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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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

Thread starter stipulated this in post #9 (my bold):

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.

Greg 'Pappy' Boyington says otherwise about what engine will be responding faster to power charges. From 'Baa Baa ...' book, pg. 30, his experience with early V-1710-powered P-40 (no automatic boost control yet there) in Burma, when he tried a 3-point landing against the advice and bounced as result:
So I slammed the throttle on, making a go-around. In my nervousness I had put on so many inches of mercury so quickly that the glass coverning the manifold pressure gauge cracked into thousand pieces. After I had landed in the proper manner on second try, I was informed in no uncertain words:
"You can't slam the throttle around like you did in those God-damn Navy air-cooled engines"



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

A6M5c (model 52c) had all of that. It lost, among other things, 24 km/h vs. the ordinary A6M5 (model 52) - 541 vs. 565 km/h.
 
Thread starter stipulated this in post #9 (my bold):

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.

Greg 'Pappy' Boyington says otherwise about what engine will be responding faster to power charges. From 'Baa Baa ...' book, pg. 30, his experience with early V-1710-powered P-40 (no automatic boost control yet there) in Burma, when he tried a 3-point landing against the advice and bounced as result:
So I slammed the throttle on, making a go-around. In my nervousness I had put on so many inches of mercury so quickly that the glass coverning the manifold pressure gauge cracked into thousand pieces. After I had landed in the proper manner on second try, I was informed in no uncertain words:
"You can't slam the throttle around like you did in those God-damn Navy air-cooled engines"





A6M5c (model 52c) had all of that. It lost, among other things, 24 km/h vs. the ordinary A6M5 (model 52) - 541 vs. 565 km/h.
I believe that quote says that radials can have the throttles moved faster than the P-40 he was trying to land without risk to the gaskets

The A6M5 was a gradual improvement for durability, and much more, and heavier firepower additions
 

SwampTiger

Banned
I think we've reached a circular argument with moving targets. The A6M fans will think it is the "bee's knees". The detractors see a vulnerable aircraft outside its comfort zone.
 
I believe that quote says that radials can have the throttles moved faster than the P-40 he was trying to land without risk to the gaskets

You can note that he quickly increased the power of the engine via applying a lots of boost in short time: I had put on so many inches of mercury so quickly ...
'Inches of mercury', in Hg, is a measure for boost.
So I'd say that V12 engines can gain power at least as fast as radials can.
 
You can note that he quickly increased the power of the engine via applying a lots of boost in short time: I had put on so many inches of mercury so quickly ...
'Inches of mercury', in Hg, is a measure for boost.
So I'd say that V12 engines can gain power at least as fast as radials can.
So why warned against treating an inline like normal operation for a radial?
 
So why warned against treating an inline like normal operation for a radial?

Probaby because it was easier for the V12 engine to actually respond to the control, than it will be for a radial. Over-boosting an engine can kill an it (although V-1710s well coped with being ove-boosted).
 
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.

Because the OP specifically says low level. Even if it didn't, if you're attempting to close down airfields and jump aircraft coming in to land you have to be at low level. There's not much point tooling around at 25,000ft when your targets are on the ground.

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

They may well do, I doubt they go from maximum endurance cruise settings to full combat power in the time it takes to say "where the fuck did those holes in my wing come from?" in German. If you're at low level then there's a chance your plane's been shredded by 8x machine guns that are going to tear through the Zero's airframe like it's not even there before the German pilot even realises he's under attack and with the RAF fighters passing them at 330+mph they're going to put a lot of distance between themselves and the German fighters before the German pilots can react.

If the Germans open the throttles to catch up with their attackers they're burning fuel a hell of a lot faster than they planned before they even get into combat, potentially leaving themselves with a long flight home with just as many worried glances at fuel gauges as their friends in Bf-109s except the Bf-109s were pretty close to the coast when they turned for home whereas the Zeros have got the whole of 11 Group's AOR to get through before they even see the Channel.

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

Why? Attacks from Norway are 13 Group's responsibility.

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

Nobody claimed it was perfect. It did, however, give Fighter Command a chance of intercepting raids inland.
 
Flight from Norway to Caen with a London detour is 725 miles. Seems like would have a lot of fuel to spend at military power, or climbing. At low level, the Zero did climb very well, to above 12000,where it's rate was still better than the Hurricane.

Also, Chain Home was of little value again low altitude flights. Chain Home didn't have the Chain Home Low (that could look inland, as well as low)with full coverage until April, 1941, and these didn't have PPI scopes till a year later. North of Dunwich, the east coast didn't have the depth of station coverage as along the SE coast, about 1/3rd
 

CalBear

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I don't know what the ultimate kill ratio for the F4F vs. Zero was, those seem a little high. I think the F4F's overall kill ration was around 6:1 against all opponents. I do know (aviation historian Barrett Tillman is my source) that in the first six months of the Pacific War, USN and USMC F4F pilots scored a 1.5:1 kill ratio over the Zero and this was at a time when they were outnumbered and facing high hour combat veterans whereas the US pilots while well trained were still new to combat and in the process of developing proper counter tactics. This was against the fighter that supposedly ran rings around its opposition for the first year of the war.
That is close to the loss ratio mentioned in Lundstrom's The First Team. There was however, also a caveat, namely that one-on-one the A6M had a huge advantage, but a pair of Wildcats could more or less fight off any reasonable number of Zeros that could be deployed against them.

This, however answering the OP's question, namely if replacing the 109 with the A6M would have changed the outcome and, if so how.
 

DougM

Donor
I may be wrong (my books are not with me now) but it seams to me that I read someplace that an A6 had between 1/4 and 1/3 its max endurance if it was running at anything close to a realistic speed. Also how much of that range was with drop tanks? Because those go away the first time they are bounced.

So if you want the endurance you have to give up Something, the Zero wasn’t magical, So you have to choose a balance between speed. Payload, armor/protection, weapons, maneuverability equipment and range.
The Zero favored the Range & Manuver end at the cost of armor/protection. And cruising at a bit slower speed.

Doin that over England is going to see a lot of lost German pilots. The English were no less experienced in 1940 then the Germans so the advantage that in 1941/ early 1942 the Japanese had over the US navy is not going to be a thing. The numbers people like to talk about for the Zero was for a very short time when the side with all the most experienced pilots was flying the most maneuverable airplane into combat and the side with the least experience was flying the least maneuverable fighter and willing to try and dog fight.
England with a better more maneuverable fighter (admittedly not as maneuverable as the Zero but better then what the US navy had in 1941/42) and pretty much the same experience as the German pilots are NOT going to go down that easy.
Yes I think the Germans shoot down a few extra RAF flyboys. But those flyboys generally have a reasonable rate of getting out and coming back next week in a new aircraft, now the addeded experience from the lesson of being shot down (I have to imagine that lesson would stick with you). But the Germans in thier delicate maneuverable tissue boxes will lose a few more pilots that otherwise would have made it home in a better protected aircraft. If you don’t believe that then explain the way Japan lost so many of its pilots in the same aircraft? And the extra pilots the Germans are losing are NOT coming back next week. If the do get out of thier flimsy aircraft (less likely things tothe joke that was the Zeros pilot protection) they will land in England and I doubt England is sending them back home.

So you are basically increasing a known German issue in that you are speeding up the lose of skilled German pilots.

So very short term (a few weeks to a few months to learn how to deal with it) the English lose a few more planes but long term Germany loses more pilots sooner. Heck if this goes badly enough for Germany it may ultimately save more American bombers and crews then it costs England. As any pilo
 
One thing I would like to point out here, folks. This thread is supposed to be focused on the whole range as flight time remaining thing, and not a continuation of the other thread, which is still open, so.....

Back on topic, anyone want to help me figure out a good (or at least, better) way to try to estimate the fuel the Spitfires and Hurricanes would likely have had left once the high altitude combat against the Bf 109 & Bf 110 escorted bombers is over?
 
No. The 30-40% of max range(ie. (1929 mile - (1929 X .40)) / 2 = maximum radius with prolonged combat. Use .30 for less combat. You can estimate the time used in combat, but I have no formula for that.

British FC will quickly determine where the Zeros are loitering after loosing a few flights of planes. It will take less than a week to devise a countermeasure for loitering Axis Zeros.
So far, this post is the closest thing in this thread to what I was looking for. Thanks to @SwampTiger for the post! Now if only I could get my mind to understand it...:cool:
 
Flight from Norway to Caen with a London detour is 725 miles. Seems like would have a lot of fuel to spend at military power, or climbing. At low level, the Zero did climb very well, to above 12000,where it's rate was still better than the Hurricane.

Also, Chain Home was of little value again low altitude flights. Chain Home didn't have the Chain Home Low (that could look inland, as well as low)with full coverage until April, 1941, and these didn't have PPI scopes till a year later. North of Dunwich, the east coast didn't have the depth of station coverage as along the SE coast, about 1/3rd

You don't need Chain Home to perform GCIs on fighters circling airfields at low altitude. And whatever the limitations of Chain Home, FC didn't seem to have too many problems intercepting the LW over British territory historically. The system was much more than just RDF.
 
You don't need Chain Home to perform GCIs on fighters circling airfields at low altitude. And whatever the limitations of Chain Home, FC didn't seem to have too many problems intercepting the LW over British territory historically. The system was much more than just RDF.
From the Wiki
Problems
Although the Dowding system proved itself in combat, the system and command of the battle had several problems. A huge volume of information flowed through the system, especially into the FCHQ filter room. On 11 January 1940, an operations research report on the Dowding system concluded that the filter room had been intended to correlate radar reports, but had developed into something much more complicated. Too much control took place in the filter room, which was producing results with "appallingly low standards". Given the success of the FCHQ filter room, it is unclear whether the report was inaccurate or if the problems had been solved by the time of the Battle of Britain.[35]

It was known that the filter room could be overwhelmed by a high volume of reports, and it was a constant complaint that it was a single point of failure in reports from OR and in the RAF and Air Ministry. Most critics wanted the filter room to be moved from Bentley Priory to Group commands, lowering the reporting volume at each location and providing duplication. Dowding refused the change, leading to increasing friction with other commanders. Information overload occurred on several occasions and the filter room had to ask certain CH stations to stop reporting. But this had little effect on their capabilities. Later, stations reported information for multiple formations as a single plot.[35]

Radio communications was another problem. The TR.9D HF radio telephone set in fighters at the time of the Battle of Britain had two channels and the operating frequencies of the two could only be selected before take-off. One channel was used for voice communication between the aircraft and the other for communications with sector control, which was also used by the "pip-squeak" system. With the channels set to squadron-specific frequencies, the TR.9D limited the ability to coordinate with other squadrons. The set was low power, with a range of about 40 miles (64 kilometres) air-to-ground and 5 mi (8.0 km) air-to-air,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system#cite_note-44 which presented numerous problems with reception quality. The TR.9 originally operated on a band that was relatively empty, but by the time of the war it was much busier and interference was a constant problem.[36]

Chain Home could only produce information of aircraft in "front" of the antennas, typically off-shore, and the reporting system relied on the OC once the raid was over land. The OC, using sight, could provide little information at night, in bad weather or through overcast. During the Battle of Britain, the weather was unusually good, the so-called "fighter's summer", and the OC was further aided by the fact that German raids took place only when the weather allowed the bombers to see their targets.[37][38][j] The system failed to work against high-altitude raids that took place late in the battle.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
The above is quite true. However, per the OP, the Zeros are loitering over airfields at mid to low levels. They will be noticed.
 
Loitering at low levels leaves them vulnerable to being jumped by returning aircraft. Not all returnees will be bingo fuel. After a week of this the RAF will have figured it out & be ambushing the ambushers.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
I never said this was a great idea. I think a better use would be pre-dawn raids on fighter fields. However, the Me 110 is better at that. Also, the long range escort for Norwegian fields. Zeros are still rather fragile in European combat.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
One thing I would like to point out here, folks. This thread is supposed to be focused on the whole range as flight time remaining thing, and not a continuation of the other thread, which is still open, so.....

Back on topic, anyone want to help me figure out a good (or at least, better) way to try to estimate the fuel the Spitfires and Hurricanes would likely have had left once the high altitude combat against the Bf 109 & Bf 110 escorted bombers is over?
However much Fighter Command tells them to have. "Squadron 16, you engage until Bingo fuel. Squadron 17, you break off at half a tank indicated" etc.
 
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