Greatest Aircraft of World War Two.

FLYBOYJ · 07-03-2006, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 361st_Xabre

Oh by the way the fastest single engine fighter of the ETO was the Yak 9U it was SCARY FAST flat out.

At what altitude? There are many german aircraft that were way faster than the YAK-9U

DerAdlerIstGelandet · 07-04-2006, 07:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpitfireKing

Secret weapons over normandy, I think, did a pretty good job. you can add mods to your planes and the second fighter you get is a Spitfire. You also get a german bomber and begin with a Hurricane.

Okay first of all dont get me started on sims.

As with FBJ and many others here who actually fly, we can tell you that a sim does not compare to really flying an aircraft.

2nd Secret Weapons over Normany is not even close. It is fake and a game for kids and nothing more. I have the game and have played it. It compares nothing to flying real aircraft. It is like the Mario Brothers of flight sims.

DerAdlerIstGelandet · 07-04-2006, 07:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 361st_Xabre

X
Oh by the way the fastest single engine fighter of the ETO was the Yak 9U it was SCARY FAST flat out.

X

Oh really are you really sure about that?

Lets see:

Yak-9U: 417 mph (672 km/h)

Germany
Ta-152: 459 mph (731 km/h)
Fw-190A-4: 417 mph (672 km/h)
Fw-190D: 440 mph (704 km/h)
Bf-109K-4: 452 mph (727 km/h)
He-100: 416 mph (670 km/h)
Me-209: 469 mph (755 km/h)
Bv-155: 429 mph (683 km/h)
Me-309: 455 mph (733 km/h)

USA
P-47N: 433 mph (697 km/h)
P-51D: 437 mph (703 km/h)
F4U: 417 mph (671 km/h)

England
Hawker Tempest MK. II: 440 mph (704 km/h)
Hawker Fury: 440 mph (704 km/h)
Spitfire XIV: 448 mph (721 km/h)

Japan
Ki.87: 433 mph (687 km/h)
J7W1: 466 mph (742 km/h)
Ki.64: 429 mph (683 km/h)

evangilder · 07-04-2006, 10:02 AM

To make the zero faster would not have done much for it, except give it the ability to get out of trouble faster. The biggest problem was the barn-door sized ailerons. It was a great advantage at slow speeds because they bite into the air and give you the tight turn radius. At high-speed, you are doomed though because there is no way any human has the strength to move them. Would power assist have helped? Maybe, we will never know if the structure would have been able to hold up to those kinds of forces.

Adding armor and self sealing fuel tanks to the Zero would have added weight, which will effect range, speed, manueverability, etc. Plus, depending on where the weight is distributed, you could take an airplane that is fairly stable and make it a student killer.

The Japanese were not stupid. They had other designs after the Zero that used some of the lessons learned. Late war Japanese fighters were actually pretty good, just too little, too late. Once cut off from the raw materials, they were well on the path to defeat. Let's not make the Zero out to be the end-all and be-all. It was a fighter that was good when it first came out, and faced a number of inferior fighters in China doing well. But it received a reputation of mythic proportions that proved in many ways to be unfounded.

361st_Xabre · 07-04-2006, 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DerAdlerIstGelandet

Oh really are you really sure about that?

Lets see:

Yak-9U: 417 mph (672 km/h)

Germany
Ta-152: 459 mph (731 km/h)
Fw-190A-4: 417 mph (672 km/h)
Fw-190D: 440 mph (704 km/h)
Bf-109K-4: 452 mph (727 km/h)
He-100: 416 mph (670 km/h)
Me-209: 469 mph (755 km/h)
Bv-155: 429 mph (683 km/h)
Me-309: 455 mph (733 km/h)

USA
P-47N: 433 mph (697 km/h)
P-51D: 437 mph (703 km/h)
F4U: 417 mph (671 km/h)

England
Hawker Tempest MK. II: 440 mph (704 km/h)
Hawker Fury: 440 mph (704 km/h)
Spitfire XIV: 448 mph (721 km/h)

Japan
Ki.87: 433 mph (687 km/h)
J7W1: 466 mph (742 km/h)
Ki.64: 429 mph (683 km/h)

To both FlyboyJ and AdlerIstgalandet
I stand humbly corrected!.......HUGE LOL!

syscom3 · 07-04-2006, 10:29 AM

A couple other points to ponder about the Zero.

It had an extremely long range for a aircraft carrier fighter. That complicated a lot of planning for the USN in the first year of the war as theoretically, the Zero (and the Val and Kate) could be in range long before the US could launch theres.

The Zero's also had terrible radio's which made control of their formations difficult to control once the fight started. And it didnt help them one bit for CAP over the carriers (one reason they lost at Midway).

Many allied pilots mistook the Oscar with the Zero.

Generally, in 1942, Oscars were found only in the CBI. Zero's were in the Solomons and New Guinie. In early 1943, as the IJAAF moved into New Guinie, the Oscar began to appear, and the Zero was relegated strictly to the Solomons and a couple of locations on New Guinie where the IJN still had airfields.

Now if there was one inadvertant advantage that the Zero and Oscar both had, it was very easy to fly. Almost like a souped up combat trainer. Once the war began and the Japanese began to accelerate their training programs, there was a reasonable probability that a student pilot could transition successfully to these airplanes and not get killed learning to fly it. Of course all that meant was they would be skilled trainee's when shot down by allied pilots.

syscom3 · 07-04-2006, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by plan_D

I have plenty of information on the testing syscom. There were three B-29s modified to carry the Tall Boy (M-109) or Grand Slam (M-110) bombs either in the bomb bay or on under-wing racks.

The M-109 testing finished with the final date as June 11th, 1945 and modified B-29s were ordered to be ready as soon as possible for use against precise targets in Japan. Reports show that these machines, with the bombs, would have been ready to bomb Japan by September, 1945.

I know that after the 20th AF finished burning down the Japanese cities, they were going to go after the rail infrastructure. I wonder if this was to be used for that. Or maybe try to hit bunker complex's in hills impeding hte invading ground forces.

361st_Xabre · 07-04-2006, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by evangilder

To make the zero faster would not have done much for it, except give it the ability to get out of trouble faster. The biggest problem was the barn-door sized ailerons. It was a great advantage at slow speeds because they bite into the air and give you the tight turn radius. At high-speed, you are doomed though because there is no way any human has the strength to move them. Would power assist have helped? Maybe, we will never know if the structure would have been able to hold up to those kinds of forces.

Adding armor and self sealing fuel tanks to the Zero would have added weight, which will effect range, speed, manueverability, etc. Plus, depending on where the weight is distributed, you could take an airplane that is fairly stable and make it a student killer.

The Japanese were not stupid. They had other designs after the Zero that used some of the lessons learned. Late war Japanese fighters were actually pretty good, just too little, too late. Once cut off from the raw materials, they were well on the path to defeat. Let's not make the Zero out to be the end-all and be-all. It was a fighter that was good when it first came out, and faced a number of inferior fighters in China doing well. But it received a reputation of mythic proportions that proved in many ways to be unfounded.

Thankyou for the clarification,
I still believe that given the opportunity to improve the A6M IE. Giving the plane power assist on control surfaces , a beefier motor ,and even the minimum of armor would have improved the Zero emensly, but of course it was never done and therefore faired terribly,and as history has shown Japan paid dearly in materials, planes and most of all good pilots.

X

FLYBOYJ · 07-04-2006, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 361st_Xabre

Thankyou for the clarification,
I still believe that given the opportunity to improve the A6M IE. Giving the plane power assist on control surfaces , a beefier motor ,and even the minimum of armor would have improved the Zero emensly, but of course it was never done and therefore faired terribly,and as history has shown Japan paid dearly in materials, planes and most of all good pilots.

X

"Power assist on the control surfaces" That's done 2 ways - hydraulic boost or by counter weights - both need room and structure to support them = WEIGHT. Assuming you could do that to the Zero you would have to reinforce the rest of the aircraft because with boosted control surfaces you run the risk of over-stressing the aircraft, so with that comes more weight. Later model Zero's did have armor and self sealing tanks, minimal by US standards but they were attempting to improve the design. The later model A6M5c had a 1,200 HP engine and couldn't even break 350 mph and the Japanese even attempted to put a 1,500 hp engine in the A6M8c in which only a handful were built and still offered little improvement.

Bottom line the design was obsolete by 1942 and you couldn't do many more "bolt on" improvements - by that time the IJN and the JAAF were already looking at new designs and it was the smart thing to do - you could only pump so much "soup" into superman, in this case the Zero....

361st_Xabre · 07-04-2006, 02:15 PM

Good points....I guess the Zero was a good idea at the time. I think the Designers did not realize that what was comming on the horizon. Far faster,better armored,better manuverable fighters...they were over whelmed at the advancements made by the allies who were really pissed at them.. but Yamamoto said it best" We can win for the first six monthes but im afraid we have awoken a sleeping giant" and they did, and from that point forward it was a losing battle for the Nips. Now that i think about it even if the JIAAF would have had the fastest fighter I dont think it would have made much of a differance. the U.S. war machine was playing to win and they did with a vengance that is unsurpassed in history.

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