In reference to the apparent lack of development for a Pacific Campaign...

[reschke]

First let me start off by saying that I have been a part of and follower of the IL-2 community for 20 years...man that's a long dang time.

 

In just coming back and reading the forums I was stunned to see a bunch of posts regarding the lack of information on Japanese aircraft from WW2 and how it appears that the developer is not able to find/gather needed information. I remember many years ago helping dig into some research needed because I had an out of print copy of a book that detailed flight testing information on a German aircraft from WW2. Anyway in my reading over the last couple of days and doing a quick search I wasn't able to find any information regarding these links I will post below. It could be that I was searching for terms that were not used/relevant to the post or information that I post below was already covered and passed on to the developer. If so; I hope that you all will excuse me for my lack of adequate search abilities in this forum. Anyway on to the post.

I remember back in the early days there was a bunch of detailed information that was produced (aka found) in the archives of US and British aerospace testing and evaluation post WW2 of a large number of Axis aircraft. For whatever reason the lion's share of the testing was done on the European Theater aircraft but some have stated that was because most of the lost aircraft from Japan was due to them being lost over water, crashed in the Aleutian Islands or in extremely difficult to reach areas of dense jungle. In reference to the full recovery of a Japanese Zero it was tested by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at Langley Memorial Laboratory in the large wind tunnel over a weekend in March of 1943; after being flown by the US Navy in San Diego and then transported to Anacostia, MD for more test flights before it proceeded on to Wright Patterson Air Base for more testing.

However it is known that General Hap Arnold stated that there should be at least 4 of every type of aircraft retained for study from the Japanese Navy and Air Force. As a result at least 115 Japanese aircraft in Japan alone were stored at Yokohama Naval Station for shipment back to the US by the Technical Air Intelligence Unit. Unfortunately only a handful of those aircraft made it back and were able to be evaluated before funding ran out and the majority were scrapped or sent to museums. However those same units were responsible for restoration and flying Japanese aircraft that were damaged and or captured at various airfields or crash sites throughout the earlier times of the war. A short list of those aircraft is listed on the Rising Decals, Dying Sun website. Those aircraft that were evaluated were known to have performed well enough to be a resource for future aircraft development and as such it is known that there is NACA information on all of those Japanese aircraft including the detailed information from the TAIU units that were posted all over the Pacific and Indochina theaters. There is also information from the British version of NACA on some other aircraft that the US was unable to test at Wright Patterson and other locations. It just takes some time to dig up that information and honestly there are a ton of flight test documents that other developers have gotten access to over the years; therefore you don't have to reinvent the wheel when plugging the information into the programs; the developer just has to take the time to do it and not rely on some other program to do it for them.

 

For a small fortune of <$20 USD you can buy the book that details the testing of these Japanese aircraft from the Osprey Publishing website and the title of the book is "Wings of the Rising Sun". In fact in the acknowledgment section of the book it lists the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, AL as one of the groups of people that assisted with helping put the book together.

Below is a link to some of the pictures from the book.
https://www.theamerican.co.uk/pr/ft-Wings-of-the-Rising-Sun