Request tacticle help for USN planes

[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

[JtD]

USN aviators might have seen more training, but they had certainly seen less war.

[Flanker1985]

Thanks for all those valuable information.
So basically what you are saying is as long as I flight USN fighters, I can forget about dog fight.

Also, about the choice between F4U and F6F, which do you thinks it's better?

By the way, is that true?? That F4F had a kill-to-loss ratio of 5.9:1 in 1942 and 6.9:1 for the entire war???

[gaunt1]

In my opinion, USN fighters were quite unimpressive (or outright bad in some cases) compared to japanese planes. The very professional training and tactics that helped the US to win the war against japan. Ingame, online this is not the case, so the Zero, Hayabusa, Hien and especially the Hayate and the Raiden are more than a match for Wildcats or Hellcats. The only tactics that work against them is hit & run.

Offline, I think its a bit easier, because it seems that IJN/IJA AI is stupid. While USN AI is trying to cooperate to a degree, they dont.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Flanker1985

Also, about the choice between F4U and F6F, which do you thinks it's better?

The F4U for me. Faster then the F6F, does not like to be hamfisted though.
IMHO the supposedly pleasant attitude of the F6F does not translate in this game. And the F4U has great high speed roll rate.

Originally Posted by Flanker1985

By the way, is that true?? That F4F had a kill-to-loss ratio of 5.9:1 in 1942 and 6.9:1 for the entire war???

I think I have read that numbers before. I do think that they were for the combined F4F and FM-2 kills. The FM-2 was a somewhat improved Wildcat, and was used mostly from escort carriers later in the war.

Originally Posted by gaunt1

In my opinion, USN fighters were quite unimpressive (or outright bad in some cases) compared to japanese planes. The very professional training and tactics that helped the US to win the war against japan. Ingame, online this is not the case, so the Zero, Hayabusa, Hien and especially the Hayate and the Raiden are more than a match for Wildcats or Hellcats. The only tactics that work against them is hit & run.

The problem is in the game IMHO. It simulates all planes up to factory specs, and while at least later in the war an average USN plane would perform almost up to factory specs and be ready the next day to fly again, the average Japanese plane - especially the Hayate and Hien - would underperform factory specs, and/or require lots of maintainance to be ready for the next flight. And the average online pilot knows most of his planes advantages and the enemys planes disadvantages, knows fighter team tactics, and communicates with his fellow pilots - as USN pilot as well as IJN/IJA pilot.

Originally Posted by gaunt1

Offline, I think its a bit easier, because it seems that IJN/IJA AI is stupid. While USN AI is trying to cooperate to a degree, they dont.

I don't know if IJN/IJA AI really is worse than USN AI. I sometimes get the impression that Ace level IJN pilots do at least some sort of coordinated attack - and average USN/USAAF AI does not work

[JtD]

Even in game the carrier based USN fighters are better than carrier based IJN fighters in all around performance. Of course, they don't turn on a dime.

[ElAurens]

Up until late 42/early 43 the Japanese were the best trained combat pilots in the world, hands down, especially the IJN. They washed out pilots to crew positions that would have been aces in any other air force in the world.

This coupled with the poor tactical doctrine that the Allies started the war with (the dogfight), created the perfect storm for them in the first year or so of the war.

This insane training regime also was the downfall of the Japanese air arm.
They simply could not keep up with losses as the Allies adapted their tactics, and aircraft, to thawrt the Japanese.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by Flanker1985

Thanks for all those valuable information.
So basically what you are saying is as long as I flight USN fighters, I can forget about dog fight.

Also, about the choice between F4U and F6F, which do you thinks it's better?

By the way, is that true?? That F4F had a kill-to-loss ratio of 5.9:1 in 1942 and 6.9:1 for the entire war???

USN fighters are not dog fighters, yep, that's the easiest way to put it. By 1943 their tactics emphasized the energy fight using turns only in high speed passes against Japanese aircraft and using their weight and engine power as an advantage. The Finnish called the technique a 'pendulum attack' which is actually a nice way to describe the basics of a boom and zoom. The type of attack requires more discipline but given the right teamwork it can be used to dominate the fight.

The F4U and F6F are a bit different. The F6F Hellcat should be a bit more pleasant to fly than it is, but despite that it's definitely the easier of the two. Both are big heavy fighters (a F6F is larger than a P-47... think about that for a moment) with a lot of weight to carry around but they also have very powerful engines.

The F4U Corsair is a bit trickier to handle. It's roll rate, top speed, and climb rate are all very good... but it's also less predictable. It's a little bit harder to land on a carrier deck which is one of the reasons why it earned the nickname 'Ensign Eliminator".

In a late war fight the Corsair is probably the better option but against Zeros (common right to the last day of the war) but the Hellcat is also a great fighter. The USN tended to favour the Hellcat on carriers as it was easier to land and so it saw the majority of carrier use while the Corsairs were really only seriously active on carriers in later 1944 and 1945. The USMC made extensive use of the Corsair from land bases with very exceptional results - again... excellent training and the eventual accumulation of combat experience helped.

[MaxGunz]

By the time the Corsair arrived, the Japanese didn't have many well trained pilots left. So was it -the plane- that made all the difference?

I saw a Bad-History Channel program on Japanese Secret Weapon Planes that stated that Japan had 100's of jet fighters at the end of the war, ready to take off and wipe the US planes from the sky. Yup. All there to just wipe the US out, lucky thing the war ended before the -next- Tuesday.

I wondered where they'd get pilots able to fly the things let alone fight in them. But in the Plane vs Plane mentality you just compare technical aspects to know the Winner, and maybe numbers manufactured. So whew did the US ever duck losing WWII to the Japanese with allllllll those jets!