A6M5 Zero

[Tanuki44]

By error, I posted on the German forum, but there are some possibilities for having AI Japanese planes (compatible v2.7)

 

and there are liveries to transform BF-109 and FW-190

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3308285/
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/fr/files/3308081/

 

[Lynchsl62]

On 5/3/2021 at 2:55 PM, Props said:

Being a bit of an armchair historian and having spent a lot of time on the Pacific campaigns in earnest, especially in regards to the march up the Solomons, I just plain want a Pacific theater sim! And especially a Zero! I don't care if it's an A6M2, 3, or 5 anyone of them will do, but I do think some appropriate adversaries need to be included. If you're going to do early war / Guadacanal period you have to have the F4F Wildcat, midwar the F6F Hellcat and Corsair (which would take you into the late war as well). Of course if you're going to do late war, where DCS seems to be focused right now, then you really need the N1JK-1/2 George or Ki-84 Frank to be competitive and fair (along with the A6M5), and mid-war the Ki-61 Tony.

You can't do the Pacific without the Zero. It was exclusive to the IJN but was also their most produced AC outnumbering all their other production fighters. And for a great portion of the war it flew in far greater numbers as a land based fighter than carrier based. The Ki-43 Oscar is interesting if your going to do Burma and mainland China, but was lacking in many ways compared to the Zero as pointed out in previous comments here, and did not really have much of a presence in South Pacific so is a non-starter for me.

 

As far as documentation on these types goes there is actually a lot more material available on the web (and other sources) than folks realize. I have even found links to engineering evaluations, with photos of interior airframe components, done by the US during the war for several of these aircraft on sites as diverse as the War Thunder forum (an arcade sim I refuse to fly, but I still found those links to be useful!-). I even found one of these reports on the Ki-44 Tojo none of which are in existence now except maybe in bits and pieces in the jungles New Guinea. There are also many surviving examples of some of these AC around the world where enterprising folks can dig up more technical info as well. There's a ton of good info on their carriers and other fleet vessels these being a little better documented despite many of them being destroyed rather early in the war. So personally I think it's all within the range of possibility if the devs really were committed to it.

 

Give me an escort carrier, and one fleet carrier, the Solomons or Marianas map and just a few models on each side and I'm one happy camper! The combat flight sim world has been sorely missing a good solid Pacific theater sim since IL-2 Pacific and 1946 made their debut. 

Considering the era of WW2 USAAF and USN planes that are/will be available in DCS the A6M will be outclassed. The IJN did use them to the end of war, sadly more often as Kamikaze so they can be placed but would be outclassed. 
 

I would prefer to see the Ki-84 which was produced in relatively large numbers and along with the N1JK1/2 was used as escort for the Kamikaze missions to Okinawa where they faced the F4U, F6F and also the P-51D when over the mainland. That would be a much more balanced engagement. there is only 1 surviving Ki-84 which was originally airworthy in Chino, CA but sadly when returned to Japan fell into disrepair. Chino also has the J2M3 whilst RAF Cosford has the Ki-100 both interesting late war IJN/IJA aircraft with the latter scoring the last kill against a P-51 in the war

 

 

[Mogster]

10 minutes ago, Lynchsl62 said:

Considering the era of WW2 USAAF and USN planes that are/will be available in DCS the A6M will be outclassed. The IJN did use them to the end of war, sadly more often as Kamikaze so they can be placed but would be outclassed. 
 

I would prefer to see the Ki-84 which was produced in relatively large numbers and along with the N1JK1/2 was used as escort for the Kamikaze missions to Okinawa where they faced the F4U, F6F and also the P-51D when over the mainland. That would be a much more balanced engagement. there is only 1 surviving Ki-84 which was originally airworthy in Chino, CA but sadly when returned to Japan fell into disrepair. Chino also has the J2M3 whilst RAF Cosford has the Ki-100 both interesting late war IJN/IJA aircraft with the latter scoring the last kill against a P-51 in the war

 

 

Unfortunately I suspect the problem with the Ki84 would be availability of Japanese performance data and engineering documents.
 

The surviving example has had a hard life so is probably next to useless for references. You can model these planes but how accurate would your creation be?
 

 

[Hiromachi]

Flight manuals and some technical publications are available. It takes time and patience to collect them, I've been doing so for almost a decade now and have at least 3 version fo flight manual, engine manual and some minor publications. Real problem is with aerodynamic data as Nakajima after the war as most of so called "zaibatsu" was split into 12 companies (one of them is Subaru) so there is no one unified archive or museum as you had for Mitsubishi in Nagoya. In fact, to this day, there are no certain information about aerodynamic characteristics of the Nakajima NN-2 airfoil and its derivatives. Similarly, a problem would arise with propeller as Sumitomo Heavy Industries was far behind companies like Curtiss, Hamilton or Rotol and data about each propeller to this day remain missing. So we know they produced propellers of lower efficiency but we dont know exactly how low, bar for a few aircraft where separate publications were found. Finally there is prop pitch mechanism, as Ki-84 used electric pitch changing mechanism based off French Ratier design. 

 

I guess combination of CFD and available data could allow developing Hayate but it would still be a tough task.

[OLD CROW]

Official historical version told us that from the ZEKE founded crash landed in the Aleutians (Akutan) in 1942  U.S.NAVY got the perfect testing model for deconstructing and finding the ZERO weaknesses and finish with its "invicivility" in the Pacific.

 

 

If I were really "obsessed" in find any kind of flying data I would start from the opponent's archives: NAVY & NACA (actual NASA), at this point of the history surelly they got any kind of "declassified" public files related to flying data.

[Mogster]

2 hours ago, OLD CROW said:

Official historical version told us that from the ZEKE founded crash landed in the Aleutians (Akutan) in 1942  U.S.NAVY got the perfect testing model for deconstructing and finding the ZERO weaknesses and finish with its "invicivility" in the Pacific.

 

 

If I were really "obsessed" in find any kind of flying data I would start from the opponent's archives: NAVY & NACA (actual NASA), at this point of the history surelly they got any kind of "declassified" public files related to flying data.

The problem is the Japanese and German aircraft the allies evaluated were often damaged, poorly maintained or operated incorrectly. For Japanese planes some even performed better than they did in Japanese hands as the evaluations used high quality US petrol.

[OLD CROW]

1 hour ago, Mogster said:

The problem is the Japanese and German aircraft the allies evaluated were often damaged, poorly maintained or operated incorrectly. For Japanese planes some even performed better than they did in Japanese hands as the evaluations used high quality US petrol.

 

Even those eventualities.... the data, even poor, is better than ZERO.

Edited July 20, 2021 by OLD CROW

[Gambit21]

On 7/17/2021 at 7:26 AM, Lynchsl62 said:

Considering the era of WW2 USAAF and USN planes that are/will be available in DCS the A6M will be outclassed. The IJN did use them to the end of war, sadly more often as Kamikaze so they can be placed but would be outclassed. 
 

I would prefer to see the Ki-84 which was produced in relatively large numbers and along with the N1JK1/2 was used as escort for the Kamikaze missions to Okinawa where they faced the F4U, F6F and also the P-51D when over the mainland. That would be a much more balanced engagement. there is only 1 surviving Ki-84 which was originally airworthy in Chino, CA but sadly when returned to Japan fell into disrepair. Chino also has the J2M3 whilst RAF Cosford has the Ki-100 both interesting late war IJN/IJA aircraft with the latter scoring the last kill against a P-51 in the war

 

 

 

BAh....The A6M was a dangerous opponent in the right hands up until fairly late in the war - and it's a Zero...gotta have it...there's just nothing like it.

The Hayate lacks the mystique.

 

 

 

[Ala13_ManOWar]

On 7/20/2021 at 4:27 PM, OLD CROW said:

 

Even those eventualities.... the data, even poor, is better than ZERO.

 

 

I don't know what data is available for Reisen, but since P-47 was a problem either and they could figure it out, I guess ED can do the very same now with almost every other hard to find aircraft data. Lets hope.

 

S!

[Snapage]

You cant have the pacific WW2 without the Zero and carriers! Carrier warfare is the one unique major attraction to Pacific air combat. Its like having European theater without 109s and heavy allied bombers.

[Mogster]

5 hours ago, Ala13_ManOWar said:

 

I don't know what data is available for Reisen, but since P-47 was a problem either and they could figure it out, I guess ED can do the very same now with almost every other hard to find aircraft data. Lets hope.

 

S!

There are plenty of P47s in museums and around a dozen still flying. It’s a US type so sources don’t require translation and of course there’s none of the turmoil Japan and Germany had to endure at the end of the war.
 

If data was in short supply for the P47 then it doesn’t bode well for rarer types unfortunately… Believe me I wish it wasn’t this way…

[Ala13_ManOWar]

7 minutes ago, Mogster said:

There are plenty of P47s in museums and around a dozen still flying. It’s a US type so sources don’t require translation and of course there’s none of the turmoil Japan and Germany had to endure at the end of the war.
 

If data was in short supply for the P47 then it doesn’t bode well for rarer types unfortunately… Believe me I wish it wasn’t this way…

Yeah, I know, but airworthy examples aren't useful compared to wind tunnel data, that was all lost in the Republic/Fairchild archives being destroyed and that is the data ED was looking for (peruse the forums for old threads, a very interesting story was going on there). Yak-52 was used to check if actual aircraft performance could be "recorded" from a real aircraft, then some synthetic wind tunnel was made by software matching the in flight recorded data, and that was what ED needed to prove the synthetic data was good enough for a full module. I know there's no a6m available at The Fighter Collection, but I'm sure they'll eventually work around a solution to make it happen if they will to.

 

S!

[Mogster]

23 minutes ago, Ala13_ManOWar said:

Yeah, I know, but airworthy examples aren't useful compared to wind tunnel data, that was all lost in the Republic/Fairchild archives being destroyed and that is the data ED was looking for (peruse the forums for old threads, a very interesting story was going on there). Yak-52 was used to check if actual aircraft performance could be "recorded" from a real aircraft, then some synthetic wind tunnel was made by software matching the in flight recorded data, and that was what ED needed to prove the synthetic data was good enough for a full module. I know there's no a6m available at The Fighter Collection, but I'm sure they'll eventually work around a solution to make it happen if they will to.

 

S!

As the post above says some aircraft even lack original blueprints and aerofoil data.
 

Recently the team seem to prefer to have their models verified by someone that’s flown the original. Nick Grey when asked about the prospects for the Tempest V replied that no one alive had flow one. I know there’s the Dora and K4 but they were leftovers from the original Kickstarter and probably wouldn’t have been EDs first choice now. Of course 3rd party dev’s may turn something out, their requirements may be different to EDs. We have the I16 but I’ve not heard any comments about it’s accuracy.

 

If I had to guess I’d think the Zero is probably a goer as it most likely has the best evidence base for any Japanese planes and flyable examples exist. As for further Japanese planes that seems unlikely. I’d love to see a DCS Ki84 but I’m not sure how you could create one without making stuff up.

 

 

 

[Ala13_ManOWar]

13 minutes ago, Mogster said:

As the post above says some aircraft even lack original blueprints and aerofoil data.
 

Recently the team seem to prefer to have their models verified by someone that’s flown the original. Nick Grey when asked about the prospects for the Tempest V replied that no one alive had flow one. I know there’s the Dora and K4 but they were leftovers from the original Kickstarter and probably wouldn’t have been EDs first choice now. Of course 3rd party dev’s may turn something out, their requirements may be different to EDs. We have the I16 but I’ve not heard any comments about it’s accuracy.

 

If I had to guess I’d think the Zero is probably a goer as it most likely has the best evidence base for any Japanese planes and flyable examples exist. As for further Japanese planes that seems unlikely. I’d love to see a DCS Ki84 but I’m not sure how you could create one without making stuff up.

 

 

 

Actually, Dora and K4 were tested by a veteran Luftwaffe pilot, probably not the best since it's been such a long time since that, but better than nothing and a source by himself. And yes, RRG, well Luthier in person I guess, choice, not ED for K4 and so on. I  guess, as you say, not plenty of them but since there's a6m5s still flying that's a good source. I don't know, but wish they can come up with something accurate enough.

 

About the Ki-84, there were actually one airworthy example back in the 70's IIRC, maybe it's not crazy to think something can be done.

 

S!

[Gambit21]

7 hours ago, Mogster said:

As for further Japanese planes that seems unlikely. I’d love to see a DCS Ki84 but I’m not sure how you could create one without making stuff up.

 

 

 

 

There are several flying/flyable Oscars around.

 

 

[Nealius]

The question is, how much documentation is really needed to create an AI opponent when DCS AI use SFM anyways?

 

Then there's the FC3 comparison. Those aircraft have advanced flight modeling. In the case of the Russian jets, I understand documentation to be difficult to find, so how complete are the flight models of FC3-level Russian jets? This logically means that an FC3-level Zero or other IJA/IJN aircraft could be made. 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Nealius

[Mogster]

6 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

 

There are several flying/flyable Oscars around.

 

 

Someone was turning out Ki43 replicas a few years ago.  

[Gambit21]

17 minutes ago, Mogster said:

Someone was turning out Ki43 replicas a few years ago.  

 

Cool...but I'm not talking about replicas.

I saw 2 flying at once at the Flying Heritage Museum a handful of years back.

[Mogster]

8 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

 

Cool...but I'm not talking about replicas.

I saw 2 flying at once at the Flying Heritage Museum a handful of years back.

I doesn’t seem like there’s any original flying examples now though although original airframes do exist. Duxford have a Ki43 undergoing restoration which is interesting.

[Gambit21]

12 hours ago, Mogster said:

I doesn’t seem like there’s any original flying examples now though although original airframes do exist. Duxford have a Ki43 undergoing restoration which is interesting.

 

Here's the near me...although they don't fly it anymore (I hope the museum reopens)

 

Flying heritage museum

 

At one of their shows maybe 4-5 years ago now, they had 2 Oscars and 2 Wildcats all up at the same time.

I have no idea who owned the other 2 Oscars, but the FHC's own Oscar wasn't one of them.

 

 

[IcedVenom]

We do not need Japanese planes in DCS and they have no capability to get proper documents in order to make a Japanese WWII aircraft or any other Japanese aircraft. Instead ED should focus on an Eastern Front map (such as Eastern Baltics map) and work on planes such as La-7 or La-9 and Yak-3

Edited August 17, 2021 by IcedVenom

[Gambit21]

22 hours ago, IcedVenom said:

 they have no capability to get proper documents in order to make a Japanese WWII aircraft or any other Japanese aircraft. 

 

 

That is simply not true.

[Tanuki44]

On 8/17/2021 at 7:34 AM, IcedVenom said:

We do not need Japanese planes in DCS...

 

You should have write 'I do not need ...' 

[Slice313]

19 hours ago, Tanuki44 said:

You should have write 'I do not need ...' 

 

Or "I dont need DCS"

[WinterH]

On 8/17/2021 at 8:34 AM, IcedVenom said:

We do not need Japanese planes in DCS

And why would that be?

 

I'd rather have Pacific planes from both sides than Eastern Front myself.