Probably some, as it is in the wings, but I would think it should be acceptable. Of course, there's a little bit extra with the ammo... Not sure what is needed to mount it on just one side or if that has any significant drawbacks.
WI: Ki-43 with cannons
- Thread starter AbeLincoln1865
- Start date
Oh, just that since the second set of guns has to be mounted on the wings, the weight is going to be distributed diffetently than if it were in the fuselage. I apologize but I can't currently recall the implications of that.
Well, the 1945 prototype of the Ki-43 with a 20 mm had them in the nose: https://wiki.warthunder.com/index.php?title=Ki-43-III_otsu_Hayabusa
The first two yes, but surely you couldnt fit four there?
BTW, I had no idea there was a re-engined version! Fascinating that they could squeeze more out of that platform.
No, but if that one didn't have four, then why would an earlier one with the Ho-3 have it?
Sorry, I meant that the plane could have four machine guns instead of just two with the configuration being two firing through the propeller and two on the wings.
As I mentioned earlier, I think the Ki-43 could have been a better B-29 killer than even the Ki-44, especially with that engine.
FBKampfer
Banned
What's your reasoning for this?
The Ki-43 will always be slower than the Ki-44 due to a greater amount of drag from the airframe.
To be fair, according to my Osprey book on the Ki-44, it was only pilots who had flown the other Japanese fighters who tended to dislike it. It required different tactics than the ones that they were used to, and they disliked the high landing speed required. Pilots who went straight from trainers to the Ki-44 generally liked it.
In the book B-29 Hunters of the JAAF by Henry Sakaida, on page 26, he says the Zero and 43's maneuverability meant that they could maintain a high altitude better than the 44, even if the 44 could climb faster.
FBKampfer
Banned
We need to break this down a bit.
So there's two ways that the A6M and Ki-43 could "maintain altitude". First is that as energy is expended from maneuvering, they do not develop as high a sink rate due to the lower wing loading (and thus a lower Vmin). However pilots should not be maneuvering much when attacking bombers.
Climb above, get ahead, dive in from the front, sides, and directly above. Pull up around into a zoom climb, reset, rinse, and repeat.
Second is that they won't require as gentle of a pullout from the dive.
This is potentially relevant.
However (and I readily admit that this is only of limited value, due to being simulators), having flown flight sims for over a decade, every time we had historical scenarios run, the largest issues faced by the Japanese team were simply reaching the bombers in the first place.
We'd be patrolling at 30,000, and have the bomber streams come in a few degrees off their expected vector, which puts them 30+ miles away, and even once we ditched external fuel and floored it, that still puts them on final before we reached intercept. And ordnance free before we could knock down a significant number of them.
Knocking them down quick meant ignoring the guns, but then my fighter always got chewed to shreds. You'd be lucky to get three, maybe four passes before something absolutely critical to controlled flight gets buggered. Or maybe you just catch a .50 with your teeth. Or get set on fire.
And any escorting fighters virtually guaranteed failure. In 8 different scenarios, I only managed to kill two bombers during a contested intercept flying as an IJAAF or IJNAF pilot. And that was even flying Ki-84's a few times during some of the later scenarios.
The damn planes were just never fast enough to do what I needed them to do.
And all of this is supported by historical evidence as well, from combat reports, to the trend of increasing speed, even among the reluctant Japanese.
The entire history of aerial warfare underlines the supremacy of speed.
From the same source and page: "at its highest ceiling, the fighter (Ki-44) literally only 'floated' in the sky, and instantly dropped hundreds of metres if a turn was made."
FBKampfer
Banned
This is true of any aircraft when you get it in the coffin corner.
Ki-44, Ki-43, B-29, F-22, Sopwith Camel, etc.
No useful maneuvering can be done right at service ceiling, because this is the altitude at which there is no longer sufficient engine power to generate more than a specified climb rate (usually around 100ft/min).
The Ki-43 may have suffered less severely from this due to a lower wing loading, but it will also lose energy to induced drag, sink (maybe 150m instead of 300m), and accelerate back up to the speed necessary to reach the service ceiling more slowly, despite nominally having lost less altitude.
If you want to argue that the Ki-43 was an effective weapon at 36,000ft (its service ceiling), I'll refer you to the physics of flight.
Just a quick note, the -IIIb never had a 1300HP Ha-33-42 (Kinsei-50 series) engine, it's a mistake perpetuated. It had the same Ha-115-II engine. I think there WAS a project to fit (surplus?) Kinseis, as Ki-43-IV or something like that, but it was never built. Recall the Kinsei has a larger diameter than Sakae (Ha-115), on A6M8 they could not fit nose MGs because of that. If you put Kinsei on the Ki-43 it will have to be considerably redesigned, which is not worth it late in the war.
Agreed that it was the extreme altitude and speed that were the prime factors. Just getting to B-29 cruising altitude was a chore, and as mentioned if vectoring was off an intercept was going to be badly compromised. Sluggish maneuvering means at best only a few high-speed passes, so pilots have to be crack shots. And escorts are really going to ruin your day...
I guess you proved me wrong FBK. You definitely know better than me. I'm still not a big fan of the Ki-44 though.
I think we need to back track to capture when high-altitude bombing was the tactic and when LeMay changed to low altitude 5,000ft firebombing in March 1945.
The ki-44 with 4x20mm would have been very effective (with enough warning) to intercept the B-29's attacking after March 1945 but they were also bombing at night and that would really complicate the Japanese air defenses.
The ki-44 with 4x20mm would have been very effective (with enough warning) to intercept the B-29's attacking after March 1945 but they were also bombing at night and that would really complicate the Japanese air defenses.