Navalized Ki61 Hien

I'm not lookin for a plausibility debate (army aircraft, etc) but in practical terms how do AH aircraft experts feel about a navalized Ki61 gracing the decks of IJN carriers in time to face the Helcats? Better than the Zero?
 
THe Ki-61, as built, would have been a better opponent for later war US naval fighters based solely on performance, Faster, better protected, better diving speed, and still fairly well-armed. Clearly inferior to the Zero only in range and endurance

They problems would arise in restressing the plane to handle carrier takeoffs - and particularly landings. A navalized Ki-61 would probably be heavier as a result and it's performance might suffer accordingly, Also, the Hein was plagued by poor engine reliability, not something you particularly want in a carrier plane.

I like Anime Ninja's idea a lot. Simple and plausible. At the same time the Army places its design orders for the Ki-61 in 1940, have the Navy place a parallel order for a radial-engined variant similar to what later became the Ki-100. In good hands, the Ki-100 was capable of facing the Hellcat on equal terms and the plane could have been entering service at the same time as the Ki-61 - early 1943 - just as the Hellcat was starting to carve up IJN fighters.
 
The underbelly radiator is a disadvantage when making water landings, as on the Sea Hurricane. They tend to drive the nose underwater quickly. The wing span is large, needing some folding or reduction in deck numbers. Undercarriage strengthening and fuselage re-enforcement will add weight. I have read that the Tony had higher performance than the Zeke/Oscar but it was the sort of performance that American pilots could handle better than the twitchyness of prior Japanese machines. They had no decided advantage in any aspect over later American fighters. A lack of up-graded engines of greater power means that things never get better.
 

Andre27

Banned
The biggest issue i see is the difference in range. Going by the wiki the A6M zero had a range of roughly 3100 Km (1675nml) while the Ki61 Hien only had a range of 580 Km (360ml).

This would result in a serious drop in ToT for their combat air patrol.
For an army fighter this is not too serious, but for a carrier aircraft?

Perhaps a navalized version would hold more fuel, but together with the reinforced landing gear it would add a lot of weight and i doubt it could match the Zero in performance.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
The Navy tested the Ki-61. They were remarkably unimpressed.

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/japan/Tony-I.pdf

Short version of the file is that the Tony was inferior in performance to everything the fleet had in use post F4F, it had very poor forward visibility, and had remarkable maintenance issues.

All of the above was without the roughly 800 pounds of extra gear needed to operate off a carrier. Add it in and the F4F-4 will be about even.

Looking at the Tony, it is difficult to imagine the aircraft being deck qualified, simply from the forward visibility aspect, much less the other serious issues the aircraft was burdened with.
 
As bad, if not worse, than a navalized 1942 Typhoon. Liquid engines and p004 pilot visibility on an aircraft for carriers are a bad idea.
 
Want a Zero successor? Either Mitsubushi solves its problems with the A7M fighter by late '43, or Kawanishi comes up with the planned carrier-based N1K3-A and N1K4-A version of the George fighter in the same time frame. When the land-based version-the N1K2, flown by the 343rd Naval Air Group, went up against Corsairs and Hellcats, it was like 1942 all over again...then again, that unit was composed of the JNAF's surviving elite pilots.
 
Timeframe

There were good options for a Zero successor. Getting the A7M to work early would have been the most obvious. What I was thinking about was of a "quick fix"transitory solution to complement the Zero. Something along the lines of the part the Seafire played in the RN. It certainly would have carrier limitations, but so did the Seafire, and at least the Japanese fighter had a wide track landing gear.
Hardly an ideal solution, but a change from the "more of the same approach"
 
As bad, if not worse, than a navalized 1942 Typhoon. Liquid engines and p004 pilot visibility on an aircraft for carriers are a bad idea.

Liquid cooled engines and inline engines were often better all round types and certainly performed much better at higher altitudes. The longer nose of the aircraftframe was not a disadvantage either, as the general use and flightpattern needed to be adjusted, rather than the aircraft itself. The best WW2 fighter of the USN and FAA was also a long nosed plane in the form of the Chanche-Vought F4U Corsair. The British learned to handle this beast in practice, with an altered approach pattern on flightdeckoperations. The USN simply copied this tactic and made use of the F4U since on its carriers too.
 
There were good options for a Zero successor. Getting the A7M to work early would have been the most obvious. What I was thinking about was of a "quick fix"transitory solution to complement the Zero. Something along the lines of the part the Seafire played in the RN. It certainly would have carrier limitations, but so did the Seafire, and at least the Japanese fighter had a wide track landing gear.
Hardly an ideal solution, but a change from the "more of the same approach"

I had proposed a blend of A6M and J2M, Zeke and Jack, as a solution to an immediate interim higher performance naval fighter requirement, primarily to avail the Kasei engine into use. It would be comparable to the first prototype F6F Hellcat, with Wright R-2600. What they needed was the A7M with it's equivalent to the 18 cylinder Pratt.
 
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