The one most over-rated plane of WWII

A couple of thoughts here.

First, the ability to and how to "lead" fire on another airplane are two different things.

The ability to arrive at a point in space where your nose is in "lead" of another can be done via luck, superior maneuverability, and or superior flying skills (or a combo of these).

The amount of lead one needs varies on the set up. If the shooter is pulling hard to get his nose in lead, and the bandit is pulling hard as well, then the amount of lead will depend on range. The longer the range the further in lead the shooter will be, the further "under" the nose the target will be. The closer the target the less lead that will be needed.

If the shooter is flying along, and the bandit is doing a turn far enough out in front of him, he may not have the bandit go under his nose at all in order to shoot him. Once again it all depends on the set up.

Next, I don't think the over the nose look required to shoot down another plane was that much different between the Zero, FW-190, Spit or P-51. I do think that Grumman did Pilot look angle well (sloping nose). The F6F, F7F, and F8F all seemed to improve on that. The Sea Fury is another plane I thought was designed with that feature in mind.

Do I think the F4F has a slight advantage in that area over the Zero, yes. Do i think it's significant, not very. The Zero shot down enough planes, as did all the other non-Grumman aircraft, to know it wasn't insurmountable.

R Leonard did an excellent analysis In my opinion of the Zero / F4F comparison.

In my opinion the Zero / F4F both had strengths and weakness, however the Allies were better able to utilize tactics to overcome it's strengths and minimize the little Grummans weak points.

If (BIG IF) the Zero was equipped with a workable radio, with tactics built around that, operated in flights of two or four, it would have made the problem much more difficult for anyone who they tangled with them. Its lack of top speed could be offset by range & endurance. I say this as we had this exact problem in the Eagle, and had effective tactics to deal with it.

Cheers,
Biff

GregP said:

NTGray, I know people who fly a Zero. You CAN see out of it forward. The target is NOT hidden. Where did you ever get THAT from? Hidden would be the view from an F4U COrsair cockpit. By comparison, the Zero is a bay window.

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From R Leonard's post #79. He doesn't say the Zero pilot can't see forward; he says that for a deflection shot the Zero had to take aim and then raise the nose slightly before pulling the trigger, thus losing sight of the target briefly. But I will quote R Leonard:

The position of the cockpit relative to the nose of the A6M2 forced the A6M2 driver, in a full deflection situation (see Holloway's comment), to drop the nose in order to get a sight picture and then raise it in order to fire at a location in space where he expects the F4F to be when the bullets get there. An alert F4F pilot, finding himself on his own with an A6M2 boring in on him and setting up the full deflection problem as his first move, can spot this action. As the nose goes up, the A6M2 guy momentarily loses sight of the F4F, and the F4F breaks off in another direction (preferably down and to the right . . . remember the A6M2 problem with rolling right), leaving the A6M2 firing at nothing.

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I have found multiple outside sources that say that American gunnery training (and actual combat results) was better in general than Japanese.

pbehn said:

Since Brown could land almost anything from a P-39 to a Mosquito on a carrier I imagine he just told a Zero to land and it did it by itself.

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Pleasant diversion:
Somebody once landed a C-130 Hercules on a carrier on purpose, with the Navy's blessing. But after evaluating it, they decided not to make a habit of it.
The Story of how the C-130 Hercules became the biggest aircraft to land on an aircraft carrier - The Aviation Geek Club

NTGray said:

From R Leonard's post #79. He doesn't say the Zero pilot can't see forward; he says that for a deflection shot the Zero had to take aim and then raise the nose slightly before pulling the trigger, thus losing sight of the target briefly. But I will quote R Leonard:

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Just so you know, Mr. Leonard is an authority on WW2 naval aviation, his father Rear Admiral Leonard flew F4Fs during WW2 to include Coral Sea and Midway.

NTGray said:

Pleasant diversion:
Somebody once landed a C-130 Hercules on a carrier on purpose, with the Navy's blessing. But after evaluating it, they decided not to make a habit of it.
The Story of how the C-130 Hercules became the biggest aircraft to land on an aircraft carrier - The Aviation Geek Club

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Kid's stuff! LOL!

GrauGeist said:

On an aircraft, the material that covers the engine area is refered to as: "cowling".

For example:
The Bf109 had two cowl mounted machine guns.

A few years back, a Boeing 777 lost a cowling while enroute to Hawaii.

Etc., etc., etc...

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The technical term is "the pointy end"

nuuumannn said:

It had cannon armament, it had far better range than the Bf 109 and the defending Spitfires and Hurricanes, it could dogfight as well as, if not better than the other three types and it had good performance, good climb rate etc. As for the crossing the Channel into France in 1941, it was a bad idea at any rate, so the RAF shouldn't have been doing it in the first place; the loss rate of RAF fighters was horrendous.

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Both sides were fitting armour and SS tanks as quickly as possible for a reason after the battle of France, thinking the unprotected A6M is going to survive in view of the facts is strange logic.

FLYBOYJ said:

Just so you know, Mr. Leonard is an authority on WW2 naval aviation, his father Rear Admiral Leonard flew F4Fs during WW2 to include Coral Sea and Midway.

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I always appreciate learning from a genuine expert. Thanks for the added background.

PAT303 said:

Both sides were fitting armour and SS tanks as quickly as possible for a reason after the battle of France, thinking the unprotected A6M is going to survive in view of the facts is strange logic.

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Hi

From Fox it appears the Germans were armouring their aircraft at the same time as the British both on the production line and retrospectively. Maybe armouring aircraft was not a lesson from the Spanish Civil War? Or just a delayed response?:


Mike

Thank you, Mike. Got to buy this book myself

pbehn said:

Radios were new at the time, veterans will have been used to not having them and they spent most of their time out of range of ground / ship based radio anyway, so maybe not as much as a disadvantage as for some others.

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Hi
Not exactly 'new' but not as advanced as later sets. The British were using voice to and from its fighters (a requirement for the air defence system) from the Gloster Grebe (not counting WW1 use) HF T.25 transmitter and R.31 Receiver from the mid-1920, in the 1930s this was replaced by the TR 9 series. While I don't think the FAA Fairey Flycatcher was fitted with voice (R/T) its replacement the Hawker Nimrod was (by TR 9 according to various sources) in the early 1930s. I would presume the US Navy and US Army were doing the same so most 'veterans' should have been used to using it by WW2. Morse sets were longer ranged of course and they would have been in use by naval air throughout the inter-war period, although operator skill would have been a major factor plus reliability but still more reliable than in WW1.

Mike

tomo pauk said:

Thank you, Mike. Got to buy this book myself

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I'll second that sentiment. I ordered my copy of that book a couple of days ago after a previous post of MikeMeech's.

Mike Williams said:

I'll second that sentiment. I ordered my copy of that book a couple of days ago after a previous post of MikeMeech's.

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Hi
Yes it is a very good book for the subject, however, it does miss out on some of the armour fitments used by the RAF during 1918 so may miss some other information in later periods. Saying that it is probably the best book on the subject I can think of.

Mike

MikeMeech said:

Hi
Not exactly 'new' but not as advanced as later sets. The British were using voice to and from its fighters (a requirement for the air defence system) from the Gloster Grebe (not counting WW1 use) HF T.25 transmitter and R.31 Receiver from the mid-1920, in the 1930s this was replaced by the TR 9 series. While I don't think the FAA Fairey Flycatcher was fitted with voice (R/T) its replacement the Hawker Nimrod was (by TR 9 according to various sources) in the early 1930s. I would presume the US Navy and US Army were doing the same so most 'veterans' should have been used to using it by WW2. Morse sets were longer ranged of course and they would have been in use by naval air throughout the inter-war period, although operator skill would have been a major factor plus reliability but still more reliable than in WW1.

Mike

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Hi, I meant Japanese veterans, since they had trouble with the sets during the war they obviously had trouble before. The British were upgrading their radios constantly up to and during the BoB, prior to the war they needed booster transmitter receivers to take the radio to the aircraft and operators specially selected for clear speech in sound proofed rooms. Even with all that was done a BOB RAF set was very short ranged in maritime terms.

NTGray said:

From R Leonard's post #79. He doesn't say the Zero pilot can't see forward; he says that for a deflection shot the Zero had to take aim and then raise the nose slightly before pulling the trigger, thus losing sight of the target briefly. But I will quote R Leonard:

I have found multiple outside sources that say that American gunnery training (and actual combat results) was better in general than Japanese.

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I'd bet all those sources were written by Americans, or at least by the Allied side.

The Japanese definitely had superior pilots at the start of the war, gunnery or otherwise, if only by virtue of being combat-tested veterans. Being a combat veteran simply means you've made mistakes in combat and survived them. Hopefully it means you will be reluctant to make them again. As the Japanese lost their veteran pilots, their training could not keep up with attrition, so late in the war ... yes, I'm sure we had better pilots. Not solely by virtue of better gunnery training, but by virtue of it being the U.S.A. who had more combat veterans and not the fresh Japanese pilots. We trained and deployed more pilots after 1942 than the Japanese had for the entire war.

GregP said:

The Japanese definitely had superior pilots at the start of the war, gunnery or otherwise, if only by virtue of being combat-tested veterans.

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That's the way I've always understood it, but even now I keep finding out new things, and I've been reading that American fighter gunnery, in training and in combat, was actually better than Japanese gunnery even at the very beginning. I didn't know that before.

I've been studying this for more than 50 years, and I don't believe that is the case. I could be mistaken. So could you.

Are any of your sources from the WWII era, or are they later than about 1955, when people started making things up about the war?

MikeMeech said:

From Fox it appears the Germans were armouring their aircraft at the same time as the British both on the production line and retrospectively. Maybe armouring aircraft was not a lesson from the Spanish Civil War? Or just a delayed response?:

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Fitting armour was from lessons learnt in actual combat and my biggest negative against the A6M, the most important asset an air force has are the pilots and it's the planes job to protect them if things went pear shaped, the Zero didn't do that.

Wasn't it First Team that pointed out that USN training included deflection shooting while Japanese training did not?

I'm working on the Corsair right now (again). BuAer records show that the XF4U-1 pilot could see less than 2 degrees over the long nose, but that was considered adequate in 1938 during the design period. With the production cockpit moved 30 inches aft, the view dropped even further. Combat experiences (the report doesn't distinguish whose experiences or when they occurred) pointed out the need for far better visibility over the nose, leading to the raised cockpit and about 8 degrees downward view. The Navy seemed very happy woth the improvement - the Japanese less so...

Cheers,



Dana

SaparotRob said:

Just wondering if the Ki-43 had flaws similar to the Zero?

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As I understand it, the Ki 43 did not suffer the same problem of manouverability at the high end of its speed envelope, I am however not sure about to what extent the structural problems were limited to dives, it was lighter constructed than the zero. On the other hand, it got pilot protection before it, though I don't know the exact dates.

When it comes to armament, the zero's advantage is not all that clear cut. Sure, it had cannons from the start, but when the (I think it was originally 60 rounds per cannon though it increased steadily during the war) was expended, it was down to rifle caliber. There's an old thread with a link to an article somewhere on the forum about the Ki 43-I having one of its rifle caliber gun changed with a 12.7, and I believe the Ki 43-II had two 12.7's from the beginning. Not in any way impressive, but it beats two rifle caliber. Of course later on the zero got better secondary armament too.

One aspect that often seem to be ignored is their bubble canopies (or at least an all round bird cage for the zero), the usefulness of which is indicated with all the aircraft that were revised to such a feature, Spitfire, P-51, P-47, yak and La fighters to name some. It seem to have been standard Japanese design philosophy, though abandoned on J2M and Ki 61, and then revised on the latter during its reincarnation as Ki-100.

As often mentioned in the early pacific war every Japanese fighter was identified as a zero. I do believe it thus stole some of the glory that should have been assigned to the Ki-43 early in the conflict. This is one reason to consider the zero somewhat overrated, and it certainly was officially since the IJN believed each to be able to handle three or more enemy fighters at a time. Ironically at the same time most foreign observers were ignoring its results over china and thus underrating, only to overrate after the first nasty shocks in the pacific war. I don't know if the army had similar overconfidence in the Ki-43 (but as a Japanese aircraft the allied by default underrated it), anyway many consider it the most manouverable fighter of its generation. Over all I consider it somewhat underrated, it wasn't as bad as is sometimes claimed. But it is impossible to decide what the 'average' rating of both planes over time and borders has been, rating is hardly an exact science. In their original forms the zero had decided advantage in speed, armament, range and carrier capability. Claiming that it had nothing but (restricted) agility going for it is in my eyes plain wrong, and it does not deserve the title the one most overrated plane of ww2.