Aichi D3A2 (Val)

Plane: Aichi D3A2 (Val)

Weight (Empty/Loaded/Max): 5,666 lb/ 8,378 lb /

Wing Area: 375.7sq ft

Wing Loading: 15.1 lb/sq ft / 22.3 lb/sq ft /

Length: 33' 5"

Span: 47' 2"

Wing Aspect Ratio: 5.9

Engine: 1,300hp Mitsubishi Kinsei 44 Radial

Flaps: 2 settings

Visibility:

• Front: Ok
• Sides: Ok
• Rear: Poor

Control Feel:

• Slow: Sluggish
• Near Sustained: Sluggish
• Fast: Horrible

Stall Speed 1k (No Flaps/Full Flaps) 60mph / 50mph

Guns:

Ordnance:
0: 1x500lb bomb
1: 1x500lb + 2x100lb bombs
2: 1x500lb + 2x100lb bombs
3: 1x500lb bomb

Fuel Time/Percent: 63 seconds/percent

Power/weight (Empty/Loaded/Max): 4.4 lb/hp / 6.4 lb/hp /

Corner Velocity: 210mph

Durability: Poor

WEP time: 5 minutes

Accleleration:

Climb:
1k-5k: 65s
5k-10k: 87s
10k-15k: 92s

Zoom Climb:
1k 400mph:
1k 300mph: +2,500ft

Dive:

Max Speed

Turn Performance

Corner Speed and Radii (1,000ft):

Speed: 210mph
Radius: 321ft
Sustained Turn Speed: 100mph
Sustained Turn Radius: 328ft
Full Flaps Speed: 90mph
Full Flaps Radius: 287ft

Roll Rate:
150mph: 7.0s
200mph: 7.6s
250mph: 11.2s
300mph: 17.4s
350mph:
400mph:

Minimum Full-Flaps Full-Power Split-S altitude:
150mph: 800ft
200mph: 1200ft
250mph: 1600ft
300mph:

Hoof's Tips and Opinions:

The D3A2 was Japan's primary naval dive bomber of the early years of the Pacific Conflict. Participating in battles ranging from the Indian Ocean, to Pearl Harbor, the Val, as the Allies called her, was famous for extreme accuracy and exceptional crews. As a plane, the D3A2 has one of the lowest stall speeds in the game, and a D3A2 with less than 20% gas and no bombs can approach a carrier at approximately 50-55mph, resulting in a 20-25mph overtake speed when landing on a carrier, less with a headwind.

As far as Warbirds goes, the Val is an extremely good turning plane. She turns with a Zero, and has 53 seconds of machine gun firing time to use against a fighter. Thus in a one on one engagement, if she can survive the inevitable snapshots as a fight develops, she can handily outturn an F4F and shoot one down. Unfortunately, her lack of self-sealing tanks and pilot armor means she can only take a bit of punishment before disintegrating or exploding. Her rear gunner is rather pathetic, with a single low rate-of-fire 7.7mm machine gun. This gun is about the only gun that Otto can have where Otto isn't really a threat. The main guns, firing 30 7.7mm machine gun rounds per second would take about 10 seconds of fire to destroy an F4F, the rear gun, firing less than 10 per second would probably take 30. Even with Otto's accuracy, you won't find anyone dumn enough to hold still without firing for 10 seconds so Otto can get a pilot kill. The Val is one of the few Otto equipped planes where you can safely say "Ignore otto". The Kate suffers the same problem.

As far as flying this bird, she's a decent dive bomber. Her primary weakness as a bomber is her bomb loadout, she can only carry one 500lb bomb and two 100lb bombs. Thus she can't do much damage, and needs to be deployed in numbers to be effective. Even a 109F can do better than the Val in bombing due to better high speed handling. But in a scenario, flying a Val vs a Dauntless is a toss up. Sure the Dauntless is tougher and has better guns/bombload, but anything the Japanese have can easily outmaneuver it. Not so with the Val, the Val can outturn anything the Yanks can throw at her, but is wonderful at showing how turning ability won't save you. Overall, I'd pick the SBD, since Otto will shred Japanese fighters, simply do a low-G barrel roll, and keep turning away from them, and you can easily rack up 2-3 kills before they chip enough parts off of you for you to take to the silk Not so the Val, she can't take many pings, and her Otto is useless against the armored American planes (unless the pilot is dumn enough to allow Otto a from-the-top pilot shot). And ack's extreme accuracy means you have to drop your bombs from above 5,000ft in order to avoid that one ping death the ack will give you, further reducing her effectiveness ahistorically. (Historically dive bombers were precision bombers and often dropped from below 3,000ft, or maybe higher against a ship, that was the whole point of dive breaks, to keep speed low enough to be able to pull out after dropping at such low altitude. Can't do this in WB with the Val. Higher altitude drops reduced accuracy, due to wind drift, bomb construction imprecision, etc, so you needed to be low to reduce bomb drop time, be almost vertical to minimize the effects of gravity on accuracy, and slow to give aiming time and pullout capability)

In scenarios, if F4Fs show up, mix it up with them. The Val is one of the few bombers than can actually engage fighters and have a hope of downing one without using Dead-eye Otto. The Val outclimbs (with no bombs) and outturns an F4F, rolls pretty good compared to an F4F, and has enough ammunition, plus enough maneuverability to knock of an elevator or other critical part off an F4F. Trouble is, F4F's tend to come in packs.

A good plane historically for the time, but I'd advise against flying one in a scenario until Otto/Ack's accuracy is reduced to human levels (so that Vals can perform historical attack maneuvers without suffering ahistorical 95% casualties), and even then, you'd better hope Zeros or Oscars are nearby when the Wildcats show up.

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