Japanese ability to analyze American aircraft

Zeros had the potential for performance upgrades, the Japanese aircraft industry didn't. It took them quite a while to develop reliable high-horsepower engines that would be good enough to offset the increased weight of the airframe.

Zeros were "easy meat" for late-war allied fighters and their tactics because the A6Ms(and all other Japanese planes) were mostly flown by "green" pilots. Not to mention the American strength in numbers. The fact that the Navy, in 1944-45, was losing more planes to operational causes than to enemy fighters says more about the quality of Japanese pilots than it does about the quality of American planes. The FM-2 Wildcats(an improved variant of the Grumman F4F, produced by General Motors) that were in many of the composite squadrons aboard the CVEs until well into 1944 and 45 were posting very favorable loss ratios with the Japanese fighters.

 

Being 100 MPH slower wasn't a big plus either. Green pilots didn't help but even if they were good, the allies had plenty of good pilots too.

I've read many of your posts in the past so I know you're a knowlegable guy and are aware of the very powerful radials being develeped as the war progressed but they were used in Franks, Ki-100s and Raidens, etc.

The Zero was a great plane in its day but time and progress had left it in the dust by 1945

 

What propeller driven American fighter plane was doing 456mph flat out? Only the F4U-4, P-51H, and P-47N were that capable, and IIRC, by the end of the war only the F4U-4 were seen in any kind of numbers. Even the most modern F6F-5 falls far short of the best of the best, yet look at it's combat performance.

Well, both the Ki-84 Frank & the J2M Raiden were intended from the beginning to be high-speed interceptors, and not a general purpose fighter like the A6M, therefore they were meant to have the larger powerplants necessary for high speed. But, look at how much time these aircraft spent in development, look at how much time was lost getting them into action due to unreliable engines, and look at how low their production numbers were. The Nakajima Ha-45 that powered the Frank was a good engine once it matured, and that was not about until late '44, it was also a maintenance heavy engine that required a lot of work to keep it running in top shape. The Mitsubishi J2M had a history of engine problems before the found a reliable powerplant for the J2M4, however production of the J2m had all but ceased by this time.

FYI - the A6M8 Zero had the same powerplant as the Ki-100, the IJN called it the Kinsei 62 and the IJA called it the Ha112-II, and top speed for both planes was right around 360mph.

 

Another problem for the Zero was once the Americans figured out how to avoid its strengths, the lack of armor on the Zero contributed to the lack of pilot quality. A Zero in the hands of an master pilot was still a good weapon.

 

To a point.

Some others-
Long-distance battles over enemy held territory.
Little hope of recovering shot down pilots.
No pre-planned air-sea rescue.
No planned rotation of pilots for a rest or use as instructors.
Lack of pilots, so they flew no matter how ill they were.

Attritional warfare. The Americans won it in the Solomons.

 

You could add "less than optimal ergonomics" to the list, leading to predictability in combat action.

 

Early war I've read that the Zero had problems with it's radio to the point where some pilots removed it as they didn't think it was worth the weight. Not sure when or if this was solved. I think I've read that EMI was the problem.

 

You are correct. I want to say it was finally solved later in the war, but I don't remember exactly when.

Nice little write up on early A6m radios: http://www.j-aircraft.com/research/gregspringer/radios/radio_systems.htm

 

What about the Kawanishi N1K "George"?

I know it was a kind of 'adhoc' fighter, being derived from a float plane fighter but it was supposed to be pretty good, especially in it's low-wing configuration.

I often see it referred to as a 'Hellcat beater' and considered the best fighter ever produced for the IJN.

 

A quick google showed a number of sites listing it as the equal of the F5F. I didn't see anything that stated it was better than the Hellcat. In this case though even equal is a fair complement.

 

" What propeller driven American fighter plane was doing 456mph flat out?" Maybe the Allied fighters were mostly all a lot faster than the Zero in a dive. That allowed us to choose when to fight or flight even if both pilots were equally talented.

 

I'll play

The P-47N could do 467mph and went into production in late 44 and there were 1500 in production by the end Aug of 45. The Ms were even faster but I don’t think any went to the PTO

As Takao mentioned, the F4U-4 could do it and they saw considerable action over Okinawa.

The Brits had the later Griffon Spit Mk XIX which could do over 450 MPH.

As you said, these could close or extend out of battle at will with a 360 MPH A6M8, but I don’t think any of those ever reached squadrons.

The more likely encounter would be an A6M5 which might hit 340 MPH against a slew of 430-440 MPH allied fighters like P-51D, P-47D, P-38L(Late), a host of Spit variants and probably the Tempest. And the maneuverability of these planes got better the faster they went. The Zeros’s control surfaces became very hard for the pilot to move at top speed. No contest.

[SIZE=12pt]The Zero’s strengths early in the war were its light wing loading (and super long range) and increases in power, armament and armor took those away. You can’t turn an Arabian into a knight’s charger. I don’t know how the similarly lightly loaded Spit adapted so well to doubling of HP, but it did. The 109 did to, but not nearly as well as the Spitfire.[/SIZE]

Edit: I forgot about the Yak-3 that they would have faced if the war continued.
Mr Zero might have survived against a Yak-3 for a while if he stayed up high but he'd have to get there first and eventually come back down below 20,000 feet.

 

My former Naval NCO sent these pictures to me. I wonder how Japanese intelligence officers analyzed these or the like in 1945?

http://picasaweb.google.com/7thfighter/IwoJima?authkey=Gv1sRgCIW06db_6oth&feat=email#slideshow/5447514772304406114

I hope these are new photos for our rogues and newcomers alike.

 

About the third or fourth time that link has popped up.

IIRC, Iwo Jima never came under the number of attacks directed at Guam. The Japanese were short on fuel and trained pilots, not to mention that they suffered heavy losses to the planes that were sent against the Marianas. Mostly the Japanese were withholding their aircraft for home defense and preparation to repel the expected American landings on Japan proper(ie. kamikazes).

 

Here are a few photos of B-17 captured by the Japanese. I read they used them to train their fighter pilots how to attack the B-17.

 

How could they properly evaluate allied planes if they lacked equivalant fuel? Did the allies have something of the same problem but in reverese?

 

So in the photos posted a few replies ago, the Japanese had their hands on a B-17, but it may be unclear as to when this happened, in other words...how early or late in the war? Besides being able to determine weaknesses in the aircraft and how best to approach it, would the Japanese also have taken this opportunity to either develop or improve upon their own bomber fleet with knowledge gained from examining the B-17 in question?

 

Early in the war(1941-42) when Japan was on the offensive. The three B-17s were made flyable using 17s captured in the Philippines and DEI. I touched on this briefly back in post #5.

Unless they found something interesting with the avionics, probably not. The concept of a large bomber was not really part of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force doctrine. The IJAAF was used, like the Luftwaffe for the Wehrmacht, as very long range artillery to support ground troops. Also, Asia was not like Europe, in Asia there were very few strategic targets worthy of the name. Bombing targets also tended to be widely scattered far and wide(especially in China), so range was valued more than bomb capacity. This also held true for the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force, who also faced a lack of strategic targets and very long range was a necessity in fighting the war in the Pacific. However, the IJNAF had been looking into a large 4-engine bomber since 1938-39, and had gone so far as to purchase and attempt to reverse engineer the failed Douglas DC-4E airliner. The result was the Nakajima G5N "Shinzan" which was overweight and underpowered. The G5N first flew in April, 1941, but it's poor performance and unreliable engines relegated the few produced to use as transport aircraft. The IJAAF also dabbled in this project and a few designs were looked at, but no aircraft were produced for the Army.

You also have to take into account production capacity...As the Japanese may have been able to reverse engineer a B-17, but it would have taken years, and there was no guarantee that it would have been acceptable for use in it's intended purpose. Further, Japan was limited in the amount of her production of bomber aircraft. Of the well known G4M Betty bomber, no more than 2,500 were produced. Later in the war bomber production numbers would drop as there was a more pressing need for fighters.

 

The inability of the Japanese to project airpower beyond the range of carrier aircraft seems detrimental to fighting a war to me. As the war progressed, the Japanese took all of these islands and established bases on them to support aircraft, but I only seem to hear of fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo planes perhaps, only a few bases seem to have been manned with Betty bombers. If this was the Japanese plan, expand their empire, and protect it with a ring of bases then it all seems very short sighted, the forward bases can only project airpower as far as these smaller planes can cover...thus all you can really do is sit there and wait for the Americans to show up at your doorstep and try to stop them versus launching bombing missions that force the Americans to backtrack. This shortsightedness of the war planners for the Japanese totally baffles me. Unless of course the Japanese thought they would be able to force the Americans into a quick peace?

 

The G4M Betty composed most of the Japanese bomber units in the Pacific. However, these were supplemented by several units flying the G3M Nell. While both aircraft could fly a good distance, escorting A6M Zeros could not fly as far. As was proven time and again, unescorted bombers have quite a hard time dealing with opposing fighters. In Europe, the American & British allies were able to continue and make up some horrific losses. In the Pacific, however, the Japanese proved utterly incapable of making good on their losses.

IIRC, the Japanese produced somewhere around 2,500 G4M Bettys...The American produced 12,000 B-17s, and 18,000(?) B-24 Liberators. Not to mention the many thousands of medium B-25s, B-26s, A-20s, A-26s, etc.