Request tacticle help for USN planes

[Daniël]

Try to keep altitude and speed. Do not engage a turn fight, the Zero is better at turning than any American plane. Instead, when you have altitude, dive and attack the Zero and pull up again, out of the reach of the Zero.
The biggest downside of the Zero and about any Japanese plane is the lack of armor, so 6 .50's are more than enough to shoot down a Zero.

[JtD]

It's the Pacific theater that coined the phrase "turn and burn". You turn, you burn. The most if not all Japanese fighters are better at this than the USN birds. So hit and run tactics are what you have to do. In a team battle, this is tremendously effective and efficient. In a 1 vs. 1, you'll have a hard time.

[IceFire]

One of the tactics that USN pilots (one in particular) developed was called the Thach Weave (also known as Beam Defense).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thach_Weave

The idea is tight coordination between wingman and lead to provide mutual defensive capabilities against any attacking Zeros. Despite initial losses, effective teamwork and coordination allowed USN pilots to achieve high kill to loss ratios versus their Japanese counterparts. Particularly by Guadalcanal the USN pilots were doing extremely well and that was just with Wildcats.

By the time the Hellcat came on scene the USN pilots were all of a very high average quality while Japanese pilots tended to either be experienced Aces with dozens of kills and much more poorly trained (than earlier in the war) pilots that ended up being shot down in droves. Since you don't always face this in single player or offline you really have to know your aircrafts advantages.

Hellcats and Corsairs in particular are all slightly to moderately faster than any Zero they face. Climb rates are more-even so acceleration often favours the Zero... but a Zero cannot, over a long distance, follow any USN fighter (Wildcat, Hellcat, Corsair) in a sustained power dive.

If you wanted to sum it up... US Navy aircraft have the following pros and cons:

PRO
- Fast overall top speed and excellent dive capabilities
- Robust airframes able to absorb more punishment and protect the pilot
- Better high speed manoeuvrability

CONS
- Slower climb rates and acceleration rates (vs Zero)
- Significantly slower turn rates
- Less range than Japanese types

In short... a Japanese pilot wants to close the gap and fight the knife fight while a USN pilot wants to stay hands off and fight from above and at high speeds. Slowing down is death. Speed and altitude are life!

[ElAurens]

You have to fly the USN birds like a Bf 109 vs. a Yak.

Boom and Zoom.

And you MUST extend a LONG way before reengaging the Zero, as it's maneuverability will enable him to keep his guns on you.

It was said in the day that if you engaged a Zero 1 v 1 with a Wildcat you were outnumbered. The Wildcat also suffers because it's top speed in level flight is not as high as a Zero. Early on USMC commanders in the South Pacific even sent a panicked letter to the Navy requesting P40s as they were faster than the Zero, and much faster than the F4F.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

The Wildcat also suffers because it's top speed in level flight is not as high as a Zero

Depends on version of the Zero. A6M3 and beyond has a little higher top speed on the deck up to 1000m. But if you plan your attack extremly careful, you can still outrun them. At best get to the fight with altitude advantage (if you do not have the altitude advantage you are basically screwed - you can try to run though) AND numerical superiority. Dive on the Zero(s), and do not burn too much E if they try to evade - continue to dive to 1000m or below, you can dive to up to 820 kph, the Zero breaks apart at 700something kph. Keep your speed up and run like no tomorrow, at best run towards own fighters or FlaK.

With the F4F and the other USN planes keep the fight fast, you are more maneuverable then the Zero when fast. The F4U has superior roll rate, use it to change direction.

Your guns are more than capable to severly damage your enemy even with a few hits. You can take pot shots, if you are a superb marksman you can even deliberately aim for the pilot - and the Zero burns easily and loses wings after very few hits.

If you are flexible in choosing your weapons, try P-40 vs. Zero, you always have a slight speed advantage -while you still lack maneuverability and climb.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

Depends on version of the Zero. A6M3 and beyond has a little higher top speed on the deck up to 1000m. But if you plan your attack extremly careful, you can still outrun them. At best get to the fight with altitude advantage (if you do not have the altitude advantage you are basically screwed - you can try to run though) AND numerical superiority. Dive on the Zero(s), and do not burn too much E if they try to evade - continue to dive to 1000m or below, you can dive to up to 820 kph, the Zero breaks apart at 700something kph. Keep your speed up and run like no tomorrow, at best run towards own fighters or FlaK.

With the F4F and the other USN planes keep the fight fast, you are more maneuverable then the Zero when fast. The F4U has superior roll rate, use it to change direction.

Your guns are more than capable to severly damage your enemy even with a few hits. You can take pot shots, if you are a superb marksman you can even deliberately aim for the pilot - and the Zero burns easily and loses wings after very few hits.

If you are flexible in choosing your weapons, try P-40 vs. Zero, you always have a slight speed advantage -while you still lack maneuverability and climb.

Even with the P-40 I feel like I have the manoeuvrability edge so long as I keep the fight fast and in the horizontal. The P-40E and M roll very quickly and turn fairly well at high speeds. But no sustained turns anywhere... always fast in and around.

[horseback]

First, if there were any pilots with a higher level of training and expertise than the IJN pilots in 1942, it was the prewar trained US Naval aviators (both Marines and Navy wore the same wings and had the same training). Even so, they needed to depend on close teamwork and good radio comms (which the average Japanese fighter pilot did not enjoy until late in the war, if ever) in order to survive, much less prevail as the actual US fighter pilots did. In an offline campaign, you do not enjoy those advantages over the ai while flying the Wildcat, and you do not have even the dive acceleration advantage or the improved high speed maneuverability vs the Japanese early war fighters. The ai will always dive faster than you can at first; you won't catch up as quickly as the real US fighters could because the only 'advantage' you have is terminal speed (and I'm still a bit dubious about that vs the ai, if not against human opponents online).

Additionally, the ai will enjoy closer teamwork than you can with your ai wingman, and they will not be limited at higher speeds the way the actual Japanese Naval aviator was (he was about 5 ft 2 inches tall or approx. 160cm, and weighed about 120 lbs or 55kg, 6 inches/16cm shorter and about 35 lbs or 15kg lighter than the US average and US pilots evaluating the Zero stated that it had very high stick forces above about 200 knots; it follows that the smaller Japanese would not be as physically strong as his American counterpart, what with the superior Allied logistics and better diet from nearly Day One, so that factor should be more significant than it appears to be in-game against the Wildcat, which emphatically did NOT suffer a similar handicap). Even so, the best course is to stay as high and as fast as you can and be a good shot. Stay in the F4F-3 as long as you can; it is lighter and quicker, plus it has more firing time than the folding wing -4.

Good sources for tactics would be Barrett Tillman's Wildcat in WWII and both volumes of John Lundstrom's The First Team, which cover Pearl harbor to Guadalcanal, and the Guadalcanal campaigns. Both are very good in terms of historical accuracy and are very well written (at least in English), and I have re-read them several times over the years, both for information and entertainment. Tillman also wrote similar books about the Corsair, the Hellcat and the SBD, covering their wartime use and development as well, and you may find them useful as well.

cheers

horseback