Early Jack and Early George

[John 3rd]

Have been entertaining an idea for quite a while to change the thrust of my Mod Arc (Treaty to Reluctant Admiral to Between the Storms) from the choice of making the ZERO airframe the ONLY real IJN Fighter (no Jack) and then seeing it develop into twin development lines of an Interceptor and a CV-based to an early abandoning of the ZERO to move directly to the Jack.

I've been adding to my resource library and have read the development stories of the Jack and George. What a cluster! I know the various design issues and engine problems.

Here is how we would run an alternate history. Yamamoto is head of Bureau of Aeronautics in the historical period. He gets the development of Zero, Nell/Betty, and Mavis/Emily as historically occurred. THIS time he foresees the need to jump strait from first generation planes (Zero, Val, Kate) to second generation (Jack, Judy, Jill).

Horikoshi Jiro and his design team creates the A6M2 then move directly J2M1. Japan does not divide its research or vacillate between aircraft. This move advances things nearly a full year of time. The Raiden LOOKS like a fantastic design but--as we know--flops due to the engine and design issues. With the Horikoshi team on the project the issues are identified earlier and fixed earlier. The engine issues cannot be fixed by the Design Team so that has to remain as is. The Raiden deploys earlier but has a horrific Service Rating. It is a hangar queen initially. Improvements come quickly but the plane does not become a truly workable aircraft until sometime in 1944.

With no immediate, reliable successor, IJN (in a panic) turns to Kawanishi and helps with its development of the promising Shinden Fighter. The company abandons the Floatfighter concept earlier and moves--with IJN backing--to the N1 Fighter. In a similar vein the problems are ironed out earlier and models roll out at a faster pace.

The net result of this alternate history is that the Japanese have ONLY the A6M2 for the IJN until early-43 when they begin to get new aircraft that are--potentially--fearsome but are hangar queens until improved. Reliable models would not deploy until late-43/early-44.

In playing this ALTHIS out the question becomes what moves to the CVs? COULD one of these develop into a CV Variant (with terrible Service Rating) for use on the carriers OR do the CVs wait for the A7 Sam?


Lots of back-and-forth here for thought and discussion. Would love to see what people think get their ideas. If you can, try to dig into your libraries for informed choices/alternates/proposals.

[ny59giants]

The A6M2 goes to A6M5 when it gets armor in mid to late 42?

[DanSez]

I am playing RA8.1 in PBEM game and if I am not mistaken, the CV A6Mx doesn't get armor until the A6M8 version which is a killer. You want armored CV Zeros of some kind for the crucial naval battles in mid 43. That is pretty hard without a total R&D commitment to the A6M8 at the expense of other lines of research.

Selling out for a 'duh' fighter is a very restrictive design straight jacket.
I would suggest two thoughts....

1. the deep sucking sound you hear on Dec 7th, 1941 isn't from Allied sinking ships but from someone in Japan's design team getting their heads out of their butts and committing to armor for all their planes.
2. if any engine design problem is to be 'solved' early, then getting the engine for the A7Mx CV Sam into some shape where it can be on carriers by late 43/early 44 would have a strong effect of stiffening the shrinking IJN Carrier capability.

It isn't Jack or George -- Sam is the upgrade/evolution of the A6Mx series.

[John 3rd]

Dan raises a good point. If the premise is pulling the Horikoshi's Team immediately away from the A6M2 and stopping the 'improvements' of that airframe then WHERE do they go?

IRL it became the Jack and then Sam. Is there a more realistic path?

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

The A6M2 goes to A6M5 when it gets armor in mid to late 42?

I THINK it is the M8 that gets armor. Will look.

[John 3rd]

It is the M8 in August 1943.

[PaxMondo]

OK, so the Jack uses the Ha-32 as opposed to the George and the Ha-45. The Ha-32 is an enormous engine, hence the issues with attempting to streamline it.

I think it a good concept. Drop the Ha-4x airframe development until the Ha-4x issues are resolved. If you keep to the historic NIH timeline, you know what that is, then add a few months to allow the air frames to catch. In between, you focus on getting the 2nd gen aircraft out that used Ha-3x engines like the Jack the re-engined Judy (Ha-33) and the re-engined Jill (Ha-32).

Leave the Ha-4x for the 3rd gen airframes: Sam, Grace, etc.

That's the Navy side. The army side isn't quite as clean. It would be Oscar/Tojo ...

[John 3rd]

My Mods focus just on changes to the Kaigun. Like your thinking Pax. What sort of timeline for deployment would you think?

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

My Mods focus just on changes to the Kaigun. Like your thinking Pax. What sort of timeline for deployment would you think?

If you move Horikoshi's focus from A6M to Jack right away ... his enabler is the P39 ... he needs a captured P39 to see how the US extended the front prop to get the cl gun in place. He doesn't need all the complexity of the P39 as he doesn't need to shift the shaft out of hte way, he just needs to see how Don Berlin supported the extension. So say, he gets one 3/42 from Oz/DEI fighting. 18 months from then would be 9/43. Players then could 'rush' the plane to about 12/42 with focus.

I would adjust that arrival date a bit for play balance. first focus on the goal : 4x20mm 375 fighter. Say 2 upgrades (3 total variants). 1st model a bit shy (365), 2nd on target (375), 3rd a bit over (385). 6 - 9 month spread. So if 1st appears in game (not arrival date, but date players will get it) in mid - late '42, you 're not upsetting game balance too much.

Biggest question: Jack never got carrier capable. Landing gear and visibility issues. As I have read the history/design reviews, even more serious than George/Tojo. However, this is Horikoshi. Does Horikoshi ever develop a CV capable version in your alternate reality?

Next biggest question: Does he ever go to wingroot placement of the cannon? this makes them cl and greatly increases the roll rate. Other IJ designers did this (Frank b model), but he never did. I think Miyazaki offered the best explanation on the 'why' for this in his movie, but we'll never know for sure and I never had the chance to meet him when I was in Japan just after he retired. Anyway, 4x20mm in the wingroot is a big deal. The challenge for the designer is this is where the connection of the wing to the fuselage is and you have to work the gun mounts around all that. Could it have been done? Sure. But would he have? Don't know ... I really think Miyazaki has that answer ... and also how it could have come about. Your call.


Good Luck!

PS: grab a bucket or two and watch the movie. My 7 yo's favorite right now.

[el cid again]

[quote]ORIGINAL: DanSez

I am playing RA8.1 in PBEM game and if I am not mistaken, the CV A6Mx doesn't get armor until the A6M8 version which is a killer. You want armored CV Zeros of some kind for the crucial naval battles in mid 43.

The first A6M series with armor is the A6M5b - under ideal conditions able to be mass produced around mid 1944.

IF you will allow the perfection of a mechanically supercharged engine for the Zero series (it would be the A6M4 series),
the second model of that could parallel the A6M5b. The A6M5 is essentially an A6M4 with a non-supercharged engine. This is
poorly documented in English, but materials in Japan suggest it was mainly a resource allocation matter: as you argue,
Japan had to concentrate human research talent to get product in a timely way. The 4/5 series are well enough armed,
and the upgrades did get some armor - badly needed certainly. The 4 would have better altitude performance, also useful.

[PaxMondo]

Pretty sure the A6M2x series had a single speed single stage super charger. The Ha-35 got a 2 speed single stage super charger for the A6M3x series and forward. Not aware that the Ha-35 ever got a multi stage super charger ...

[US87891]

According to JWE:

Yep, the A6M3 and A6M5 both had two-stage-blowers. Japan tried a turbo on the A6M4 (built 2 protos) but it failed miserably. Cowling got fatter and had bumps. Intercooler flat didn't work, it sucked.
From John Long, AVIAN, LLC. Seriously acclaimed aviation historian. He lives in Huntsville and is easy to talk to.

Just think about what a miserable time Japan had with trying to design a decent turbo and intercooler for it, and how ugly the late war planes looked that finally got one. Woof!

Funny guy.

Matt

[1EyedJacks]

I liked the armor idea from DanSez. If you could push the center-mounted cannon earlier the accuracy will increase; that'd help your fighters do unto the allies as the allies are doing to Japan later in the war...

Have you though of turning to Germany in a tech transfusion? This could give you better radar, a V1 or V2 rocket (although I don't know how this could be modeled), or better blower/Inter-cooler designs for your 3rd generation aircraft.

If you "captured" an allied fighter in 1942 you might get a reasonable copy produced by Japan in 1944. If the captured fighter had a better blower or Inter-cooler than Japan, that could help with your third generation aircraft...

[US87891]

ORIGINAL: 1EyedJacks
..
Have you though of turning to Germany in a tech transfusion? This could give you better radar, a V1 or V2 rocket (although I don't know how this could be modeled), or better blower/Inter-cooler designs for your 3rd generation aircraft.

If you "captured" an allied fighter in 1942 you might get a reasonable copy produced by Japan in 1944. If the captured fighter had a better blower or Inter-cooler than Japan, that could help with your third generation aircraft...

Hello again.

Japan's big problem was precision machine tooling and corrosion-resistant specialty metals. Japan couldn’t do the former with enuff repeatability, and didn’t have jack for the latter. Good to have stuff, like ball bearings, races, exhaust ducting, had to go begging. They had ok designs, but couldn’t execute.

IJN finally bit the big one and went to three-stage blowers. Worked well enuff for what they wanted. Army, and Nakajima, persevered and came up with Ki-87. Turbo install was ugly to say the least, was a maintenance nightmare, and it didn’t work as expected because of tooling and materials problems. Someone at the IJA Air Tech Section didn’t suffer from cranial-rectal infarction and insisted the turbo get moved to the belly, but that moved the CG and required more anti-corrosive ducting (pesky materials again). They were trying to copy the P-47 design, but it was a looong time before they got their hands on one. For sure not in 1942.

Matt

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: US87891

According to JWE:

Yep, the A6M3 and A6M5 both had two-stage-blowers. Japan tried a turbo on the A6M4 (built 2 protos) but it failed miserably. Cowling got fatter and had bumps. Intercooler flat didn't work, it sucked.
From John Long, AVIAN, LLC. Seriously acclaimed aviation historian. He lives in Huntsville and is easy to talk to.

Just think about what a miserable time Japan had with trying to design a decent turbo and intercooler for it, and how ugly the late war planes looked that finally got one. Woof!

Funny guy.

Matt

Cool, consistent with my reading.

Just read your 2nd update and answered my questions.

Say "Thanks" to John. I hope to be out Pensacola way in the spring ... might drive a few hour west before I back track to Ft. Walton. Stop in a drink some of his scotch. [;)]