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[Aseaheru]

Allright you two, quit it. Take your time to duke this out in PMs PLEASE.

[evilcherry]

@ ebbor what prevented the sparrows from reaching a higher airspeed? As numberswise it is almost as good as an A6M. I feel either we have some really bad aeronautic design, or our engines suffered from a very serious communist statistics problem.

Seriously 900kW is a lot of power. Both planes sounded like having only 450kW for me.

[3_14159]

@Heavy bomber design: It's not a question of engine power but of power per weight ratio. And here, the twin-engined is advantaged: ca. 0.84kW/kg vs 1.2kW/kg speaks a pretty clear matter for me. That's 500kg we have to fill with something else, after all.

@New fighter:

So something with far better agility is the best way to counter it, you don't counter heavy with heavy.

You counter it with something more agile, at least in the air anyway.

We already have a nimble, agile dogfighter plane. It's called the Raven and it's losing.

Actually, the Sparrow is pretty good: We have a 'Osprey's and Sparrow's are having slight trouble defeating the thing on even odds', which I interpret as a win/loss-ratio of about 0.9 or better. But, the Lightning is a twin-engined design, which means roughly double the cost (two engines, bigger body, and so on). So the cost win/loss ratio is about 1.6 or 1.7. Not as good as Raven vs their biwing, but good nonetheless.

Except the enemy fighter beats it 1 on 1 meaning it's better, we're not ahead at all and we can't count on superior numbers over the enemies territory where we have to spread ourselves out and they can concentrate and use AA.

That's exactly the other way around. Once we start moving in their territory, we have disadvantages due to less fuel for combat, but they must spread out their fighters to cover their whole coast and not leave holes where they need two hours to get there.
But I agree that something has to be done to upgrade them, which is probably weapons-wise (see proposal 1) and engine-wise (which I will propose shortly). A new fighter can then follow in two turns, after we design yet another engine. That's, at least, how I see it.

[Patrick Hunt]

We can't focus ours to attack.

We can only send 50% out, part of it has to defend ships, part of it landing craft, part of it landing zones, part of it bombers.
Our air force will be very spread out to cover everything while the enemy can just wait for us to attack then intercept in minutes and use Radar to keep track plus it's AA.

Over enemy territory we're at a disadvantage.

[evilcherry]

You have to outnumber the enemy by a factor of say 2 before you can do an effective all-theater assault anyway.

[Patrick Hunt]

Which it's doubtful we'll achieve and the enemy will up it's pruduction and refirect old production again soon as it did with the biwing.

[3_14159]

We can't focus ours to attack.

We can only send 50% out, part of it has to defend ships, part of it landing craft, part of it landing zones, part of it bombers.
Our air force will be very spread out to cover everything while the enemy can just wait for us to attack then intercept in minutes and use Radar to keep track plus it's AA.

Over enemy territory we're at a disadvantage.

Oh, not exactly. The point is not to gain all-out air superiority but local one for the duration of the campaign. Let's assume, for example, that they have an unspecified detection method of 30km range. [I am assuming that they have nor RADAR, and even if, that that's an acceptable maximum range]. This means they have about nine minutes from detection until our planes arrive over land. Maybe another ten to get to the target and bomb it, then another ten to retreat. Let's say 30 minutes total.
Now, this means that they have either nine to fifteen minutes to intercept the planes before the damage is done, or thirty to do so until after it's dropped. This means, for  a higher speed than our planes, a distance of circa forty kilometres to intercept them - assuming the enemy planes are already in the air. So, whatever we're sending has to go up against all air patrols in a distance of forty kilometres plus closer fighters that are on alert. Since the enemy cannot keep all of its fighters in alert or in the air at once, this reduces the number of fighters they can dispatch for each threat. This may mean a reduction in numbers by 1/3 (8-hour patrols) * borderToPatrol/80km, so easily by one sixth, realistically far more.
We, on the other hand, can - for bombings at least, which were what I assumed for now, not landings - pretty easily concentrate half of our airforce on the escort in one attack, giving us a local air superiority of about three to one for a short time.
Of course, once we are over enemy territory, we have to deal with anti-aircraft guns. But, even our new 30mm gun has an effective service ceiling of 4km, while the sparrow can climb to seven. This means the main risk will be anti-aircraft artillery (something heavy, 80mm or so), which cannot hit more nimble fighters reliably. Hell, it can't even hit heavy bombers reliably.

Once invading, the whole thing looks differently, as we both have a single target needed to defend or attack, which means we both concentrate our airforces there. Then it's pretty much a fight for air superiority that we are disadvantaged in for our range.

Which it's doubtful we'll achieve and the enemy will up it's pruduction and refirect old production again soon as it did with the biwing.

So it might be necessary to actually do strategic bombing runs covered by fighters against their aircraft production factories.

[Patrick Hunt]

It's unlikely we can get the numbers for it.

In large numbers the biwings are dangerous at least as distractions for the dual engine.

We can't send bombers without more sparrows or something stronger then the enemies new toy.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

@ ebbor what prevented the sparrows from reaching a higher airspeed? As numberswise it is almost as good as an A6M. I feel either we have some really bad aeronautic design, or our engines suffered from a very serious communist statistics problem.

Seriously 900kW is a lot of power. Both planes sounded like having only 450kW for me.

a) We have only max power of engine here, another, quite important characteristic (rpm ) is missing. Same can be said about other things like propeller design, gearbox and so on...
b) Yes, surprisingly, we have worse aerodynamics than much later aircrafts, worse alloys, worse paints, worse producing machinery
c) Zeroes had 1500kg of empty weight, we have 2500kg on sparrows

[evilcherry]

@ ebbor what prevented the sparrows from reaching a higher airspeed? As numberswise it is almost as good as an A6M. I feel either we have some really bad aeronautic design, or our engines suffered from a very serious communist statistics problem.

Seriously 900kW is a lot of power. Both planes sounded like having only 450kW for me.

a) We have only max power of engine here, another, quite important characteristic (rpm ) is missing. Same can be said about other things like propeller design, gearbox and so on...
b) Yes, surprisingly, we have worse aerodynamics than much later aircrafts, worse alloys, worse paints, worse producing machinery
c) Zeroes had 1500kg of empty weight, we have 2500kg on sparrows

Zeros are of course much lighter. However I think we should be able to easily hit at least 400+ kmh with the Sparrow layout.

If you got too much power that you can't use, just connect an overdrive to it.

[3_14159]

It's unlikely we can get the numbers for it.

In large numbers the biwings are dangerous at least as distractions for the dual engine.

We can't send bombers without more sparrows or something stronger then the enemies new toy.

I dislike the notion of actually using fighters (and valuable pilots!) on distractions.

But, we need to gain air superiority on the longer term. Them producing biwings won't last long, you're right on that. That's why I would advise producing a longer-ranged strategical bomber and - should the range suffice - escort them with fighters. Priority targets would be their fighter factories if we can recognize them.
The idea is to sucker the enemy to engage with much smaller numbers than the escorting fighters. We may, however, need a longer-ranged design for that. Therefore, my proposal would be something like that:
This turn: Improve engine and armament, mount both on Sparrow Mk. II
Next turn: Develop completely new engine
Turn after: Develop completely new fighter.
With the second step only done if the engine isn't great already. This should give us faster air capacity and then lets us begin with a completely new design.

[evilcherry]

(anyway I feel the Sparrow got much more questions than answers. Must be some kind of capitalist accounting!)

[Patrick Hunt]

I meant enemy biwings. They have close to 600 planes to use as bait/distractions to allow them to pick off the Sparrows.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

I meant enemy biwings. They have close to 600 planes to use as bait/distractions to allow them to pick off the Sparrows.

a) We still have 305 ravens ( And yes, I think disbanding them before we have a lot of sparrows is a BAD idea. Ceasing production is one thing, removing aircrafts from active service is another. Ravens are bad against the twin enginer but adequate against scout planes, torpedo bombers, older fighters and slow bombers enemy may field later)
b) Enemy biwingers can't stand a fight against Sparrows, They'll just die after attacks from above.  They are to slow to evade, and maneuverability not gonna help them at all.
c) No, they can't distract sparrows from the fighting against the Twin engined, unless twin engined will choose to go low, but low attitudes is a bad place for a heavy fighter to be.
d) You forget that Osprey is a fighter-bomber, not a pure diving bomber, so our numbers of aircrafts capable for aerial fight is higher than it looks


Unless enemy will somehow manage to produce at least two hundreds of Twin engined fighters per turn, I fail to see how they can win an air war against us.

[Alexandria]

Quite simple. Your basing it purely on numbers and ignoring other factors and they can distract, you can't ignore enemy planes in a fight because yours is better.

Arrogance will get you killed.