Aircraft that should never have seen service

I heard that too.

Never have seen anything confirming it.

Can you imagine poking along at 60K and 1,800MPH and having someone DIVE past you?:eek:

I did get it from a good source, but noone would ever officially confirm it :)

The Lightning could get up a LOT higher that 60K if it had to, and it would have been in its performance window to do the trick. Its a one-shot, of course, the Lightning cant catch the SR-71 in a chase, but if its seem coming they can arrange an intercept. Of course, since the SR-71 crew 'know' they cant be caught, its likely they'd keep flying on dumb and happy..:)

It somehow seems like the sort of thing the RAF would do it they had the chance, just to wind up the USAF...:)
 

CalBear

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Calbear, earlier you mentioned that the Ki-44 should not have seen service. Can you clarify on this? The Shoki had good armament, speed and climb.

I pretty much said it in the original post:

Ki-44, a Japanese contemporary of the P-47 and FW-190, with 2 .50 cal machine guns and a gas leak.

The aircraft was a death trap, drastically under armed for a 1942 introduction, no protection to speak of, and can be seen as a poster child for everything that was wrong with Japanese aircraft. It entered service at the same time as the P-47 (8 .50 cal), F4U, F6F (6 .50 cal), and Fw-190A (2 .30 cal and 4 20mm cannon). A day behind and a dollar short.
 
Actually, the Ki-84 was a pretty good plane that had development issues, which were understandable given the state of the war.

It was a good fighter--sometimes. Japanese pilots drew straws before flying to decide who would get a "good" Hayate instead of one of the "lemons" often delivered to combat units (which could suffer from all sorts of problems, including a combat top speed of less than 400 km/h). Basically, the N1K2 had fewer bugs and the Ki-100 was better in most ways, especially reliability-wise, so in hindsight they shouldn't have bothered with the Hayate.
 
I pretty much said it in the original post:

Ki-44, a Japanese contemporary of the P-47 and FW-190, with 2 .50 cal machine guns and a gas leak.

The aircraft was a death trap, drastically under armed for a 1942 introduction, no protection to speak of, and can be seen as a poster child for everything that was wrong with Japanese aircraft. It entered service at the same time as the P-47 (8 .50 cal), F4U, F6F (6 .50 cal), and Fw-190A (2 .30 cal and 4 20mm cannon). A day behind and a dollar short.

The first models of the Ki-44 had two 12.7mm and two 7.7mm machine guns. It was progressively upgraded until carried two 20mm and two 40mm cannons in late-war models. And as far as I know, it had no reliability issues.

That's not to say that it didn't have certain problems, such as high wing loading and taking a relatively high number of man-hours to produce, but it was still a highly capable interceptor.
 

CalBear

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The first models of the Ki-44 had two 12.7mm and two 7.7mm machine guns. It was progressively upgraded until carried two 20mm and two 40mm cannons in late-war models. And as far as I know, it had no reliability issues.

That's not to say that it didn't have certain problems, such as high wing loading and taking a relatively high number of man-hours to produce, but it was still a highly capable interceptor.


They only produced abot two dozen of the heavy cannon armed aircraft. The rest were vastly under gunned and they were still fire hazards.
 
They only produced abot two dozen of the heavy cannon armed aircraft. The rest were vastly under gunned and they were still fire hazards.

The majority had four 12.7mm guns, four 20mm cannon or two of each. Equivalent to many aircraft at the time. Besides, what were the alternatives? The A6M was unsuited for intercepting, the Ki-43 was obsolete, and the Ki-61 was very unreliable. Furthermore, none of these types had better armament than the Shoki.

What's your source for the gas leak/fire hazard?
 
Sub Lt Makoto Ogawa scored two of his 9 victories over P-51 Mustangs, the rest being B-29's. In a Ki-44II Shoki. Capt Yoshio Yoshida scored 6 of his seven victories over the B-29 in his Ki-44II. Not bad for an aircraft that shouldn't have been built. Of course, the Ki-45 shouldn't have existed either. Sadamitsu Kimura brought down 8 B-29's in that shamefully inadequate aircraft. He claimed many more, but that wasn't confirmed.

Tommy MacGuire would probably have told you not to underestimate the Ki-43 and Ki-84, had he lived.
 
Which is one way to ignore that the fact that mediocre pilots flying demanding planes in poor weather equals high accident rates. :mad: Of course, despite all the belief that Germans are better at everything, the Italians managed to fare far better with the F-104.:eek:

Indeed; German tourists are actually a major source of accidents here near the Grand Canyon; no other foreign nationality comes close in accident rate...
 
Which is one way to ignore that the fact that mediocre pilots flying demanding planes in poor weather equals high accident rates. :mad: Of course, despite all the belief that Germans are better at everything, the Italians managed to fare far better with the F-104.:eek:
Are u saying that Canadians are mediocre pilots too??? We lost so much f-104 ...
 

NothingNow

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Which is one way to ignore that the fact that mediocre pilots flying demanding planes in poor weather equals high accident rates. :mad: Of course, despite all the belief that Germans are better at everything, the Italians managed to fare far better with the F-104.:eek:

Hell, weren't the Spanish the only Air force not to loose one in an accident?
 
Gentlemen, there are two reasons the F-104 was such a dismal failure in German service.
At first, pilot training was not especially good. General Steinhoff, the Inspector of the Luftwaffe, criticized the prevailing modus operandi as inadequate, proposing improvements and was then forced to resign amidst a big public stink, IIRC.
Second, the Starfighter was conceived as a pure fighter (correct me if I am wrong) but ze Chermans, in keeping with the time-honored tradition of favoring egg-laying wool-milk-sows (read, absolute allrounders) in military hardware, rape-constructed a fighter-bomber out of the 104. Direct result: BOOM :mad:
Oh, yeah, not to forget the procurement process with all the bribery involved (thanks a bunch, Franz-Josef ,,i,,). The Bundesamt für Wehrtechnik und Beschaffung (Federal office for defense technology and procurement) isn't known as Bundesamt für Wehrtechnik and Bestechung (Bestechung = Bribery) in the Bundeswehr for nothing...
 
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