Japanese pilots

[NapoleonXIV]

The Japanese started off WWII with one big advantage IIRC. They had pilots who had been flying since 1931 in some cases.

In OTL these were all shot down and killed pretty quickly as the war progressed by better armored American planes, not better American pilots

How could they have used this advantage? In OTL they had a good plane with poor armor, could they have improved the armor, (or would that make the plane perform badly?)

Did they have other planes and/or tactics they could have used? What if they had had jets from about late 1942? Would it make that much difference if all their experienced pilots hadn't been killed as quickly as the war progressed?

[CalBear]

The Japanese started off WWII with one big advantage IIRC. They had pilots who had been flying since 1931 in some cases.

In OTL these were all shot down and killed pretty quickly as the war progressed by better armored American planes, not better American pilots

How could they have used this advantage? In OTL they had a good plane with poor armor, could they have improved the armor, (or would that make the plane perform badly?)

Did they have other planes and/or tactics they could have used? What if they had had jets from about late 1942? Would it make that much difference if all their experienced pilots hadn't been killed as quickly as the war progressed?

Most important single change would be rotating the pilots OUT OF COMBAT and use them as trainers. This was what the United States did, and it paid huge dividends. The preserved their best pilots and got the hard won lessons of combat passed on all in the same action.

[cra0422]

It would be highly unlikely for the Japanese to use the pilot-rotation system during WWII. The pilot training program was lengthy and cumbersome when it came to turning out new pilots. Pilots were considered to be more like modern samurai and had to be from a certain social background whereas American pilots simply had to pass the physical tests.

Armor plating and greater firepower were two huge advantages early American fighters had over the Japanese compared to speed and manueverability. Japanese Zero fighter planes were purposely built without armor because it was believed that protecting pilots would cause them to act less aggressively.

[Sargon]

Don't forget self-sealing fuel tanks as well.

In addition to the things listed above, the average US pilot came from a culture where young men tended to tweak around with mechanical things more often, such as farm machinery, family cars, etc. These sorts of things were not nearly as widespread in Japan, and thus pilots, ground crew, damage control teams already had a head start in terms of mechanical experience and savvy.

Rotating pilots out would have helped a lot, and pilots were not necessarily selected from particular societal backgrounds contrary to popular belief, however it is true that their training was very intense and specialised in the early years when compared to the US. However, this tended to whittle down the number of pilots available due to the very high standards required to qualify as one, and was actually detrimental to raising a good number of competently trained pilots. Standards were of course relaxed later on in the war, but by then it was too late.

For a good read about the life of Japanese pilots from a Japanese viewpoint, I recommend Samurai by Sakai Saburo, a WW2 Japanese fighter ace. Although, he was from samurai descent himself, it was not a requirement that others had to be. In fact many pilots came from farming or merchant families.


Sargon

A Timeline of mine: The Roman Emperor Who Lost His Nose (http://www.alternatehistory.net/discussion/showthread.php? t=39898)

[ranoncles]

Japanese pilots demanded extremely manoeuvrable aircraft, such as they had known in their biplanes. To get that kind of performance, Japanese designers were forced to build very light airframes because Japan did not have sufficiently powerful aero engines.

The use of pilot armour and self-sealing fuel tanks was not a major consideration when flying against weak Chinese opposition in the early and mid 1930’s and most air forces only started installing this in the late 1930’s/early 1940’s.

When faced with better opposition, these things were tried but it downgraded the performance of their aircraft significantly, and Japanese pilots preferred high manoeuvrability and no armour against low performance and decent armour.

The solution: The Mercedes-Benz DB601 V12 engine.
Japan acquired the licence for this engine and it finally allowed them to build fighters capable of boom & zoom tactics which had overtaken the old WWI turning-style dogfight tactics.

Incidentally, the Italians also prized manoeuvrability above all other considerations and also lacked a powerful aero engine necessary to build a modern “boom & zoom” fighter. They also got their hands on the Mercedes-Benz DB601 engine which transformed their Macchi MC200 series and Fiat G50 series.