I found some pdf in my download folder and looked inside.
What I saw was this:
From: Air Intelligence Group
Subject: Japanse Aircraft - Performance & Characteristics
It shows the cowl guns to be either 2x7.7mm or 2x13.2mm but in the game all Zeros have merely a single 13.2mm in the cowling.
However I wouldn’t be suprised if it wasn’t correct, since the document often shows incomplete data or estimations.
We have in game Otsu variant with 13.2 mm. It states the basic A6M5?
Idk, it just says “Zeke 52”
All A6M5s at most have a single 13.2mm in place of a 7.7mm MG in the cowling but never two.
Zeke 52 was a late A6M5. Apparently this was captured by the US.
Some sites said it only had 2 20mm gun and 7.7mm guns.Mitsubishi A6M5 'Zeke' | Planes of Fame Air Museum
Model 52 Zeke Mitsubishi A6M5 Reisen (Zero Fighter) Model 52 ZEKE | National Air and Space Museum
“Model 52” only tells us it’s the 5th airframe type with the 2nd engine ‘option’. Even within the model 52s there was a lot of variation - regular A6M5, Ko, Otsu, and Hei, all for minor variantions mostly concerning armament.
AFAIK there wasn’t ever a Zero with 2x 13.2s in the nose, that might have been an assumption made by TAIC.
Probably 🤔
I wonder why. They could have mounted two in the cowling instead of two in the wings. Maybe replace the ones in the wing with 7.7mm. The 7.7s are probably quite similiar in ballistics to the 20mm.
Having less weight in the wings for better roll seems like a good choice.
I assume the designers and engineers weren’t stupid (most of the time), so they must have had a good reason to do so.
Maybe the center of gravity was altered too much, maybe they just couldn’t fit two of the Type 3s in there, maybe putting them in the wings made maintenance and rearming much faster. If they could, they probably would since it means your wings are easier to make, stronger, and lighter while as you said, improving roll rate. Or maybe they had gun synchronization issues like some Army aircraft had with nose-mounted Ho-103s and thus moved them to the wings.
I’m personally leaning on the weight or space as the most probable causes. I believe Jiro Horikoshi wrote a book about his time at Mitsubishi during the war, so maybe that has answers.
A6M5B->Otsu model.
It’s because Japanese navy pilots often used the 7.7s to figure out the angle they would need to fire for their 20mm’s, it was pretty much used similarly to how pilots sometimes used their smaller calibers as spotters.
I don’t think they every used the a/b/c/d IRL, remember reading something in… ww2aircraft? that it was a Francillion creation.
The overall length of the 7.7 mm Type 97 machine gun was 1,034 mm, but the overall length of the 13.2 mm Type 3 machine gun is 1,530 mm. I heard that when this 13.2 mm machine gun was mounted on the nose of the A6M5, the receiver of the gun protruded significantly into the cockpit. If two 13.2 mm machine guns were mounted on the nose, the cockpit would become unacceptably cramped, and there is a risk that the receiver of the gun would interfere with the mixture control lever on the left side of the cockpit.
I observed the A6M5 Hei in WT, and there is a possibility that the mounting position of the 13.2 mm machine gun is incorrect. The mounting position of the machine gun might need to be further back.
Makes sense 🤔
Germany: Big aerodynamic disadvantages blisters
Japan: Just cram the gun into the cockpit!
There is is no space in the cowl for 20mm guns and ammo
No one is talking about 20mm guns
