IJN lessons from Battle of Britain ~ the wrong lessons?

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf

Greetings,

it is wondered if perhaps the IJN's reports from liason officers observing the battle of britain
were counter-productive.

The main suggestions: increase the range of the fighters, increase the maneuverability
The result: the Zero fighter

Technical requirements for Zero were formulated far earlier and at the time of BoB they already were testing prototypes.

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
The question is: why does every other fighter in the world carry less fuel than the zero?
Why is every other fighter faster than the zero?

Because they aren't? In particular, every carrier fighter in production until Hellcat and Seafire was considerably slower than Zero. Looking at land Allied fighters, Warhawks and Aerocobras demonstrated approximately equal speed in real combat, Hurricanes were much slower. The main vice of Zeros was an engine which reserves of improvement ran out in 1942 (later modifications of Sakae had better high-altitude performance, but no more power). There was no "faulty Japanese approach to air combat", just the design dead-end. Of course, Zero had an expiration date anyway, like its Allied contemporaries, but development of its successor was slowed down by various factors, and even had it been free of troubles, A7M almost certainly woudn't have been available in numbers for crucial battles of late-1943 and 1944 anyway (Ki-84 really appeared in large numbers only in autumn of 1944, production of N1K-J, adopted even earlier, was very slow).

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
It appears that larger fuel tanks with more fuel inside weight more..

Even soviet fighters made of laminated wood with large radials (LAG-5) fly more than 400mph,

No version of La-5 achieved or exceeded 400. That only became reality on La-7

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
yet all IJN fighters struggle to achieve such a basic speed.

Late-war versions of N1K2-J achieved it. See:
http://www.j-aircraft.org/smf/index.php?topic=11204.0

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
Out of concern of operational losses, severe compromises were made to the aircraft's tactical capabilities
(speed, survivability, and firepower)

Considering that Zero was one of the perhaps top three most heavily armed singe-engined fighters in existence at the time of its adoption, I wonder how a non-compromised firepower should look like.

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
Even late war fighters such as the N1K George are encumbered with massive fuel loads 2 or 3 times larger
than european counterparts such as the FW190, Lag, or Typhoon (the entire fuselage is an integral fuel tank)

That's because Western Europe is small compared to the Pacific. By late war Japanese actually had to struggle with lack of range on some of their newer planes.

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
This commander's suggestion to the Koku Hombu: build the Ki-44 with a Kasei-21 radial (1850hp vs 1530)

This is a good proposition, but twisting manufasturer's arms in such a way requires signigicant hindsight, and that's why it wasn't done. Besides, Kasei did not achieve 1850 hps until late 1943.

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
half the internal fuel,

Ki-44's range was already insufficient.

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
2x 20mm on the cowling just like the Lagg-5, build it of good aluminum instead of wood
and you have the highest power-to weight ratio of any fighter in the world.

No, after enlarging the entire plane to accomodade Kasei, with its bigger radius (never mind cowling guns), you probably won't. Well, the result probably will be still better than historical Ki-44, but see above.

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
A speed of 425mph in 1943 would be competitive with FW190 / F4U type planes.

Corsairs achieved 425 in second half of 1944, for the record.

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
Either this, or just copy the 3 Heinkell-100s you imported from germany instead of letting pride blind your judgement [:'(]

He-100 is a failed fighter that got good PR post-war by basically comparing its factory test performance (if not exaggerating it) with actual field performance of RL alternatives.

[wdolson]

The Sakae engine was a derivative of the French Gnome Rhone 14K.  The Japanese aerodynamic designs were top notch at the beginning of the war, but their engine industry lagged a bit behind the rest of the world.  During the war they did produce some all new designs to compete with the larger radials the US had, but they went through a lot of teething problems with those engines.

The Zero stayed in production as long as it did in part because the Japanese were struggling to produce the larger engines for the N1K, Raiden, and the Ki-44.  It was better to have some obsolescent fighters than none at all.  The Navy also never really put into production anything to replace the Zero as a carrier fighter, but then that issue was pretty much moot by mid to late 1944.

The US had some cutting edge carrier fighters in development at the start of the war, but in 1942, the Zero was the best carrier fighter in the world in most categories.  It was a fairly new notion in the late 30s that carrier fighters could be anything close to land fighters in performance.  Many carrier fighters were two seaters until the mid-30s.  The British were very slow to adopt high performance designs for carriers and lagged behind the US and Japan most of the war (at least with native British designs, they did use a fair number of American aircraft on their carriers). 

When it was introduced the Buffalo was a sensation for being the first monoplane fighter in USN service.  The Corsair, TBF, and SB2C came out of a 1938 specification.  All were flying by Pearl harbor, though the SB2C and the Corsair had a lot of problems.  One of the serious problems the Corsair had was it was incredibly tough to land on a carrier.  The Hellcat was adopted as the primary Navy fighter, even when VF-17 worked out the problems landing F4Us on carriers because it had 90% the performance of the Corsair and had excellent handling characteristics landing on a carrier.  The trade off in performance was worth it until the kamikaze attacks started.

The Zero was an excellent design compared to it's contemporaries with the same mission.  It had the legs for long escort missions, or long loiter time on CAP.  It had heavier fire power than any other carrier fighter at the time (though the cannons on the early models weren't terrific).  And it fit well with the Japanese doctrine which sacrificed defensive features for high maneuverability and range.

Bill