Japanese aircraft were behind in timing to Allied aircraft.

There were other aircraft designs that didn't get to production either. One that was intended to keep parity with
Allied was the A7M. Four years in development and first flight in 1944. Never produced in numbers - canned and then
reactivated.

By 1944 newer planes were already in service with the USN, notably the Hellcat. The Hellcat was worked on
since 1938 as a replacement for the Wildcat which is an important fact since somebody was thinking well
ahead. It entered service in 1943 with a build total over 12,000. This is the difference. Most Japanese development
was delayed or taken on too late to be a factor so it didn't matter whether the design was better or not. By 1943
it was definitely behind.

While I do not want to be too harsh, some of the arguments being put forward re the 'Japanese aircraft were behind in timing to Allied aircraft' are quite spurious.

Part of the problem with making any valid comparison is the vague parameter (ie 'behind') of the OP along with its predetermined position (ie "Japanese aircraft were behind . . .").

Are we talking about inherent technical design of the airframe and/or engine and/or weapons?
Are we talking about inherent limitations on design due to lack of high grade fuels?
Are we talking about being behind due to limitation on industrial capacity?
Are we talking about the concept of the design and/or the planned mission of the aircraft?

Any argument based on the numbers produced is invalid, unless the inherent design or other technical aspects made the airframe significantly less producible compared to comparable Allied aircraft.

Any argument based on the aircraft not being able to meet the 'standard' of the comparable Allied aircraft, where the design was significantly impacted by the lack of high grade fuels, is also invalid or at least pointless as the conclusion is predetermined by Japan's historical lack of access to fuels above 87/93 grade. Unless you can answer the question of what would the Japanese designs have been capable of if they had the high grade fuels available in the same time frame as the Allies?

Any argument based on the timing of the entry into production or service of the aircraft - due to lack of industrial resources - is sort of pointless as again the conclusion is predetermined by Japan's historical lack of said industrial resources. In other words, of course Japanese aircraft were behind in timing to Allied aircraft, at least from shortly after the war started, as there was no way for them to get new designs into production/service as quickly as needed due to the Japanese industrial resources that were somewhere around 1/5 that of the US alone, and maybe 1/10 of the Western Allies?

If we are talking about concept of the design and/or the planned usage of the aircraft, unless you can show that the technical aspects of the design and/or the planned usage were invalid/obsolete there is no valid argument that can say a particular design was 'behind'. The only exceptions that I can think of would be where there is a distinct difference in technology (such as the turbo-supercharger, airborne radar, air dropped torpedo, jet engine technology, etc). Further, the difference in technology would have to actually have an effect on the mission the aircraft was designed for.


What if we phrased the OP as 'Allied aircraft were behind in timing to Japanese aircraft relative to fighting a war in the Far East'? How many of the arguments presented in this thread would make sense?

We could easily say that the Allies were

1. behind in effective strike range
2. behind in maritime strike effectiveness.
3. behind in maneuverability (this is a case where a design concept/emphasis might allow an argument against)
4. behind in concept/mission


There is no question (I think) that the Japanese designed their aircraft for 2 theaters of war, mainland China and the Pacific Ocean campaigns. If you look at the US and UK designs immediately pre-war, most designs were similar to the Japanese - with the exceptions of the Japanese emphasis on range for the aircraft intended for the Pacific Ocean theater, and the Allied emphasis on the heavy bomber/large bomb load.

The Japanese emphasis on range for their aircraft intended for operating in the Pacific is self explanatory, as are many other aspects due to the lack of high grade fuels. The Allied emphasis on the heavy bombers with their large bomb load is explained by the intent to carpet bomb military targets and/or cities form high altitude. The smaller bomb loads of the Japanese medium and heavy bombers is explained by their requirements that did not include carpet bombing of military targets from higher altitudes, or carpet bomb cities at all - unlike the US and UK the Japanese actually intended to hit military targets with precision and did not think it practical to do so from high altitude.

What would the Allied designs have looked like if the intended theaters had been the same as the Japanese, and there were no high grade fuels available? All you have to do for a general idea is look at the US/UK designs prior to the definitive airframes that were designed to operate on 100 octane.

Incidentally, I think we have another myth for the myth busting thread. The B-17 was not designed for the maritime patrol mission. The B-17 was sold to an isolationist and depression poor congress on the idea that it was intended to act as a maritime patrol bomber to protect the US offshore and coastal targets from attack.

In reality the B-17 was intended as the first long range strategic bomber type, capable of reaching and bombing military/heavy industry/city targets at significantly longer ranges that previous designs. From around 1932, War Plan Orange contained the intent to carpet bomb Japanese cities using incendiaries and HE. Doolittle was the most outspoken on the subject, and the Army pushed for aircraft capable of doing so. The first 500,000x 4 lb incendiary bomblet ordered from England in the spring of 1941 (yep, before we were at war with Japan), were listed for use on Japan in case of war. And while AWPB1 did not contain the term 'terror bombing', it might as well have. It is quite possible that the stated purpose for the purchase of the incendiaries in the spring of 1941 was due to the unwillingness to say 'intended for use on German cities', as congress might have objected to that idea.

bleh

ThomasP said:

Any argument based on the numbers produced is invalid, unless the inherent design or other technical aspects made the airframe significantly less producible compared to comparable Allied aircraft.

Click to expand...

The ability to produce sufficient machine tools to then produce large numbers of widgets is also a technological factor, it seems to me. Airplane parts don't grow on trees, and precise milling requires precise tooling.

There are a lot of things that go difference between countries in production and "technology".
In the field of combat aircraft "technology" you need aerodynamics, how you are going to shape the aircraft or make lift. You need structure, how you are going make the shape/s you want. You need materials, which affects structure. You need propulsion. This applies to civil aircraft just as well. For combat aircraft you need armament. Armament is sometimes driven by doctrine and sometimes doctrine is stupid and stupid doctrine can lead to bad combat aircraft regardless of aerodynamics, structure, materials and propulsion. See BP Defiant for one example. But weapons are reason for warplanes. They should be integral to design and not just add ons. Sometimes weapon development doesn't keep pace.

When comparing Countries and production we do have look at what the countries can produce. Japan for example had an industrial capacity of about 1/6 to 1/8 that of the US, Italy was about 1/3 that of Japan. How the production capacity was used is sometimes the result of doctrine and planning and sometimes (or a lot of times) had to be adjusted for raw materials.
No country, even the US, could build as much of everything as they wanted.

In the case of this discussion I would separate production from design except in the case of designing aircraft that had little chance of production due to raw material shortages. Like exotic alloys for turbos or jet engines.

I would also tend to discount the issue of fuel. Not eliminate it but discount it at least until 1944-45. But that also means that any country that planned to use better fuel and could not had made errors in planning to some extent. This fuel issue is touchy. Since it takes 3-6 years to design and build an aircraft engine (and even then basing it on past practice) many engines that were used in 1942-43-44 started in 1939-40 with lower grade fuel as the design fuel. Higher grade fuel could, with some engines, give a lot of extra power, with some other engines, not so much. Air cooled engines didn't really respond well to higher octane fuel with no other changes.

For weapons we have to separate out the weapons from the airplanes. The US really screwed up the aerial torpedo which affected the entire US air anti-ship efforts for several years.
If the torpedoes don't work it doesn't matter what aircraft you use. We don't know how good or bad the A-20, B-25 and B-26 would have been as land based torpedo bombers for example because of the failure of the US torpedo program. The US was certainly planning on using torpedoes. They had fitted early B-25s with not just a method of holding a torpedo but a torpedo sight for aiming the torpedo and calculating firing angles based on speed of target and distance dropped. There even instructions on using a crude type gun sight incase the calculator failed. I have no idea how good the calculator was because the torpedo failed.
British failed with early Hispano Spitfires, they fixed it but it took months. Doesn't mean the Spitfire was bad plane in 1940.

Some of these aspects can be threads on their own.

The Russians put (apparently excellent) torpedoes on the A-20 and the British put them on the B-26. I never understood why the US didn't use British torpedoes via reverse lend-lease, but I guess it was partly due to failure to even recognize the problem.

As far as fuel goes. The Germans did fairly well for a lot of WW II using 87 octane fuel.
The Soviets did fairly well with 96 octane fuel (at best).

Now you do have to design the engines to use the fuel. Like use large displacement engines of low weight to get the desired power. Yes this only goes so far.
We also start crossing into production technology. Many US air cooled engines (simply because we have the data for them) of 1939-40-41 don't show much increase in power going from 91 octane to 100 octane. Some times there was a jump in power, other times the power stayed the same but the engine was allowed to use a bit more boost (open the throttle a bit more) to get a few thousand feet more altitude. The engine had already hit it's heat limit with 91 octane fuel at 0-3000ft and by using 100 octane you could raise the altitude to perhaps 4500ft without detonation. Improvements in power required finding ways to increase the cylinder fin area to increase the cooling.

For some reason the US didn't buy into the small low drag radial, perhaps because one of the two big US companies had spent the 1930s building a 9 cylinder radial the size of a barn door. The US Navy did buy into the small radial for view over the nose (R-1535) but P&W couldn't sell them to anybody else and wanted to cancel the whole thing to build bigger engines.

P&W built the short-lived R-2180 at about this time and on 87 octane fuel it was rated at 1200hp for take-off and weighed around 1600lbs. Early R-1830s of under 1000hp went around 1250-1300lbs. Later 1200hp R-1830 engines went around 1400-1500lbs and used the 100 octane fuel

So in some cases we have doctrine (or conventional wisdom) driving engine design and perhaps not good engineering?

Design a larger displacement radial with lower BMEP for the same weight (or close) to the smaller displacement radial using higher BMEP with higher octane fuel?
There is only so much you can do streamlining a small diameter radial engine.

Russians used the M-105 engine which was almost the size of the Griffon but weighed less than a Merlin. It had a few other issues but design for the fuel you have got, not what you wish for.

Japanese seem to have gotten very good supercharger performance?

Only the Germans seem to have used an inter cooler (after cooler?) on a single stage engine in production?

The West (Britain) got lucky with the Merlin, luck in the form of hard work. RR KNEW in 1938 with the work on the Speed Spitfire that the basic Merlin would stand up to 1800hp if they could find fuel for it and design a supercharger that would flow the amount of air needed. This narrowed down the needed development of the engine.

Hey Thumpalumpacus,

re ". . . and precise milling requires precise tooling."

The Japanese were quite capable of producing precision parts (where they were needed) both in terms of quality and in terms of numbers/man-hour. But the total volume of production is not the same thing - that requires volume of people and materials - neither of which Japan had in comparison to the Allies. I said Japan had 1/5 the industrial capacity of the US, and Shortround6 says that Japan had 1/8 the capacity, either way it does not allow for keeping up with the Joneses - and hence it is a forgone conclusion not needing argument or allowing value to the argument. The only way it can apply is if you wish to base being ahead or behind only on industrial capacity.


Hey Shortround6, (oops, cross posted here, but still valid I think)

re "I would also tend to discount the issue of fuel. Not eliminate it but discount it at least until 1944-45. But that also means that any country that planned to use better fuel and could not had made errors in planning to some extent. . . "

I believe the US adopted 100 octane as standard in 1938? and the UK in 1939? for all further engine development. I may be wrong about the exact year but it was somewhere about then.

The way (I think) to tell if the argument is valid is to try to think of what the progressive US/UK line-up would have looked like in 1940 thru 1945 if they had not had access to fuels higher than 87/91 grade. From your posts in other threads I think you are quite aware of the ramifications on engine development and the consequent impact on aircraft performance.

Admittedly only from a quick look, but as far as I can tell we are saying that (until late-war) no Allied fighter or TB/DB aircraft would have more than ~1100-1200 BHP available at altitude, until the mature 87/91 grade Griffon/Sabre and R-2600/2800 series came into use. There is no way the later aircraft the Allies fielded in real life (ie F4U, F6F, F7F, F8F, P-47, P-51 - Allison or Merlin, Typhoon, Tempest, etc) could do what they did if limited to 87/91 grade. The best the 'Hookerized' Merlin 45 would do is about 1200 BHP at 16,000 ft? The 2-stage Merlin 60 would still be worthwhile, but what would the power be with 87/91 grade? Maybe 1000 BHP at 23,000 ft? Can you imagine what the climb rates for the mid-war Allied single-engine aircraft (US in particular) would be if they were required to carry the same amount of armour, fuel load/SSFT, and armament, as in the real timeline? They might make the Fulmar look competitive. The P-38 with the turbosupercharger would still have been a good climber, as would a P-51/Merlin 60 (relatively), but what would the top speeds be - maybe 390-405 mph?

Single engine attack aircraft would suffer similar limitations.

Similarly, there would have been significant limitations on the medium and heavy bombers. The differences would perhaps been less due to somewhat conservative design requirements for the heavy bombers, but I do not think you would have seen anywhere near the combined bomb and fuel loads carried in the real timeline, not without sacrificing armour/SSFT and defensive armament.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

The Russians put (apparently excellent) torpedoes on the A-20 and the British put them on the B-26. I never understood why the US didn't use British torpedoes via reverse lend-lease, but I guess it was partly due to failure to even recognize the problem.

Click to expand...

I am not sure the British could supply enough torpedoes for their own use. At least until late in the war. The British expended about 1700 18 in Torpedoes until late 1944 both air and MTBs.
The US dropped about 1300 MK 13s (may not include MTBs?)

Torpedoes are sort of the cruise missiles of the 1890s-1940s. They were very, very expensive and very hard to make. The concept was simple, the execution was not. The depth keeper and gyro auto pilot required a lot of precession work.

The US did do a lot of dumb stuff that lengthened the war considerably. The US with even functioning submarine torpedoes in 1941-1942 would have had a very different war in the Pacific than what actually happened.
The technology of Radar also was not simple, or perhaps I should say the integration/use of Radar was not simple. The Battle of Salvo for instance should never have happened, or not happened to a British force in the middle of 1942? Salvo was as much a failure of command/communication as anything else.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

B-17 was originally meant to be a coastal defense, maritime patrol bomber. It was pretty good in that role, but that wasn't a decisive mission. Like I said, if you put a (working) torpedo on it, it would have been pretty scary IMO.

Click to expand...

A true navalized B-17 like the Privateer, could have been a good thing. Replace the turbos with single stage supercharger, drop the belly turret and have the blister turrets in place

Thumpalumpacus said:

The ability to produce sufficient machine tools to then produce large numbers of widgets is also a technological factor, it seems to me. Airplane parts don't grow on trees, and precise milling requires precise tooling.

Click to expand...

then you had the issues of the IJN/IJA hostility, that worked its way on down where you had separate work on aircraft guns and engines.
Japan missed out on the unified A/N standard the US forced on the Army and Navy

Thumpalumpacus said:

Mosquitoes aren't going to be any more accurate than the heavies if the former are dropping at 20,000'+. You want accuracy, you gotta get into the weeds, and that means a lot of low-altitude targets open not only for 88s but 20- and 37-mm flak as well. Oh, and subject to bounce by -109s and -190s on egress.

It's an alternative, but it's every bit as much "trench warfare" as using heavies. It's just more expensive.

Click to expand...

I really don't agree with that, but it's a subject for another thread (I think it was possible to use low-level strike aircraft, but the subject is speculative and very controversial)

ThomasP said:

Hey Thumpalumpacus,

re ". . . and precise milling requires precise tooling."

The Japanese were quite capable of producing precision parts (where they were needed) both in terms of quality and in terms of numbers/man-hour. But the total volume of production is not the same thing - that requires volume of people and materials - neither of which Japan had in comparison to the Allies. I said Japan had 1/5 the industrial capacity of the US, and Shortround6 says that Japan had 1/8 the capacity, either way it does not allow for keeping up with the Joneses - and hence it is a forgone conclusion not needing argument or allowing value to the argument. The only way it can apply is if you wish to base being ahead or behind only on industrial capacity.


Hey Shortround6, (oops, cross posted here, but still valid I think)

re "I would also tend to discount the issue of fuel. Not eliminate it but discount it at least until 1944-45. But that also means that any country that planned to use better fuel and could not had made errors in planning to some extent. . . "

I believe the US adopted 100 octane as standard in 1938? and the UK in 1939? for all further engine development. I may be wrong about the exact year but it was somewhere about then.

The way (I think) to tell if the argument is valid is to try to think of what the progressive US/UK line-up would have looked like in 1940 thru 1945 if they had not had access to fuels higher than 87/91 grade. From your posts in other threads I think you are quite aware of the ramifications on engine development and the consequent impact on aircraft performance.

Admittedly only from a quick look, but as far as I can tell we are saying that (until late-war) no Allied fighter or TB/DB aircraft would have more than ~1100-1200 BHP available at altitude, until the mature 87/91 grade Griffon/Sabre and R-2600/2800 series came into use. There is no way the later aircraft the Allies fielded in real life (ie F4U, F6F, F7F, F8F, P-47, P-51 - Allison or Merlin, Typhoon, Tempest, etc) could do what they did if limited to 87/91 grade. The best the 'Hookerized' Merlin 45 would do is about 1200 BHP at 16,000 ft? The 2-stage Merlin 60 would still be worthwhile, but what would the power be with 87/91 grade? Maybe 1000 BHP at 23,000 ft? Can you imagine what the climb rates for the mid-war Allied single-engine aircraft (US in particular) would be if they were required to carry the same amount of armour, fuel load/SSFT, and armament, as in the real timeline? They might make the Fulmar look competitive. The P-38 with the turbosupercharger would still have been a good climber, as would a P-51/Merlin 60 (relatively), but what would the top speeds be - maybe 390-405 mph?

Single engine attack aircraft would suffer similar limitations.

Similarly, there would have been significant limitations on the medium and heavy bombers. The differences would perhaps been less due to somewhat conservative design requirements for the heavy bombers, but I do not think you would have seen anywhere near the combined bomb and fuel loads carried in the real timeline, not without sacrificing armour/SSFT and defensive armament.

Click to expand...

The problem is I don't know what the actual limitations of the US 100 octane fuel were. And there is/was a definite difference between US 100 octane and British 100 Octane fuel in 1939-40. That whole not less than 20% aromatics vs not more than 2% aromatics thing.
Or what the differences were between 87 octane and even 92 octane and that is huge in itself.
We don't even know what British 87 octane was.
If the British 87 octane was 15-20 % aromatics it may have acted like something in the low to mid 90s under rich conditions. The British were specifying the aromatic content for a reason even if they didn't know why/how it worked at the time. They knew it did and they wanted it.

I don't know when in late 1940 or in 1941 things changed. The US had short lived specification for 125 fuel while the British went for the 100/130 fuel (as I have said before, BoB fuel when tested later ranged between 100/115 to 100/120) so designing developing engines in 1940-41was not as straight forward as it seems now.


You are quite right, the later war performance levels would not be reached. However the limits of the R-2800 powered aircraft were as much limited by the engines themselves as the PN of the fuel. The F4U, F6F and P-47 were all using intercoolers and were limited to about 11-12lbs of boost with 100/130 fuel. Merlin's could run 18lbs of boost without an intercooler. Merlin III was limited because of the gear ratio in the supercharger, they could use 9-10lbs of boost on the Merlin VIII and Merlin X engines with lower geared supercharges.
Edit> The single stage R-2800s in the B-26s were limited to 52in ( about 11 lbs?) so was it a engine cooling thing?


We also don't know what else could have been done. Jimmy Doolittle (among others) had experimented with water injection in the early 1930s and gotten about 900hp from a P&W R-1340 engine on test stand. In the early 30s the R-1340 was not quite a 600hp engine. The experiments were side lined with the development of better fuels.
Better fuels were also expensive and not needed for cruise.

We also don't know if better superchargers could have been developed.
Your example of the Merlin 45 is interesting as the Merlin 46 was designed to boost the altitude of the Merlin 45 by several thousand ft. However the bigger single stage, single speed supercharger cost 80-100hp at lower altitudes (and was the engine used in the Darwin Spitfires) however the Merlin 60/61 replaced it, however there were several experimental Merlin's at about that time. One was a Merlin 46 with a higher gear ratio and an intercooler, power was 1100hp at 26,000ft with 9lbs of boost.
There were a couple of experimental two speed engines, one with an intercooler and one without but using methanol injection. Both gave 1150hp at 23,000ft with 9lbs of boost using the standard 10.25 impeller.
There was also a two speed engine with a cropped impeller also using 9lbs of boost.

There were avenues that were not explored any further because they didn't need to be.
Supercharge design was one of them, some of the 1939-41 superchargers were literally god awful.
Using a mediocre supercharger with great fuel solved a lot of problems

Hispano-Suiza superchargers in the late 30s were sometimes noted as having blistered the paint off the supercharger housing. Now take that hot air and feed to engine using 87 octane fuel? Using 100 octane fuel was a band-aid, not a cure. we are talking 4-5lbs of boost.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

The Russians put (apparently excellent) torpedoes on the A-20 and the British put them on the B-26. I never understood why the US didn't use British torpedoes via reverse lend-lease, but I guess it was partly due to failure to even recognize the problem.

Click to expand...

I had a thought but it died a lonely death. Anyway, I wondered why the U.S. didn't use British torpedoes as well. Could it be that the Navy believed the ordnance bureau's claims?

Shortround6 said:

I am not sure the British could supply enough torpedoes for their own use. At least until late in the war. The British expended about 1700 18 in Torpedoes until late 1944 both air and MTBs.
The US dropped about 1300 MK 13s (may not include MTBs?)

Torpedoes are sort of the cruise missiles of the 1890s-1940s. They were very, very expensive and very hard to make. The concept was simple, the execution was not. The depth keeper and gyro auto pilot required a lot of precession work.

The US did do a lot of dumb stuff that lengthened the war considerably. The US with even functioning submarine torpedoes in 1941-1942 would have had a very different war in the Pacific than what actually happened.
The technology of Radar also was not simple, or perhaps I should say the integration/use of Radar was not simple. The Battle of Salvo for instance should never have happened, or not happened to a British force in the middle of 1942? Salvo was as much a failure of command/communication as anything else.

Click to expand...

Auto correct strikes again.

ThomasP said:

The Japanese emphasis on range for their aircraft intended for operating in the Pacific is self explanatory, as are many other aspects due to the lack of high grade fuels. The Allied emphasis on the heavy bombers with their large bomb load is explained by the intent to carpet bomb military targets and/or cities form high altitude. The smaller bomb loads of the Japanese medium and heavy bombers is explained by their requirements that did not include carpet bombing of military targets from higher altitudes, or carpet bomb cities at all - unlike the US and UK the Japanese actually intended to hit military targets with precision and did not think it practical to do so from high altitude.



bleh

Click to expand...

Hi
The Japanese had no problem with "carpet bombing" cities in China during the 1930s. Some extracts relating to this: From 'Pictorial History of Japanese Military Aviation' by Eiichiro Sekigawa,pages 68-69:


Also 'Sunburst, The Rise of Japanese Naval; Air Power, 1909-1941' by Mark R Peattie, pages 116-117:

The book 'A History of Chinese Aviation' by Lennart Anderson also has some information, including a description of a Japanese raid on page 142:


And a picture of the aftermath of a raid on Shanghai on page 133:

Plenty of evidence is available for Japanese attacks on cities by "carpet bombing", it appears that the Japanese Naval Air Arm was quite keen on it.

Mike

They did terror bombing and a lot of other atrocities, but they were not necessarily adherents to the Douhet theory of air war based on annihilation of cities, I think ThomasP is correct that on the design level, the Japanese aircraft were made mainly for daytime bombing of military targets at relatively low to medium altitudes. They were used for other things needless to say, and due to Allied AAA they flew some missions at fairly high (~20-28,000 ft) altitudes, which did not necessarily help accuracy.

In general, I think ThomasP did hit the crux of the debate here. Though I don't agree so much about the fuel being such a major issue, I do agree that the real 'problem' in this discussion is that some people really believe that the Western conclusions about how air war was to be fought were the only correct ones. I mean, we won, right? (We always ignore the Soviets in this line of thought).

So that means, we take the British design philosophy for fighters and bombers - Fighters to be fast, agile, fast climbing and heavily armed, with range a secondary consideration. And bombers, long range and heavy bomb load, and increasingly, optimized for night raids, with speed, armament and altitude performance secondary. Mosquito being an outlier and an exception.

And US design philosophy - Fighters to be fast, tough, heavily armed, with moderate to long range, climb rate to some extent sacrificed for armament and range; bombers being very heavily armed with medium to large bomb loads for daytime strategic strikes and tactical strikes (with heavy reliance on the ultimately not that great Norden bomb sight rather than dive bombing - with some exceptions). Good performance though not super high speed. A-20 being a bit of an outlier as a fast short ranged bomber, improved upon by the late war A-26.

And of course, the German design philosophy - Fighters to be fast, tough, heavily armed, fast climbing, with range secondary. Plus zerstorer fighters which were supposed to cover the longer range needs but didn't work out (except as night fighters in an increasingly effective counter to British night bombing). Bombers to be medium speed and moderately armed but capable of either dive or torpedo bombing for better accuracy. And then later an emphasis on uber-weapons which are very impressive but were always too little, too late.

British, US, and German air forces also all shifted tactical and CAS type bombing largely to fighter bombers when they found their strike aircraft becoming inadequate for many missions.

These are not precisely the same priorities, but they kind of merge into the concept of a general 'Western model', a somewhat evasive and illusory concept, because to make everything fit we must ignore not only the Soviets, who are chiefly responsible for defeating the Nazi state, but also the North African / Mediterranean campaign which was a major effort by both British and then (somewhat late arriving) Americans, and where arguably the heaviest blows were struck to the German war machine (second El Alamein, conquest of Sicily, invasion of Italy and collapse of the Italian fascist state) prior to the downslope of the war.

Against this we see the Japanese design philosophy with their priorities: Fighters with long range and excellent maneuverability, and moderately heavy firepower (for the Navy), or light firepower (for the Army). Bombers designed to hit and damage tactical and operational targets. For the navy in particular, bombers that can sink ships. We take our mutant 'Western model' yardstick and find all this wanting. But the real operational histories (very much contrary to the lingering postwar legends) tell us that the Japanese air forces were holding their own against very modern fighters like P-38s, Spitfires and F4Us. The Japanese bombers sunk tons of ships and didn't seem to trivial problems in their strikes against ports and airfields either. To me this says that the Japanese model was not, in fact, inferior, it was just different.


Let's look for example at the Ki-61. It's often dismissed as a slower, poorly armed version of a MC 202 or a Bf 109. But is it? To me it's quite different. It has a 39' wing span and a low wing loading, so this thing can turn. Unlike a Bf 109, it can both turn and dive with P-40s, but still climbs much faster. It may not have the big speed advantage or heavy guns of a Bf 109G, but those did not automatically triumph over P-40s either. The Ki-61 is reflective of a different fighting philosophy.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

Let's look for example at the Ki-61. It's often dismissed as a slower, poorly armed version of a MC 202 or a Bf 109. But is it? To me it's quite different. It has a 39' wing span and a low wing loading, so this thing can turn. Unlike a Bf 109, it can both turn and dive with P-40s, but still climbs much faster. It may not have the big speed advantage or heavy guns of a Bf 109G, but those did not automatically triumph over P-40s either. The Ki-61 is reflective of a different fighting philosophy.

Click to expand...

The problem is that the MC 202 showed up in Fall of 1941, The Ki-61 show up in April of 1943.
The Ki-61 has more range but basically the two planes as initially deployed had very close to the same firepower, close to the same engine power, they are within 10mph in speed the both dive well and they both will turn well and they both will climb well (some Italian figures seem too good to be true)

Depending on exact model/version of each one there could be differences. The Ki-61 on average may be better armed once you get past the first versions.

Showing up with a MC 202 clone in the late Spring/Early summer of 1943 even if just as good or even a little bit better means you are late.
You are showing up just before the P-38Hs start to show up,
You are showing up just before the P-47s go operational in the 5th Air Force
You are showing up 4 months before the P-47D goes operational in the SW Pacific.
You are showing up abut 4-5 months before the F6Fs show up and the F4Us show up in large numbers.

The Ki-61 is the 1st line fighter. Beating 2nd line P-40s isn't good enough.

for a bit of context here,
the Ki-61 shows up over 5 months after El Alamein
and about 3 month before Kursk.
The MC 205 was going into squadron service 2 months before the Ki-61 saw combat.

Shortround6 said:

The problem is that the MC 202 showed up in Fall of 1941, The Ki-61 show up in April of 1943.
The Ki-61 has more range but basically the two planes as initially deployed had very close to the same firepower, close to the same engine power, they are within 10mph in speed the both dive well and they both will turn well and they both will climb well (some Italian figures seem too good to be true)

Depending on exact model/version of each one there could be differences. The Ki-61 on average may be better armed once you get past the first versions.

Showing up with a MC 202 clone in the late Spring/Early summer of 1943 even if just as good or even a little bit better means you are late.
You are showing up just before the P-38Hs start to show up,
You are showing up just before the P-47s go operational in the 5th Air Force
You are showing up 4 months before the P-47D goes operational in the SW Pacific.
You are showing up abut 4-5 months before the F6Fs show up and the F4Us show up in large numbers.

The Ki-61 is the 1st line fighter. Beating 2nd line P-40s isn't good enough.

for a bit of context here,
the Ki-61 shows up over 5 months after El Alamein
and about 3 month before Kursk.
The MC 205 was going into squadron service 2 months before the Ki-61 saw combat.

Click to expand...

I see your point. Ki-61 did come a little late, but I think you are overselling it.

First of all, it became operational in late 1942. First combat was in Jan 1943, that's not precisely the same thing.

Second, and more importantly, the MC 202, it's closest analogue in Europe, was hardly out of the fight in Jan (or March or even through September) of 1943. It was still, in fact, still the main Italian front line fighter (MC 205s arrived in very small numbers and equipped the same units.) So was the P-40, which in it's Merlin engine configuration was equipping no less than five US fighter groups plus two RAF squadrons in the Med, as well as one FG in the Pacific. And (in Allison engine variants) remained the main US fighter in China and Burma. Were they really second tier at that point?

Anecdotally, according to the pilots, MC 202s could not turn with Hurricanes, P-40s or Spitfires. Ki-61s apparently could. That is what I am getting at. P-40 pilots reported using rolling maneuvers like scissors to get away from them much as they did with A6Ms, but unlike vs the A6M, they could not out dive them. Neither could Corsairs. That is why these planes were a new problem when they showed up in 1943.

P-38H was only available in small numbers in the Pacific in 1943, and (G and H) equipped two fighter groups in the Med, where it was expected to become the front line fighter but turned out not to do so well. I'm not sure how well they did vs Ki-61s (anybody know?)

The F4U as we saw in another thread, was still going about even with A6Ms in the Solomons through much of 1943.

I have to admit that I don't know the history of the P-47 in the 5th Air Force that well, but I know that overall the type came into it's own a bit later than early 1943. In fact you could kind of say the same for the F4U and P-38.

The Ki-61 did admittedly have maintenance problems too, though on the design level it seems to have been good.

Shortround6 said:

The problem is that the MC 202 showed up in Fall of 1941, The Ki-61 show up in April of 1943.
The Ki-61 has more range but basically the two planes as initially deployed had very close to the same firepower, close to the same engine power, they are within 10mph in speed the both dive well and they both will turn well and they both will climb well (some Italian figures seem too good to be true)

Depending on exact model/version of each one there could be differences. The Ki-61 on average may be better armed once you get past the first versions.

Showing up with a MC 202 clone in the late Spring/Early summer of 1943 even if just as good or even a little bit better means you are late.
You are showing up just before the P-38Hs start to show up,
You are showing up just before the P-47s go operational in the 5th Air Force
You are showing up 4 months before the P-47D goes operational in the SW Pacific.
You are showing up abut 4-5 months before the F6Fs show up and the F4Us show up in large numbers.

The Ki-61 is the 1st line fighter. Beating 2nd line P-40s isn't good enough.

for a bit of context here,
the Ki-61 shows up over 5 months after El Alamein
and about 3 month before Kursk.
The MC 205 was going into squadron service 2 months before the Ki-61 saw combat.

Click to expand...

But if you ignored all that, would he be right?

SaparotRob said:

But if you ignored all that, would he be right?

Click to expand...

For the record, I agree the MC 202 was about a year earlier than the Ki 61. It wasn't earlier than say, the A6M.