After months of playing, if lucky, 1-2 hours per week, and flying 109s and 190s, I've discovered both the Spits and the N1K2. It was like a revelation. I mean, I'd flown and turnfought Spits before but had little idea how easy it is to wrack up kills in both the Spixteen and Seafire. Saturday, I got an easy ten landed (installments of 2, 3,3,2) kills in the N1K2. I had no idea what a fine bomber buster/dogfighter this thing is. Indeed, on one of my sorties, I approached a triad of B-26s flown by some guy name "Fangsout" and, by slewing the rudder a bit, blew away 2 of em on the first pass and saw the system message before I even knew I'd downed 'em. Dealing with the third was cake after that.
The George is a fine balance of maneuverability, firepower, robustness, and speed. As for the Spits, well, they're just easy - call 'em a Noob special. By the end of my "experiment" away from the LuftStable, I got 17 kills (and died a few times too, just in case anybody thinks I'm braying - though my fighter ranking went from dismal to respectable - I climbed about a thousand spots), two assists in about 2-3 hours this w/e and it precipitated some further thought on other late-war Japanese types.
I found 3 right away that looked intriguing - the Ki-100, Ki-102, and Ki-44. All three meet the, imj, rather silly inclusion criteria - which I'd replace with, "if we've got test data, include 'em, proto, experimental, ALL, as time and priority permit".
The Nakajima Ki-44 shoki was mostly a buffbuster. The Kawasaki Ki-100 was a derivative of the Ki-61 and served as a high altitude interceptor. Oddly, a simple search here at the site revealed nothing on it or the ki-61-ii (using ki-100 I truned up 40 pages of junk that appeared totally unrelated, though I didn't rifle through all of it, ki-61-ii turned up nada). The Kawasaki Ki-102 was a twin groundpounder. This last, at only 241 copies, would, admittedly, have had marginal impact on the war.
As for the Ki-100, it too was produced only in a small quantity (275 copies). The Ki-44, otoh, would've been more significant and HAS been written of here before.
Anyway, I want 'em all and am re-energized on flying again. Also, I died twice at the hands of HiSpd in his Tempest this w/e. He's renewed my appreciation of "that type" of fighting - I guess you'd call it hiE B and Z. In the D-9, though, typically my gunnery lets me down. I miss way too often on my high-speed pass. It's very cool to see that from the victim side, though, to understand how it's meant to work.
