Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Feinder

Now you're getting into semantics Trist.

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ORIGINAL: crsutton

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

There is no comparison between the F2A and the A6M. Any pilot worth a salt knows which plane would win. The A6M Zeros tore through every P-40 squadron they ever came across. The AVG never engaged A6Ms in combat so no comparison can be made there. Navy Wildcats barely held there own against the Zero. They did so because they learned that if they didn't have a height advantage, it would be suicide to engage.


Chez

This is a generalization and not a very good one. Early war zero pilots had success against P40s but that was about it. Other than that, P40 had a very decent success rate against zeros. What about the air battles over Darwin where ANZAC P40 pilots did a very credible job of shooting down zeros?

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To say the zero was superior is without merit.

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The zero certainly had advantages-long range and maneuverabilty certainly come to mind. but I can't think of much more.

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The P40 was just as fast if not slightly faster in level flight . . .

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. . . could dive away with ease from the zero and most important had a much better roll rate at high speeds (a much underated asset when comparing maneuvering ability of both planes) Since any turn begins with a roll, a well flown P40 could intially turn faster than a zero and get off a valuable shot inside of the turning zero's arc. When you factor in the far superior firepower and overall structrual soundness of the P40, it comes out looking better.

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The zero was a capable aircraft in the hands of a skilled pilot but it was poorly armed (later models are better), had a weak airframe and in the cruical period of the war, had no sealing gas tanks.

Quite frankly, the zero was designed for the past war. Yes, it was trememdously agile but only at mid and low speeds. That is, it was a dogfighter in a era when dogfighting had become all but obsolete. The secret to fighting a zero in a P40 was to keep the speed up. At high speed the zero was a poor performer and turning ability dropped off significantly. At high speeds the p40 could fly rings around it. Once the Allied pilots understood this simple fact, the p40 was more than a match for the zero.

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And, I might add, (I have already beat this one to death) that P40s generally had working radios where most zeros had none or had radios that did not work very well. With dogfighting growing obsolete and the greater reliance placed on formation flying, this was a tremendous tactical advantange. It is almost entirely overlooked in this and other forums when discussing the merits of WWII aircraft. Modern aircraft fighting aircraft without radios!

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You might as well have equipped the japanes pilots with wooden rifles.

All things considered, perhaps it is only a marginal difference, but the P40 was a better plane. Any pilot worth his salt knows that

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

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Think about this. Gary gives a "maneuver" rating for planes, as if the ability of a plane to "maneuver" might be something absolute when in fact it should not be represented as something absolute but rather something which needs to be qualified according to the circumstance. It's like polling. If you ask bad questions of the sample the poll results will come out skewed. "Was the Zero better at maneuvering than the P-40?" a question might go. Well, it depends on what altitude the planes were at and what air speed we're talking about, right? But Gary never takes that into consideration. At 15,000 feet in a vertical space, diving, with a P-40 pilot who understands the flying dynamics of both his plane and that of the enemy, I'd take the Tomahawk any day. Wouldn't you?

It also depends on the mission. Aircraft escorting bombers are handicapped whereas the intercepting bombers are more able to select the conditions under which they intercept. AVG pilots to a man all said they refused combat if they couldn't get a height advantage so as to zoom through the bomber formations.

The AVG also had some other very significant advantages over the Japanese that can't be modeled in the game. One was their early warning system. Primitive and crude, it did normally give the AVG 30 minutes or more to get into position. Given the P-40s abysmal rate of climb (20 minutes to 20K feet), it needed all the advance warning it could get so as to intercept. Without this advantage it is unlikely that the AVG would have been as effective. Over Rangoon, where they didn't have an extensive warning net, they had to maintain standing combat patrols. That's hard on planes, pilots and supplies.

The point that I'm trying to make is that the when you look at the types of fighters the AVG encountered, one fact stands clear: the majority of AVG kills came against the Ki-27 Nate, an obsolete, fixed-gear aircraft that was woefully undergunned with only two 7.7mm guns. Over 60% of AVG's CLAIMED kills by their top 15 aces were Nates. The kill ratio here was on the order of somewhere around 20:1. Against the Ki-43 Oscar, the AVG didn't fair as well, claiming only 21 kills total for 3.5:1 kill ratio. The Oscar was also very undergunned having only two 7.7mm guns at the time of the AVG.

The AVG had 18 aircraft shot down. 4 by Nates, 6 by Oscars, 5 by ground fire and 3 by bomber defensive fire. 4 pilots were killed. These totals do not include the large number of P-40s that returned so shot up that they never flew again. When you compare the P-40s durability with the total lack of Japanese firepower, the P-40 pilot had an excellent chance of surviving. But ask yourself, what could two 20mm cannon and two 7.7mm guns do to a P-40? And could it be this increased armament that was the reason Australian and US P-40s in the PI were shot down in large numbers by the A6M2 Zero?

I use the above information in support of my contention that the P-40 is over rated in the game. The game has the P-40B effectiveness against the Oscar pretty close, maybe slightly high: 58% vs 49% because of the Oscar's lack of firepower. Against the Nate's 43%, it is probably correct given how effective the P-40 was against the Nate.

But the game shows the P-40B as being 6 percentage points better then the A6M2 and 1 percentage point better than the A6M5c. This is assinine when you consider that the A6M5c was faster in level flight than the P-40, could dive at 460mph, had armored windshields and pilot armor, self-sealing tanks, automatic fire extinguishers, better armament while maintaining excellent maneuverability. Every disadvantage the Zero had against the P-40 had been addressed while reatining its advantages yet the game still models it worse than the P-40, a fighter that was withdrawn by the USAAF from combat service in October 1942 and used only for photo recon. Does that seem like accurate modeling to you? Even with the max Zero bonus, the P-40 retains a higher rating vs the Zero, something that allied pilots serving in the SRA and Phillipines probably would have disagreed with had they survived.

Chez

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ORIGINAL: Armorer

Unless I'm misunderstanding Feinder's numbers, these are HIS percentages, not the game's. Unfortunately, we have no real idea what weight the game engine assigns the variables that the spreadsheet factors in. If I am misunderstanding, and these are somehow the game's percentages, I'll be very surprised.

Regards,
Randy

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ORIGINAL: Feinder

Pardon me. No disrespect intended. I was just abbreviating, the fact that "trist" is a word meaning a shallow, superficial relationship, didn't actually occur to me when I originally typed it.

That's not to say that there isn't much to be said for "shallow, superficial relationships".

(* sigh *)

19 minutes to go.

-F-

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez
But the game shows the P-40B as being 6 percentage points better then the A6M2 and 1 percentage point better than the A6M5c. This is assinine when you consider that the A6M5c was faster in level flight than the P-40, could dive at 460mph, had armored windshields and pilot armor, self-sealing tanks, automatic fire extinguishers, better armament while maintaining excellent maneuverability. Every disadvantage the Zero had against the P-40 had been addressed while reatining its advantages yet the game still models it worse than the P-40, a fighter that was withdrawn by the USAAF from combat service in October 1942 and used only for photo recon. Does that seem like accurate modeling to you? Even with the max Zero bonus, the P-40 retains a higher rating vs the Zero, something that allied pilots serving in the SRA and Phillipines probably would have disagreed with had they survived.

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ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

Would it be possible to use the air balance numbers given for each base to try to figure out how various planes are rated? You could play H2H and park an equal number of Zeros and P40s, for instance, on adjacent bases and compare the air balance numbers. Do the same for Zeros and F4F4s and so on. Might this not reveal the relative ratings of the fighters?

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ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

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ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

Would it be possible to use the air balance numbers given for each base to try to figure out how various planes are rated? You could play H2H and park an equal number of Zeros and P40s, for instance, on adjacent bases and compare the air balance numbers. Do the same for Zeros and F4F4s and so on. Might this not reveal the relative ratings of the fighters?

I must be having a bad afternoon because I don't understand what you mean by "air balance numbers." What is that? Have I missed something obvious all along?

Whatever those air balance numbers are, how would we derive from these relative scores the truth as to how Gary plugged all that plane data in? Is that a logical step that I just can't see? Speak to me.

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ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

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ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

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ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

Would it be possible to use the air balance numbers given for each base to try to figure out how various planes are rated? You could play H2H and park an equal number of Zeros and P40s, for instance, on adjacent bases and compare the air balance numbers. Do the same for Zeros and F4F4s and so on. Might this not reveal the relative ratings of the fighters?

I must be having a bad afternoon because I don't understand what you mean by "air balance numbers." What is that? Have I missed something obvious all along?

Whatever those air balance numbers are, how would we derive from these relative scores the truth as to how Gary plugged all that plane data in? Is that a logical step that I just can't see? Speak to me.

The "air balance numbers" are available at each base in the roll over text. Place your cursor over a freindly base and look at the number in the upper right corner. If positive, then the "air balance" at the base is in your favor. If negative, the "air balance" is in favor of the enemy. Now place the cursor over an enemy base. If the "air balance" number is positive, then it is in favor of the enemy. If it is negative, it is in your favor. I have no idea how these numbers are calculated. But perhaps they could provide the solution to "rating" the different aircraft.