wdolson
Posts: 10398
Joined: 6/28/2006
From: Near Portland, OR
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On the other side, some marks have been combined together. There are some marks of the P-39 and P-40 missing. Though as far as game performance goes, there was no major differences with marks in the game. The SBD-4 is missing. It was identical to the -3 in performance, but had a 24 Volt electrical system (the -3 was 12V) and a different propeller. Douglas sharply increased production when the -4 was introduced, so in game terms there should be an increase in production around October or November 1942. Just what the JFBs want, more Dauntlesses. 
I believe a few PBY-3s were in service at the start of the war too, but I believe those are accounted for with the PBY-4s.
A number of transport plane types are missing too. The C-47 was the version of the DC-3 specifically built for the military with a cargo door. The many DC-3s pressed into service had a different designation. For game purposes, what's there is adequate. Many of the transports in the real world were not part of any group located in one place, they were in a general air transport command and either flew routes like civilian airliners or were flown on courier flights. The game sort of represents them invisibly by moving pilots and commanders around with x number of day delay.
There were also a number of B-25 variations. The B-25C in game is pretty similar to the version of the C/D that operated in India/Burma and the Mediterranean. The 5th AF took their B-25s and by mid-1943 had turned them all into strafers with gun noses. Cs and Ds. (I believe the only significant difference between the C and D were where they were made like the P-51B and P-51C). Technically the D1 should be limited to the 5th AF.
By the introduction of the J, the factory was doing a lot of the mods that were done in the field by the 5th AF. The J1 represents a Far East version (though many there got extra .50s added in the field too). The J11 represents the all gun nose version from the factory that had a solid nose with 8X .50s, plus 4 more on the sides of the cockpit.
There was another field mod done by the 5th AF and most other field mod depots in the Pacific that took the glass nose J and added 4X .50s inside the glass nose while leaving the bombardier's seat in there, though the bombardier was usually not carried. On photo missions a photographer would be crammed into the nose. Most B-25Js operating in the Aleutians had this mod and it was done in India too.
PBY-5 production should also be phased out by late 42 and be replaced by more -5As. The USN switched all production to -5As, though they did take some non-amphibians from a later British order. Most USN PBYs after the first year of the war were -5As.
The significant marks of everything that did contribute is included. There are some what if weapons that are missing. The P-40Q, XP-55, XP-72, P-59, and the various Japanese experimental aircraft aren't included. In an alternate universe, some of these, especially the Allied aircraft could have been introduced into combat.
The Japanese aircraft industry was under a lot of stress from the beginning. They could produce a few large aircraft, but they didn't have the industrial capacity to produce any of these aircraft in large numbers, even in 1941. By 1944, fighters and naval attack aircraft were the two primary aircraft types in production and that was stressed to the limits.
Bill
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