Quote:
Originally posted by nc_martialartist:
The Japanese did not have crappy airplanes, one bit. The reason they lost the air war was not their lack of good aircraft, but our ability to destroy them (by way of better aircraft.)
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I think that a bigger reason for winning the air war was Japan's inability to train new pilots up to the standards that they did prior to the war. Japan let their "first string" stay on the front lines until they were killed in battle whereas the United States would routinely call pilots who had served in the front lines back to train the newer pilots so as to pass on the lessons learned in combat. The Japanese also rarely rescued pilots shot down during the course of the war whereas the US used there subs as plane guards later in the war and in earlier stages go through some freat lengths searching for downed pilots.
On the flying boats issue... what about the PBY Catalina? That was a heckuva plane, and arguable much better than the Emily.
To accurately compare these planes I looked at the production models for each that most commonly used during the war period, these being Consolidated's PBY-5A and Kawanashi's H8K2. The table below shows how they compare;
PBY Emily
Max Speed 179mph 290mph
Cruising Speed 117mph 184mph
Ceiling 14,700ft 29,000ft
Range 2,545naut mi 3,862naut
Empty Weight 20,910lbs 40,520lbs
Max Takeoff Weight 35,420lbs 71,650lbs
As for armament the PBY carried five 7.62mm (0.3in) machine guns and up to 4000lbs of bombs or depth charges. Whereas the Emily carried 20mm Type 99 Model 1 cannons in its bow, dorsal and tail turrets and two beam hatches, 7.7mm Type 92 machine guns in its ventral, port and starboard fusalage sides and cockpit hatches along with an external bomb load of two 1,800lb bombs or eight 550lb bombs or sixteen 110lb bombs or depth charges.
As for powerplants the Emily had 4 radial engines rated at up 1850hp each as compared to the 2 radial piston engines rated at 1200hp each for the PBY.
From the above it is clear that in terms of its performance the Emily far outshines the PBY in every catagory.
[ 06. May 2005, 01:23 PM: Message edited by: Bill Murray ]