800mZero

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How bout a meat ball


What was the first fixed wing aircraft, made of metal ordered by the army after the ww2?

SimonCraig1

L-19A Bird Dog?

800mZero

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Simon Craig your up!

SimonCraig1

This may be very easy.....

I'm looking for a pilot.

1. Amongst her many achievements she was the first woman to fly a helicopter.

a65l

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Hanna Reitsch

SimonCraig1

On the nose. Also the first woman to fly a jet, a rocket and a manned flying bomb.

a65l you are up!

a65l

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First, let me apologize if it takes me a little while to respond to posts. I'm in a little different time zone that most of you, and will be traveling in the coming days.

So, having said that... what airplane do Idescribe?


1. When introduced, this type enjoyed superiority over it's opponents, but most of that was due to the increased experience level of its pilots.
2. This type was chosen over the comptetition, even though they enjoyed superior speed and rate of climb, due to it's manuverability.
3. That decision colored the future selection process for aircraft for the service this airplane served....

The Raven

F-86 Sabre

Ernie P.

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Fokker Dr1. Thanks; Ernie P.

800mZero

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Spitfire.

SimonCraig1

Mitsubishi A5M?

Ernie P.

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Ooohhhh.... That's a good answer. Wish I had thought of that one. Thanks; Ernie P.

a65l

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First, let me apologize if it takes me a little while to respond to posts. I'm in a little different time zone that most of you, and will be traveling in the coming days.

So, having said that... what airplane do Idescribe?


1. When introduced, this type enjoyed superiority over it's opponents, but most of that was due to the increased experience level of its pilots.
2. This type was chosen over the comptetition, even though they enjoyed superior speed and rate of climb, due to it's manuverability.
3. That decision colored the future selection process for aircraft for the service this airplane served....
4. The type had two different code names
5. It introduced two new features to the service it served, and those two features were universally used by follow on aircraft

Charlie P.

Polikarpov I-16

"Rat" or "Fly" nicknames (and known to the Finns as the "Flying Squirrel")

World's first fulllycantilevered monoplane & first retractable gear.

And, judging by my FMSsimulator, it is ungodly maneuverable.

psb667

p40

Ernie P.

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Oscar? Often mistaken for the Zero. Thanks; Ernie P.

The Oscar was to change that, but not to the extent hoped. Superior marksmanship/airmanship was to make up for the lack of heavy guns. This clever hope failed to materialize. The plane's light wing loading and fundamentals limited its top speed, diving ability and punch. Light armament dogged the design to the end, and doomed its pilots as well, and not for a lack of trying...the design could simply not carry more guns, not on pylons, not anywhere, although it was tried desperately down the years (finally with an unsuccessful nose-stretch for twin cannon.) as time ran out for Japan. But the beautiful if fragile Oscar created its share of havoc and horror for Allied airman upon the outbreak of hostilities and down to the end of the war. Beside its simple pure beauty as an aeroplane it had a number of strengths. For one it was stable, predictable and easy to fly, land, approach in and handle on the ground, and it spun safely in any configuration. It was used as a trainer extensively. For another it had a fantastic rate of climb and the tightest turning radius of the entire pack. Although it lacked the Zero's top speed and wing-cannon punch, it turned inside of it and climbed faster, with the same power in the respective airframes. Weak firepower and inadequate Army pilot training and tactics/philosophy were to blame for the Oscar's lack of success relative to the Zero. Still, Oscars shot down a frightful number of Allied planes and airmen right down to the end, (suffering high attrition themselves for the above reason and backwards fighter tactics) and were a mainstay (along with the Ki-84 Frank) of the Army's large "Special Attack" (Kamikaze) program. They were found in nearly every region of the Pacific and in very large numbers in China.

But perhaps the greatest advantage the Oscar had over its contemporaries (and shared with the P-51, Zeke and Frank) was its RANGE. It was an extremely long-legged airplane and its pilot was under little stress about time as a result. With its large wing tanks and external stores it was an extremely long ranged fighter airplane, not unlike the P-51. It had a huge radius of action and the pilot never felt under constant pressure to figure out just where he was and to plot a hurried course home, with its attendant distraction. For example, an Oscar or Zero out of Taiwan could reach the Philippines, fly and fight for 30 minutes and return to base with reserve fuel. This was an important lesson of the Battle of Britain; all those Bf 109s that never made it home for want of fuel, and Itokawa (and Mitsubishi's Horikoshi) made use of it. The location of the tanks in the wings and under the cockpit, without the dangerous fwd tank, made the plane more survivable in combat or operational accidents; they didn't catch fire as easily as the Zero. On the negative side was a certain structural weakness in high G pullouts and a reluctance to recover from terminal velocity dives, in which they couldn't really get going all that fast anyway. They could not easily pursue a diving P-40, for example. And soon the allied aircraft got faster as we know...

a65l

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Lots of good guesses so far, getting a little warmer here and there....


1. When introduced, this type enjoyed superiority over it's opponents, but most of that was due to the increased experience level of its pilots.
2. This type was chosen over the comptetition, even though they enjoyed superior speed and rate of climb, due to it's manuverability.
3. That decision colored the future selection process for aircraft for the service this airplane served....
4. The type had two different code names
5. It introduced two new features to the service it served, and those two features were universally used by follow on aircraft
6. It was considered a good match for the I-16 initially, but that changed later....
7. One of its major deficiencies in combat was due to number 2 above..

Charlie P.

Fiat CR.32?

proptop

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I-15?
Later models had retractable landing gear...

I think they might have also gone from open cockpit to enclosed?

Ernie P.

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The Brewster F2A Buffalo. Thanks; Ernie P.

a65l

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Lots of good guesses so far, getting a little warmer here and there....


1. When introduced, this type enjoyed superiority over it's opponents, but most of that was due to the increased experience level of its pilots.
2. This type was chosen over the comptetition, even though they enjoyed superior speed and rate of climb, due to it's manuverability.
3. That decision colored the future selection process for aircraft for the service this airplane served....
4. The type had two different code names
5. It introduced two new features to the service it served, and those two features were universally used by follow on aircraft
6. It was considered a good match for the I-16 initially, but that changed later....
7. One of its major deficiencies in combat was due to number 2 above..
8. The airplane had fixed landing gear
9. It turned out to be a very poor match to the Brewster Buffalo
10. The type was used extensively against the AVG, but proved again to be a poor match to the P-40

Experten109/40

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KI-27

Ernie P.

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Mitsubishi Claude? Thanks; Ernie P.

The Mitsubishi A5M was the immediate predecessor of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter. This small, low-wing monoplane with fixed landing gear was a transition plane, yet it marked a decisive step in the prewar evolution of Japanese naval aviation. The prototype made its first flight on February 4, 1935, and then went through a series of flight tests. The aircraft was put into production in 1936, with a total of 1,094 A5Ms were built in several versions before production ceased in 1940. When the Pacific war began, the Allies still thought that the A5M equipped the bulk of the Japanese Navy fighter units and they assigned the code name "Claude" to the aircraft, while reserving the codename "Sandy" for what they thought was a version of the aircraft with inverted gull wings. No Sandys were ever encountered by the Allies, however, as the sole prototype was destroyed during testing in 1935. With the exception of the attack on Davao in the Phillipines, no Claudes participated in front-line actions against the Allies, and most of the A5Ms were used in Japan by second-line and training units during the war. The few A5Ms that remained by war's end were expended in kamikaze attacks against Allied ships off of the coast of Japan.

Charlie P.

By George (Or "Nate", or "Abdul" in China), I think he's got it.

Nakajima Ki-27

a65l

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KI-27.. spot on. As well as I can divine from my sources, the first fighter aircraft in service with the Japanese Army to feature less than 2 wings and an enclosed cockpit.

In 1935, the Imperial Japanese Army held a competition between Nakajima, Mitsubishi, and Kawasaki to design a low-wing monoplane to replace the Kawasaki Ki-10 (Army Type 95 Fighter) biplane. The new fighter was to have also a better performance than the experimental Mitsubishi Ki-18.

The results were the Nakajima Ki-27, the Kawasaki Ki-28, and the Mitsubishi Ki-33 (a modification of the Mitsubishi A5M carrier-based fighter). The Nakajima design was based on its earlier Ki-11 monoplane fighter which lost to the Ki-10 in the Type 95 Fighter competition. When the follow-up Nakajima Ki-12 proposal with a liquid-cooled engine and retractable landing gear was deemed too complex by the Japanese officials, the Ki-27 was designed by Koyama Yasushi to have an air-cooled radial engine and fixed landing gear. The aircraft had the Nakajima trademark wing with a straight leading edge and tapered trailing edge which would reappear again on the Ki-43, Ki-44, and Ki-84.

The Ki-27 made its first flight on 15 October 1936[7][8]. Although it had a slower top speed and worse climb performance than its competitors[9], the Army chose the Nakajima design for its outstanding turning ability granted by its remarkably low wing loading. The Army ordered 10 pre-production samples (Ki-27a) for further testing, which featured an enclosed cockpit with sliding canopy and larger wings.

The type was officially accepted into service in 1937 as the Army Type 97 Fighter. In addition to Nakajima, the Ki-27 was also manufactured by Tachikawa Aircraft Company Ltd and Manshukoku Hikoki Seizo KK, with a total of 3,368 built before production ended in 1942.


The Ki-27 was the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force's main fighter until the start of World War II. When placed into combat service over northern China in March 1938, the Ki-27 enjoyed air superiority until the introduction of the faster Soviet-built Polikarpov I-16 fighters by the Chinese.


A Ki-27 as used in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.In the 1939 Battle of Khalkhin Gol against the USSR in Mongolia, the Ki-27 faced both Polikarpov I-15 biplane and the I-16 monoplane fighters. In the initial phase of the conflict, its performance was a match for the early I-16 models it faced, and considerably superior to the I-15 biplane. With clearly better trained and experienced Ki-27 pilots, the IJAAF gained aerial superiority. The deficiencies of the Ki-27 included a lack of armor protection for the pilot, absence of self-sealing or fire suppression in the fuel tanks and inadequate armament of two 7.7 mm (.303 in) machine guns. Despite these faults, whenever Ki-27s managed to scatter an enemy formation and engage in dogfights, the Soviets had little chance of escaping unscathed.

Later the Soviet Air Force started to receive improved and new types including an improved I-16. The faster, more heavily armed, armored and more robust I-16 proved to be superior to the Ki-27. The new I-16 also allowed Soviet pilots to routinely escape from the Ki-27 in a dive. The VVS started to use new combat tactics consisting of flying in large tightly knit formations, attacking with altitude and/or speed advantage, and hit-and-run (high-energy) tactics. Consequently, as Japanese pilots began to be exhausted by the strain of constant combat, losses soon became heavy, and as a result, in spite of the Ki-27's excellent maneuverability and early performance, the Japanese claim of 1,252 downed enemy aircraft (six times the official Soviet losses number and three times as high as the actual number of committed Soviet aircraft in total[10]) is clearly unrealistic. Top scoring pilot of the incident and top scoring IJAAF pilot on the Ki-27 and overall WW2 IJAAF ace was Warrant Officer Hiromichi Shinohara, who claimed 58 Soviet planes (including a IJAAF record of 11 in one day) whilst flying Ki-27s, only to be shot down himself by a number of I-16s on 27 August 1939.

The preference of Japanese fighter pilots of the Ki-27's high rate of turn caused the Army to focus almost exclusively on maneuverability, a decision which came back to haunt them later as it handicapped the development of faster and more heavily-armed fighters. The Ki-27 served until the beginning of World War II in the Pacific, escorting bombers attacking Malaya, Singapore, Netherlands East Indies, Burma and the Philippines (where it initially fared poorly against the Brewster Buffalo).

The type also saw extensive action against the American Volunteer Group in the early months of the war. Soon outclassed by the American Curtiss P-40s, the Ki-27 was replaced in front line service by the Nakajima Ki-43, with surviving examples continued to serve as a trainer.

The Ki-27 was also exported for use with Manchukuo and Thai armed forces, seeing combat with both. In Thai service, Ki-27s reportedly damaged two P-51 Mustangs and shot down one P-38 Lightning. Near the end of World War II, a few Ki-27s were equipped with up to 500 kg (1,100 lb) of explosives for a kamikaze role,

You're up P-40 san.....