Recent content by NevadaK

I'm pretty sure that the USSR would say that the tide kept rising until either winter 1941/42 or 1942/43. In my opinion, trying to identify an aircraft that did the most to "turn the tide of the war" is practically impossible since the war had many tides and theaters. At the very least, we...

Prototype B-17

There was a brief, but informative thread about the F2G a little while ago. Here is the link: https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/why-was-the-f2g-so-slow.55497/ The second tab has charts showing that the F2G excelled at low altitude.

Imagine, French bombing flight togs design by Chanel

Maybe if the French had B-29’s……

Agreed, but since this is an aviation focused site the discussion has centered on aircraft. Overall, the bombing survey presents a fairly comprehensive review of what factors contributed to the victory over Japan. If you haven't read it, here is a link to the summary report...

It’s hard to ignore hindsight. Contemporary thinking (1945) questioned whether or not the US population would be willing to absorb the kinds of casualties that the US was experiencing in the later stages of the war. The bombing survey points out that the US had very little understanding of...

The fear of stalemate on the American side was real. America's support for the war was flagging and the casualty rates for Iwo Jima and Okinawa were viewed as unacceptable to the American public and the impact of the Kamikaze attacks raised significant concerns as to the cost of the invasion...

We can disagree. The bombing survey’s opinion is that the B-29 bombing campaign effectively destroyed the Japanese population’s will to fight as well as crippled Japanese industry. That was the foundation of the surrender in 1945. Otherwise the war goes to 1948 or 1949, possibly ending in a...

Well, now that we've taken that turn. How about the plane that did the least to alter the outcome of the war: The BA 349 Natter...

Thank you, Shortround6, I'm not a big fan of identifying "culture" as a reason for the way things are, especially when this can lead to bigoted thinking and all that entails. I do think that every nation has periods where a clearly defined cultural outlook is adopted resulting in a zeitgeist...

I was trying to locate a direct reference, but I've seen in numerous texts the observation that Japan's Bushido Code influenced Japan's thinking about combat and the design of weapon systems like aircraft. There was a tendency to think of aerial combat as "man to man" and "to the death", hence...

Steve Twomey’s excellent Countdown to Pearl Harbor focuses on how that attitude help make the Pearl Harbor attack possible.

Not that the Japanese were incapable of designing aircraft that were equal to those coming from the US. The material shortages and production challenges certainly impacted what could be brought in to active service. This aircraft for example would have been quite effective...

I'm not sure if this answers the OP's post, but my feeling is that the Japanese had some very good aircraft designers that were limited by resources overall and power plants in particular. Engine development in Japan strikes me as being similar to Germany in the desire to develop smaller...