in the war but that is more than damning with faint praise.

Wild_Bill_Kelso · Jul 20, 2023

Yeah but didn't a very large number of bombers in 1940-42 have Vicker's or Lewis guns?

Japanese aircraft were behind in timing to Allied aircraft.

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