Saburo Sakai Zero vs Bf-109

[HoHun]

Hi Parsifal,

>The british in 1940 were trained to dogfight, which was a major tactical advantage over the germans.

>...

>There is no doubt that the zero could be beaten in a "shoot and scoot" engagement, which is basically how the Americans defeated the Japanese in the air battles after 1942.

Hm, I sense a contradiction there. This is basically how the Luftwaffe defeated the RAF over France in 1941 and 1942 too, so how would an indoctrination for dogfighting an enemy who could refuse to play be a "major tactical advantage"?

>The British would have been forced to disperse their fighters, which meant the odds against them would be even longer than they were.

Actually, the British historically had already dispersed their fighters, enabling them to intercept the Luftwaffe's Norway-based attack on the North of the British Isle when it came.

>As for the vulnerability of the Zero, the zero was no more vulnerable than the Me-109 E-3 versions.

Hm, are you aware that there were hardly any Me 109E-3 aircraft lost in the Battle of Britain? The losses are almost exclusively Me 109E-1 and E-4 aircraft.

>the early marks of the 109 (including most of those used in the BoB, did not have armour, and structurally were a bit weak.

Now I'd like to see your source for that.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[The Basket]

Bristol flew a prototype fighter that was an almost copy of the Zero...it is spooky how close it is...1938 if I'm not mistaken.

The RAF totally rejected it as the Spitfire was way better. Range was never an issue in the early days of the 109 or Spitfire.

The Zero is all mouth and no trousers IMHO. Compare time wise with the latest Soviet or Western fighters and it is sloooow.

Maybe the Zero would have done nicely in the BoB but it is out of time by about a year. It is no better saying if the Germans had Fw 190s...Now if the Germans had F-22 Raptors...jeez...I would be speaking German by now...Mien Gott!

 

[smg]

i think then raf's aaguns woud had crush the zero like nothing

 

[kool kitty89]

Bristol flew a prototype fighter that was an almost copy of the Zero...it is spooky how close it is...1938 if I'm not mistaken.

The RAF totally rejected it as the Spitfire was way better. Range was never an issue in the early days of the 109 or Spitfire.

I think you mean the Gloster F.5/34, obviously for specification F.5/34 which stated:

High-performance fighter with air-cooled engine for overseas (hot climate) use

The first flight was in December of '37. It prabably would have been ready on a similar timescale as the Hurricane, but work on the Gladiator postponed development. It was a bit underpowered with the Mercury, but could have done better with a Pegasus or Taurus engine. Top speed was a little better than the original Hurricane prototype as well, and I'd expect overall performance to be similar to the Hurrican with a 1000 hp class engine. (the Fraise ailerons also made it roll better than the Spit or Hurri, particularly at high speeds)
And it really doesn't look too much like a zero if you ook closely plus the canopy is obviously borrowed from the Gladiator. The landig gear is also a bit primitive, being only partially retractable (like the P-35) though it only protrudes a little more than the P-36/40's.

 

[Graeme]

Bristol flew a prototype fighter that was an almost copy of the Zero...it is spooky how close it is...1938 if I'm not mistaken.

The Bristol 146.

 

[The Basket]

Obviously...the Bristol fighter wasn't a Zero copy...but was very similair not only in looks but also performance.

It was too late as the Hurri and Spit were already in production and it was underpowered.

The fact is that it was rejected as the Spitfire was better. The later zeroes matched the Spit Mk I. hardly sign of a first rate fighter.

 

[parsifal]

Hi Henning (HoHun) ,

>The British in 1940 were trained to dogfight, which was a major tactical advantage over the germans.

>There is no doubt that the zero could be beaten in a "shoot and scoot" engagement, which is basically how the Americans defeated the Japanese in the air battles after 1942.

Hm, I sense a contradiction there. This is basically how the Luftwaffe defeated the RAF over France in 1941 and 1942 too, so how would an indoctrination for dogfighting an enemy who could refuse to play be a "major tactical advantage"?

Response
The Luftwaffe defeated the RAF over France in 1941 and 42? How and when did that happen. Luftflotte III "defeated" the RAF essentially by running away, by the simple expedient of moving its forces out of the primary range of the RAF fighters. That is hardly defeating the RAF. Moreover, the Germans always favoured the diving pass, followed by the big run, relying on their speed, and strangely, their diving ability (strange, because the 109 was a terrible diver). Against the RAF, who could dive better than they could, could run almost as fast as they could although I concede the LW held a distinct speed advantage for both the 109 and the 190, until well into 1942), and when they caught them, could turn inside of the 109, given two pilots of equal ability. The germans held two principal advantages in 1941….their pilots were still better than the RAF, generally, and their firepower for their fighters was much greater. A 20mm Mauser cannon put out about twice as much kinetic energy as an equivalent Allied 20mm weapon.

The British would have been forced to disperse their fighters, which meant the odds against them would be even longer than they were.

Actually, the British historically had already dispersed their fighters, enabling them to intercept the Luftwaffe's Norway-based attack on the North of the British Isle when it came.

Response
True enough…against virtually unarmed Me110s with no rear gunner. About two thirds of the RAF strength was concentrated in the South, and South East of England. What would have happened if the 'rest area", the midlands, and the North, were added to the possible list of targets. Remember, the initiative lies with the attacker. So they get to choose the moment of attack, and the amount of strength devoted to the attack. The British undid a lot of this advantage with their radar, but this could not redepploy an entire wing or group halfway across the country

>As for the vulnerability of the Zero, the zero was no more vulnerable than the Me-109 E-3 versions.

Hm, are you aware that there were hardly any Me 109E-3 aircraft lost in the Battle of Britain? The losses are almost exclusively Me 109E-1 and E-4 aircraft.

Response
No, but neither do I accept it. Would like to see your source on that one. I do know that by the end of the day battle, roughly the end of October, the German Jagdgruppen were a spent force, just 232 serviceable aircraft, with over 710 lost in the previous two months. If your assertion is correct, then the E-3 was an insignificant proportion of the total force structure. I know this is not true, so I have to question the veracity of your original assertion.


>the early marks of the 109 (including most of those used in the BoB, did not have armour, and structurally were a bit weak.

Now I'd like to see your source for that.

Response
My source for that is the publication "Messerschmitt BF 109 in Action-part I, by Beaman and Campbell
It states that armour began to be fitted to the E-3 midway through the battle, and was later fitted to E-1s as well. The initial armour fit was 53 lbs of 8mm back armour, and 28.6 lbs of armour above and behind the pilots head. In a curved plate attached to the actual canopy frame. There was no plexiglass or other frontal protection until after the battle.

As far as the structural inadequacy of the Me109s, I know that I have read about it somewhere, but cant put my finger on the source at this minute. The main problem was in the wing loading. Compared to the Spit, which had a wing loading of about 21 lbs per square foot, the german fighter was working at something approaching 40 lbs. If the Germans were using the same engineering techniques as the brits, it follows with a wing loading twice as high as the brit fighter, that the 109 is going to give up the ghost a lot sooner than the Brit plane.

Regards,

Parsifal

 

[The Basket]

I remember an interview with Johnnie Johnson...his rule was get in and get out...don't hang around because then your dead.

The Zero thing...your missing one huge point...Yep outturn a Spitfire but what about two or three or four...I'm in a slow aircraft with no armour protection against faster fighters...I can turn and continue losing energy when what I really need to do is light the afterburner and bug out as fast as my little legs can take me. But...ooops...the Zero is much slower and the moment I stop turning, I'm going to be swiss cheese.

The 109 Emil had the performance to bug out and run for it when things turn sour. Now the pilot lives to fight another day. Simple.

 

[krieghund]

Guy's you all missing the point...these aircraft have been built to a specification dictated by operational requirements and then you want to compare them together when they are built to different requirements...yes the Zero would have cleaned house in the BoB, the RAF could no longer count on only fighter contact in the south and they didn't have enough fighters to adequately cover all the sectors.

Imagine if they used Vals instead of Stukas....once unladden they could do fighter duty.

Show me the planes the zero copied from, let them sortie from a carrier, fly 500nm, do combat for 30 minutes and recover to that same carrier. That list evaporates. The Zero was perfect for its precise moment in history, no other carrier fighter could do that at this point in time. Japanese mistake was not to have the zero's upgraded (the A6M with a Kinsei54 in 1942) and its replacement coming down the pike.

Ever play War in the Pacific? If someone wasn't looking out for us we really would have had our heads handed to us.

Anyway every European combatant was rushing to get armor and protect fuel tanks in 1940 (BTW Trivia ? when did the Spitfire finally protect the bottom fuselage 37 gal tank?)

Loose them dogs!!!

 

[JoeB]

It is often pointed out correctly that the Spit V did not score well against the Zero, it isn't often mentioned that the Seafire, which is a heavier Spit V with less performance did do well against the Zero. The difference being the tactics.

There was only one bona fide combat between Zeroes acting as fighters and Seafires. Seafires claimed other fighters attacking carrier groups as kamikazes in a few cases. The one real fighter combat was the last day of the war, August 15 1945. The Seafires claimed 8 Zeroes for 1 loss (and loss of one Avenger being escorted), but in the Spit V Darwin case (1: several ratio against the Spitfire) we are counting (or should be) losses recorded by both sides, not claims. But there aren't clearly complete Japanese accounts of that last day's combat, whereas the accounts of the Darwin combats seem to be, we know the 202nd Air Group was the only (Zero, one mission v Darwin was by JAAF Oscars) unit involved.

In the August 15 combat the 252nd Air Group lost one Zero to Seafires, pilot survived, and the 302nd AG recorded one pilot WIA by Seafires though plane apparently not destroyed. USN F6F's made a number of claims in basically the same series of combats, similar area and time, and the Japanese attributed several other losses to F6F's. But, there's more potential for confusion and incompleteness in that accounting than the Darwin combats.

But the main point is it's one real fighter combat, can't draw a broad conclusion from that. You might say Seafires *would* have done a lot better, and you might assert tactics *would* have been the difference but there's no actual comparison that conclusively proves or disproves that exact reasoning. One other fairly obvious difference was the Spit V's at Darwin in 1943 faced the 202nd Air Group (redesignated from 3rd AG) which had gained extensive favorable experience defeating various Allied fighter units in 1942 but hadn't been attrited in the Solomons campaign nor apparently seen a large personnel turnover (though by same token had relatively old A6M2's even in 1943). The opponents August 15 '45 were run of mill 1945 JNAF units, a somewhat different proposition.

In general the most clearly wrong statement on this thread I saw was along lines that range wasn't a big deal for Bf109 and Spit in early war: quite the contrary. The lack of range, hence combat persistence even over southern Britain, of the Bf109 was arguably the key factor in the German failure in the BoB. Likewise the LW over France ca. 1941 did have a quite favorable actual fighter exchange ratio v the RAF, considerably better than it had had in BoB, and that was true even before it introduced better types like Fw190. The lack of combat persistence of the Spitfire over France, as opposed to over Britain, was an important reason for that shift.

Joe

 

[claidemore]

Hi Parsifal,

Wingloading of a Spitfire Mk 1 was just under 25 lbs/sq ft, wingloading of the 109 Emils was about 32 lbs/sq ft. The 40 lb figure would apply to later G models of 109.

Wingloading is a ratio of a planes weight to wing surface area, and has nothing to do with structural strength of the wing itself. The Spitfire wing might be a little stronger in that it flexes more and would tend to bend rather than break.

The 109 was considered an excellent diving airplane, with very quick acceleration in the dive, quicker than a Spitfire. The Spitfire wing has a higher mach number, which means it can dive to a higher max speed.

Claidemore

 

[kool kitty89]

As Claidemore stated wing loading would be a factor for other issues (like stall, turning, etc.), certainly not structural issues. Plus (as for the wing loading issue its self) the 109 had a higher lift airfoil and LE slats that made up for this making lift loading about equal with the Spit. (as long as the slats worked properly)

A 20mm Mauser cannon put out about twice as much kinetic energy as an equivalent Allied 20mm weapon.

What ever gave you that idea, the MG FF cannon of the Bf 109E had slow muzzel velocity and rate of fire compared to the allies Hispano cannons, similar to the Zero's cannon. (the MG FF was much smaller and lighter though, and the FF/M used the "Mine Shell") The MG 151/20 of the later 109's was roughly equal to the allied guns (a little lower velocity, but similar RoF, more max ammo, could use "Mine Shells," and a bit lighter)

See: The WWII Fighter Gun Debate: Gun Tables

 

[kool kitty89]

The Bristol 146.

I knew of the Bristol designs, but the Myth I've always read about was that the Zero was derived from the Gloster design. The Bristol design does look a bit more like the Ki 43 too. (more tapered fuselage, the wings, and the canopy)

 

[HoHun]

Hi Parsifal,

>The Luftwaffe defeated the RAF over France in 1941 and 42? How and when did that happen. Luftflotte III "defeated" the RAF essentially by running away, by the simple expedient of moving its forces out of the primary range of the RAF fighters.

By attrition, 1941 and 1942. I'm surprised that anyone would deny that, though I'm not surprised someone would rely on attitude in denying it.

E. R. Hooton, "Eagle in Flames", p. 111: RAF Fighter losses for Offensive Operations, Western Europe, July 1941 to December 1941: 416

E. R. Hooton, "Eagle in Flames", p. 113: Luftflotte 3 fighter losses July 1941 to December 1941: 85.

I'm not going to continue this discussion beyond this random data sample since I don't respond to baiting posts.

>>Hm, are you aware that there were hardly any Me 109E-3 aircraft lost in the Battle of Britain? The losses are almost exclusively Me 109E-1 and E-4 aircraft.

>No, but neither do I accept it.

E. R. Hooton, "Eagle in Flames", p. 39.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[HoHun]

Hi Joe,

>One other fairly obvious difference was the Spit V's at Darwin ...

Talking about the Far East, have you seen my response to your post over in the Hurricane thread?

Direct link

Thread link in case the direct links doesn't work - post #195 for manual navigation:

Since we seemed to be finding some common ground in our latest posts, I'd regret it if we wouldn't try to make some further progress over there ...

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[The Basket]

To my knowledge both Zero and the Bristol fighter were different but came to the same conclusion. How to get as much performance out of a weak engine. Don't think the Bristol fighter was well known to be copied.

The only fighter I know which was influenced by the Zero was the Grumman Bearcat and that could chop up Zeroes all day long...but missed the war by a whisker.

When I said early days about the range of the 109 and Spitfire I meant the 1930s not actual combat experience...the 109 and Spitfire were what they were. A long ranged fighter of the same design era would have to have two engines to carry enough fuel. You either accepted a short ranged single engine fighter or went down the Bf 110 road. The Zero first flew a good 3 years later so could learn from the early monoplanes.

To my knowledge, there was only about 15 Zeroes in combat in July 1940...now...15 fighters against the RAF...Cleaned house? With what? 15 fighters?

The Val could do fighter duty? With a top speed of 242mph?

 

[Glider]

There was only one bona fide combat between Zeroes acting as fighters and Seafires. Seafires claimed other fighters attacking carrier groups as kamikazes in a few cases. The one real fighter combat was the last day of the war, August 15 1945. The Seafires claimed 8 Zeroes for 1 loss (and loss of one Avenger being escorted), but in the Spit V Darwin case (1: several ratio against the Spitfire) we are counting (or should be) losses recorded by both sides, not claims. But there aren't clearly complete Japanese accounts of that last day's combat, whereas the accounts of the Darwin combats seem to be, we know the 202nd Air Group was the only (Zero, one mission v Darwin was by JAAF Oscars) unit involved.

In the August 15 combat the 252nd Air Group lost one Zero to Seafires, pilot survived, and the 302nd AG recorded one pilot WIA by Seafires though plane apparently not destroyed. USN F6F's made a number of claims in basically the same series of combats, similar area and time, and the Japanese attributed several other losses to F6F's. But, there's more potential for confusion and incompleteness in that accounting than the Darwin combats.

I will need to dig around in my papers but if I remember it correctly the SPits were awarded 7 kills the additional kill being awarded to the Avengers Gunners. Of the 7, I think about 4 or 5 could be called pretty certain the others more likely to be survivable, but I will get back on that.

But the main point is it's one real fighter combat, can't draw a broad conclusion from that. You might say Seafires *would* have done a lot better, and you might assert tactics *would* have been the difference but there's no actual comparison that conclusively proves or disproves that exact reasoning. One other fairly obvious difference was the Spit V's at Darwin in 1943 faced the 202nd Air Group (redesignated from 3rd AG) which had gained extensive favorable experience defeating various Allied fighter units in 1942 but hadn't been attrited in the Solomons campaign nor apparently seen a large personnel turnover (though by same token had relatively old A6M2's even in 1943). The opponents August 15 '45 were run of mill 1945 JNAF units, a somewhat different proposition.

Quite likely. However re, the attacks on the Kamikazes some were awarded as Kamikaze kills and others as 'normal' kills as the Zero's in question were shot down as they moved to intercept the Spitfires. Again I will have to get back to you on that.

In general the most clearly wrong statement on this thread I saw was along lines that range wasn't a big deal for Bf109 and Spit in early war: quite the contrary. The lack of range, hence combat persistence even over southern Britain, of the Bf109 was arguably the key factor in the German failure in the BoB. Likewise the LW over France ca. 1941 did have a quite favorable actual fighter exchange ratio v the RAF, considerably better than it had had in BoB, and that was true even before it introduced better types like Fw190. The lack of combat persistence of the Spitfire over France, as opposed to over Britain, was an important reason for that shift.

Totally agree with you. The range (or lack of it) with the advantage of Radar direction gave the defenders, be they British or German fighters, a huge advantage.

 

[JoeB]

Hi Joe,

>One other fairly obvious difference was the Spit V's at Darwin ...

Talking about the Far East, have you seen my response to your post over in the Hurricane thread?

I don't bug people why they don't respond to my posts, I might not like the answer .

Anyway on this thread, I'm simply correcting a factual misunderstanding about historical ops: that the 'Seafire did well against the Zero'. In the period of the war where the two might have met often enough to say, the Seafire might have done very well, but in fact they barely met in true fighter combat, much less than the sample of Hurricane and Spit V v Zero combats.

And if they had met more, and the Seafire had done well, 'tactics' (except by distorting that word to mean 'all human factors') wouldn't necessarily have been the main difference v the Darwin debacle. Umpteenthly, those Spit units claimed to have adjusted their tactics and done better, it's just that Japanese accounts don't support that version of events very well (again, Allied accounts don't support the claims of the Zeroes well either, we're counting by recorded losses).

The 1945 JNAF was very different than 1943 (and 202nd over Darwin was kind of a throwback to 1942). That big change was indirectly related to tactics (as one among other factors accelerating attrition over a prolonged period, plus the inability to re-produce the original quality of pilots) but it's basically confusing things to literally call such a difference 'tactics'.

I suppose the idea behind the Seafire statement is that if Zeroes were encountered by the RAF over Europe in 1941 (agreed not many around in 1940) and the Zeroes gained an initial advantage, the RAF would quickly have countered it with different tactics. To an extent perhaps and over a long enough time perhaps a good deal, but such as to quickly reverse an exchange ratio like the Darwin one (perhaps 1:several against the Spitfires) to say 1:1 or several:1 the other way?, I'm not familiar with cases where changes anything like that dramatic were achieved simply by changing tactics in a short period (again same protagonists, same opponents, same situation othewise, the case of improvment in German exchange ratio v RAF from 1940 to 1941-2 doesn't really fit, in one case the shortlegged 109 was forced to fight at the edge of its range, other case the shortlegged Spit was forced to, and there were better German types later in that period). Of course one can simply assert the Spit would have done much better v the Zero in Europe from get go, hard to prove or disprove, like most 'what if' assertions.

Joe

 

[JoeB]

I will need to dig around in my papers but if I remember it correctly the SPits were awarded 7 kills the additional kill being awarded to the Avengers Gunners. Of the 7, I think about 4 or 5 could be called pretty certain the others more likely to be survivable, but I will get back on that.


Quite likely. However re, the attacks on the Kamikazes some were awarded as Kamikaze kills and others as 'normal' kills as the Zero's in question were shot down as they moved to intercept the Spitfires. Again I will have to get back to you on that.

I'd appreciate any more FAA details on these ops, but, we're never going to establish actual outcomes of combats with one side's accounts, it's just a bad habit to try to do that for WWII combat IMO, leads to very distorted conclusions, over and over for 60 years that's obscured the truth in many situations. Even in 1945 over Japan, Allied claims were still sometimes quite overstated apparently, and highly variably, just can't go by them in any given combat. I was happy to come across what I related about the August 15 '45 combat from Japanese side in a couple of good Japanese language sources, just recently. Again while that might be incomplete, or the Japanese mistaken that Seafire victims were F6F victims etc. if the Seafires had 4-5 'pretty certain' and really knocked down 1 or 2, that wouldn't be unusual, as you may already know, in any given WWII air combat.

Again though I don't doubt much that Seafires would have generally had the advantage in that period against Zeroes if they'd met enough to say. I just think the difference in the quality of '45 and '43 JNAF would have been the monster factor.

Joe

 

[kool kitty89]

To my knowledge both Zero and the Bristol fighter were different but came to the same conclusion. How to get as much performance out of a weak engine. Don't think the Bristol fighter was well known to be copied.

The only fighter I know which was influenced by the Zero was the Grumman Bearcat and that could chop up Zeroes all day long...but missed the war by a whisker.

When I said early days about the range of the 109 and Spitfire I meant the 1930s not actual combat experience...the 109 and Spitfire were what they were. A long ranged fighter of the same design era would have to have two engines to carry enough fuel. You either accepted a short ranged single engine fighter or went down the Bf 110 road. The Zero first flew a good 3 years later so could learn from the early monoplanes.

The Gloster design prooved to be better though with the same engine, and flying a year earlier. (and that's with their preoccupation with the Gladiator) And the Gloster design is the one with the myth around it that it inspired the Zero design.

Well the Bf 110 road isn't really correct as it wasn't really designed to be a true "fighter" a/c; the Fw 187 on the other hand was designed as a high performance long range single seater, which fits necely with the contemporary P-38 and Whirlwind.


But in the case of the BoB, the kind of range capable with the Fw 187 was unnecessary in that drop tank equipped 109's would have been sufficient. (and trials of such had been caried out as far back as the Spanish Civil War)