[MitsubishiZero]

Originally Posted by pauldy

Well i found the Novel in the Baka Tsuki website, but the translation seems to have halted.. anyways i have read some chapters

Anyways i think i might like the novels more. I dunno, it's a bit more dark than the Fanservice driven anime series..

Honestly though, if there's another Strike witches anime coming, i wished it would just retell the story..

Something more similar to the OVA wherein the girls had the "Familiar" system and wearing skirts & shorts when not on standby xD

That novel vol. 1 is only about 70% translated, but you shall see how lovely the story is with Elizabeth's actions later in the novel......Season 2 is highly unlikely to follow the novel based on what they have been telling us on magazines.......Nor it is going to follow the manga route (the Nyantype one).....

Originally Posted by Tk3997

Actually according to him IIRC at first he had no real sensation of falling because he was basically jumping into space. He only really started to feel it as he passed through like 90,000 and was decelerating IIRC.

Also I forgot to mention two rather blindingly important aspect of piston engine fighter maneuvering: speed and overspeed.

Spoiler for More rambling:

It’s so pervasive it just slipped my mind, but as noted none of these fighters could break the sound barrier, but in steep dives they could get fast enough to get into trouble. The compression of air at speeds approaching Mach 1 wasn’t well understood when some of the main fighters of WWII were designed.

As a result some of them had serious issues with compressibility which could set in at high speeds and result in a loss of control as the flight surfaces suddenly plummeted in efficiency due to the changes in air flow. When this occurred varied by airplane as it was a complex thing with many factors contributing, but it’s one of the key things that separated “good divers” from bad.

Most American planes, designed with ready access to very high performance wind tunnels had little issue (Only the P-38 had real issues beginning to loose control when approaching 500 mph, but the fitting of special dive recovery flaps did much to get rid of that issue, it could also keep up with all it’s main targets in a dive in any case so it wasn’t a huge weakness). So US aircraft remained controllable to very high speeds the Spitfire, more by luck then design, also had a very high controllable speed in a dive. German aircraft not so much the Bf-109s controls began to lock up and become very heavy at around 450 mph and by 500 it was more or less unresponsive. (This is one reason why the common US tactic to break off an unfavorable attack was to dive away, while the German tried to climb away) The Fw-190 dived better though still not as well as US aircraft.

It was significantly worse in Japanese aircraft many of them were built very lightly, and as the war dragged on, crudely, they didn’t have to much worry about compression… because the wings fell off at around 400 mph. The Zero and Oscar both had structural limits of like 400 mph, any faster and you took your life in your hands. The controls though became almost useless before even that neither plane could really roll at all past about 350 mph. later planes were somewhat more robust, but never appeared in really useful numbers (mostly due to the a continued an irrational emphasis on low speed maneuverability which slowed design and forced compromises to high speed handling. Even more so though by the lack of sufficiently powerful engines from the comparatively young engine industry, lack of power from there engine plagued Japanese aircraft throughout the entire war).

Maneuverability in general was affected by speed and the design of the plane. Japanese aircraft for most of the war were quite light and sacrificed allot for low speed handling. US aircraft by and large were much heavier being built to maneuver violently at high speed, there control surfaces and structure were tailored too it and high speeds (250-300) they actually maneuvered better then the light Japanese aircraft.

German and British aircraft tended to be somewhere between not quite as heavy and geared for high speed as US aircraft (often referred to in sim circles as “American Iron” with a mixture of fondness and consternation), but no where near as light as the Japanese aircraft. Altitude matter two as manuverlity up high had allot to do with how much power your engine could retain compared to sea level, again US aircraft almost all fitted with turbo and superchargers excelled up high (again Japanese aircraft did not, which compounded other weaknesses by meaning after late 1942 US aircraft almost always started the fight from above).

So when someone says “well X could outmaneuver Y” you best say “At what speed and at what altitude?”

Yeah I am a bit more familiar with Japanese produced WW2 planes.......it is like the Lotus Elise base model with a chassis made out of paper: very light body gives it good handling in low altitudes, but the feeble engine and the body is no good anywhere else. It doesn't has the power to make planes go fast and even if they do, their rudders froze at high speeds and you crash. You take one bullet in the non-self-sealing tank you explode and die. I would say Japan is a bit of a late starter in aviation technology so even with limited German help Japan still couldn't manage heavy-duty planes from USA or Europe....I know quite a few Japanese planes did try turbocharging their planes but as far as I know they have yet to succeed. Their jet/(hot/cold something turbine with ? stoff mixing with ? stoff which explodes if you put one in the other tank) engines are weaker and more fragile than western products as they lack the technology or the material to do it right. The Mitsubishi J8M Shūsui or the Nakajima "Kikka" (equivalents to Me 262 A-1a fighter type) are just example....