Hi Ppopsie,
>I read war stories written by other Zero pilots. Saburo Sakai preferred the 7.7mm machine guns on the nose to the 20mm Oelikons in the wings, for the former's greater firing rate. This implies he must've done shooting at close ranges. I think it was about the case of A6M2, on early days of the air combats in Rabaul area.
Reading between the lines of interviews with Japanese pilots, I gained the impression that it was a matter of pride to use the machine guns to bring down an opponent, perhaps because they were more accurate due to their centreline location.
(It reminds of of Musashi's teachings: "STRIKING AND HITTING - By striking and hitting, I mean two different things. The sense of striking is that whatever stroke you employ, you make a deliberate and certain strike. Hitting means something like running into someone. Even if you hit an opponent so hard that he dies on the spot, this is a hit. A strike is when you consciously and deliberately strike the blow you intend to strike.")
The less predictable but more powerful off-centre cannon armament would "hit" in Musahi's sense, while the centreline machine guns could be used to "strike" the enemy. I imagine that the Japanese experience against the poorly protected types encountered over China probably showed machine guns to have good effect when used from short range and with accurate aim, which might explain the preference for machine guns. (Musashi doesn't seem to consider striking superior to hitting or vice-versa.)
>Another example being Tsutomu Iwai's. When he shoot an enemy plane, he deliberately spread the line of shooting by shoving the control stick a little. He said it worked well to get effective hits on the enemy plane. I think this was for the A6M5 he flew later in the war.
Excellent comment, thanks a lot! I've often tried to explain this idea of "semi-tracking" by deliberately flying in a way that increases the hit pattern along one axis (the enemy's line of flight), but as far as I can tell I haven't been able to get my point across. It's fascinating to see the same idea expressed by a WW2 pilot! I have also found the technique described in Boyd's "Aerial Attack Study" - while he describes its use against bombers, the basic idea is to get the best result from a short burst of fire without losing much energy so that it is possible to reposition oneself for the next attack easily. This principle of course can be used in a dogfight against fighters as well.
>I understand the examples I listed are not based on any of quantitive data but can be used to some extent explaining the theory; fire more bullets per second.
Golodnikov's recollections are quite interesting - note the emphasis on short-range shooting. The general rule in aerial combat is that the number of its is inversely proportional to the square of distance, meaning that at twice the distance you'll only score a quarter of the hits (everything else being equal). This is a direct result of the apparent decrease of target size with distance, and of course is modified by complex target shape, convergence/divergence issues of off-centreline guns, manoeuvering etc. - but the basic idea is that guns are much more effective at very short range.
So I'd like to add to your statement and write "fire more bullets per second and hit with more bullets per second".
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
>I read war stories written by other Zero pilots. Saburo Sakai preferred the 7.7mm machine guns on the nose to the 20mm Oelikons in the wings, for the former's greater firing rate. This implies he must've done shooting at close ranges. I think it was about the case of A6M2, on early days of the air combats in Rabaul area.
Reading between the lines of interviews with Japanese pilots, I gained the impression that it was a matter of pride to use the machine guns to bring down an opponent, perhaps because they were more accurate due to their centreline location.
(It reminds of of Musashi's teachings: "STRIKING AND HITTING - By striking and hitting, I mean two different things. The sense of striking is that whatever stroke you employ, you make a deliberate and certain strike. Hitting means something like running into someone. Even if you hit an opponent so hard that he dies on the spot, this is a hit. A strike is when you consciously and deliberately strike the blow you intend to strike.")
The less predictable but more powerful off-centre cannon armament would "hit" in Musahi's sense, while the centreline machine guns could be used to "strike" the enemy. I imagine that the Japanese experience against the poorly protected types encountered over China probably showed machine guns to have good effect when used from short range and with accurate aim, which might explain the preference for machine guns. (Musashi doesn't seem to consider striking superior to hitting or vice-versa.)
>Another example being Tsutomu Iwai's. When he shoot an enemy plane, he deliberately spread the line of shooting by shoving the control stick a little. He said it worked well to get effective hits on the enemy plane. I think this was for the A6M5 he flew later in the war.
Excellent comment, thanks a lot! I've often tried to explain this idea of "semi-tracking" by deliberately flying in a way that increases the hit pattern along one axis (the enemy's line of flight), but as far as I can tell I haven't been able to get my point across. It's fascinating to see the same idea expressed by a WW2 pilot! I have also found the technique described in Boyd's "Aerial Attack Study" - while he describes its use against bombers, the basic idea is to get the best result from a short burst of fire without losing much energy so that it is possible to reposition oneself for the next attack easily. This principle of course can be used in a dogfight against fighters as well.
>I understand the examples I listed are not based on any of quantitive data but can be used to some extent explaining the theory; fire more bullets per second.
Golodnikov's recollections are quite interesting - note the emphasis on short-range shooting. The general rule in aerial combat is that the number of its is inversely proportional to the square of distance, meaning that at twice the distance you'll only score a quarter of the hits (everything else being equal). This is a direct result of the apparent decrease of target size with distance, and of course is modified by complex target shape, convergence/divergence issues of off-centreline guns, manoeuvering etc. - but the basic idea is that guns are much more effective at very short range.
So I'd like to add to your statement and write "fire more bullets per second and hit with more bullets per second".
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
