Japanese medium & heavy bombers

Not sure if this has been stated, but they looked into the FW200 prior to the war...

 

Wonder if fuel was an issue for Japan not using German deigned engines from the 88 and 111..Weren't those engines deisels- requiring a certain type of fuel that maybe Japan didn't have access to?

 

I understand what you were stating, what I was trying to explain and wasn't doing too good a job of, is that the problem is not that simple. Most Japanese radial aircraft engines were very reliable, simpler to maintain, cheaper to manufacture, had better cooling, were more economical in fuel usage and were producing comparable horsepower. If Japan bought actual BMW 801 C-1 engines producing 1539 hp, and let's say for the sake of argument they bolted it right into a Japanese airframes with no modifications. The engine would only produce in the neighborhood of 1170 hp due to the Japanese use of lower octane fuel and needing to tune the engine as such. Again, for the sake of argument, you could take a 1530 hp MK4A Kasei 11 engine and bolt it directly into an FW-190 in place of its BMW 801 C-1 producing 1539 hp, with no additional modifications being made. Using the German standard 100 octane fuel and having the engine tuned to that fuel would have resulted in the Kasei 11 producing 1900hp and the engine itself was not as deep and weighed 526 pounds less giving additional performance advantages, and would have resulted in the FW-190 having no peer at that time.

Takao is correct in that some Japanese engines did have some developmental issues. The Nakajima Mamoru/Mamori was Nakajima's attempt to squeeze the maximum performance possible from a 14 cylinder engine. It was plagued with reliability issues and never developed the hoped for horsepower. Where it became an issue was in aircraft such as the B6N carrier attack aircraft. The problem was the designer insisted on using the unproven Mamoru engine when a suitably powerful Mitsubishi Kasei engine was available. The same issues appeared with the Nakajima Homare 18 cylinder radial. These problems were eventually resolved but not until later in the war. There was a suitable replacement in the Mitsubishi MK9A 'Ha-211 Ru', 18 cylinder engine.
If not for the internecine squabbling between manufacturers and the Army and Navy and the squabbling between the two services, Japan had reliable engines of the required horsepower.
You cannot easily compare U.S. vs Japanese, or Japanese vs German or German vs U.S. radial engines based upon the producing countries published horsepower figures. Japan's radial engines would have out performed Germany's radial engines of the same time period, if an adjustment is made for the different octane fuel used. Same with the U.S. vs German radials. The Wrights and Pratt and Whitney engines of the Americans appear to be the cutting edge in radial engine performance, until an adjustment is made for fuel octanes. Most of the time, (not all the time) the U.S. used fuels of much higher octane and better performance characteristics than any of it's opponents and most of its friends.

Where Germany and Japan could have cooperated better, would have been in pursuing Japan's Synthetic fuel production program. There was a good deal of interest shown pre-war, but it wasn't fully developed. If Japanese aircraft had been using 100 octane fuel they would have been the world leader in performance for a given displacement engine.

 

The 88 and 111 used standard aviation gasoline. The JU 86 used the Jumo 205 aero-diesel engine. I think that's the aircraft you had in mind.

 

The Do 26 too

 

Right you are! There were several others that the aero-deisels were planned for or that used them or used them for a short time until replaced by conventional fueled engines. The biggest problem appears to be that they were not very responsive which doesn't bode well for an aircraft engaged in combat.

 

Excellent . What a great bit of info regarding octane levels and Japanese engines USMCP.... I wonder if the topic had already been covered in 'Intellectual Exercise' - that thing is huge... Thanks as well Dave.

 

As I recall we have covered Octane levels and their potential impact, especially as we attempt to improve engine performance as we up gun and up armor our aircraft to keep them competitive with the always improving western combat aircraft. There does seem to be a place for aero-deisels in either training aircraft or transport planes.

 

Hey! We went to the moon on deisel! Nothing wrong with the stuff...

 

For what it's worth, "hardly." It was easily more manueverable at low speeds, but that came at a price. At higher speeds the larger ailerons and elevators became stiff and harder to move due to the air pressure. "Better" and "Ruling the skies" are subjective and really need to take into account tactics and pilots as well as split out the aspects one is discussing.

 

It is a fair statement to say it "ruled the skies" for the first year of the war. No allied aircraft deployed matched it plane for plane and to effectively engage yet conventional dogfighting tactics had to be abandoned in favor of zoom and scoot or the Thatch weave which required at least two aircraft to engage one Zero.

This is not to say it was a perfect aircraft, but for the Pacific theater it had some exceptional attributes. Not until the introduction of the F5F, F4U, P-38 and modern Spitfires did the Allies have an aircraft that could take it on in even terms.

 

The exchange rate between the F4F and the A6M being near parity says that the A6M did not "rule the skies". There are no Marquess of Queensberry Rules for air combat stating that you must use "conventional dogfighting tactics". Only the results matter. Using the advantages of your own aircraft against the weaknesses of your opponent's is the heart of good air tactics. Yes, the A6M was a formidable foe, but it did not dominate air combat for the first year. Researcher's comments are on target.

The introduction of the F6F and F4U resulted in very uneven terms with the Zeke as they held significant performance advantages over it.

I know it was a typo, but only one F5F Skyrocket was built.

 

We got off the ground on RP-1 which is basically kerosene (close enough to diesel). We left the atmosphere on liquid hydrogen and oxygen. We traversed to the moon on hydrazine based fuels.

 

The first use of the Thatch weave, by Thatch himself at Midway, involved three F4Fs against an estimated 15-20 A6Ms of which 3 or 4 were shot down (Shattered Sword, First Team). First Team also documents total losses for Coral Sea and Midway of 14 A6Ms vs. 10 F4Fs, so even if we discount Thatch's engagement they were breaking even.

The Zero's performance and maneuverability fell off at higher speeds and altitudes, which American pilots learned to exploit. Bottom line, the Zero had the advantage under the conditions it was designed for, and if you fought it under those conditions, you were in trouble.

 

So i was right! : ) I know...sort of. Liquid H and O...almost water...

 

This index of the Pacific War is the most complete I have found, if the Japanese flew it or built it you will find it here and much much more.

http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/Table_Of_Contents.htm

 

Doolittle worked to get SHELL Oil to develop higher Octane fuel for US Air Craft before World War II.


http://www.angelo.edu/content/news/1466-doolittle-raid-remembered-for-impact

As a member of the board of Shell Oil Co., he had earlier convinced the federal government and the Army Air Corps to purchase 100-octane fuel, which provides higher performance and better mileage for aircraft, a decision that later would help save the lives of him and 68 other raiders.




On April 18, 1942, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle led a flight of sixteen B-25 bombers off the flight deck of the USS "Hornet" on one of the most daring raids in U.S. military history, a low-level strike on Tokyo and other Japanese cities. For this heroic act, he received the Medal of Honor. But, as Dik Alan Daso convincingly argues, James H. Doolittle should be remembered as much more than a famous combat pilot. With a doctorate in aeronautics from MIT, he devoted his life to mastering the technical and practical intricacies of the most amazing new invention of his time, the airplane. In 1922, Doolittle became the first person to complete a transcontinental flight across the United States in a single twenty-four-hour period. Later he worked with the Shell Oil Company to develop high-octane aviation fuel to enhance aircraft performance. He also won numerous trophies for his record-breaking high-speed flights, and he developed new instrumentation to assist pilots when flying ???blind??? in poor weather. In jet age parlance, Doolittle constantly ???pushed the envelope.??? After holding several major combat commands during World War II, he was appointed a special assistant to the Air Force chief of staff in 1951 and served as a civilian adviser in scientific matters, including the development of ballistic missiles and the fledgling space program. From the early days of aviation to the space age, Daso provides a concise but expansive overview of the rapidly developing field of aviation and chronicles a pioneer??'s tireless efforts to be a visionary for the new era.

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I apologize for posting this information from two sources, I thought I had lost the first posting and it was deleted so I entered a new one.

Before World War II, Major Jimmie Doolittle realized that if the United States got involved in the war in Europe, it would require large amounts of aviation fuel with high octane. Doolittle was already famous in the aviation community as a racing pilot and for his support of advanced research and development (and would later earn even wider fame as head of the 1942 B-25 bombing raid on Tokyo).

In the 1930s, he headed the aviation fuels section of the Shell Oil Company.

Fuel is rated according to its level of octane. High amounts of octane allow a powerful piston engine to burn its fuel efficiently, a quality called "anti-knock" because the engine does not misfire, or "knock."

At that time, high-octane aviation gas was only a small percentage of the overall petroleum refined in the United States. Most gas had no more than an 87 octane rating. Doolittle pushed hard for the development of 100-octane fuel (commonly called Aviation Gasoline or AvGas) and convinced Shell to begin manufacturing it, to stockpile the chemicals necessary to make more, and to modify its refineries to make mass production of high-octane fuel possible. As a result, when the United States entered the war in late 1941, it had plenty of high-quality fuel for its engines, and its aircraft engines performed better than similarly sized engines in the German Luftwaffe's airplanes. Engine designers were also encouraged by the existence of high-performance fuels to develop even higher-performance engines for aircraft.