Hunter1324

The R2800-18W was the variant used in the F4U-4. The F4U-1 and early F4U-1A was originally powered by a R-2800-8 engine, late models of the F4U-1A as well as the F4U-1C and the F4U-1D (the one we are getting) were powered with R-2800-8W engines which added a water injection system. Alternatively just check the source shared above.

Is it really off-topic when the text is heavily focused on the perception of the A6M Zero in the late war and about whether its combat results were due to technicall shortcomings or other factors? Also, of course I know the IJAAF and the IJAAS are part of the army ... Thing is that in the context you were using it still makes no sense because the IJAAF was NOT involved in the Battle of the Philippine Seas. The land based air units were Imperial Japanese Navy units, flying navy planes (A6M's, D4Y's and B6N's). The Army had no involvement in the entire battle at all! Also no <profanity> about the A6M Zero's being unable to protect Yamamoto's flight, it was 6 Zeros vs 16 P-38's. Exchange the scenario and I guarantee that the Zero's would also had gotten through. Also I probably should point out that the A6M Zero's suffered no combat losses during the flight (this is well documented in wartime documents) while one of the P-38's failed to return... I'll give you three guesses as to why Lt. Raymond K. Hine didn't make it back to Guadalcanal, hint, he was last seen being persued by the fighter escort. Anyways, I think we can both agree that having an A6M Zero module in-game would be amazing.

Lots to unpack here so let me go one by one. While Samurai! is a great read I'm not sure it is the best source to draw any conclusions regarding the capabilities of WW2 aircraft, mainly for two reasons: 1. It is well know that quite a bit of the book is fictionalized, either due to mistranslations or the coauthors (mainly Martin Caidin and Fred Saito) wanting to add some extra flair to the book. 2. While Saburo Sakai was certainly one of the best IJN fighter pilots, he also was grounded due to his injuries/working as an instructor for much of the war (from August 1942 to April 1944, to be exact), this meant he missed out nearly the entirety of the Guadalcanal campaign (he was crippled in one of the first IJN raids against the island) as well as much of the reminder of the air campaign over New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. That also meant he went from confronting F-4F's, P-40's and P-39's to fighting late variants of P-51's. Likewise I have doubts he personally encountered much if any P-38's or (P-47's for that matter) late in his carrier since, after his deployment over Iwo Jima, where he would had encountered USN almost exclusively, he spent the reminder of the war with the 343rd Kokutai over the mainland, where P-38's in fighter roles were a no-show and P-47(N)'s arrived very late. I get that there isn't much material in English about IJN (or IJAAF) pilots and therefore it can be quite hard to dig up this sources, but my point still stands, you shouldn't base your assessment of aircraft or an entire conflict based on the experience of just one person, even if they can provide quite a lot of insight in some specific actions besides being just interesting by themselves, that is why we need to dig deep into the operational records of air units in WW2 and elsewhere. As for the Battle of the Philippines Sea, as I addressed in an earlier comment (my very first comment in the site, actually), while the Hellcat performance and the highly improved radar vectoring certainly played a very big role at the very one-sided air engagements over the Marianas, the statement that "many IJN Aces [...] lost" undermines the main reason (according to most experts and I'm inclined to agree) why both carrier and land-based IJN air units faired so poorly in the battle, mainly, they actually weren't many "aces" in those units because most of them had already died by that point in the war. The carrier air-units had been almost fully depleted in the carrier battles of 1942 through attrition which is the reason why the IJN spent much of 1943 and a chunk of 1944 trying to rebuild their carrier aviation back to the levels it had before the war... Key word here is trying, Japan simply didn't have enough instructors or resources to train such a an amount of air and maintenance crews in so little time, which combined with a suboptimal training plan and unrealistic expectations by the high command meant that, the vast majority of pilots who were deployed in IJN carriers for the battle had often just 150 hours of flight time and only very rudimentary skills in how to conduct combat, navigate or fly in formation. It was so bad, that Ozawa described that many of the pilots that managed to return from the battle couldn't perform a proper carrier landing even with undamaged planes and crashed their planes on the flight deck or ditched in its proximity. As for ground based air-units they also had been "attritioned out" by the fighting over New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and by mid 1944 were just a shadow of their former self. Their training regime was even leaner and they often had as little as 100 hours of flight. So while the IJN had amassed on paper a very impressive force to the battle, in practice it was just "paper", the qualitative gap between the USN and IJN aircrews had just reached its critical point after Japan's failure to keep up with the attrition rates of their pilots. So I have to bluntly state that you are wrong about the F4U (or any other allied aircraft type) not mattering, because the reason why the Battle of the Philippine Sea played out as it did was due to the EFFECTS that the continuous loss of experienced aircrews had on the combat capabilities of the IJN (and the IJAAF elsewhere), which were CAUSED by the actions of Allied aircrews and AA gunners among others thorough 1942 and 1943. The F6F Hellcat was also present during the Solomon Islands Campaign, but it didn't play as much of a role as the F4U did in that theater, arriving later and in smaller numbers, and although I haven't seen a thorough examination of its combat record there, it didn't seem to perform any better than the Corsair units based on attrition rates, and again, the Solomon Campaigns tied up and grinded out quite a big chunk of the IJN land-based units, contributing to the decline of Japan's war capabilities. So in a way, one can argue that, while the Hellcat was great plane and its pilots skill enhanced it results, it also wind up being at the right place and the right time to rack-up an extremely high exchange ratio, under circumstances in which even much less capable planes would had performed very well (see also late war combat record of the FM Wildcats). Finally and being just a little tongue-in-cheek for a second... You know what the A in IJA stands for, right? I know it was probably just a mistake and I surely have made quite a few myself in such a wall of text, but its still funny

Kenneth A. Walsh was one of the top USMC aces in WWII and was credited with shooting down 21 aircraft during the Solomons Air Campaign... ... He also got shot down by Zeros, thrice. As did Pappy Boyington once, before becoming a POW. The point I'm trying to get across is that even an expirienced pilot could meet its match on the A6M Zero. As I guess you already know, WWII air to air combat wasn't about neat tail chasing furballs and most pilots never saw their attacker before being shotdown. Current data shows that the F4F Wildcat and the A6M Zero were well matched and had a mostly even exchange ratio throught 1942, even more modern aircraft like the P-38 and F4U only took a slight lead on the A6M during the reminder of the Solomons campaign. These kind of sweeping generalizations kind off remove some merit to your own (?) servicemen, making it seem like they had the upper hand the momment they "figured it out", when in truth the air war in the Pacific was quite a contest throught 1942 and 1943 and the eventual collapse of the IJN and IJAAF came down more to Japan's inability to keep up with the attrition in both aircraft, pilots and ground crews than in technical and tactical improvements by the Allies (which, I won't deny, did play a role throught the war). Also adressing a previous reply, while the A6M Zero was certainly not "the best ever made WW2 bird", it was still one of the finest plane designs of the Late 1930's and, given the lingering limitations of Japanese Air Industry, a massive archievement. Again kind of underselling both Japanese ingenuity and the struggle the USN, USAAF, USMC, RAF and RAAF pilots had to go through early in the war.

This an overly simplistic assesment. I recently got a digital copy of "F4U Corsair versus A6M Zero-sen" by Michael John Claringbould, and his research shows that at least in the Solomons and Rabaul, IJN Zeros stood their ground pretty well against USMC Corsair's and USAAF units. Back then there was still quite a decent ammount of expirienced, land-based IJN pilots which were able to amass in comparable numbers to their opponent and fought a mostly deffensive campaign, resulting in comparable exchange ratios. It is later in the war, when IJN pilot quality truelly plummeted and the strategic situation worsened that you start to really see the very one-sided engagements such as the Battle of the Philippines Sea. By that point the IJN and IJAAF were progressively more and more outnumbered and very few expirienced pilots remained, the situation got so bad that even units flying much superior aircraft like the Ki-84 and N1K2 over the homeland rarely managed to break even.