michael rauls
Tech Sergeant
- 1,679
- Jul 15, 2016
I verry much agree. I think many(including myself here)often focus to much on early war Japanese types when thinking of what allied planes were up against against when it comes to Japanese aircraft in relation to German types.Regarding post 445, Flyboyj said that the Allies in the ETO faced better enemy aircraft. Not too sure about that one.
They certainly faced enemy aircraft that had potentially higher top speed, but Japanese fighters were pretty darned good in their best-maneuvering range. Early on, they also had some seasoned combat veterans as leaders. By the time late-war was upon them, the aircraft were very good, even if not quite as fast as the German aircraft, but a large percentage of their seasoned combat veterans had been lost.
The Ki-84, Ki-44, Ki-100, J2M, and N1K series of aircraft were all excellent ... in the hands of a good pilot, with decent speed, if not exactly fast, and decent armament.
Not a strong disagreement here with Flyboyj because circumstances above consipred to make the late-war Japanese fighter force less effective overall than the Luftwaffe was when they were late-war, but teh aircraft themselves wewre pretty good when properly employed.
It would be an interesting "what if" to have swapped some good aircraft between Germany and Japan to see what developed in the way of tactics and results but, of course, it never happened.
I may get some disagreement on this but I think if you compare contemporary aircraft that is 1940 German and Japanese types or 1944 German and Japanese types they are pretty close in performance(with the exception of the Me262).
I would still give an edge to German types overall but don't think there's really that big a margin.