J7W1 In War Thunder : A Basic Review

the j7w Flies for Japan in War Thunder let's check it out the Japanese had experimented with Canard Pusher designs as early as 1943 and had actually constructed a few proof of concept gliders they tested one of them with an engine which ended up working out pretty well and validated the basic layout and aerodynamic shape designated as the mxy6 this prototype looked very similar to what would become the j7w but had fixed landing gear and a more rounded overall appearance military leaders felt that the design was pretty forward-thinking and the potential of converting it to use a jet engine when one was ready wasn't lost on them so they decided to take a risk and fund development of an operational aircraft this eventually became the j7w this was a Navy program and the design work actually progressed fairly quickly owing in large part to the work that was done with the earlier gliders however construction was another issue as by this point in 1944 the war had turned against Japan and resources were in short supply the Prototype wasn't ready until 1945 and ground testing revealed that there were some serious problems with engine cooling an attempt was made at a first flight in July but more problems revealed themselves during the takeoff run and the pilot had to abort due to excessive engine torque and a premature aerodynamic pitch-off that led to a prop strike the design defects were all corrected and the first successful test flight took place on August 3rd only two additional flights were made before Japan's surrender still during those three flights the Prototype showed good performance and had already been ordered into mass production as a land-based bomber interceptor a second prototype was built but primary sources disagree if it was ever fitted with an engine there were also a few follow-up versions of the j7w that were planned but none of them ever got off the drawing board in the end the plane showed strong potential as an Interceptor but it was just too little too late what we get in War Thunder is the j7w1 shinden a fighter and Rank 4 of the Japanese air tray with a battle rating of 6.0 the j7w is armed with a cluster of four type 5 30 millimeter cannons right up on top of the nose the one second burst mass for the set of cannons is over 10 kilograms which is just insane the real catch though is that the plane only carries 60 rounds per gun which isn't a lot of endurance and the j7w runs out of ammo very quickly without really strict Trigger Discipline and pro level aiming for ammo belts you get the usual selection of the late War Japanese prototype plans I'm gonna make this easy though just take the Tracer belt all of the other belts contain at least one practice round that does essentially no damage meanwhile the Tracer Bell is solid full of high explosive rounds with 59 grams of TNT equivalent this hit incredibly hard in almost any shot you connect with against an air Target is going to cause a critical hit when you're using this belt against ground targets again use the Tracer belt you can kill light Vehicles outright and cause a lot of superficial damage to heavier targets for loadouts the j7w can carry two or four 60 kilogram bombs these are basically dead weight they do almost no damage against strategic base targets and only have a two meter blast radius you need basically a direct hit even to take out an AI controlled artillery piece and I don't say this very often but the external weapons on this plane are really just useless in terms of its flight performance the shinden is built for high altitude combat at lower levels the news isn't very good despite being broadly in the super prop category the acceleration isn't great the rate of climb is pretty average and its maximum speed isn't especially impressive it doesn't turn very well below 500 kilometers an hour and it's got really weird energy retention in a sustained turn there's an energy sweet spot right at around 360 kilometers an hour where you can hold a horizontal turn without losing speed but the turn rate will be garbage now there are two situations where the flight performance can be a bit more respectable if you're fast or if you're up high once the speed is over 500 kilometers an hour or so the overall maneuverability gets significantly better with turn rate and loop performance both noticeably improved by a pretty significant margin if you can get up to high altitude and by High I mean like six or seven thousand meters the performance of the j7w drops off significantly less than most other planes it faces and it's genuinely Superior to most other stuff if you can get up that high and actually get into combat the problem is high altitude combat like that just doesn't really happen in War Thunder very often so there's a lot of wasted potential that you'll never get to use you can drop combat flaps up to about 500 kilometers an hour and the wings rip a little under 900. combined with some pretty heavy elevator compression above 750 kilometers an hour you're going to want to be really careful in steep Dives there are a few other considerations to keep in mind too the plane doesn't take damage very well and even glancing hits from low caliber machine guns can be enough to cause some pretty serious damage or just set the thing on fire and when it's damaged the flight performance gets reduced even further plus with the engine in the back it gets taken out pretty easily if anyone's chasing you it also seems like the plane just spontaneously catches on fire anytime somebody's shooting at you and it's a pretty big Target compared to most other single engine Fighters so overall the survivability is pretty low taking the j7w out into combat is exciting but it can also be really tricky you don't have the climb performance to beat more well-rounded super props up to altitude so unless you spend like seven minutes side climbing at the start of a match and just wait for everybody else to dive into combat before you turn towards the battle you're usually not going to have a significant altitude advantage since the plane also doesn't accelerate any better than comparable props at this BR it can also be a challenge to get or maintain a speed advantage positioning tactics end up being really important with this plane and getting up to a medium altitude then using boom and zoom energy fighting is generally the best way to go but it can take a couple of minutes to set that up now another thing to consider are the guns the type 5 cannons hit incredibly hard as I mentioned earlier but they're low velocity with a low cyclic rate and it takes a lot of practice to get good with them and I certainly don't claim to be it's not just with this plane but with the Japanese type 5 30 millimeters generally I personally frequently find myself with an opponent flying in between my shots even if my aim is correct when I'm using a sustained burst but again the good news is if you can connect the Tracer belt does some really heavy damage having all the Firepower right on the center line can make aiming a little bit simpler sometimes but the plane tends to be a little unstable on the z-axis which can be annoying when you're trying to line up a shot plus only 60 rounds per gun so lots of give and take with this plan in terms of ground attack the j7w isn't really well suited for being a Ground Pounder the pathetic bombs and low ammo count with the Cannons really Hold This Plane back from being very effective at either close air support and tank battles or bombing ground targets grinding out in air battles just stick to air combat visually the j7ws are pretty slick and unusual looking plane personally I love the thing and it looks way ahead of its time you can get three paint jobs for it and all of them look pretty nice with the sharp mouth skin really standing out as an attention grabber but my personal preference is just the normal Japanese green ing this one isn't too bad and there are some small Landing wheels on the bottom of the vertical stabilizers so you can actually land this thing if one or both of your rear Landing legs are blown off you still need the nose wheel though now it can drop gear and Landing flaps a little over 300 kilometers an hour so you can lock up the brakes immediately after touching down with no risk of a nose over just make sure to avoid zigzags on the runway since the gear is pretty tall and the plane is top heavy so it's gonna tip over if you're not careful now the cockpit gives some average visibility and the instruments are easy to find but here's the thing the four cannons aren't in the nose they're on top of the nose so when you fire them the muzzle flash is right in your field of view for me this is a serious distraction and the plane was really annoying to fly out in VR the cockpit itself is fine but the plane is difficult and frustrating with the headset to close out on the j7w1 shinden this plane has an absolutely and appropriate amount of Firepower concentrated right on the center line its high altitude performance is excellent and it's pretty agile at very high speeds however it loves to catch on fire it doesn't have much ammo and its low speed performance is just awful the final verdict on the j7w1 is that this plane just feels like it's built out of wasted potential its performance really shines in specific situations that you won't get to take advantage of in War Thunder and it doesn't compare well against more rounded planes in its BR range except for Firepower my goodness does this thing breathe fire as always thanks for watching

Channel: Tim's Variety War Thunder

Views: 17,159

Keywords: war thunder, warthunder, war thunder review, war thunder gameplay, review, war thunder update, j7w1, shinden, j7w, j7w-1, j7-w, j7-w1

Id: 9IiSr3zLS1A

Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2023