It has been ages since i’ve played japan, but now i gotta dust off the japanese planes to farm the R2Y2 before it goes away.
Here I was playing the Zero , then I see the A7M1 and i don’t remember seeing it there before.
Is it as good as the raiden?Should I get it?
its perfect for grinding the r2y2 because it can research all the tiers around it without penalty and is pretty decent as a fighter.
It is a pretty good fighter, yes. Surprisingly its also not a straight downgrade to the A7M2, has a bit less weight and performs just as good (if not better) at some altitudes.
(EDIT: I misakenly thought this topic in in Air-SB section, not Air-RB, so below info is about Sim performance and battleratings. Rb has instructor that decreases turn rate of most planes in different ways)
A7M2 is the strongest Japanese prop fighter in Sim - better than N1K2s, Ki 84s J2Ms etc, while at 4.7 br for some reason. It’s ridiculous. A7M2 is noticeably better than A7M1, because of on average 200hp stronger engine. it a bit heavier but not nearly enough to offset power advantage. A7M2 overheats less than A7M1 too. But A7M1 is amazing too.
A7M2 info at 20 min of fuel and WEP:
Sustained turn rate = 28°/s. A6M5 ko has only 25°/s, Yak-3 22°/s, Bf 109 F-4 has 21°/s.
It’s because A7Ms have great maneuvering energy retention bue to huge, efficient wings. You have to understand, that’s among the best turn rates out of any monoplanes above 2.3 br in War Thunder. Other monoplanes that come close are A6M2 (26°/s), Ki-43s(28°/s), and J2M2(25°/s). But Ki-27 dominates with (37°/s). A6Ms have great instantenous turn rate of 35-45°/s, but they bleed so much energy with time so it drops to 24-26°/s.
Good climb rate (26m/s below 2km, 23m/s below 5km), A6M5s are on average 3m/s worse.
Great guns (stealth 13.2 full HE belt slaps).
Decent speed(540kph top speed at sea level), while A6M5 has 480kph top speed and yak-3 has 570kph.
Great dive speed cause it’s heavy and sturdy.
I see 0 (no pun intended) reason to play A6M5s, when A7M2 or A7M1 exist.
i find the power to be on par with most p-51’s in terms of speed,i can keep a safe distance from them if i dive. And It being a bit lighter actually is quite nice .
Played only with the M1 yesterday, about 25 games, i can count on one hand how many times i’ve lost.
Maybe at low speed, but the A7Ms are quite draggy due to their size and you won’t keep up at high speed. Regardless you can just outmaneuver them in any regard except very high speed.
Very capable and one of the aircraft I’ve been looking at buying for the longest.
Sim has quite a few dubious balancing decisions, the XP-55 is still at 3.0? While having far better handling than it should.
Out of curiosity, how do the A6M3s stack up, especially the Model 22? Slightly more power and the A6M2’s longer wings (vs A6M5) might get it turning a little better.
Good find! A6M3 mod 22 has also 28°/s sustained. The best out of all zeros it seems.
I checked A7M1 and it has 26.5-27°/s (at sea level). I was surprised it’s that much lower than A7M2 but noticed, A7M2 on top of having stronger engine at low-mid altitudes, also has a better propeller. A7M1 has 72% prop eff when turning, and A7M2 77%.
I’ll never understand where gaijin gets their prop eff%s from. You’d think the plane with less power and a similar looking propeller wouldn’t be that much worse.
Yeah, it’s weird. Should be definetly be stronger for A7M1 if the props were the same.
I think Gaijin uses propellers as the last black box for balancing. When a plane they make is faster or climbs better than in sources, they change propeller for performance to fit data. That’s why most Homare 23 planes have crap propellers.
And in turn their sustained turn performance is much worse than it maybe should be.
That’s not certain, but possible.
If instead of decreasing propeller efficiency, they decreased wing lift to match ingame climb rate to historical climb rate, then sustained turn rate could be even worse.
They can’t change mass or engine power, cause they’re easy to verify with sources.
I’m not too worried that Gaijin us unrealistically nerfing Homare 23 planes. I know Japanese didn’t design the best propellers during WWII. J2Ms had quite inefficient prop IRL, and in game these propellers are mid, perhaps better than IRL. Maybe Ki 84s etc also didn’t have good propellers IRL, idk.
True, it’s not all bad.
The A7M series are pretty underrated they literally are better zeros and really thats what they were supposed to be built as so its no surprise there.
But nost people see the name A7M and think its slow…weak etc the usual zero weaknesses but then you surprise them with speed…climb better firepower while STILL being able to out turn everything you see. If used right both A7M1 and 2 are just Zeros on steroids.
