What happened to the Zero Bonus in this game?

[Tanaka]

Playing Andy Macs updated Scen 1 and I have tried everything but cannot get anything but worse or even odds in airfights as Japan early war. I remember you used to sweep the skies early war way back. What changed?

[Tanaka]

Ah found the answer...

Well damn things are much harder now!

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.a ... ey=�

[Sardaukar]

Zeros will still murder most Allies in 1941 - early 1942. Even when used by AI.

USN pilots and AVG are few exceptions that do well vs. elite early war IJN pilots.

[geofflambert]

I think the Wildcat is really underrated by many people.

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

I think the Wildcat is really underrated by many people.

I guess I am one of those underraters, because playing both sides I see them get shredded over and over. F6F can't come fast enough. Range is OK with drop tanks so there's that, but they are rather SLOW, and it shows

Maybe myself and my opponent are using them wrong?

[Sardaukar]

Wildcat was OK, could have done with better turbo/supercharger.

Very sturdy plane too.

But as AVG's success (and also Finnish Air Force success with Buffalos) came from simple rule: Do not dogfight more agile opponent. Energy fighting aka Zoom & Boom was the thing.

Of course game does not get into these intricacies.

[Hrafnagud]

The F4F-3 was very agile and nimble. Slightly faster than the Zero, good climb rate and in the right hands would outturn a Zero. But then they went and packed her full of additional weight (around 500lb extra) for the -4 variant, which dramatically reduced her maneuverability.

The same comparison holds when evaluating British Buffalo Is with Dutch B-339s. The Brit Brewsters were very heavy compared to Dutch 339s with a similar power plant. End result - Dutch 339s were much better dogfighters than Brit Buffaloes. British pilots started tearing whatever could go from their Buffaloes to bring down weight.

[Sardaukar]

Well...value of pilot armour and self-sealing tanks became apparent very quickly.

[dwesolick]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

I think the Wildcat is really underrated by many people.

I think one of the enduring myths of the Pacific War is that the Zero reigned supreme and slaughtered all Allied opponents until the Corsair and Hellcat came along and saved the day.

As most on this forum know, the Wildcats and P-40s more than held their own and had already turned the tide in the air by 1943, mainly by using superior tactics (speed dives/hit and run/Thach weave). The Zero was superb but once its weaknesses were figured out (about mid-42) it became obsolescent really fast.

[Dan1977]

The British & Dutch Buffalos were all produced with the export version of the single-stage supercharger that was inferior by design to those made for the USN air units. The British required their aircraft (import or domestic) to have pilot armor & self-sealing fuel tanks, which was later adopted by the USN, USMC & USAAF as a requirement for future fighters. Yes the Dutch aircraft were lighter because they mounted four .303 cal MG instead of the British & US versions with the .50 cal MG, and they lacked the protection of the British versions. The Dutch & British export versions all suffered performance deficiencies above 15,000, regardless of how you lightened the aircraft. The Finnish version had a better single-stage supercharger, better firepower (almost as good as British), but little to none protection of pilot & fuel. The British & US versions had more than four times the killing firepower (Kinetic Energy-measured in joules) vs the Dutch version.

The problem with Allied air units trying to lighten up the Buffalos is that they will never out-turn an Oscar, Nate, Claude or Zero. They are attempting to fight on the Japanese terms (low-speed turning & climbing). That is a losing tactic. As others have mentioned, the more successful tactic is higher altitude, higher speeds, mutual protection, zoom climbing, head-on passes, dive-out to disengage and only turn with the enemy at higher speeds while slightly diving (corkscrew). A big lesson is: know when NOT to engage, know when it is time bug-out, the best way to escape, and know how to work with your wingman. The Allies suffered most from inferior tactics in those early months of the war, with the exception of the AVG. I think the USN & USMC were fortunate to have the five month respite (Dec-April) to pick-up the lessons learned & come up with better tactics before Coral Sea & Midway.

[Hrafnagud]

Most of it comes down to pilot quality, numerical parity and suitable tactics. The Dutch CW-21s and even the export Curtiss Hawks could perform adequately with Zeroes and Oscars in a dogfight but they faced numerical superiority and were whittled down.

The Zero and Oscar were fantastic designs piloted by experienced guys - but the Zero was not some mythical beast. It was a product of tradeoffs. The right tactics saw it easily countered.

[Hrafnagud]

Fully agree with you re the Brewsters with export Cyclones. At low altitude a Buffalo I or B-339 stood some sort of chance, at higher altitudes they were slaughtered.

The real weakness of Japanese aircraft design was the lack of properly powerful engines. They therefore decided to focus on low-speed maneuverability at the cost of durability. The US Navy decided to focus on high speed, survivability and firepower.

As Thatch said: A Zero was not that hard to shoot down, you just had to be able to land some hits (which was easier said than done). The Zero's 20mm cannon was also not a great weapon initially - even the Japanese termed it a machine gun.

[Hrafnagud]

The Japanese Type 99 20mm cannon (the Mark 1) was a continuation of the design philosophy behind the Zero - low weight at all costs. This meant low muzzle velocity and a low rate of fire. The heavier IJAAF 20mm Ho-5 cannon was far superior.

[Dan1977]

Yes, you are correct. Japanese aircraft weapons were generally poor compared to US, British, Russian & German. The Zero's 20mm was a poor performer, and barely improved as the war went on.

[RangerJoe]

Some of the Dutch Buffaloes were sent with second hand, ex-civilian engines as well.

[Hrafnagud]

The B-339-C's had the 1,000 hp G105 Cyclones. The B-339-Ds had the more powerful Cyclone 40s (1200 hp). The B-339-23s (most of which went to Australia) had the G205.

[geofflambert]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

I think the Wildcat is really underrated by many people.

I guess I am one of those underraters, because playing both sides I see them get shredded over and over. F6F can't come fast enough. Range is OK with drop tanks so there's that, but they are rather SLOW, and it shows

Maybe myself and my opponent are using them wrong?

I won four PBEMs (my opponent quit) after, in each case, I sank the entire KB without losing a CV. Three times the battle happened in early '42, once in either late '42 or early '43. Mostly I won those battles with Wildcats. Twice it was the same opponent and the battle was in about the same place (near Noumea) at about the same time.

[Ian R]

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

Wildcat was OK, could have done with better turbo/supercharger.

Very sturdy plane too.

But as AVG's success (and also Finnish Air Force success with Buffalos) came from simple rule: Do not dogfight more agile opponent. Energy fighting aka Zoom & Boom was the thing.

Of course game does not get into these intricacies.

RAAF #1 Wing was trading Spitfire Vcs for Zeros in turning fights at 8000 ft over Darwin, until Clive Caldwell went to Melbourne on leave and met up with Joe Foss. After that the Spitfires used "Corsair tactics" and shredded the flimsy Zeros.

[RangerJoe]

The game does reward those "Zoom and Boom" tactics, just have your aircraft fly higher than the enemy. Even escorting bombers, my fighters have had success against the A6M2+.

[Moltrey]

In my relatively short full campaign experience as Allies I have seen both sides of the "luck of the die" equation.
Sometimes my efforts at Clark, Bataan and Manila bear decent fruit, mostly it is a bad game of attrition due to my pilot experience levels- as it should be.
Thing is, I CAN see it flow mostly in the IJN's favor and then back a bit at times under the right circumstances.
I agree with an earlier sentiment that the OP just had a run of bad luck.

To paraphrase my own parents who were 18 when Pearl Harbor happened, every day the papers were filled with accounts of defeats at the hands of the Japanese. It was a very scary and disturbing time and most people realized we were not at all ready for the war when it started.
Pop was a AO2 with VBF-16 on the USS Randolph late war, he joined in Nov '42.