Look it up, look how long the US took to turn up aircraft production lines with its almost limitless woman power and industrial capacity. The Soviets were short of everything from skilled woman and children power to machine tools. Without tungsten from the US try couldn’t even make tooling for the machines they had, the Soviet high altitude fighter lines were turned off, I’m not sure they even kept the tooling and production jigs.
No, it was not a successful design, they showed themselves very badly against German tanks.
The bombing really affected the Germans, they spent hundreds of billions of Riechmarks relocating factories underground. They had to produce ersatz motor fuel from coal which is hard and expensive because their refineries were destroyed. They had to resort to slave labor because the RAF “ dehoused” the German workers destroying their cities so workers had no place to live. German production went up because until near the end of the war Hitler refused to go to a total war economy and use women in his factories. It wasn’t until Albert Speer “rationalized” German industry by ruthlessly eliminating duplication and waste that production increased. By then he could build fighters and tanks but had no fuel to operate them. For instance, there were hundreds of Me-262s sitting at the factories without even enough fuel to move them to operational squadrons that critically needed them.
The bombing really affected the Germans, they spent hundreds of billions of Riechmarks relocating factories underground. They had to produce ersatz motor fuel from coal which is hard and expensive because their refineries were destroyed. They had to resort to slave labor because the RAF “ dehoused” the German workers destroying their cities so workers had no place to live. German production went up because until near the end of the war Hitler refused to go to a total war economy and use women in his factories. It wasn’t until Albert Speer “rationalized” German industry by ruthlessly eliminating duplication and waste that production increased. By then he could build fighters and tanks but had no fuel to operate them. For instance, there were hundreds of Me-262s sitting at the factories without even enough fuel to move them to operational squadrons that critically needed them.
After action report of the CO of the USS Yorktown after the Battle of Midway.
Oh, and I am sure that you alto think they were all small, had buck teeth, and wore glasses.
"Cheap, flimsy, low powered".
Just give up, you just literally shot off your foot by even attempting to make that claim. Even the US Experts that finally got their hands on a disabled A6M in 1942 praised the design. The fighter dominated all battles it was in until the F6F Hellcat came out in 1942. I am finding it almost comical that you are actually trying to claim that the Japanese made "cheap, flimsy, low powered" aircraft.
After action report of the CO of the USS Yorktown after the Battle of Midway.
And many of the things the US experts praised when they finally got their hands on one were things Japan was doing years before the US did. Like flush rivets, gun nozzles being flush with the wing instead of protruding from it, and that it had not only an exceptionally low stall speed, the controls would stiffen up as speed increased to give the pilot even greater control.
And their smaller engines were used for two reasons. The plane even fully loaded weighed half of a comparable US fighter, and was much more maneuverable. And the light weight gave them exceptional performance. As in, up to eight hours flying time (over 50% more than comparable US fighters).
The A6M was low powered and flimsy. You've got things backwards, the Japanese had to build light planes because they didn't build high powered engines before 1944. Zeros only dominated aerial combat prior to May 1942. At Coral Sea Zeros were already taking prohibitive losses against Wildcats. The "superiority" of the Zero was more a factor of the IJNAF having the best pilots in the world in 1941 and 1942. Once the allies stopped underestimating the Japanese pilots Japanse losses soared. The only recessed gun barrels on Japanese fighters were cooling guns that were too short to protrude beyond the engine. The wing cannon's barrels in the wings protruded beyond the leading edges of the wings. The Zero had large wings which gave it its low stall speed, but they limited its top speed the aerlions getting heavier at high speed was a design flaw, not an advantage at speeds over two hundred fifty knots even a Wildcat could outmaneuver a Zero. The Oscar was even worse. Japan didn't produce a good fighter until the IJA's Ki-61 Tony with its license built DB-601 engine, the IJN had to wait for the Shiden with its brittle landing gear and unreliable engine. The Zero did have great range, but it was achieved by making the plane a death trap. No self sealing fuel tanks, no armor, very light structure, often not even a radio. The US got equal or superior range out of survivible aircraft like P-38Ls, P-51Hs and P-47Ns. The Zero's "superiority" was a myth, and it's fragility killed most of the expert IJN pilots by the end of 1943.
Oh, and I am sure that you alto think they were all small, had buck teeth, and wore glasses.
"Cheap, flimsy, low powered".
Just give up, you just literally shot off your foot by even attempting to make that claim. Even the US Experts that finally got their hands on a disabled A6M in 1942 praised the design. The fighter dominated all battles it was in until the F6F Hellcat came out in 1942. I am finding it almost comical that you are actually trying to claim that the Japanese made "cheap, flimsy, low powered" aircraft.
After action report of the CO of the USS Yorktown after the Battle of Midway.
And many of the things the US experts praised when they finally got their hands on one were things Japan was doing years before the US did. Like flush rivets, gun nozzles being flush with the wing instead of protruding from it, and that it had not only an exceptionally low stall speed, the controls would stiffen up as speed increased to give the pilot even greater control.
And their smaller engines were used for two reasons. The plane even fully loaded weighed half of a comparable US fighter, and was much more maneuverable. And the light weight gave them exceptional performance. As in, up to eight hours flying time (over 50% more than comparable US fighters).
In late 1944 the Japanese were finally building world class fighters like the George and Frank because they were finally producing two thousand horsepower class engines. Both the Frank and especially the George had serviceability problems due to poor build quality and inferior materials. The Japanese could build quality equipment, but usually didn't. For instance, the Diesel engine used in the Type 97 Medium tank was a great engine, but the tank was riveted and flimsy. Japanese destroyers were great, but their subs sucked. The only modern light cruisers they built had almost no armor, light gun armament and were more oversized destroyers than cruisers. The Japanese couldn't afford the resources to build large numbers of quality products. Japan was a small, poor country that depended on importing everything except coal for a modern economy.
The Rex was floatplane fighter. The two models of the George were never considered the finest land based fighter of the war, but it was considered to be one of the very few Japanese aircraft to have an even chance against modern US fighters. Georges could have been good aircraft, but a large percentage were lost in landing accidents due to brittle landing gear snapping on landing. I've read that George pilots preferred to land on the grass near their runways rather than the hard concrete runways.
But the Wildcat would bring its pilot home where the Zero wouldn't. Durability and survivability were part of the design for Grumman, only range and maneuverability were the design constraints for Mitsubishi. In 194o the Japanese didn't have a single thousand horsepower class engine and the US had several.
Both Japanese amphibious were built in tiny numbers, I believe less than a hundred in total and were pretty worthless as tanks with thin armor and small guns. The LVT(A) was just as well armored, just as seaworthy and built in huge numbers. The DD tanks worked quite well under most conditions, the ones lost on D Day were launched further out and in rougher water than they were designed to handle. While they were inferior to the Japanese amphibious as boats, they were far superior to them as tanks. There was nothing wrong with the flotation system, the Swedish Strv 103, US Bradley and the Sheridan light tank all use similar systems.Japan was simply one of the nations that never saw the need for tanks. And looking at who they were fighting and where, that makes sense.
Either it was against a very poorly armed and equipped Chinese Army where even their poor tanks were far superior to the Chinese Tanks (a joke, China had almost no tanks). Or on the islands in the Pacific where they was really no real use for tanks in the first place. Hence, in later battles the tanks were most often buried in the sand and made into pillboxes.
When you are fighting over an island that has rough terrain and very few large flat areas, what use is a tank? Japan knew this, so never wasted the time and resources to improve them. They could have had 100 Tiger II tanks at Okinawa or Iwo Jima, it would have made absolutely no impact on those battles.
However, interestingly there is one area they were the best at. And that was in amphibious tanks. The Type 2 Ka-mi and Type 3 Ka-Chi were both excellent designs, far better than anything any other country produced at the time.
One aspect of the Type 3 never really used was that it could even be deployed and recovered by submarines at sea. All in all, vastly superior to the closest the US ever deployed (and worked), the LVT.
Or the "DD Tank", used at Normandy.
Of course, we know how well those worked at Omaha. 27 of the first 29 of them sank before they even reached the beach. Of the eight launched as part of Operation Dragoon, only six made it to shore.
YOu see, this is the problem with trying to prove such silly claims, they all fail when looked at logically and with actual knowledge of the equipment. Not just making generic statements with nothing to back it up.
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