Playing an offline campaign featuring Ki-43 early war operations, noticed how it was set as first version armed with two 7.7 mm machine guns. Unfortunately, these latters are totally ineffective against Buffalo's and this affects significantly playability, but also realism, as I'll try to explain.

Thanks to kindness of a japanese friend, I was helped to put some order in available data, sometimes contradictory and seldom definitely wrong.

First of all "Itsu Sen" was armed with Type 89 machine gun and not, as listed by some source, Type 97, which belonged to Navy and was in use on A6M and absolutely not Type 99, that was an Army gas type, although all of the same calibre.

Second but main point, since beginning of its operational use, "Yo San" was armed with two 12.7 mm Ho-103; then, either because this latter weapon had tendency to jam, or because its synchronized rate of fire was too poor (depending on source) and exploiting complete interchangeability of the two types, one heavy MG was always replaced by one 7.7 mm as a backup or to add punch.

Would be nice if in occasion of revision or making a new campaign involving "Oscar", authors would consider this point.

Thanks,
GB

Are you talking about the crappy DGEN campaign? Not much is going to change there that hasn't been done for the last 6 years. They were almost an afterthought for Pacific Fighters.

The Oscars used during the Malayan campaign were quite a mix of armament types. The most common was the mix of light and heavy machine guns but there were others and the Ki-27 was also used for a time in here as well with just the two light machine guns (site note: This was the Ki-44s combat debut as well with an experimental squadron).

No sir. I'm speaking of Poltava's "Raging Eagles, part 2", not so recent but neither so obsolete. What strikes me is how, notwithstanding plenty of numerical proofs and veteran evidences, former Francillon's inaccuracy about early versions still resists. Probably the three versions (kou, otsu, hei) not even existed, but happened for sure that at the front there were almost only those with mixed armament. I hoped that Poltava transposed this, setting Ki-43 Ib, since it's the sole way to replicate what really happened.

I know there wer Ki-27 too, which Poltava also modeled in his campaign, but I guess they were dedicated only to CAS.

Interesting mention about Ki-44; I didn't know it debuted so early. It's really a pity that wasn't yet included in IL-2.

A good article about the issue of the Ki-43's armament:

http://www.warbirdforum.com/rdunn43.htm

That's just the article I referred to.

Rereading its notes, it is likely that root source of the error was (once again) William Green's "Famous Fighters of the Second World War". I say "once again" because same happened about Bf 109 K, whose peculiar shape of gun feeding chute fairings, on the basis of Green's book, were negated still for years after Thomas Hitchcock's work had demonstrated with plenty of evidence they were different from "bulges" of previous G-6...

People tends to stick with first notion he got, often refusing even to consider newer studies. Author's of these latter must be really good to draw attention and (sometimes) change common knowledge.

GB

I will update that (old) campaign in due time. Thanks for pointing this out!

Thanks to you for your attention and interesting campaigns!

GB

Well, I don't know that it is a balance issue per see (if I remember, almost as many Buffaloes were lost to accidents as to Ki-43sand -27s), but for sure the IL-2 representation of the different models of the Ki-43 does not always match what you would find in the history books.