Talk:Nakajima Ki-44/@comment-172.88.5.215-20160218063710

I like the Shoki. They should have produced more of them. No newer design was as reliable untill the Ki 100 and J2M5. And those two didn't move the production needle over 500.

It could fight the US pilots on their terms, and tackle B-29s like none before it could.

A 20 sec full circle turn and high landing speed put off pilots spoiled by the Ki 43, but  by world standards it was agile. It not only out-dove the Ki 43, but also the Ki 84 that came after it! Climb was it's hallmark as a dedicated interceptor. Most US fighters couldn't match it. It was faster than most contemporary fighters too.

The 40mm Ho-301 of the Ki 44-IIc put a hole in a B-29 1.5m wide! Still, the low M/V of this cannon had a range of only 150m. The Ki 44-IIc of the 70th Sentai for example had some success perhaps with other cannons. I'm unsure which ones. A Russian report mentions 37mm Ho-203 in their case. I'm not so quick to dismiss the 20mm H0-3. It had ballistics like the US 20mm Hispano without the jamming. It was slower @ 400 rpm, but a quartet of them would compensate. It also had the heaviest 20mm shells. The later 20mm Ho-5 was the opposite. It had world beating RoF but perhaps the  lightest shells.

Since the Ki 84 successor was less reliable, I think the Ki 44 should have continued in parallel production. Or install the reliable Ki 44 engine in the initial batches of Ki 84s until the powerful Ha-45 matured. I think the Ki 44 deserved more than it got. Only the Ki 43 and A6M were as reliable and they were obsolete long before the Shoki. All that followed it, proved unreliable: the Ki 61, Ki 84, J2M3, N1K fighters. The Shoki should have been in stronger numbers with B-29s on the horizon. Imagine 6,000 Ki 44-IIc cannon packing interceptors! Not so many Ki 43s.and A6M5s. Nakajima made most of the A6Ms don't forget.

An alternate would be to use the reliable Ha-112 that was turned down for the A6M5 in 1943 and put it in the new Ki 84 like Nakajima did much later and called it the Ki 116 prototype at the Mansyu plant. It could still do 385 mph but climb was only so so. A side effect was that it weighed half a ton less than the regukar unreliable Ki 84, so it was far more aerobatic. This could have been in place of the thousands of underpowered A6M5s! At least the ones built by Nakajima since mid-war. They still needed a fast climbing Shoki interceptor to remain in production too. Japan needed more reliable interceptors after 1943. Don't you agree?

1,200 or so MG packing Shokis was only a good start in my opinion.

The Ki 44-III sounds like a Ki 84 pre-protoype (with the unreliable Ha-45 and new wing). It's 4x20mm Ho-5s is better than 4x12.7mm Ho-103s at least. It's 37mm cannons would overwhelm any other fighter's accuracy. However,the Shoki had the most stable gun platform with the tailfin so far back. No Japanese fighter was as accurate.