So what is that cruising into France @ 200mph TAS is tantamount to suicide.
Cruising over undefended water, say Rabaul to Guadalcanal is not the same as crossing the channel and into France and then Germany.
Cruising in an A6M @ 300+ mph TAS (remember, you have to get up to combat speed if bounced, that's why P-51's routinely cruised at high speed over Indian country) does not get you very far, I doubt it could range as far as the Thunderbolt at P-47 speeds.
I get the gist, but I don't think that the phenomenal range of the Zero especially and specifically as compared to the Spitfire or the Bf 109, suddenly drops 90% if they have to pick up their cruising speed to max continuous for part of the flight. When they brought Spit Vs to Australia they had major problems with them
due to range - in spite of the luxury of being able to fly over water. The difference in reach was striking between the Spit and the Zero in that Theater, just as it would in any other.
I don't know precisely how
much the range would be reduced but I have seena min-max on range for the A6M2 of 1,600 to 1,900 miles. I assume that difference probably has something to do with the cruise speed. I do not believe as Shortround was suggesting that the range of the Zero would drop down to that of the Spitfire if they increased the cruise speed a bit. I think that is spurious logic - and "reaching" quite consciously.
As I also noted previously, they could use that phenomenal range to loop out into the Atlantic and attack from unexpected (and less protected) directions such as from the Bay of Biscay.
Nor do I think carrying a drop tank would be problematic. It wasn't problematic for P-51s, P-47s, P-38s and so on flying over Europe. You use the fuel for climbing up to altitude and forming up and everything from the drop-tank. Again, spurious and disingenuous.
The bottom line is it's a fact that the A6M2 had 5 times the range of a Spitfire, substantially longer even than the P-38, no matter how you slice it - if one has to slow down to raid France or Belgium, than so does the other.
And range does confer a Tactical as well as Strategic or Operational advantage. Some people have a hard time getting their head around that but it's a fact, as inescapable as a good brass fishhook in the mouth of a catfish.
I think the P-51 has some limitations to it's greatness, and no doubt it's annoying for all the non-Americans to see it lauded to such ridiculous heights, mainly because it was such a late arrival and not good at everything (no fighter was). But it
was a great plane, because range speed and altitude capabilities, it did effectively win a battle as Parisfal put it. Or a couple of them. It broke the Luftwaffe, essentially.
It was only a factor in the war toward the end, late 1943 - 1945, and most importantly in 1944. And it wasn't so formidable by the Korean War of course. But that doesn't make it a bad plane. Similarly, the Zero was mainly a factor from 1941 through the middle of 1943 - by which time it began to fade as a threat. But it was pretty damn terrifying in it's heyday - and a formidable tool in the arsenal of the mighty IJN. I don't know why the Zero gets so much contempt these days but thems the facts.
No amount of back of the napkin horses**t arithmetic is going to convince me otherwise.
Could a Zero be brought down by a good pilot in a Wildcat or a P-40 -
once it's traits and tactics were better known? Yes it could, but so could the Bf 109 and everyone still seems to give them mad respect. I think the difference has much more to do with the popularity of the propaganda from one of the factions in WW2 over all the others than with any actual technical
or historical knowledge of the facts.
S
