Japanese Air Power in WWII, revised

Rare earths are not "rare" as in hard to find, but "rare" as in a low % of the ores. Many rare earth ores will yield at least 6 different rare earth elements. It is more a refining issue than a finding issue. You can basically look up any tin mine spoil, uranium mine spoil and get rare earths. The POD just needs to be the Japanese identify the need at least 6 years before the war. Now the butterflies of the strategic industrial material department can be very large.

Yes, but the mines in Inner Mongolia have a higher percentage so my understanding is that they take less effort to refine. OTOH I was not aware that tin mine tailings would be a good place to mine for rare earths...my understanding was that until the 1950s the majority were mined in South America after that mines in California and Colorado opened and were a major source until the Mongolian mines were opened in the early '90s. From what you are saying it is more a % yield that drives specific rare earth mines rather than needing to find a special mine.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
When you are looking at porting a land based aircraft to carrier use, you also need to account for the additional weight needed for the aircraft to survive more than one or two landings.

Carrier aircraft are brutalized under even the best of conditions, with landings being more of a controlled crash than anything else. The designer needs to redo the landing gear, effectively from a blank sheet of paper, strengthen the airframe, and add better navigation equipment, just as a start.

It is worthwhile to look at the Seafire for the impact that creating a deck qualifed version of a land aircraft will have. The Seafire, a version of what may well have been the best airframe design that WW II produced, was more than 1,000 pounds heavier than the same version of the aircraft used ashore (6,200 vs. 5,100 for the IIC) with inevitible impacts on performance. It is much easier to take a really good deck qualifed design and make a land based version (F4U, F8, and A7 as examples) since the land based version can have lots of equipment removed and that space/weight used for fuel/weapons/performance improvements.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element

Significant quantities of rare earth oxides are found in tailings accumulated from 50 years of uranium ore, shale and loparite mining at Sillamäe, Estonia.[39] Due to the rising prices of rare earths, extraction of these oxides has become economically viable. The country currently exports around 3,000 tonnes per year, representing around 2% of world production.[40]

Mining, refining, and recycling of rare earths have serious environmental consequences if not properly managed. A particular hazard is mildly radioactive slurry tailings resulting from the common occurrence of thorium and uranium in rare earth element ores.[44] Additionally, toxic acids are required during the refining process.[13] Improper handling of these substances can result in extensive environmental damage. In May 2010, China announced a major, five-month crackdown on illegal mining in order to protect the environment and its resources. This campaign is expected to be concentrated in the South,[45] where mines – commonly small, rural, and illegal operations – are particularly prone to releasing toxic wastes into the general water supply.[12][46] However, even the major operation in Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, where much of the world's rare earth supply is refined, has caused major environmental damage.[13]

The rare earths are in the decay chains of Uranium, but this may not have been understood in the 1930's. If you get the right ores, and there are many, many types of ores that work, it is process.

And yes, the difference in good/bad ore might be 4 to 1 in the amount of rare earths in the ore. Sort of like high % gold leeching and a lower % gold leeching.
 
\It is much easier to take a really good deck qualifed design and make a land based version (F4U, F8, and A7 as examples) since the land based version can have lots of equipment removed and that space/weight used for fuel/weapons/performance improvements.
The F4H did pretty well, too, as a landbased aircraft.:D
 
An aircraft with a powerful engine must be made to a higher strength factor than a lightweight fighter. Even though American fighter doctrine dictated big engines, experiments were done to follow the lightweight fighter principles, by a number of companies. Some were cute, but all were failures, until the A4 Skyhawk, but that was a Heinemann project.

p77-1.jpg
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element



The rare earths are in the decay chains of Uranium, but this may not have been understood in the 1930's.
No, I think you misunderstood. What the article says is
In nature, spontaneous fission of uranium-238 produces trace amounts of radioactive promethium, but most promethium is synthetically produced in nuclear reactors.
Note the word "trace". Spontaneous fission of U238 is vanishingly rare.
99.276% of U238 decays are by alpha emission, and my chart doesn't list what the other decay modes are.
Normal decay
U238->Th234->Pa234->U234->Ac228->Ra226->Pb218->Bi214->Tl210->Pb210->
Bi210->Po210->Pb206

No rare earths there. Thorium and U235 decay similarly, but different in detail.
 
An aircraft with a powerful engine must be made to a higher strength factor than a lightweight fighter. Even though American fighter doctrine dictated big engines, experiments were done to follow the lightweight fighter principles, by a number of companies. Some were cute, but all were failures, until the A4 Skyhawk, but that was a Heinemann project.
So, getting back to the idea of the Japanese producing these new fighters....

I gather what your implication is that fighter weights will tend to escalate inevitably. Would this be correct? If so, then would the corollary you are postulating is that the Japanese reach this conclusion sooner than IOTL?
 
So, getting back to the idea of the Japanese producing these new fighters....

I gather what your implication is that fighter weights will tend to escalate inevitably. Would this be correct? If so, then would the corollary you are postulating is that the Japanese reach this conclusion sooner than IOTL?

Certain items carried by fighter aircraft have fixed weights, like bombs, guns, radios, and pilots. In WWI, heavy fighter pilots were at a severe disadvantage due to their own body weight. While the Zero carried two 20mm cannons, they were light cannons. The Oscar couldn't carry cannons because of the weight/power limitations, and spent the war being up-graded from two puny mg to two larger mg. Simply realizing the ineffectiveness of the armament, as everyone else had done, should have led to a larger, more powerful Oscar, as in the Shoki, but with more amenable wing area to suit preferences. The Shoki started with twice the Oscar's biggest armament fit, and grew from there. Something like pilot armor would have incredible performance implications on the Oscar, less so on Shoki. When the final Zero model was made, it had the larger Kinsei engine that was asked for in the beginning, and performance was similar to earlier Zeros, but it carried armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. Power is good.
 
When the final Zero model was made, it had the larger Kinsei engine that was asked for in the beginning, and performance was similar to earlier Zeros, but it carried armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. Power is good.
So this change was not so much due to changes in technology but changes in doctrine due to experience with US fighters, correct?
 
So this change was not so much due to changes in technology but changes in doctrine due to experience with US fighters, correct?
Changes in technology grudgingly dragged a change in doctrine out of the decision-makers in the IJN. Decision-makers are always the old and the wise. Unfortunately, their age means that their wisdom stems from a past which had no bearing on the present, because of the vast technological changes in aviation throughout the thirties and continuing into the jet age. From WWI to 1930, aircraft remained largely unchanged, with performance increases stemming from improvements in engine performance. The modern all-metal cantilever retractable-gear monoplane with enclosed canopy snuck up on the old folks. They flew to a different doctrine, and while the Japanese included a phrase in every specification that the new model must be able to match or exceed the turning performance of the aircraft it replaces, they forgot to include that it must keep it's wings in a dive. Army experience combatting the I-16 might have been a warning of what was to come, presaging a drive to produce a powerful fighter more like the Ki-44 Shoki rather than the flimsier Ki-43 Hayabusa, but in fact, production of the type 97, the Ki-27 Nate continued until well into 1942. The Japanese armed forces often lacked communication between people who may have the ideas, and the people who make the decisions. To varying degrees, this is true everywhere. The American forces made a change in doctrine in 1939, and it began to take effect mid 1942. The RN made a change in 1943 and it took effect in 1947.

The USAAF had a doctrine that aircraft must not use external fuel tanks. Never. With the advent of the concept of ferry flights to England by P-38s, Hap Arnold said to Ben Kelsey that tanks were needed. Due to the utter lack of discipline in the service, such tanks had been developed and Kelsey knew of them. Months were saved by ignoring strict doctrine. Fuel tank doctrine was later ignored when the British started making paper-and-glue fuel tanks of larger capacity that the doctrinal metal-only tanks fitted to P-47s. The extra 66 gallons came as quite a shock to the German fighters when the Jugs didn't turn for home.

But the Japanese military code didn't allow for breaches of discipline and divergence from doctrine. The radio that equipped the Zero worked perfectly. The Zero worked fine. The radio inside the Zero was beset with static which meant that there was no voice com. It would still home on a carrier, but had no other purpose. There was no doctrine to make the radio work in the airplane. And there never was. A need for ballast resistors and shielding but nobody's job to make radios work inside airplanes. Doctrine is a hard nut to break. Horikoshi got his bigger Zero engine in 1944, and his Reppu engine about the same time. The same time as the earthquake and firebombing which destroyed the engine factory. The decision should have come about when wings were flying off Nates in 1939. Tough.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
No, I think you misunderstood. What the article says is
Note the word "trace". Spontaneous fission of U238 is vanishingly rare.
99.276% of U238 decays are by alpha emission, and my chart doesn't list what the other decay modes are.
Normal decay
U238->Th234->Pa234->U234->Ac228->Ra226->Pb218->Bi214->Tl210->Pb210->
Bi210->Po210->Pb206

No rare earths there. Thorium and U235 decay similarly, but different in detail.

Ok, It may not be in the chain, but Thorium pollution is a common side effect of rare earth mining, and uranium tailings make good rare earth ore. It is common enough in the business permitting applications to the EPA, I am lead to believe that if you find good uranium ore, you have found good rare earth ore.
 

Hyperion

Banned
So this change was not so much due to changes in technology but changes in doctrine due to experience with US fighters, correct?

Again, it doesn't matter jack s**t what technology you give the Japanese if they don't have an operational and administrative doctrine improved for their navy.

You could give them P-51s and F-4Us and it isn't going to mean s**t if the pilots flying the things have little if any practical training other than fly, find a target, and crash.

Improving the aircraft quality, while of some help, is more a cosmetic change then anything, and a huge waste of time without addressing operational, administrative, and training issues the IJN suffered from.
 
...snip ...

2. The other factor is the inability of Japan to obtain sufficient rare earths and fractional additives to make the extremely high strength steels and aluminum alloys necessary to build high performance engines. Japanese engine designs were excellent, as good as any in the war, unfortunately the quality of the parts forged and cast to bring the designs to life was simply not up to the task. When coupled with the Japanese need to try to keep up in a production battle with the U.S. (a battle it was doomed to lose from the start), this crippled the Japanese efforts.

....snip...

...snip...
Rare earths are also useful in turbo-charging, and the C6N was the only aircraft so equipped with some success.
...snip...
After searching for a few days, I am beginning to suspect that neither of you are chemists or metallurgists.

Steel and aluminium alloys require small quantities of added metals. For example, a steel in 1940 might need nickel, manganese, chromium and silicon in addition to iron and carbon. One might add molybdenum for armour or vanadium for springs. For steels only small quantities up to 3 or 4% are generally added.

Turbo superchargers and later jet engines needed materials such as stellite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellite which is a cobalt – chromium alloy although nickel – molybdenum or nickel – chromium alloys were also fairly good.

Now Japan was indeed short of nickel, chromium and, I suspect, cobalt before and during WW2. However, none of those elements are what chemists and metallurgists call rare earths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element.

Some time around 1940-1950, experiments showed that adding up to 1% of mischmetal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischmetal to some steels could remove sulfur as CeS, which was useful as sulfur can weaken steels. I havn't found exactly when that started but I don't find cerium mentioned in discussions of ww2 armours.

Similarly, scandium can be added to aluminium alloys and scandium is sometimes considered a rare earth although it is not a lanthanide. However, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandium says “The use for aluminium alloys began in 1971”.

I am not sure that rare earths are irrelevant for WW2 technologies, so please correct me if I am wrong. Note that I am mostly referencing Wikipedia, so I am not showing deep understanding. It is just that I havn't been able to find any information on their use at that time.
 
a
Turbo superchargers and later jet engines needed materials such as stellite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellite which is a cobalt – chromium alloy although nickel – molybdenum or nickel – chromium alloys were also fairly good.
IIRC, turbochargers used lots Inconel, high nickel alloys developed by a subsidiary of the Canada based, US controlled (at that time) International Nickel Company--which gave rise to its name. I was wondering what the discussion about the rare earths was.

Inconel alloys, like Stellite, are pretty cool things. I remember reading an article years ago about Gary Helfrich, one of the founders of the pioneering titanium bicycle frame builders Merlin Metalworks. Helfrich had left Merlin and moved to northern California, among the redwoods. He told of finding the wreck of a P-38 and how most the plane's airframe had corroded but the turbos were still in great shape.

ETA: Found a copy of that interview with Gary Helfrich. Here it is, scroll down. Here's the relevant portion.
The rest of his time is spent finding other new puzzles. Like tracking down the story behind the turbocharger from a P-38 fighter plane wreck that he found in the woods. "This is the only part of that plane that didn't corrode away to nothing. The alloy they made these turbos from is called lnconel, while the rest of the plane was steel and aluminum. So everything except that turbo sort of dissolved during 50 years of coastal fog."
 
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Oops. CalBear used the wrong term, and the rest of us went chasing red herrings.:(:eek: I rather think that you are entirely right.

Come to think of it, I've never been a chemist or a metallurgist either. I was trying to talk about airplanes, honestly. The Japanese were missing some stuff.
 
I still believe that the POD needs to be fairly early and WOULD NOT have much to do with capabilities of FAA aircraft.

Japan reacted to battle lessons from the late 1930's conflict in China and incidents with the USSR, which did not reveal any flaws in the "light, long ranged and manouverable at all costs" design philosophy that led to planes like the A6M and G4M. As CalBear suggests, neither the Chinese nor Soviets fielded planes like the Bf-109 or Spitfire that might have bested the Japanese craft - or at least pointed to another design direction.

In the early 1930's Germany courted good relations with both Japan and Nationalist China. Perhaps one of the best ways to have the Japanese change their approach would be for Germany to eventually go with China and provide the Nationalists with Bf-109Es - or He-112s?
 
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