Originally posted by Fruda
Japanese planes had small props, plus they didn't really consider much technology in their airframes. Also, the engines weren't optimized like, say, a P-51D's.
You got anything to back any of that up? At least definitions of it?
For example, the Ki-84 has lamilar flow wings like the P-51. The N1K2-J had automatic combat flaps.
The engines were optimized for different altitudes. Personally I think the P-51's was optimaized for the better altitudes, but that doesn't change the fact that the Japanese engines were also optimized for a given altitude.
Looking at photos of late war Japanese aircraft the props don't look particularly thin to me. They aren't Fw190 thick, but they aren't Spitfire Mk Ia thin either. They seem about like the thinker blades on Mosquitos and P-47s. Further, they have four blades unlike the German props.
The lack of high top end speed isn't found in their designs, as American tests verify, it is found in their low production standards, poor maintainance in the late war and in the poor fuel. Their designs were fine, but what kind of militaristic idiocy causes one to draft ones machine tool specialists and production experts to be conscription infantry? In a industrial war, which WWII was, as an industrial combatant, which Japan was, it is sheer idiocy to deprive your industry of the skilled workers needed to put quality weapons into the hands of your soldiers, sailors and airmen and yet Japan did that too.
