ratster
Posts: 166
Joined: 1/21/2002 From: PA Status: offline
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Hehehe, Actually its closer to 850 miles from Kota Baharu to Rangoon. However they were escorting other bombers for this mission, so probably would only have been carrying drop tanks.
The other possibilty is (as I mentioned before) they refuelled at Bangkok (about 350 miles from Rangoon), or even staged from there for this raid. The squadron in question (64th Sentai) however was based at Kota Baharu, from which they had launched an attack on Kuala Lumpur 3 days earlier (22 Dec,1941). I can't say with any certainty how likely it is they would have staged from Bangkok, not being that familiar with the details of Japanese air op procedures in WWII.
Most of the information I'm geting is from online sources. Unfortunately all the printed source material uses the term "maximum" range without defining it, which is why I started looking at missions flown by squadrons using the Ki-43-1a.
It does seem likely that the 745 mile figure for the 1a model is for standard operational range, given all the data presented so far. In addition all models could carry 2 45 gallon drop tanks, which I would guess would add another 100-150 miles of operational range (200-300 total), at the very most. The mileage on WWII era aircraft engines wasn't that impressive, compared to today.
So I would say 24 hexes carrying bombs, and say 30 without(as a fighter only), for the Ia model.
edit: DoH! lol, Glad thats cleared up , wasn't sure about the rebasing, didnt read your post before I posted, too busy writing all this up.
[ February 28, 2002: Message edited by: ratster ]
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