Japanese ability to analyze American aircraft

While the Americans were fortunate to discover a mostly intact Zero on one of the islands in the Aleutian chain and return it to air worthiness to discover its' strengths and weaknesses, did the Japanese not have the same fortune at some point? We were able to analyze the Zero, fly it, and pass on the findings to our flyers to give them an edge in combat and it worked. While most of the battles were over water, there were plenty of times when bases were attacked and American planes shot down. Were the Japanese that unlucky that they never came across at least a partially intact American aircraft or did not understand the value of acquiring and analyzing what they may have found? I've got to believe that they had to have found some wreckage to help them understand the value of self-sealing gas tanks or amor plating for the pilots.Their own pilots had to have complained to their superiors when they saw their comrades going down in flames after a few hits from a .50 cal.and wondered why their planes became and remained so inferior to the American counterparts as the wat progressed.

 

IT wasn't so much the planes, even though Japan was not able to match American production numbers, it was pilot quality. Japan started off with a limited number of pilots and a inability to replace losses quickly. Once the losses mounted up after Midway, Coral Sea and the Guadalcanal/New Guinea campaigns Japan was in a vicious cycle of a lack of trained pilots and no time to properly train them. The Kamikazi approach was the result of the pilot shortage. In contrast America routinely rotated pilots back to the states so trained pilots could pass on their experience to trainees.

 

A few other factors to consider is that at the same point in the war where the US captures a A6M (Zero) fighter, Japan is still seeing aircraft inferior to their own by their design criteria (F4F, P-40, P39 etc.) The greatly improved F6F, F4U, P-38, P-47 would not appear in numbers until late 1942 early 1943. While these planes, and their pilots, benefited from reverse engineering the captured A6M, the aircraft themselves were well on the way to development before Pearl Harbor, and merely represented a refinement of existing American design thought.

For the Japanese the design "flaws" of the A6M and other types in service were seen as virtues that gave them greater speed, range and maneuverability that suited their aggressive style of operations. All of the technologies that made America's mid-war fighters so lethal (self-sealing fuel tanks, pilot armor, HMG's) were known to Japan who chose initially not to incorporate them into their designs.

The US did have a greater technology base, allowing a more rapid capacity to take captured tech and learn its secrets, but Japan was developing aircraft that closely matched American designs through out the war. Producing them in numbers, with skilled pilots to fly them and enough fuel to operate them were the problem, not the quality itself.

In many ways Japan was maxed out at the time of Pearl Harbor and many of the decisions made in the first year of the war did not give them the leeway it could to expand their production and technology base to fight a prolonged war. In somewhat basic terms they were a thief that stole just enough to meet their prewar needs, not considering they would need enough swag to spend while evading the hunt by the law.

Japan, like Germany, worked on the theory that their enemies lacked the will and/or ability to wage a prolonged war and came late to the appreciation that that they would have to fight such a war.

In simplistic terms, this is why they lost.

 

Just remember that the A6M Zero in the hands of a skilled pilot remained a formidable foe right up until the war's end. Luckily for the US pilots, skilled Japanese pilots were in very short supply. We should also remember the fate of the Brewster F2A Buffalo - it began life as nimble fighter that could have held it's own against a Japanese Zero in combat. But, then armor was added, and self-sealing fuel tanks, and many other "improvements". Into this mix was added only a modest increase in horsepower, which failed miserably to compensate for the great increase in weight. The result was that this once nimble fighter became a rather lackluster fighter, relegated to the "could have been" column in fighter history.

The Japanese well understood the value of armor and self-sealing tanks. But, they come at a cost - more weight = less speed and maneuverability, as well as less range. To compensate for this you have to add a more powerful engine(which also adds even more weight, and usually reduces range through a higher fuel consumption). The problem for the Japanese was that they lacked reliable high-horsepower engines in quantity until late in the war. Thus, they could not successfully overcome the increased weight of these improvements. We can see this in the various models of the A6M throughout the war

But, to return to AmericanEagle's original post.

Yes, the Japanese capture many Allied aircraft, but there was a dry spell mid-war. During their early "victorious" period, the Japanese capture a lot of Allied aircraft - B-17s, P-40s(various models up to the P-40E), British Hurricanes, CW-21, F2A Buffaloes, etc. During the mid-war period, the Japanese did examine American aircraft wrecks, but I don't recall them capturing/reconstructing any flyable aircraft. Finally, late in the war, did the Japanese again start to make progress - they managed to procure, at least, a flyable P-51C, two flyable Hellcats, and an SB2C divebomber. The Japanese managed to recover several crashed Corsairs in '45, but AFAIK, it is still only a rumor that they made one fly.

 

The fly off betweem a P40E a Me 109E a LaGG 3, a Ki 43 a pre production Ki 44 and the Ki 61 prototypes is well know, IMO the big advantage of testing enemy aircraft is not engineering lessons but knowing the limits of the enemy planes and turning that into effective tactical guidance to your pilots. Knowing wheter your plane can outurn, outdive or outrun your opponent or not can can be critical.

 

True, but I don't think the Japanese would be interested in that kind of info, cant have the emperors pilots think they have anything to learn from the Americans. I just thought of the fact that Japan must have captured some B-17's and yet did they ever develop a counter to the plane like the Germans did.

 

What plane did the Germans develop based on the B-17? I have heard of what I believe was called the "New York" bomber as it was referred to on the Military History channel, but I don't believe it was ever built.

Also, I believe some valid points in the earlier posts concerning the strict adherance to the chain of command and the blind obedience of subordinates in the Japanese military. While all this is possible, would not the manufacturer's of the aircraft used by Japan not be looking to increase the capabilities of the aircraft they produce. While I understand the government probably puts out requests for aircraft and what requirements are needed in their submissions, in Germany, England, and the United States there were people within the aircraft industries improving upon current technology and I have to believe that at least some form of product development had to also be taking place in Japan.

 

You mean like the Imperial Japanese Navy's J2M Raiden and the J1N Gekko. Or do you mean the Imperial Japanese Army's Ki-44 Shoki, Ki-84 Hayate, or the Ki-45 Toryu. All were effective against the 4-engined bombers. The problem was that the Japanese had problems developing effective superchargers & turbosuperchargers that would allow their fighters to operate at the very high altitudes of the B-29s. This was not helped by the fact that Japan relied on AvGas that was of lesser octane than other nations. Further, Japan also lacked the relative wealth of natural resources of the other nations, which often meant that she had to make due with less reliable resources.

The captured Flying Fortresses were put to good use in training Japanese pilots to use tactics well-suited to combat the four engined bombers.

It wasn't that the Germans developed a plane based on the B-17, just the concept of very long-range bombing - which would be more inline with the B-29.

It had very little to do with the chain-of-command, or blind obedience to superiors. It was their blind obedience to "success" aka "victory disease." The Japanese had a mostly successful air campaign against China and in the early part of World War II. Their tactics were well suited to their aircraft, so long as pilot training levels remained high. However, their tactics were suited only to individual aircraft combat, although the early skilled pilots made them work in "team" combat. However, when one or two of the three-man-flights was new, Japanese tactics in team combat broke down, and fighter combat turned into a free-for-all. The Americans, on the other hand, began to focus on "team combat" early on, the Thatch Weave, for instance.

The Japanese aircraft industry, like the rest of those in the world was always looking to improve their products, indeed, the Ki-84, Ki-100, and the J1N2 all rank fairly high on a "best fighter of World War II" list. But, as I stated in an earlier post, the Japanese had early problems producing reliable high-horsepower engines for their new aircraft. Many of their aircraft were delayed from entering service because their engines were not "up to snuff." And several Japanese aircraft projects were cancelled because the available engines did not produce the required power necessary.

 

Japan had German info on the 109 and how it performed against other craft. Wasn't a 109 shipped to Japan in a submarine?..Japan would have an idea how Allied planes performed by flying the 109 against their own craft...Thinking that it's all about pilot performance, as mentioned above. Even if Japan could have produced a Mustang or Jug, i doubt it would have affected the outcome of war.

 

Japan had received three Me-109Es in 1941, and, I believe two 109Gs in 1942 or early 43. The Japanese also had a FW-190, IIRC, an A-5 model, but I can't remember if it was shipped to Japan or constructed from plans sent to the Japanese. However, the Ki-61 Hien, which superficially resembled the Me-109, was based on the He-100 & He-112 - Japan had received one of the 112 prototypes and a 112B.

Japan just could not match the Allied/American production. Japan's most numerous fighter, the A6M Zero, ran to just under 11,000 aircraft produced between 1940-45. The Americans produced over 12,000 copies each of the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair between 1942-45.

 

For me this is where logic defies, hits home- surely Japan realized before the war they started, they could not win. [they had a guy who was educated in US, socialized with US elite, and he advised against war with the US]..Did they [Japan] truly believe they were invincible? God given?

 

Win...or present a fait a acompli?....Do enough to establish a hegemony that would be too expensive in men..time...effort...and logistics...which once established would not be challenged?

 

Actually, they had several officers that had been to the United States and spent time there.

The Japanese military didn't believe that the were invincible, quite the opposite. They believed that Japan would be defeated, either economically - there military budget was driving the country bankrupt and Allied economic embargoes only worsened Japan's financial condition, or militarily - the United States had begun a massively expanding it's armed forces(at a rate Japan could not hope to match), particularly the Navy in 1937-38, and those military programs were expected to begin yielding results in the near future.

As an old saying goes - If your falling off a cliff, you might as well flap your arms and try to fly, because you have got nothing to lose. So, the Japanese military seeing itself in a lose-lose battle...tried to "fly." The timing was opportune for the Japanese, since their military was as good as it was going to get, and the United States military was not yet seeing the dividends of it's building programs. So, Japan struck, in the hopes that their military could decide the war before American new construction could be brought to bear. When that failed, it became a knock-down drug out fight, with the Japanese believing that if they made the war costly enough for the Americans, that the US would accept peace terms that were more favorable to Japan.

In the end, they were wrong on both counts.

 

It wasn't a fait accompli, it was a "sucker punch."

 

Love the T bone- lots of meat....Maybe Japan was more afraid of the Russians. ..Maybe Japan formulated battle plans that required US formations to follow what they wrote/foresaw, not what US would actually do. The US ruined their well laid plans by not fighting the way Japan wanted...And then the production advantage took over?

 

IIRC the Fw 190 was shipped, I know I have some info on blockade runners (surface and subs) somewhere if only I could rember where so I may be able to identify the ship or more likely sub, might be an interesting research project to get a list of all trips both ways, IIRC the Japanese sent rubber and "edible oils" whatever that is.
The lack of feedback from the pilots is a mith, AFAIK the Japanese stuck to the "manouverability is everything" concept because the pilots overuled the engineers that proposed something more in line with what was done elsewhere. But it didn't probably didn't get so extreme as in Italy where the first generation monoplanes reverted to open cockpits on pilot input.

 

Though I think not as far wrong as we sometimes make them out to be. From the evidence I've seen (primarily anecdotal) the U.S. was becoming quite war weary by 1945. War Plan Orange suggests that the U.S. Navy believed U.S. political will to fight a protracted war would become tenuous after two to four years. If American indignation over the war had been appreciably less, or costs noticeably higher would the outcome have been the same? I can't believe these two things are impossible. This question is really only relevant if one wishes to discuss the validity of Japan's prewar assumptions. I tend to think they were more accurate than we like to believe, thus making Japan's infamous early diplomatic and military blunders relevant. (Which is to say that I tend to think Japan was slowly being forced off a cliff, as you suggest, but how they approached that cliff could make a difference. Of course by 1944 it was clear that they were indeed flapping their arms in free-fall.)

 

There was serious discussion going on of not invading and simply blockading Japan. Even though Japan was tightly controlled, there was a lot of dissent building due to the lies of the military and the lack of food combined with the demands made of the war effort.

 

If we look at how Japanese troops behaved after being cut off from higher command we get a better picture of what is more likely to happen in a blockaded Japan.

Put simply, soldiers did not quit or surrender in appreciable numbers and they had no qualms about using force to keep civilians in line. Some great popular uprising by the common Japanese man or woman just isn't going to happen in the near term.

Lets not fit them with a western psyche they never had.