As I've found lately, Francillon wasn't infallible. He made some mistakes. He created a new model of Betty that didn't exist, mis-labeled the squadron of planes in an apparently widely posted picture, etc.
I don't like relying on only one source... Especially if that source is given credibility because of a "grandfather clause" where it's been around the longest -- often some of the older stuff is the most inaccurate. Francillon may be nice, but he's not perfect. Might want to branch out.
As for your dispersions about my "radioactive status" I neither asked for nor looked for this, and only a fool sees a high post count as a sign of authority. I do take one small bit of pride in the fact I don't post in the O'club (where 90% of the other high posters pad their count).
Where? Where do I get this? Well you're relying so heavily on Francillon, I'd have expected you to at least read some of his writing on the matter!!!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4661601/Aircraft-Profile-070-Nakajima-Ki84Hint, page 8 covers several points. It also helps differentiate the -Ib as being identical to the -Ia, and the -II as being a different model with an engine change. Now, either you can accept Francillon's word, as you wanted to in your previous post.... Or you can remain skeptical in which case neither of our posts means much (both being based on Francillon) and you need to go research some more before making blanket statements like:
"Firstly no, the Ki-84-II Hayate-Kai might have had a wooden tail section but that is the extend of wood employed in this version. I'm still researching this at the moment." Well... Do you know? Or are you still researching? Not "it appears that" or "so far" but just plain blanket-statement "no, but I don't know"??
It's nothing to be ashamed of if you get the wrong designation with the wrong craft or configuration. However it's NOT a cut-and-dried issue when talking about the Japanese nomenclature.
Example:
http://78sentai.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=33&sid=2b9e80e31c8d24e6c56c3cb1cb721317It's about Ki-61s and Ki-43s, but it illustrates the many different ways the Japanese and the Americans referred to the same aircraft.
So it's a case of "You keep using dat word... I do not think it means what you think it means" in regards to the -Ib designation. To avoid any such issues with myself I've spelled out my words clearly enough (so I would think). There WAS a model of the -Ia armed with 4x20mm. That is what I am talking about. There WAS a revised model with a different engine, wing modificatons, and a wooden tail, and NO I'm not confusing the Ki-106. This was considered to be the -II, and the 4x20mm could be considered in US designation codes to be a Ki-84-IIb, but the similarity does not mean they were the same craft with 2 names.
You're saying the 2 names applied to the same plane. I'm saying you're wrong, and that the system was so muddled that it's a mistake many have made before you. Take the Me109/Bf109 debate and multiply it by 10, and you'll have a fraction of the issues with Japanese naming conventions.
This seems to sum it up nicely, since you don't believe anything I type
http://www.pilotfriend.com/photo_albums/timeline/ww2/Nakajima%20Ki%2084%20Frank.htm"The Ki-84-II or Hayate Kai was an attempt to conserve valuable supplies of aluminum by employing large numbers of wooden components in the manufacture of the Hayate. The rear fuselage, certain fittings, and modified wingtips were made of wood, with all the wood work being carried out at a shadow factory at Tanuma. The engine was the Nakajama [Ha-45] 21, 25 or 23 with low-pressure fuel injection. Armament consisted of four 20-mm or two 20-mm and two 30-mm cannon. The designation Ki-84-II was actually a Nakajima designation, the aircraft in JAAF service retaining the Ki-84-Ib or -Ic designation, depending on armament."
If you read my previous link (japanese nomenclature) you'll see that often the pilots didn't use any of the differentiation or model numbers, they just called it a single name regardless of the model/variant. It's because of this that you're thinking the -Ib and the -II are the same. The official designations from Nakajima, the folks that designed it, suggest otherwise. Mind you I'm not an expert but I have read quite a bit about it lately. I can definitely say I don't think you have a complete picture.
Now, let's split hairs.... The Japanese fuel was limited in quality at the end of the war and the manufacturing processes on both the Ki-84 airframe and components as well as on the later-model engines was sub-par. Regardless of the fact that the designed power was higher, most of those -II with the newer engine seemed to run at reduced rates mimicking the performance of the -I. In fact, sometimes the performance was slow enough and bad enough that a Japanese pilot couldn't tell if his plane would even be able to climb up and meet the enemy. I've read a comment that some pilots thought the Ki-100 was faster. Consider that! If the aircraft failed to perform so badly that a simpler, older, airframe performs better than it. It's not the first time I've read this about late war Japanese production values in regards to other planes. In Aces High we naturally don't have such malfulnction problems. However we do model real-war performance rather than souped up US test runs. If we got any -II in-game it probably wouldn't be any different in real performance (although possibly tail-heavy -- you don't just wrap a wooden veneer to shape a tail, as the Germans did with late Fw190s you have to build the entire internal frame, ribs, braces, structures to hold the stabilizers, etc, THEN cover in fabric or wooden veneer. Often it added considerable weight as compared toe empty shells of aluminum they replaced.)
