Maneuverability vs Speed

[Shortround6]

And range, if properly exploited, was a very big deal.

Properly exploiting the range was harder as the range increased.

The longer it took to form up a strike and the longer it took to fly to the intercept point the harder it was make the intercept/attack. The enemy fleet moved.
Spotters/shadowers could make up for that, if the spotters/shadowers weren't shot down/driven off. In some cases they were operating off of sighting by subs. But updates usually rely on a 2nd or 3rd sub. A 1 hour difference in arrival at the target location (4 hours instead of 3) can mean the enemy fleet is somewhere within a 50 NM circle of where it was at 3 hour mark.
Range is useful, it may not be decisive in some situations.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

Properly exploiting the range was harder as the range increased.

The longer it took to form up a strike and the longer it took to fly to the intercept point the harder it was make the intercept/attack. The enemy fleet moved.
Spotters/shadowers could make up for that, if the spotters/shadowers weren't shot down/driven off. In some cases they were operating off of sighting by subs. But updates usually rely on a 2nd or 3rd sub. A 1 hour difference in arrival at the target location (4 hours instead of 3) can mean the enemy fleet is somewhere within a 50 NM circle of where it was at 3 hour mark.
Range is useful, it may not be decisive in some situations.

Fair point, but I don't buy it. Longer range gives you an opportunity to outgun the enemy, it is a chance you may not always effectively exploit in the chaos of combat, but certainly in WW2 it paid off several times for the IJN as I assume you are aware. It was an ongoing problem for the US with their shorter ranged aircraft.

I would also note that the US had more and better scouts in some battles. They certainly put a strong initial emphasis on it with half of their carrier based SBD dive bombers (one out of the two squadrons carried on a fleet carrier) trained as scout units. They changed this as the war went on but still had a bit better luck with their SBD scouts quite often.

I don't think you could call the A6M inferior in naval combat (as in carriers vs carriers) in 1942 or even 1943. Where they started to have problems is where they were put into sustained attritional engagements with land based fighter units at Darwin, in New Guinea, and (especially) in the Solomons.

In a way the A6M was a victim of it's own success. In theory carrier fighters would almost exclusively fight other naval aircraft, with maybe the occasional engagement with ground based forces. As ThomasP noted, in a carrier aircraft engagement, high casualties are somewhat expected and are worth it if the enemy carrier is sunk. On the level of cost alone, any capital ship represents a much larger investment in resources than a couple of squadrons of aircraft and their crews. In terms of capability as well - a fleet with a carrier is somewhat protected, a fleet with no air component is at a crippling disadvantage against a fleet with a carrier, and can expect to be defeated unless they flee.

The A6M was so capable that in early engagements it was not only effective, but dominant over land based fighters. This gradually changed to something nearer to parity by the end of 1942, as less capable fighters were removed from service and the better remaining ones were used with improved tactics and performance.

That resulted in a gradual frittering away of the exceedingly well-trained naval pilots and aircrew (because strike aircraft like the D3A were being used in these engagement too).

The losses in the naval engagements for the IJN were heavily exacerbated by the lack of a serious, dedicated air-sea rescue program. When both sides lost 50 aircraft, the US recovered 30 pilots and crew, the Japanese might get back 5.

This could perhaps be at least partly attributed to a 'warrior culture' issue. It goes along with not always having parachutes in the planes - to some extent the Japanese looked at a pilot shot down in combat as having been dishonored. Armor and self sealing tanks were a factor too, but maybe not as decisive as people tend to assume (at least not until later in the war when the API ammunition became more widely available for the US). If you read the day by day combat accounts from New Guinea etc., Japanese planes were definitely not blowing up or crashing with dead crew every time they got hit. They were routinely landing with battle damage. If they got hit well enough of course they were history. Nor were US planes immune to being ripped apart by cannon shells or set on fire when they were hit by a good burst.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

I think we should also recognize that given the losses in WW2, the mortality rate for all combatants was extraordinarily high. We don't see this portrayed so much in films and TV shows, but if you read through these battles, survival was ... a challenge. On either side.

 

[Shortround6]

I don't think you could call the A6M inferior in naval combat (as in carriers vs carriers) in 1942 or even 1943. Where they started to have problems is where they were put into sustained attritional engagements with land based fighter units at Darwin, in New Guinea, and (especially) in the Solomons.

Again we are lumping all A6Ms together here.
The A6M2 had some definite limitations over much of 1942, a main one for both fleet defense and long range air combat (bomber escort) was the 60 rounds per gun limitation of the 20mm cannon. It turns out that wasn't enough. The Japanese tried to cover that with fast deck handling and reloads but having CAP fighters that could engage the enemy for twice as many seconds may have payed big dividends. The A6M3 32 couldn't reach Guadalcanal with it's greater ammo capacity. The A6M3 22 could but it was late, I don't know if they could fit the new magazines to the older A6M2 fighters. I haven't read anything either way.
A pair of 7.7mm Vickers guns was not enough after the 20mms ran out of ammo. Yes they shot down some aircraft but the P-39, P-40 and F4F established a reputation for being able to absorb gunfire and stay in the air (or at least not crashing). Of course if they had performed better perhaps they wouldn't have been shot up as bad.

Using two fighters to get 240 20mm shells to the battle site is not efficiency. An F4F-3 had close to the same firepower as an A6M2 except it's firepower lasted for just over 30 seconds not under 7 seconds.
Both sides needed fighters that would do more. The A6M2 ran out of offensive firepower before it ran out of fuel.
The Allied fighters ran out of airspeed/altitude (firing position) before they ran out of ammo.
Allied fighters could engage and shoot down multiple Japanese bombers in one mission. Mediocre but long lasting armament vs poor protection.

 

[GregP]

I talked with one guy who was on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He said the Germans had mortars zeroed in on the spaces between the beach obstacles and also on the tidal beach shingle where the soldiers would lie down to avoid machine guns and rifle fire. Because they had the shingle zeroed in, people were dying all around them and they figured if they were going to die anyway, they might as well charge the machine gun nests. They did, and overran them after some interesting running and climbing.

That says a lot about the situation and how people think in a battle where the casualties are high.

The aircrews could have anywhere from zero percent to 100% loss on a single mission, but the odds of getting to 25 missions and going home were not really very good.

To put that in perspective, to rotate home from a B-17 Group, you needed to fly 25 missions. Say you started with 100 aircraft. With an aggregate loss rate of only 2.84%, you would have 50 left at the end of 25 missions if you didn't get any replacement aircraft. Not that it happened that way, but it is correct. That means that with only a 2.84% loss rate per mission, you have a 50% chance of either dying or being shot down and likely captured and a 50% chance of going home. Wouldn't make you feel good about being there, would it?

If the loss rate per mission went as high as 5% per mission, you'd hit the 50% number at 14 or 15 missions. By 25 missions, you'd have 29 aircraft left (again, without replacement), so you'd have a 29% chance of going home and a 71% chance of dying or being shot down and likely captured.

Getting replacement aircraft and aircrew made it seem better than it was, morale-wise, because you kept flying out with mostly a full complement of aircraft.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

I talked with one guy who was on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He said the Germans had mortars zeroed in on the spaces between the beach obstacles and also on the tidal beach shingle where the soldiers would lie down to avoid machine guns and rifle fire. Because they had the shingle zeroed in, people were dying all around them and they figured if they were going to die anyway, they might as well charge the machine gun nests. They did, and overran them after some interesting running and climbing.

That says a lot about the situation and how people think in a battle where the casualties are high.

The aircrews could have anywhere from zero percent to 100% loss on a single mission, but the odds of getting to 25 missions and going home were not really very good.

To put that in perspective, to rotate home from a B-17 Group, you needed to fly 25 missions. Say you started with 100 aircraft. With an aggregate loss rate of only 2.84%, you would have 50 left at the end of 25 missions if you didn't get any replacement aircraft. Not that it happened that way, but it is correct. That means that with only a 2.84% loss rate per mission, you have a 50% chance of either dying or being shot down and likely captured and a 50% chance of going home. Wouldn't make you feel good about being there, would it?

If the loss rate per mission went as high as 5% per mission, you'd hit the 50% number at 14 or 15 missions. By 25 missions, you'd have 29 aircraft left (again, without replacement), so you'd have a 29% chance of going home and a 71% chance of dying or being shot down and likely captured.

Getting replacement aircraft and aircrew made it seem better than it was, morale-wise, because you kept flying out with mostly a full complement of aircraft.

Then you had bad raids like Schweinfurt where you had 26% lost and another 41% damaged.

The actor Jimmy Stewart (famous when I was a kid, maybe not so well known today.. he was in a lot of Hitchcock films...) was in one of those bad raids

Jimmy Stewart and the WW2 Mission That Almost Broke Him

Jimmy Stewart rarely talked about his World War II experience after returning from the service, but intense air force battles over Europe left lifelong scars.

www.denofgeek.com

 

[GregP]

When I was at Purdue University in 1968, my sister and her husband were stationed at Grissom AFB in Peru, Indiana. They were a Convair B-58 Hustler wing. I was visiting once in 1969 when Jimmy Stewart, then a Brig, Gen. visited and they took him for a ride in a B-58.

The runway was a 10,000 foot runway and they were at very light weight. Likely it had no bomb load at all, just fuel. When they passed the end of the runway, the aircraft was 10,000 feet in the air! Jimmy was live over the base louspeaker and his comment was, "This isn't an airplane, it's a Goddamned rocket ship!" in his movie voice. I cracked up; it was a bit like watching a Hollywood western. The B-58 could not perform like that at takeoff with a war load, but it was a hotrod when light, assuming the pilot didn't make a mistake, that is.

Most of the time, the B-58s would depart quite sedately relative to that flight, and were climbing at a modest angle by comparison, until out of sight. Occasionally, one would make a fast pass down the runway and climb ot at something like a 40° angle for several thousand feet before turning and leveling a bit. Now that I think about it, they may have been avoiding busting Indianapolis Center airspace.

I never met Jimmy personally and didn't see him around the base except from a considerable distance after he landed, but we all heard him on the loudspeaker.

 

[PAT303]

Then you had bad raids like Schweinfurt where you had 26% lost and another 41% damaged.

What do you think the loss rate would be if the Japanese had done it in Betty's escorted by A6M's?.

 

[SaparotRob]

What do you think the loss rate would be if the Japanese had done it in Betty's escorted by A6M's?.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

What do you think the loss rate would be if the Japanese had done it in Betty's escorted by A6M's?.

About the same as if it had been Wellingtons or Sterlings or Lancasters flying during daytime, escorted by... anything.

But that's not what Betty's were for. Or zeros for that matter.

 

[SplitRz]

About the same as if it had been Wellingtons or Sterlings or Lancasters flying during daytime, escorted by... anything.

But that's not what Betty's were for. Or zeros for that matter.

What *was* the G4M 'for' that differentiated it from other twin-engined tactical bombers that first flew around 1939...?

 

[ThomasP]

Actually, part of the range requirement for the A6M was due to the perceived need to escort bombers on long range missions.

Hey PAT303,

Do you mean the Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid of August 1943, where the US lost 60 B-17 shot down, and another 50 or so lost for operational reasons (mostly so badly damaged that they were not repaired/returned to service) and another 15 or so forced to landing at other than intended locations due to damage, navigation error and/or fuel starvation?

It is hard to say just how bad it would have been for the A6M and G4M. The major differences would have involved the fact that the G4M woud probably have been attacking at under 6,000 ft with a speed over target of 220-230 mph or so instead of 23-25,000 ft(?). And unlike the B-17s, they would have had enough fuel to return to the launch bases in England. Plus the A6M would have been able to escort them all the way there and back using one method or another. The G4M would have been significantly less susceptible to attack by enemy fighter due the to the constant A6M escort, but probably significantly more vulnerable to flak due to the lower attack altitude.

Otherwise, what Wild_Bill_Kelso said above. The G4M was not designed for the carpet bombing of cities military targets mission like the B-17 was. And the Japanese did not have the advantage of knowing what the British had learned in the first 4 years of the air war (on the other hand the Japanese probably would have listened to the British).

What would the losses be if B-17s performed the attack missions against the Japanese fleet escorted (unescorted?) by F4Fs?

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

What *was* the G4M 'for' that differentiated it from other twin-engined tactical bombers that first flew around 1939...?

Like the G3M before it, the G4M was a navy aircraft, and it's main mission was to sink ships with torpedos. Which it did pretty well. It was also reasonably good for bombing ports and coastal air bases. It wasn't designed for strategic bombing deep into an enemy country's interior. Nor did they use it much for that kind of thing, the planes used in China were mostly Army planes.

 

[GregP]

The G4M wasa twin-engine, land-based, medium bomber that was adapted for torpedos when so required. It was not designed primarily as a torpedo bomber, but was adapted as one. It was decently high-speed for when it first flew, but "high-speed" in 1939 was not the same thing as "high-speed" in 1944, as we all know.

At Guadalcanal, the Japanese lost 100 G4Ms with crew and there were no replacements available.

The G4M was not a bad aircraft, but its design was also not very adaptable as far keeping it current with fighter aircraft was concerned. It started out with 1,530 hp Mitsubishi Kasei Model 11 engines and went to Kasei 21s, Kasei 25s, and Kasei 27s, eventually with 1,820 Kasei 27bs engines. The horsepower increase did not quite keep up with weight increases. The late-war Betty was sort of like a late-war Wellington ... OK but not exactly top-tier equipment by that time.

Much the same could be said for many medium bombers. Some "kept-up," many did not.

A late-war A-26 Invader was a completely different animal from a G6M Betty. The A-26 could hit near 360 mph and that made it tough to catch for most fighters, especially down low. The Betty was maxed out at 265 mph and couldn't escape from even P-40. But, if it got through, the Betty could hit you about like an A-20, with about 2,000 pounds of bombs. It was very A-20-like in performance, but slower by about 50 mph.

 

[Shortround6]

What *was* the G4M 'for' that differentiated it from other twin-engined tactical bombers that first flew around 1939...?

Kind of hard to figure out without documentation from the Japanese.

Was it for long range recon?
Long range over water bombing?
Long range torpedo bombing (naval bombing, whatever that is) ?
Long range over land penetrations?
Whatever it was, the ability of the G4M to defend itself was clearly lacking.

The first 30 "production" planes were built as heavy escorts for the G3Ms but weren't fast enough to keep up with them once they had dropped their bombs.
First bombing raids were in the late spring or early summer of 1941 over China and hundreds of miles from blue water.
Once they ran into even average Western fighters losses mounted. With no passive protection, 4900 liters of fuel and four Lewis guns and a single slow firing, hand aimed 20mm cannon with 15 round magazines, and a cruising speed of around 200mph the idea they could operate without fighter support was crazy, And the A6M never had the range to escort the G4M to the extent of it's range (although the book ranges maybe incorrect, like max range was without bombs as the G4M1 had a gross weight of about 21,000lbs and 4900 liters of fuel is over 7700lbs of fuel) in plane that was supposed to weigh just under 15,000lb empty.

 

[ThomasP]

Hey GregP,

I may be misunderstanding what you are saying, but in case I am not:

The G4M design was specified with the ability to carry 1x air dropped torpedo or 2000 kg of bombs. As such, there was no adapting needed. In effect it was specified as a torpedo-bomber, in a similar manner to the B5N Kate. (I suppose you could claim it was a bomber-torpedoer, but torpedo-bomber sounds better. )

 

[Shortround6]

A lot of planes changed with time.
The G4M changed a bit too and it got heavier, it also got rudimentary protection but in the Schweinfurt style raids the G4M and Zeros would have been a disaster.

The G4Ms could fly at 15-20,000ft and keep out of most of the light flak but they lightly protected and flak damage would have been severe. Maybe they could have climbed before the actual targets but flying at over 20,000ft for several hours?
G4Ms got a 20mm gun in a top "turret" but it was the same slow firing 15 round gun used the tail. Turret is in quotes because it was not powered. Ability to track fast moving German fighters is subject to question. About 8 rounds a sec vs the 24-26 rounds per sec from B-17 turret. Nose gun and waist guns were still Lewis guns. The G4Ms carried about 1/2 the bombload of the B-17, didn't carry as much defensive ammo, carried 7 crewmen

The A6Ms would have been dealing with 109Gs and FW 190s in late summer of 1943. The A6Ms would have been the last of A6M3s, no A6M5s.

BTW. the G4M2 didn't enter production until July 1943. Production of the G4M1 didn't fully stop until Jan 1944.

 

[Shortround6]

The G4M design was specified with the ability to carry 1x air dropped torpedo or 2000 kg of bombs. As such, there was no adapting needed.

Indeed. According to Francillon the early G4Ms didn't use bomb-bay doors with either torpedoes or bombs so really no adapting needed.

 

[PAT303]

It is hard to say just how bad it would have been for the A6M and G4M. The major differences would have involved the fact that the G4M woud probably have been attacking at under 6,000 ft with a speed over target of 220-230 mph or so instead of 23-25,000 ft(?). And unlike the B-17s, they would have had enough fuel to return to the launch bases in England. Plus the A6M would have been able to escort them all the way there and back using one method or another. The G4M would have been significantly less susceptible to attack by enemy fighter due the to the constant A6M escort,

Considering the losses B17's sustained do you really think unprotected Betty's doing only 220mph at 6,000ft would have not suffered worse losses?, how would the 350mph A6M's stop 420mph FW190A's from doing whatever they wanted whenever they wanted?, regarding maneuverability and speed, against the A6M the Anton had both.

 

[PAT303]

The G4M was not a bad aircraft, but its design was also not very adaptable as far keeping it current with fighter aircraft was concerned.

Kind of a reoccurring theme with Japanese aircraft.