ORIGINAL: Nikademus
The Ki-43 was not a great high speed preformer i agree, however i can recall only one incident in Shores where an Oscar's wings ripped off.
Structural weakness was inherent. A plane which disintegrates when hit isn't good. A plane which disintegrates when pulling a high-G maneouver, neither is good. There were more instances of Oscars falling down because structural weakness. I'll have to dig up into all the saved stuff I have in my PC at home. However that's about 300 miles from where I'm sitting now, so will have to wait.
This was not a common occurance. My objection, which you keep ignoring is that you are only talking about the Ki-43's weak points and not it's strengths.
That's not true, nik. I've talked about the Oscar's strenghts too. In your last message you quoted me talking about the Oscar acceleration.
What I'm trying to say is that the strenghts of the Oscars were of relatively minor importance for WW2-vintage air combat. Acceleration and low speed turnrate are minor advantages if you compare them with dive&zoom ability and hispeed maneouvering. As I said previously, the Oscar's drawbacks hughely shadowed it's strenghts...the pluses couldn't overcome the penalties of fighting at high speeds. Given that in WW2 hispeed combat was the key for success, the Oscar simply sucked as a fighter plane, no matter it had fields of performance where it excelled.
This is my point. I am not arguing that the Ki-43 was one of the best fighters of WWII. I am arguing that it was not "Rubbish". It was a competetive plane for it's time and preformed very well. It would not hold it's edges long.....no argument there and like the Zero, it soldiered on long after it's needed replacing but that is more a commentary on the state of the Japanese air industry, not on the plane.
maybe you're taking me wrong. I'm not saying that you think the Oscar was the best fighter of WW2. I'm talking about the objective way I'm comparing planes between each other to find out which one was better. However, the same method used for finding out the best fighters of WW2 can be used, reversed, to find out the WORSE fighters of WW2. And the Oscar ranks very high in that particular "competition".
based on your flight simmulator by what i've read. I'm comparing the same stats, however i am also comparing and analysing how the plane was used and preformed in real life combat. The results do not agree with your blanket conclusion that the plane was lousy.
Nik, I would thank you stopping saying that my conclusion are blanket. You might or not be in agreement with them, but up to this point I've backed up my position with enough data to prove that I'm not saying this out of the blue. I have a quite wide knowledge of WW2 air combat, tactics, engineering and performances. Please keep that in mind.
On the other topic, again I repeat: Real air combat didn't always throw objective prove about each plane's real quality. As well as the Fw190D9 or the Ki84 didn't got the numbers to back up their excellence (even while THEY WERE excellent) there were some planes in WW2 that performed and got numbers well beyond their true qualites as fighters because the extreme circumstances of the enemy they fought. The Oscar is one example of this. What do K/D numbers prove?...in fact, nothing. The Dora-9 was a superb fighter, the Ki-84 was a wonderful fighter, none of them both got exactly great results...that does mean that they weren't excellent?...What does true numbers prove?
if you take real life K/D ratios of air forces flying in a ballanced scenario numerically talking, and with pilots of good skill in both sides, then yes, they do prove a lot. But if you take real life K/D ratios of air forces flying against unexperienced enemies flying in scrap-metal things with wings, there isn't a lot to extract from them.
I have flown air sims and under certain conditions i can duplicate the feats described...however i have found that once you move away from the aritificial duel type situations and get into more sophisticated mission profiles, it is not nearly so cut and dry as you preport.
I think you're talking about boxed sims where you fly vs the AI. Aces High is a MMOG where there's NO Artificial intelligence involved. You go up, you fight against HUMAN ENEMIES, you die or you come back. In such an environment, full of exceptional "virtual" pilots if you don't use real life tactics, and you use them well, you're toast in less than 5 minutes.
Regardless.... an air simm is no substitute for research.
never said otherwise. I said simulators add first-hand feedback of WW2 combat tactics applied.
Something you wouldn't ever get reading a book, for instance. Books aren't substitutes for air simulation experience, either.
They're different things, and the most desirable thing is learning from both.
A plane diving out of combat is a non factor until it can return to the fight. Allied pilots did not always have this option depending on the tactical situation.
but they sometimes had it. You said that diving from an enemy meant diverting out of the fight for good. I say that's not always true. Diving can be the initial move for a disengagement, or the initial move for coming back with the advantage after a long zoom and buildup of Energy. Tactical situations sometimes prevented the aircraft to come back, but sometimes not. And in any case I'd rather be in a plane that gives me a high chance to avoid an enemy if I see him in time, that in one that doesn't give that chance to me.
The Hurricane was certainly not the 1st line plane for the UK by 41, but it was still a decent aircraft and it could use energy tactics. (and did though not as much as it should have...it also didn't have the chance to do so much of the time because of the tactical sitaution)
The Hurricane was obsolescent by late 1940, and by 1942 was already obsolete. I would like to know what do you call a "decent aircraft"
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It could use energy tactics, but the RAF pilots always tended to use turning tactics when meeting a foe, something inherited from european experience where british aircraft had better low speed maneouverability and turning that their german counterparts. If the pilot had seen combat in the ETO, this was even more true.
When confronted with the Oscar the Hurri pilots always tended to enter close fights, and in those fights they were dead meat against the Oscars. Once they realized it and resorted to E-fighting the losses started to go down...still they lost quite a number, but that is because the Hurricane was a very dated design by that time, and the E-fighting techniques and tactics didn't fit well with that aircraft, either (even while it was better than the Oscar in that department).
Given that, i doubt even spitfires would have done better. Here the qualities of the Ki-43 would be maximized and with altitude advantage they could control the fight to some extent.
The spitfire was a much faster plane than the Oscar and had similar or better climbrate and acceleration (depending on the version of the Spit we're talking about). The Spit would've had a much better result than a hurricane...just as the soviets would've had much better results in 1941 with an air force composed of La5s instead of I-16s.
How many times do i have to say this? I'm not saying the Ki-43 was a war winner either. I'm saying its not "rubbish" and the evidence from the actual combat results speaks of this. Results which are not found in the game.
I know what you want to say, I already explained it before.
And evidence of actual combat results doesn't give objective facts when that combat didn't happen between similar numbers and similar pilots quality wise, as I already said. Factual data sometimes is VERY subjective because of the particular circumstances of the war at any given moment.
And anyway those combat reports don't speak so well of the Oscar. At least not from the moment when the Oscar faced experienced pilots in capable planes instead of lousy riders with winged garbage cans...
and please, lighten up the mood a bit, Nik. We're discussing about a plane that stopped flying 59 years ago, not about the end of the world
. This is intended to be a friendly debate, not a heated discussion...isn't it?
