Nerf Japanese planes

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
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It’s not about strong pilot, when a plane was thrown into compressibility dive, the control surfaces just become useless.

The spitfire was very lightly built, it benefits from a high mach limit mostly thanks to very thin wings, but in terms of IAS limitations it’s not fantastic. The P-51H saved a lot of weight over the D models by using ‘british standards’ for structural strength. It was inevitably more fragile but it’s hard to say no to the performance it allowed.

No it’s not. The spitfire was allowed for 450mph IAS @ 20000ft, while P-51D was limited by 400mph at the same altitude. We see the IAS limit for spitfire was actually HIGHER than the Mustang. Which wasn’t surprising, the IAS limit for allied aircraft was usually set differently for different altitude, which perfectly reflects the mach/reynolds effect. Something that Imperial Japan lacked the research at. With altitude becomes lower, the IAS limit will release further.
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Clearly Ki-44 couldn’t reach 850kph in a dive, nor it could achieve 12.6G load factor. Everything you’ve mentioned was just structural design goal for the main wing spar, and has nothing to do with the aircraft level performance.

We see the design goal for ki-44’s wing spar been to withstand 850kph dive and 12.6G load. That is the goal for single discipline. But in reality, only 5G load and 650kph IAS was allowed in actual service, which reflects the actual performance in aircraft level, which was a multi-disciplinary result. So I see no reason you use those quote to prove ki-44 could dive 850kph, without even a single first-hand source show its ability to make a steep, controlled dive in compressibility region.

The contemporary IJA fighter manuals give Ki-43 a load factor limit of 6G, and Ki-61 with 7G. But for Ki-44 II, only 5G was allowed. At that time(late 1943), IJA already had a lot of experiences with ki-44, which reflected that the Ki-44 was structurally weak. In fact, due to this, Ki-84 was set to have a heavy elevator control to prevent the pilot from pulling too hard to damage the structure.

So I would suggest that “850kph” figure claimed in later memoirs in Ki-44 and Ki-61 may just been converted from IAS. We don’t know the altitude been set for that 650kph/700kph IAS limit, but if that happened around 15000ft, then the TAS would be 800-850kph. Which solves the myth for both Ki-44 and Ki-61’s mysterious claim on performing 850kph dive.

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In that page, “650kph IAS” was listed as “maximum speed”, which was the maximum indicator reading during the entire dive-pull-out process.

But one thing have to be concern. The Japanese manual tends to list IAS limit regardless of altitude. If they obtained those limit above 10000ft, then theoretically there is room to make faster IAS at lower altitude. But “850kph IAS” is simply too high, I don’t see any other prop in ww2 was allowed to make such airspeed, not even a P47. I do think 850kph TAS may be obtained during the dive.

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Ngl japanese planes are good, because no one climbs much these days.

In arcade mode, planes like ki44/j2m are mostly superior to other planes in everything but raw speed and Japanese guns are really horrible. (They’re easier to aim in RB because planes are not UFO)

However as a revenge for their performance, F8F, P51H etc etc beats the late planes like n1k2. The ki-87 and j7w is very “American” when it comes to handling.

Also, IJA planes tend to be better tiered and more lightweight (irl less fuel and no carrier strengthening and kit)strong text

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Makes sense. Practically it could be around 15000ft. It’s close to what they considered as “combat altitude” for these planes, although that’s a very vague term.

Starting from 30000ft with barely practical dive angle, Ki-44-II can reach 650km/h IAS at about 20000ft. Under 10000ft would be simply be getting too little for safe recovery.

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I found this quote from Ki-44 ‘Tojo’ Aces of World War 2

“Nakajima test pilot Hayashi had dived the aircraft 9,480 ft. to reach a speed of 528 mph, without experiencing any adverse handling characteristics whatsoever.”

This is probably the closest claim to have Ki-44 dive at 850kph. The speed 528mph, presumably stands for 850kph TAS been achieve around 9480ft. If we convert it back to IAS, that would be around 720kph. Or it may stands for the altitude lost during the dive, in that case the terminal altitude should be higher than 10000ft, and the IAS could be just as 650kph. However, I cannot find this quote from Japanese source.

Probably the Ki-44 maybe have the potential to be able to dive like Ki-84, safe till 750kph IAS. But there must be reason for IJA to restrict Ki-44II’s dive speed at 650kph as of late 1943, considering that the contemporary manual for Ki-61 allowed 700kph dive. The manual also mentioned the problem of tail buffeting on the Ki-44. This reminds me of the development of F6F, the early F6F-3 also suffered from tail buffeting, thus had a relatively low dive speed restriction. With the tail buffet problem solved, the restriction was removed.

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218

It depends heavily on aircraft, even past the IAS limit you could still pull out in, say, a 109 if you were strong enough; finnish pilots did it many times.

It was lightly built, how do you think they got such low weight out of it while maintaining relatively heavy armament?

This is just extremely biased, nobody was putting a 5G limit on a frontline fighter halfway through WW2.

Nowhere, in any literature about these aircraft that I’ve come across, have such low structural limits been mentioned, and cases of pilots simply ‘breaking their planes’ would be everywhere - ESPECIALLY in a nation that emphasized dogfighting in their training (part of the reason why the early Ki-43s were considered a failure, they could not beat the earlier Ki-27s in a close-in duel).

The closest I’ve seen is the “6G” limit on the A6M, but that was more of a suggestion and the ultimate load factor was still 12G, the same as the P-51 when clean.

I haven’t really gotten to the Ki-84 yet, but this has also not been mentioned anytime anywhere. Higher stick forces were more likely to disincentivize pilots to get in close, slow dogfights where they would be easy prey for vastly more numerous USAAF or USN fighter groups.

This is more plausible, however data is both scarce and contradictory. Again, TAIC report claimed “very high diving speed” which it did not for the Ki-43, which is KNOWN to be limited in the low-mid 600s.

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219

Look at the arcade B.Rs for Japanese props lmao. Absolutely ridiculous

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Big 3 players won’t be happy til they can just easily smoke anything without being touched by counterfire at all

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It is very nice information. Could I ask you, isn’t there any mention about any Fire Extinguisher system what was used for extinguishing firing fuel tanks or engine in Ki-61 or Ki-100?

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225

How about instead of “nerf” this, how about we “buff” that?

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Just like Russian lie about anything

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Hey, at least Russian tanks are scary in real life. I wouldn’t be scared of a Jap tin can.

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desert storm and war in Ukraine tell me otherwise probably scary for it own crews

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Desert Storm was just Ground Pound Simulator. The air force did all the work, the US Army and Marines just took over AFTER the US Air Force did all the work.

Ukraine is different, if you were actually there instead of listening to that propaganda crap on the news, you would know. Everyone wants to talk about that Bradley that destroyed the gunner optic on a T-80, but yet Ukraine was losing all their gifted tanks in the most stupid of ways, because they don’t know how to actually run a bloody army. I was there, and my God were we given idiots to lead us. At least most of us were too high and too drunk to care about being thrown into the meat grinder.

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I wish I could tell my Ukrainian friend this without him getting angry.
And yes Ukraine isn’t even reporting their loses just the Russian tanks (both sides do the same though).

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Oh i forget infamous one the valley of tears that IDF using modified British Centurion got out numbered by T-55 and T-62 yet still manage to stop all of them
Russian tanks soooo scary hah?

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Mate, I probably had the best logistics in Ukraine simply because I was buying “fun stuff” from Amsterdam. The only reason the lads and I did majority of the stuff we were told to do is because we were all too high to even say different. Halfway through a skirmish my vision was being torn apart like one of those wicker baskets and I lived a lifetime as a blade of grass before realising, “oh wait, I’m being shot at”

Hell, there’s a reason Russia doesn’t have a “smack” epidemic anymore, and it’s because we all stole their stash. Hell, I knew a guy who smoked out of his rifle. Maybe that’s why Russia isn’t as effective anymore, we stole their stash and they don’t have a reason to keep going.

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Tell your friend to go serve his country. I went down because my ex left me and I was bored of farming. Had the best time of my life: great food (well, considering we were on the brink of starvation at all times, any food tastes good), great friends (who will probably lose their lives by the end of the week), good entertainment (like “young ones” who will do the stupidest stuff and… now you have an extra magazine and you can swap rifles), and you forget all your troubles (by constantly worrying about artillery, drones, and trying not to frag your mates because who the hell can tell the difference between Ukrainian and Russian with zero hours of sleep and a massive hangover). And best of all, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) will tell you how different you are (they won’t treat you like a war hero, but rather a loose cannon, because God forbid they leave you alone and not beg you to talk about your emotions).

I miss it.

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He’s 16 but yeah.

And thank you for your service.
Cat Soldiers | TikTok

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Oh boy I sure do love it when people intentionally derail topics about WWII Japanese aircraft…

(This goes for all of you participating in this convo)

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