DBB scen 30 (IronBabes): Norm FP weirdness?

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: oldman45

I am sure you're aware Pax that many of the motivations for the US production was how many could we build? The Sherman tank, the P40 various ships these were mass produced even though they were not the best. That said, I like your idea and may go back and look at my mod now.

Absolutely, mass production was a key part of the US war effort. I also know that engine production was the limiting factor for most of the '43 US fighters; the P40 was one of the leasst affected.

However, my gut tells me that if the US was losing a lot of pilots because of an inferior fighter more P47/F4U engines might have come about. That didn't happen so we can't really know, just speculation on my part. [8D]

[wdolson]

In the Pacific, it took a while to figure out how to fight the Zero. Once the US developed tactics for fighting the Zero by keeping speeds up, the P-40 was perfectly adequate. The F6F used the same engine as the P-47 and the F4U, the P&W 2800. The B-26 and A-26 used the same engine too.

If Japan had better fighters before the good pilots were gone, it is an interesting what if. There were some models of the P-40 with the Packard Merlin used in North Africa and Italy. They weren't sent to the Pacific because most air battles were at lower altitude. Lockheed drew up plans to convert the P-38 to Merlins which would probably have made it a much better plane. With Merlins the turbo superchargers could be eliminated which would have made the plane much lighter.

It was technically possible to shut down Alison production and build Merlins on the same production lines. That would have put Packard Merlins into P-39s, P-40s, and P-38s. It would have dramatically improved high altitude performance, but probably not dramatically improved low altitude performance except on the P-38.

The P-40 remained in use in the Pacific and CBI because of its reliability. It was the best US fighter for primitive air strips. In game it should be one of the few liquid cooled planes with a service rating of 1. The design added 1 to all planes with liquid cooled engines, and it's accurate for most of them, but not for the P-40 which had a very simple cooling system compared to other liquid cooled engines.

There is an advantage to having a plane that stays airborne day after day, even if it isn't the best performing plane around. This is one major reason the F6F ended up the standard carrier fighter and not the F4U. The Hellcat had 90% of the Corsair's performance without any of the drawbacks. Until the kamikaze threat, it was more than adequate for the job running up the best kill to loss ratio of any fighter in WW II.

Bill

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

In the Pacific, it took a while to figure out how to fight the Zero. Once the US developed tactics for fighting the Zero by keeping speeds up, the P-40 was perfectly adequate. The F6F used the same engine as the P-47 and the F4U, the P&W 2800. The B-26 and A-26 used the same engine too.

Bill, Agree with everything you stated 100%.

My speculation was surrounding the Tojo vs P40. If the IJA had started to field more of them, like what happens in a PDU ON game, then I'm not sure that they P40 would have stayed. Against the Zero/Nate/Oscar it is a competitive plane. Against the Tojo, not so much. It loses its speed advantage and that's an issue.

I did consider dropping the Merlin into the P40, but as you noted, its low level performance doesn't change that much. The P40 is just not a 400mph design. I could have switched the production to the Mustang, which in many ways makes more sense (liquid cooled, Allison production converts to Merlin easier than ramping up the P&W) but I chose the P47 because it is a better plane for my competition. [;)] When I do the PBEM version of my mod, I'll likely change it to the Mustang as it just makes a little more sense ...

Thanks for confirming my read on the production history of these planes. Nice to have things confirmed by an expert.

[wdolson]

Not sure I would call myself an expert.

What the US most needed in the Pacific was range. The Twin Mustang was developed for the long range escort role. Twin engines were a benefit when flying long range missions over water. The P-38 ran up the score it did because it was the best long range fighter in the theater for a long time.

The Allies didn't need the best fighters in the Pacific because they were not often coming up against large concentrations of the enemy as they were in Europe and Japanese pilot quality fell off a cliff during the Solomons campaign. Germany's pilot quality declined dramatically too, but it happened later and they still had the ability to concentrate very large formations of defensive fighters until quite late in the war.

It wasn't until the war came to the Home Islands that the Allies began to encounter large fighter concentrations.

The game does allow a good Japanese player to skew history and build better planes earlier as well as keep a good training queue going. The bad news was the Mustangs and Thunderbolts were mostly dedicated to Europe until that war was over. The better fighters for the Pacific were being built in the largest numbers possible. Vought, Goodyear, and Brewster were building as many Corsairs as possible (though the Brewster Corsairs turned out to be unreliable pieces of junk) and Grumman was maxxed out on F6F production. Similarly Lockheed was mass producing P-38s and it was never really intended for mass production. The P-38 was supposed to be an interceptor built in small numbers.

The game doesn't really lend itself well to the complexity of production some planes had. For Japan you do need to build engines, but a George or Tojo was a much more complex machine than a Zero and it took longer to build. It also took more skilled workers who were in very short supply.

The Allies just get planes without any effort, but the P-40 stayed in production because it was good enough and it was very fast and east to build. Which also lent itself to easy maintenance in the field. The Wildcat and Hellcat were also very easy to maintain which allowed Grumman and GM to build a lot of them. The Corsair was a much more complex machine. There was more production line space dedicated to the Corsair than the Hellcat, but Grumman's production was 2X all Corsair production combined.

A lot of criticism has been heaped on the US for standardizing on less than the best equipment, but the strategy actually proved successful in the end. The Sherman was a generation older than most German tanks in the last year of the war and Sherman losses were staggeringly high, but the US built so many of them, there were rarely shortages. I don't think Germany had a single panzer division that ever reached full strength after 1942. Every loss for Germany was irreplaceable.

Same thing with aircraft. The P-40 and the Hellcat were not the best fighters of the war, but they were available in large enough numbers to overwhelm the enemy. In most instances, losses could be made up very quickly and damage could be repaired, even in primitive conditions, very easily.

Bill

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The game doesn't really lend itself well to the complexity of production some planes had. For Japan you do need to build engines, but a George or Tojo was a much more complex machine than a Zero and it took longer to build. It also took more skilled workers who were in very short supply.

Bill

Agree with most of what you say.

In my mod, I have "jacked up" the cost of engine factories for all the new engines. The "4" series (45,44,42, etc) all cost at least 1500 supply to build. The rocket/jet engines are 2000. I'm also looking to add "ghost" engines to several models to represent, as you say above, the additional complexity above the standard models that IJ was producing. I wish I could add 0.5 or 0.25 engines as that would make it much easier to balance the economics. But, still, I am happy with my changes so far.

I've added 'ghosts' to the Dinah III's for example. The engines in that were not the typical Ha-33, but were as you say above a far more complicated version. A nice plane, but not for a frontier air strip. I've also added a couple of 'ghosts' to the Emily. Again, a complex AC and only a couple dozen were acutally built for that reason.

[Symon]

What are 'ghost' engines? Could you be a bit more specific? Thanks. J

[wdolson]

I interpreted it to mean he added more engines required than historically necessary. For example give the Emily 5 engines instead of 4.

Bill

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

I interpreted it to mean he added more engines required than historically necessary. For example give the Emily 5 engines instead of 4.

Bill

Yes. Drives up the initial cost reflecting the greater comlexity and special skills and resources to build, and the higher AV support cost in the field reflects the difficulty in the field ... far from perfect I know. But it helps to limit the number of late war planes, or better to say, it increases their cost to better reflect what they had to work with ...

[Symon]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
I interpreted it to mean he added more engines required than historically necessary. For example give the Emily 5 engines instead of 4.

Bill

Seems you were right. Thanks Bill. Ciao. John