The B-17E which did see initial service in the Pacific in 1941 was probably uptiered for balance reasons, though its European debut was in 1942, matching its current tier. The Japanese tree also lacks planes that were introduced around this period, especially fighter aircraft, explaining the down-tiering of the first 2 models of the Ki-61-I. As with Era I, the great disparity of aircraft performance has made Gaijin try to level the playing field, especially for the Soviets, by uptiering the Bf-109F4s and Spitfire Vs, and down-tiering the Laggs and introducing the first La-5. In 19, the only relatively modern planes available to the Soviet Airforce that are in game were the Mig-3 and the Lagg-3-series 8, hardly a match for the Bf-109Fs that were to come flying over the fields of Russia in 1941. Finally, the Soviets, not yet at war with Germany, suffered due to the political circumstances around the rise of Josef Stalin that hampered greatly among other things, aircraft development. The Japanese on the other hand have the infamous A6M2, a plane that served as a nasty wake up call to the current available American and Commonwealth aircraft in service at the same time. America, seeing war on the horizon with Japan and the situation in Europe, has newer aircraft made such as the P-40 and P-39 and the venerable B-17E. German and British aircraft development enters into a race, with new variants of the Bf-109 pitted against upgraded Hurricanes and the new Spitfires as the Battle of Britain raged. When put side by side, even with the limited selection of implemented aircraft in game, a clear pattern emerges between the initial combatant nations during this period. Moving to Era II, this is where it gets interesting. The current tier I bombers of the American line all entered action 1940+. A good example of this is the American early bombers. This does give some insight into how the tiers are currently: With such disparity in Era I, it is not surprising that certain planes that entered service much later were pressed into the first Era as a balancing measure. II, while America had the P-36 and the F2A-1 Buffalo as its main front-line fighters at the time. In the same period, Britain was somewhat forward looking with the first mark of the Hurricane out alongside the Gladiator Mk. Germany already had fielded the Bf-109 E-1 at the start of 1939! Notably, Japan is missing the Ki-27 in the current release tree, which was fielded to great success against the Soviets. As such, if you look at the aircraft of the period, Germany, Russia and Japan have a larger selection of aircraft precisely because they fought in these conflicts. In the interwar period, we had the Spanish Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese conflict that led to the Soviet-Japanese Border Wars (which is represented in-game by Khalkin Gol). Yet this does make sense in a simple way: WW2 hadn't started yet. The major realization that I came to after finishing this little project was how different every nation was at the start of the war (Era 1, Interwar to 1939). If there are major discrepancies, please let me know so I can fix my chart. I might have also gotten some introduction dates wrong by a little bit, but nothing too major. The A-26C isn't here because I don't have the plane. These never really entered service, so Gaijin would have some leeway in uptiering them for balance purposes. Some caveats: Prototype planes here were tiered according to their first flight. The current tier of the aircraft can be seen on its icon, which can be compared with its real historical tier on the side. Whether these are justified or not can be discussed elsewhere. The patterns that emerge putting all nations side by side are very interesting, and do actually explain somewhat some of the decisions Gaijin has taken in the tiering of aircraft. I then made this giant JPEG with all the nations (even Italy) side by side with the Era system with the years of introduction beside it to serve as a guide. I wanted to see the whole picture, so I rolled my sleeves up and scoured the internet for information on the service date of introduction of every plane in War Thunder. Historical tiering has always been brought up time and time again, but arguments for or against it have mostly been about early jets vs props and the like. I always wondered about how War Thunder would look if each plane was given its proper tier according to its service introduction date.
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