quote:

Originally posted by Ba5tard5word:
Well you're probably right and I've always reckoned that the Allies did poorly against the Japanese prior to Midway more because of bad training rather than because of poor planes, but the storyline has always been that the Allied planes were worse than the Japanese planes, which were as slow or slower, had poorer armor, and had iffy armament, but obviously shone in the hands of a skilled pilot.

The USN had highly trained pilots at the start of the war; there just weren't a whole lot of them. Obviously they would have had little combat experience before Coral Sea.

quote:

The Wildcat was definitely a great plane and a good match for the Zero if flown right, but it wasn't until after a while that the US figured out the best tactics, until then it was TnB bait for the Zero.

The capabilities of the A6M were discovered quickly, and tactics were developed by USN pilots. The Wildcat still did only so-so in situations where it didn't have altitude advantage.

quote:

And was it used that much outside of the carrier battles between Pearl and Midway?

Yes, at Guadalcanal. While the early war air battles (Philippines, Java, Malaya) were quickly concluded in favor of the Japanese, land-based Wildcats were in constant action for months in the second half of 1942. Two more of the five major carrier battles of the war were also fought during the Guadalcanal campaign-Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz.

quote:

The F2A-1 and F2A-2 did have problems with its landing gear, but these were largely overcome by 1941 with (a) strengthened struts (b) an increase in tyre pressure. However, the problems recurred with the overweight F2A-3.

Actually the Buffalo’s landing gear problems were connected with the tendency of hard landings (and by definition, every carrier landing is a hard one) to cause the structural connection of the landing gear to literally shave bits off of critical parts, leading to the gear collapsing at some unpredictable point. Buffalo squadrons in USN service during the first few months of the war were chronically understrength as a result, and the Marine squadrons had similar problems. The export Buffalo may have been a fine little land based fighter, but combined with the extra equipment required and the unavoidable stresses of carrier operations, it was simply much less suited for the job than the Wildcat, which was the only other true carrier fighter available to the Allies at the time.

quote:

The Allies did have knowledge of the capabilities of the Ki.27 and A6M2; Chennault had warned them, but the powers that be in the RAF and USAAC chose to ignore these warnings- certainly nothing was passed down the line to the squadrons.

Yes, Chennault wrote letters about the Japanese fighters’ capabilities to high ranking USAAC officers, but he had long since established himself as a sorehead and a bit of an alarmist before ‘retiring’ to China. The fact that his warnings about the importance of the fighter plane in any air war turned out to be right had not exactly endeared him to the Army Air Corps’ power structure, either. He simply wasn’t believed until after the first reports from Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, and even then I suspect that they didn’t get it right. Most Allied pilots got their information about how to fight the Zero, Nate and Oscar from the survivors of the Philippines, Burma and Java disasters.

On top of this, the early 1940s were not exactly the heyday of instant communication and China was almost completely isolated from the rest of the Allies; if the letters had arrived in Washington less than two full months after they were written, I would be very surprised. Even if the letters were taken seriously, requests for more information or expansion on some point or other would take another two or more months before Chennault received them. At a minimum, the time between the first report and the response with request for expansion & clarification would take five months, and then it would take another two or three months for the answer to make its way out of China via the Burma Road, and God only knows how much time after that for the intelligence and technology offices to digest it and decide how reliable the information was and to put the information out to the Army at large.

Then there would be the matter of distribution of the information through the Army bureaucracy out to individual Theater Commands, the assigned theater Air Force, Wing, squadron and group commanders all with more immediate problems on their mind…

My best guess is that if Chennault had sent out his reports in late 1940 and was believed, under ideal conditions of the time the information would have reached the squadron level in the winter of 1943-44.

cheers

horseback

R_Target:"Which campaign or battle are you referring to?"

- There were two, one attack launched on April 17, 1944, code-named "Operation number 1", 120 000 Japanese troops defeated the 360 000 strong Kuomitang Army to capture the region's Capital, Changsha, on June 18th 1944. This attack had gained, by the Fall of 1944, 300 miles and about 50 town or cities, as well as the capture of numerous 14th Air Force airfields.

The capture of Kweiling in November 1944 allowed further gains in December, allowing Japanese troops to link with their other, also advancing(!), forces in Vietnam and Indochina. By then the Japanese had full control of all land communication routes between Beijing and Singapore, and there were yet more gains to come in the Spring of 1945...

China was on the verge of falling, which would have freed 800 000 Japanese troops for the Pacific...

The other major attack was launched on March 22 1945, and ended with a conclusive and massive Japanese victory at the battle of Laohokou, on march 27 1945(!), and the capture of Nanyang, 90 miles from the starting point over a several hundred miles wide front. Both the 1944 and 1945 attacks were spearheaded by the 3rd Armored division (about 220-250 type 97 and 95 tanks), the only two large Japanese attacks of the war to be spearheaded by an armored division, and, remarkably enough, both of these massive successes for the Army were NOT rolled back until the end of the war...

Since the American 14th Air Force was a massive challenge to any ground advance, it does appear likely that the ubiquitous Ki-43-II was widely, and apparently successfully, used to support it... No "Marianna turkey shoot" for the Ki-43, apparently...

While it should be noted the internal strife within China between Mao and Chiang Kai-sheck does explain part of these successes, all these strings of unreversed victories DO offer an interesting contrast to the uninterrupted series of debacles suffered by the Japanese Navy...

Surprisingly, this Japanese 3rd Armored Division was NOT disbanded by the Americans at the end of WWII, and was requisitionned to fight, succesfully, alongside the Nationalists in defense of Beiping and Seoul into November 1945...

Source: Tank Power, Japanese armor vol.5, p,43-61.

Given the very different nature and circumstances of the fighting, it does seem very possible that the Ki-43 had many more kills than the A6M Zero... As many as all the others Japanese fighter types combined would seem incredible to me, and is probably gross overclaiming due to the weak armament.

It does appear the Ki-43 was never flown into combat without some form of rubber lining in its tanks, and it DID get standard pilot seat back armor in the Spring of 1943...

Sgt Major Yoshido Yasuda is quoted thus in 1942 (against P-40s): "I had 17 bullet holes in my aircraft. We lost six airplanes and pilots in two days of combat. It was the biggest defeat that the 64th Sentai experienced throughout the war..."

It seems to me these losses are a walk in the park compared to what the A6M Zero units experienced...

Gaston

Gaston, you appear to overestimate the pace of operations maintained by the 14th Air Force in WWII; if ever a modern US military operation was operated on the proverbial shoestring, it was USAAF’s operations in China throughout the war. Everything that was flown, worn, shot, lubricated or fueled in that unit as well as by the Chinese Air Force units PLUS supplies and weapons for the Chinese army had to be flown over the Himalayas by C-47s, converted Liberators, B-29s (!) and C-46s. It was a tremendous logistics effort that never came close to meeting GEN. Chennault’s needs, much less his desires.

The 14th AF rarely had anything approaching the levels of aircraft availability that the 7th, 8th, or 15th Air Forces regularly achieved.

The result was that the poorly trained and equipped Chinese army (Chiang apparently was stockpiling his Lend Lease supplies for the coming civil war with the communists instead of using those supplies and weapons to fight the Japanese) was pushed around by the Japanese at will. The air power available to support the Chinese ground forces was very limited, and carefully husbanded because the planes, fuel and ammunition for them were so hard to get.

Since your primary source of information seems to come from Osprey military books, I suggest that you read at least two of their other volumes to obtain something like a balanced understanding of the subject:

• The ‘Aviation Elite’ volume on the 23rd Fighter Group
• The P-40N vs. the Ki-43 volume

You might also want to look for Daniel Ford’s book on the Flying Tigers, Donald Lopez’ terrific autobiography Into the Teeth of the Tiger, Barbara Tuchman’s Stillwell and the American Experience in China and John Toland’s Rising Sun; then consider how poorly Japanese claims correlate to recorded Allied losses for the same times and places.

The Japanese routinely overclaimed at a rate more common with air forces just entering combat; I have always thought that it was partially a result of the pilots NOT being individually credited with their successes and the lack of critical examination of their reports and partially due to the much lower amount of damage their own aircraft could survive (I doubt that they ever fully appreciated how much firepower was required to actually shoot down a P-40 or P-51, much less a P-47 or P-38).

You might also want to compare how the Japanese accounts of the air war are approached compared to how western accounts of the same events are presented. My impression is that there is very little in the way of critical thought or balance from the Japanese chroniclers, and I attribute that to how difficult it is to get first hand information from men who were ‘disgraced’ by their defeat and the need to do it very politely. Japanese culture does not lend itself to the directness that western cultures have so it is hard to question someone’s account of an event without being insulting.

The Japanese held vast swaths of Chinese territory, and made regular major incursions to seize rice harvests or other food supplies. Some historians may charactorize these as major campaigns, but the people who were there considered them to be large scale bandit raids.

I tend to agree with the people who were there (which includes my ex in-laws).

cheers

horseback

quote:

The Japanese routinely overclaimed at a rate more common with air forces just entering combat; I have always thought that it was partially a result of the pilots NOT being individually credited with their successes and the lack of critical examination of their reports and partially due to the much lower amount of damage their own aircraft could survive (I doubt that they ever fully appreciated how much firepower was required to actually shoot down a P-40 or P-51, much less a P-47 or P-38).

I have read that they claimed 'out of control', ala WW1, and a/c that were smoking and left the fight as 'kills'.

Someone mentioned William Green. He might know his British a/c and be somewhat knowledgeable about American a/c but when it came to German, Italian and Japanese a/c, it is best to take what he says with a grain of salt.

quote:

Originally posted by Gaston444:
- There were two, one attack launched on April 17, 1944, code-named "Operation number 1", 120 000 Japanese troops defeated the 360 000 strong Kuomitang Army to capture the region's Capital, Changsha, on June 18th 1944. This attack had gained, by the Fall of 1944, 300 miles and about 50 town or cities, as well as the capture of numerous 14th Air Force airfields.

The capture of Kweiling in November 1944 allowed further gains in December, allowing Japanese troops to link with their other, also advancing(!), forces in Vietnam and Indochina. By then the Japanese had full control of all land communication routes between Beijing and Singapore, and there were yet more gains to come in the Spring of 1945...

The "Ichi-Go", or "Number 1" operation owed it's successes to the pathetic state of the chronically under-equipped, poorly-led and starving Nationalist troops. Some 14th AF bases were overrun, and about 350 planes (the entire CBI theatre had about 1800 planes in April '44) which had been constantly harassing the Japanese in eastern China simply moved west and continued their work.

quote:

China was on the verge of falling, which would have freed 800 000 Japanese troops for the Pacific...

Heh, China had been on the verge of falling since 1937. At any rate, by 1944, the Japanese could barely move troops between islands in the Philippines. Moving troops across a South China Sea full of American submarines would have been an utter disaster.

quote:

Since the American 14th Air Force was a massive challenge to any ground advance, it does appear likely that the ubiquitous Ki-43-II was widely, and apparently successfully, used to support it... No "Marianna turkey shoot" for the Ki-43, apparently...

Probably a difference of scale more than anything else.

quote:

While it should be noted the internal strife within China between Mao and Chiang Kai-sheck does explain part of these successes, all these strings of unreversed victories DO offer an interesting contrast to the uninterrupted series of debacles suffered by the Japanese Navy...

The chronic corruption and rampant criminality of Chiang's regime is the primary reason for poor Chinese Army performance IMO. American-trained and equipped Chinese units removed from Chiang's influence did well. However, they were not released from Burma to fight in Ichi-Go.

quote:

Originally posted by R_Target:

quote:

Originally posted by Gaston444:
Little known is that after the fall of Okinawa (April of 1945!)the Japanese Army launched a massive land attack in China, lead for the very first time by an actual armored division(about 220 Type 97 tanks). There were no rapes or looting this time around apparently, as this was a much more professionally conducted campaign, and it was one of the Japanese Army's biggest success of the entire war!

Dozens of Allied airfields were captured, Gen. Chennault's entire air force having to flee China(!), while the Allied front was pushed back over hundreds of miles... This was due to Mao tacitly relieving pressure on the Japanese, to help cause the collapse of his enemy Thang Kai Check. Thousands of Allied aircraft fleeing dozens of airfields in front of a massive Japanese Army advance is not exactly the image I had of the Spring of 1945, but it did happen, incredibly enough... And is now utterly forgotten...

Which campaign or battle are you referring to?

I believe he is referring to the Laohokow offensive and the subsequent Chihchiang offensive, which advanced about 160 miles (at its furthest point) against four Chinese armies. However, it also appears that he is getting his timelines slightly mixed up. Laohokow was captured, but the offensive began in mid March 1945, before the launch of the Okinawa invasion. The Chichiang offensive began in early April 1945, while the battle for Okinawa was already underway.

The initial Japanese offensive was quite successful, capturing the major US airbase at Laohokow(after it was evacuated) but to claim it caused 14th air force to leave China is an outright fabrication. Chihchiang is near the southern border of Hunan and Guangxi provinces, about 700 km from China’s southern border with Vietnam, and about 1000 km from Burma.

The 14th AF was essentially intact despite the renewed offensive, and its operations played a major role in blunting the Laohokow offensive and halting the Chihchiang offensive. These were the last major Japanese offensives in China.

More here: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwa...-C-ChinaO/index.html

If you want to compare against the Zero then you should first say It's The Pilot Not The Plane and then check WHEN
you are making the compare since after Midway the number of well-trained Zero pilots steadily shrank to "no real matter".

For the majority of Japanese pilots involved in the GMTS, they could have had any plane made then and still lost badly.
The majority of those were semi-qualified for Kamikaze duty and they were all on suicide missions, using that battle
or data from that battle to characterize any of the planes involved is really poor.

This thread is like debating with a Birther. You will never convince the OP.

quote:

Originally posted by Waldo.Pepper:
This thread is like debating with a Birther. You will never convince the OP.

There is also those who believe that 100 octane avgas was not in widespread use by RAF FC during BoB despite reams and reams of proof that it was.

Quote:"I believe he is referring to the Laohokow offensive and the subsequent Chihchiang offensive, which advanced about 160 miles (at its furthest point) against four Chinese armies. However, it also appears that he is getting his timelines slightly mixed up. Laohokow was captured, but the offensive began in mid March 1945, before the launch of the Okinawa invasion. The Chichiang offensive began in early April 1945, while the battle for Okinawa was already underway."


-The first offensive in question was the Peiping-Hankou operation "Operation number one", which from April 17th 1944 to May 25th 1944 gained 180-200 miles in several directions. It gained further in the Fall of '44 and another 90 miles in the Spring of 1945, but if you say 160 miles in 1945 so much the better! (AJ press "Tank Power" "Japanese Armor" volume 5, map of page 54.)

I did say the offensive made the ENTIRE 14th Air Force flee China(!), but that was simply an overstatement that meant to say "to flee IN China", and was immediately followed by the more precise statement: "The Allied front was pushed back hundreds of miles", which is obviously something too small to be out of China... Sorry for overstating the case. You know, many people are not aware that, throughout 1944 and up to the spring of 1945, dozens of allied airfields were abandoned, with hundreds of U.S. warplanes hurriedly fleeing hundreds of miles in front of a massive Japanese advance that was NOT to be rolled back... I'll bet there's a few raised eyebrows out there, given the GREAT prominence this is given in the history books...

Quote: Waldo.pepper: "This thread is like debating with a Birther. You will never convince the OP."



-I'm debating if the Ki-43-II's combat record could really be better than the rather unimpressive one of the A6M Zero... And you are trying to convince me of WHAT exactly?

As for the Ki-43-I being good in 1941 (It HAD to be because they were winning, weren't they?), how much of a howler that is can be appreciated by the "Youtube" interview linked in this very thread by Wildnoob: I particularly like the part were the ace Ki-43 pilot says how unhappy he was at flying the new Ki-43-I, AFTER putting his fingers in the cracks in the wings... (Quote: "I knew it was bad, but not THIS bad...) In the Osprey books there is a descriptions of three pull-outs in row pulling the wings off of three Oscars, one after the other... And then let's not forget the morale-boosting jamming or exploding guns... I tell you, those early battles were just a smooth sailing delight for those Japanese Army pilots... They were just a big bunch of happy fliers for sure...

Yes they reinforced it, put springs in the cables and 7.7mm guns in the cowlings, but please read how relieved they were when the Ki-43II came on line...

Quote: "Since your primary source of information seems to come from Osprey military books, I suggest that you read at least two of their other volumes to obtain something like a balanced understanding of the subject:

• The ‘Aviation Elite’ volume on the 23rd Fighter Group
• The P-40N vs. the Ki-43 volume



-My sources on the Japanese land offensives are not from Osprey: They are from two volumes from AJ press; "Tank Power" "Japanese Armor" series vol. 4-5.

The Osprey "Ki-43 aces" book was written by Japanese author Hiroshi Ishimura, who interviewed personally most of the numerous pilots and officers quoted in his book. Not too shabby for original sources, especially compared to the rather vapid "P-40N vs Ki-43", a collective work if I'm not mistaken...

If you stick close to the actual participant accounts, you will get a very different story from many of the generalities of historians...

Gaston

Gaston, do you use the handle "Dimitri" elsewhere, and other different ones on other forums?

K2

quote:

Originally posted by yuuppers:
There is also those who believe that 100 octane avgas was not in widespread use by RAF FC during BoB despite reams and reams of proof that it was.

Not to stray off topic for too long here is another one for the 100 octane file. From Fighter Squadron 1940-1942 by Wing Commander Dizzy Akken DFC page 48.

"The first thing that struck me about the Spitfire was the unusual smell as one plonked oneself down on the seat. It was a mixture of 100-octane petrol from the priming pump, hand controlled for starting; and of engine oil; and of dope which was applied to the canvas which concealed the gun-ports - the canvas, of course, vanished into thin air when the eight Browning machine-guns were fired, and when landing after action there was a veritable howl as the aircraft stalled onto the ground in a landing configuration and the air swooped through the now open gun-ports."



Allen reported to B flight No. 66 Squadron RAF (one of the first 2 Squadrons to be equipped with Spitfires at Duxford) April 13 1940.

Quote: "Gaston, do you use the handle "Dimitri" elsewhere, and other different ones on other forums?"

-No. I always use the same first name on all sites and E-mails.

Gaston

quote:

Originally posted by Waldo.Pepper:

quote:

Originally posted by yuuppers:
There is also those who believe that 100 octane avgas was not in widespread use by RAF FC during BoB despite reams and reams of proof that it was.

Not to stray off topic for too long here is another one for the 100 octane file. From Fighter Squadron 1940-1942 by Wing Commander Dizzy Akken DFC page 48.

"The first thing that struck me about the Spitfire was the unusual smell as one plonked oneself down on the seat. It was a mixture of 100-octane petrol from the priming pump, hand controlled for starting; and of engine oil; and of dope which was applied to the canvas which concealed the gun-ports - the canvas, of course, vanished into thin air when the eight Browning machine-guns were fired, and when landing after action there was a veritable howl as the aircraft stalled onto the ground in a landing configuration and the air swooped through the now open gun-ports."



Allen reported to B flight No. 66 Squadron RAF (one of the first 2 Squadrons to be equipped with Spitfires at Duxford) April 13 1940.

I bet the cockpits smelled of all sorts of nasty little odors not originally there in the aircraft.

quote:

Originally posted by Gaston444:
I did say the offensive made the ENTIRE 14th Air Force flee China(!), but that was simply an overstatement that meant to say "to flee IN China", and was immediately followed by the more precise statement: "The Allied front was pushed back hundreds of miles", which is obviously something too small to be out of China... Sorry for overstating the case. You know, many people are not aware that, throughout 1944 and up to the spring of 1945, dozens of allied airfields were abandoned, with hundreds of U.S. warplanes hurriedly fleeing hundreds of miles in front of a massive Japanese advance that was NOT to be rolled back... I'll bet there's a few raised eyebrows out there, given the GREAT prominence this is given in the history books.

The "Ichi-Go" offensive is covered with the rest of the CBI in most decent histories of the Pacific War. At any rate, despite the Japanese being able to go where they pleased in eastern China, the offensive had little real value. As Japanese staff officer Shigeru Funaki noted:" Ichigo was a success in a narrow sense, but it did not help our overall strategic position. We still had a million men in China who were denied to the Pacific campaign. Our success in overrunning the B-29 airfields in China simply meant that the Americans moved their bases to the Marianas."

I have taken on more aircraft at one time in the little oscar and fought them to a stand still then any other fighter in il-2.

quote:

Quote: "Since your primary source of information seems to come from Osprey military books, I suggest that you read at least two of their other volumes to obtain something like a balanced understanding of the subject:

• The ‘Aviation Elite’ volume on the 23rd Fighter Group
• The P-40N vs. the Ki-43 volume


-My sources on the Japanese land offensives are not from Osprey: They are from two volumes from AJ press; "Tank Power" "Japanese Armor" series vol. 4-5.

The Osprey "Ki-43 aces" book was written by Japanese author Hiroshi Ishimura, who interviewed personally most of the numerous pilots and officers quoted in his book. Not too shabby for original sources, especially compared to the rather vapid "P-40N vs Ki-43", a collective work if I'm not mistaken...

If you stick close to the actual participant accounts, you will get a very different story from many of the generalities of historians...

Okay, let me rephrase that: your primary source of information about the Ki-43 appears to be Osprey military books. I could give a rat’s patoot about the Japanese ground operations in China; as I said earlier, it was simply banditry on a giant scale against a near helpless opponent rather than a legitimate military feat of arms. Prior to the 1990s, air power by itself was not capable of the precision necessary to negate boots on the ground, particularly the extremely limited air power the USAAF could exert over China’s interior from 1942 to 1945, so there was no virtue in forcing the 14th Air Force to withdraw from a few forward bases. Strategically, it means nothing for an army trapped in China and unable to redeploy to the Home Islands, much less the Philippines or New Guinea, to move about freely on the mainland robbing and murdering a million or more peasant farmers in the course of mainly just feeding itself.

Both the Osprey volumes I cited were written by Carl Molesworth, who is a well known aviation historian and writer with a long time relationship with the veterans of the Flying Tigers and 23rd FG. It occurs to me that they too, were “actual participants” in the air war in China, and as I pointed out, their loss records and unit histories (which survive intact) and personal recollections don’t fit very well with those of the mostly oral Japanese sources. More important, they are very consistent with the accounts supplied by the other volumes I cited by ‘serious’ historians like Ford, Tuchman, and Toland.

I am a US Air Force ‘brat’; I grew up on Air Force bases in the ‘50s and 60s, when a lot of WWII veterans were still in active service. One of the things I have seen again and again is that the veterans’ memories are no more precise than anyone else’s. Some of their accounts will be inconsistent with the written record on some details, often because human memory often mixes and matches similar incidents, and sometimes because they never got their original mistaken impressions corrected. Many of them still believed the things they were told ‘back in the day’, like the Soviet pilots who are convinced to this day that American and British pilots were paid a cash bounty for their kills, or the bomber gunners who thought that they personally hit dozens of enemy fighters.

Basically, for many of them the rumors and propaganda they believed when they were in their twenties are still believed by them today.

This must be balanced with written records where possible, and contrasted with the other side’s version of the events. As I pointed out, Japanese culture makes it very difficult for a historian to ask challenging questions or point out inconsistencies and ask for an explanation without seeming rude. Given how touchy old American and British fighter pilots can be when it is pointed out that other sources disagree with their version, it is hard to walk the fine line between sycophancy and polite interest/enthusiasm when dealing with a man in his eighties who fought a long hard war and then got treated like dirt for doing what he was told all his life was his duty and who knows that he is the only living source of the information you seek.

The temptation to rewrite or sway history to be a little more appreciative of his efforts cannot be discounted.

Small wonder that so much of the recent stuff coming out of Japan sounds like the stuff Toliver & Constable put out in the seventies and eighties, which were primarily a sensationalist arse kissing of the previously unknown German aces of WWII. People want to find out what the Japanese did and how they did it in WWII, but the records are limited and the men who participated in that war have been largely shamed into silence, so any new information or expansion on what we already know is quite marketable.

Even so, it is a mistake to assume that new information or a contradiction of the old common knowledge is the New Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the New & Improved Truth. It must be measured and tested against the known record and compared to what is already known & can be confirmed instead of being swallowed whole and vomited up to impress the ignorant and the gullible.

The great lesson of WWII fighter combat was that speed and firepower trumps maneuverability and style 99.9% of the time; the Oscar was too slow, too fragile and poorly armed by the standards of WWII fighters to excel after 1942. The IJAAF simply was too stubborn to see this in time and had next to nothing to replace it with until the Ki-84 and Ki-100 were developed.

cheers

horseback

quote:

Originally posted by horseback:
The IJAAF simply was too stubborn to see this in time and had next to nothing to replace it with until the Ki-84 and Ki-100 were developed.

Agree with all your points except the last one. Both the Ki-61 and Ki-44 were there to supplement the Ki-43, if not replace it outright.

The Ki-100 was simply a Ki-61 re-engined with an radial and a turbocharger, granting it better high altitude performance.

quote:

Originally posted by ImpStarDuece:

quote:

Originally posted by horseback:
The IJAAF simply was too stubborn to see this in time and had next to nothing to replace it with until the Ki-84 and Ki-100 were developed.

Agree with all your points except the last one. Both the Ki-61 and Ki-44 were there to supplement the Ki-43, if not replace it outright.

The Ki-100 was simply a Ki-61 re-engined with an radial and a turbocharger, granting it better high altitude performance.

Agree.........Except that they were never intended to replace it, supplement yes. The Ki-84 the direct replacement and Nakajima's Ki-43 efforts stopped once the Ki-84 program was rolling.

Frankly, Mitsubishi and Kawasaki had long dominated the Japanese aircraft industry. Nakajima was the new kid and with the Ki-27 & 43 really sealed its place as an excellent aircraft manufacturer.....In fact, though a Ki-61 fan, my bet is if it had been built by Nakajima it would of been a much better aircraft as far as quality and evolution.....Kawasaki IMLTHO not having the same continuous improvement mindset.

K2