A6M2's range as a force multiplier in an ATL Battle of Britain.

Given the range advantage of an A6M2 type aircraft in the Luftwaffe during the BOB:


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A very sizeable percentage of BoB kills came in GCI bounces where the victims weren't aware of what was going on until it was too late. The Zero would probably be the aircraft most vulnerable to these bounces, in either air force.

A very sizable percentage of all air-to-air kills have come from bounces of one sort or another.
 
I think the range advantage would provide a tactial flexibiity the Germans lacked iotl.
I think the pod draws a lot of counterarguments because of the use of the A6M2. A better pod would be a german design optimized for long range.
The He-100 or equivalent afsked for early and modified as this Spitfire would fit the bill, and all the counter arguments would be less with an aircraft at least equal to the spitfire in the duels. https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/558683-long-range-Spitfire
 
Even if the LW gains some temporary advantage over the RAF for a few weeks or a couple of months while the British develop new tactics what exactly is that going to achieve? Sealion is still impossible, the fall of France and the Blitz didn't make the British quit so some extra RAF losses aren't likely to do it. There is no wonder weapon that's going to deliver victory for the Nazi's outside of the A-Bomb.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
Johnboy started the He-100 discussion on post#13 in https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ahc-the-best-possible-luftwaffe-for-1940.461622/

Although the increase in range is good for the Luftwaffe, the aircraft must be able to operate effectively against FC. The Zero is not that plane.

The LW needs many more SE fighters and at least double the pilots to suppress Fighter Command. It still cannot effectively interdict the Royal Navy. The talk of longer ranged LW fighters is getting circular. The tactics described will kill many more Luftwaffe pilots. LW bombers must be more effective against aircraft industry targets and transportation centers. This will hurt Fighter Command more than longer ranged fighters.
 
Just don’t understand how a plane with a losing record to the F4F (F4F, not even discussing the F6F) could single handily turn/win the BoB.

Because the F4F was also a damn good aircraft,with half the range of the A6M.

No one was saying it would ever win the BoB, just putba lot more hurt on Fighter Command, and do a far better job at being a bomber escort
 

DougM

Donor
A few opinions
1) the extra range is not that useful in BoB as the distance was not that great. It was needed in the middle of the Pacific but it is not a Huge adventure in BoB. Staying over Britan longer just means that the RAF has longer to track in on you and ambush you.
2) the lose of Armor and other protective systems is going to cost the Germans pilots that ultimately they can’t aford to lose. In the long run this will do more damage then good as England gets Alies later to help replace pilots.
3). You won’t just be able to add a couple hundred additional aircraft. It takes materials to built them an pilots to fly them so you will have to replace Real world aircraft with these new Zeros.
4). The early kill ration was a bit of a special circumstance in OTL. That will NOT happen in the ATL BoB. In the OTL you had very experienced Zero Pilots fighting against not very experienced Alied Pilots to start with. In BoB Germany doesn’t have a ton of pilots with more experience then England has. Add in that the US was using an airplane that was not as good as what England had and that at the start the US was trying to fight as the Japanese did. Once that was changed the Zero started getting blown out of the Sky. So England fighting with better aircraft and against simulrly experienced pilots is not going to suffer like the US did.

End result is that it goes a little worse for England for a very short while then if Germany stays with the Zero it goes much worse for Germany ultimately. As I said the extra range is not that good. And don’t over estimate fighter sweeps. The US and England did a LOT of damage against ground targets in France and elsewhere with Fighters but that was because the Alies generally had control of the air so the fighters were not getting bounced from on high while playing around down low (and that usually means slow also). On top of the by the time the Alies were doing this they had rediculus number of fighters to do it with. And the fighters most often used had a lot of guns or had big guns. And ythe fighters could take a bit of damage. A lot more then an early model Zero could every handle.

I mean let’s stop and think about this. The trend for ALL sides was building bigger heavier better armored aircraft as the war went on. Do you think maybe thier was a reason for this? Or are we to assume that every single country was ran by idiots?

So I think this idea of using Zeros in the BoB where basically thier only advantages will be of no particular use and against pilots of equal skill is going to result in Germany not gaining anything much short term and losing pilots long term it can’t aford and this is a best case. Worse case Germany gets its but handed to it starting about a week or so in.

Picture some pilot that just happens to be high and fast when he sees a sweep of 4 Zeros lower and slower. He dives down using speed to overtake them. Shoots one down and then uses his speed to pull up and away, he does this once or twice more. His wing man doing the same. They return to base and compare notes with a handful of pilots that tried to dog fight and got curb stomped by the Zeros.
The next time the pilot and his flight our out they intentionally try this. Then back at base this flight is painting a bunch of kills on thier aircraft while the other flights are patching damage. In about a week this will be all over the place and the German Zeros days of glory end before they ever began.

Frankly from a strictly personal point of view I don’t understand why this basic concept is still around. Could of it happened. Sure they were Alies and lord knows England and the US shared more then this. But the Zero is not the greatest WW2 aircraft. It is not magical and it is not even the best Axis Aircraft. So I just don’t get why anyone would think this was a great idea. Ultimately the Zero probably was one of the leading causes of Japan running out of skilled pilots later in the war. It didn’t exactly protect the pilots and once it was up against experienced and well trained pilots as opposed to newbies it was pretty much over with.
 

DougM

Donor
Oh and I forgot adding a radio is not a minor change. The iweight of the radio will drop that much (over) valued range a bit. It will decrease its max speed, its cruising speed and it climb and max altitude a bit. As well as maneuverability. How much? Hard to say but even a bit of a decrease is a decrease.
The Zero was a striped down fighter designed for minimal weight adding weight does not help it.
The real question is can a German radio fit in the aircraft they way it is designed or will it have to be modified and if so will that add drag?

Like I said it won’t decreas it by huge amounts but when you choose maneuvering over armor as your protection anything that cuts into is not a good idea.
 
Oh and I forgot adding a radio is not a minor change. The iweight of the radio will drop that much (over) valued range a bit. It will decrease its max speed, its cruising speed and it climb and max altitude a bit. As well as maneuverability. How much? Hard to say but even a bit of a decrease is a decrease.
The Zero was a striped down fighter designed for minimal weight adding weight does not help it.
The real question is can a German radio fit in the aircraft they way it is designed or will it have to be modified and if so will that add drag?

Like I said it won’t decreas it by huge amounts but when you choose maneuvering over armor as your protection anything that cuts into is not a good idea.

Also, the long range only came by cruising at very slow speeds. So to get that range you have to sit over southern England having been tracked from the minute you took off by radar then by the Observer Corps at roughly the same speed as a Stuka, waiting to be jumped by RAF fighters that are going considerably faster and carrying eight 0.303in machine guns which can chew your plane to pieces before you even see that they're there...
 
1) the extra range is not that useful in BoB as the distance was not that great.

It's best not to think of 'Range' but rather 'Endurance'
Me-109E had just a few minutes of combat power over SE England. A6M can stay at combat power longer over SE England than a Spitfire or Hurricane that had just taken off
 
Also, the long range only came by cruising at very slow speeds. So to get that range you have to sit over southern England having been tracked from the minute you took off by radar then by the Observer Corps at roughly the same speed as a Stuka, waiting to be jumped by RAF fighters that are going considerably faster and carrying eight 0.303in machine guns which can chew your plane to pieces before you even see that they're there...

A6M2 cruising speed 207mph
Stuka 160mph
Hurricane 238 mph
Spitfire 243 mph

Since the A6M has an excess of fuel, it can fly at higher speeds, while still having far more range(endurance) than the British fighters

Next in 1940, there is little radar coverage past the coasts, CH was outward looking, not inward, so its on ground observers
 

SwampTiger

Banned
Welcome to the thread!
I think the other thread covered most of these points, so just a quick recap...

Only change from OTL A6M2 model 11, is radios. Specifically no armor, no BP glass, no thicker skin. Don't know what {s-s tanks is}, and numbers as per other thread, so 1 A6M2/day, starting Jan 1st, 1940, so somewhere around 180 by June 30th. Rest of Luftwaffe as historical.

Specific mission profile for A6M2 force is low altitude intercept/dogfighting, hunter/killer fighter extermination in SE England, no high altitude combat, no bomber escorting, just pure fighter v fighter combat.

Why altitude? A6M wasn't a slug like the P-39 and P-40 above 15k

Because that is the stated mission profile, low altitude fighter hunting. You give away altitude over enemy territory. The Observer Corps will be very busy.
 
Why wouldn't the Germans be using them as bomber escorts? If anything, it would also allow them to escort bombers based on Norway and attack Scotland from there, which means the British northern fighter groups would also be under pressure from the LW
 

SwampTiger

Banned
If you are going to use them, Norway is the place. The OP was as long endurance patrol over British airfields.
 
Concur, if the A6M is going to have a use in the Battle of Britain, it's as a long range fighter escort to keep pressure on No. 13 Group.
 
A6M2 cruising speed 207mph
Stuka 160mph
Hurricane 238 mph
Spitfire 243 mph

The Hurricanes and Spitfires won't be cruising, they'll be at full combat power and ideally diving. They'll smash the slow moving paper planes up before they even know what's hit them. Without radios any Zero pilot that spots them coming in can't even warn their mates what's about to happen and with the engine sitting at low revs and lean mixture for the endurance they won't even be able to react when it happens.

Since the A6M has an excess of fuel, it can fly at higher speeds, while still having far more range(endurance) than the British fighters

Start adding radios (and armour, self sealing tanks, more ammunition etc that you need to make a Zero survivable on long, slow cruises over the best defended patch of airspace in the world) and you can start slashing those endurance figures. Throw in a nice little desperate fight with the Big Wing from Duxford as it comes down to cover 11 Group's airfields and all that endurance is doing is leaving them further from home than the Bf-109s would be with no ammunition and less chance of surviving battle damage than their German counterparts.

Next in 1940, there is little radar coverage past the coasts, CH was outward looking, not inward, so its on ground observers

The RAF were able to track raids inbound once they'd crossed the coast with few problems thanks to what radar cover they could use inland, the Observer Corps etc. There's no reason to think the Zeros would be immune from that.
 
One place extra range would be useful will be when forming up with the bombers over France, where the ability to loiter for longer will make timing of when the fighter escort takes off in relation to the bomber groups less critical.
Of course if the fighters then go 'swanning off', at least in the eyes of the bomber crews, then there is going to be calls for them to fly close escort with the bombers. Which then gives all of the disadvantages the ME-109 had when doing this but in a less survivable plane.
 
The Hurricanes and Spitfires won't be cruising, they'll be at full combat power and ideally diving. They'll smash the slow moving paper planes up before they even know what's hit them. Without radios any Zero pilot that spots them coming in can't even warn their mates what's about to happen and with the engine sitting at low revs and lean mixture for the endurance they won't even be able to react when it happens.

Why aren't the A6M also at high altitude, and the German Radios that would be included with German built Zeros, and unlike the Me-109, the A6M has good visibility from the Cockpit.

Radial engines respond faster to power changes than is possible with liquid cooled, so that's another advantage

Start adding radios (and armour, self sealing tanks, more ammunition etc that you need to make a Zero survivable on long, slow cruises over the best defended patch of airspace in the world) and you can start slashing those endurance figures. Throw in a nice little desperate fight with the Big Wing from Duxford as it comes down to cover 11 Group's airfields and all that endurance is doing is leaving them further from home than the Bf-109s would be with no ammunition and less chance of surviving battle damage than their German counterparts.

The A6M5 had all that,plus more, bigger guns with more ammo, and lost roughly 300 miles of range. Even with that long range, that Big Wing has to watch out for fighter sweep from Norwegian bases


The RAF were able to track raids inbound once they'd crossed the coast with few problems thanks to what radar cover they could use inland, the Observer Corps etc. There's no reason to think the Zeros would be immune from that.

It seems that wasn't as good as you think is was, because much effort was in place after the BoB to correct that lack of radar coverage
 
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