"Stretch or not strech" of aircraft designs

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Here are some excerpts from Shores, randomly taken from about 40 pages in the middle of MAW III, covering the time period from Nov 1942 - Jan 1943. I went through and circled Italian fighter losses and claims - in red for MC.202 and blue for all the older types. In total I count ~40 mentions of the MC.202, one mention of a G.50 and one of an MC.200, the latter of which was on some kind of special convoy escort.

I don't expect this to prove anything but I am showing you what I see in the operational history, it's almost all MC 202 and German fighters (which at this stage of the war are all 109G-2 and G-4, or Fw 190s, with a few F-4 remaining)

MC202_10.jpg
Nov 1942 - 5 x MC. 202 lost, 1 x G.50 lost


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22 Nov 1942 - 1 x MC.202 lost, 4 x MC.202 made claims

MC202_8.jpg
30 Nov 1942 - 2 x MC.202 made claims, 1 x MC.202 lost in accident

MC202_7.jpg
2 Dec 1942 - 1x MC.202 made claims, 1 x MC202 lost and 5 x MC.202 damaged, 1x MC. 200 lost

MC202_6.jpg
15 Dec 1942 - 7 x MC.202 made claims, 2 x MC.202 damaged by strafing

MC202_5.jpg
29 Dec 1942 - 3 x MC 202 made claims

MC202_4.jpg
Jan 1943 - 2 x MC.202 made claims

MC202_3.jpg
8 Jan 1942 - 2 x MC.202 made claims, 1 x MC.202 crash landed

MC202_2.jpg
11 Jan 1943 - 3 x Mc 202 made claims, 1 x MC.202 shot down, 1 x MC.202 damaged

MC202_1.jpg
11 Jan 1943 1 x MC.202 damaged landing - this one also mentions that a P-40 piot from 33FG (2nd Lt Scholl) shot down and killed Oblt Heydric, commander h of II./KG 51 when the latter got on the tail of his flight leader. German records confirmed the loss which I also confirmed in another couple of sources.
 
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Well, I've already shown (several times, going back to many months ago) that the vast majority of Axis fighters in the MTO in 1942 through mid 1943 (when P-40s were most active in the MTO) were late model Bf 109s and Macchi 202s, and in 1943 you can add Macchi 205s and Re 2001s to the mix. If they were so easy to shoot down I'd like to know why they posed equally difficult challenges for contemporaneous Sptifires and P-38s which were the best fighters in the Allied arsenal at the time.

Hello Schweik,

First of all, I don't ever recall making a comment about 1943 other than about the transfer of remaining Macchi C.200 units back to Italy. I also never stated that the Macchi fighters were that easy to shoot down. My comment was that they were very poorly armed and that the C.202 was inferior to a Me 109F because it had less power even if the performance numbers were similar. Even the early Veltro didn't do much better for armament initially. The prototype was a Serie IX Folgore which was the first Macchi built version with wing guns. It wasn't until the Serie III Veltro came along that they actually got cannon armament.
As for your comment that Spitfires and P-38 were the best Allied fighters of the time, I agree. Consider though why they may not have done as well in this environment as a P-40. Both types have excellent altitude performance but don't have quite the same advantage down low.... Same as most of the German fighters.
For what it's worth, the Italian accounts also state that the Folgores were having problems handling the Spitfire and P-38 when they arrived. Each side always thinks they are facing tough opposition unless the battle is completely one-sided.

Part of the opposition was the Ki-43, which I agree was excellent but no I certainly wouldn't call second rate (it was apparently the highest scoring fighter in the Japanese arsenal), but much of the opposition was also from A6M2s and later marks of the A6M, both over Darwin and Port Morseby / Milne Bay (and later other Islands), and soon after that Ki-61s and Ki-44s entered the fray as well. In fact the Tinian Air group, one of the top outfits in the IJN, was one of the main opponents of the 49th FG (P-40s) at Port Morseby.

This is exactly why I don't think operational history is always an indication of aircraft quality. The Ki-43 Hayabusa was the Type 1 fighter (Model of 1941). It started life with 2 x 7.7 mm LMG. Equivalent aircraft in Europe (Britain) were carrying 8 x 7.7 mm LMG. That is not nearly enough firepower for Hayabusa. It got a bit better when one or both cowl guns were replaced with 12.7 mm MG based on the Breda HMG cartridge. (That part is debatable because it lost a lot of its firing rate.) Lack of protection has already been mentioned. It also was fairly slow even for the improved Ki-43-II at 330 MPH.

The A6M2 at the time carried only 60 rounds for each of its cannon. That gave it about 7 seconds total time of fire. After that, its firepower was even worse than Ki-43 because all it had left were two 7.7 mm LMG.
Someone here (I forget who) posted that it was nearly impossible for the A6M to shoot down a Wildcat or any of the tougher aircraft from the back unless it had its cannon. The only real chance to kill a Wildcat from astern would be to hit an oil cooler. This is consistent with what I have read about USN tactics of the time.
If you know about the Tainan Kokutai, then perhaps you have also read the books by or about Saburo Sakai. His was a successful unit, but he was somewhat surprised at the lack of success of other IJN units and all of the were flying the A6M.

Regardless of what was being flown, they were able to cause the Spitfires (again, top Allied fighter at the time) sent to the region trouble so I don't think it's plausible to call them second rate in 1942 or say up to mid-1943. They did not hold up well to the Hellcat or Corsair and a few P-38 pilots did well against them, but some P-38 pilots did well against Bf 109s too..

You can be flying the best fighter around, but if you used bad tactics and fight in a way that lets the enemy exploit their performance advantages, you will still get killed.

The Bf 109F-2 was the contemporary of the original MC.202, that is why I made the comparison. Their firepower was equivalent, for the simple reason that the MC.202 was putting out more bullets, and each bullet could knock down an enemy aircraft or kill a pilot. For all this talk about 'throw weight' and muzzle velocity and so forth, have any of you ever seen a 12.7mm machine gun fire? (of any brand). Try to understand this - an aircraft is not a chunk of reinforced concrete which must be chipped away by a kind of long range jackhammer to destroy it. It is a mostly hollow shell made of light aluminum alloy (or light plywood, or cloth, or all three) with a few small pieces of relatively thin armor plate inside, and a lot of vulnerable control wires, hydraulic lines, oil tanks, squishy fuel tanks (which yes, have a sealer but aren't immune to blowing up), fragile high performance engines and very squishy pilots. Any one of which can be messed up by a single shell let alone two or three. Even a 'bad' Heavy Machine Gun like the Breda is still a heavy machine gun. Shooting 11 HMG shells per second from two HMG is enough to do serious damage and certainly as lethal as another plane shooting 7 or 8 rounds per second with a slightly better gun. Bf 109F-4 was better than the F-2 (though apparently hampered by the Trop filter) but subsequent 202s were also improved. Which is what led to the 205 and 205V, N/1 and N/2 (started with MC. 202bis which had the DB 605).

Actually I am pretty familiar with a .50 BMG in a McMillan sniper rifle. Those suckers are HEAVY (about 40 pounds)! A fellow brought one to the range many years back and insisted that *I* shoot it because I owned the chronograph and he was curious as to what kind of performance he was getting.
Engines aren't really as fragile as you think they are. There are plenty of videos to prove it.
As for aircraft structures, destroying sheet metal has radically different effects depending on where the location is.
Destroying structural members takes a bit more effort.
I am sure you have seen at least as many photographs of battle damage as I have.
As for the Macchi C.202, it didn't get enough performance enhancements worth mentioning. The C.202bis was really the initial designation for what became the C.205 Veltro.
Regarding the "slightly better gun", the shells are over 50% heavier and 650 feet/second faster. That is not "slightly".
Let's not forget as Shortround6 mentioned, that the larger shell carries a significantly larger explosive charge.

That operational history was from Globalsecurity.org and they listed their source which I also listed. Wikipedia says the combat introduction of the MC 205 was in February 1943 which seems to match. From the wiki:

"The C.205 entered production only five months after its maiden flight and began reaching front line units in February 1943. At the end of April, the 1° Stormo, based in Pantelleria, is the first unit to enter action with the C.205, on Mediterranean, escorting maritime and aerial convoys to and from Tunisia. "

According to one of the books I was reading, the first deliveries were April 1943 to Pantelleria, so that part is in agreement. There were apparently very few aircraft delivered, but I need to find the passage to confirm numbers.

By no means ! I am not trying to convince you of any such thing. I am trying to explain to you what the various history books and online sources say - which is for example that Soviet evaluation of the Yak-9T was positive, and more than 2,700 were made. Soviet evaluation of the Yak-9K, which you definitely cherry picked, was negative, and only 50 were made.

I just quoted the first evaluation of a heavy cannon armed Yak-9 I could find.

You keep making repeated assertions which simply aren't true and don't line up with the historical record and then you just move on to another:

MC.202 was inferior - I believe it WAS inferior for the reasons mentioned:
Firepower was too low.
You first claimed that the Wing LMG were "standard".
I pointed out that they were factory installed in a little more than half of the aircraft manufactured and that in operational use, they were typically removed. Your response was a very interesting, "They were ineffective anyway."

MC.202 was not available in any numbers- false
*I* did not make that statement. I stated that only about 30% of the fighter sorties flown by the Italians in North Africa in 1942 were with the Macchi C.202. I also stated that average monthly availability in North Africa of C.202 averaged 30-70 aircraft in 1942.
Anything else was something you are adding.

most Axis sorties in North Africa were old MC 200 and G.50 - false
I never made a statement as to the breakdown of types other than Macchi C.202 Folgore. I simply do not have the statistics. I never looked for them. They were not relevant to what I was looking for a few years ago when I was collecting data. Logic states though that if Macchi C.202 only account for 30% of sorties, then SOMETHING ELSE has to account for the other 70%.

Most German fighters in MTO were obsolescent Bf-109E - false
I asked YOU how many of the Messerschmitts were the older E models. The reason I asked is because of the photographs I recently saw in a book about the 109 that shows a quite a few 109E in Africa.

US forces only fought Ki-43 in PTO - false
WHERE did this statement come from????

Ki-43 was inferior - false (though I will say MC.202 was more dangerous)
The Hayabusa was a beautiful aircraft but was significantly out of date even at its introduction in 1941.
This is not to say it wasn't dangerous, but it was easily a generation behind.

Yak -9 was inferior too - false
I don't remember making such a statement. Keep in mind what my usual reaction is when you make such comparisons: There are so many variants of the Yak-9 that you need to be more specific as to which model is being discussed.

Yak -9K is indicative of Yak-9 performance overall - false
Same Engine, Same Engine power, Same airframe, Same Weight. Straight line performance numbers are nearly identical.
I would say the two probably have very similar if not identical flight performance.
One of the things worth noting is that although the NS-45 cannon has higher recoil, the muzzle brake apparently brings the recoil level below that of the NS-37.

And I do suspect the P-39 may have influenced the adoption of that caliber, if not it's another coincidence as to why they liked it. Yes the guns were different but two large caliber guns like that are a lot more alike than any smaller caliber (LMG or HMG) gun.

As I tried to point out earlier, the cartridge used in the NS-37 pre-dated the Great Patriotic War. When it was first used, there was no such thing as a Lend-Lease Kobra.
The power levels between the 37 mm are also very different as is the firing rate. The NS-37 is a much more powerful gun.

The ShVak also looks like a bit better cannon (800 rpm at 770 mps) than an MG 151 (700 rpm at 700 mps)

The firing rate you list is a little higher than my notes are listing. Mine only list 750 RPM and that is for a free firing wing mount or motor cannon. When synchronized, firing rate drops to about 610 RPM.
The 710 meters/second muzzle velocity for the MG 151/20 is also an indication that it is using shells that are quite a bit heavier than those of the ShVAK. With similar weight shells, it would be doing 800 meters/second.

- Ivan.
 
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The ShVak also looks like a bit better cannon (800 rpm at 770 mps) than an MG 151 (700 rpm at 700 mps)


The German cannon was a bit schizoid. It might have fired a bit faster, most sources do say 700-750rpm. But that is not a big deal

The problem is with the ammo. the 700mps velocity is for a 113-117 gram projectile vs the 96-99 gram projectiles for the ShVAK cannon.
This does not necessarily mean the German projectiles are more destructive as this weight is an average of a number of different types.
However the famous German mine shell only weighed 92-95 grams (depending on source) and carried 18.6 to 20 grams of HE (again depending on source) and had a velocity of about 800mps (once again depending on source), this round had lousy penetration but the blast was obviously considerable.
The Germans used mixed belts with up to about 40% of the mine shells. Due to the light weight the mine shell tended to loose velocity fairly quickly and the slower heavier shells would up going faster at the longer ranges.
However the short, blunt Russian shells are also going to shed velocity quicker than some other shells.

Short time of flight makes for easier deflection shooting.
 
Just a thought on the " p40s faced inferior oposition wherever they happened to be narrative". I'm not well read enough to have the numbers at my finger tips but it seems like it should be pretty easy to prove or disprove. If the majority of fighters faced by the p40 were older, inferior types( say 60%) then they would, at a minimum, constitute 60% of the fighters shot down by p40s( probably more like 70 or 80% because they were......well......inferior).
From what ive read this was not the case but I'll leave it to those of you better read than myself to answer this question.
 
Looks like the B-26 suffered from mission creep: forward firing MG's for low level attacks, bombardier's nose and ventral guns for level bombing, bomb bay capable of holding a torpedo - it could have benefited from somebody deciding what mission it was meant for and outfitting it just for that - or shipping multiple armament kits, as was done with the B-25.

A lot of the "mission creep" started fairly early. In part because the B-25 and the B-26 were in the design stage before WW II started in Poland.
"on August 10, 1939, the Army issued a contract for 201 Model 179s under the designation B-26 "
The plane was ordered off the drawing board with no prototype.
Combat experience by the French and British showed that the original set up as designed had several flaws or gaps in capability. (no armor or self sealing tanks for one thing)

"Although the first B-26 had yet to fly, orders for 139 B-26As with self-sealing tanks and armor were issued on September 16. Further orders for 719 B-26Bs on September 28, 1940 brought the total B-26 order to 1131 aircraft."

first Flight by a B-26 was not until November 25, 1940 and the Army got the first ones on February 22, 1941.
One the early aircraft there was single .30 cal in the tip of the nose, the two .50s in the top turret (first power turret on a US bomber) a single .30 cal out the bottom and a single .50 in the tail. Crew was five men.
Crew weight, as given in the weight and loading charts in the March 1942 manual, was rather optimistic. 950lbs for all five men including parachutes, WHile the pilot, copilot and radio operator could all weigh 200lbs each (with parachute) the navigator was a svelte 180lbs and the gunner a mere 170lbs (again with parachute).
Ammo for the guns was 600 rounds for each of the .30 cal guns and 200 rounds for each of the .50s.
At the rear of the plane the turret gunner was expected to get out of the turret and lay on his belly to operate the .30 cal tunnel gun and then bounce up and climb into the turret if the threat should get into the upper hemisphere of the plane.

Radio operator (or co-pilot?) went through the bomb bay and into the the tail to man the tail gun (?) hardly an ideal situation in combat.

The 326mph listed in the manual for the early planes was done at 26,734 lbs design weight. But normal gross weight as operated was 28,706 lbs which included only four 500lb bombs and just 465 gallons of fuel.

for those who are interested the manual for the early planes is here: http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/B-26/B-26_Operation_and_Flight_Instructions.pdf
with lots of charts and tables.

The high performance of the early B-26 was somewhat of an illusion as even without chin guns and some of the other add ons it's combat weight had gone up thousands of pounds.
The size of the bomb bay was not governed by the requirement to carry a torpedo but by the desire of the AAF to carry thirty 100lb bombs.

Some speed was lost by the deletion of the propeller spinners and the larger air intakes (to house dust/dirt filters) and perhaps a large oil cooler intake.

there are 3 basic B-26s, the original small wing, the big wing and the big wing with tilt.
 
Here are some excerpts from Shores, randomly taken from about 40 pages in the middle of MAW III, covering the time period from Nov 1942 - Jan 1943. I went through and circled Italian fighter losses and claims - in red for MC.202 and blue for all the older types. In total I count ~40 mentions of the MC.202, one mention of a G.50 and one of an MC.200, the latter of which was on some kind of special convoy escort.

I don't expect this to prove anything but I am showing you what I see in the operational history, it's almost all MC 202 and German fighters (which at this stage of the war are all 109G-2 and G-4, or Fw 190s, with a few F-4 remaining)

Hello Schweik,

You do realize that this is not really disproving anything I have been stating thus far.
Your statistics are for the very end of 1942 at which time, I don't believe the Saetta was in production any longer.
They certainly were not being delivered to the front.
At the end of October 1942, there was a resupply of Folgore to the units in North Africa.
I am still somewhat curious as to what the breakdown was EARLIER in the year to explain who was actually flying the other 70% of fighter sorties.

The earlier comment that I had made about Saetta units (all but one) returning to Italy at the end of 1942 / beginning of 1943 SHOULD have also included that the units were going back because they no longer had serviceable aircraft.
With relatively few aircraft still flyable, it isn't a great wonder that they were not getting shot down.
The Ali d'Italia 08 book comments that this was the end of the service of the Saetta as a front line aircraft.

- Ivan.
 
Hello Schweik,

As for your comment that Spitfires and P-38 were the best Allied fighters of the time, I agree. Consider though why they may not have done as well in this environment as a P-40. Both types have excellent altitude performance but don't have quite the same advantage down low.... Same as most of the German fighters.
For what it's worth, the Italian accounts also state that the Folgores were having problems handling the Spitfire and P-38 when they arrived. Each side always thinks they are facing tough opposition unless the battle is completely one-sided.

Well, you are actually making my larger point - which I've been trying to illuminate in this and several other threads on here: namely that different fighters excelled in different Theaters, therefore the same set of traits did not universally make a fighter superior; and second that among those traits high altitude performance wasn't necessarily the most important thing in every Theater.

Thus Soviet fighters did not need two stage superchargers - it would be nice to have, but when most combat is below 15,000 ft and quite a bit below 5,000 ft, it's not the most important thing - and worth sacrificing when limits for weight and size were strict. This is probably one reason why the P-39 did so well there., P-40s also did quite well where the fighting was mostly down low. In the MTO it was a mix of high, medium and low altitude though the bulk of the fighting was at medium (10-20k) and low altitude (below 10K). Same in the PTO. In China and Burma it was more low altitude in most engagements.

As for the complaints - yes whenever fighters had about even performance against enemy fighters of roughly equal capabilities the pilots often perceived it as a problem.

This is exactly why I don't think operational history is always an indication of aircraft quality. The Ki-43 Hayabusa was the Type 1 fighter (Model of 1941). It started life with 2 x 7.7 mm LMG. Equivalent aircraft in Europe (Britain) were carrying 8 x 7.7 mm LMG. That is not nearly enough firepower for Hayabusa. It got a bit better when one or both cowl guns were replaced with 12.7 mm MG based on the Breda HMG cartridge. (That part is debatable because it lost a lot of its firing rate.) Lack of protection has already been mentioned. It also was fairly slow even for the improved Ki-43-II at 330 MPH.

I could be wrong but my understanding is that the 7.7mm mg (only) armed Ki-43s only fought in China and in the earliest engagements in the Pacific (mostly against Brewster F2A and Hurricanes). The standard was quickly adjusted to add at least one 12.7mm HMG. Still quite light armament but the Ki-43 made up for that with other excellent characteristics of what you might call hyper-maneuverability, excellent climb, good diving traits and relatively high combat speed especially at lower altitudes. Anyway it made short work for example of very heavily armed Hurricane IIC.

The A6M2 at the time carried only 60 rounds for each of its cannon. That gave it about 7 seconds total time of fire. After that, its firepower was even worse than Ki-43 because all it had left were two 7.7 mm LMG.

The Spitfire through Mk VB, the Bf 109E series and quite a few other early cannon-armed fighters were also restricted to 60 rounds. Much better once they changed to belt-fed systems instead of drums but apparently with 60 rounds you could do damage.

You can be flying the best fighter around, but if you used bad tactics and fight in a way that lets the enemy exploit their performance advantages, you will still get killed.

This is true, but the nice thing about studying aircraft which were in very wide use is that you can see how they performed with both new or poorly trained pilots using almost no tactics at all and how well with experts using ideal tactics. Furthermore, you can see how tactics were developed, often under brutal combat conditions, as pilots and leadership determined how they could exploit the advantages of their machine against the flaws of the enemy (if such existed). One way you can tell if an aircraft was truly unsuitable or obsolete is if they could no longer find any way to make it successful. This, I would argue was the fate of the Hawker Hurricane after 1942, or the P-39 in American service - even while the Soviets were able to figure it out.

Engines aren't really as fragile as you think they are. There are plenty of videos to prove it.
Show me a video where a liquid cooled engine takes a hit from 2 or 3 HMG rounds and keeps running. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't think it was very common. In combat one round that holed a radiator or caused an oil leak could and usually did cause the rapid or gradual death of the engine.


MC.202 was inferior - I believe it WAS inferior for the reasons mentioned:
Firepower was too low.
You first claimed that the Wing LMG were "standard".
I pointed out that they were factory installed in a little more than half of the aircraft manufactured and that in operational use, they were typically removed. Your response was a very interesting, "They were ineffective anyway."

I don't remember dismissing them quite so categorically, but certainly the 12.7mm guns were considered the main armament by the pilots. Sometimes they removed wing guns in the field, sometimes they did not, you can see plenty of photos in Shores MAW showing the wing guns. It depended on the unit, the mission, and sometimes the individual pilot.

As to whether the MC.202 had too little firepower, it is essentially ridiculous. You can't simultaneously argue (as German pilots themselves did, as did their opponents) that the Bf109F-2 was a superb fighter and the MC.202 was inferior because it was underarmed. You might, by wiggling and twisting, make a case that the single MG-151-15 hit harder than two Breda 12.7mm, but it's certainly not a decisive or major difference, it was at best a slight difference, and at the same time the MC.202 had slightly better wing loading, climb and even speed than the 109F so it probably evened out. Both MC.202 and Bf 109F had a design philosophy that prioritized performance and agility over firepower. No one aircraft can be everything.

You have spoke before of a flying / fighting culture among the Japanese and the Soviets. The Italians had their own as well of course. They liked agility, performance and precision. They wanted to keep their significant altitude and climb advantages for the MC.202 which is why they didn't load it down with guns. They could have armed it like a Hawker Hurricane but then it would have been as slow and lumbering as a Hurricane. Italian pilots were trained in complex and nimble acrobatic techniques (commented on, sometimes with a hint of derision, quite a bit by the Germans and British) which required high agility, hence some pilots removed the wing guns, which in turn could depend on the mission. If they were sending them to shoot down B-24s more guns are better. To duel with Spitfires or Kittyhawk IIs, probably less is more.

I also stated that average monthly availability in North Africa of C.202 averaged 30-70 aircraft in 1942.

Well I've shown you that is incorrect.

I asked YOU how many of the Messerschmitts were the older E models. The reason I asked is because of the photographs I recently saw in a book about the 109 that shows a quite a few 109E in Africa.

There were quite a few. JG.27 was armed with 109E until late 1941. They accelerated the transition over to Bf 109F allegedly because of encounters with British Tomahawks. The switch to the Franz started with the arrival of II./JG27 in September 1941 and was complete by February 1942. All the other JG operational in North Africa from that point on had F or G model Bf 109, or Fw 190. There was also a unit of Bf 110 but after 1941 they did fighter bomber, night or coastal missions.

The Hayabusa was a beautiful aircraft but was significantly out of date even at its introduction in 1941.
This is not to say it wasn't dangerous, but it was easily a generation behind.

I don't think that is accurate because of the record of the fighter. It was not a generation behind, in some ways it was extremely sophisticated. It was excellent in combat, it's record was among the best in WW2, but it turned out to be not so great for attrition warfare.

The firing rate you list is a little higher than my notes are listing. Mine only list 750 RPM and that is for a free firing wing mount or motor cannon. When synchronized, firing rate drops to about 610 RPM.
The 710 meters/second muzzle velocity for the MG 151/20 is also an indication that it is using shells that are quite a bit heavier than those of the ShVAK. With similar weight shells, it would be doing 800 meters/second.

- Ivan.

The ShVak was not normally used synchronized on the Yak series.
 
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Hello Schweik,

You do realize that this is not really disproving anything I have been stating thus far.
Your statistics are for the very end of 1942 at which time, I don't believe the Saetta was in production any longer.
They certainly were not being delivered to the front.
At the end of October 1942, there was a resupply of Folgore to the units in North Africa.
I am still somewhat curious as to what the breakdown was EARLIER in the year to explain who was actually flying the other 70% of fighter sorties.

I'll post some more from earlier in 1942 no problem. But lets not forget the context of the argument - your claim that the P-40 faced inferior opposition in the MTO. The P-40 was heavily engaged in the MTO through early 1944, with the peak of activity there (and almost all of the American activity) was between late 1942 and mid 1943.

By the way I wonder why this line of thinking doesn't extend to the Germans who slaughtered so many I-153, I-15, MiG-3, LaGG-3, SB bombers, Su-2, Ro and other utility biplanes, and various other obsolescent aircraft in the first days and through the first year of Barbarossa.

The earlier comment that I had made about Saetta units (all but one) returning to Italy at the end of 1942 / beginning of 1943 SHOULD have also included that the units were going back because they no longer had serviceable aircraft.
With relatively few aircraft still flyable, it isn't a great wonder that they were not getting shot down.
The Ali d'Italia 08 book comments that this was the end of the service of the Saetta as a front line aircraft.

- Ivan.

The pages I listed showed both claims and losses. I'll post a few more though if you don't mind I'll just give page numbers for others to verify as I don't want to go through the whole chore of making photos, uploading them to the computer and rotating them and marking them up etc.
 
Ok here is every Italian fighter (or fighter-bomber) claim or casualty listing for July & August 1942. This is all from Shores MAW II pp 244 -318. There may be additional activity for this same period covered in MAW III but I think this should be sufficient to make the point.

July 1
2 x MC.202 destroyed, 2 x CR.42 damaged (damage may have been due to the weather)

July 2
9 x MC.202 made claims
1 x MC.202 crash landed, pilot POW

July 3
16 x MC.202 made claims
1 x MC.202 crash landed, 3 x CR.42 failed to return (the CR 42s were flying as bombers, escorted by the MC.202)

July 4
15 x MC.202 made claims

July 5
4 x MC.202 made claims (a couple of these say MC202s plural)
1 x MC.202 shot down, 1x MC.202 destroyed strafing, 1x CR.42 crash landed

July 6
1 x MC.200 claimed a B-24 damaged
1 x MC.202 damaged, 3 x MC.202 damaged or crash landed

July 7
8 x MC.202 made claims
2 x Cr. 42 crash landed or FTR (10 other CR.42 and 1 MC.202 damaged or destroyed on the ground by an SAS raid but this was not air combat)

July 8
2 x MC 202 made claims for probables

July 9
4 x MC 202 made claims
1 x MC 202 damaged pilot WiA

July 10
24 x MC.202 made claims, 2 x CR.42 made claims
6 x MC.202 damaged in combat, 1 x CR.42 shot down

July 11
2 x MC.200 made claims for a B-24 damaged, 1x MC.202 made claims an enemy aircraft shot down
3 aircraft damaged by commando raid (ground troops)

July 12
No Italian claims or casualties

July 13
3 x MC.202 made claims
4 x CR.42 shot down, 1 x MC 200 crash landed

July 14
11 x MC.202 made claims
1 x CR.42 shot down

July 15
5 x MC.202 made claims
1 x MC.202 crash landed

July 16
11 x MC.202 made claims
2 x MC.202 shot down, 2 x MC.202 damaged

July 17
3 x MC.202 made claims

July 18
8 x MC.202 made claims

July 19
1 x MC.202 shot down

July 20
1 x MC.200 crash landed, 3 x MC.202 damaged by bombs

July 21
2 x MC.202 made claims

July 22
4 x MC.202 made claims

July 23
No Italian claims or losses

July 24
3 x MC.202 made claims
1 x MC.202 crash landed

July 25
4 x MC.202 made claims

July 26, 27, 29, 30
No Italian claims or losses

July 31
7 x MC.202 made claims
1 X MC 202 damaged

August 1 -4
No Italian claims or losses

August 5
9 x MC.202 made claims

August 6-8
No Italian claims or losses

August 9
2 x MC.200 claimed a Liberator damaged near Bengazi (they apparently shot it down)

August 10
No Italian claims or losses

August 11
2x MC.202 made claims

August 12-13
No Italian claims or losses

August 14
4 x MC.202 made claims
4 x MC.202 destroyed by bombs

August 15-18
No Italian claims or losses

August 19
(at this time Shores lists German fighter strength as follows:
Stab/JG 27 - 2 x Bf 109F
I./JG 27- 23 x BF 109F
II./JG 27- 24 x Bf 109F
III./JG 27 - 24 x Bf 109F
JaboStaffel/JG 27 - 12 x Bf 109E
III./JG 534 - 24 x BF 109E and F
Jagdkommando /JG 27 3 x Bf 109F


Listing 97 aircraft servicable)

August 19
4 x MC.202 made claims
2 x MC.202 shot down

August 20-28
No Italian claims or losses

August 29
7 x MC.202 made claims
5 x MC.202 crash landed or failed to return (this was in an engagement with Kittyhawks of 2 and 5 SAAF, 2 x Bf 109F from JG 27 were also lost. The SAAF lost 4 Kittyhawks, 3 Hurricanes and 1 Tomahawk damaged)

Aug 30
3 x MC.202 made claims
2 x MC.202 damaged or crash landed, 1 x CR 42 crashed into another CR 42 in a night landing

By my count that breaks down as follows:

Claims
182 x MC.202 made claims (on roughly 45 out of 62 days)
5 x MC.200 made claims (mostly against Liberators... on 3 days)
4 x CR.42 made claims (on 3 days)

Losses
36 x MC.202 shot down or damaged
14 x CR.42 shot down or damaged
2 x MC.200 shot down or damaged

(no G.50)
 
Thus Soviet fighters did not need two stage superchargers - it would be nice to have, but when most combat is below 15,000 ft and quite a bit below 5,000 ft, it's not the most important thing - and worth sacrificing when limits for weight and size were strict. This is probably one reason why the P-39 did so well there., P-40s also did quite well where the fighting was mostly down low. In the MTO it was a mix of high, medium and low altitude though the bulk of the fighting was at medium (10-20k) and low altitude (below 10K). Same in the PTO. In China and Burma it was more low altitude in most engagements.

The Russians may not have needed two stage superchargers but the supercharger on the M-105 was crap even for a single stage.

You are trying to compare apples and oranges (or at least baking apples to eating apples).

The Russian engines were never intended or designed to run on 100 octane and above fuel, and pretty much never did. this limited the amount of boost that could be used or more properly the amount of compression that the supercharger could use to raise the pressure of the ambient air to the desired manifold pressure.

The M-105PA engine was good for 1100hp for take-off, 1100hp at 2,000meters in low gear of it's two speed supercharger and 1050hp at 4,000meters. Please note that this is not much different than what the Allison in the P-40 Tomahawk could do when flown by the book (no over boosting). Also note that on the M-105PA engine power dropped to about 1000hp at 2800meters at which point high gear in the supercharge was engaged.

The M-105PF engine used lower supercharger gears and more rpm and higher manifold pressures to hit 1210hp for take-off, 1260hp at 700 meters in low gear and 1180hp at 2700 meters in high gear. At 4000 meters it actually made about 40-50hp less than the M-105PA engine. They also sacrificed engine life (shorter time between overhauls) to get this amount of power down low. It is little wonder that the Russians liked the Allison (and the fuel that came with it)
The British and American fighters had hundreds more HP at low altitudes in 1942 using over boosting than the Russian fighters even when using single speed superchargers, and their single speed superchargers (let alone two speed) didn't crap out in the high teens as much as the M-105 engines did. M-105PA was down to 800hp at 6000 meters, the PF was worse.

This was NOT a deliberate decision to keep their fighters light and cheap. It was a result of things out of their control like the quality of the available fuel and the state of the art in supercharger design in the Soviet Union in 1939-41.
The Mig-3 shows the alternative possible path, use a really big engine to get power at altitude.

Please note that the Soviets had tried using turbochargers on a variety of engines and aircraft but due to their state of the art they weren't out of the experimental stage.
Also please note that on the first PE-8 four engine bombers the Soviets went to the extreme of mounting an M-100 engine in the fuselage to drive a supercharger that would provide air to the engine driven superchargers on the AM-34 engines mounted in the wing nacelles. The Soviets would have used higher altitude aircraft if they could have built them in numbers at a reasonable cost (both in rubles and in performance at other altitudes)

I could be wrong but my understanding is that the 7.7mm mg (only) armed Ki-43s only fought in China and in the earliest engagements in the Pacific (mostly against Brewster F2A and Hurricanes). The standard was quickly adjusted to add at least one 12.7mm HMG. Still quite light armament but the Ki-43 made up for that with other excellent characteristics of what you might call hyper-maneuverability, excellent climb, good diving traits and relatively high combat speed especially at lower altitudes. Anyway it made short work for example of very heavily armed Hurricane IIC.

There is some confusion/dispute over the type and number of guns in the Ki-43 in the early part of WW II. Ammo shipments to some bases don't seem to go along with the conventional wisdom as to what guns were fitted.

Did the Ki-43 really make short work of the Hurricane IIc or did experienced, well trained Japanese pilots make short work of inexperienced, not so well trained British/empire pilots?
The performance figures for the IIC aren't that far off the IIA and both are a lot better than a Hurricane I.

The Spitfire through Mk VB, the Bf 109E series and quite a few other early cannon-armed fighters were also restricted to 60 rounds. Much better once they changed to belt-fed systems instead of drums but apparently with 60 rounds you could do damage.

The belts certainly allowed for multiple engagements. :)
But it points to the ever changing state of the art, Spitfires with belt fed guns started leaving the factory in Oct 1941, how lont it took to convert all production I don't know but in the spring and summer of 1942 55-60 round drums are no longer state of the art. A problem with both the 109Es and the Zero was that their 20mm cannon were of both fairly low velocity and low rate of fire.

Show me a video where a liquid cooled engine takes a hit from 2 or 3 HMG rounds and keeps running. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't think it was very common. In combat one round that holed a radiator or caused an oil leak could and usually did cause the rapid or gradual death of the engine.
There may not be any "video" but there is a photo on page 131 of "Vees for Victory" that is supposed to be of a C-15 engine from a Tomahawk in NA that got hit 14 times by bullets (even if not heavy machine gun bullets). At least 3 of the hits are in the reduction gear case with another immediately behind. Other holes are either very difficult/impossible to see.
This may be a freak occurrence but some liquid cooled engines were not as vulnerable as is sometimes made out. You might not be able to keep fighting but the engine might stay running for 15-20 minutes at reduced power and get the pilot home. A lot depends on the location of the hit/s. the temperature of the engine to begin with (if you are already pushing the red zone there isn't much margin) , the air temperature and the amount of oil in the oil tank if the hit/s are in the oil system.

I don't think that is accurate because of the record of the fighter. It was not a generation behind, in some ways it was extremely sophisticated. It was excellent in combat, it's record was among the best in WW2, but it turned out to be not so great for attrition warfare.

The Ki-43s record might very well be true. However it would be truly amazing if the commonly accepted scores are actually true. Like over 6000 allied planes shot down. IN 1942-43 the allies didn't have 6000 planes operating in the theaters the KI-43 operated in. By the end of 1943 only 2319 KI 43s had been built.
How successful was the KI 43 in 1944 when the bulk of the Ki 43 production (2652) showed up?

Maybe I am wrong but something seems a bit off.
 
The Russians may not have needed two stage superchargers but the supercharger on the M-105 was crap even for a single stage.

You are trying to compare apples and oranges (or at least baking apples to eating apples).

The Russian engines were never intended or designed to run on 100 octane and above fuel, and pretty much never did. this limited the amount of boost that could be used or more properly the amount of compression that the supercharger could use to raise the pressure of the ambient air to the desired manifold pressure.

The M-105PA engine was good for 1100hp for take-off, 1100hp at 2,000meters in low gear of it's two speed supercharger and 1050hp at 4,000meters. Please note that this is not much different than what the Allison in the P-40 Tomahawk could do when flown by the book (no over boosting). Also note that on the M-105PA engine power dropped to about 1000hp at 2800meters at which point high gear in the supercharge was engaged.

The M-105PF engine used lower supercharger gears and more rpm and higher manifold pressures to hit 1210hp for take-off, 1260hp at 700 meters in low gear and 1180hp at 2700 meters in high gear. At 4000 meters it actually made about 40-50hp less than the M-105PA engine. They also sacrificed engine life (shorter time between overhauls) to get this amount of power down low. It is little wonder that the Russians liked the Allison (and the fuel that came with it)
The British and American fighters had hundreds more HP at low altitudes in 1942 using over boosting than the Russian fighters even when using single speed superchargers, and their single speed superchargers (let alone two speed) didn't crap out in the high teens as much as the M-105 engines did. M-105PA was down to 800hp at 6000 meters, the PF was worse.

This was NOT a deliberate decision to keep their fighters light and cheap. It was a result of things out of their control like the quality of the available fuel and the state of the art in supercharger design in the Soviet Union in 1939-41.
The Mig-3 shows the alternative possible path, use a really big engine to get power at altitude.

Please note that the Soviets had tried using turbochargers on a variety of engines and aircraft but due to their state of the art they weren't out of the experimental stage.
Also please note that on the first PE-8 four engine bombers the Soviets went to the extreme of mounting an M-100 engine in the fuselage to drive a supercharger that would provide air to the engine driven superchargers on the AM-34 engines mounted in the wing nacelles. The Soviets would have used higher altitude aircraft if they could have built them in numbers at a reasonable cost (both in rubles and in performance at other altitudes)

As a separate side discussion maybe for another thread, I just want to say I love the third / fifth engine just for the supercharger concept, the French had a neat design with one of those too though it didn't have time to mature.

SNCAC NC.150 - Wikipedia

1570396184674.png

SNCAC%20150.jpg

This thing allegedly managed 373 mph at 26,00 ft! Not bad for 1939-1940

For the Soviets, I don't totally disagree that their policies were an adaptation to their reality, including things like fuel quality, but I still stick to my main point that R&D is, while partly dependent on the individual creativity of your designers (and therefore the luck of the draw for the war-leaders) to a large extent it's also a matter of how many resources you put into it. The Pe-8, which was quite a good long range / heavy bomber for 1941 (I would compare it to a slightly flawed Lancaster), would have been much more heavily and seriously developed if there had been a major perceived need for it. Same for high altitude capabilities for the Soviet fighters. Their main need to fight above 20,000 feet was to intercept the occasional Ju-86. They didn't need fleets of high altitude fighters because neither they nor the Germans were using fleets of high altitude bombers. The fighters, as I often try to point out, are basically obligated to go where the bombers go.

In the Battle of Britian there was a lot of more or less high altitude level bombing going on. Later in the 8th AF etc. campaigns (and British Night bombing) there was once again a lot of level bombing going on, then later you also had the B-29 raids on Japan. But these were features mostly of the very early and very late war. In most of the war, and in most Theaters, the action was down low above the tanks and artillery pieces and infantry battalions. In this crucial middle period of WW2, the fighting was more often than not down low, certainly for the Russian it almost always was. Therefore their development followed the course it did.

I also say again, if you were a high ranking general in the Soviet VVS, your main goal is to get production quality up to par, not to improve designs. If say in 1942 you had 95% of your fighters of the latest (say Yak-1B, Yak-7B or La-5) version flying at or near spec (instead of probably more like 30%) your Tactical and Operational situation would dramatically improve.


There is some confusion/dispute over the type and number of guns in the Ki-43 in the early part of WW II. Ammo shipments to some bases don't seem to go along with the conventional wisdom as to what guns were fitted.

Did the Ki-43 really make short work of the Hurricane IIc or did experienced, well trained Japanese pilots make short work of inexperienced, not so well trained British/empire pilots?
The performance figures for the IIC aren't that far off the IIA and both are a lot better than a Hurricane I.

As recently discussed in the Burma thread, from what I gather Hurricane pilots were having trouble with Japanese Ki-43s right until the end. A well flown Ki-43 could also shoot down other more modern Allied fighters. The general trend though in 1944-45 was for poorly trained replacement pilots on the Axis side, vs. fairly well trained and well-led pilots on the Allied side. My opinion on the Ki-43 from reading a lot of operational history in the CBI and PTO, is that they were armed well enough against other fighters or early war light bombers (Blenheims, TBD Devastators, TBF Avenger), their problem was that when faced with more heavily armed bombers like A-20s, B-25s and especially any US 4 engine bombers, or against planes like Beaufighters. They did not have enough hitting power to take those down.

The belts certainly allowed for multiple engagements. :)
But it points to the ever changing state of the art, Spitfires with belt fed guns started leaving the factory in Oct 1941, how lont it took to convert all production I don't know but in the spring and summer of 1942 55-60 round drums are no longer state of the art. A problem with both the 109Es and the Zero was that their 20mm cannon were of both fairly low velocity and low rate of fire.

And yet both the A6M and Bf-109e were known to be exceedingly deadly. I can tell you that in the MTO, both Spitfire Mk VB and Bf 109E were still in action through 1941, Bf 109E were being phased out by February 1942 (as I just pointed out to Ivan) except as Jabos, but the Spit VB were still around through the end of 1942 and well into 1943, along with the (better, IMO) Spit VC though some people disagree with that.

The A6M3 had 100 rounds per 20mm, & by the time you get to the A6M5c they were quite well armed- two x 20mm plus three x 13mm. Of course they came out very late. Should have been standard by say early 1943.

There may not be any "video" but there is a photo on page 131 of "Vees for Victory" that is supposed to be of a C-15 engine from a Tomahawk in NA that got hit 14 times by bullets (even if not heavy machine gun bullets). At least 3 of the hits are in the reduction gear case with another immediately behind. Other holes are either very difficult/impossible to see.
This may be a freak occurrence but some liquid cooled engines were not as vulnerable as is sometimes made out. You might not be able to keep fighting but the engine might stay running for 15-20 minutes at reduced power and get the pilot home. A lot depends on the location of the hit/s. the temperature of the engine to begin with (if you are already pushing the red zone there isn't much margin) , the air temperature and the amount of oil in the oil tank if the hit/s are in the oil system.

Again, I don't necessarily disagree - a strongly made engine could endure 2 or 3 hits even from an HMG or a 20mm, but it wasn't likely and certainly in most cases would be out of the fight. I do know for a fact this happened with numerous P-40s and even more B-17s and P-47s and so on (with legends of entire cylinders being shot off and the engine still running for a while) but for a fighter, 90% of the time a hit like that is going to take you out of the fight. The rest (i.e. whether the engine immediately shuts down or catches fire or if you are able to limp home smoking for another 10 or 15 minutes) is relevant more on the level of attrition warfare than to the Tactical situation. Attrition is of course very important too without a doubt, but it's a separate issue from immediate results in a dogfight.

The Ki-43s record might very well be true. However it would be truly amazing if the commonly accepted scores are actually true. Like over 6000 allied planes shot down. IN 1942-43 the allies didn't have 6000 planes operating in the theaters the KI-43 operated in. By the end of 1943 only 2319 KI 43s had been built.
How successful was the KI 43 in 1944 when the bulk of the Ki 43 production (2652) showed up?

Maybe I am wrong but something seems a bit off.

Without a doubt they overclaimed quite a bit, at least 3-1 probably more like 5-1 or 8-1, depending on the area of operation and the Theater, and the individual operation. The IJA seemed to be worse about that than the IJN, the two branches of the Japanese Imperial Military had very different cultures (and there is a reason why all the top Aces were in the Navy regardless of what plane they flew). But even with significant overclaiming of say, 5-1, they still took a toll. We can look at individual battles and Operations and see that the Ki-43 was not an easy mark.[/quote]
 
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Ok here is every Italian fighter (or fighter-bomber) claim or casualty listing for July & August 1942. This is all from Shores MAW II pp 244 -318. There may be additional activity for this same period covered in MAW III but I think this should be sufficient to make the point.

July 1
2 x MC.202 destroyed, 2 x CR.42 damaged (damage may have been due to the weather)

July 2
9 x MC.202 made claims
1 x MC.202 crash landed, pilot POW

July 3
16 x MC.202 made claims
1 x MC.202 crash landed, 3 x CR.42 failed to return (the CR 42s were flying as bombers, escorted by the MC.202)

July 4
15 x MC.202 made claims

July 5
4 x MC.202 made claims (a couple of these say MC202s plural)
1 x MC.202 shot down, 1x MC.202 destroyed strafing, 1x CR.42 crash landed

July 6
1 x MC.200 claimed a B-24 damaged
1 x MC.202 damaged, 3 x MC.202 damaged or crash landed

July 7
8 x MC.202 made claims
2 x Cr. 42 crash landed or FTR (10 other CR.42 and 1 MC.202 damaged or destroyed on the ground by an SAS raid but this was not air combat)

July 8
2 x MC 202 made claims for probables

July 9
4 x MC 202 made claims
1 x MC 202 damaged pilot WiA

July 10
24 x MC.202 made claims, 2 x CR.42 made claims
6 x MC.202 damaged in combat, 1 x CR.42 shot down

July 11
2 x MC.200 made claims for a B-24 damaged, 1x MC.202 made claims an enemy aircraft shot down
3 aircraft damaged by commando raid (ground troops)

July 12
No Italian claims or casualties

July 13
3 x MC.202 made claims
4 x CR.42 shot down, 1 x MC 200 crash landed

July 14
11 x MC.202 made claims
1 x CR.42 shot down

July 15
5 x MC.202 made claims
1 x MC.202 crash landed

July 16
11 x MC.202 made claims
2 x MC.202 shot down, 2 x MC.202 damaged

July 17
3 x MC.202 made claims

July 18
8 x MC.202 made claims

July 19
1 x MC.202 shot down

July 20
1 x MC.200 crash landed, 3 x MC.202 damaged by bombs

July 21
2 x MC.202 made claims

July 22
4 x MC.202 made claims

July 23
No Italian claims or losses

July 24
3 x MC.202 made claims
1 x MC.202 crash landed

July 25
4 x MC.202 made claims

July 26, 27, 29, 30
No Italian claims or losses

July 31
7 x MC.202 made claims
1 X MC 202 damaged

August 1 -4
No Italian claims or losses

August 5
9 x MC.202 made claims

August 6-8
No Italian claims or losses

August 9
2 x MC.200 claimed a Liberator damaged near Bengazi (they apparently shot it down)

August 10
No Italian claims or losses

August 11
2x MC.202 made claims

August 12-13
No Italian claims or losses

August 14
4 x MC.202 made claims
4 x MC.202 destroyed by bombs

August 15-18
No Italian claims or losses

August 19
(at this time Shores lists German fighter strength as follows:
Stab/JG 27 - 2 x Bf 109F
I./JG 27- 23 x BF 109F
II./JG 27- 24 x Bf 109F
III./JG 27 - 24 x Bf 109F
JaboStaffel/JG 27 - 12 x Bf 109E
III./JG 534 - 24 x BF 109E and F
Jagdkommando /JG 27 3 x Bf 109F


Listing 97 aircraft servicable)

August 19
4 x MC.202 made claims
2 x MC.202 shot down

August 20-28
No Italian claims or losses

August 29
7 x MC.202 made claims
5 x MC.202 crash landed or failed to return (this was in an engagement with Kittyhawks of 2 and 5 SAAF, 2 x Bf 109F from JG 27 were also lost. The SAAF lost 4 Kittyhawks, 3 Hurricanes and 1 Tomahawk damaged)

Aug 30
3 x MC.202 made claims
2 x MC.202 damaged or crash landed, 1 x CR 42 crashed into another CR 42 in a night landing

By my count that breaks down as follows:

Claims
182 x MC.202 made claims (on roughly 45 out of 62 days)
5 x MC.200 made claims (mostly against Liberators... on 3 days)
4 x CR.42 made claims (on 3 days)

Losses
36 x MC.202 shot down or damaged
14 x CR.42 shot down or damaged
2 x MC.200 shot down or damaged

(no G.50)
This would seem to, unless there is something I'm missing, put to rest the inferior oposition narrative.
 
Well, you are actually making my larger point - which I've been trying to illuminate in this and several other threads on here: namely that different fighters excelled in different Theaters, therefore the same set of traits did not universally make a fighter superior; and second that among those traits high altitude performance wasn't necessarily the most important thing in every Theater.

Thus Soviet fighters did not need two stage superchargers - it would be nice to have, but when most combat is below 15,000 ft and quite a bit below 5,000 ft, it's not the most important thing - and worth sacrificing when limits for weight and size were strict. This is probably one reason why the P-39 did so well there., P-40s also did quite well where the fighting was mostly down low. In the MTO it was a mix of high, medium and low altitude though the bulk of the fighting was at medium (10-20k) and low altitude (below 10K). Same in the PTO. In China and Burma it was more low altitude in most engagements.

Hello Schweik,

What I was saying was that the P-40 often wasn't facing first quality opposition which is one reason it might have done so well. There are many restrictive environments in which one set of performance qualities are favored. In a tight space even Romanian IAR 80 fighters were a match for first line US fighters, but that doesn't mean they were particularly good aircraft.

I could be wrong but my understanding is that the 7.7mm mg (only) armed Ki-43s only fought in China and in the earliest engagements in the Pacific (mostly against Brewster F2A and Hurricanes). The standard was quickly adjusted to add at least one 12.7mm HMG. Still quite light armament but the Ki-43 made up for that with other excellent characteristics of what you might call hyper-maneuverability, excellent climb, good diving traits and relatively high combat speed especially at lower altitudes. Anyway it made short work for example of very heavily armed Hurricane IIC.

There was a pretty good debate going on at J-Aircraft about what kinds of armament were actually installed in the Ki-43-II. The issue was really a choice of a very low rate of fire for a 12.7 mm gun or a decent rate of fire by replacing one of the 12.7 HMG with a 7.7 Vickers. Either way, it wasn't a lot of firepower.
Regarding killing Hurricanes, I suspect that might again be a bad tactics thing. Hurricane loses in an agility contest against Hayabusa.

The Spitfire through Mk VB, the Bf 109E series and quite a few other early cannon-armed fighters were also restricted to 60 rounds. Much better once they changed to belt-fed systems instead of drums but apparently with 60 rounds you could do damage.

I see that Shortround6 already addressed this, but here is another viewpoint:
The Spitfire Mk.VB still had 4 x .303 cal LMG even without the cannon. The 109E probably WAS too lightly armed but note that the successor replaced the two wing guns with a motor cannon with more ammunition and this was at about the same time as the introduction of the A6M2 and Ki-43-I.
Another factor to consider is that the "loiter time" of the A6M2 is much higher than either of the European fighters. Over the carriers at Midway for example, the description I had read was that after the first engagement, the combat air patrol was left to defend with just machine guns. Another book about the A6M made comments that for the first years of the war, the vast majority of kills were made with the machine guns.

Show me a video where a liquid cooled engine takes a hit from 2 or 3 HMG rounds and keeps running. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't think it was very common. In combat one round that holed a radiator or caused an oil leak could and usually did cause the rapid or gradual death of the engine.

Since when were we limiting this to liquid cooled engines? We already know about various R-2800 coming home with missing cylinders.
The specific video I was thinking of is of an automobile that was modified for radio control and shot at with a BMG. It eventually was destroyed of course, but took quite a few more hits all over than I would have expected. There is also a couple commercial videos (I believe one of them is by Dillon Precision) which shows similar things.

I don't remember dismissing them quite so categorically, but certainly the 12.7mm guns were considered the main armament by the pilots. Sometimes they removed wing guns in the field, sometimes they did not, you can see plenty of photos in Shores MAW showing the wing guns. It depended on the unit, the mission, and sometimes the individual pilot.

Keep in mind that the first factory equipped version of Folgore with wing guns did not get produced until May 1942.
Multiple sources have claimed that the majority of the operational C.202 did not carry wing guns for weight and handling reasons.

As to whether the MC.202 had too little firepower, it is essentially ridiculous. You can't simultaneously argue (as German pilots themselves did, as did their opponents) that the Bf109F-2 was a superb fighter and the MC.202 was inferior because it was underarmed. You might, by wiggling and twisting, make a case that the single MG-151-15 hit harder than two Breda 12.7mm, but it's certainly not a decisive or major difference, it was at best a slight difference, and at the same time the MC.202 had slightly better wing loading, climb and even speed than the 109F so it probably evened out. Both MC.202 and Bf 109F had a design philosophy that prioritized performance and agility over firepower. No one aircraft can be everything.

Schweik, We have been to the same point over and over again. You call it wiggling. I call it stating the facts.
Before going a whole lot further, I suggest you do a little background research on the Breda 12.7 x 81 mm HMG. In the field of HMGs, this is one of the weaker guns. It only has about 2/3 the muzzle energy of a Browning M2.
The German MG 151/15 is really borderline HMG / Light Cannon. Besides the faster and heavier shell, it is carrying (according to Shortround6 3.5X the explosive charge).
The Me 109F-2 is also carrying two additional 7.92 mm MG 17 are not matched by anything the typical C.202 was carrying.
Wing guns might have gotten things a little closer, but most of the C.202 did not fly with them.
Now when we get to the 109F-4, we are matching a MG 151/20 against the two Breda 12.7 mm and it isn't even close to even.
I am very curious as to how you came to the conclusion that the Folgore was faster, climbed faster, etc.
From what I have been able to find, the F-2 has on the low end, about the same level speed and on the high end is about 15 MPH faster than Folgore. The F-4 is from 15-20 MPH faster.
As for wing loading, Folgore without wing guns is 2930 KG, with wing guns we get 3069 KG. Wing Area is 16.80 M^2
For the Me 109F-4, loaded weight is 2980 KG and wing area is 16.20 M^2.
I don't have data for the Me 109F-2 handy, but for the Me 109F-1, weight is listed as 2750 KG loaded.
Thus there isn't any significant wing loading advantage for the Folgore. Where did you get this idea?

You have spoke before of a flying / fighting culture among the Japanese and the Soviets. The Italians had their own as well of course. They liked agility, performance and precision. They wanted to keep their significant altitude and climb advantages for the MC.202 which is why they didn't load it down with guns. They could have armed it like a Hawker Hurricane but then it would have been as slow and lumbering as a Hurricane. Italian pilots were trained in complex and nimble acrobatic techniques (commented on, sometimes with a hint of derision, quite a bit by the Germans and British) which required high agility, hence some pilots removed the wing guns, which in turn could depend on the mission. If they were sending them to shoot down B-24s more guns are better. To duel with Spitfires or Kittyhawk IIs, probably less is more.

You are quite imaginative here but not really in agreement with the historical development of Folgore and Veltro.
Very early on, there was recognition that armament was too light. Heck, they were carrying the same two 12.7 mm HMG that some of the old Fiat CR.32 biplanes were!
There were attempts to add MG 151/20 cannon (!) in underwing gondolas very early in the production of the Folgore. There were only a total of 5 aircraft built to this standard because poor performance and eventually they were converted to the Veltro standard.
The 2 x 7.7 Breda MG were also tried but didn't become a production standard until May 1942 which was almost a year after service introduction of the type. In service, pilots usually had the guns removed because they represented 300 pounds of extra weight for no great additional firepower, so they were back to CR.32 armament.
It took another year to get a proper cannon armed fighter in the Serie III Veltro.
As for Altitude and Climb advantage, the specifications don't really show any significant advantage for either aircraft.
I do believe that with added engine power and armament (beyond what the C.205 got) the Folgore / Veltro was probably the airframe with better development potential, but at the stage that it reached with C.202 versus Me 109F, my belief is that the 109F had the advantage.
As for tailoring the armament to the mission, how long do you think it would take to completely remove and install wing mounted MG and ammunition feeds and replace fairings to block off the openings? Keep in mind that you also need to harmonize the guns. Is this the kind of thing that you would ask your ground crew to do once you hear that there is an incoming bomber attack? Oops, there are escorting fighters, "Hurry, pull the guns back out!!!" Really??

Well I've shown you that is incorrect.

I don't think you are even reading your own post. I stated average of 30-70 Folgore in North Africa in 1942.
Your one data point that "didn't match" showed 55 Folgore by your count. Seems in agreement to me.

I don't think that is accurate because of the record of the fighter. It was not a generation behind, in some ways it was extremely sophisticated. It was excellent in combat, it's record was among the best in WW2, but it turned out to be not so great for attrition warfare.

In what way do you think Hayabusa was that sophisticated?
It certainly was agile and easy to fly and that was probably the best that could be said about it.
What characteristics do you believe made it "excellent in combat" but "not so good for attrition warfare"?

The ShVak was not normally used synchronized on the Yak series.

It was ALWAYS used synchronized in the Lavochkin radial engine fighters.

Claims
182 x MC.202 made claims (on roughly 45 out of 62 days)
5 x MC.200 made claims (mostly against Liberators... on 3 days)
4 x CR.42 made claims (on 3 days)

Losses
36 x MC.202 shot down or damaged
14 x CR.42 shot down or damaged
2 x MC.200 shot down or damaged

(no G.50)

By my count, that is 18 Folgore shot down over two months versus 16 other types shot down.
As you commented, Commando raids and bombing victims really don't count the same.
That doesn't sound like a great loss of aircraft over two months for the numbers involved.
Just out of curiosity, how do the Italian claims stack up against actual Allied aircraft losses during this time?

As recently discussed in the Burma thread, from what I gather Hurricane pilots were having trouble with Japanese Ki-43s right until the end. A well flown Ki-43 could also shoot down other more modern Allied fighters. The general trend though in 1944-45 was for poorly trained replacement pilots on the Axis side, vs. fairly well trained and well-led pilots on the Allied side. My opinion on the Ki-43 from reading a lot of operational history in the CBI and PTO, is that they were armed well enough against other fighters or early war light bombers (Blenheims, TBD Devastators, TBF Avenger), their problem was that when faced with more heavily armed bombers like A-20s, B-25s and especially any US 4 engine bombers, or against planes like Beaufighters. They did not have enough hitting power to take those down.

First of all, the Ki-43 that was being produced "at the end" wasn't really quite the same beast as it was earlier. It gained a bit more engine power than the A6M did even though it used basically the same engine.
It would have been faster that the Hurricane though it still wasn't particularly fast.
The interesting thing about the armament of Ki-43 is that its armament was almost exactly the same as that for a Folgore without wing guns.

The A6M3 had 100 rounds per 20mm, & by the time you get to the A6M5c they were quite well armed- two x 20mm plus three x 13mm. Of course they came out very late. Should have been standard by say early 1943.

A6M3 armament had a few variations with the later production Model 22s being the most advanced. Some probably got the 100 round magazines, but late Nakajima production A6M2 also got those.
As for the A6M5c, even the first model of the A6M5 had not yet been developed by early 1943.
Engine power did not increase, so with the extra guns, this model was definitely getting too heavy.

- Ivan.
 
A thought about tagging an aircraft as inferior solely due to less than optimal armament as this seems to be the sole shortcoming of the Mc202 near as I can tell. Everything else looks good to exceptional. Speed, climb, moaenuverability, etc.
The p51 b&c versions were underarmed though less so than the Mc 202( but not by much) and I would argue were one of the very best fighters of the war. Don't think too many people would classify the p51b/c as inferior oposition. Imho.
 
I'm not sure it's germane here, but I always thought that one of the most successful stretches of an aircraft was a C-141A to a C-141B. That really opened up a whole different world of mission effectiveness for that airframe.

When I read the OP thread title, that was what came to mind at first.
The stretch of the C-141 was pretty straight forward. The A model, which I flew, had excess power, a good thing. We had more power on three engines than a KC -135 did, with water injection, on all four engines and we maxed out at similar weight. The real driver was that most flights maxed out space before maxing out on gross weight. In fact, I can only recall, after some 40+ years, that I only flew two maxed out, weight wise, takeoffs. One was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at a pressure altitude of 7600 ft., and the other was at Cherry Point Marine base with a runway length of 8500 ft and we were going to Rota, Spain. Two plugs equaling 23 ft were installed, probably equidistant from the Cg. The change was estimate to be the same as buying 90 new aircraft!
 
Here is a power chart for the M/VK series of engines. This was posted by Tomo many years ago.
vk-jpg.jpg


The M-106 engine used a single speed supercharger and managed to be up to 200hp more power at low altitudes than the M-105P engine. Even a slightly lower power such an engine in 1941/42 would have given a number of advantages to Soviet fighters. The VK-107, had they got it to work would really have changed things on the Russian front, even without trying to fight at 6000 meters and up (and even if an earlier version was 100-150hp less powerful)

It was the failure of these two engines to be developed as soon as the Soviets wanted that restricted the Armament choices of the Yak and Lagg design teams.
 
A thought about tagging an aircraft as inferior solely due to less than optimal armament as this seems to be the sole shortcoming of the Mc202 near as I can tell. Everything else looks good to exceptional. Speed, climb, moaenuverability, etc.
The p51 b&c versions were underarmed though less so than the Mc 202( but not by much) and I would argue were one of the very best fighters of the war. Don't think too many people would classify the p51b/c as inferior oposition. Imho.


The differences between the 12.7mm machine guns in the P-51B&C and the 12.7mm machine guns in the MC. 202 (or any italian fighter) are a lot more than "not by much".

The American guns cycle faster, more rounds per second, and that is if the guns are free firing. With the Italian guns slowed by synchronization the amount of bullets per second really starts to differ. rate of fire is about 18 bullets per second for the pair if Italian guns. The P-51B fires over 50 bullets per second, I don't know about you but 2 1/2 times as many per second seems like more than "not by much" to me.

The American bullets are heavier, about 46 grams vs 35 grams for the AP rounds. Not actually a big difference if you hit skin with nothing behind it, at 12.7mm hole is a 12.7mm hole, but if you hit a wing spar, engine mount, longeron, rib or other substantial piece of structure the heavier bullet will penetrate deeper and do more damage. The Longer, heavier, more streamline bullet will also retain velocity better meaning the difference in hitting power goes up with increased range.
The American ammo has a higher velocity to start with (about 14%) but since kinetic energy goes up with square of the velocity that means, if the bullets were the same weight (see above, they are not) the American bullet would hit about 30% harder. In actual fact the American AP round has 64% more kinetic energy at the muzzle than the Italian 12.7mm ammo. And at longer ranges (even 200-300 meters) the difference is even greater.
The Italian guns do have exploding bullets (HE) but the charge is small and they used mixed belts (not all ammo is HE, some of the Bullets are AP).
Putting everything together the P-51B & C has about 4 times the firepower of a MC. 202 with two 12.7mm Breda- SAFAT machineguns. The wing mounted 7.7s are gong to help but not a lot.
 
A thought about tagging an aircraft as inferior solely due to less than optimal armament as this seems to be the sole shortcoming of the Mc202 near as I can tell. Everything else looks good to exceptional. Speed, climb, moaenuverability, etc.
The p51 b&c versions were underarmed though less so than the Mc 202( but not by much) and I would argue were one of the very best fighters of the war. Don't think too many people would classify the p51b/c as inferior oposition. Imho.

Hello Michael Rauls,

To characterize the Macchi Folgore, I would adjust things a bit.
Speed: Fair - usually quoted as just under 600 KPH.
This isn't bad and faster than a P-40 but not terribly fast compared to FW 190A or Me 109F/G or the Spitfire Mk.IX which arrived soon after.
Climb: Fair - actually very good for the amount of power but again nothing extraordinary and a quite a bit less than the FW 190A / Spitfire.
Maneuverability: Good by the standards of most of its adversaries. Not as good as predecessors such as C.200 and not as good as Hurricane so it needed to use vertical maneuvers to beat Hurricane.
Power-Weight: A bit on the low side in comparison to contemporaries. This was not a light airframe. It was just very aerodynamic.

The P-51B/C armament is quite a bit different. There are twice as many guns. They are all free firing, so they don't lose any firing rate for synchronizing. Their cyclic rates are higher, The bullets weigh 30% more and move 350 fps faster.
Assuming there was no synchronizing loss, the P-51B/C is still putting out over three times the muzzle energy as the guns on C.202.
The P-51B/C also had extraordinary speed and a really excellent climb rate and altitude performance which made it competitive even against late war fighters in any theater.

Of course it is also a much later aircraft.

- Ivan.
 
Hello Michael Rauls,

To characterize the Macchi Folgore, I would adjust things a bit.
Speed: Fair - usually quoted as just under 600 KPH.
This isn't bad and faster than a P-40 but not terribly fast compared to FW 190A or Me 109F/G or the Spitfire Mk.IX which arrived soon after.
Climb: Fair - actually very good for the amount of power but again nothing extraordinary and a quite a bit less than the FW 190A / Spitfire.
Maneuverability: Good by the standards of most of its adversaries. Not as good as predecessors such as C.200 and not as good as Hurricane so it needed to use vertical maneuvers to beat Hurricane.
Power-Weight: A bit on the low side in comparison to contemporaries. This was not a light airframe. It was just very aerodynamic.

The P-51B/C armament is quite a bit different. There are twice as many guns. They are all free firing, so they don't lose any firing rate for synchronizing. Their cyclic rates are higher, The bullets weigh 30% more and move 350 fps faster.
Assuming there was no synchronizing loss, the P-51B/C is still putting out over three times the muzzle energy as the guns on C.202.
The P-51B/C also had extraordinary speed and a really excellent climb rate and altitude performance which made it competitive even against late war fighters in any theater.

Of course it is also a much later aircraft.

- Ivan.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert on the MC 202 but from what I know I would characterize it's performance a little differently. The two sources I looked at gave it's speed as 376 and 380. Anything in that balpark is pretty good in 42. What was the 109 f doing. About the same to slightly less I believe. Climb rate, 3500 fpm, at least from what I read. Again, can't think of any planes except maybe the p38 that were surpassing this in 42 and quite a few( most) that were behind it. I admit I have not read extensively on this aircraft but in what I have read it was always discribed as quite maneuverable by pilots on both sides. Add to that good high altitude performance and I believe it was pretty good in a dive and that sounds like one tough oponent to me.
Yes the armament was less than optimal but every plane has at least one fault and most of them several but overall it sounds pretty formidable to me.
 
The point about the P-51B is that it was relatively lightly armed compared to many of it's contemporaries in 1944. Yet it was still considered almost wildly effective. In various other discussions in other threads some of the same people have made the claim that 4 x .50 cal is light armament - it's what the P-40F and L was often kitted out with in the MTO particularly when they were flying a lot of escort or fighter sweep missions. Lets also not forget that despite the opinions of some here, nose guns were widely considered more accurate (because they are) than wing guns and wing guns notably in the Mustang, Spitfire and P-40 were prone to jamming / stoppages, especially earlier in the war.

In a way, I see this as yet another example of the endless "There is only one way to make a good fighter" vs. "There are as many ways as there were battlefields".

There are a couple of approaches vis a vis armament. Quite a few of the best day fighters of WW2 had light armament:

P-51B/C - 4 x .50 cal in the wings
F4F3 - 4 x .50 cal in the wings
Ki-43 - 1 x 12.7mm and 1 x 7.7mm in the nose
Yak-1B - 1 x 20mm spinner and 1 x 12.7mm in the nose
Yak-3 - 1 x 20mm spinner and 2 x 12.7mm in the nose
La-5FN - 2 x 20mm in the nose
Bf 109F-2 - 1 x 15mm spinner, 2 x 7.92mm
Bf 109F-4 - 1 x 20mm spinner, 2 x 7.92mm in the nose
MC.202 - 2 x 12.7mm in the nose, 2 x 7.7mm in the wings (or not)
Ki-61 (early) - 2 x 12.7mm in the nose and 2 x 7.7mm in the wings

Some kind of in the middle:
A6M2 -2 x 20mm (60 rounds), 2 x 7.7mm in the wings
Spitfire I - 8 x .303 in the wings
Spit V - 2 x 20mm (60 rounds), 4 x .303 in the wings
Bf 109E - 2 x 20mm (60 rounds each) in the wings, 2 x 7.92mm in the nose
D.520 - 1 x 20mm spinner (60 rounds), 4 x 7.5mm in the wings
Ki-84 - 2 x 20mm inn the wings, 2 x 12.7mm in the nose
Ki-61 (late)- 2 x 20mm in the body, 2 x 12.7mm in the wings
MC 205 - 2 x 20mm in the wingts, 2 x 12.7mm in the nose
Fiat G.55 (early) - 1 x 20mm spinner, 4 x 12.7mm in the wings

And some heavily to very heavily armed:
Bf 109G-6, 1 x 20mm spinner, 2 x 20mm wings, 2 x 7.92 mm
Fiat G.55 (late) - 3 x 20mm in spinner and wings, 2 x 12.7mm nose
F6F - 6 x .50 cal in the wings
P-51D - 6 x .50 cal in the wings
F4U - 6 x .50 cal in the wings
Fw 190 - 4 x 20mm plus two 7.92 (or later 13mm)
P-47 - 8 x .50 wing guns
P-38 4 x .50 plus 1 x 20mm all in the nose
Tempest - 4 x 20mm in the wings
N1K1 -4 x 20mm cannon in the wings


All of the above were good to excellent fighters for their time. Some of the best of the war were in the first category, in fact I would say all in that first group with the possible exception of the F4F-3 are widely acknowledged as among the best designs of the war. . In fact many of the best and most highly regarded were in the first group and of the 'very heavily armed fighters' - probably only the Fw 190 is truly in the top tier. Maybe the P-47.

The point of laying out the above is to emphasize there were different schools of succssful fighter design in the war. Many of the types most successful in the key middle years of the war were the more lightly armed ones. Why? Because performance and / or maneuverability turned out to matter more than heavy armament. The most heavily armed fighters of the mid-war years like the Hurricane IIC and the Me 110 did not turn out to be the most deadly, to the contrary.

Later in the war engines got so powerful as to allow heavier armament. The other reason for it is A) you have fewer fighters to contend with but must on the other hand do more strafing (which made the more heavily armed Allied fighters more useful) or B) you have to contend with hordes
 
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