Heavy bombers are not fully invested into.

Now please correct me if I'm wrong. If the Luftwaffe was able to keep a steady stream of fighters going over Britain( If more resources were into them) would the amount of flight time battered their efforts much? Londoners said themselves that the bombing became a part of everyday life. But if it was set up that there was always fighters their, morale would hit the fan and would drive the country into a steep step into submission? Now as said on the first line, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Also I would imagine the the Germans could do well with a German remade Zero.

 

I'm pretty sure that, somewhere in these forums, there is a thread that concludes that the Zero was better than the early versions of the Me 109...even without the increased fighter protection.

An advantage that the Zero has over the Me109 is that the Zero has a decisively longer range than the Me109. This allows the Zero to actually stay above Britain for long periods of time. As stated, what the Germans really needed were long-range escort fighters, not interceptors.

The Germans really didn't have a long-range strategic bomber, or a heavy bomber in the sense of a Lancaster or B17.

More importantly, how would production be affected by the sudden stoppage of bombers to create new fighters?

 

And why would that be? Just because there were more fighters? Fighters did not have have the same effect as bombers did because fighters could not create as much damage as bombers did. More fighters would not effect the morale as would more bombers would.

 

Also when would this theoretical German made Zero be produced and deployed? The first Zero didn't fly until just after the war started. Then the Zero wasn't even deployed by Japan in the Pacific until the BoB was almost over.The Tripartite Pact wasn't even signed until 27 Sept 1940. So Germany and Japan were not even allies yet by the time the BoB was over. I seriously doubt that Japan would have sold or given Germany the plans before then. Even if Germany wanted them. In addition to switch production from the German designed aircraft would have taken quite awhile.Even new tooling,jigs,dies,engines,Ect for a heavier and slower and less manuverable Zero would have taken time to produce ,design and build.

 

Likely the A6M5. A relatively slow marginally maneuverable aircraft that would compare unfavorably with the Me 109 and Fw 190. Its only redeeming feature would be its range.

 

Can any one supply me a vital detail on the height coverage the Chain Home Stations (High) along the Kent Coast of Britain

v.R

 

Concur. The Zero would not have done well in Europe, and would have lost what few advantages it had if modified for German service over the UK. The Zero's tremendous slow speed dog fighting ability came at a very high price. The airframe was exceedingly light weight to the point of fragility; it could not take damage with much hope of returning to base. Every effort was made to keep the weight down in the Zero and thus retain it's agility. The Japanese often removed the radios (which were unreliable, anyway) in the Zero and thus could not coordinate their actions with other pilots or the ground. Another example of weight saving was the very low ammo load out for the two 20 MM cannons, one each wing. Only 60 rounds of cannon ammo was carried for each gun. This went very quickly in combat, and as Mark Horan has pointed out, was very probably a factor in why the Japanese lost at Midway. Once the 20 MM ammo was gone, the Zero still retained two 7.7 MM MG's, but these were no serious threat to most Allied fighters planes, which were built much heavier and utilized cockpit armor and self-sealing gas tanks. Once their cannons were inoperative, the Zero might as well head for home for all the combat power it represented. Further, while the Zero's ceiling was listed at 32,000 feet, it's low wing loading meant that above about 15,000 feet, it began to lose maneuverability, at 20,000 feet it was a lot less agile, and at 25,000 feet it became downright awkward. This didn't make much difference in the early Pacific War, because Allied planes were also underpowered and stayed fairly low, but that certainly wasn't true of European fighters.

The Germans, of course, would want to beef up the airframe, add self-sealing gas tanks, a more powerful engine, cockpit armor, better radios, and increase the firepower, and amount of ammo carried. They would then have a very overweight and slow dog fighter which could not compete with Allied fighters above about 15,000 feet. Sounds like just the ticket for winning the BoB! As for staying in the air over Britain, it wouldn't work out that way. No radios mean they can only form local patrols, not be vectored by ground radar to where the enemy planes are operating. Secondly, with little 20 MM ammo, the long range is meaningless because once the cannon ammo is exhausted the Zero is basically toothless. And what about at night? The Zero was too weight sensitive to carry the radars that made night fighters practical.

Bluntly put, the Zero was a loser against good pilots flying rugged, if much heavier, aircraft. The Zero design was a big mistake, although the Japanese could not have done much else due to the low power of their aircraft engines; they basically took a lemon and made lemonade out of it.

 

You know your airplane has problems when below 15,000 feet the P40 and P39 are competitive.
As for the cannon ammo problem: This was shared by the Me 109E and early Fw 190 models armed with the MGFF 20mm cannon (and a number of other aircraft using this gun under license like the Pzl 24). This is essentially the same gun as on the Zero. All three used a 60 round drum magazine and had the additional problem of a relatively low muzzle velocity.
Zero pilots had the ability to selectively fire the 7.7mm machineguns and or their cannon. Many of the more seasoned pilots would first fire the 7.7's with tracer until they got hits on their victim and then switch on the cannon for a kill. They realized very early on the limitation of a small ammo supply.
USN pilots likewise complained about the F4F-4 versus the earlier -3 model for the same reason. Most would have prefered having four .50 machineguns and more ammo per gun than the six gun -4 aircraft. The way they saw things was four .50 machineguns were more than sufficent to wax any Japanese aircraft so having six was just over kill.

Now, I will give the Zero one other advantage: The cockpit / canopy gave an outstanding all-round view compared to the German fighters, particularly the 109. Note how the Allies shifted to similar canopy styles for this reason.
The old fighter pilot addage is the one that gets you is the one you never see coming. With interceptors like the 109 view is not critical as you have some idea of where your enemy is from the ground controller. Problem is that WW 2 proved that such a narrow focus of purpose in a figher was a losing combination, just as it often has been since. The MiG 21 is a perfect example of this problem.

 

actually, i kinda knew it was impossible to bring a6m5 or m6 to the channel at the time of BoB. but i'm glad people shifted to the right discussion, what if the zero WAS there.

the zero would have done something the me's couldn't and that is force the spitfires to fight rather than just be interceptors. and the zero had definitely more firepower than both the hurri and the mk1. the trade-off to maneuverability is usually armor protection since maneuverability is already defensive. i wouldn't let someone chew my back and trust to my armor.

during dogfights, one does not fire long bursts. one aims at the belly or the wing roots. four 20mm cannon shells (a very short cough for both the me-109 or the zero) can do a small fighter in. you come less than 100 meters and you can target the cockpit with your cowl-mounted MGs.

over iwo jima, sakai once escaped from 16 hellcats right after he was laid off for a year, having lost one eye over guadalcanal (he thought the planes were zeros until he noticed the stars on the wings.) whereas the hellcats were now faster and can match the zero in spirals, sakai noticed very poor firepower discipline in the part of the american pilots. he realized they were about as green as his own students back in japan. every time a hellcat got on his tail with the zero on overboost, he simply waited for the american to fire. he'd immediately kick the brakes, throwing the shot off, then snap roll in the direction of the propeller bite. he did this countless times and the hellcats would continue firing even when they were already thrown off more than 200 meters ahead. sakai was cursing himself, "why run away from such a clumsy pilot?" trouble was, he couldn't counter-attack because if he slowed or turned, the hellcats would be all over him again.

but going back, i'm mystified why people keep dwelling on the zero's poor armor (actually survivability) when its other features like duration, level speed and climb would have put the RAF fighters' survivability in bigger question.

 

You obviously have little understanding of the dynamics of large scale air operations in WW 2 Mac.

Starting with your entry: The occasional hot pilot in any air force could often outfly his opposition regardless of the level of their ability or the quality of theirs or his own aircraft. But, in larger operations this matters little. What matters is the orgainzation, control, and coordinated tactics of the two sides engaged.

For example, the US Navy had trained their pilots in gunnery and deflection shooting. They provided gun sights and aircraft that facilitated this. At Guadalcanal the Japanese would show up with bombers flying in a V of V's formation at a given altitude. Their escort was positioned in a group usually above and to one side of the bombers.
The US Navy (or Marine) pilots in their F4Fs had plenty of warning via coastwatchers and radar to get into a position up sun and above in altitude to the Japanese. They would then dive on the Japanese formation ignoring the fighters, slice through the bomber formation using high side passes from usually head on shoot down one or two bombers each decimating the formation and dive out of the fight leaving nothing for the Zeros. There was no dogfight. No real fighter on fighter action.
In fact, the US pilots were not trying or desirious of taking on the defending Japanese fighters. They posed little threat to the airfields on Guadalcanal.

At Midway the Japanese carriers lacked a means to control their CAP and coordinate its actions. Many of the Zeros on CAP lacked radios. They relied on sighting the enemy and then individually engaging them. This meant as the US torpedo planes came in the CAP dove down to near sea level and racked these aircraft shooting virtually all of them down. But, they did it very close to their carriers lacking radar and a control system. The US dive bombers showed up at altitude and there was no remaining CAP. There was no warning and no control. The Zeros were off elsewhere. The Japanese carriers paid dearly for their lack of CAP coordination.
In contrast, the US had an excellent system of radar detection and control of their CAP. The Yorktown was able to vector their CAP onto the Hyryu's first strike at almost 70 miles out and shoot down nearly 65% of the strike before it even sighted their target. The carrier accounted for more. The Japanese did manage to cripple the Yorktown but at the cost of their strike. The Hyryu by the end of her second strike was finished. Her airwing was decimated. Even if she survived she was out of the war for more than a year simply due to a lack of pilots and planes from those shot down attacking the Americans.



The British took the same tact in the BoB. The Spitfires were there to engage and draw off the German figher escort. It was really irrelevant if they shot even one of them down. While so engaged, the British would then send in Hurricanes and shoot up the now largely defenseless bombers. The Germans never had the means to counter this system.
The US later in the war did have the means to counter such a system. Their longer ranged aircraft in huge numbers mounted the escort in relays. As each relay got relieved it was free to roam the German countryside shooting up everything in sight on the way home. Luftwaffe units found their airfields covered by attacking fighters as they returned low on fuel. Airfields with their aircraft away were shot to pieces. Motor vehicles, trains, nothing was safe from strafing.

Tactics are the same way. The Thach weave used two sections flying in mutual support to sisccors with one and other forcing the Japanese to attack head on; something their fragile underarmed airplanes could not survive.
The Germans came up with the finger four formation. The British found their three section "Vics" were death traps due to their rigidity and inability to maneuver.
Other pilots discovered things like energy maneuvering.

The difference was that the Axis powers failed to distribute what they learned to new pilots unlike the Allies. Without institutional learning the Axis was doomed.

 

none of what you just wrote is all that hard to understand, assuming it's the first time i read about them. what i can't understand is what part of my last post it is addressing. i never said air wars are decided by one-on-one fights between fighters, preferably at par with regard to performance, to see who the better dog fighter or tactician is, and the loser quits the airplane business. i believe we were discussing a wild what-if, something that couldn't have occurred, and keeping it to aircraft performance.

 

Just with this, we must remember the air supremacy the Allies held over Germany once the US was in the war, so they has the ability, means and the sheer numbers to allow aircraft to 'free roam' around the German countryside shooting up everything, while still having the numbers to perform long ranged close escort's. So I think this is different from the Germans in the BoB, who did not have the ability to, or the superirority in the air or in numbers to achieve the success that the allies had later in the war.

 

Assume the USNavy pilots were chimpazees, and the ammo they fired were cherry stones. What if the Japanese pilots were armadillos, would they be better protected than their human counterparts?

 

Are you sure it was one of the best dive bombers? Even the He 177 was stressed as a dive bomber, but how often was it used as such?

 

Oh? Just how would the Zero's performance allow the German's to accomplish this? Eric Bergerud in "Fire in The Sky", page 243, quotes a P-40 pilot on fighting the Zero; "...If you knew what you were doing you could fight a Jap on even terms, but you had to make him fight your way.. He could outturn you at slow speed. You could outturn him at high speed. When in a turning fight with him, you dropped your nose down so you kept your airspeed up. At low speed he could outroll you because of those big ailerons: they looked like barn doors on the Zero. If your speed was up over 275, you could outroll it. His ailerons didn't have the strength to make high speed rolls; it was like they were set in concrete. The same thing happened at a high-speed. He could outclimb you at slow speed, say 90 miles per hour, he could climb real steep. But if you kept it going up to 250 or more you could outclimb him. So you could make him fight your way. You could push things, too. Because you knew one thing: if you decided you wanted to go home, you could go home. He couldn't because you could outrun him. He couldn't leave the fight because you were faster. That left you in control of the fight."

Seems to me that if a P-40 had that advantage over a Zero, so would a Spitfire.

Did it really? Two 7.7 MM MG's and two 20 MM cannon with 60 rounds each? Doesn't sound that way to me.

Not the point, really. Sometimes you have no choice and armor literally saves the day. Would you rather fly a deathtrap like the Zero knowing that a few rifle-caliber rounds could turn you into toast? It not only makes the Zero's 7.7's irrelevant, but gives you maneuver options the Zero doesn't have.

Ideally, a pilot tries to get as close as possible and aims for a vulnerable spot on his opponent's plane. In practice, that is seldom possible, especially if one is up against faster planes with superior diving characteristics. In the real world, a Zero pilot found that 60 rounds of cannon ammo didn't last long in combat against robust Allied fighters. And, the Zero being extremely weight sensitive, there's not a damn thing you can do about it without destroying that "defensive agility" of which you are so enamored.

Yes, Saburo Sakai could make the Zero sit up and beg, but that is irrelevant to a discussion of how the Zero might have performed in European skies because he was an outstanding pilot whose skills were so far above the average pilot's that they actually made no difference in a theater-wide campaign.

If all you're hearing in this discussion is the Zero's lack of armor, then you really aren't comprehending these posts very well. The Zero was actually deficient in several areas, speed being one of the major ones as demonstrated by the quotation from the P-40 pilot. The Zero was slower than most of the modern fighters it came up against and it's dog fighting superiority existed only at the slow end of the speed spectrum, same with it's climb "superiority". As for "duration", yes it had a pretty impressive range, but it's "duration" in combat was limited by it's supply of cannon ammo which was very small. Additionally, at higher altitudes above 15,000 feet, it's performance fell off markedly with altitude. It wasn't the "wonder weapon" that some have made it out to be, and, unlike other fighters, it had very little capacity for development during it's lifetime so that it could be adapted to lessons learned in combat. It's frequent lack of a reliable radio meant that coordinated teamwork in the air was impossible, an extreme disadvantage as it turned out.

 

The Spitfire Mk Ia had 8 .303 machine guns and the Mk IBs has 2 20mm cannon. Later the best combo was found to be 2 20mm cannon and 4 machine guns. The Hurricane Mk I had 8 .303 machine guns and the Mk II had 12 .303 machine guns.

 

If a loaded a6m6 can make a b-17 explode, and still engage another plane, then that's be enough firepower if you ask me.

if you can shoot down 4 p-39s in one short-range mission and still have ammo left, that must be enough.

if you can shoot down six f4fs in one long range mission (corrected to 4 down and 2 crippled,) AND THEN run out of ammo, then that must be enough.

still smart designing if you ask me. as with 9mm handguns, a big mag capacity is good for people who miss often.

 

The point is, in order for the Zero to have the effect you seem to imagine in the European air war, it would have to do these kinds of things consistently, not once in hundreds or thousands of missions. Further, I'll wager these things were done in cases where the Zero in question was flown by a "hot pilot" with far above average skills and experience.

In fact, Bergerud in "Fire In The Sky", reports that the Zero never was consistently able to down American heavy bombers, particularly when they operated above 20,000 feet. He says no Zero pilot relished attacking an American heavy bomber, and the actual "kill ratio" very easily may have been in favor of the bombers.

The design of the Zero was dictated by the fact that Japanese aviation industry could not produce a reliable high powered aircraft engine. It was a clever design, but certainly not the best way to go with a fighter aircraft for the reasons already delineated. Nothing could change the fact that the Zero was essentially an underpowered fighter design that compensated by eliminating as much weight as possible, including those things essential to a really successful fighter in European airspace. In German hands, the Zero would have been given a much different engine, but then it wouldn't be a Zero. With more power, it would have been redesigned to carry armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, heavier fire power, and more ammo. So why would the Germans even consider starting with the Zero airframe, which had very little developmental potential, and try to come up with a fighter that could meet the requirements of the European theater? Doesn't make sense for them.

BTW, handguns have nothing to do with air warfare and haven't since the early days of WW I.

 

Or ground warfare, referring to your last paragraph.

 

is there a place here where i can start the thread, "did the colt peacemaker really win the west?"

but swerving back to the topic, i'm waiting for people to comment on guys like mitchell and douhet.