# Most Overrated aircraft of WWII.....?



## Lucky13 (Apr 16, 2007)

Which, in your honest opinion, aircraft achieved a popular reputation that far exceeded their actual performance or capability in combat?
I think that this might be interesting..... 8)


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## Jank (Apr 16, 2007)

P-51 Mustang.

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## renrich (Apr 16, 2007)

Early in the war the P39 was supposed to be hot stuff and it certainly looked the part. Operationally it was a real dud.

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## comiso90 (Apr 16, 2007)

renrich said:


> Early in the war the P39 was supposed to be hot stuff and it certainly looked the part. Operationally it was a real dud.



Don't tell that to the Russians!

I think the PBY Catalina was one of the most overrated planes.
It was reliable, beautiful and sturdy but does not deserve all the acclaim it receives.

Don't get me wrong it was (is) an awesome plane but to often that is the ONLY image that is conjured when thinking of WW2 seaplanes or flying boats.

I love the Cat but she is overrated.


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## renrich (Apr 16, 2007)

Another aircraft that was a dud as far as it's intended role was the BF110. Jank, I tend to agree with you on the P51 in that it's reputation has far exceeded it's capabilities and conversely the P47 is probably the most underappreciated fighter in the European Theater.

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## Grampa (Apr 16, 2007)

After the battle of Britania the Spit got the honor of the plane that did the most of saving britania from german invasion but in fact it whas the Hawker Hurricane who did the most work because by it whas more than twice faster to manucacture than the Spit and so become in greate number so the Hurricane should stand as symbol over battle of Brittania whit the Me 109 instead of the Spit.
sorry for my bad spelling.

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## syscom3 (Apr 16, 2007)

The P47 didnt have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets, therefore it cant be under appreciated.

The P51 was in on most of the destruction of the LW, so it cant be over rated.

The PBY did what it was supposed to do. It was never thought of being the best, so it cant be over rated,

The P40 was a good performer in the first couple of years in the PTO... cant be that.

The P39, quite possibly the most over rated. And that goes for the Me-110.

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## comiso90 (Apr 16, 2007)

syscom3 said:


> The P47 didnt have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets, therefore it cant be under appreciated.
> 
> The P51 was in on most of the destruction of the LW, so it cant be over rated.
> 
> ...



The question was "What is the most over rated" not, "What was considered the best but really not"

>>
_The PBY did what it was supposed to do t was never thought of being the best, so it cant be over rated_

That is a government worker mentality. You can only be over rated if you are thought of as the best? If you do what u are supposed to do then u are immune to criticism?



I believe the PBY does not live up to many peoples lofty assesments... the same goes for the B-17.

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## Glider (Apr 16, 2007)

Zero It had a reputation of being unbeatable but it never was and in the early days when it gained the reputation, it often fought second string fighters, not the latest. Hurricanes and P39's in particular.

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## amrit (Apr 16, 2007)

Ahh, Glider beat me to it. Yep the A6M Zero. No armour or self-sealing tanks!! Range and agility weren't everything - just sneeze on it and it fell down

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## davparlr (Apr 16, 2007)

Like the Bf-110, the Stuka was considered a first string tool of the Luftwaffe, only to quickly be given second string status.

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## Civettone (Apr 16, 2007)

The first one that comes to mind ... the Fw 190. No better than the Bf 109 was twice as expensive to build. 

Kris

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## Thorlifter (Apr 16, 2007)

Civettone said:


> The first one that comes to mind ... the Fw 190. No better than the Bf 109 was twice as expensive to build.
> 
> Kris



????HUH????

The FW-190 is often in arguments as one of the finest piston planes ever produced.

Just because it was expensive to build doesn't mean it didn't live up to the hype.

And while the P-39 didn't perform up to American standards in the PTO or ETO, it did very well in India/Burma and I think the Russian kills in it showed what it could do when given to a determined force.

I would have to go with Jank and pick the P-51. It's given all the glory, it's the cadillac of the sky, etc. Well you know what?????? I wouldn't have a cadillac. Comfy car for sure. But Lord help your wallet when it breaks. And if you shot it with anything bigger than a .22, it was going down.

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## comiso90 (Apr 16, 2007)

Civettone said:


> The first one that comes to mind ... the Fw 190. No better than the Bf 109 was twice as expensive to build.
> 
> Kris



Why did FW get the contract then? TWICE is a lot for little/no pay off. 

The relationship between the German military and the contractors always seemed odd to me. 

The tanks, self propelled guns and recon vehicles all had so many different chassis and suspension systems. If they would have realized the power of standardization, combined with German quality, their industry would have been a huge impact on the war.


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## amrit (Apr 16, 2007)

Thorlifter said:


> And while the P-39 didn't perform up to American standards in the PTO or ETO, it did very well in India/Burma and I think the Russian kills in it showed what it could do when given to a determined force.



My turn to go HUH???

Firstly, the P-39 didn't perform to RAF standards either (without the turbocharger).

And who flew the P-39 in Burma/India? It's news to me. I'm not aware of any USAAF squadrons operating it over India?burma - and only 601 had it in the RAF (didn't operate there).

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## davparlr (Apr 16, 2007)

Just a note on the P-39. It flew 30,547 sorties for the AAF in Europe. Lost 107 for a loss rate per sortie of .4%, the lowest of any Army fighter.

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## GregP (Apr 16, 2007)

To me the most overrated plane. far and away, is the Me 262.

Sure it was the first jet into regular squadron operations, but the effect it had was nothing comarped with the resources expended to develop and deploy it.

The B-17 bomber stream was the SAME whether or not the Me 262 was there, and Me 109s produced in lieu of the 262s would have done more damage to the bombers, if only because so many more Me 109s could have been built using the resources dedicated to Me 262 development and deployment.

I think this is a personal opinion. The P-51's real performance is as good as the hype. I never heard it built up to the point where it was claimed to be better than it was.

When it first escorted B-17s to Germany, no other plane could have done that or they WOULD HAVE DONE SO. It was faster than most operational Spitfires, but I've never yet heard anyone claim it could out-turn or out-climb a Spitfire.

All of the comparative tests I have read were done by the British and they weren't too keen on touting the Mustang, so almost all the Mustang performance data was taken at normal power (no WEP) using 87-Octane gasoline, and limiting the boost to something like 12 - 18 inches ... while the Spitfires were allowed to use WEP, 100 - 150 Octane gas, and were allowed to use 25 inches of boost or more.

In these circumstances the Spitfires almost always came out on top, as the Mustang would have done had the restrictions been reversed. Restriction tend to muddy the waters. In point of fact, the Mustang was a good all-round performer and was probably not the BEST in any single category. 

The Spitfire was a specialist with no apologies for being such, and was always kept as light as possible for the fighter-interceptor role. T

The Mustang was loaded down with fuel and whatever else was deemed necessary for the escort role.

Perhaps you people who feel the Mustang was overrated could post the exaggerated claims you have heard about the Mustang? I would be curious to read overinflated claims about it. I'm not saying you wrong (actually, I'm a Spitfire nut myself), I just want to read about the overinflated claims of the Mustang's performance.

Cheers!

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## FLYBOYJ (Apr 16, 2007)

I just made this into a poll....


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## syscom3 (Apr 16, 2007)

Thorlifter said:


> I would have to go with Jank and pick the P-51. It's given all the glory, it's the cadillac of the sky, etc. Well you know what?????? I wouldn't have a cadillac. Comfy car for sure. But Lord help your wallet when it breaks. And if you shot it with anything bigger than a .22, it was going down.



Performance figures and statistics dont lie. Even if some of the accolades are a bit of an exageration, its still among the best propellor driven planes of all time.

Maybe youre thinking of the Zero when it comes to lack of structural strength. Because the P51 wasnt a light weight like you make it out to be.Over rated? Not by much. And its certeinly not in the same league as the P39 and -110.


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## FLYBOYJ (Apr 16, 2007)

I voted for the P-51. I recognize it was one of the best combat aircraft of WW2 but at the same time many ill-informed historians have played it up to be superior to every German fighter with the exception of the Me 262.


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## Civettone (Apr 16, 2007)

comiso90 said:


> Why did FW get the contract then? TWICE is a lot for little/no pay off.


It's not a good idea to put all your money on one horse. This has also to do with politics, as it's not advisable to let one company deliver all the fighters. The Bf 109 could also be produced with the BMW radial engine because the prototype was a succes. Instead, they pushed on with the Fw 190.

Plus, the Fw 190 could carry a larger bombload and was the better fighter bomber. Though I doubt if that's why the Fw 190 was chosen.

Note, it's not so much that the Fw 190 costed twice as much, it just took twice as long to build. A cost price is meaningless in a closed war economy. 
Kris


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## Thorlifter (Apr 16, 2007)

1. I never said it operated at RAF standards. I completely agree with you that it didn't. But it sure did for the Russians and I'm sure you would agree with that.

2. You may be right about the P-39 in the CBI/TO preforming well. My appologies. I've been enjoying my new bottle of Canadian Hunter this afternoon and I'm feeling no pain! But they were there. USAAF Chonology January 1944


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## Thorlifter (Apr 16, 2007)

syscom3 said:


> Maybe youre thinking of the Zero when it comes to lack of structural strength. Because the P51 wasnt a light weight like you make it out to be.Over rated? Not by much. And its certeinly not in the same league as the P39 and -110.



You are correct. I would not choose either of these above the P-51. But the title of this post is most overrated. If you watch footage or documentaries, the only fighter that gets any mention is the Mustang. The P-47 and the P-38 are mere afterthoughts.

I will conceed a valid argument towards the ME-110, but the P-39 was NOT the most overrated. In fact, I would argue it was underrated. Not much was expected out of it and it did perform exceedingly well in select situations.


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## amrit (Apr 17, 2007)

Thorlifter said:


> 2. You may be right about the P-39 in the CBI/TO preforming well. My appologies. I've been enjoying my new bottle of Canadian Hunter this afternoon and I'm feeling no pain! But they were there. USAAF Chonology January 1944



I never said that they didn't perform well. They may have done a brilliant job - just not in the CBI theatre.

The link above refers to P-39 activities specifically in SW Pacific or Pacific Ocean Theatres.

The one mention of P-39s being used in the CBI is for the Tenth Air Force attack on Sunday 2 January 1944. However, the Tenth didn't operate any P-39s at this time (must be a typo for P-38) See:

10th AF UNITS
or
https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/Publications/fulltext/af_combat_units_wwii.pdf


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## Gnomey (Apr 17, 2007)

FLYBOYJ said:


> I voted for the P-51. I recognize it was one of the best combat aircraft of WW2 but at the same time many ill-informed historians have played it up to be superior to every German fighter with the exception of the Me 262.



Yep, I would agree with that. I would also say the BF-110 and the Zero are up there as well.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 17, 2007)

Well I voted the P-51D as well. It was a great aircraft dont take me wrong but she was not all she was cracked up to be. One on one there were many aircraft that were just as good or better but she gets all the attention.

The P-51D does deserve credit where it is due though and it certainly not a pushover aircraft and obviously one of the top of the war.

Now having said that most overated:

Germany - Bf 110 for reasons stated by many. I think she was a great night fighter but never became what she needed to be.

Japan - Zero a myth. She was outclassed for the later half of the war.

England - Spitfire Dont take me wrong. The Spit was a marvelous aircraft and in my opinion better than the P-51 except for the range however I hate to see the Hurricanes achievments overshadowed by the Spitfire.


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## Parmigiano (Apr 17, 2007)

My vote goes to the P51, assuming that 'overrated' is related to what the general public and not only the experts is believing.


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## davparlr (Apr 17, 2007)

GregP said:


> In point of fact, the Mustang was a good all-round performer and was probably not the BEST in any single category.



I think the Mustang is the BEST long range escort fighter and the BEST long range interdiction fighter.

While I think the P-51 is generally overrated by public perception, I think it is the most underrated aircraft on this, otherwise, very knowledgable site.

As I have said before, the P-51 is like the T-34, when the P-51B appeared, it outclassed the opposition (like the Fw-190 did when it appeared), and sent the Germans to drawing boards to come up with an answer, and, by the time they did, they were overwhelmed by the vast quantities facing them.

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## Civettone (Apr 17, 2007)

Of course these are personal opinions so not my place to criticize. But I do wonder about the Bf 110 because I usually consider it as the most underrated aircraft. If you google Bf 110 you'll read about how it suffered horrible losses in the BoB and that it was a complete failure as a fighter. So the general sentiment towards the Bf 110 seems to be rather negative.

As a nightfighter the Bf 110 has gained more respect but I still feel that it's mainly being judged as a fighter...
Kris

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 17, 2007)

I never said it was a complete failure. I think it was overated in its intended role and did not do that very well. It was a very good night fighter however.

By the 1942 the Bf 110 was however outclassed by all other aircraft in its class that were used by the major players.


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## Gnomey (Apr 17, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I never said it was a complete failure. I think it was overated in its intended role and did not do that very well. It was a very good night fighter however.
> 
> By the 1942 the Bf 110 was however outclassed by all other aircraft in its class that were used by the major players.



Yep. In 1940 the RAF was more wary of the -110 than they were of the -109...


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## Civettone (Apr 17, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I never said it was a complete failure.


I know. I said this is what you usually read about the Bf 110 fighter. 



> I think it was overated in its intended role and did not do that very well.


Of course. But you see, I interpreted this poll as WW2 aircraft which are overrated NOW. 
There is no doubt whatsoever that the Germans and their enemies overrated the Bf 110. 

Kris


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## renrich (Apr 17, 2007)

I mentioned the BF110 and P39 early on because they had when first operational a good reputation as fighters or in the case of the P39, pursuits. However neither turned out to be effective fighters or pursuits. The 110 served as a nightfighter well and the P39 served as close support a/c fairly well but neither could survive for long when first line enemy single engined fighters were about, except for the P39 at very low altitudes. I voted for the P51 as most overrated because as many of you have pointed out of it's exalted reputation as the "greatest" piston engined fighter ever. With certain strict parameters, mainly range, maybe it should be considered among the best but using different parameters, not so. In some ways, the P51 reminds me of the Zero. At one time the Zero was the "wonder fighter" of WW2 until it's achilles heels were discovered. The fact remains though in the first year of so of the Pacific War the Zero kept turning up where many thought it had no chance to be because of its seven league boots. And when it did show up it was a winner until our pilots learned how to counteract it's weak points with our fighters strong points. In fact the Japanese campaigns from Pearl Harbor on until after Guadacanal probably would not have been nearly as successful without the Zero. One shudders to think what the LW could have accomplished with the Zero during the BOB. Like wise the P51 could be someplace no other fighter could be in early 44 and be pretty effective when it showed up. However, there are several fighters I can name I would rather be driving in a one V one with another premier fighter of WW2. (admittedly based on book learning only)

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## Jank (Apr 17, 2007)

"_However, there are several fighters I can name I would rather be driving in a one V one with another premier fighter of WW2_."

Which planes would you choose?


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## renrich (Apr 17, 2007)

Well Jank, if I was in Europe in WW2 and confined to the A/C in that theater, I would go for the latest P47 or if short range is not a problem the MkXIV Spitfire. The FW190D9 would be attractive. If I had my choice of any WW2 fighter, the F4U4 would be my choice.


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## Hunter368 (Apr 17, 2007)

Simple choices for me:

ME-110

Zero

P-51

All were good in some ways but history gives them far too much credit.


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## Sgt. Pappy (Apr 17, 2007)

Grampa said:


> After the battle of Britania the Spit got the honor of the plane that did the most of saving britania from german invasion but in fact it whas the Hawker Hurricane who did the most work because by it whas more than twice faster to manucacture than the Spit and so become in greate number so the Hurricane should stand as symbol over battle of Brittania whit the Me 109 instead of the Spit.
> sorry for my bad spelling.



i may be a spitfire freak, but i agree with you. but just to clarify...

the spitfire took longer to make, therefore there would be less units coming out of the factories than hurricanes for a given amount of time. this would mean that the spits are carrying a heavier burden since they must do just as much work but with less units. i do believe that the hurricane, however, is underrated under the shadow of the spitfire, since it did pretty much just as much work (as it had a very similar kill ratio during the battle of britain).


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## Thorlifter (Apr 17, 2007)

renrich said:


> If I had my choice of any WW2 fighter, the F4U4 would be my choice.



Good man!!!!!!!!!

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## Civettone (Apr 17, 2007)

Renrich, I agree that the P-51 is overrated as it wasn't the fighter that defeated the Luftwaffe as often claimed.
But to say that you would rather fly other fighters goes a bit too far IMO. The P-51 wasn't a superfighter but it was by far the best fighter flying over Germany until late 1944.


Hunter, I'm surprised you're mentioning the P-51 as that aircraft in your signature looks a lot like one. 
Kris


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## Hunter368 (Apr 17, 2007)

Civettone said:


> Renrich, I agree that the P-51 is overrated as it wasn't the fighter that defeated the Luftwaffe as often claimed.
> But to say that you would rather fly other fighters goes a bit too far IMO. The P-51 wasn't a superfighter but it was by far the best fighter flying over Germany until late 1944.
> 
> 
> ...



Could you explain what you meant by the following statement: "P-51 is overrated as it wasn't the fighter that defeated the Luftwaffe as often claimed."

My Sig you ask? I have it not b/c I have some great love for the P-51. It is historic and belongs to the city where I live. I think my sig is clasic looking IMO. One day I will change it, like I have before several times.

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## renrich (Apr 17, 2007)

What I said was in a one V one that did not depend on range I would prefer some other fighters over the Mustang. Look at the sortie numbers versus losses of the P47 and the P51. The leading aces in the 8th flew P47s. And that was against more experienced LW pilots earlier in the war. Those facts along with along with performance comparisons that are a matter of record convince me that I would rather be in a P47 than in a P51 in a one V one. The F4U4 was a hot rod and out performed the P51 in most ways, faster,better climber, better maneuverability, more armament and because it was more rugged, much more survivable. Kris, I have never flown in combat and I doubt you have. I have flown an airplane some but all I have to go on is what I have read and common sense.


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## davparlr (Apr 17, 2007)

renrich said:


> Well Jank, if I was in Europe in WW2 and confined to the A/C in that theater, I would go for the latest P47 or if short range is not a problem the MkXIV Spitfire. The FW190D9 would be attractive. If I had my choice of any WW2 fighter, the F4U4 would be my choice.



F4U-4 was an excellent warplane. The P-47 is at a disadvantage to the equivalent model P-51 below 25k ft in airspeed, climb, and most likely turning ability. It was more rugged and had more firepower, but the P-51 could engage and disengage at will. Above 25k, the P-47 was formidable.

My choice would be the P-51B with a Malcolm (?) hood until late 1944. During this period, the P-51B was faster than any enemy (or friendly) aircraft and was a better climber (except the early P-51Bs vs. Bf-109G in climb. Later P-51Bs were better climbers and was comparible to the Fw-190D-9 in total performance). I would have wanted two additional 50 cals. though. In late 1944, I would switch to the F4U-4.


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## Civettone (Apr 17, 2007)

Hunter368 said:


> Could you explain what you meant by the following statement: "P-51 is overrated as it wasn't the fighter that defeated the Luftwaffe as often claimed."


Sure.
What you usually read is that the Luftwaffe was defeated when P-51s started to escort the B-17s over Germany. 
While I agree that the Luftwaffe was defeated during what is called Big Week, most of the fighters were P-38s. So if one aircraft one it, it would be the P-38.




> My Sig you ask? I have it not b/c I have some great love for the P-51. It is historic and belongs to the city where I live.


So what's the story behind it? It gather it was a squadron based in Winnipeg?

Kris


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## Jank (Apr 17, 2007)

Adler posed the following interesting comment on the FW-190 vs. Spit / P-51 / P-47 thread on 8/16/06:

_There was an interesting documentary on the N24 a German documentary and news TV channel about the Fw-190. They talked about the development and the Butcher Bird in action. They interviewed several members of the Wilde Sau unit and several other Luftwaffe units. The show is coming back on TV tonight and I will have to watch it again for names of the pilots. They also interviewed several USAAF pilots who flew against the Fw-190.

All of the Luftwaffe pilots had these things to say about the allied aircraft.

They said the Spitfire was a superb aircraft and in straight up one on one fighting they were more scared of the Spitfire than the P-51D. The one they really did not like flying against though was the P-47. They said it was a very hard aircraft to take down and a worthy opponent.

One USAAF pilot (name not remembered until I watch the documentary again tonight) who flew all 3 of the mentioned allied aircraft said he really enjoyed flying the Spitfire. He said it was easy and a joy to fly. The P-51D on the other hand he said he did not enjoy very much. He said the only advantage it had over the Fw-190 and even the Bf-109 was its long range, saying it was especially hard to get the upper hand of the Fw-190D-9 with a P-51D.

The one that he preferred to fight the Fw-190 in was the P-47 due to its heavy armament and good armour and robust engine.
_


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## Soundbreaker Welch? (Apr 17, 2007)

While I agree that the Luftwaffe was defeated during what is called Big Week, most of the fighters were P-38s. So if one aircraft one it, it would be the P-38.

That should make wtmaxt happy and I never thought of it that way before! 

I think of all the enemy aircraft the Americans encountered, the Zero was possibly the one they feared and overated the most, with perhaps good reason in 1941-42. But a lot of the fear was on the Zero being invincible, which in the end wasn't true. 

For the British I know the FW-190A got them pretty scared during the Spitfire Vb phrase. But was that really the plane the Brits feared the most? Was it the V1 rocket? 

The British overated the Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, a foregivable fault, except to the ire of the Hawker Hurricane Pilots. The B-17 was similarly praised while the B-24 overlooked as the workhorse. 

The USAF bomber crews were pretty scared of the Komets, before they found out that they were just a nuisance. 

Hitler overated most of his aircraft and flying bombs. 

I guess the plane we American's overated the most would be the Mustang, especially as the years have gone after WWII. 

Did the Germans and Japanese really overate it that much during the time?

Goring was scared of it over Berlin, but by then he had no choice. The Mustang was flying overhead and defending the Bombers from harm.

So, I'll go for the Zero as most overated during the war years, and the Mustang for the post WWII years.

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## Hunter368 (Apr 17, 2007)

Civettone said:


> Sure.
> What you usually read is that the Luftwaffe was defeated when P-51s started to escort the B-17s over Germany.
> While I agree that the Luftwaffe was defeated during what is called Big Week, most of the fighters were P-38s. So if one aircraft one it, it would be the P-38.
> 
> ...



Well I can't honestly agree with you on the P-38 bringing the LW to its knees.


Yes the P-51 squadron was from Winnipeg, I found it and used the photo. I rather like the black and white image.

Classic feel to me.


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## Hunter368 (Apr 17, 2007)

Soundbreaker Welch? said:


> Goring was scared of it over Berlin, but by then he had no choice. The Mustang was flying overhead and defending the Bombers from harm.



He would of been scared of any enemy fighter flying over Berlin in numbers that surpased his own total of fighters defending Berlin. Who wouldn't be, so it was not so much the fact it was the "P-51" he feared so much as the fact that some enemy fighter could actually reach Berlin and surpased in numbers his own defending fighter protection.

He then knew that USA production of bombers and fighters were going to destroy his beloved LW. Not to mention it made him eat crow and look like an azz.


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## Soundbreaker Welch? (Apr 17, 2007)

Agreed Hunter. 



> But Lord help your wallet when it breaks.



But the Mustang was fairly cheap to build and it wasn't that hard to maintain. Only issue is if it got shot down a lot, then it's large numbers of aircraft are pretty useless. But the Mustang was tough enough to survive in the sky, agains't the cannon and bullet of enemy fighters, even when it didn't outnumber them. 

Flak was a danger to the Mustang, more than the P-47. The Mustang pilots did try to avoid straffing runs, aside from airfields and targets deep in Germany that only they could get to at the time. 




> One shudders to think what the LW could have accomplished with the Zero during the BOB.



But the Hawker Hurricane had a fine turn rate, and the Spitfire MK I was equal to the Zero. Both of them were more sturdy too. The Zero would have been able to stay over England longer than the Bf 109, but it was more fragile. 



> Of course. But you see, I interpreted this poll as WW2 aircraft which are overrated NOW.



Good point. The Mustang is still being praised, while the 110 or P-39 are forgotten or given the contempt they may not deserve.

But I think the Spitfire still has a respectable following of fans today, though a lot of them are British!


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## GregP (Apr 17, 2007)

The posts above mostly say "History" has overrated the P-51. Could I ask what, specifically, you think is overrated?

I chose 9 aircraft operated by the USAAF to comapre statistics between from 1942 to 1945, specifically in the European war. Remember, these were aircraft operated by the U.S.A.


1) P-47: 423,435 sorties (45.7%), Air Kills Claimed: 3,082 (28.8%)
2) P-51: 213,873 sorties (23.1%), Air Kills Claimed: 4,950 (46.2%)
3) P-38: 129.849 sorties (14.0%), Air Kills Claimed: 1,771 (16.5%)
4) P-40: 67,059 sorties (7.2%), Air Kills Claimed: 481 (4.5%)
5) P-39: 30,547 sorties (3.3%), Air Kills Claimed: 14 (0.1%)
6) Spitfire: 28,981 sorties (3.1%), Air Kills Claimed: 256 (2.4%)
7) A-36: 23,373 sorties (2.5%), Air Kills Claimed: 84 (0.8%)
8 ) Beaufighter: 6,706 sorties (0.7%), Air Kills Claimed: 24 (0.2%)
9) P-61: 3,637 sorties (0.4%), Air Kills Claimed: 58 (0.5%)

Total: 927,460 sorties, 10,720 claimed air to air kills.

The P-51 flew 23% of all our combat sorties and accounted for 46% of the kills, almost twice as many as the P-47, which saw longer service. Remember, P-51s didn't GET there until around 1943.

Overrated? By whom? Not by the USAAF! 

And there weren't hardly ANY F4U Corsairs in Europe operated by the U.S.A., so it would have been VERY tough to find an F4U-4 in the ETO in any case.

The press, at least in the U.S.A., touted the P-51 as our best in the ETO because it was as factually demonstrated.

I ask again for what, specifically, you think was overrated for the P-51, and by whom? 

When the P-51 had its biggest impact, the first escorted missions over Germany, exactly what alternative fighter(s) would you suggest that were available at the time with the range to fly a complete escort mission? I mean complete missions, without abandoning the bombers part-way over, as had been the practice before the P-51s got there?

Exactly when in the war do you think any other Allied fighter could have taken over from the P-51, and in what numbers? If the late-model, longer-range Spitfires are suggested by someone, how many were available? And were sufficient drop tanks available for them to allow the replacement of the P-51s? If you say "Yes," were sufficient drop tanks available even after several missions where the tanks were actually dropped?

If you say "Yes" again, would you have turned over the defense of Great Britain to the P-51 and the Americans so the Spitrfires of the RAF could escort the bombers to Germany? If we had even requested that, would you have agreed? If agreed to, would the person who agreed have been relieved of command?

I know a lot of people chose the P-51 as overrated. I'm just asking for specifics so I can understand your viewpoint beyond national pride.

I admit the P-51 got accolades. I just can't see that they were undeserved given the complete lack of alternative choices for the P-51 in its assigned role.

I might very well prefer to be in a Spitfire over Berlin, but not if if meant running out of fuel over occupied Europe on the way home and being captured ... in THAT case, give me a P-51 and THANK you very much.

I KNOW many of you feel otherwise. Please explain so I may share your viewpoints.

Cheers.

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## Civettone (Apr 17, 2007)

Like I said the P-51 was the best fighter over Germany until late 1944, and arguably until the very end.

But I said that the P-38 was the main American fighter during Big Week, and not the P-51. 

It seems I was wrong. 

_The claim/loss stats for Operation Argument (Big Week) : 

Claims by Group, aircraft type and total claims. Includes 60 ground kills 
(enemy aircraft destroyed on ground). 


56th FG P-47 52 
354th FG P-51 45 
357th FG P-51 21 
78th FG P-47 19 
4th FG P-51 16 
352nd FG P-47 14 
353rd FG P-47 11 
20th FG P-38 8 
355th FG P-47 8 
361st FG P-47 8 
359th FG P-47 7 
55th FG P-38 2 
356th FG P-47 1 
362nd FG P-47 1 
______________________________________ 
Total 213 / 153 air to air 


Kills by type: Air / Ground 


P-51 49 / 33 
P-47 94 / 27 
P-38 10 / 0 


Losses: these include losses from all causes, including accidents, engine 
failures and so on. 


357th FG P-51 8 
53rd FG P-47 5 
354th FG P-51 3 
20th FG P-38 3 
358th FG P-47 2 
361st FG P-47 2 
55th FG P-38 2 
4th FG P-51 2 
56th FG P-47 1 
78th FG P-47 1 
356th FG P-47 1 
359th FG P-47 1 
362nd FG P-47 1 
_____________________________ 
Total 32 


Loss break down by type: 


P-51 11 3 lost to accident/unknown 
P-47 16 3 lost to accident/unknown 
P-38 5 2 lost to accident/unknown 
Accident/unknown indicates that the aircraft failed to return to base 
and the loss was do to accidental crash, mechanical failure or unknown 
causes (most likely triple A over German airfields) . 


Total lost to Luftwaffe: 24 


Air to air kill/loss rate by type excluding accidental/unknown losses: 


P-51 6.125/1 
P-47 7.230/1 
P-38 3.333/1 


Total number of each type available on average during Big Week. 


P-51 140 
P-47 710 
P-38 74 


Mission abort ratios by type: These include any cause that prevents an 
aircraft from flying the full scheduled mission. 


P-51 16% avg. 
P-47 4% avg. 
P-38 31% avg. 


Typically, 23 P-38 aircraft would abort each mission based upon 100% 
availability. 22 P-51 aircraft could be expected to turn around, and 28 
P-47's had to head back for various mechanical reasons. Over the course 
of the war, the P-51 abort ratio would be better than halved, down to 7%. 
The P-38's deployed in the SWPA Theater averaged a 7% abort ratio as 
well. The Lightning did not get better than 10% in the ETO until the arrival 
of the P-38J-25-LO and the L model. By then, these fighters were exclusively 
used by the 9th Air Force. However, in Feb/March 1944, the 8th AF had only 
just received the P-38J-15-LO which suffered at high altitude from over 
efficient radiators/coolers and sub-standard fuel, which would have the 
anti-knock compounds separate in the boosted intake plenum. The net 
result was burned pistons. Better grade fuels and a redesigned intake manifold 
cured these problems, albeit, too late for the 8th AF Brass. 


It must also be noted that with the exception of one mission, the P-38 groups 
were required to remain in close escort, tied to the bombers. Hence, their 
score is more a reflection of limited opportunity than any lack of performance 
and ability. Note also, the P-47 maintained the best kill ratio of the three 
during Big Week. _
(by C.C. Jordan)

Kris


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## GregP (Apr 18, 2007)

What exactly is "Big Week?" That's a new one on me ...

Where did you get your statistics?Mine were from "American Combat Planes."


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## Jank (Apr 18, 2007)

"_What exactly is "Big Week?" That's a new one on me ..._"

That was funny. Or sad.

The P-47 in large part broke the Luftwaffe's back after which the sexy P-51 came on the scene in droves and took all the credit.

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## amrit (Apr 18, 2007)

I'm sorry to be pedantic but could someone please change a spelling mistake in the poll - Stirling rather than Sterling (not much British money flying around during the war  )

Cheers


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## Heinz (Apr 18, 2007)

zero for me...


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## FLYBOYJ (Apr 18, 2007)

amrit said:


> I'm sorry to be pedantic but could someone please change a spelling mistake in the poll - Stirling rather than Sterling (not much British money flying around during the war  )
> 
> Cheers


 Done....


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## davparlr (Apr 18, 2007)

GregP said:


> What exactly is "Big Week?" That's a new one on me ...
> 
> Where did you get your statistics?Mine were from "American Combat Planes."



If that is by Wagner, I have found it to be a very good reference book. What errors I have found have been errors accepted by the press in general.

I am not familar with "Big Week" either. Of course, at my age, I could have been familar with in and forgot!


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## Civettone (Apr 18, 2007)

Are you guys kidding me? 

Big Week - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The operation lasted a week but in fact the attacks went on until April. After that the Luftwaffe would never recover.
Kris

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## Hunter368 (Apr 18, 2007)

Civettone said:


> Are you guys kidding me?
> 
> Big Week - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> ...



keep in mind Kris not everyone is as knowledgable as the rest of us on WW2, some people are still learning.

Go easy on them.

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## Civettone (Apr 18, 2007)

I honestly thought that question was meant as a joke. GregP gave a detailed account of WW2 fighters, then I would expect he had at least heard of Big Week.
Also see Jank's comment: _That was funny. Or sad._

Kris


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## Hunter368 (Apr 18, 2007)

Civettone said:


> I honestly thought that question was meant as a joke. GregP gave a detailed account of WW2 fighters, then I would expect he had at least heard of Big Week.
> Also see Jank's comment: _That was funny. Or sad._
> 
> Kris



Patience 

Just explain

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## GregP (Apr 18, 2007)

Actually, I am a lifelong fan of WWII aviation, have a VERY detailed database of WWII aircraft to include over 1500 different aircraft types, and have read and written extensively on WWII aviation (as well as Naval history).

I am 56 years old and volunteer at an active WWII aviation museum where were fly WWII warbirds every weekend inluding Mustangs, Spitfires, a Zero with a still-running Sakae engine, Bearcat, B-25, P-40, P-38, P-47, F4F, SBD, Hurricane, T-6s, and Hellcat.

I have met Hartmann and Rall, and many US "Aces," including Parr, Boyington, Blesse, and others.

And I have never heard of "Big Week." Maybe it was simply described elsewhere as a series of bombing raids, but I own over 500 volumes on WWII aviation and still never heard of Big Week. Maybe I just missed the name in my readings ... could be.

Until I see it somewhere beisides "Wikipedia," I'll assume it is a bogus label for an operation otherwise known as something else ... I don't believe a thing I read in Wikipedia and you shouldn't either, unless you can independently verify it.


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## Hunter368 (Apr 18, 2007)

Start of "Big Week", six days of missions designed to destroy German aircraft production. The Eighth Air Force (England) and the Ninth Air Force (Italy) participate.


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## pbfoot (Apr 18, 2007)

Hunter368 said:


> Well I can't honestly agree with you on the P-38 bringing the LW to its knees.
> 
> 
> Yes the P-51 squadron was from Winnipeg, I found it and used the photo. I rather like the black and white image.
> ...


and heres its brother


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## Hunter368 (Apr 18, 2007)

Oh sure show a crashed one!!!  Any others?


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## Jank (Apr 18, 2007)

"_Until I see it somewhere beisides "Wikipedia," I'll assume it is a bogus label for an operation otherwise known as something else ... I don't believe a thing I read in Wikipedia and you shouldn't either, unless you can independently verify it_."

I'm going to ask you to help yourself here Mr. Independent Verification. I assume you are sitting at a computer with access to the WWW right now. 

Try typing in "big week" and "air force" into your search engine.

Enjoy.


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## Civettone (Apr 18, 2007)

GregP said:


> Actually, I am a lifelong fan of WWII aviation, have a VERY detailed database of WWII aircraft to include over 1500 different aircraft types, and have read and written extensively on WWII aviation (as well as Naval history).
> 
> I am 56 years old and volunteer at an active WWII aviation museum where were fly WWII warbirds every weekend inluding Mustangs, Spitfires, a Zero with a still-running Sakae engine, Bearcat, B-25, P-40, P-38, P-47, F4F, SBD, Hurricane, T-6s, and Hellcat.
> 
> ...


Greg, in fact I know you. Of course not personally but you're quite a personality to me. I've read numerous posts of you at the GreatPlanesCommunity and I consider you an expert on WW2 aviation and I've learned heaps of your posts.
So please my dear Greg ... when I saw you ask what Big Week ... I honestly honest to God cross my heart hope to die boys scouts honor on my mothers grave on the soul of my unborn child thought you were kidding. 




> Until I see it somewhere beisides "Wikipedia," I'll assume it is a bogus label for an operation otherwise known as something else ... I don't believe a thing I read in Wikipedia and you shouldn't either, unless you can independently verify it.


My choice of Wikipedia was deliberate. When something is very well known, and you need just one link, wikipedia is always a good starting point. 





Kris


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## pbfoot (Apr 18, 2007)

Jank said:


> "_Until I see it somewhere beisides "Wikipedia," I'll assume it is a bogus label for an operation otherwise known as something else ... I don't believe a thing I read in Wikipedia and you shouldn't either, unless you can independently verify it_."
> 
> I'm going to ask you to help yourself here Mr. Independent Verification. I assume you are sitting at a computer with access to the WWW right now.
> 
> ...


does this count by searching big week ww2
Army Air Forces in World War II


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## mkloby (Apr 18, 2007)

If you're going to write a book on US Army Air Forces in WWII, you should at least know that it was not the US Air Force. Those jokers didn't spontaneously appear until 1947

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## Civettone (Apr 18, 2007)

Yeah, and there are other things that bother me too about that cover. Like "the week that decided the war" or "the air battle between Gen. Doolittle and Gen. Galland". Both sound spectacular but neither are correct. 

Hopefully the book is better than the cover.
Kris


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## GregP (Apr 18, 2007)

Hi guys,

I already checked into it and it seems to be legitimate.

Many of my own sources simply state the week of 20 - 26 Feb 1944 was a series of raids designed to hurt German aircraft production ... they never mention "Big Week."

But, it does show up on the internet searches. I am left to infer it became known as "Big Week" but it may or may not have been an official name. Please, I am not saying it wasn't an official name ... it probably was, I just haven't found it yet except on the internet and in the pic above (which is a source I don't own).

I was aware of the large number of raids and sorties, but simply didn't associate it with "Big Week." Instead I thought of it as raids on Schweinfurt, Leipzig, and other places in response to the Pointblank Directive of 1943 ordering concentration on German aircraft production capabilities.

Live and learn. OK, "Big Week" is the 4th week of Feb 1944!

Thanks for the "history" lesson.


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## Civettone (Apr 19, 2007)

Well, for what it's worth, that wikipedia article said the name Big Week was given afterwards. I don't know if that means right after that week, or even afer the war... 
My guess is that it was called Big Week because of the success it had. So is probably started of as "it was a big week for us" to "the Big Week".

Kris


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## plan_D (Apr 19, 2007)

I don't know how the P-51 can possibly considered over-rated. It carried the U.S bomber offensive to Germany on its shoulders. All this BS about the P-38 doing it is just an attempt to belittle the Mustang ... for some reason. Yeah, the P-38 did it first ... but the Blenheim flew over Germany first, does that make it better than the B-17 as a bomber? 

The "Mighty 8th" had the Mustangs carrying them to hell and back on almost every mission. For this they destroyed the Luftwaffe in Western Europe; along with their friends in the U.S 9th and 15th - and RAF Bomber Command. The P-47s were ground pounders for the 9th, as were the Lightnings ... the Mustang group in the ninth (354th FG) were leant to the 8th to carry the war over Germany. 

The Mustang was the best escort fighter - it over-shadows its brethren because it was better ...and is all with good reason. Plus it's a gorgeous looking plane. 

And lets face it, the Hurricane was pants ... it was a second rate fighter...the Spitfire was far superior ... and if the wings of Hurricanes were replaced by Spitfires then there'd have been more losses for the Luftwaffe to deal with. Yeah, the Hurricane performed admirably in the BoB and CBI ... but fact of the matter is ; the Spitfire was one the great fighters of the war from day one to day end... there's no way it can be over-rated when it was in every theatre, every Allied air force, and every year of the war...shooting down planes from every Axis air force.


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## Lucky13 (Apr 19, 2007)

Did they ever try to extend the range of the P-47 to that of the P-51, with inside tanks instead for droptanks? Had the P-47 had the same range maybe they've on par...


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## plan_D (Apr 19, 2007)

The P-47 did reach the range of the P-51.

The P-47N could achieve, with drop tanks, a range of 2350 miles to dry tanks. While the P-51D/K could achieve 2080 miles to dry tanks with drop tanks. 

The main points were, the P-51 was more reliable than the P-38 and was faster, with longer range, than the P-47. The P-47N made no impact on the European theatre.

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## renrich (Apr 19, 2007)

I believe the reason many people on this forum(including myself) believe the P51 is overrated is because the general consensus of the uninformed is that the P51 was the "greatest" fighter of WW2. If that could modified to "the best escort fighter in Europe in WW2" then the P51 would win hands down. Was it the best interceptor of WW2? I don't believe so. Was it the best air superiority fighter of WW2. I don't think so. The Hellcat and Corsair could do almost anything a Mustang could(some things a lot better) and operate off a carrier. The Mustang was not near the fighter bomber the Jug was. Should not that mission be considered in the comparison of fighters. I think that the problem for the P51 as far as I am concerned is that not particularly authoritative books and TV shows constantly state the P51 was the be all end all fighter of WW2. I don't think so.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 20, 2007)

I agree with what you said right. I dont think anyone thinks the P-51 was a bad fighter. There were just better ones out there when you take the overall picture of things.


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## mkloby (Apr 20, 2007)

renrich said:


> I believe the reason many people on this forum(including myself) believe the P51 is overrated is because the general consensus of the uninformed is that the P51 was the "greatest" fighter of WW2. If that could modified to "the best escort fighter in Europe in WW2" then the P51 would win hands down. Was it the best interceptor of WW2? I don't believe so. Was it the best air superiority fighter of WW2. I don't think so. The Hellcat and Corsair could do almost anything a Mustang could(some things a lot better) and operate off a carrier. The Mustang was not near the fighter bomber the Jug was. Should not that mission be considered in the comparison of fighters. I think that the problem for the P51 as far as I am concerned is that not particularly authoritative books and TV shows constantly state the P51 was the be all end all fighter of WW2. I don't think so.



Well said. I think, however, that some diminish the importance of range, and instead think of two fighters sitting in the sky one on one to make their judgements... which is completely out of touch with reality.


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## Glider (Apr 21, 2007)

GregP said:


> Exactly when in the war do you think any other Allied fighter could have taken over from the P-51, and in what numbers? If the late-model, longer-range Spitfires are suggested by someone, how many were available? And were sufficient drop tanks available for them to allow the replacement of the P-51s? If you say "Yes," were sufficient drop tanks available even after several missions where the tanks were actually dropped?
> Cheers.



I was the one who suggested that late model Spits could hae been developed into long range fighters because two MkIXc flew from St Johns Newfoundland to Northern ireland without stopping. Range enough for anyone.

As for the droptank question, the reply is also yes as most of the drop tanks used in Europe by P51's were designed and built in England. Te Paper Mache type were I understand preferred by the US as they could be dropped without worry as they were one use only, were cheap and didn't use special materials.

By the way I agree with the rest of the post and my overated aircraft was the Zero. I was just replyung to the questions in your post.

Hope this is of interest.


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## Nonskimmer (Apr 21, 2007)

Glider said:


> I was the one who suggested that late model Spits could hae been developed into long range fighters because two MkIXc flew from St Johns Newfoundland to Northern ireland without stopping. Range enough for anyone.


An American initiative if I'm not mistaken, undertaken by the USAAF to prove the range potential of the Spitfire to the British. I'd forgotten which mark they'd used.


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## mad_max (Apr 21, 2007)

> The best fighters I met in combat were the P-51 Mustang, Russian Yak-9U. Both obviously exceeded all Bf109s in performance, including the K. The 51 was unmatched at altitude, while the Yak was champion in climb and maneuvering. Walter Wolfrum 137 kills



Lots of kills, so I take his word for it. That's all I need to see.

Really the P-51 was excellent at a few things such as range, high alt. performance
and high cruising speed at low power.
But all airframes of the war were compromises. What makes the P-51 stand just
alittle above the rest is it did all things realitively well. That is what comprises a good aircraft.

What made the P-51 really stand out is the adoption of 100/150 and 115/145 octane
fuel. 300+ more HP under 23.5k does wonders for speed and climb rate.

Of course that just my opinion.  

Best


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## pbfoot (Apr 22, 2007)

I just read an article about ferrying Spits from the Uk direct Gibraltar now all I have to do is refind the the article .


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## GregP (Apr 22, 2007)

Hi Glider,

Thanks for answering. I'm still wondering if there would have been enough late-model Spitfires to take over from the P-51 on escort duties, and I'm still wondering if teh British would have turned over defense of the homeland to the U.S.A. in order to field the Spitfire escorts.

I am assuming, of course, that were not enough Spitfires to both fly escort duties and defend the homeland.

In the event there WERE enough Siptfires, then we could have packed up and gone home and the war would still have been won?

Just speculating, not arguing.

In the real event, we know what happened. These things are, after all, only "what if" questions. In the real event, we combined efforts and had a profound effect on the war's outcome.

All might still have been for nothing if it weren't for the Soviet Union's war front where most of the German manpower and aircraft were stationed for most of the war.

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## Soundbreaker Welch? (Apr 22, 2007)

HE SAVED THE FREE WORLD AND MADE IT RED, RED, RED!!!


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## GregP (Apr 22, 2007)

Nice post!


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## Soundbreaker Welch? (Apr 22, 2007)

Thanks. 

But I don't like Stalin. 

I still wonder why Hitler was chosen to be destroyed by the Allies, and that they let Stalin keep a bigger amount of territory than Hitler ever did. Not to mention that Communism spreads faster than Nazism and has a more appealing message. 

Was it because Hitler was more aggressive and domineering in his "Blitzy" ways?

And what about Hirohito or Mussolini? They weren't any worse than Stalin.


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## Civettone (Apr 22, 2007)

Stalin didn't interfere with British or American interests. Hitler did. 

Kris

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## GregP (Apr 22, 2007)

Hitler committed active aggression against the "Allies."

He annexed territory, committed submarine warfare against peoples against which he was not at war, persecuted peoples for their ancestry, disarmed his populace, abrogated the Treaty of Versailles (which, admittedly, was a STUPID treaty to start with), ignored the military armament rules that were put into place after WWI, and thumbed his nose at the world.

Stalin oppressed his own people and presented a political front to the world. Stalin was brutal, no doubt, and controlled avery large territory, but he did not antagonize the world in general, and he did not declare war on the world.

Hitler did and suffered the fate of being wrong in his estimation of his strength relative to the rest of the world, and the resolve of the world's peoples when their ire was aroused.

Stupid is as stupid does, and he WAS, even if charismatic and charming when he wanted to be so.

Of course, Mussolini had NO redeming qualities, and HE was in power, too.

What can you say?


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## Soundbreaker Welch? (Apr 23, 2007)

Hitler was stupid and evil and Stalin was smart and brutal?

Anyway, good thing Hitler went first. If he had managed to get a nuke, he probably would have used it, even if we were on his doorstep. And then no Moscow, London, or Washington D.C. 

And then no Berlin. 


Something Stalin was wise and scared enough not to do.


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## MAV_406 (Apr 23, 2007)

well said


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## drgondog (May 28, 2007)

The Mustang may not be the 'Best' air to air fighter and that debate can go as long as anyone has an opinion. 

I will submit that it was the Most Important simply because it did have exceptional performance and it's strategic footprint was critical to the prime Mission - namely make Airpower and Daylight Strategic Bombing work. And despite the short interval in which it fought compared to 38s and 47s it destroyed more German a/c than all the other USAAF fighters combined - (air and ground) and nearly that same ratio for air to air alone 

The P-38 with more reliable engines and the dive brake of the P-38J could have been that fighter but lost far too many ships up through point of receiving the J and, by that time, the 8th AF had had enough - and picked the Mustang as the long range escort. If only B-24s were flown by USAAF then the 38 would be more highly regarded... as the altitudes would have been below 22,000 feet for normal raids.

The P-47 was formidable at the altitudes that B-17s and B-24's operated and where the performance of the Fw190s and Me 109s fell off - so they were very dangerous to the Luftwaffe as far as they could escort the bombers, but until the 56th got water injection and Paddle blades even they did not want a fight with the 190 and 109s from middle altitude to deck because the 47 was a pig on the deck in accleration, climb and turn. 

The P-38 was extremely tough below 20,000 feet because it could do everything a Mustang could do and out turn a 51 and had great range but the high altitude cold blew up too many Allisons and w/o dive breaks couldn't dive with 109s and 190s.The LW simply retreated and attacked when the 47s had to tune back - but they could not do that with the Mustang and there was no place in Germany where they could 'hide and form up in peace'

After the 51's equipped the first 4 Groups (357, 355, 352 and 4FG) in the 8th plus the 354th FG on loan from the 9th - the game was over for 47's being the prime contributor to air battles over Germany - they were basically relegated to Penetration and Withdrawal support for deep penetrations until the summer of 44 when the -25's combined with longer range tanks enabled the 56th to play over the Berlins and Regensburg's and Posnan and Leipzig's but by then the LW had truly been decimated of the Experten and experienced pilots.... and the 8th was committed to replacing the 47's with 51's.

Daylight bombardment and Strategic campaigns against the critical Oil targets were only possible because the 51 thrived at high altitudes, could go all the way and fight as well or better from the deck all the way up with the Fw 190 and the 109. You can argue all day long about performance of Spitfires and Tempests, etc but they were irrelevant to Strategic Bombing campaigns and results.

When the argument gets around to 'Best all Around', the F4U-4, the P-47 and even the P-38 (and Fw190) are candidates because of their TacAir combined with air to air capabilities were formidable and they were more durable in high intensity flak... a lot more Mustangs were lost to flak than fighters. In my father's group - the 355th FG - they lost twice as many 51's to flak as fighters and had an 8:1 air to air ratio but only 4:1 for a/c destroyed on ground.

To the point that P-47s 'broke the back' of the Luftwaffe before the Mustang B's got to ETO in late December, it simply ain't so. The 8th was so bloodied so badly between August through October, 1943 that they quit deep penetrations until Big Week in late February, 1944 when the combined strength of the P-38 and 51 groups were sufficient to go all the way to the aircraft factories at Brunswick and Regensburg and Augsburg and Munich.. the 47's had done a good job but did not wrest air superiority from LW - whereas the Mustang did!

The 47's were relegated to Penetration (to Dummer Lake area) and Withdrawal Support while the 51's were mixing it up and shooting down LW s/e fighters and twins in droves. The 38's were important but operating at close to 1:1 air to air ratio. 

If anyone doesn't think that destroying German Oil and Luftwaffe were the most important factors in destroying German war capability then maybe you can downgrade its (P-51) importance...but you won't find any B-17 or B-24 crews talking about it being over rated.

Long winded - apologise

Bill Marshall


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## Soren (May 28, 2007)

> the 51 thrived at high altitudes, could go all the way and fight as well or better from the deck all the way up with the Fw 190 and the 109.



That is untrue however.

The P-51 needed to be at high alt for it to have an advantage, at mid alt and esp. down on the deck it was at a disadvantage against the new FW-190's and Bf-109's.



> a lot more Mustangs were lost to flak than fighters



That sounds far fetched.

And as to kill ratio's, well they're much overblown.

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## renrich (May 28, 2007)

I don't know where this high altitude performance for the P51 comes from but maybe it is a function of definition of high altitude. If you look at a performance graph of the P51D it had a Vmax w/combat power at sea level of about 360 mph which climbed to about 415 mph at 11000 ft, then dropped off to 405 at 15000 feet and back up to about 435 mph at 24000 ft where it starts really dropping off where at 35000 feet it only gets about 385 mph. The P47D had much better high speed above 25000 ft than the Mustang so I would not rate the P51 as a premier high altitude fighter. Of course I doubt if much ACM took place above 25000 ft so the Mustand had plenty of tactical speed for most encounters.


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## davparlr (May 29, 2007)

Soren said:


> The P-51 needed to be at high alt for it to have an advantage, at mid alt and esp. down on the deck it was at a disadvantage against the new FW-190's and Bf-109's.



??? 

The main foe/threat of the P-51D for most of the war was the Fw-190A-8 and Bf-109G. 

At sea level, the P-51D had a 16 mph speed advantage over the Fw-190A-8. Not significant. At 5k ft, the speed advantage increased to 28 mph, and at 10k ft, it was *56 mph*. Both are a significant advantage.

At sea level, the P-51D had a *49 mph *speed advantage over the Bf-109G, at 5k ft, the speed advantage is also *49 mph*, and at 10k ft, this advantage is *54 mph*. All these speeds provide a big advantage to the P-51D.

And this is not even talking about the P-51B, a better performer still (with upgraded gas).

So, against the, by far, most significant number of German aircraft, the P-51D was going to control the energy level of the fight.

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## davparlr (May 29, 2007)

I just looked at the poll and I was surprised, especially looking at people who voted for the P-51. How can one of the most successful aircraft of WWII be considered the most overrated. Even the statistics reflect incredible performance and effectiveness.

The P-51 was a superb aircraft, and the jump from superb to best fighter, while maybe not correct, is still a small jump.

I wonder which made the bigger impact on WWII. The fact that the P-51 was overrated, or whether the Bf-110 was overrated.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 30, 2007)

I did vote for the P-51D. I certainly however would not say that it was not a great aircraft. It was a great aircraft and one of the best piston fighters ever built.

The reason I voted for it was purely based off of the fact that people assume automatically that it was the greatest thing since bread and butter and nothing could compare to it.

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## davparlr (May 30, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I did vote for the P-51D. I certainly however would not say that it was not a great aircraft. It was a great aircraft and one of the best piston fighters ever built.
> 
> The reason I voted for it was purely based off of the fact that people assume automatically that it was the greatest thing since bread and butter and nothing could compare to it.



How are your plans for moving to Alaska coming? I think we are going back to visit next year.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 30, 2007)

Well we researching where we want to live and I am looking at Aviation companies where I would like to work and started my wifes Green Card paperwork and all the immigration stuff because she is German.

We will not be moving though for a while until she is done with her college though.


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## Lucky13 (May 30, 2007)

Good luck Adler!


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## Soundbreaker Welch? (May 30, 2007)




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## drgondog (May 30, 2007)

renrich said:


> I don't know where this high altitude performance for the P51 comes from but maybe it is a function of definition of high altitude. If you look at a performance graph of the P51D it had a Vmax w/combat power at sea level of about 360 mph which climbed to about 415 mph at 11000 ft, then dropped off to 405 at 15000 feet and back up to about 435 mph at 24000 ft where it starts really dropping off where at 35000 feet it only gets about 385 mph. The P47D had much better high speed above 25000 ft than the Mustang so I would not rate the P51 as a premier high altitude fighter. Of course I doubt if much ACM took place above 25000 ft so the Mustand had plenty of tactical speed for most encounters.



For the purposes of the Mustang's prime mission - namely long range escort of daylight Strategic Bombing - High altitude definitons should be framed around the escort levels of the B-17 and B-24 - namely 20,000 to 26,000 feet plus another 3-5K to engage LW fighters entering with an altitude advantage. The later model 109G/K's and Fw190Ds were designed to perform much better in this arena... but were at extreme disadvantage in early 1944 through end of year at these altitudes.

For the purposes of Interceptor Mission of Recon ships - then 38,000 - 45,000 is "High Altitude". That isn't where the Mustang played but is where the 109G, the Fw190 had to play if they wanted to try to stop daylight recon. 

Frequently the excellent performance of the Fw190D9 thru 12's are cited at the higher altitudes, and when the 3 stage supercharger actually worked on the Jumo 213's, their speed was exceptionally close to 51's at the 51B/C/D best altitudes, and slightly higher at 35,000 feet - but irrelevant to stoppping B-17s and Mustangs and Thunderbolts from hammering Germany

Here are the late Brit comparisons found on Williams' website for the Mustang, Tempest, Typhoon, Spit IX, Spit XII, Meteor and P47D for your consideration - you have to be careful on all judgements because the 'controls' for the tests are not well presented per altitude, loads, fuel used, condition of a/c blowers, etc.

Comparitive Performance of Fighter Aircraft

As for the 47D trials for USAAF 
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/p-47/p-47-tactical-chart.jpg

You'll notice that at the war emergency HP the max speed for the 47D-26 was 357mph at 5,000 ft and 425mph at 30,000

For the 51B/C and D

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/p-47/p-47-tactical-chart.jpg

the corresponding war emergergency HP the max speed for the 51D-15 was 375mph at SL and 430mph at 30,000 feet. 51 still faster basically across the board, turn much better, accelerate faster, initial climb better, slower roll and slightly slower dive..

Point to note - the 47 had to carry much more fuel to go the same distance on a medium to long range escort, making the Jug much more sluggish in acceleration and climb both on the deck, in middle altitudes and at high altitudes.

Point to note - in the first link, the Brit Report, you will note that the Jug was by far worst turning ship in the comparisons but the 51D was beaten only by Spit IX while the 51D beat the Spit XXII..

And the 51H had better actual speed performance at high altitude than both the P-47N and M (and much better than the D) - you will have to look further in Mike Williams site to dig out the details

Take what you want out of this - just food for thought on the most over rated fighter of WWII.

Regards,

Bill


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## renrich (May 30, 2007)

As you know there are all kinds of performance figures floating around on all a/c from ww2. My numbers I quoted were from a graph based on the MFR and the USAAF. I doubt very much that the P51D on average could touch 375 mph at sea level or 430 mph at 30000 ft. My graph shows it at about 417 mph at 30000ft. The Vmax for the P47D 23,26 at 30000 ft combat power was about 435mph TAS which was the same as at 25000ft. So the P47 had a slight edge in speed at altitudes above 25000 ft which is why the joint fighter conference rated the P47 as best fighter above 25000 feet. More food for thought. But I still think that us arm chair experts have a false impression of ww2 ACM in that we think it was all about high speed and high altitudes. Combat power was only good for a few minutes. If one flew around very long with the throttle firewalled one probably did not have an engine to go home. At 30000 ft or more the pilot was doing his best just not to stall and fall out of the sky and was not worried overmuch about tight turns or rolls not to mention freezing to death especially in winter over Europe. And the fact is that most air to air kills took place when the killee had no idea the killer was on his six until it was all over. One major factor in ACM in Europe was that few pilots had the skill to be effective at deflection shooting. Thus most kills took place from the 6 o clock position.


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## pbfoot (May 30, 2007)

renrich said:


> . But I still think that us arm chair experts have a false impression of ww2 ACM in that we think it was all about high speed and high altitudes. Combat power was only good for a few minutes. If one flew around very long with the throttle firewalled one probably did not have an engine to go home. At 30000 ft or more the pilot was doing his best just not to stall and fall out of the sky and was not worried overmuch about tight turns or rolls not to mention freezing to death especially in winter over Europe. .


Amen just read an anecdote of guy hurrying home from another base in a P47 and he was quite impressed at cruising at 300 knots . The Mosquito cruised at 240 and the Hurricane at about 160. Even the C47s I flight planned cruised at 140 no where near top speeds


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## drgondog (May 30, 2007)

One major factor in ACM in Europe was that few pilots had the skill to be effective at deflection shooting. Thus most kills took place from the 6 o clock position.[/QUOTE]

True enough until the K-14 arrived in July-Aug 1944, and G suits in November 1944. The game changed considerably

Believe what you will on the performance of the 47 - I can't comment from personal experience but I do have 56.5 hours in a 51D&H (which actually is 54 hours more than my father had when he flew his first combat mission in one)

I have yet to talk with one fighter pilot in the 354th FG, which was the Pioneer Mustang Group, that a.) loved the 47 when they had to fly it for 4 months 11/44-2/45, and b.) weren't delighted when they got their beloved 51's back in March 1945. They would tell you to a man that they felt safer on the deck from flak in a 47 but not against a German fighter.

Right or wrong there was a reason the USAAF and USAF standardized on the 51 after WWII - and it wasn't because they wanted the second best piston fighter available to them. Ditto F4u-4/5 for the Navy

Regards,

Bill


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## lesofprimus (May 30, 2007)

Money money money..... Ease of training ease of training..... 51's were cheaper and easier for some flight school noob to fly.... Then theres the whole escort range gimmick...


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## drgondog (May 30, 2007)

Nice try - There were more than a few of the old hands that remember training for WWII in B-10's and P-35's and Brewster Buffalo's (for our jarhead friends) and the losses we took with P-39s that were only useful in USSR... all because of money. 

There were one He!! of a lot of 38's and 47's left after the Great Unpleasantness that didn't have to be 'bought' again..and a lot more B-17s and B-24s than B-29s so why didn't we just cut the 29s loose if $$ and training was the factor?

Doubt that was the factor but sure wish 47s had been used in Korea - that wasn't the war we expected to fight (as usual)

Regards,

Bill

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## renrich (May 30, 2007)

I see your point and it is well taken, on the deck ,in air to ground, the 47 was the weapon of choice, from sea level to 25000 feet where the vast majority of acm took place, the 51 was a good choice especially if one had his eye on the fuel gauge. That is the reason I have always and still do maintain the US should have given Republic a contract to build F4U1s with that 361 gallons of internal fuel, 1500 miles of yardstick range, no tail hook, no folding wings, instead of P47s, and a lot of 8th air force crew would have been saved in 1943, before the P51B got into the fight.


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## davparlr (Jun 1, 2007)

renrich said:


> As you know there are all kinds of performance figures floating around on all a/c from ww2. My numbers I quoted were from a graph based on the MFR and the USAAF. I doubt very much that the P51D on average could touch 375 mph at sea level or 430 mph at 30000 ft.



Flight test by the Air Force (http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/mustang/p51d-15342-level.jpg) and manufactures analysis indicate that the P-51D, in a clean configuration, was capable of about 375 mph at SL and about 430 mph at 30k ft. The test report appears of high quality with the aircraft identified by tail number and results in discrete test points. In addition, similar test on the P-51B with 44 fuel shows similar results, only a bit faster. I am not sure what justifies your doubts.




> My graph shows it at about 417 mph at 30000ft.



What is your source?




> That is the reason I have always and still do maintain the US should have given Republic a contract to build F4U1s with that 361 gallons of internal fuel, 1500 miles of yardstick range, no tail hook, no folding wings, instead of P47s, and a lot of 8th air force crew would have been saved in 1943, before the P51B got into the fight.



This makes no sense. The P-47 had a reputation as a very capable air-to-air fighter in ETO and there is no reason that techniques to increase the range on the F4U-1 would not have worked equally well on the P-47 with a result of similar ranges (some claim that the P-47 was not used for long range escort was because of politics associated with the theory that bombers could protect themselves. If this is true, the F4U-1 would have been as impotent as the P-47). Also, I suspect that ceiling is important for escort duties, preventing dive through attacks and allowing higher overall energy levels. Therefore, claiming that many 8th Air Force lives were lost because the P-47 was used by the Air Force rather than the F4U-1 is unjustified.


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## renrich (Jun 1, 2007)

As I said before my numbers are based on graphs coming from the Mfr and the the Air Force. Everything I have ever read about the P51D says that it's Vmax at it's critical alt( slightly less than 25000 ft) was 435 mph. At that point the superchargers ability to maintain power begins to drop off significantly and if you could see the graph you would could readily see that at 30000 ft it could not do 430 mph. This data is from "America"s One Hundred Thousand" an exhaustively researched and footnoted book by an aeronautical engineer which goes into the design, development and manufacture and deployment of all US fighters in WW2. I recommend it to you. All I am saying as far as the F4U is concerned is that because of it's superior range in the 1 version that had fuel tanks in the wings, it could have stayed with the bombers longer than the P47s could and saved some lives in 1943. Also think about a redesigned version meant strictly for the AAF. Surely there could have been weight saving measures other than fixed wings and no tail hook that would have allowed the performance of the F4U to be even better. As it was the F4U1 in 1943 was already a better climbing and turning a/c than the P47 and it was a hands down better fighter until the fight got above 20000 feet or more. Just it's ability to use a much shorter field would have been an asset in England. Of course, I know why that idea was never tried as the AAF would never admit that an a/c designed to be a ship board fighter could never outperform a fighter designed for the AAF. The reason that the RN had no decent carrier fighters was that the RAF controlled design of the RNs a/c and they flat rejected the idea that a carrier fighter could compete with a conventional fighter. Part of the reason was also that in Europe( where they mistakenly thought in the 30s that only fighters with inline engines could compete) no fighter suitable radial engines were available. That inline engine idea was in vogue in the US also in the 30s and the only thing that kept the radial engine of high enough power to give the fighter the performance needed to keep up with inline engined fighters was the US Navy, that was responsible for it's own procurement of a/c. Thus the PW R2800. Back to the P51, I have no doubt that a specially prepared a/c with perhaps special fuel could exceed the figures I have quoted. I do think the figures I have quoted are more representative of the average production a/c. Whew, I am tired. This hunt and peck typing is hard.


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## drgondog (Jun 2, 2007)

Quote:
a lot more Mustangs were lost to flak than fighters 

That sounds far fetched.

Soren - True enough for quite a few Mustang groups in 8th FC

Here are the figures for the 355th FG from my own research which I will guarantee is better than any other source.

Losses 
355 Unit	Air	Strafing	Other	Acc.	Total
354	16	26	7	3	52
355HQ	1	1	0	0	2
357	16	34	9	2	61
358	12	30	15	3	60
SF	1	2	3	4	10
46.0	93.0	4.0	12.0	185.0

There is some 'judgement' that results in estimates of higher air losses than actually occurred.. but I assigned an air loss if contact was lost with a pilot on a mission in which enemy fighters were even seen much less engaged. That doesn't account for the possibility that the pilot could have gone down in bad weather, dropped to the deck and got shot down by flak or simply had a mechanical malfunction and lost oxygen - so the probability is that the ratio of flak losses to air losses is even higher than my MARC by MARC examination of every loss concluded.

The Other is a known situation where an engine over heated or a guy simply went into a dive in clear weather and didn't recover or a pilot was shot down by a B-17 - all with no fighters in area.

For the 8th AF Fighter Command the actual total losses due to fighters was about 638 out of 2338 fighters (P-47s, 51s, 38s and Spits) lost in all Operations including accidents, weather, flak and mechanical.. 

I say 'about' because I am using Kent Miller's Fighter Pilots and Units of the 8th AF and while pretty good I think he under estimates losses due to fighters and I 'rounded up' where a guy 'disappeared' where German Fighters were present rather than leave in UNK category.

Regards, 

Bill


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## renrich (Jun 2, 2007)

Just checked on combat radius for P47c-d and F4u1. P47 with internal fuel had a CR of roughly 225 miles. This with 370 gallons fuel and includes warmup, climb out, cruise, 5min at combat power, 15 min at military power, cruise back, fuel reserve of 30 min at min cruise power. F4U1 had CR of roughly 450 miles with 361 gal internal fuel with same profile. A significant difference. Which one would you rather have escorting you in your B17 or B24?


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## davparlr (Jun 2, 2007)

renrich said:


> As I said before my numbers are based on graphs coming from the Mfr and the the Air Force.



I gave a reference to an AF flight test report that identified a specific AF aircraft by number and you seem to disregard that data. Also, here is a manufacturer’s data sheet with the manufactures logo that also disputes your input (http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/mustang/na-46-130-chart.jpg). These seem to be *high quality* data. These are two different data sources reflecting the same information. Also, comparison to P-51B flight test data is consistent. 





> Everything I have ever read about the P51D says that it's Vmax at it's critical alt( slightly less than 25000 ft) was 435 mph. At that point the superchargers ability to maintain power begins to drop off significantly and if you could see the graph you would could readily see that at 30000 ft it could not do 430 mph.



The chart I referenced shows hp vs. altitude and reflects your comment about dropping off. However, airspeed does not drop off at the same rate as hp. It would if drag was a constant, but, as altitude goes up, drag drops off. Less hp is required to maintain airspeed. This is chart is consistent with other aircraft performance charts.

There is an interesting test report from a comparison test performed by Flight Test, U.S. Naval Air Station, Patuxent River, Maryland, titled “Evaluation and Comparison Trails of the P-51B and F4U Airplanes” (see http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f4u/p-51b-f4u-1-navycomp.pdf). Test included the F4U-1 and F4U-1A. These *Naval *test show that the P-51B was capable of 445 mph at 30000 ft. This is not inconsistent with the P-51D doing 430 mph at that altitude.




> This data is from "America"s One Hundred Thousand" an exhaustively researched and footnoted book by an aeronautical engineer which goes into the design, development and manufacture and deployment of all US fighters in WW2. I recommend it to you



Hmmm, I not sure of what “exhaustive” means, since your data does not relate very well with what I have researched. I’ll have to see about getting that book.



> All I am saying as far as the F4U is concerned is that because of it's superior range in the 1 version that had fuel tanks in the wings, it could have stayed with the bombers longer than the P47s could and saved some lives in 1943. Also think about a redesigned version meant strictly for the AAF. Surely there could have been weight saving measures other than fixed wings and no tail hook that would have allowed the performance of the F4U to be even better.



The load carrying ability (gross minus empty weights) of the P-47C, F4U-1, and FG1 (F4U-1 with fixed wings) is a follows:

P-47C 3600lbs
F4U-1 3057lbs
FG1 3344lbs

As you can see, the F4U or FG1 could never carry as much fuel as the P-47 so it could never have a greater range.



> As it was the F4U1 in 1943 was already a better climbing and turning a/c than the P47 and it was a hands down better fighter until the fight got above 20000 feet or more.



An escort fighter for B-17/24 should have optimum fighting ability between 20k to 30k+. This is where the F4U-1 begins to fade. I fail to see the F4U-1 advantage here.



> Just it's ability to use a much shorter field would have been an asset in England.



I am not sure this was important in ’43 England.




> Of course, I know why that idea was never tried as the AAF would never admit that an a/c designed to be a ship board fighter could never outperform a fighter designed for the AAF. The reason that the RN had no decent carrier fighters was that the RAF controlled design of the RNs a/c and they flat rejected the idea that a carrier fighter could compete with a conventional fighter.



I am sure this is true.



> That inline engine idea was in vogue in the US also in the 30s and the only thing that kept the radial engine of high enough power to give the fighter the performance needed to keep up with inline engined fighters was the US Navy, that was responsible for it's own procurement of a/c. Thus the PW R2800.



I do not agree with this statement. It is true that the in-line engine was in vogue but the Navy was not the only service using and proposing to use radial engined aircraft in the 30s. The AAF designed or built radial fighters in the 30s included, P-26, P-35, P-36, and P-43. In addition, and probably more influential to radial engine development, was the bombers, B-17, B-18, B-24, B-25, and B-26. There were probably more bomber funds provided to radial development than any other source.




> Back to the P51, I have no doubt that a specially prepared a/c with perhaps special fuel could exceed the figures I have quoted.



The configurations of the tested aircraft are defined. Only minor modifications are mentioned in some instances and in other instances the aircraft were standard production aircraft. The only fuels used in these test were those available operationally, except where the fuel were being tested for proposed for use (like higher octane). These fuels were later operationally implemented.




> I do think the figures I have quoted are more representative of the average production a/c.



Average performance of in-use aircraft is usually below those that are flight tested. However, this applies across the board to all aircraft. You cannot claim data is not good for one aircraft because it is not “average” and then compare that to the tested values of another aircraft. Since “average” performance is very difficult to get a handle on, comparing performance to “tested” levels is much more consistent and is a better way to compare aircraft.




> Just checked on combat radius for P47c-d and F4u1. P47 with internal fuel had a CR of roughly 225 miles. This with 370 gallons fuel and includes warmup, climb out, cruise, 5min at combat power, 15 min at military power, cruise back, fuel reserve of 30 min at min cruise power. F4U1 had CR of roughly 450 miles with 361 gal internal fuel with same profile. A significant difference. Which one would you rather have escorting you in your B17 or B24?



Neither one of these planes could make it to Berlin. Both would have had to have been modified to carry extra fuel. As mentioned above, the P-47 had equal or better fuel carrying potential with drop tanks. I like the larger internal fuel capacity and it would probably have reduced some bomber exposure (although the P-47 could be modified for more internal fuel, in fact, the P-47D had 370 gal internal fuel). I do not think the F4U-1 would have made much of a difference. These planes were very similar but tuned to perform at different envelops, the P-47 at high altitude and the F4U-1 at lower altitudes. Both could probably be tuned to do the others job (except carrier ops. No carrier would be long enough for a Republic aircraft to take off on).

I do think that the higher altitude operating range of the P-47 gives it a significant advantage for bomber escort, as what it was designed to do.


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## Jank (Jun 2, 2007)

For late war P-47D, when the higher grade fuel was in use, the following test is impressive.

FLIGHT TESTS ON THE REPUBLIC
P-47D AIRPLANE, AAF NO. 42-26167
USING 44-1 FUEL
P 47D Performance Test
.
.
.


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## renrich (Jun 2, 2007)

Since you seem to be very interested in this stuff, I am sure you would be very pleased with the book and if you get a copy, you will see what I mean by exhaustively researched. I could not read the graph in the test report you mentioned. The p51b was faster than the D model as the D was heavier and there was a drag penalty for the bubble canopy but I do not find it inconsistent that that the speed would drop off more than 5 mph from around 24000 to 30000 ft. After all that is a mile higher. The same book in the graph on the Vmax of the F4U4 shows a drop of it's speed from just over 25000 ft to 30000 ft of from 446 mph to about 436 mph a spread of 10 mph. At any rate those numbers are tactically insignificant. As far as the ranges are concerned, the P47 would use more fuel at cruise than the F4U because it had a bigger cross section and more fuel in climb because it was around a ton heavier. Actually, the CR I quoted you was on the later model D version the C and early D only carried 305 gallons of fuel and that only gave the a/c a range of 800 miles at 10000 feet with no provision for warm up, takeoff, climb out, cruise, combat, cruise back and fuel reserve. Under the same conditions the F4U1 with 361 gallons of fuel could go twice as far. To put it simply the Corsair got better gas mileage than the Thunderbolt. Just as the Mustang with a Merlin got better gas mileage than a Kittyhawk with the same engine.


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## drgondog (Jun 2, 2007)

Rhttp:
//www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f4u/p-51b-f4u-1-navycomp.pdfenrich - 

I thought I would make your day - it is an official US Navy Flight Test Comparison of an F4U-1 versus a P-51B.It will state that the 51B is faster above 25,000 feet and in a dive but in all areas inferior to the F4U.

If you read between the lines however (remember it is not impossible for a Naval officer to be persuaded by higher command that they don't WANT an aeroplane from the USAAF - and you reflect that the Navy has only ONCE bought an airframe that was tainted by the USAF- the FJ version of the F-86)

You will note the following:

No comparison Climb curves from SL,From 5,000 from anywhere

No comparison curves for Turn or Roll 

NOTHING except HP available (think and R2800 has more HP than a Packard Merlin -sure) but no HP to weight or Acceleration curves to look at things like acceleration at various altitudes.

A 'footnote' that the props are changed from standard 13'3 to 13'11 on the F4U but no recommendation that the fleet adopt such a flight test experience!

No corresponding change on the 51B nor any NA engineers on site

A footnote that the F4U wing folding fairings are sealed and cowl flaps tuned

A footnote that the War Emergency Power is boosted from Standard 60" to 65".

A footnote that 'equivalent fuel led to equivalent range" but no footnote to note that the 51B used a lot LESS fuel for 'equivalent range"

And finally no note on the version of the 51 B (its a -7 representing most of the first deliveries before March 1944 and the program had two major improvements in next three months)

Do ya think the Navy wanted a fair trial?

the 51 could either out turn or hold it's own, ditto acceleration (all depending on altitude and load of course), had very close to initial climb rate at SL was slower in climb until 20K+ then climbed faster than the F4U.. Both ships rolled well

Neither wanted the 'other guy' to have either ship. These two were as close to dead even as any two separate fighters in the world.

But it's funny how one controls the tests, isn't it?

Regards, Bill


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## Soundbreaker Welch? (Jun 3, 2007)

Yeah!


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## renrich (Jun 3, 2007)

I had read that report previously several times and had noticed the discrepancies although not as many as you. Another interesting thing about the report was that there were two P51s a B and a C. As I am sure you know the main difference between a B and C was that the latter was built at a new plant in Dallas. The C had so many defects that it was dropped from the study. Teething problems from the new assembly line? Reminds me of the difference between the quality of the Vought Corsairs and the ones built by Brewster. I wonder if the US did not try to foist as many of the Brewster builds on the British as possible. An interesting comparison test would have been the F4U4 and the P51D. The 4 was a hotrod and the D was heavier and more draggy than the B so the margin in performance would have been different. On this forum previously I have tried to advance the notion that many of these performance reports on the web, while authentic, may not have been objective and might not represent performance available in production a/c. Thank you for your detailed and specificpost.


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## drgondog (Jun 3, 2007)

Mike Williams - owner of the very fine website which posts the many flight test reports as well as Mustang Encounter Reports - is the single best reference and the place you have to start with.

All the ones I posted earlier were in fact Official USAAF Reports in one form or another - whether tabular or narrative... same with Dave.

Yes the F4U-4 was a hotter ship - but here's two items you need to deal with. It was a later model and came into production about a couple of months before the P-51H so those two would be better for time based comparisons. Interestingly enough the P-51B-15 with improved Boost on the Merlin-3 was of course faster (and lighter) than the 51D and the 51H was not only 900 pounds lighter with same internal fuel and armament as the D but another 30Kts faster at 25,000.

I'm dealing from memory now but believe the initial climb at SL for the 51H was "around" 4700 feet per minute, had a lighter wing loading than the -4 (but less power) and both once again were within 10's of a foot per second in acceleration (F4U-4 slightly ahead).

Here's the question - so many sources claim that the F4U-4 out turns the 51 (name your model) at all altitudes. 

But the 51B and H had lower to really lower wing loading than the F4U. Physics and aero suggest that the Corsair doesn't out turn 51 unless at really low speed - has anyone ever done a side by side turn test/comparison?

The charts would have looked similar - 51H faster and maybe slightly more agile on the deck and really come ahead above 25,000 feet while the F4U-4 will out roll it everywhere and be faster and climb slightly better from 5,000 to 20,000 +

Different Missions and not much to choose from. Difference is like Blonde vs Brunette on radial vs inline (51 will always - forever- loose energy slower and go farther on same fuel). If ground support is what you want F4U-4 clearly tougher and carry bigger load. If high altitude escort is the game then 51 is what you want. (WWII)

Which is NOT what Korea was all about for 18th and 35FBW with 51's - they needed 47's or (gasp) F4U-4/5's (or ADs)

Regards,

Bill


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## renrich (Jun 3, 2007)

My reference of choice is "America's One Hundred Thousand" by Francis H Dean. One of the last sections in the book compares US fighters as to many of their performance characteristics. It is a very technical book,(written by an aeronautical engineer), and as far as turning is concerned with no flaps the relative performance is as follows in this order,(best to worst), FM2, P63A-9, P61B-1, F6F5, P51D-15, P38L, P47D-30, F4U-1D. As one can discern, turning does not guarantee superiority and does not necessarily translate to maneuverability.


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## Snautzer01 (Jun 3, 2007)

For me the il 2

awfull lot build , got great press, but also very many were shot down. 

Bit like throwing so much gasoline on a fire that it kills it

regards 

Snautzer


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## renrich (Jun 3, 2007)

Another factor to consider in any discussion of the relative merits of F4U4 and the P51 H is that the F4U4 had a service ceiling of 41400 ft so it was no slouch at getting up there and it's critical altitude was 26200 ft where it got it's 446 mph TAS. From a practical point of view I wonder how much acm with recip engines took place at altitudes above 30000 ft. Other factors to consider might be controllability and ammo load. I have read in a number of places that the Mustang could be a handful in certain flight regimes whereas the Corsair had the reputation of being a sweet handling plane in the air with excellent control force modulation throughout. The Corsair of course had an ammo load of 2350 rds of 50 cal. I wonder what the H carried. By the way, it is my understanding in a turning fight the Corsair was improved vastly by 10 or 15 degrees of flap. Corsair turning ability was impaired by the right wing spoiler which more or less cured the left wing drop. I read somewhere that Hub Zemke spent time in a LW POW camp because he lost a wing on his P51 in a thunderstorm. As you said for long range fighter escort the P51 was the obvious choice. For a carrier capable fighter the Corsair hands down. For all the other roles except possibly the interceptor job, seems to me the Corsair comes out on top.


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## davparlr (Jun 3, 2007)

renrich said:


> Another factor to consider in any discussion of the relative merits of F4U4 and the P51 H is that the F4U4 had a service ceiling of 41400 ft so it was no slouch at getting up there and it's critical altitude was 26200 ft where it got it's 446 mph TAS. From a practical point of view I wonder how much acm with recip engines took place at altitudes above 30000 ft. Other factors to consider might be controllability and ammo load. I have read in a number of places that the Mustang could be a handful in certain flight regimes whereas the Corsair had the reputation of being a sweet handling plane in the air with excellent control force modulation throughout. The Corsair of course had an ammo load of 2350 rds of 50 cal. I wonder what the H carried. By the way, it is my understanding in a turning fight the Corsair was improved vastly by 10 or 15 degrees of flap. Corsair turning ability was impaired by the right wing spoiler which more or less cured the left wing drop. I read somewhere that Hub Zemke spent time in a LW POW camp because he lost a wing on his P51 in a thunderstorm. As you said for long range fighter escort the P51 was the obvious choice. For a carrier capable fighter the Corsair hands down. For all the other roles except possibly the interceptor job, seems to me the Corsair comes out on top.



The only maneuvering problem I have heard of for the P-51 was if the pilot failed to use his aft tank of gas first. This moved the cg aft and caused handling problems. Also, stall characteristics could be exciting. However, a Mustang pilot should always avoid low speed maneuvering since his advantage was always at high speed.

The ’43 P-51B was at a disadvantage to the F4U-1 except above 25k. The '44 P-51B was significantly faster than the F4U-1 at all altitudes and is actually close to the F4U-4. The P-51D had airspeed advantage over the F4U-1 except between 15 and 20k. In maneuvering, the F4U-1 has wing loading and power loading advantage. The P-51H was faster at altitudes than the F4U-4, significantly faster below 15k (over 30 mph at SL and 40 mph at 5k). In addition, the P-51H has a power loading advantage. Wing loading is a slight advantage for the F4U-4.

So, nose to nose, 
F4U-1 has advantage over ’43 P-51B below 25k. Naval comparison test confirm this comparison. Test also revealed that the P-51 had a much superior dive speed than the F4U.

’44 P-51B has advantage over F4U-1 at all altitudes (due to much greater level speed and dive speed)

P-51D and F4U-1 pretty well even with speed advantage for P-51 over most of the envelop up to 25k, but better maneuvering for F4U-1. Above 25k, the P-51 would have the advantage. Again, P-51D would have superior dive speed.

P-51H has advantage over F4U-4 below 15k due to much higher level speed advantage. Above 15k they are pretty equal with the P-51H having an airspeed advantage and power loading advantage but the F4U-4 having better wing loading. Both planes climb superbly with the F4U-4 having a slight advantage. Again, P-51H would have superior dive speed. Also, two thousand pound weight advantage would certainly benefit the P-51H in sustained turns.

The Joint Fighter Conference perfered the P-51 to the F4U-1, although very close below 25k.

As to losing a wing in a thunderstorm, many an aircraft has come out of a thunderstorm in pieces. Thunderstorms are dangerous to all aircraft and have to be avoided. We lost a C-141 over England in one. The plane had lost its radar. Later analysis indicated that it got into vertical down draft of 6000 ft/min immediately followed by an updraft of 6000 ft/min. The engines pulled off the wings.

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## drgondog (Jun 3, 2007)

Dave - off topic but one of the greatest lessons I ever learned was when my father and I were caught in a massive cell north of Atlanta on the way to Nashville (in a 51 modified to two seater). 

Basic rule - tightnen up, lower seat and follow him throught with light stick. 

Just keep the wings level and forget about altitude integrity. Keeping wings on a better thing than maintaining altitude per the ATC contollers sipping on a coke watching all the 'red' on the radars.

Renrich - the 51 had no problems passing carrier trials on the Great Lakes and as Dave said 'losing stuff is easy in a T-storm" and that axiom follows whether a 51 or F4U (or 1011 or F4 or Spitfire or ______ pick one) 

I love the F4U as you do but more sympathetic to 51H as the best all around US Piston Fighter but Ok with F4U if someone gets purple about it. 

PS I found it (51D-30) a simple F%%%^ing delight to fly in any situation but never flew with a full 85 gallon fuse tank because my butt occupied that space. No CG problem replacing 500 pound of 150 LL with 130 pounds of snot nosed kid!

God I love the 51. Just don't run the throttle thru the gate on a Missed approach with flaps down - won't ever do it TWICE. PS nor with an F4U and certainly NOT with an AD! those Hogs will kill you low speed, flaps down, throttle up!

Regards,
Bill


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## davparlr (Jun 3, 2007)

drgondog said:


> Dave - off topic but one of the greatest lessons I ever learned was when my father and I were caught in a massive cell north of Atlanta on the way to Nashville (in a 51 modified to two seater).
> 
> Basic rule - tightnen up, lower seat and follow him throught with light stick.
> 
> ...



All good procedures similar to what we were taught. There is nothing good in a thunderstrom, rain, hail, lightning, wind shear, tornadic winds, et.al.



> I love the F4U as you do but more sympathetic to 51H as the best all around US Piston Fighter but Ok with F4U if someone gets purple about it.


I have no problems with the F4U. I girded my loins and did battle defending the F4U-4/5 as the best prop fighter ever. I didn't include the P-51H because of no combat experience.



> God I love the 51. Just don't run the throttle thru the gate on a Missed approach with flaps down - won't ever do it TWICE. PS nor with an F4U and certainly NOT with an AD! those Hogs will kill you low speed, flaps down, throttle up!



Never had controllability problems with a jet. Just push the throttles and up you go. One thing I think is funny, as much a we practiced missed approaches, the one time I had to do it (because of weather), I really screwed it up. It seems that we always practiced missed approachs a minimums. The one time I did it, we were about 1000 ft high with go-around altitude of 1500 ft. Procedures were, throttles - Normal EPR (engine pressure ratio), flaps approach, climb to go-around altitude. I did all that and by the time I got my nose up, I was zooming through go-around altitude by about 500 ft. I had to nose down a bit and pull power. I was embarrassed as I was an experienced aircraft commander at that time.


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## drgondog (Jun 4, 2007)

On the missed approach I have to tell one on myself and ultimately how my old man caught me 'not reading the 'book.

Early in the cycle of learning how to fly the 51 I was doing it all from back seat of course.. we set up some approaches one fine day and were at maybe 4-5,000 feet... shooting a not completely believable approach on the top of low cloud formation .. bleed some speed, flaps down, gear down - down wind-base and final leg - when he barks 'missed approach'

I am rattled a little as I wasn't expecting it and ran the throttle past 50" almost to the gate and.........

as he recovers from the snap roll/split ess he really chews my ass out and wonders if I have the focus I need to fly something more complex than a J-4.

I wasn't a mental giant but I had the imagination to understand what that situation would have done for us coming over the inner marker or threshold

I never forgot the lesson..


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 4, 2007)

drgondog said:


> On the missed approach I have to tell one on myself and ultimately how my old man caught me 'not reading the 'book.
> 
> Early in the cycle of learning how to fly the 51 I was doing it all from back seat of course.. we set up some approaches one fine day and were at maybe 4-5,000 feet... shooting a not completely believable approach on the top of low cloud formation .. bleed some speed, flaps down, gear down - down wind-base and final leg - when he barks 'missed approach'
> 
> ...




 Pretty Wild!!!

What was the speed for the P-51 in the pattern? I've shot localizer and ILS approaches in an L-29 and more recently a Jet Provost. The hardest thing was maintaining the sink rate but controlling the airspeed. The Provost wasn't that hard as it accelerated better then the L-29. The Delfin is a brick, once it starts sinking it wants to meet the earth real fast and that slow spooling M 701 isn't much help....


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## davparlr (Jun 4, 2007)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Pretty Wild!!!
> 
> What was the speed for the P-51 in the pattern? I've shot localizer and ILS approaches in an L-29 and more recently a Jet Provost. The hardest thing was maintaining the sink rate but controlling the airspeed. The Provost wasn't that hard as it accelerated better then the L-29. The Delfin is a brick, once it starts sinking it wants to meet the earth real fast and that slow spooling M 701 isn't much help....



The T-37 was similar to your L-29 on acceleration. Those centrifugal compressors were really slow. We flew final with the speed brake out along with thrust attenuators (flap deployed into the jet exhaust), all just to keep the revs up. Now the T-38, that was another story, instant go power.


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## drgondog (Jun 4, 2007)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Pretty Wild!!!
> 
> What was the speed for the P-51 in the pattern? I've shot localizer and ILS approaches in an L-29 and more recently a Jet Provost. The hardest thing was maintaining the sink rate but controlling the airspeed. The Provost wasn't that hard as it accelerated better then the L-29. The Delfin is a brick, once it starts sinking it wants to meet the earth real fast and that slow spooling M 701 isn't much help....



Joe I think every one had a slightly different approach. I wanted 110-115 IAS over the threshold - I think book says 105-115IAS but he liked it on the hot side..

2700rpm, reduce speed below 170 and lower gear, trim to maintain 120IAS and drop flaps 15 degrees to help drag it up and steepen the angle. 

I usually lowered flaps fully after turning on final and kept a close eye on airspeed and real careful throttle. The 51 isn't a sinker per se, I just flew it in and kept the tail up for a bit down the runway.

The 51 loses airspeed a lot slower than a T-6

I miss it (flying) 

Regards,

Bill


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## Trautloft (Jun 4, 2007)

i agree with snauzer and voted for the Il-2.
sure,the mustang been overestimated,but even Göring shouted 'we lost the war' as he sighted the p-51 the first time. i consider this also as 'over-rated' by public,by the politics,propaganda etc. and this is clearly the Sturmovik. remember,not only me in hungary,but all citizens of 'eastern block' countries + ex soviet states,this is half of europe, heard for 40years about nothin else as the victories of the 'stalin-hawks' as we talked about aviation in ww2. the glorious red army..pff.. well,sure it was the most built plane in ww2,and if im right the 2.or 3.most built in history with 35000+, with impressive armament and protection but a miserable loss rate (also because of accidents), poor defense of the rear gunner ( every pilot,before he got shot down himself, 'consumed' 7 rear gunners, that was the average, after 10 solved missions they recieved a hero order already), the extremely low flying level and so on. the germans recognized its weaknesses( the infamous oil-cooler spot at the bottom of the engine armor plate) and developed tactics against them. their successes are clearly overestimated aswell, and finally,after the political change in 1989,the TRUTH about the history of Udssr planes,due to statistics they destroyed only 6% of axis living forces and equipment on eastern front (65% been killed by cheap mines/mortar). all at all, 65000!! soviet airmen (most of them the poor meatballs called rear gunners) die in this plane because of accidents,training,enemy aircraft/AA guns.


you,my friends who grew up in countries with a 'better,luckier' fortune,i mean western countries,certainly heard/red more about the godlike mustang, the lightning,the jug etc. ,i think we all agree that overall,german pilots been superb to allied if we check out the aces , the 100 top scorers killed 10000 planes! and bf-109,fw-190 are among the best fighters but i personally think the late versions of mustang ,or the spit XIX been very well a match for even ta-152,they been available in great numbers without a lack of well trained pilots,fuel,and airfields,air superiority and so on-my conclusion: quality above quantity,that was the recipe of early german successes(or even japanese) but later a bf-109g14 had to face 15 p-51d and a pather 100 t-34-85,and experienced personal of the axis been mostly dead in 44-45.by the way,im a great fan of the gustavs and the ta-152 so no offense,in my eyes the messer and the fw190 are the best fighters cosidering the whole war and the ta-152 is the best piston engined fighter ,but this is another topic.
so i agree if u put the mustang, but please think about my word of the 'zementbomber' which fell down like a stone if hit.

i checked the other planes of the rest of the list:
-the p-47 been great in ground attack role (yes,air superiority etc. so this victories cant be compared to the stuka's) 
-the p-39 cobras(if Aira;-or p-63 King) been essential for the soviets
-the p-38 lightning killed more planes with the red sun as any other allied fighter types
-the p-40 been a bit owned everywhere,but it was an important, reliable,rugged plane and widely used in all allied airforces,often as ground attack ac, in africa,far east (remember the flying tigers), sovietunion lend-lease etc.
-the spit been overestimated especially because the hurri played the major role in the battle of britain,not the spit,but later it became obviously obsolete
so the spit could take his deserved place as RAF's best fighter,beloved by his pilots,feared by its opponents (still some Luftwaffe experten downed like 50 each ...for case you dont know this amazing site: Kacha`s Luftwaffe Page )
- me-262 hmm,if he enters service 2years later after its engine probs are fixed,if hitler use them as fighters insted of jabos, if if if..well a clearly overrated ac,unfortunate and too late to play a significant role. still i like it 
me163 is crap.)
all the other planes do not really belong on this list,or at least i dont/cant criticize them, all pros and contras are equal or tending to the overall positive side.

sorry,it became longer as i expected ,cheers


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 4, 2007)

davparlr said:


> The T-37 was similar to your L-29 on acceleration. Those centrifugal compressors were really slow. We flew final with the speed brake out along with thrust attenuators (flap deployed into the jet exhaust), all just to keep the revs up. Now the T-38, that was another story, instant go power.


Interesting!

On the L-29 I like to leave the dive brake closed until I'm on the runway and then use it to slow down because of the pneumatic brake system (Soviet style). If I'm high and fast on final I may pop it out for a second...





drgondog said:


> Joe I think every one had a slightly different approach. I wanted 110-115 IAS over the threshold - I think book says 105-115IAS but he liked it on the hot side..
> 
> 2700rpm, reduce speed below 170 and lower gear, trim to maintain 120IAS and drop flaps 15 degrees to help drag it up and steepen the angle.
> 
> ...




Neat stuff Bill, amazing that the 51 would loose airspeed slower than the T-6. I understand your dad liking it hot, sometimes that extra 5 or 10 knots are quite helpful!


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## renrich (Jun 5, 2007)

I have a long technical description of the handling problems in a dive of the Merlin P51, probably, in part, caused by the propellor but obviously it did not render the a/c unusable and I am too poor a typist to copy it and post it.


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## Soren (Jun 5, 2007)

> But the 51B and H had lower to really lower wing loading than the F4U. Physics and aero suggest that the Corsair doesn't out turn 51 unless at really low speed - has anyone ever done a side by side turn test/comparison?



None of what you have said there is true. Like Davparlr pointed out the F4U Corsair has always enjoyed a much lower wing-loading than the P-51 Mustang, throughout its different versions.



renrich said:


> My reference of choice is "America's One Hundred Thousand" by Francis H Dean. One of the last sections in the book compares US fighters as to many of their performance characteristics. It is a very technical book,(written by an aeronautical engineer), and as far as turning is concerned with no flaps the relative performance is as follows in this order,(best to worst), FM2, P63A-9, P61B-1, F6F5, P51D-15, P38L, P47D-30, F4U-1D. As one can discern, turning does not guarantee superiority and does not necessarily translate to maneuverability.



Which is reason enough for you to throw that book away.


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## T4.H (Jun 5, 2007)

Interesting Thread.

Most overrated aircraft...

Hmmm...

P51?
It was the right aircraft, but get on duty little bit too late.
P51 and the last versions of FW190 (FW190 D with the Jumo engine) were the best fighters of WWII. Perhaps the FW190 D was a little bit better. Overrated? Yes, but only because it comes too late.

Spitfire?
Yes. Too short range.

Me262?
Yes. It comes too late. The well known jet-engine problems.

IL2/IL10?
Yes! Produced in masses, send in masses, realy difficult to shoot it down.
A "Widowmaker".



"My First Place"
*C-47!!*

Why?
In WWII the transport of material and soldiers by aircrafts in total were less or more unimportant. It is nice to have them. But without transport of material and soldiers by air, the war wouldn't have finished earlier.
Parachute jumpers?
Important at begin of the war, because of the surprise.
After Crete (operation "Merkur") the time of the parachute jumpers was over.
All operations of the allies ended less or more in disasters, even when they won. 
Perhaps sometime I will tell you the story of my grandfather, he was in the "German airforce" as commander of a well armored radio half-tank. 
He was in "Arnheim". It is not a nice story. They got out of the mess alive and unhurt.


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## Lucky13 (Jun 5, 2007)

Didn't P-47 take off from.....yep! Look at this fellas...

_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRGYXMs9n1s_
DAMN! I wish it had sound!!


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## drgondog (Jun 5, 2007)

Soren you are wrong (and right) about the Corsair having a 'lower to much lower wing loading", but in your enthusiasm, you might have gone overboard on your statement that "all F4U's enjoyed much lower wing loading than the P-51 Mustang in any of its variations". 

I don't think you realized I was talking about the two specific ships in that test - but I DID cherry pick one set of comparative loading conditions - namely the one at 'manufacturer's published combat load"

To your blanket statement about all Mustangs having larger wing loading I invite you to pull the data on Basic and Max specifications for the P-51A, the A-36, the P-51F,G and J and compare against the F4U-4 for example.

So, I gave you no context for the 'wing loading' comment you referred to, which was a continuing discussion w/Renrich and Dave on the subject of comparative performance between the two fighters and cites the below report as an example of deciding an outcome before the Test. 

You also 'erred' ,I believe, as badly as I did by not having a valid comparison chart to the two a/c and relevant statistics in front of you when you made your own wing-loading pronouncment.

Let me be clear that the statement I made that the 51 wing loading was "lower to much lower" is simply wrong if you compare a P-51D against any F4U - it overstates the very slight advantage the 51B had over the F4U-1 in that test. 

This is the link for the Navy Test in 1944 (below) found on Mike Williams' site containing the US NAVY Comparison between P-51B and F4U-1 in 1944. 

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f4u/p-51b-f4u-1-navycomp.pdf

Moving forward

The 51H had lower wing loadings than the 51D and just slightly higher than many, if not alll F4U's - but in normal load conditions the two ships at the same point of relative fuel condition are very close.

My comparisons (and I should have done the math as I depended on a memory note from many years ago) was between the F4U-1 and the 51B-5 (or -7 I would have to look it up) that was in the Navy report.. The wing area and weights, respectively are 235.75ft2 and 9100 pounds for the P-51B; 314.0 ft2 and 12162 pounds for the Corsair.. as the report stated - "each to its own specified full load fighter weight" 

In honesty, they also loaded that same 51 up to Max Gross at 9453 pounds which would have increased the wing loading by 1.5#/ft2.. but then they had to be careful because at the higher weight the resulting range at the higher load would have been much more than the F4U and they didn't want to go there in their report (my opinion only) 

The resultant wing loadings for the Mfr spec load in the Test are 38.73#/ft2 and 38.60#/ft2 respectively for F4U-1 vs P-51B, at the Test Conditions

I humbly apolgise, the 51B was only (.0033) .33% lower ("not lower to much lower" - as I overstated) than the F4U in one test condition and 1.2#/ft2 - about 1% higher than the F4U in the heaviest load condition above spec on the 51B.

The F4U-4 is heavier than the -1 and is almost exactly the same wing loading at Basic and Max - with the 51H about 2 oz of HEAVIER wing loading than the F4U-4. 

I'm not gonna do the math on every variant because I believe that the difference one way or the other is probabaly insignificant - after doing the math above.. so you do the math - tell us what the combination of wing loading and comparative aerodynamics yields from a theoretical point of view in a turn performance competition?

Now, you quickly dismissed the data in Dean's book that the F4U was less capable in turn? 

Can we assume that you have a better and more reliable reference to compare these two turn -as this was the question I was seeking answers to?

Regards,

Bill


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## drgondog (Jun 5, 2007)

Renrich - What may be interesting is that a specially prepared and instrumented 51D was fitted with Spinner but no prop and towed to 26000 ft by a P-61 for dive tests... got up to .75 Mach vs power on .76 mach..

Test designed to compare readings and actual data versus wind tunnel - and demonstrated the wind tunnel readings very close..

What suprised everyone is the at .70 to ..75 mach the propless/torqueless 51 yawed to the right - taking the prop effect out of the question.


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## renrich (Jun 5, 2007)

Soren, with all due respect to your advice and your technical expertise which I understand is considerable I think I will keep Dean's book. As I have mentioned before on this forum, his book is exhaustively researched and footnoted. The report on the turn capabilities is based on a NACA report( I believe # 829 dated May 19, 1944) and the results are taken directly from the report. I have had this book since about 2000, the book is copyrighted 1997, have read it more than once and never fail to get something new from it. It is too technical for an itinerant homebuilder like me to understand all, you would probably get a lot more than I from it but I am surprised that I have heard no other members of this august forum quote from this source as it is, I believe, a must read for all with our kind of interests. Besides it has imnumerable photos of US fighters going back to the early 20s.


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## renrich (Jun 5, 2007)

I believe on the P47 takeoff from the carrier a catapult was used. Good film and highly interesting. Bill, that is interesting about the propless P51.


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## Lucky13 (Jun 5, 2007)

A catapult was used, true, since USS Manila Bay CVE-61 is an escort carrier. I think though since the Essex class was a fair bit larger, the P-47 could take off from their decks without the assist of a catapult. Right?


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## renrich (Jun 5, 2007)

I don't think so unless the a/c was really light. The P47 had a reputation of being a superlative ground lover. Although if they had a half a gale blowing over the bow and the ship was turning up 28 knots, maybe. They launched B25s off hornet with no catapult.


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## Lucky13 (Jun 5, 2007)

Let's borrow a P-47 and one of the preserved Essex class carriers and find out... I didn't know that she had that reputation renrich.


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## Jackson (Jun 5, 2007)

Obviously the Ta-152..

They were gounded mostly and the only kills anyone talks about are at low altitude. I am not even sure even one got anywhere near a P38L, because the internal mechanics were just not there.


High altitude? Maybe, one day uh huh...but never any documented altitude fights..So one shot down Yak 9 down on the deck or maybe jumped a Tempest/ Typhoon. Tank ran away in one once from a few Mustangs- wow-weee

70 of them delivered and almost none of them flying on VE day.


Overall fewer kills than a P-40.. or a Brewster Buffalo, heck fewer A2A kills than some B-17 tailgunners. 

waaay overated IMHO


Not even a contender, actually


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## Jackson (Jun 5, 2007)

The Ta-152 


It was not even on the list to vote for..


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## renrich (Jun 5, 2007)

" In just about all cases and in all versions the P47 was noted for eating up large chunks of real estate on takeoff." a pilot checking out a P47B related,"On takeoff I wondered if we were ever going to leave the runway, the roll being so much longer than other fighters."


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## Soren (Jun 6, 2007)

drgondog,

I am only right on this matter. 

A weight of 9,100 lbs is not the normal gross weight of the P-51B, that is 9,202 lbs (4,173 kg), and the normal gross weight of the P-51C is ~9,350 lbs (4,241 kg), 9,760 lbs (4,427 kg) for the P-51D and 9,530 lbs (4,322 kg) for the P-51H - which equals the wing loadings below:

P-51B = 192 kg/m^2
P-51C = 196 kg/m^2
P-51D = 204.4 kg/m^2
P-51H = 200 kg/m^2

The F4U-1 has a gross weight of 12,039 lbs (5,460 kg), and the F4U-4 a gross weight of 12,405 lbs (5,626 kg) - which equals the wing-loadings below:

F4U-1 = 187 kg/m^2
F4U-4 = 192.8 kg/m^2

Now on top of this advantage in wing-loading the F4U Corsair also has the advantage of the NACA 23000 type airfoil providing a higher CLmax and critical AoA, giving it an even better lift-loading. While the laminar type airfoil of the P-51 suffers from a low CLmax and critical AoA and is known for its early, sudden and violent departures in turns. 

And here's first the facts and then the doc's to prove it:

Fact no.1: The FW-190 G-2 turns with the Mustang III.
Fact no.2: The F4U-1 is superior in every aspect of maneuverability compared to the P-51B.

From Birtish AFDU trials between FW-190 G-2 and Mustang Mk.III:
_"Turning circle 
42. Again there is not much to choose."_
- And this is against a FW-190 G-2 running at lower power than usual.

From US Naval evaluations and comparison trials of F4U-1 and P-51B, Patuxant River, Maryland:


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## Soren (Jun 6, 2007)

Jackson said:


> Obviously the Ta-152..
> 
> They were gounded mostly and the only kills anyone talks about are at low altitude. I am not even sure even one got anywhere near a P38L, because the internal mechanics were just not there.
> 
> ...



Know the facts before you make stupid comments like those.

The Ta-152H acquired itself a 11 to 1 kill ratio in the short time it was in service, which is a very admirable feat.

The Ta-152H is not only a contender, its the the best of all contenders.


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## drgondog (Jun 6, 2007)

Soren - I'm on a business trip and wont' be back until weekend.

My references for all weights and performance on all the p51 series is Mustang by Robert Gruenhagen and the figures that I used in the discussions, particularly th 51H is sourced there and significantly differnt from your post.

First question is what is your reference point?

The second point I made in reference to the report I posted and the report you extracted is that zero data was given in that report other than to simply state the the "F4U-1 was superior in all respects in maneuver"

Not one data point for acceleration, roll, initial climb from say 300, 350 and 400mph at different altitudes, characteristics in turn with 15 and 20 degrees of flap in such turns, dive acceleration, dive stability, etc

We are reading the same report - where did I miss the data points you use to 'close out the argument' by simple decree?

I cited specifically the wing loading from that report, which aside from the Speed and HP charts as function of altitude and boost is all I could find. I also noted that the test loaded up the same Mustang from 9100 to 9453 which gave it a higher wing loading - 

In jest and seriousness I noted that not much was said about that series of tests because the extra loading was equivalent (or actual) to the fuel of the 85 gal tank - which would have given that Mustang much longer range than the F4U-1 - one of the key reasons the Navy looked at the Mustang - which is more than the Gross weight you cited for the 51B.

I'm not even sure that 437150 had a fuse tank as that series had them installed by field mod. 43-7153 for example came
into the 355th FG in early March 1944 and had tank installed at the Service Group the same month.

In seriousness I commented that the tests were all conducted by Navy pilots, not factory test pilots incented to wring the most out of each ship in the trials and suggested that the Navy might just NOT want the P-51. Who knows what kind of experience the Mustang pilot had.

Is that the Engineering experience you use to postulate a conclusuion?

Next, help me out with what you consider the definitive document for the F4U series. I must confess I have had a hard time and the sources seem to have different loads than you presented - especilly the F4U-4 which has a Max Gross of 14,000+ 

Last, cite your references for the 'dreaded' left breaking stall? I am VERY aware of this nastiness with 20 degrees of flaps at low speed but I just finished talking to several 355th FG pilots to help refresh my own experience and they seemed to not have encountered that at medium to high speeds.

The 'net is rife with Encounter reports in which flaps were used to easily out turn Fw 190 and me 109s at high and low altitudes - the same source for the Navy Report also has them under 'Encounter Reports'.

So, ???

Regards,

Bill


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 6, 2007)

Just off what is on the list:

US - P-51D
Germany - Bf 110
Japan - Zero


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## Soren (Jun 6, 2007)

Its all assumptions on your part Bill.

The laminar type wing is known for its low CLmax and Critical AoA, esp. *without* flaps deployed. The sharp leading edge of this type of airfoil causes the sudden and violent departure in turns - however this doesn't mean there isn't some warning that you're approaching the limit, just that go slightly further and you'll regret it. In combat it took the P-51 an awful lot of altitude to recover from a spin - unlike the Bf-109, Spitfire FW-190. This unfortunate characteristic of the P-51 still gets pilots to this day.

As to the P-51 using flaps to easily out-turn FW-190's and Bf-109's in combat, well first of all combat reports are about the most unreliable way of determining an a/c's maneuverability as all the circumstances are unknown - its all guesswork when using combat reports as evidence. Secondly about 80% of all engaged -190's and 109's were most likely bomber-interceptors carrying gun-pods, large fuselage racks etc etc... the Germans had few dedicated fighters to protect the bomber- interceptors but the few they had certainly caused some serious problems for the Allied fighters. Even so a Bf-109G equipped with gun-pods was infact a better turn-fighter than the P-51, a Finnish pilot shooting down two Mustangs in a single engagement in his Bf-109G equipped with gun-pods. 

The Germans also evaluated a light P-51C against their own Dora-9 and found them to be equal in every aspect of maneuverability except roll rate and climb where the -190 was considerably better - the captured P-51C was flown with low fuel as the Germans expected some missions to be carried out this way by the allies, owing the long range of the a/c. 






As to the Corsair and its weights, well I quoted the highest fighter configuration weight I could find, many are as low as ~ 11,000 lbs. The only way the F4U-4 was ever going to weight ~14,500 lbs was if it carried bombs ! Std. configuration fighter load was 12,405 lbs.

You can read the POH's for the a/c if you're in doubt Bill.


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## Juha (Jun 6, 2007)

_Even so a Bf-109G equipped with gun-pods was infact a better turn-fighter than the P-51, a Finnish pilot shooting down two Mustangs in a single engagement in his Bf-109G equipped with gun-pods. _

Soren, it seems that all Finnish claims against P-51s were in reality against Yak-7s, so they have no relevance here.

Juha


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## Soren (Jun 6, 2007)

If that is so then the achievement is pretty remarkable - the Yak-7 was no big and heavy a/c like the P-51.


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## Jackson (Jun 6, 2007)

*short time in service is right,* they were 'hanger queens' I have read no 'H''s were in service at the of the war, as they were all grounded for good reason

Get your facts straight, not even 70 were delivered and they flew relatively very little combat as they were poorly made and were full of dangerous design errors 

as for being a contender for 'most overrated', I figured they were left off the list as they were more or less irrelevant..

Focke-Wulf Ta152H

But since I am a nice guy, next time I go see the last remaining example, tell me if you need any photos of the cockpit etc, one of my tight buddies is a museum docent


Even P40's could shoot down a bomber


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## drgondog (Jun 6, 2007)

Soren I cited my source on weights and models, you did not

I cited personal observations of the Naval F4U team and cited personal references in the Mustang Encounter report. You cited the Luftwaffe tests

You chose to discount the ones you didn't like.

I asked you to cite specific comparative data from the F4U-1 vs P51B test and you come back to me with another personal recount of belief (not facts) from Luftwaffe test claim, again unsubstantiated by specific flight test data on rolll, climb, turn, acceleration by weight b y altitude and throttle settings.

Where is the meat upon which to base and engineering based flight test conclusion.

You profile doesn't give me much to work on but I suspect you might be an Aero Engineer as I am. I suspect w/o proof that I have more 51 time but happy to acknowledge that mine does not qualify me to make any judgements from personal experience other than stall and spin and dive characteristics - do you at least have that?

I'm happy to debate wing-loadins maybe we can find a common doument... but so for you have shown zero facts on maneuver perfromance?

Regards,

Bill


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## Soren (Jun 6, 2007)

Oh no you don't Bill ! I provided ample evidence of the facts, but I guess you just don't have documents.

When it is clearly said that the F4U-1 is superior in maneuverability in every way compared to the P-51B then there's no mistaken what that means Bill, you can circle around it all day if you wish but thats just how it is, your doubt is brought forth only by your bias toward the P-51 alone.

Now from what you have said am I to understand that you fly the P-51 and know all its flight characteristics ? Based on what you've claimed so far I'd be very surprised.


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## Soren (Jun 6, 2007)

Jackson said:


> *short time in service is right,* they were 'hanger queens' I have read no 'H''s were in service at the of the war, as they were all grounded for good reason
> 
> Get your facts straight, not even 70 were delivered and they flew relatively very little combat as they were poorly made and were full of dangerous design errors
> 
> ...



LoL long time since I've seen as ignorant a poster as you ! 

You get your facts straight boy, cause at the moment you're hopelessly lost !


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## Sgt. Pappy (Jun 6, 2007)

Bah, F4U and Ta-152H beat the P-51 anyday


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## drgondog (Jun 6, 2007)

Soren - *"When it is clearly said that the F4U-1 is superior in maneuverability in every way compared to the P-51B then there's no mistaken what that means Bill, you can circle around it all day if you wish but thats just how it is, your doubt is brought forth only by your bias toward the P-51 alone."*

Soren - this is an amusing debate. I'll try to re-position on this subject. First I like the F4U and candidly think that it is the Best All Around fighter of WWII.

Does this sound like Bias toward the P51? Check my other posts.

Second, my time in a 51 does not qualify me as an expert. Now having said that, most pilots that have high time today in a Mustang never had to turn high G's in a fight for his life and certainly not against the F4U? Are we clear on that concept. I am not dismissing your comparisons between the two ships by either my experience or your lack of experience.


Third, you have clearly SAID that the F4U-1 is clearly superior to the P-51B in every aspect of maneuver. I heard you. Understood that you stated it clearly.

What I so want from you is proof points of skilled pilot engineers that tested these two ships, collected the data, published the data and published opinions based on the data. 

You have at best presented only conclusions based on opinions for both the Fw190 tests and the F4U tests. 

So far I led you to the same report,with the fact deficiencies, that you presented back to me as facts on the F4U-1 vs the P51B - You didn't find anything unique and tried to throw it back to me - do you feel silly about this?

As near as I can tell you a.) aren't the engineer with the data, b.) you don't have in possession the documents with such data, and c.) you continue to tell others that disagree with you that they are silly because they don't quite understand your fact base you claim to have in possession.

That report didn't have any facts as discussed before except weights and Speed and Climb Performance Charts - yet made blanket statements about superiority? Kind of like you?

We (I) will accept your proof, just difficult to accept your words just because you accept them.

I am un-biased, I try to be fact based - supply the facts please - I promise I will acknowledge your brilliance and knowledge - just don't TELL me you are brilliant and knowledgeable - Show me the facts.

So I will help you out once more. 

Show me the Turn radius at any comparable weights you choose at 5K, 20K and 30K with and w/o flaps.

Show me the Climb Performance at SL, 5K, 20K, 30K

Show me the Acceleration for the same conditions.

Show me the Roll performance at 300, 350mph at SL, 300, 350 and 400mph at 20K , at 300, 350 and 400mph at 30K

Or Soren show me ANY of the data you have for ANY of those comparisons - either Fw190G or F4U-1 as you quoted both ships as Superior to the 51B

Regards,

Bill


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## drgondog (Jun 6, 2007)

I think there might be too much emotion and not enough facts on this subject.


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## davparlr (Jun 6, 2007)

Soren said:


> Oh no you don't Bill ! I provided ample evidence of the facts, but I guess you just don't have documents.
> 
> When it is clearly said that the F4U-1 is superior in maneuverability in every way compared to the P-51B then there's no mistaken what that means Bill, you can circle around it all day if you wish but thats just how it is, your doubt is brought forth only by your bias toward the P-51 alone.
> 
> Now from what you have said am I to understand that you fly the P-51 and know all its flight characteristics ? Based on what you've claimed so far I'd be very surprised.



Remember that the "Report of Joint Fighter Conference", selected the P-51D as better than the F4U-1C above 25k feet by a large margin (39-7, only the P-47D scored higher with 45) AND better than the F4U-1C below 25k feet by a slim margin (29-27, only the F8F scored higher with 30). And also remember that the P-51B was a better performer than the P-51D in airspeed, rate of climb, and time to climb over the entire envelope. It is a subjective review but it was also heavily weighed with Navy personnel, and indicates that the P-51 performance compared very well against other respected American aircraft. Its advantage was not just speed and range.


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## Jackson (Jun 6, 2007)

Soren said:


> LoL long time since I've seen as ignorant a poster as you !
> 
> You get your facts straight boy, cause at the moment you're hopelessly lost !






pretty rude..

I guess you must resort to being a "#!%@" when ever you cannot muster any facts.

My source is the worlds premier aircraft history center..

They own a TA-152H..the only one in the world...


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## evangilder (Jun 6, 2007)

Guys, having a debate is one thing, but if the insults and mud-slinging continue, infractions will be delivered and this thread will be locked. Keep it civil, this is your only warning.


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## Jackson (Jun 6, 2007)

During the fall of 1944, Tank converted an existing Fw 190 prototype airframe (Werk-Nummer or serial number 0040) into the Ta 152H prototype. This aircraft and several other Ta 152 prototypes crashed early in the test program, due largely to intense pressure from the RLM to field production airplanes. Critical components suffered quality-control problems. Superchargers failed, pressurized cockpits leaked, the engine cooling system gave trouble, the landing gear failed to properly retract, and oil temperature gauges gave false readings. 

Definitive information about the NASM Ta 152 has always been lacking but research conducted late in 1998 may have revealed the airplane's true identity as Werk-Nummer (serial number) 150020, not 150003 or '010 as has been widely reported. This places the airframe toward the end of the range of pre-production H-0 models, a variant marking the transition from the Ta 152 prototypes to full production Ta 152H-1 airplanes. It was probably built at Focke-Wulf's production facility at Cottbus, Germany, in December 1944, and delivered to Erprobungskommando Ta 152 at Rechlin, Germany, for service testing. As with most Ta 152s produced, '020 was apparently transferred to Jagdgeswader (fighter squadron) JG 301 in early 1945. A green '4' was painted on the fuselage and this may have been the squadron identification and radio call sign "Green 4" but much remains unknown about this aircraft.

In 1998 Museum restoration staff were treating deteriorated sections of the wooden aft fuselage, fin, rudder, and right elevator when they discovered several interesting items that offered tantalizing glimpses into the airplane's shadowy past

Extensive wood rot was found in where the horizontal stabilizer joins the vertical fin. The restoration staff speculated that during testing at Wright Field, pilots and engineers became concerned that the wooden tail may have been weakened by defective glues or sabotage. They strengthened the entire area with steel plate.



Lucky it did not fall apart... 

wood rot, glue..

faulty guages


It was held together with chewing gum (and boogers)- built by slaves who sabotaged it..

dangerous according to the people who have flown it, inspected it, restored it and OWN it..


I know why it saw saw no real air battles.. with first rate aircraft.

It jumped a few Yaks before it was mothballed..


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 7, 2007)

Jackson said:


> Extensive wood rot was found in where the horizontal stabilizer joins the vertical fin. The restoration staff speculated that during testing at Wright Field, pilots and engineers became concerned that the wooden tail may have been weakened by defective glues or sabotage. They strengthened the entire area with steel plate.


 Having worked with wood I could tell you there is no way you could "date" dry rot, especially if it was found during restoration. No denying that shortcuts and less than quality material and construction techniques were used in the Ta 152 construction, but at this point the aircraft was being produced for longevity and it's wooden tail was easily replaced.

More than likely the aircraft dry rotted while being shipped to Wright Pat....


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## drgondog (Jun 7, 2007)

at great risk I would offer the following opinion on the Ta152H.

In the context of "would it fly great, was it fast, was it formidable"

It did and it was.

Would a lot of German pilots been KIA because of faulty engines, or workmanship if it had been delivered to the field - maybe. 

But what coulda happened (dominate the skies or be a "Feldwebel Killer" as other excellent a/c before it) didn't happen. 

But still a very great airplane that nobody on our side wanted to see in great numbers. 

This is opinion only - not backed by flight profiles or comparative facts against the best Allied Piston Engine fighters.


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## Soren (Jun 7, 2007)

Bill, here's my question;

Why is it you insist upon dancing around the fact that the F4U-1 proved superior in maneuverability compared to the P-51B in every way - is it because you don't understand what it means or is it because you don't want to acknowledge this fact ? What is it thats so wrong about that Navy test according to you ?

As to the weight figures, I told you to look in the POH if in doubt, but apparently you just choose to ignore this and started spewing out lies about me not providing any substantiating evidence. 

Now as to turn performance, well like I've said before you can dance around it all you like but the F4U features a higher lift airfoil and a lower wing-loading, hence why its superior in turn performance compared to the P-51.

Now as to your flying time in the P-51 - tell me about it please. Were you the pilot or were you in the back seat ?

Also the veteran a/c flying around today aren't like the ones flying around during WW2, they are significantly lighter.


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## drgondog (Jun 7, 2007)

Soren said:


> Bill, here's my question;
> 
> Why is it you insist upon dancing around the fact that the F4U-1 proved superior in maneuverability compared to the P-51B in every way - is it because you don't understand what it means or is it because you don't want to acknowledge this fact ? What is it thats so wrong about that Navy test according to you ?
> 
> ...



Sigh - what 'lies' have I been spewing about you not providing any substantiating evidence? 

I recall and I can substantiate, and you can substantiate and everyone reading this thread can substantiate, what I have asked you to produce.

1. I asked as aero engineer and pilot to you - (?? and ??) to show me, "the unconvinced but willing to be conviced" person the performance data of both the P-51B and the F4U-1 in either head to head or separate performance tests which highlighted all the turn, climb, roll, dive and acceleration results of instrumented test procedures. 

Stuff that form basis of opinons in a fact based discussion?

2. Your reference (I gave you mine for the 51s) for the various manufacturer specs on the F4U - I shamefully admit I haven't found the on-line source yet either for the complete F4U series.

3. When you pulled the Fw190G Tests out of the hat and proudly declared victory (HuH!) against the P-51 I said "gee that's interesting - show me the figures please?"

4. You pulled a quote from the Mike Williams site on the specific Naval Tests at Pax River January, 1944, conducted by the US NAvy by Naval Aviators, to compile a report why the 51B is is not 'better' than the F4U-1 (my Words). This is precisely the same report I referenced to Dave and Renrich earlier.

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f4u/p-51b-f4u-1-navycomp.pdf

I joked about this report because the only data driven charts to substantiate the comparison was the Speed/Boost comparisons vs altitude and Horsepower available vs Altitude.

The report states that the 51B outclimber the F4U (both) above 20,000 feet but nowhere does it show the data. BTW this statement is not particularly favorable to your statement that the F$U is 'everywhere and every way superior in manuever" is it? But no data by Navy pilot to support that either... so you are off the hook.

You might have noticed also that the F4U-1A was fitted with Special Boost to give it 65" vs the standard 60 and the atandard 60" for the F4u-1A. I'll come back to this point later.

The report states that the F4U-1 was superior in turn and acceleration and (special note excepted) was everywhere superior in climb below 20,000 feet

But no data presented

Then you stroll along, and declare Dave, Renrich and myself clearly not possesing your vast knowledge of these mortal things and declare 'victory'

I'm interested in learning, even at my advanced stage of dimentia so I ask YOU "where's the data, great Soren-master?"

and you hit me with the comment that I am 'spreading lies" - Wow

Where is the Data on that subject please? I have tried to be respectftful in this debate and will continue to do so.

Now back to me-

I have 56.5 hours as s/e pilot in command (understand 'solo'), with 20 hours command in back seat with a miserable no talent retired colonel by the name of Bert Marshall, Jr attempting to impart wisdom on his clueless son - (yes I was clueless long before I ran into you), and 10 hours beginning time when I basically looked and listened. You may decree whatever expertise you wish on that humble experience - I don't associate much, particularly in high speed desparate manuevering and said so above.

The miserable, demanding character instructor in this scenario, that was self inflicted, but inflicted nevertheless, on teaching me to fly was the fastest ace in the 355th FG, was promoted from Captain to Lt Colonel in the span of 7 weeks (Aug 18-October 23, 1944), commanded two different groups of Mustangs - and when retired had 8,950 hours in about 30 different aircraft including Fw190d-9, Me109G (no version specified) but a two seat trainer, a Fw 190 two seat trainer. 

He was probably a 'low talent/experience' from your perspective - he certainly couldn't speak German. He only had perhaps 800-1000 hours USAF time in 51B/C/D/H

In the process he shot down one miserable Stuka on D-Day and six 109Gs between June 20 and September 11, all a/c that should have been able to out turn, him and out climb him but somehow gfailed to exploit their superior performance - 

then maybe 500 more hours after retirement when he had it in the 59-61 timeframe.

I have a Masters Degree in Engineering in Aero (Univ Texas 1972) with a BS in Aero Engineering (Structures). It is probable that your credentials far out weigh mine - but guess what?

I'm not proclaiming victory by experience - I'm not declaring victory. Period.

I am asking you this last time because we are boring the Sh!t out of everyone on this forum ---- where is your performance DATA backing up your pronouncement of victory?

Last but not least I am a scarred veteran of the great wars fought at the Pentagon by the USN and the USA, then USAAF, then USAF on fighter procurement. 

I suppose you know that the US Navy NEVER has purchased a fighter aircraft originally designed for the Air Force (to my humble knowledge) - not even under Congressional decrees (F-111 and F-16) come to mind immediately. I don't count the 86 because USAF bought hte Navy version of interest but stipulated the design mod of swept wing.

I was joking about this to Renrich but half serious because I didn't see the data.. and at the end of the day think the squids did just fine not buying the 51! 

But I remain skeptical when pronouncements of performance are made without data - even by honorable squid aviators or lowly AF types - or by forum posters.

Now we can agree to completely disagree - I am not going to respond to you asking me to prove your claim - I have said I can't because I can't find the data. 

I have submitted that you can't because you can't find the data (on either of your a/c in competition) I believe this is called 'impasse' but--- 

you stand corrected - I have not and will not call you a "liar' just because you disagree with me.

Regards,

Bill


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## Soren (Jun 7, 2007)

So you think acting childish with alot of sarcasm will get you anywhere Bill ?

You like complicating things alot, don't you Bill ?

That the F4U proved superior in turn performance compared to the P-51B is more than enough DATA Bill - what you want is exact figures of turn radius, rate, speed of entry etc etc - well considering that the conclusion reads that the F4U is superior in maneuverability in every way, also response time, I think you've got your answer.

And if you still doubt the weight figures I provided then go read the POH - but incase you don't have it:
*F4U-4:*


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 7, 2007)

Allright both of you chill out. If you have a personal problem with one another take it to private messaging okay!

And Soren you do the same thing and make childish remarks with lots of sarcasm, so dont go accusing others until you look in the mirror.

Debate friendly or take it the pm's. Infractions are next and if need be this informative thread will be closed dont ruin it for everyone. 

That is for both of you.


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## Soren (Jun 7, 2007)

I can look passed a single remark Adler, but he continues it throughout his post - thats why I said the above.


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## rogthedodge (Jun 7, 2007)

I voted Spitfire!!

To me the poll was about overrated (over-rated?) which I took to mean 'reputation / place in history out of significant proportion to its actual role / achievement'.

So the reasons for voting Spitfire?:

It over-shadows the achievement of the Hurricane (Luftwaffe pilots were adamant they'd been downed by Spitfires when they'd been shot down by Hurricanes [professional pride?])

The Spit was a fine, fine aircraft without doubt but in terms of availability 'repairability @ squadron' the Hurricane was the true hero of the BoB but the reputation / history would have the Spit as the hero. 

Camm is now largely forgotten but Mitchell is a 'hero' - a misjustice in my book!

The Spit went onto many great achievements but only after the Air Ministry decided one a/c was to be developed, the other to be 'disposable' - hence Hurricat etc

The others? - I don't know, I'm no expert but the P51 certainly played its part in the 'big week', the zero was a real handful etc etc so I couldn't vote for them. 

Just my $0.04's worth


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## Negative Creep (Jun 7, 2007)

Yes the Spitfire's part in the BoB was overplayed, but I don't think it takes away from the aircraft itself. Until the end of the war, it remained a match for virtually anything thrown against it, whereas the Hurricane was obsolete as a dogfighter by 1942. The Spit used the same basic design throughout its life, whilst Hawker produced an entirely new aircraft in the Typhoon. The fact it was a morale booster for the British public is still an important factor in continuing the war. I think it happens all the time; ask someone with little knowledge of planes to name some WW2 aircraft and they will say the Spitfire, 109, P-51, Lancaster, B-17 and Zero, not the Hurricane, FW 190, P-47, Halifax, B-24 or Oscar, all of which could be argued were just as good, if not better. Whilst in absolute terms I wouldn't say the Spitfire was the _best_ plane of the war (was certainly the best looking) I wouldn't call it the most overrated


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 8, 2007)

Soren said:


> I can look passed a single remark Adler, but he continues it throughout his post - thats why I said the above.



Soren go and look at all the posts your make when you are in disagreement with someone...

Come on now okay both of you are good members of this site, dont ruin it.

Now lets all get back on topic in a friendly manner. It really is not that hard. Debating can be fun but only if it is done right.


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## Trautloft (Jun 8, 2007)

what you guys think about my vote of il-2?


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## davparlr (Jun 8, 2007)

Trautloft said:


> what you guys think about my vote of il-2?



Good selection. It has a reputation of a flying tank but took massive losses.


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## Negative Creep (Jun 8, 2007)

Considering the environment it operated in, wouldn't any gorund attack plane have suffered similar losses? My vote would go for the Zero however. When it achieved its success early in the war, it was flying against inexperienced and unprepared allied pilots in often outdated machines. As the old saying goes, you never underestimate your opponent twice, and once the allies had got measure of its limits and weaknesses, it became decidedly outclassed. By the end of the way, it was inferior to almost anything in the sky, and lacked the punch needed to take down bombers. Being able to outmaneuver your opponent is all well and good, but as the Hellcat would prove, you still needed armour and firepower. I tihnk the kill loss ratios against the Hellcat and Corsair are vindication of this. Japan had far better fighters, like the Frank or Tony, but the Zeke always gets the credit.


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## renrich (Jun 8, 2007)

I see your point about the Zero but at the time it first went in to action in 1940, it was a revolutionary fighter. Good Vmax performance from sea level to 25000 ft. Good acceleration, good maneuverability, good armament, excellent climb, excellent range and could operate off a carrier. In 1940, all things considered, it was equal to or better than any other fighter in the world and that was unheard of for a carrier fighter. It just did not happen! However, the caliber of Japanese pilots began to erode, the Japanese had some difficulty developing higher powered aero engines and the A6M design did not have much "stretch" in it, unlike the Spitfire and BF. However, in the hands of an experienced pilot like Sakai, one could not get slow with a Zero, even in 1945.

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## Soren (Jun 9, 2007)

By late 1942 the Zero was no'more a first class fighter, it was simply not fast enough. Had the Japanese put a more powerful engine on the Zero things might have been very different - however power levels would have to increase dramatically, up to around 1,700 - 1,800 HP levels.


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## Jackson (Jun 9, 2007)

Even a P40 was faster than a Zero


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## renrich (Jun 9, 2007)

Yep, you are right Soren. In fact, I believe when the Zero was first developed they were trying to put an engine with more HP in it but had to compromise because the engine they hoped to use did not develop well and the Japanese had no really first class high powered engine during the whole war. In contrast, the Germans had the DB engines, although the first BF had a RR Kestrel, I believe, and then the BMW radials, the British had the Merlin and Bristols, the US had the PW and Wrights.


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## evangilder (Jun 9, 2007)

Putting a more powerful engine in a Zero would not have done it any good. Above 275 MPH it was pretty much impossible to turn, no self sealing fuel tanks and one piece of armor in the back of the seat made this an obsolete fighter that would have been better relegated to training or non-combat duties by 1942. Addition of all of the necessary stuff would have changed weight, CG and a number of other things that would have had to be engineered for. Better to spend the time designing a new airplane.


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## drgondog (Jun 9, 2007)

renrich said:


> Yep, you are right Soren. In fact, I believe when the Zero was first developed they were trying to put an engine with more HP in it but had to compromise because the engine they hoped to use did not develop well and the Japanese had no really first class high powered engine during the whole war. In contrast, the Germans had the DB engines, although the first BF had a RR Kestrel, I believe, and then the BMW radials, the British had the Merlin and Bristols, the US had the PW and Wrights.



Richard The US also had the Allison - even though it 'had problems at 60 below over Europe' it was still a really good powerplant


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## Gnomey (Jun 9, 2007)

evangilder said:


> Putting a more powerful engine in a Zero would not have done it any good. Above 275 MPH it was pretty much impossible to turn, no self sealing fuel tanks and one piece of armor in the back of the seat made this an obsolete fighter that would have been better relegated to training or non-combat duties by 1942. Addition of all of the necessary stuff would have changed weight, CG and a number of other things that would have had to be engineered for. Better to spend the time designing a new airplane.



True. They did design new aircraft to replace it - Ki-84 etc - but most were land based planes and not carrier capable (correct me if I am wrong).


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## renrich (Jun 9, 2007)

Did not the Allison engine have reliability issues even in the Pacific? Actually the A6M8c with the 1350 hp Kinsei 62 engine was considered the finest performing Zero though still 55 mph slower than the F4U1D. This was the engine the Zero designers wanted in the first place but teething problems prevented it from being used.


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## drgondog (Jun 9, 2007)

Richard - the only reliability problems I am aware of were over Europe/High Altitude/Very cold conditions in Winter 1943-1944 for the P-38


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## Soren (Jun 9, 2007)

evangilder said:


> Putting a more powerful engine in a Zero would not have done it any good. Above 275 MPH it was pretty much impossible to turn, no self sealing fuel tanks and one piece of armor in the back of the seat made this an obsolete fighter that would have been better relegated to training or non-combat duties by 1942. Addition of all of the necessary stuff would have changed weight, CG and a number of other things that would have had to be engineered for. Better to spend the time designing a new airplane.



The problems with the heaviness of the controls over 275 mph and the alterated CG could be solved, it would interrupt production however. 

And yes, in the end it would be better to design a new fighter - which they did.


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## renrich (Jun 9, 2007)

Probably a result of the problems in Europe but at the Fighter Conference in 1944, the pilots were asked their choice of engines as far as inspiring confidence, 79% voted for R2800, 17% voted for Merlin, 1% voted for V-1710


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 10, 2007)

Soren said:


> The problems with the heaviness of the controls over 275 mph and the alterated CG could be solved, it would interrupt production however.


The control surfaces would of had to be redesigned, more than likely making them smaller. That probably would of taken away some of its maneuverability. That coupled with more armor and self sealing tanks again would of removed much of it maneuverability. Having the opportunity to see several Zeros up close and personal, there wasn't much more you could do with this design that would of greatly affected its performance and at best probably gotten a few more MPH out of her...


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## Soren (Jun 10, 2007)

FLYBOYJ said:


> The control surfaces would of had to be redesigned, more than likely making them smaller. That probably would of taken away some of its maneuverability. That coupled with more armor and self sealing tanks again would of removed much of it maneuverability. Having the opportunity to see several Zeros up close and personal, there wasn't much more you could do with this design that would of greatly affected its performance and at best probably gotten a few more MPH out of her...




Ther are actually better ways to lighten the control forces, using entirely metal elevators is one.


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 10, 2007)

Soren said:


> Ther are actually better ways to lighten the control forces, using entirely metal elevators is one.


You would still have to modify the spar the hinges are located on. A metal control surface balanced will help but it will carry more load to the structure - heavier structure, more weight, especially back in that day....


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## Soren (Jun 10, 2007)

FLYBOYJ said:


> You would still have to modify the spar the hinges are located on. A metal control surface balanced will help but it will carry more load to the structure - heavier structure, more weight, especially back in that day....



Agreed, but the Zero was already so light that the little extra weight gained from this would mean nothing. 

The Zero's biggest problem was the low dive speed limit.


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## lesofprimus (Jun 10, 2007)

The Zeros biggest problem was no self sealing fuel tanks and no armor plating...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 10, 2007)

Soren said:


> Agreed, but the Zero was already so light that the little extra weight gained from this would mean nothing.



Do you believe that? Please explain. I was responsible for weight and balances on aircraft and even the little bit of extra weight is noticible on an aircraft.


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 10, 2007)

Soren said:


> Agreed, but the Zero was already so light that the little extra weight gained from this would mean nothing.


A re-design of the aft wing spar to support say all metal ailerons was a bit more than "a little extra weight." Even the metal surface itself was going to add weight.


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 10, 2007)

lesofprimus said:


> The Zeros biggest problem was no self sealing fuel tanks and no armor plating...


Bingo...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 10, 2007)

FLYBOYJ said:


> A re-design of the aft wing spar to support say all metal ailerons was a bit more than "a little extra weight." Even the metal surface itself was going to add weight.



FBJ see's what I am getting at. I think we had a discussion a while back (ofcourse it was a bit different) about modifying a B-25 for carrier landings and how it was a lot more than just adding a tail hook and ofcourse that was all going to add weight, and what does weight do.....

Funny how some people think that working and modding an aircraft is like doing a 2005 Honda...


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 10, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> FBJ see's what I am getting at. I think we had a discussion a while back (ofcourse it was a bit different) about modifying a B-25 for carrier landings and how it was a lot more than just adding a tail hook and ofcourse that was all going to add weight, and what does weight do.....
> 
> Funny how some people think that working and modding an aircraft is like doing a 2005 Honda...


Bingo!!!


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## Lucky13 (Jun 10, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> FBJ see's what I am getting at. I think we had a discussion a while back (ofcourse it was a bit different) about modifying a B-25 for carrier landings and how it was a lot more than just adding a tail hook and ofcourse that was all going to add weight, and what does weight do.....
> 
> Funny how some people think that working and modding an aircraft is like doing a 2005 Honda...



Not long ago I saw a website where they had deisgned a carrier for B-25 capability(?) after what had been talked about by USN at the time and it was, well, HUGE!!
I'm desperately trying to find the website, but no luck so far...


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## drgondog (Jun 10, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Do you believe that? Please explain. I was responsible for weight and balances on aircraft and even the little bit of extra weight is noticible on an aircraft.



Dead on. 

The whole land to naval/carrier ops conversion of airframes is also complicated by the carrier landing G requirement. As I recall, the Navy Std for max design load on airframe load bearing structure (gear, main spars if main gear out on wing instead of fuse, etc) for carrier landing was multiples of land based design (I never was involved in USN design) - always a significant weight increase.. that's why the Navy version of F-111 was such a failure, performance wise, from spec. 

That doesn't have anything to do with Zero, but putting a bigger engine usually means much more torque - stiffer load carrying structure back to airframe, stronger bulkhead and stiffeners to distribute the new laods, Bigger rudder, stronger rudder attach, maybe longer fuse to get the cg back and the list goes on, and on...

Regards,

Bill

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## renrich (Jun 10, 2007)

A lot easier to take a high performance carrier plane and adapt for land based use than the other way around. I can't think of a single a/c not originally designed for carrier use that was ever successfully adapted for use on a carrier but can think of several that went the other way. The Seafire was a stopgap measure but was not robust enough for extended carrier duty.


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## Negative Creep (Jun 10, 2007)

Ok, so they weren't ideal for carrier operations, but Seafires still performed well in CAP duties


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 10, 2007)

drgondog said:


> Dead on.
> 
> The whole land to naval/carrier ops conversion of airframes is also complicated by the carrier landing G requirement. As I recall, the Navy Std for max design load on airframe load bearing structure (gear, main spars if main gear out on wing instead of fuse, etc) for carrier landing was multiples of land based design (I never was involved in USN design) - always a significant weight increase.. that's why the Navy version of F-111 was such a failure, performance wise, from spec.
> 
> ...




Bingo! Saying that you're going to put a bigger engine on a naval fighter or configure a land based aircraft as a carrier bird involves a lot of work. The seemingly most minor modifications will turn into major issues when applied to what was described above....


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## Glider (Jun 11, 2007)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Bingo! Saying that you're going to put a bigger engine on a naval fighter or configure a land based aircraft as a carrier bird involves a lot of work. The seemingly most minor modifications will turn into major issues when applied to what was described above....



I am sure that you are aware of rule of thumb, but others may not be.

The basic rule of thumb is that if you add a pound of weight to the aircraft and everything else e.g range payload remains the same, you add 10 pounds to the take off weight as everything needs to be strengthend enlarged etc.


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## Magno (Jun 11, 2007)

For the role it had in the Battle of Britain: *Supermarine Spitfire*


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 11, 2007)

Glider said:


> I am sure that you are aware of rule of thumb, but others may not be.
> 
> The basic rule of thumb is that if you add a pound of weight to the aircraft and everything else e.g range payload remains the same, you add 10 pounds to the take off weight as everything needs to be strengthend enlarged etc.


Sounds right - unfortunately when modifying some of the primary structure the CG will more than likely change as well, affecting other components as well...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 11, 2007)

drgondog said:


> Dead on.
> 
> The whole land to naval/carrier ops conversion of airframes is also complicated by the carrier landing G requirement. As I recall, the Navy Std for max design load on airframe load bearing structure (gear, main spars if main gear out on wing instead of fuse, etc) for carrier landing was multiples of land based design (I never was involved in USN design) - always a significant weight increase.. that's why the Navy version of F-111 was such a failure, performance wise, from spec.
> 
> ...



Exactly. Every change you make effects the aircraft in some way. Just like I said, it is not a car!


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## renrich (Jun 11, 2007)

You are so right Adler, and even cars if you read road tests particularly small ones are effected by seemingly small weight additions.

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## Soundbreaker Welch? (Jun 12, 2007)

I have heard this before. Two aircraft of the same mark, can behave completely differant from each other. So, don't think all Bf 109's behave the same way as the one you flew in WWII. 

Still, how differant can two Merlin engines be from each other? Can even a small chip on an airplane change it's performance drastically?


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## Glider (Jun 12, 2007)

Soundbreaker Welch? said:


> I have heard this before. Two aircraft of the same mark, can behave completely differant from each other. So, don't think all Bf 109's behave the same way as the one you flew in WWII.
> 
> Still, how differant can two Merlin engines be from each other? Can even a small chip on an airplane change it's performance drastically?



Very small production differences in the way the jigs were set up or how recently the machines tools were reset, blades replaced ect can make a huge difference in the final outcome.

You can prove this to yourself when testdriving cars. Its possible to testdrive three or four different cars of exactly the same type and find a difference in how they feel and perform.


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## Soren (Jun 12, 2007)

Take a look at how low the weight of the Zero is compard ot other Allied a/c, even it its final version with armor, self sealing fuel tanks etc etc.. It would take a huge increase in weight for the Zero to reach the same wing-loadings as the Allied fighters.

The Zero's biggest problem was its limited dive speed, and to heighten this the contruction of the a/c had to be redesigned - now this would cause a weight increase! The difficulties would be greater than designing an entirely new fighter.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 12, 2007)

No Soren just a little bit of weight will effect the Zeros performance. Please go and read up on Weights and Balances and about aircraft construnction.

It does not matter how much it takes to get to a comparable point to other aircraft. You can not make a comparison of it.

Wing loading really has nothing to do with it. You add weight at point "A" you are going to effect the performance and handling of the aircraft.

Trust me Soren I know what I am talking about here. I did plenty of mods to aircraft which effected weight and balance of the aircraft which in turn effects performance and handling.


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## dobravery (Jun 12, 2007)

What's the point of using the Zero as an example. Japan suffered because it had trouble producing high performance engines on a mass scale. Why even argue the point of giving the Zero more power?

I understand people are tired of hearing how great the P-51 was, but in reality atleast the P-51 had performances (range/speed) that really set it apart. IMO for USA, overrated goes more to --P-38, P-47, F4U, F6F-- aside from the carrier aspect, these planes are rather redundant (and I love'em?).


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## Soren (Jun 12, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> No Soren just a little bit of weight will effect the Zeros performance. Please go and read up on Weights and Balances and about aircraft construnction.
> 
> It does not matter how much it takes to get to a comparable point to other aircraft. You can not make a comparison of it.
> 
> ...



Adler don't put words into my mouth, I never claimed it didn't have any effect on handling or performance, ofcourse it did, but the Zero was already way more maneuverable than any Allied fighter - the heigher weight of a bigger engine wouldn't negatively affect the Zero's handling to such a degree as to make it inferior to its Allied counterparts. 

Lets not forget how much both the Bf-109 and Spitfire were modified throughout the war.


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 12, 2007)

Bottom line folks, a more powerful engine and minor airframe modifications weren't going to fix the Zero's problems. By late 1942 the only thing that was going to make the Zero competitive would of been about 2000 Saburo Sakai clones flying them....


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 13, 2007)

Soren said:


> Adler don't put words into my mouth, I never claimed it didn't have any effect on handling or performance



Ummm lets see you did say this:

*Soren said:

Agreed, but the Zero was already so light that the little extra weight gained from this would mean nothing.* 

Oh and dont get all angry here, it is just a debate. You have a habit of going on the offensive like that when someone does not agree with you.



Soren said:


> but the Zero was already way more maneuverable than any Allied fighter - the heigher weight of a bigger engine wouldn't negatively affect the Zero's handling to such a degree as to make it inferior to its Allied counterparts.



The Zeros superior handling was only at lower speeds. You put a heavier engine in it, more armour, modifications as you are suggesting it would have gotten heavier, slower and less maneuverable. 



Soren said:


> Lets not forget how much both the Bf-109 and Spitfire were modified throughout the war.



And both were effected by the added weight...


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## drgondog (Jun 13, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Ummm lets see you did say this:
> 
> *Soren said:
> 
> ...



I wonder how many major airframes other than the P-51 had a follow on design which REDUCED the weight in concert with bigger engine. The 51H comes to mind, what about the 109K series?

Carving 900 pounds out of the 51H made a noticable difference in its performance relative to the D - as it should


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 13, 2007)

drgondog said:


> I wonder how many major airframes other than the P-51 had a follow on design which REDUCED the weight in concert with bigger engine. The 51H comes to mind, what about the 109K series?
> 
> Carving 900 pounds out of the 51H made a noticable difference in its performance relative to the D - as it should



Yeah but the Zero was not going to get lighter...


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## drgondog (Jun 13, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Yeah but the Zero was not going to get lighter...



I don't think I had that ship in mind - lol


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## renrich (Jun 13, 2007)

Adler, your point about added weight is well made. The lighter the a/c the more impact some added weight is going to have. Just purely from a proportional point of view, 200 added lbs is going to affect a Zeke a lot more than 200lbs added say to a P47.


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## Soren (Jun 13, 2007)

I never claimed that any extra wait wouldn't have ay effect on the Zero's handling or performance Adler, I just said that what'ever effect it had would mean nothing considering the already huge advantage in agility the a/c enjoyed. The full metal elevators would also help greatly reduce the huge control forces at high speeds.

And I am not going on the offensive here Adler, I just want to make clear what I didn't say. 

*Drgondog,* 

As to your question regarding wether any German a/c lost weight, well there's the FW-190 for example. The Dora-9 weighes less than the A-8 and -9. Considering the extra size and fuel capacity the Ta-152 is also very light. The Russian La-7 also weighed less than its predecessor the La-5. 

As for the P-51H being lighter than its predecessor, well as you can see there's nothing unusual about that.


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## Captn javy Wilson (Jun 13, 2007)

me 262 was way over rated but the p-51 deserves it if it can take down jets


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## Parmigiano (Jun 14, 2007)

Considering the tactical and strategical scenario (inferiority 1:10 at best, lack of fuel, no more radar warning service etc.) and that her best estimated kill ratio was in the range of 2.5:1 (over 700 claimed kills, about 350-400 probably real vs 150 losses including those during landing approach) it looks that the 262 in general is way UNDER rated...

(comment from somebody -me- who used to think the 262 was overrated before analyzing numbers and historical scenario...)


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## FLYBOYJ (Jun 14, 2007)

Parmigiano said:


> Considering the tactical and strategical scenario (inferiority 1:10 at best, lack of fuel, no more radar warning service etc.) and that her best estimated kill ratio was in the range of 2.5:1 (over 700 claimed kills, about 350-400 probably real vs 150 losses including those during landing approach) it looks that the 262 in general is way UNDER rated...
> 
> (comment from somebody -me- who used to think the 262 was overrated before analyzing numbers and historical scenario...)


Forget the numbers, look at its operational limitations. A marvelous machine when all worked well and with a little luck that was for about 20 hours....

I wouldn't say it was over rated or under rated, just that it's impact was limited....


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## Parmigiano (Jun 14, 2007)

I fully agree that the impact was limited, but the machine itself cannot be praised too much, in spite of the well known engine youth problems.

-There were limits of the aircraft itself :engine life, engine reliability, slow throttle response, even poor construction (although this latter could reasonably be blamed to the scenario rather than to the machine)

-There were difficulties independent by the quality/reliability/performance of the aircraft, like fuel shortage, no more radar to address the interception, overwhelming numbers.

But the fact is:

1) with all her operational limitations (engine fragility, construction below normal German standars etc.) and the very difficult environment the results (numbers) of the Me262 are excellent, unattainable by any other aircraft operating in the same scenario (take 300 Dora, P51, Ta152, Spit etc. with the same qty of available fuel in place of the circa 300 Me262: even if they were MUCH more reliable, it is unlikely they could have scored the same)

And the 'what if' could be:

2) Whitout the aircraft operational limitations the results COULD HAVE been even better. This does not change point 1

3) In a less desperate scenario (proper radar coverage, fuel available, better numerical proportion) again the results COULD HAVE been even better.
But also this does not change point 1


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 14, 2007)

Soren said:


> I never claimed that any extra wait wouldn't have ay effect on the Zero's handling or performance Adler, I just said that what'ever effect it had would mean nothing considering the already huge advantage in agility the a/c enjoyed. The full metal elevators would also help greatly reduce the huge control forces at high speeds.



Okay you keep thinking that....


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 14, 2007)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Forget the numbers, look at its operational limitations. A marvelous machine when all worked well and with a little luck that was for about 20 hours....
> 
> I wouldn't say it was over rated or under rated, just that it's impact was limited....



I would not consider the Me 262 overated or underated as you said. She was ahead of her time but as with all early jets she had great limitations as well as with the limited engine TBOs.


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## Catch22 (Jun 14, 2007)

As much as I hate to say it, I have to vote for the P-51. I really do love that airplane, but it was not a whole lot better (performance wise) than a lot of other planes.


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## drgondog (Jun 14, 2007)

Soren said:


> I never claimed that any extra wait wouldn't have ay effect on the Zero's handling or performance Adler, I just said that what'ever effect it had would mean nothing considering the already huge advantage in agility the a/c enjoyed. The full metal elevators would also help greatly reduce the huge control forces at high speeds.
> 
> And I am not going on the offensive here Adler, I just want to make clear what I didn't say.
> 
> ...



Soren - So, one or two examples out of how many? 

and wouldn't you think that the D-9 comparison should be made to a model like the A6 or A7 as the A8 was not designed to fight Allied Fighters and so heavily armored that it is difficult to conceive the D-9 as an evolution? If there was a D-9 that kept the armor and armament of the A8 but underwent a weight reduction program you would have a point. 

As to the Ta152, do you consider that airframe a 'weight reduction' program on the Fw190 or even Fw190D? interesting. 

As to metal control surfaces on a Zero being the answer to 'upweighting' -boosting controls might be a better plan - depending on how much weight you added to try to make it more competitive in speed and survivability? 

The Zero's manueverability in the horizontal was just fine with faric control surfaces. If the Japanese had decided that was an answer to the performance differential it was a simple field mod to change it. Terminal velocity in a dive was well below any of its adversaries and didn't even need metal elevators to improve stick force response in a dive so why do it?

I doubt if the Zero's aerodynamics were solid enough for major upscaling of engine and structure without losing what made it great in the first place

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## Soren (Jun 15, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Okay you keep thinking that....



There's no need to be rude Adler....


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## Soren (Jun 15, 2007)

drgondog said:


> Soren - So, one or two examples out of how many?
> 
> and wouldn't you think that the D-9 comparison should be made to a model like the A6 or A7 as the A8 was not designed to fight Allied Fighters and so heavily armored that it is difficult to conceive the D-9 as an evolution? If there was a D-9 that kept the armor and armament of the A8 but underwent a weight reduction program you would have a point.
> 
> ...




The Ta-152H has a greater fuel capacity, wing-area, longer span lenght and more new gadgets than the FW-190D, and yet its only 450 - 500 kg heavier - thats quite an achievement.

As to the Zero and its maneuverability at high speed, well changing the fabric covered elevators with fully metal ones wouldn't have been as easy as you make it sound. The production line would be interrupted for some time. Besides why do it when you got a new fighter under development ?

And as to the terminal velocity of the Zero, well that depends of density and drag, and as you know with an increase in mass comes and increase in density. So that extra weight added to the Zero will actually benefit it in some ways.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 15, 2007)

Soren said:


> There's no need to be rude Adler....



I am not being rude Soren...

I am mearly using the same type of speech that you use when you disagree with someone.


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## drgondog (Jun 15, 2007)

Soren said:


> The Ta-152H has a greater fuel capacity, wing-area, longer span lenght and more new gadgets than the FW-190D, and yet its only 450 - 500 kg heavier - thats quite an achievement.
> 
> As to the Zero and its maneuverability at high speed, well changing the fabric covered elevators with fully metal ones wouldn't have been as easy as you make it sound. The production line would be interrupted for some time. Besides why do it when you got a new fighter under development ?
> 
> And as to the terminal velocity of the Zero, well that depends of density and drag, and as you know with an increase in mass comes and increase in density. So that extra weight added to the Zero will actually benefit it in some ways.



Soren, wouldn't you describe the Ta152 as a new design with all those fundamental changes? and if not, wouldn't you consider those changes as adding weight to its preceeding model - rather than weight reduction? You can't have it both ways.

On the metal elevators, the changes made for the 51 were in the form of Field installable kits. The US engineers weren't more clever than Japanese in this concept. As to 'why' go back and look at your posts - you suggested changing to metal control surfaces. I rebutted that boost might be a better choice if you started adding weight and power.

As to adding weight to improve dive? Well, the lighter 51H had the same terminal velocity (maybe slightly higher with thinner wing/same area as the the B/C/D so the aerodynamics/drag had more influence than weight (or mass) in the same basic airframe. 

I suspect (without facts- I don't have data) that the Zero wing design had more influence on dive terminal velocity than its mass... but if you think differently that's ok with me. HP certainly would have aided *acceleration* in the dive given more proportional HP gain than weight gain. If you have contrary data I would be interested.

Regards,

Bill


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## Soren (Jun 16, 2007)

Bill,

The Zero's dive speed limit was heightened pr. every new version. And as to your theory about it being the wing causing the low dive speed limit, well thats actually partly true, adding a thicker metal skin layer to the wing was one of the ways the Japanese heightened the dive speed limit of the a/c. Also remember that the wing of the Zero was made smaller from the A6M5 and onwards, something which increased the density and decreased the drag of the a/c - this was one of the prime contributers to the increased dive speed limit.

As to the Ta-152 being a new design, well yes it was, not by a whole lot though - it was basically just an enhanced design of the FW-190.

The P-51H had a quicker dive speed limit than the P-51D because of its different wing Bill, thats it - the P-51H's wing was esp. thinner at the root.


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## Soren (Jun 16, 2007)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I am not being rude Soren...
> 
> I am mearly using the same type of speech that you use when you disagree with someone.



No Adler, I only use such type of speech if the person I'm talking to is completely wrong. 

If I merely disagree with someone I'll debate my way through or agree to disagree.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 16, 2007)

Keep on thinking that...



Lighten up Soren, seriously.


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## drgondog (Jun 16, 2007)

Soren said:


> Bill,
> 
> The Zero's dive speed limit was heightened pr. every new version. And as to your theory about it being the wing causing the low dive speed limit, well thats actually partly true, adding a thicker metal skin layer to the wing was one of the ways the Japanese heightened the dive speed limit of the a/c. Also remember that the wing of the Zero was made smaller from the A6M5 and onwards, something which increased the density and decreased the drag of the a/c - this was one of the prime contributers to the increased dive speed limit.
> 
> ...


I think I mentioned the thinner wing of the 51H in a prior post - 

I haven't seen the figures on the smaller wing/aspect ratio but that effect could result in increased induced drag and I would be interested in the attributes you think introduced Mcrit for the Zero?


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## Soren (Jun 16, 2007)

drgondog said:


> I haven't seen the figures on the smaller wing/aspect ratio but that effect could result in increased induced drag and I would be interested in the attributes you think introduced Mcrit for the Zero?



Bill, with a decrease in lift comes a decrease in drag, and the higher weight coupled now with a smaller overall surface area gave the a/c a higher density = higher terminal velocity dive speed limit. The slightly lower AR only slightly reduced the L/D ratio of the wing.


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## drgondog (Jun 16, 2007)

Soren said:


> Bill,
> 
> The Zero's dive speed limit was heightened pr. every new version. And as to your theory about it being the wing causing the low dive speed limit, well thats actually partly true, adding a thicker metal skin layer to the wing was one of the ways the Japanese heightened the dive speed limit of the a/c. Also remember that the wing of the Zero was made smaller from the A6M5 and onwards, something which increased the density and decreased the drag of the a/c - this was one of the prime contributers to the increased dive speed limit.
> 
> ...


I think I mentioned the thinner wing of the 51H in a prior post - 

I haven't seen the figures on the smaller wing/aspect ratio but that effect could result in increased induced drag and I would be interested in the attributes you think introduced Mcrit for the Zero?


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## Soren (Jun 16, 2007)




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## pedigi96 (Feb 11, 2008)

I'm late to this party, but have not looked at this site since Dec 2006...sorry.

I know the choices of overrated WWII combat aircraft did not include this, but I would suggest the He-219 as the most overrated. Despite its stellar reputation and name as a "Mosquito killer", Erich Brown in his "Wings of the Luftwaffe" described the He-219 as underpowered with high wing loading and limited maneuverability and a plane he would not want to try to land more than once on one engine. Was its combat record as good as described in many WWII aviation books?

Kenneth


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 11, 2008)

Do you also realize that Eric Brown was* EXTREMELY *biased?!?!?!?!


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## pedigi96 (Feb 11, 2008)

Flyboy-

No, I am not aware of Eric Brown's bias. I guess I'm not in the know as many of you are.

Could you elaborate in more detail about Brown's bias?

Thanks,
Kenneth


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 11, 2008)

pedigi96 said:


> Flyboy-
> 
> No, I am not aware of Eric Brown's bias. I guess I'm not in the know as many of you are.
> 
> ...



Compare some of his reports with other test pilots - he gives a very one sided perspective that favors certain aircraft.

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/interview-captain-eric-brown-7136.html


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## Elvis (Feb 17, 2008)

Its not on your list.

I understand we had HIGH hopes for the Fisher P-75 Eagle.











Elvis


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## Coors9 (Apr 20, 2011)

There's no way the Mustang should be called overrated. In my opinion , the one that stands out on the list is one that is in my top 5 favorite fighters......lol. I just love the look of her. She was awesome in the pacific, not sure how she'd make out over France and Germany.......the sweet looking F6F Hellcat.


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## billswagger (Apr 21, 2011)

The spitfire is somewhat over rated IMO.
It did make for a great interceptor because of its high rate of climb, but it was not as fast as some records show particularly when equipped with cannons. 
There are comparisons out there with the A6M and figures were surprisingly close in all categories. Much slower. 
The main hitch was in dive and said to be the biggest reason the A6M had an edge on the Spitfire more so than the P-40 despite turn radius.
109 pilots also found it easy to outrun the Spitfire in a dive. 
The Spitfire also lacked range which made it somewhat useless as an offensive roll beyond 1943.
To be more specific, it probably had the legs to get there but would not be at a competitive height nor would it have the fuel to maintain combat for more than a few minutes. 
Its easily one of the top fighters of the war but from a logistics standpoint there wasn't much that could be done with it beyond a point defense/interceptor.
Later variants had engine upgrades which made for faster planes but wing span would be a hindrance at higher altitudes. (see Mustang vs Spitfire)

Speaking of which, 
The Mustang would not be that overrated if it wasn't also the poster warplane for the Americans. 
Other than that, I've seen stats that place acceleration well below contemporaries although top speed is much faster. It was also behind the lot when it came to time to climb to 15k ft from start up but that's not really relevant given the roll of the plane.


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## bowfin (Feb 12, 2012)

I voted for the Me-109 due to the horrid attrition that came in take offs and landing.

It is possible that the Me-109 killed more Me-109 pilots than any single Allied aircraft type.


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## DonL (Feb 12, 2012)

> It is possible that the Me-109 killed more Me-109 pilots than any single Allied aircraft type.



LOL!

It is correct that the Bf 109 had problems with it's landing gears, but I have read for example that the F4U had noob killer characteristics, that I haven't read for the Bf 109!

So do you have any sources that the Bf 109 had killed more pilots by accident than any other allied aircraft type?


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## bowfin (Feb 12, 2012)

To be clear, my contention was that the Me-109 didn't have more fatal accidents than any other allied aircraft, but I think more Me-109 pilots died in fatal accidents than to the guns of any single Allied type.

I do not think this claim wild, as more American aircrew were lost in training/operational accidents than actual combat.


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## cimmex (Feb 12, 2012)

bowfin said:


> To be clear, my contention was that the Me-109 didn't have more fatal accidents than any other allied aircraft, but I think more Me-109 pilots died in fatal accidents than to the guns of any single Allied type.
> 
> I do not think this claim wild, as more American aircrew were lost in training/operational accidents than actual combat.


then, why you choose the 109?


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## bowfin (Feb 12, 2012)

> then, why you choose the 109?



Because even though training and operations took the lion's share of aircraft and aircrew for many of the air forces in WWII, the Me-109 was a particularly voracious lion, not unlike the B-26 Marauder.

My great uncle was a top turret gunner for the B-25s, and he said the training squadrons had more B-26s sitting on the bottom of the ocean than in the hangars. (Normal loyalty to his particular aircraft at the expense of others.) 

I had the privilege of heading up a group that brought the Collings Foundation B-25 "Tondelayo" to our hometown, since the original Tondelayo of the 500th BS was the aircraft that my great uncle won his Silver Star while manning the top turret. A spirted back and forth of the B-25 vs. B-26 was carried on by both former pilots and ground crew, and a vet who was a pilot of B-26s mentioned the fact that the B-26 had less comparative losses than any other medium bomber in Europe. The retort was that by the time the aircrews entered combat, the "Flying Prostitute" had already winnowed out all but the luckiest and most skilled.

Yes, pilots of the Me-109 did great things, but was it because they were in the 109 or in spite of it?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 14, 2012)

I don't see how that would make it overrated though...


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## Readie (Feb 14, 2012)

Maybe we all 'overrate' our personal favourite planes?
Not that I do of course....
John


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## oldcrowcv63 (Feb 14, 2012)

I am pretty sure I voted for the Zero ?: ) which, in the day, was initially incredibly underrated and then, after it became a giant killer against opposition that was mainly subpar, became ever more overrated. It did well against the Spitfire V but I would tend to chalk that up to overconfidence on the part of the RAAF believing all they needed was a Spitfire between their legs. A very understandable assumption I might add. No disrespect to either side but, unless I have missed some extended battle fought between the two, it seems to me that, given a period of absorbing the tactics necessary to defeat the A6M, the Spit and its pilots would have taken its measure. 

That's my belief and unless someone argues me out of it I'm stick'n to it. This is not to say I don't have enormous respect for the airplace and the original pilots who flew it. They were a truly suberb lot and it was their weapon of choice; at least initially.

But then my vote for the most Underrated aircraft of WW2 is of course (what else?) the F4F-3!!! and for that matter the F4F-4.


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## bowfin (Feb 14, 2012)

> I don't see how that would make it overrated though...



Because I think that many of us focus too much on speed, climb, and armament, and not enough on the more mundane things such as engine reliability, ground handling characteristics, and ergonomics. If such things are not taken into consideration, then a plane can be easily overrated or underrated.

A pilot killed by a takeoff accident in an Me-109 was just as dead as a pilot killed in a P-39 trying to dogfight a Japanese Zero at 20,000 feet. In both cases it was a inherent shortcoming of the plane.


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## Kryten (Feb 14, 2012)

having waded through numerous pilot biographies recently I have nominated the Me109 as overrated, as every single author singled out the FW190 as the most dangerous adversary they faced, yet none give much more than passing respect to the 109!


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 14, 2012)

bowfin said:


> A pilot killed by a takeoff accident in an Me-109 was just as dead as a pilot killed in a *P-39 trying to dogfight a Japanese Zero at 20,000 feet*. In both cases it was a inherent shortcoming of the plane.



Actually a P-39 could beat a Zero at 20K easily if the right tactics were employed


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 15, 2012)

bowfin said:


> A pilot killed by a takeoff accident in an Me-109 was just as dead as a pilot killed in a P-39 trying to dogfight a Japanese Zero at 20,000 feet. In both cases it was a inherent shortcoming of the plane.



Replace *Me-109*, with any *aircraft*. Are they all overrated?

I highly doubt that more 109 pilots were killed in accidents than in combat. I also don't see how one can call the most produced fighter in history overrated. Maybe I am just biased because it is my favorite aircraft, but I would hardly call it overrated.

In the end we will agree to disagree though. I think everyone will have their own opinion on what is Overrated and what is not.


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## bowfin (Feb 15, 2012)

> Actually a P-39 could beat a Zero at 20K easily if the right tactics were employed



I think we may have different definitions of "dogfight". The AVG (Flying Tigers) generally didn't dogfight, but they had successful tactics for engaging enemy fighters using dives and superior speed.


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 15, 2012)

bowfin said:


> I think we may have different definitions of "dogfight". The AVG (Flying Tigers) generally didn't dogfight, but they had successful tactics for engaging enemy fighters using dives and superior speed.


 And if you "dogfight" a zero at high speeds, the zero maneuvers like a tank, that's my point. We tend to dwell on old folklore about certain aircraft and one of those is the maneuverability of the Zero. 

The key in air to air combat is to actually avoid the dogfight, stalk your enemy, engage quickly, kill him and move on. If one gets into a furball they have already failed the first rules of air to air combat tactically.


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## DonL (Feb 15, 2012)

> The key in air to air combat is to actually avoid the dogfight, stalk your enemy, engage quickly, kill him and move on. If one gets into a furball they have already failed the first rules of air to air combat tactically



I absolutley agree! I think the dogfight or turnfight was antiquated at the beginning of WWII with the very fast fighters.
The japanese didin't get it and stick much to long with there fixation to turning- and dogfights and this type of fighter.

That is why to my opinion the A6M is the most overrated aicraft. In the ETO it would be outclassed from the begining of it's service.


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 15, 2012)

DonL said:


> I absolutley agree! I think the dogfight or turnfight was antiquated at the beginning of WWII with the very fast fighters.
> The japanese didin't get it and stick much to long with there fixation to turning- and dogfights and this type of fighter.
> 
> *That is why to my opinion the A6M is the most overrated aicraft. In the ETO it would be outclassed from the begining of it's service*.



Agree....

IMO the only reason why a fighter pilot needs to learn maneuvering tactics is to deal with being placed in a situation where they have lost the tactical advantage and know what to do in order to fight another day. The other scenario is to know what to do should you loose the tactical advantage during attack and to make the decision to press the attack or break off.


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## Njaco (Feb 15, 2012)

DonL, you just convinced me. Good point.


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## bowfin (Feb 15, 2012)

> The key in air to air combat is to actually avoid the dogfight



Agreed. Most aerial victories more resembled drive by shootings rather than duels.

However, I distinctly used the term "dogfight" meaning a dogfight. You seem to be saying that a P-39 can win a dogfight by avoiding a dogfight...

I'm not disparaging the P-39 as it is a sentimental favorite of mine, and was a more pragmatic favorite of some Russian aces. However, I am going to stick to my original analogy.


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## bowfin (Feb 15, 2012)

I mean no disrespect to the Me-109 It was indeed one of the great aircraft of World War II. So I apologize if anyone thinks I am denigrating that aircraft too much.

However, I do believe their is a gap between perception and reality to how great this particular aircraft was, because we all overlook the more mundane faults or strengths. For example, I was told by several turret gunners of American bombers that one big plus for the P-38 was it was almost impossible to mistake it for any other enemy fighter, due to its distinctive configuration. Same gunners told me that the poor old Commonwealth Boomerang was the victim of friendly fire incidents (ranging from annoying to fatal) so much so that a gentlemen's agreement was reached that the Boomerang was better off employed as something besides an escort fighter, once they had the luxury of doing so.

Now, whoever thought the *shape* of a plane had any real world consequences? Certainly not me, until I heard that story. So in that same light, I believe most of us tend to think of aircraft performance only when the landing gear is up, for those planes lucky enough to be able to retract it.


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 15, 2012)

bowfin said:


> Agreed. Most aerial victories more resembled drive by shootings rather than duels.
> 
> However, I distinctly used the term "dogfight" meaning a dogfight. You seem to be saying that a P-39 can win a dogfight by avoiding a dogfight...
> 
> I'm not disparaging the P-39 as it is a sentimental favorite of mine, and was a more pragmatic favorite of some Russian aces. However, I am going to stick to my original analogy.


A good fighter pilot avoids a dogfight, but in your context let's see a Zero "dogfight" at 300 knots. The P-39 will (or would have) make (made) a cherry bomb out of it.

Your anology works at 180 knots....


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## bowfin (Feb 16, 2012)

> but in your context let's see a Zero "dogfight" at 300 knots. The P-39 will (or would have) make (made) a cherry bomb out of it.



I wonder why it didn't happen more often then...

I guess we'll leave it at that.


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 16, 2012)

bowfin said:


> I wonder why it didn't happen more often then...


Tactics and the altitudes the P-39s were deployed at in the Pacific. If you look into the history of such units as the 35th and the 36th FS over New Guinea they had about a 1:1 kill ratio against the Japanese while flying outnumbered at lower altitudes. (Let's see if JoeB chimes in) It was recognized that the P-39 was inferior to the Zero and Oscar in terms of acceleration, climb and maneuverability. If researched one would find the P-39 actually held its own in direct air to air combat but was not suited for the island hopping campaign planned by the US and its allies. Buzz Wagner, one of the first US aces in the Pacific gave a good assessment of the P-39 as he scored kills in both P-39 and P-40s. It's when the P-39 (and P-400s) were used at high altitude interceptors over Guadalcanal is where they suffered heavy losses. Tactics and not recognizing the aircraft's limitation played into this.

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_P-39_Airacobra_US.html

BTW Chuck Yeager's favorate WW2 fighter? The P-39.





bowfin said:


> I guess we'll leave it at that.



If you wish....


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## bowfin (Feb 16, 2012)

> over New Guinea they had about a 1:1 kill ratio against the Japanese



1:1 would show that the P-39 could hold its own if that ratio was 1:1 against fighter aircraft exclusively. I don't think that was the case, though. If the P-39 had a favorable ratio against Vals and Bettys, then it must have meant that it lost more than won against some other type of Japanese aircraft...

As for Yeager's opinion on his favorite aircraft, I don't know how many combat sorties he flew in a P-39 and what his successes were while flying those missions. I don't even know what P-39 combat squadron with which he fought.


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 16, 2012)

bowfin said:


> 1:1 would show that the P-39 could hold its own if that ratio was 1:1 against fighter aircraft exclusively. I don't think that was the case, though. If the P-39 had a favorable ratio against Vals and Bettys, then it must have meant that it lost more than won against some other type of Japanese aircraft...


Actually I believe most of the P-39s victories over New Guinea were against fighter aircraft. Zeros, Ki-27s and 43s.


bowfin said:


> As for Yeager's opinion on his favorite aircraft, I don't know how many combat sorties he flew in a P-39 and what his successes were while flying those missions. I don't even know what P-39 combat squadron with which he fought.


He flew them in training but maintained his opinions about the aircraft long after the war. The P-39 could be inherently unstable and if one knew the limitations of the aircraft, they could really fling it around the sky.


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## Tante Ju (Feb 16, 2012)

DonL said:


> I absolutley agree! I think the dogfight or turnfight was antiquated at the beginning of WWII with the very fast fighters.
> The japanese didin't get it and stick much to long with there fixation to turning- and dogfights and this type of fighter.
> 
> That is why to my opinion the A6M is the most overrated aicraft. In the ETO it would be outclassed from the begining of it's service.



The Japanese got it very well actual!

The Zero was not built for dogfight - its just happened to be very good at it - its designer was very clear about he wanted to make the aircraft to be as fast as possible. Manouverability was a secondary consideration. The Japanese designer of Zero said that they were well aware that a good skill pilot can make up for manouveriblity of plane - and Japanese pilots were excellent trained - but he could not make up for the lack of speed. Its a given. The Japanese simply did not have good enough engines..


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## DonL (Feb 16, 2012)

I disagree.

The main problem of the A6M was that at high speed it's maneuvering was realy bad as FLYBOYJ stated.
This is one of the consequences to trim the fighter to maneuver very good at low speeds.

The Japanese get the HE 112 with Jumo 210G injection engines at 1938 and a HE 100D with a DB 601 at 1939.
Also they could produce the DB 601 in license at 1939.

With the two Heinkel aircrafts they had a very good comparation for high speed aircrafts and high speed maneuvering.
But they rejected both aircraft of the reason that they were not good enough for dog/turn fights at low speed. 

Later at the war they developed the KI 61 Hien what is a very similar design to the two Heinkel aircrafts but three years later.


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## Rick65 (Feb 17, 2012)

FLYBOYJ "Actually a P-39 could beat a Zero at 20K easily if the right tactics were employed "

Would you expound on this.
Based on reading "Angels Twenty" by Ted Park the biggest problem with fighting a Zero at 20K was getting there. He didn't claim to be a superstar pilot and as a conscript pilot had a very bad opinion of the P39 as a weapon for combat at altitude. The key probem seemed to be that the higher you went the less the P39 advantages existed and all the time the limited fuel was being used. 
A quote from another pilot John G " If the sector tells us to go to Angels 20 we try like hell to get to 20,000ft. In these planes it ain't easy" 

In any case the P39 could be the most overrated plane of the war if you compare its US service with the early hype or the most underrated if the Russian experience with them is considered but 20K doesn't seem an altitude to bring out the best in the plane.


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2012)

Rick65 said:


> FLYBOYJ "Actually a P-39 could beat a Zero at 20K easily if the right tactics were employed "
> 
> Would you expound on this.
> Based on reading "Angels Twenty" by Ted Park the biggest problem with fighting a Zero at 20K was getting there. He didn't claim to be a superstar pilot and as a conscript pilot had a very bad opinion of the P39 as a weapon for combat at altitude. The key probem seemed to be that the higher you went the less the P39 advantages existed and all the time the limited fuel was being used.
> ...



I'll expound - Yes - half the problem would be getting there, BUT once there the P-39 still had a faster top speed then most if not all of the earlier Zero marks it encountered, even at 20K. At the Wright Patterson performance testing done October 1942 still achieved a top speed over 350 mph at critical altitude. The key would have been to keep the speed up and avoid losing any energy to place the P-39 into speeds that would benefit the Zero's maneuverability. Again it was the Zero that became a maneuving pig at higher speeds, regardless of altitude.
Here are the results of the testing.

P-39 Performance Tests

The P-39 WAS NOT a fighter to be used at altitude or in any kind of interceptor role as many of its operators eventually found out. It carried a very bad reputation throughout its career and IMO it's because of its performance over Guadalcanal (That also included the P-400). If anything I believe it was one of the most "underrated" fighters of the war based on its performance over New Guinea and of course with the Soviets. It by far was not a war winner and can only be considered an "iron pig" if it was placed in a position where its performance disadvantages were obvious and many of its operators did that, either by necessity or by ignorance.

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## Readie (Feb 17, 2012)

May I venture to suggest that the B29 was a little over rated?
Its weak spot being engine fires.
It had many good advanced features but...
John


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## Gixxerman (Feb 17, 2012)

I'm just stunned to see the Mustang Spitfire voted for so much.

I'd suggest that the Me163 was massively over-rated, technically interesting of course but such a limited point-defense plane that it could easily be avoided by route-switching.

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## Readie (Feb 17, 2012)

Gixxerman said:


> I'm just stunned to see the Spitfire voted for so much.
> /QUOTE]
> 
> Gix, Jealously of our Spitfire is a terrible thing....
> John


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2012)

Readie said:


> May I venture to suggest that the B29 was a little over rated?
> Its weak spot being engine fires.
> It had many good advanced features but...
> John



Maintenance was always problematic for the B-29 but by the time the atomic bomb was dropped its MC rates were pretty high AFAIK


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2012)

Gix, Jealously of our Spitfire is a terrible thing....
John


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## buffnut453 (Feb 17, 2012)

That's the thing about our Readie - you always know where he stands ("Spitfires are FANTASTIC!! Any questions? No? Good!")


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## drgondog (Feb 17, 2012)

I was also amused at the number of 'over rated votes for B-29, Mustang and Spitfire.

As to the B-29 I would like to hear from the detractors why one airplane on two total missions made the invasion of Japan a 'no, never mind' and quite likely saved 1,000,000 Japanese and Allied soldier's lives not to mention Japanese civilians, can be imagined as 'over rated'.

and, the only aircraft that could carry that load from Tinian...


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## Gixxerman (Feb 17, 2012)

I have to agree drgondog.
Some planes are so great at what they do their deeds so profoundly significant (like the Spitfire, Hurricane Mustang, I'd suggest) that they serve the rest of us a debt.
A debt we ought to remember and not forget. 
The B29 left us one of those debts.

(.....and I'm not convinced Readie was completely sincere there on the '29, it has no votes so......call it a Washington see how he reacts. lol)


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## model299 (Feb 17, 2012)

I seem to remember reading an article (Wings or Airpower) some years ago about the P-39, and the author's opinion, backed up by some research and interviews, where he stated that training in stateside p-39s actually made for better P-51 pilots. I'll see if I can dig that up.


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## fastmongrel (Feb 18, 2012)

Readie said:


> May I venture to suggest that the B29 was a little over rated?
> Its weak spot being engine fires.
> It had many good advanced features but...
> John



It was a whole technical generation ahead of anything else so not surprising it had some initial problems. Still doesnt stop it being the best bomber of the war.

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## Readie (Feb 18, 2012)

fastmongrel said:


> It was a whole technical generation ahead of anything else so not surprising it had some initial problems. Still doesnt stop it being the best bomber of the war.



I agree the B29 was advanced in design and delivered the fatal blows to Japan. No one could argue with that.
However, I think that the A bomb attack has led a lot of people into believing that the B29 was the best bomber of WW2.
I would vote for the aerial footsoldiers who slogged through years of attack, losses, success and failures the Flying Fortress, Lancaster, Stirling, Liberator and Wellington.
having said that if you look at the team of bombers the allies had, together they were unbeatable and that is the most important thing at the end of the day.
John


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## Readie (Feb 18, 2012)

buffnut453 said:


> That's the thing about our Readie - you always know where he stands ("Spitfires are FANTASTIC!! Any questions? No? Good!")




BN, They are, but so are others. I admire the Typhoon Tempest Mosquito's in particular.
I also have a sneaking admiration of the Mustang too.

Fabulous piston engined aircraft.

John


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## buffnut453 (Feb 18, 2012)

Readie said:


> I also have a sneaking admiration of the Mustang too.



I wouldn't bring that up in polite conversation if I were you. It'll ruin your reputation!


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## Readie (Feb 18, 2012)

buffnut453 said:


> I wouldn't bring that up in polite conversation if I were you. It'll ruin your reputation!




 Mum's the word BN.

John


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## stona (Feb 18, 2012)

Tricky this. I pegged the Me163 since it was pretty useless. An interesting concept but a dead end,there aren't many rocket powered glider interceptors about today but for the Germans,at the time,needs must.Was it however over rated? Did anyone really rate it in the first place?
This is why people are voting for great aircraft like the Spitfire and Mustang. By being so highly rated they leave themselves open to the charge of being over rated. Not by me though.
Steve


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## Readie (Feb 18, 2012)

stona said:


> Tricky this. I pegged the Me163 since it was pretty useless. An interesting concept but a dead end,there aren't many rocket powered glider interceptors about today but for the Germans,at the time,needs must.Was it however over rated? Did anyone really rate it in the first place?
> This is why people are voting for great aircraft like the Spitfire and Mustang. By being so highly rated they leave themselves open to the charge of being over rated. Not by me though.
> Steve



Well said Steve
John


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## muscogeemike (Feb 18, 2012)

comiso90 said:


> Don't tell that to the Russians!
> 
> I think the PBY Catalina was one of the most overrated planes.
> It was reliable, beautiful and sturdy but does not deserve all the acclaim it receives.
> ...



Especially when compared to other flying boats.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 18, 2012)

Readie said:


> I agree the B29 was advanced in design and delivered the fatal blows to Japan. No one could argue with that.
> However, I think that the A bomb attack has led a lot of people into believing that the B29 was the best bomber of WW2.
> I would vote for the aerial footsoldiers who slogged through years of attack, losses, success and failures the Flying Fortress, Lancaster, Stirling, Liberator and Wellington.
> having said that if you look at the team of bombers the allies had, together they were unbeatable and that is the most important thing at the end of the day.
> John



That does not change the fact that capability wise it was the best and most capable heavy bomber of the war. It could do more than any of the other heavy bomber and was more advanced. I don't understand why people don't want to admit that. There is no shame in that, nor does it take away from the Lancaster, B-17 or B-24. They were also amazing aircraft, but fact remains that there is always a next generation that makes it better. 

Now I do agree with you and think that a lot of people overlook the other "big 3", but *not in a serious aviation community* like this one, and therefore that does not make it overrated. No one with a true understanding of the B-17, Lancaster and B-24 would do this. There are however a lot of people on this forum that overlook the B-29, because it was not built on a certain Island to remain unnamed...


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## fastmongrel (Feb 19, 2012)

When your building a bomb truck Higher, Faster, Further with more is always better. B29 did all those things and did them well, I personally think that the B 29 as an all round weapons system wasnt equalled till the Vickers Valiant and B 47 came out and they were another 2 generations further on.


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## Readie (Feb 19, 2012)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> That does not change the fact that capability wise it was the best and most capable heavy bomber of the war. It could do more than any of the other heavy bomber and was more advanced. I don't understand why people don't want to admit that. There is no shame in that, nor does it take away from the Lancaster, B-17 or B-24. They were also amazing aircraft, but fact remains that there is always a next generation that makes it better.
> 
> Now I do agree with you and think that a lot of people overlook the other "big 3", but *not in a serious aviation community* like this one, and therefore that does not make it overrated. No one with a true understanding of the B-17, Lancaster and B-24 would do this. There are however a lot of people on this forum that overlook the B-29, because it was not built on a certain Island to remain unnamed...



I have always said that the B29 was the next generation of bomber, advanced in design capability albeit with teething issues but, as FLYBOY points out these were sorted.
It was a quantum leap forward almost as much as the jet was over the piston engine.
I agree with your points Chris, those of FLYBOY and other posters. _The B29 was a fantastic plane_ and the fact that it was not British has nothing to do with it. If the Germans had designed it I would say the same as ( as you say) we are a serious forum.

My point and I stress that it is my opinion, there to be be shot at so feel free, that the A bomb delivery and long range attacks does not automatically make the B29 the 'best'. Neither does the Dam Busters raid automatically make the Lancaster the 'best'.
I am more inclined to give credit in WW2 to the heavy bombers (and crews) that did the spade work rather than the new designs that came late in the war.

John


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## Gixxerman (Feb 19, 2012)

Readie said:


> Neither does the Dam Busters raid automatically make the Lancaster the 'best'.
> John



Have to disagree with you there John, if ever there was an outstanding example of sheer technical merit in an aircraft it was proved to be there in spades in the Lanc.....the pertinent accompanying point being _for the timeframe summer 1943_.

It's not so much that 'it made the Lanc the best' as that it proved it was (in summer '43).....together with its' crews.
The difficulty of pulling off what those men machines did given the problems they faced was nothing short of miraculous.....not to mention the dangers 
(the loss figues made chilling reading).

Anyways just my 2 pennies.
I have to say I think the B29 did enough for long enough to show itself as the best bomber in WW2. 

(The only serious opposition contender of anything close to similar ability - and that is heavily reliant on proposed specs and not produced specs - I can see is the German He 274, which we know from Fench post-war use was one very formidable machine, but which thankfully had zero operational history to gauge it by; the question is was it next gen or peak of the old gen? I tend to see it more as next.....kind of in the way the Lanc grew out of the old Manchester gen to become a new gen itself, so to the He 177 - He 277/274)


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## Dcazz7606 (Feb 19, 2012)

I agree with the Me 163 Comet as totally over rated. Dangerous and difficult to service. Deadly to the pilots if something went wrong which it sometimes did. Short duration. The biggest drawback was it's fast attack speed as the two cannons fired too slow and the Comet would pass it's target before many rounds had been fired. 
Depending on what you read it seems it either shot down 7 or 9 bombers in it's entire operational carrer.


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## GrauGeist (Feb 19, 2012)

The B-29 actually doesn't catch the spotlight as much as bombers such as the B-17, Lancaster , B-24 and so on.

It did have mechanical bugs to contend with early in it's operational career, but the troubles the Wright R-3350 caused were eventually fixed. On the otherhand, consider it's capabilities, and how it ushered in a new age of bombers and it could almost be considered under-rated...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 20, 2012)

GrauGeist said:


> The B-29 actually doesn't catch the spotlight as much as bombers such as the B-17, Lancaster , B-24 and so on.



I agree. I think when most people think of WW2 bombers they automatically think of the B-17 (unless you are from the Motherland....

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## Readie (Feb 20, 2012)

Gixxerman said:


> Have to disagree with you there John, if ever there was an outstanding example of sheer technical merit in an aircraft it was proved to be there in spades in the Lanc.....the pertinent accompanying point being _for the timeframe summer 1943_.
> 
> It's not so much that 'it made the Lanc the best' as that it proved it was (in summer '43).....together with its' crews.
> The difficulty of pulling off what those men machines did given the problems they faced was nothing short of miraculous.....not to mention the dangers
> ...



Gix, The Lancaster was the best bomber for the RAF sorties there is no doubt about that. I was just trying to put my point in context about the B29.
I agree with your B29 comment too.
John


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## Readie (Feb 20, 2012)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I agree. I think when most people think of WW2 bombers they automatically think of the B-17 (unless you are from the Motherland....



 That's an interesting point, if we went into the streets of our respective cities and asked the youth which heavy bomber they associate with WW2 I wonder what they would say?

We may have to explain the term 'heavy bomber' first...

John


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 20, 2012)

Readie said:


> That's an interesting point, if we went into the streets of our respective cities and asked the youth which heavy bomber they associate with WW2 I wonder what they would say?
> 
> We may have to explain the term 'heavy bomber' first...
> 
> John



I am sure it would be exactly this:

USA - B-17
UK - Lancaster


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## stona (Feb 20, 2012)

Readie said:


> That's an interesting point, if we went into the streets of our respective cities and asked the youth which heavy bomber they associate with WW2 I wonder what they would say?
> 
> We may have to explain the term 'heavy bomber' first...
> 
> John



You'd need to explain more than that. My youngest daughter is a secondary school teacher and most of her pupils have no idea which decade(s) the second world war took place in,far less what equipment was used to fight it.
I knew my grandmother who was bombed in Canterbury and my grandfather who served in various theatres. My children did not and the next generation of children are totally disconnected from what to them is ancient history. It's something that sometimes happens (usually badly) in Hollywood movies.
Cheers
Steve


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## Readie (Feb 20, 2012)

stona said:


> You'd need to explain more than that. My youngest daughter is a secondary school teacher and most of her pupils have no idea which decade(s) the second world war took place in,far less what equipment was used to fight it.
> I knew my grandmother who was bombed in Canterbury and my grandfather who served in various theatres. My children did not and the next generation of children are totally disconnected from what to them is ancient history. It's something that sometimes happens (usually badly) in Hollywood movies.
> Cheers
> Steve




Funnily enough I was thinking along similar lines Steve.

My children are aware of who did what in WW2 as I'm interested (my brother is not) , my father was in the 8th Army and mother in the WAAF. So we have their diaries, medals and photo's to hand.
The school's history department cover WW1 WW2 and go on school trips to see the usual sites here and in Europe.History is delivered warts and all.I think that the sites say it all really. Even the WW1 sites at Verdun etc.
Generally I would say that they are shocked by the savagery and butchery of WW 1 / 2 and appreciative of the hardwon freedom they enjoy.
My wifes parents were teenagers in WW2 are can give the 'homefront' perspective.
My youngest childrens friends nearest relative who were involved in WW2 are great great grandparents and, as you say, are more disconnected than my offspring.
The local newspaper in Plymouth likes to have articles about the way Plymouth was before the blitz and how much was destroyed. Rather missing the point that the post war bulldozers flattened more of the City of Plymouth prior to the great rebuild than the LW ever did.
My lad eldest daughter like to watch the WW2 aircraft displays when we can and seeing the BoB memorial flight is always a special moment. Seeing and hearing a Merlin Spitfire is an even more special moment.But, that's my thing.
I think that WW2 is alive (if that is the right word) as long as people like us on this and other forums remember the planes and crew. When we are not around or the planes are too old to fly any more, I rather suspect it'll all slide into history along with the Napoleonic wars and become part of the landscape.

John


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## GrauGeist (Feb 20, 2012)

I agree...when I was a kid, there were combat vets all around me and WWI was still in living memory, WWII and Korea being even more recent.

So the stories were being recalled first hand (the few stories that they'd share) and we had a grasp of the efforts and sacrifices they made as well as the equipment they used. Many years ago, I was refinishing the stock of a 7x57mm Mauser where I worked, and my co-worker and I were puzzling over a series of "grooves" that were all over the lower stock (both sides, from the reciever to the butt) and I concluded that they were the result of being "knocked around" over the years. A long time customer (who has long since passed away) happened to come into the store, and saw our project and gave it a close look. When I commented on the mystery of the rough condition of the stock, he looked at me and said "Hell son, that's not from wear and tear...some poor bastard was using that as a club!" He pointed out that the "grooves" were made from the edges of Allied helmets...We were speechless!
So we solved a mystery because of a person who had a first hand account and I think it's most important to do what we can to educate the newer generations as best as possible in the hopes that they will someday pass it on to the next.


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## Readie (Feb 20, 2012)

GrauGeist said:


> I agree...when I was a kid, there were combat vets all around me and WWI was still in living memory, WWII and Korea being even more recent.
> 
> So the stories were being recalled first hand (the few stories that they'd share) and we had a grasp of the efforts and sacrifices they made as well as the equipment they used. Many years ago, I was refinishing the stock of a 7x57mm Mauser where I worked, and my co-worker and I were puzzling over a series of "grooves" that were all over the lower stock (both sides, from the reciever to the butt) and I concluded that they were the result of being "knocked around" over the years. A long time customer (who has long since passed away) happened to come into the store, and saw our project and gave it a close look. When I commented on the mystery of the rough condition of the stock, he looked at me and said "Hell son, that's not from wear and tear...some poor bastard was using that as a club!" He pointed out that the "grooves" were made from the edges of Allied helmets...We were speechless!
> So we solved a mystery because of a person who had a first hand account and I think it's most important to do what we can to educate the newer generations as best as possible in the hopes that they will someday pass it on to the next.



I agree with that Dave. I forgot to mention that most of my school teachers were WW2 Vets and taught us history with a personal touch. I started work in 1972 and a lot of colleagues were vets too, all with a different story to tell be they Burma Star, Merchant Navy, Navy, Army or Airforce.Some were very bitter and some found humour in even the darkest hour.
I too hope that the stories like your get passed on, and perhaps mosre importantly the idea that being as free as we are today was won not given.

John


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## drgondog (Feb 20, 2012)

GrauGeist said:


> I agree...when I was a kid, there were combat vets all around me and WWI was still in living memory, WWII and Korea being even more recent.
> 
> So the stories were being recalled first hand (the few stories that they'd share) and we had a grasp of the efforts and sacrifices they made as well as the equipment they used. Many years ago, I was refinishing the stock of a 7x57mm Mauser where I worked, and my co-worker and I were puzzling over a series of "grooves" that were all over the lower stock (both sides, from the reciever to the butt) and I concluded that they were the result of being "knocked around" over the years. A long time customer (who has long since passed away) happened to come into the store, and saw our project and gave it a close look. When I commented on the mystery of the rough condition of the stock, he looked at me and said "Hell son, that's not from wear and tear...some poor bastard was using that as a club!" He pointed out that the "grooves" were made from the edges of Allied helmets...We were speechless!
> So we solved a mystery because of a person who had a first hand account and I think it's most important to do what we can to educate the newer generations as best as possible in the hopes that they will someday pass it on to the next.



Yo, Dave - did you try to steam the grooves out with wet cloth and iron?


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## GrauGeist (Feb 20, 2012)

Nope Bill, I was going to until I found out what caused those marks...

I left them there as sort of a badge of honor that the rifle earned in it's days as a fighting weapon. It now lives a life of ease as an occasional trophy Elk hunter and destroyer of targets

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## oldcrowcv63 (Feb 21, 2012)

Readie said:


> I agree with that Dave. I forgot to mention that most of my school teachers were WW2 Vets and taught us history with a personal touch. I started work in 1972 and a lot of colleagues were vets too, all with a different story to tell be they Burma Star, Merchant Navy, Navy, Army or Airforce.Some were very bitter and some found humour in even the darkest hour.
> I too hope that the stories like your get passed on, and perhaps mosre importantly the idea that being as free as we are today was won not given.
> 
> John



John, Your story brought a tear (off course I have to admit, in my dotage, that doesn't take much). The best teacher I ever had was for 1960, eighth grade: Mr. Oaks. I first saw him come in to school with a marked limp. I later learned he had been at Anzio and wounded. He wouldn't talk much about it, so I never knew his whole story. I just know he taught with a humor and a manner I did not see again. I went into his class believing none of my dreams were attainable, but graduated knowing it was possible to learn and do anything to which one was committed. Had lots of teachers over the years but never learned as much from any other.


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## zoomar (Mar 26, 2012)

I chose the A6M and the Me-163.

The Zero was an underpowered and underprotected airplane that was able to outperform a number of western types because of its extremely light construction. It had some advantages over early war types such as the P-40 and F4F, but was not the amazing plane made out to be by some. Basically outclassed by 1943, which is not a good thing for a plane only first introduced in late 1940.

The Me-163 was a pointless exercise in high-performance waste.


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## Vincenzo (Mar 26, 2012)

the zero was not of extremely light constructions. it's true was outclassed in late '43 but all fighters that outclassed him were newest.


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## GregP (Mar 27, 2012)

I don't really get this poll.

The P-51 has been picked as the best overall fighter of WWII by more than 5 inetrnational panels of judges. Before the P-51, the war wasn't going well in Europe. After the P-51 was there for awhile it was. Spitfires, Typoons, Hurricanes, and Tempests weren't escorting the bombers to Berlin, the P-51 was along with the P-38 for a short while before the P-38 departed for the ETO where it won.

How is it overrated? It may not be the best at any particular task but, overall all ALL tasks, there were few or none better. High speed, high altitude, long range, plently of airframes, better than average maneuverability, adequately armed, with a reliable engine and radio. What other aircraft had more good qualities?They might have the same number of good qualities, but more? I don.t see it.


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## GregP (Mar 27, 2012)

I don't really get this poll.

The P-51 has been picked as the bets overall fighter of WWII by more than 5 inetrnational panels of judges. Before the P-51, the war wasn't going well in Europe. After the P-51 was there for awhile it was. Spitfires, Typoons, Hurricanes, and Tempests weren't escorting the bombers to Berlin, the P-51 was along with the P-38 for awhile before the P-38 departed for the ETO where it won.

How is it overrated? It may not be the best at any particular task but, overall all ALL tasks, there were few or none better. High speed, high altitude, long range, plently of airframes, better than average maneuverability, adequately armed, with a reliable engine and radio. What other aircraft had MORE good qualities? They might have had the same number of good qualities, but more? I don.t see it.


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## Siegfried (Mar 27, 2012)

GregP said:


> I don't really get this poll.
> 
> The P-51 has been picked as the bets overall fighter of WWII by more than 5 inetrnational panels of judges. Before the P-51, the war wasn't going well in Europe. After the P-51 was there for awhile it was. Spitfires, Typoons, Hurricanes, and Tempests weren't escorting the bombers to Berlin, the P-51 was along with the P-38 for awhile before the P-38 departed for the ETO where it won.



International panel of judges? Paula Adul and Simon Cowel?

The P-51 'score' should be weighted and reduced by a factor of 4. The P-51B wasn't present in any significant numbers till January 1944 having flown a few tentative missions in mid december 1943. The earlier Allison P-51A made no significant impact both in numbers and missions due to the limmitations of its high altitude performance. It's also clear that P-47 improvements in fuel tankage were capable of not only matching but exceding P-51 range and that these improvements could also have been accelerated. Furthermore the P-38 was also being improved and had overcome its technical bugs around the time the P-51B started its first missions.

I would say even the P-40 was more important than the P-51. It held the line and it is clear that the US and UK would have suffered many defeats without it that may not have been reversible.


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## wuzak (Mar 27, 2012)

GregP said:


> I don't really get this poll.
> 
> The P-51 has been picked as the best overall fighter of WWII by more than 5 inetrnational panels of judges. Before the P-51, the war wasn't going well in Europe. After the P-51 was there for awhile it was. Spitfires, Typoons, Hurricanes, and Tempests weren't escorting the bombers to Berlin, the P-51 was along with the P-38 for a short while before the P-38 departed for the ETO where it won.
> 
> How is it overrated? It may not be the best at any particular task but, overall all ALL tasks, there were few or none better. High speed, high altitude, long range, plently of airframes, better than average maneuverability, adequately armed, with a reliable engine and radio. What other aircraft had more good qualities?They might have the same number of good qualities, but more? I don.t see it.



Greg, it could be the best thing ever, never surpassed, and sill be overrated.

The P-51 didn't really do a lot for the RAF war effort either, since most of their missions were at night.


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## Siegfried (Mar 27, 2012)

zoomar said:


> I chose the A6M and the Me-163.
> 
> The Zero was an underpowered and underprotected airplane that was able to outperform a number of western types because of its extremely light construction. It had some advantages over early war types such as the P-40 and F4F, but was not the amazing plane made out to be by some. Basically outclassed by 1943, which is not a good thing for a plane only first introduced in late 1940.
> 
> The Me-163 was a pointless exercise in high-performance waste.



The Me 163B had been designed as a reconaisance aircraft interceptor, it was 'misused' to intercept bombers. The flaw in the Me 163B had already been ascertained as it was begining its first missions. It had too short an endurance, the pilots could intercept the bombers but needed a few more minutes to set up an ideal attack run. One solution was the New two chamber rocket which had a seperate boost and a smaller more efficient sustainer motor that significantly increased efficiency and range. The other was to increase the size of the aircraft to allow a higher proportion of fuel. The new designs were the Me 163C and Me 263 Ju 248.

It's likely if these improvments had of been incorporated in the first instance we would likely be talking about the deadly effect of these rocket aircraft on USAAF bomber formations.

The latter zeroes received armour protection and self sealing fuel tanks, however new advanced and more powerfull engines did not becoame into production to enhance performance


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## drgondog (Mar 27, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> International panel of judges? Paula Adul and Simon Cowel?
> 
> The P-51 'score' should be weighted and reduced by a factor of 4. The P-51B wasn't present in any significant numbers till January 1944 having flown a few tentative missions in mid december 1943. The earlier Allison P-51A made no significant impact both in numbers and missions due to the limmitations of its high altitude performance.
> 
> ...



Last but not least. While the first victory credits belonged entirely to the 354th FG in ETO and only scored 9 in December 1943, the combined four (4th, 354th, 355th and 357th FG) scored nearly as many credits as ALL of the ETO (8th and 9th AF) P-47 groups in the 1st Qtr, and by end of June the 7 Mustang Groups had scored as many all All the P-47 groups in ETO for All of the P-47 Group's combat record from early 1943 forward - over Germany and deep targets while the Jugs were relegated to Penetration and Withdrawal support. 

Even though the P-38, per se, was not particularly successful compared to the Mustang, the combined long range escort capabilities of the two fighter types compared to the contemporary P-47D enabled the long range effort over German targets to destroy almost as many through March (and crossed over in April) as All the 9th and 8th AF Jug groups. 

To perhaps put it in perspective for you the combined P-47 Fighter groups that were operational from January 1944 and flying escort missions were (4th, 56th, 78, 352nd, 353rd, 355th, 356th, 358th, 359th, 361st, 362nd). The combined Mustang Groups were 354th. At the end of March, the 4th, 357th, 354th, 355th and 357th had fully converted to Mustangs in February and March while the 9th added the 366th, 368th and 405th FG's

So, despite a nearly 4:1 operational sortie advantage to the P-47 FG's versus Mustang sorties, the P-51 was outscored 560 to 390. during the next two months the Mustang Groups outscored the P-47 (8th and 9th) approximately 850 to 320 in the battles leading up to D-Day... mostly over Brunswick, Hannover, Berlin, Leipzig, Munich, Augsburg, Magdeburg where the P-47s could not play. 

Note: I am busy breaking out the entire ETO Victory credits by a/c by group, by month so the number above is an estimation backed out from end of June.

There were always more P-47s than P-51s in the ETO and the P-47 flew twice the sorties as the Mustang - yet from December 1943 though April 1945, the P-51 outscored the Jug 4179 to 2658 in the ETO (P-38s scored a total of 451).

This does not take into account aircraft destroyed on the ground where the results are far more lopsided in favor of the Mustang, nor have the RAF totals been considered, which skews the resulys even more.

So how was the Mustang overated?


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## pbfoot (Mar 27, 2012)

GregP said:


> I don't really get this poll.
> 
> The P-51 has been picked as the bets overall fighter of WWII by more than 5 inetrnational panels of judges. Before the P-51, the war wasn't going well in Europe. After the P-51 was there for awhile it was. Spitfires, Typoons, Hurricanes, and Tempests weren't escorting the bombers to Berlin, the P-51 was along with the P-38 for awhile before the P-38 departed for the ETO where it won.
> 
> How is it overrated? It may not be the best at any particular task but, overall all ALL tasks, there were few or none better. High speed, high altitude, long range, plently of airframes, better than average maneuverability, adequately armed, with a reliable engine and radio. What other aircraft had MORE good qualities? They might have had the same number of good qualities, but more? I don.t see it.


Another international poll said Rickenbacker was the 2nd most important pilot in WW1 after Richhofenbut I don't think he was even in the top 10.


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## buffnut453 (Mar 27, 2012)

drgondog said:


> Yo, Dave - did you try to steam the grooves out with wet cloth and iron?



I still do - ironing dark trousers can leave them shiny if you're not careful but using a wet cloth (I have a favourite old tea towel for the purpose) prevents that problem!

Ok, so I'm a luddite living in the past...but it works for me!!!


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## varsity078740 (Mar 27, 2012)

GrauGeist said:


> I agree...when I was a kid, there were combat vets all around me and WWI was still in living memory, WWII and Korea being even more recent.
> 
> So the stories were being recalled first hand (the few stories that they'd share) and we had a grasp of the efforts and sacrifices they made as well as the equipment they used. Many years ago, I was refinishing the stock of a 7x57mm Mauser where I worked, and my co-worker and I were puzzling over a series of "grooves" that were all over the lower stock (both sides, from the reciever to the butt) and I concluded that they were the result of being "knocked around" over the years. A long time customer (who has long since passed away) happened to come into the store, and saw our project and gave it a close look. When I commented on the mystery of the rough condition of the stock, he looked at me and said "Hell son, that's not from wear and tear...some poor bastard was using that as a club!" He pointed out that the "grooves" were made from the edges of Allied helmets...We were speechless!
> So we solved a mystery because of a person who had a first hand account and I think it's most important to do what we can to educate the newer generations as best as possible in the hopes that they will someday pass it on to the next.[/QUOTE
> ...


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## drgondog (Mar 27, 2012)

IIRC - Spain and Argentina still used 7x57 in WWII timeframe.


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## GregP (Mar 27, 2012)

Hi pbfoot,

I agree. I liked Rickenacker, but he wasn't anywhere number two.

Wuzak,

You may be right, especialoly about the timeframe and helping the RAF. Go look at the tonnage of bombs dropped by the USAAC in WWII and you will see most of the bombs taht were dropped by the USA were dropped after the P-51 go there to escort our bombers to berlin. Coincidentally, that's when the germans began suffering their worst time. Once the mass dalight bombing began it was amatter of time. 

Did the USAAF mass daylight bombing win the war? No, but it certainly contributed a great deal. Yes, the Spitfires were there from the start, but were mostly involved in defensive operations through the BOB and beyond. It wasn't until the Allies began attacking Germany that the tide of war changed. The BOB stopped Germany, but didn't do much to destroy the German war machine aside from depleting her of some aircraft and crews and, of course, saving Great Gritain in the process. Heroic. And the Hurriocane did more than the Spitfire in the BOB.

But turning the tide meant bombing the factries that produced war materiel and interrupting the oil, rubber, metal, and food supply. The P-51 was there for the best part of attacking Germany itself. It was seen as a pretty good fighter and did most of its service for teh USAAF, true. I don't argue that at all since it is correct. I just don't get the "overrated" part of it, that's all.

The Spitfire was lauded as the winner of the BOB despite the fact that Hurricane shot down more German aircraft in the actual event. Now that's overrated in my book, at least during the BOB. Doesn't mean the Spitfire wan't a great plane, it WAS and IS. It means it got credit out of proportion to what it actually accomplished ... ergo, overrated. If credit had been given where it was due, the Hurricane would be the big hero of the BOB.

Of course, that's just one opinion and I don't feel particularly emotional about it, just wondering and commenting on it.


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## Kryten (Mar 27, 2012)

{{{The Spitfire was lauded as the winner of the BOB despite the fact that Hurricane shot down more German aircraft in the actual event. Now that's overrated in my book, at least during the BOB. Doesn't mean the Spitfire wan't a great plane, it WAS and IS. It means it got credit out of proportion to what it actually accomplished ... ergo, overrated. If credit had been given where it was due, the Hurricane would be the big hero of the BOB.}}}

The Hurricane was able to shoot down more aircraft partly due to thier numbers and partly due to the Spitfires being used to keep the 109's off thier backs, thats not overrated, thats sound tactics!


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## muscogeemike (Mar 27, 2012)

Quote:
You may be right, especially about the timeframe and helping the RAF. Go look at the tonnage of bombs dropped by the USAAC in WWII and you will see most of the bombs taht were dropped by the USA were dropped after the P-51 got there to escort our bombers to berlin. Coincidentally, that's when the germans began suffering their worst time. Once the mass dalight bombing began it was amatter of time. 

I really don’t have a rooster in this fight but on the first full scale USAAF mission to Berlin (6 Mar 44) both P-51’s and P-47’s escorted. I’ve read of P-47 missions in the Pacific that were as long, or longer, then those flown by the P-51. Apparently the Thunder bolt had more range then it is generally given credit for.


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## zoomar (Mar 27, 2012)

Vincenzo said:


> the zero was not of extremely light constructions. it's true was outclassed in late '43 but all fighters that outclassed him were newest.



The A6M was not of extremely light construction? Unless I am sorely misinformed, it was very lightweight, its sheet aluminum was of a thinner gauge than western types, it lacked armour, self-seaing tank, and other amenities s in order to minimize weight. The only reason its relatively low-powered engine could provide it with a performance equivalent or marinally superior to contemporary Allied types such as the F4F, P-39, and P-40 was because it was so light. The Zero first flew in 1940 and was totally obsolete by 1943. The Bf-109 and Spitfire were introduced in 1938 and variants of these planes were still first-line fighters in 1945. The first P-51s and Fw-190s flew in 1940 and they remained first rank fighters until the end of the war. The Zero was a compromised design that acheived short term and relatively marginal superiority over early war allied types by sacrificing any potential for significant improvement. It was a combination of allied overconfidence, surprise that the Japanese had any modern aircraft, and the high skill of early war Japanese aviators that lead to the myth of the Zero's invincibility, not the fact that it was just a fairly decent plane in 1940 with a few outstanding characteristics counterbalanced by some serious flaws


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## FLYBOYJ (Mar 27, 2012)

Actually the Zero's skin wasn't much thinner than it's western counterparts. It was built light and was actually quite strong although some of it's structure wasn't "over engineered" like some western and US aircraft. What it lacked was armor protection and self sealing tanks. Additionally like many Japanese aircraft, part interchangability was an issue as well.

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/fighters-were-thick-skinned-937-7.html#post61510


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## zoomar (Mar 27, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> The Me 163B had been designed as a reconaisance aircraft interceptor, it was 'misused' to intercept bombers. The flaw in the Me 163B had already been ascertained as it was begining its first missions. It had too short an endurance, the pilots could intercept the bombers but needed a few more minutes to set up an ideal attack run. One solution was the New two chamber rocket which had a seperate boost and a smaller more efficient sustainer motor that significantly increased efficiency and range. The other was to increase the size of the aircraft to allow a higher proportion of fuel. The new designs were the Me 163C and Me 263 Ju 248.



The Me-163 was designed as a high speed research aircraft. It was hurridly adopted as an interceptor. I am unaware that it was specifically designed to intercept only recon aircraft. Even with the improvements planned in the Me-263, the plane would have had a very short endurance and the basic problem associated with its high speed approach and low speed cannon would not have been solved. The Me-163 is an example of an amazing high-performance aircraft that is ranked highly just because of its technology - not its utility as a warplane.


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## Vincenzo (Mar 27, 2012)

Zoomar i can use the flyboyj reply for the constructions question (and armour, ss are not construction). the zero first flight was 1939. was not totally obsolete in all '43, in '43 zero get also good results like in escort over darwin, take in the account that allied new fighters coming in '43 not full replace the oldest model in few days.
Zero was a long range carrier borne fighter, light, it's obvious a compromised design. The Spitfire not get good result v/s zero, the V over Darwin were mauled, late war seafire got nothing of exceptional v/s a "outclassed" plane. Also F4U early don't get one sided result, imho the trouble was not the Zero but the lower level of new japanese pilot (not that the slow speed of zero help, or the its small capacity in dive)


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## tomo pauk (Mar 27, 2012)

The military plane needs to be assessed as a weapon used to prosecute war. For a weapon to make a difference, the good timing is an important thing, as important as the capabilities proper use of those capabilities. P-51B-K did have great capabilities, used in exemplary fashion (making the difference in a major war), and it's timing was good. So the ingredients for a great weapon of war are there.


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## fastmongrel (Mar 27, 2012)

Perhaps the reason the P 51 has got so many votes is because according to some posters on this and other forums it is the reason why the USA won WWII singlehanded.

I say this as someone who thinks it was a great weapon and the Mustang III with Malcolm hood and tail fillet is one of my favourite aircraft of all time.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 27, 2012)

Okay, I see what you mean. 
I rate the Hurricane and P-40 as the most valuable fighters for Allied cause, BTW.


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## davparlr (Mar 27, 2012)

pbfoot said:


> Another international poll said Rickenbacker was the 2nd most important pilot in WW1 after Richhofenbut I don't think he was even in the top 10.


 
 Just goes to show you one can find a poll showing anything one wants. However, I suspect you would have a difficult time finding another poll with similar results.


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## muscogeemike (Mar 27, 2012)

Vincenzo said:


> Zoomar i can use the flyboyj reply for the constructions question (and armour, ss are not construction). the zero first flight was 1939. was not totally obsolete in all '43, in '43 zero get also good results like in escort over darwin, take in the account that allied new fighters coming in '43 not full replace the oldest model in few days.
> Zero was a long range carrier borne fighter, light, it's obvious a compromised design. The Spitfire not get good result v/s zero, the V over Darwin were mauled, late war seafire got nothing of exceptional v/s a "outclassed" plane. Also F4U early don't get one sided result, imho the trouble was not the Zero but the lower level of new japanese pilot (not that the slow speed of zero help, or the its small capacity in dive)



While I agree that the Zero was obsolete by '43, we must not forget that the Zero in expert hands was still capable, as demonstrated by Saburo Sakai over Iwo Jima in June of 1944.


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## GregP (Mar 27, 2012)

Perhaps you are right when you say the P-51 is considered overrated because of expressed US opinions of our contributions to WWII. Either way, the P-51 is a great plane, whether underrated or overrated. I personally feel the most overrated fighter is either the Spitfire or the Fw 190, take your pick. Both are great planes but tend to get what I see as more adoration than their real-world performance deserves. But that is just me. I KNOW what the P-51 will do and so do not overrate it myself. I have seen in here people quoting performacne for the Fw 190 that I cannot find in my references ... particularly my references from the just-post-war period (I value them above more modern research since they were written by people who were there). We even have a guy in here who calims to have uncovered evidence of even better performance for the liquid-cooled Fw 190's, 70 years after the fact! Yeah, right. The planes were what they were, and were no better or worse. The factory test data are correct. What factory underrates it's own products?

While I'm from and live in the U.S.A., I am not one of the US citizens who thinks we mostly won WWII by ourselves. We helped save Great Britain with food, war materiel and, after Dec 7, 1941, we joined in the war and contributed a great deal. Without our contributions, Great Britain could probably have been lost ... but maybe not the war. On the other hand, the British were pretty plucky and might well have survived without our aid. This is a "what if" for which I don't care to speculate about a conclusion. In the event, we KNOW what happened. All else is fiction and opinion.

I think the biggest single factor in Allied victory was the fact the Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. If not for that, most of the German strength could have been brought to bear upon the western front. If that had happened, Germany might have won. The Soviet Union sapped German strength and the Soviet winter took care of a lot more. The Soviet Air Force, though initially ineffective, evolved into a great air arm capable of repulsing the German Luftwaffe in their own right. Another nation might not have been able to do what they did.

I do NOT claim we definitely saved the UK, I claim we were a factor in keeping the Germans from launching the the invasion of Great Britain and a factor in Britain's ability tio survive and continue the fight. But Germany well might not have launched in any case. I also claim we helped tremendously in the ETO and MTO with our daylight bombing, Navy, and Army. In the Pacific, though there was some presence by other powers, we mostly did it with ourselves and Australia. Yes, the British were there, too (thank you, Great Britain), though not in great numbers since their national survival was at stake in Europe.

Though we suffered maritime losses to U-boats just offshore, nobody invaded the U.S.A or bombed us. Despite some nationalistic views, we admire the British resolve to continue fighting and respect the resistance from those European countries who fell to the Germans. It isn't easy to risk your family to aid a downed flier or trapped / wounded soldier, but you DID and we haven't forgotten it ... at least some of us ( I like to think many of us) haven't. So while the "Ugly American" may be alive and well, not all of us are in that genre. It should not affect your opinions of our aircraft either way ... but I understand a bit better anyway.


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## barney (Mar 28, 2012)

muscogeemike said:


> While I agree that the Zero was obsolete by '43, we must not forget that the Zero in expert hands was still capable, as demonstrated by Saburo Sakai over Iwo Jima in June of 1944.



There's no question that Sakai was a world class fighter pilot but Sakai himself admits that if the American pilots had been better shots that day he'd have been toast. He wasn't fighting, he was just trying to stay alive.


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## zoomar (Mar 28, 2012)

Yes, avaiation history is replete with examples of outstanding pilots excelling in planes that would, for an average pilot faced with more capable enemy planes, be a death trap. That is a measure of the pilot, not the aircraft.

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## GregP (Mar 30, 2012)

I met Saburo Sakai in Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.A. in the mid-1980's. He was very personable and a nice man. He got a ride in Bill Hane's P-51D at that time and was thrilled to not only fly in a Mustang, but also to fly in a piston fighter again. He enjoyed the day and had many good things to say, particularly that while the Japanese treated their captives harshly, they also did the same to their own people and soldiers. The times and attitudes were tending that way, and while it was not a good thing, that was the way things were at the time and he was a pilot who stuck to piloting as ordered. He never mistreated a subordinate, but DID handle normal disciplinary action for actual transgressions, and never HAD a prisoner of his own to treat well or badly ... he was a pilot, period.

In real life, he was a nice person , or at least he seemed that way at the time. I enjoyed his talk at the Doug Champlin Air Museum at Falcon Field, Mesa, Arizona.

I bought a print of him over Mount Fuji ina Zero, and he personally autographed it. Still have it. Neat guy!


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## muscogeemike (Apr 26, 2012)

GregP said:


> I met Saburo Sakai in Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.A. in the mid-1980's. He was very personable and a nice man. He got a ride in Bill Hane's P-51D at that time and was thrilled to not only fly in a Mustang, but also to fly in a piston fighter again. He enjoyed the day and had many good things to say, particularly that while the Japanese treated their captives harshly, they also did the same to their own people and soldiers. The times and attitudes were tending that way, and while it was not a good thing, that was the way things were at the time and he was a pilot who stuck to piloting as ordered. He never mistreated a subordinate, but DID handle normal disciplinary action for actual transgressions, and never HAD a prisoner of his own to treat well or badly ... he was a pilot, period.
> 
> In real life, he was a nice person , or at least he seemed that way at the time. I enjoyed his talk at the Doug Champlin Air Museum at Falcon Field, Mesa, Arizona.
> 
> I bought a print of him over Mount Fuji ina Zero, and he personally autographed it. Still have it. Neat guy!



I have read other accounts about Mr. Sakai which agree with you and I don’t doubt that he, personally, did not abuse prisoners.

I was stationed in Japan in the late ‘60’s and found the Japanese (of the war generation) were very reluctant to speak of their experiences during the war.

I spent several years stationed in Germany and found them to be much more forthcoming. I once stumbled into a small bar in Mannheim which was a hang out for Africa Corps Vets. After some initial awkwardness they actually welcomed us. 

One funny thing though, I talked to many Germans (military and civilian) who lived through the war and was amazed that none of the veterans I spoke to (in the US section of Germany) had opposed the Americans - they all fought the Russians or Brits.

Even more amazing was when I spent some time in Dusseldorf (in the Brit. Zone) I was told by Brit. Soldiers that none of “their” Germans fought the Brits - they all fought the Russians or Americans!

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## iron man (Apr 26, 2012)

muscogeemike said:


> I have read other accounts about Mr. Sakai which agree with you and I don’t doubt that he, personally, did not abuse prisoners.
> 
> I was stationed in Japan in the late ‘60’s and found the Japanese (of the war generation) were very reluctant to speak of their experiences during the war.
> 
> ...



And if you take it on an aggregate figure? 

~90% of them fought the Russians; ergo, your chance of running into someone who fought either a Brit or a Yank, is only about 10%.

As to the veracity of those with which you spoke?

Who's to say by this point?

BTW? Which _was_ the most overrated aircraft in WWII?

That is what the thread's about.

I still haven't voted...but it's certainly NOT the A6M.


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## Edgar Brooks (Apr 27, 2012)

I haven't voted, nor will I, since, without flying (and fighting) in all of them (an impossibility,) how can anyone make a reasoned judgement? For the U.K., I'd put the likeliest candidates as the Manchester and Botha, which caused more trouble for their own side than the enemy.


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## wuzak (Apr 27, 2012)

Edgar Brooks said:


> I haven't voted, nor will I, since, without flying (and fighting) in all of them (an impossibility,) how can anyone make a reasoned judgement? For the U.K., I'd put the likeliest candidates as the Manchester and Botha, which caused more trouble for their own side than the enemy.



Neither the Manchester or Botha have been rated at all highly, so how can they be overrated?


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## pbfoot (Apr 27, 2012)

Edgar Brooks said:


> I haven't voted, nor will I, since, without flying (and fighting) in all of them (an impossibility,) how can anyone make a reasoned judgement? For the U.K., I'd put the likeliest candidates as the Manchester and Botha, which caused more trouble for their own side than the enemy.


 Who rated the Manchester as even a good/reasonable aircraft . It was shrapnel from day one


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## Kryten (Apr 27, 2012)

perhaps it was overrated, as in being not as bad as people say!


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## wuzak (Apr 27, 2012)

Kryten said:


> perhaps it was overrated, as in being not as bad as people say!



Then it would be underrated.


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## pbfoot (Apr 27, 2012)

Kryten said:


> perhaps it was overrated, as in being not as bad as people say!


It was worse , a pilot that flew I believe 2 tours on it called it a Rube Goldberg device


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## BLine22 (Jul 4, 2016)

What did the Spitfire do after Sept. 1940? The Spitfire is an 1.5 hr aircraft while the P-51 is good for 8+ and can carry more than twice the ordnance in the fighter-bomber role.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jul 4, 2016)

BLine22 said:


> What did the Spitfire do after Sept. 1940? The Spitfire is an 1.5 hr aircraft while the P-51 is good for 8+ and can carry more than twice the ordnance in the fighter-bomber role.



Apples to oranges.

Two different roles. The Spitfire was an interceptor, the P-51 an escort fighter.

Both had their advantages and disadvantages compared to the other. 

To make a claim the Spitfire did nothing post 1940 is just absurd.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jul 4, 2016)

I would venture to say you put two equal pilots in a one on one fight against each other, the Spitfire would have the advantage over the 51.


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## BiffF15 (Jul 4, 2016)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I would venture to say you put two equal pilots in a one on one fight against each other, the Spitfire would have the advantage over the 51.



I agree, if both are fighting near home plate. I don't agree if they fought after having been airborne for 3 hours, then fought, then flew three more hours home...

Cheers,
Biff

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## GrauGeist (Jul 4, 2016)

lmao...Biff, it looks like you're being schooled on fighter tactics!

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jul 4, 2016)

BiffF15 said:


> I agree, if both are fighting near home plate. *I don't agree if they fought after having been airborne for 3 hours, then fought, then flew three more hours home...*
> 
> Cheers,
> Biff



Well yeah...

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## parsifal (Jul 5, 2016)

Spits did well, but not as well as the post war hype suggests, in 1940. Still according to many, including fighter ace Johnie Johnson it was the best conventional defensive fighter of the war. In 1941, faced with an intractable enemy over France, it did a lot less well but still competitive. its range was improved and in 1942 it began to have some effect in foreign TOs. later marks improved the range, which incidentally was also the case for the 109. both the 109 and the spitfires were remarkable at the time of their introduction, and retained that reputation because they were a design that just kept on giving. There were good reasons why the Spitfire remained in front line aservice for more than 20 years 

by 1943 when the long range escort versions of the P-51 began to enter service, the Spitfire had been in squadron service since august 1938. The spitfire was a pensioner by then but still was giving the upstart Us design (and others) a good run for the money. Lets not also forget the british connection for the p-51. what was its powerplant again?

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## stona (Jul 5, 2016)

An explanation of the concepts behind the development of the Spitfire and other fighters designed for home defence from Colin Sinnott, author of "The Royal Air Force and Aircraft Design- 1923-1939".

_"Since 1923 the RAF had pursued the concept of two classes of single seat fighter. The standard zone class was required to operate by day or night, and to have an endurance sufficient for patrol until the route and height of an attack was fully identified. The interception class was at first to be optimised for a pursuit climb from airfields on the coast. When the pursuit climb role had been found unfeasible the class was retained as a high performance, low endurance, day only fighter. The two classes began to merge as the introduction of flaps broke the link between maximum speed and landing speed, and night flying and radio equipment reduced in weight. But the most important factor was the reduction in endurance specified for day and night zone fighters.
In going from F.7/30 to F.10/35 the Air Staff had accepted the advice of the Fighting Area and reduced the required endurance (at maximum normal rpm) from 2 1/2 hours to 1 hour, and reserves from 1/2 to 1/4 hour. This startling change underlay Sorley's proposal that the Supermarine F.37/34 experimental fighter could meet F.10/35. He noted that the latter required only two thirds of the fuel load of the former as a result of a halving of the required endurance and reserves. This saving in fuel weight would more than offset that of four additional guns. It also explains how Hawker's experimental fighter, which Camm had based upon the Fury low endurance concept, could be deemed to meet the new zone fighter requirement F.10/35.
Merging of the two classes was completed when the Bristol and Gloster prototypes to the Fury replacement day fighter specification F.5/34 were brought into line with F.10/35. The first step concerned endurance. That specified for the zone fighter F.10/35 was actually less than that of F.5/34 - one hour as compared with one and a quarter hours. The Air Staff proposed to reduce F.5/34 to one hour , and this was agreed by the Fighting Area and put into effect."_

This makes it clear why the home defence fighters had the endurance that they did. It was what was deemed necessary at the time, reflected in the requirements and specifications issued.. They were not designed as offensive fighters and the certainly weren't designed as bomber escorts. The latter role did not exist at the time, bombers were supposed to be self defending not requiring escort, a concept only disproved after the outbreak of hostilities.

Criticising the lack of endurance of fighters that were specifically designed to meet specifications that did not require it, as it was not required for the intended role, is hardly fair. 

Cheers

Steve

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## drgondog (Jul 5, 2016)

James W. said:


> AFAIR, the highest performing US fighter unit in the MTO operated Spitfires, then Mustangs, & not the P-38, or P-47.
> Reverse Lend-Lease photo-recce Spitfires were often used in preference to the Lightning like-wise.



The 31st FG (Spit), which started in ETO along with 1st FG (P-38) then moved to MTO for Torch were the two longest serving AAF units . The 31st did end up with highest air victory credits (more in P-51) at 582. The 82nd flew P-38s and ended up with 553. The 82nd was in the lead until approximately February, 1945.

Interestingly the P-38 groups were in the lead until the 31st, 52nd, 325th, 332nd converted from Spitfire and P-47 to P-51. Even the 332nd outscored each of the P-38 FG's after June 1944.

It should be remembered that the 325th and 332nd flew mostly P-40's until late 1943 so they were at a distinct disadvantage in performance vs the Spit. The P-47 helped close the gap but the P-51 was the dominant air superiority fighter in both the MTO and ETO.

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## drgondog (Jul 5, 2016)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Apples to oranges.
> 
> Two different roles. The Spitfire was an interceptor, the P-51 an escort fighter.
> 
> ...



To make a finer point. Both were excellent fighters, both were operational as fighter bombers, escort fighters, air superiority, photo recon. Both were fast and each very maneuverable. The edge goes to the Spit for climb and turn, to the Mustang which was faster, much longer range and greater external load/range combined.

The P-51B/D became the premier escort fighter as a result of matching performance envelope to a.) the range of the B-17/B-24, b.) maneuverability envelope to the Bf 109 and FW 190 from SL to 20,000 feet, c.) achievement of max performance at bomber altitudes from 20,000 up at which point the P-51 was gradually superior to the Bf 109 and FW 190.

Net - the Spit was a superior interceptor and dog fighter, handicapped from 'all purpose air superiority' by short legs. The P-51B/D was an excellent knife fighter using higher speed, better zoom, faster close but handicapped slightly by higher Gross weight and smaller wing for turn and climb -but was 'good enough' to defeat the LW fighting over its own airspace - which the Spit never did until the European bases enabled coverage over mid and east Germany.

IMO using the term Fighter rather than escort fighter is the right place to start comparisons and operational suitability versus the array of opponents. The first question to ask a military planner, given a choice of assets, is which fighter of the two do you select if your Prime Objective is to wrest air superiority from the enemy Fighter Arm. 

If your entire reason for deployment of airpower is support ground forces and deny the enemy access to your airspace to project their strategic bombers, then you have to give the nod to the Spit series because range and load capability is not crucial (same reasoning for Bf 109 or YaK 9). Otherwise, the P-51B/D/H

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## stona (Jul 5, 2016)

Behind all the technical specifications for performance, range and fire power that produced the Spitfire was the requirement to protect London, not even the industrial cities of the Midlands and the North or our ports, aircraft industry and airfields which might seem more obvious targets to us today. This can only be understood by trying to appreciate the mindset of those tasked with Britain's air defence in the 1920s and 1930s and the attitude held by people all over Europe to the prospect of large scale and unrestricted aerial bombardment.
Cheers
Steve


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## stona (Jul 5, 2016)

BLine22 said:


> The Spitfire is an 1.5 hr aircraft while the P-51 is good for 8+ and can carry more than twice the ordnance in the fighter-bomber role.



You need to read my post above to understand why the Spitfire had the endurance it did. You should really try to learn some of the history behind these various aircraft and the reasons for the decisions taken, and the specifications to which they were built, before giving vent to ill informed opinions. You would certainly earn some respect that way.

After September 1940 the Spitfire remained the RAF's primary fighter, serving with distinction all over the world, but you know this already. 
It also proved very successful in some roles for which it was not designed. It became one of the two best photo reconnaissance aircraft operated in any number by the Allies (along with the Mosquito). 
Range was not such an issue when operating from airfields close to the fronts on mainland Europe after the invasion, as any number of Luftwaffe pilots would testify, at least those who survived their encounter with a Spitfire.

Cheers

Steve


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## RCAFson (Jul 5, 2016)

The most directly equivalent Spitfire to the Mustang was the Mk 8 which was a 6 hour aircraft:

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/Spitfire_LF_VIII_Trop_Aircraft_Data_Performance.jpg

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## BiffF15 (Jul 5, 2016)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Well yeah...



Gents,

I owe an apology to you! I did not convey my point well and apologize for that! My point regarding the Spit vs Mustang was meant to point out:

1. That the Spit / 109 / 190 were designed as close to base fighters and enjoyed an advantage best summed up by the late Colin Chapman in regards to the Lotus, and that is to increase performance just add lightness.

2. That a direct performance comparison between a Merlin Mustang and any of the aircraft mentioned in bullet 1 requires some serious caveats. History has shown us how they were used, books / charts / tests show us what they were capable of.

Cheers,
Biff

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## Shortround6 (Jul 5, 2016)

BLine22 said:


> What did the Spitfire do after Sept. 1940? The Spitfire is an 1.5 hr aircraft while the P-51 is good for 8+ and can carry more than twice the ordnance in the fighter-bomber role.



And here we really get into the _History_ and _development_ of the aircraft. The Spitfire was _ designed 4-5 years _*before* the Mustang. 
It was designed to give the max performance possible while carrying the heaviest gun armament used at that time while being handicapped by using a fixed pitch propeller (which also limited max rpm for take-off to well below the power the engine was capable of) and taking off from *small *grass airfields. 
The Mustang was designed around an engine offering 30% more power for take-off while using a constant speed propeller and the field restrictions were being relaxed (fields being made larger). By the time the prototype NA-73X was rolled out the factory door the Spitfire was being fitted (at least a few) with 20mm guns and four .303 maching guns. 
Underwing loads for the P-51 would NOT show up until after hundreds were built and the 1000lb load under each wing didn't show up until the D model at the Spring of 1944. That is _"Official"_ what units did in the field often varied (A few P-40 Units in Italy carried a pair of 1000lb bombs under P-40s). 

Please try to compare like to like. Quoting endurance for a Spitfire either carrying a a small or no drop tank to a Mustang carrying drop tanks gives a rather distorted picture. A Mustang with a rear fuselage tank and no drop tanks was much closer to a 4 1/2 to 5 hour aircraft and that doesn't include any fuel allowance for combat, in fact it doesn't allow for much of anything except warm up, take-off and climb to low altitude and then a low, slow straight flight. Slow being relative, around 260mph true at 10,000ft according to manual. 

The Mustang was a truly great aircraft, it doesn't need other aircraft to be put down or misrepresented in order to look good.

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## fastmongrel (Jul 5, 2016)

BLine22 said:


> What did the Spitfire do after Sept. 1940? The Spitfire is an 1.5 hr aircraft while the P-51 is good for 8+ and can carry more than twice the ordnance in the fighter-bomber role.



Yes what did the Spit do after Sept 1940. The RAF should have bulldozed its Spits off a cliff and used P51s instead. Oops that means using Hurricanes until Mustang MkIs get into service in Jan 1942 and then hoping the Axis is kind enough not to fly combat missions over 20,000ft.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 5, 2016)

fastmongrel said:


> Yes what did the Spit do after Sept 1940. The RAF should have bulldozed its Spits off a cliff and used P51s instead. Oops that means using Hurricanes until Mustang MkIs get into service in Jan 1942 and then hoping the Axis is kind enough not to fly combat missions over 20,000ft.



Actually the Mustang Is didn't go into service (combat) until May of 1942 and only 4 squadrons are equipped with them at the time of Deippe in August. In August of 1942 4 squadrons had received Spitfire MK IXs although they may not have been operational at that time. Anybody want to argue that the Mustang I was better than the Spitfire IX 
The Mustang I's had no provision for external stores, either bombs or drop tanks. They would go on to equip a total of 21 RAF squadrons with Allison powered Mustangs, it just took a while. 
BTW MK V Spits in Malta were modified to carry a 250lb bomb under each wing and used in combat 9-10 months before any Mustang version drops a bomb in anger.


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## BLine22 (Jul 5, 2016)

The Mustang was a truly great aircraft, it doesn't need other aircraft to be put down or misrepresented in order to look good.[/QUOTE]

I'm not putting the Spitfire down to support the Mustang. I agree that they are both two of the greatest aircraft ever made. I'm just responding to the poll question. I believe that both of these aircraft are overrated as the results of the poll seem to indicate. Its just easy to compare these two aircraft because the Spitfire's weakness is the Mustang's strength.


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## Shortround6 (Jul 5, 2016)

A lot is written about the Spitfires "weakness" of short range/endurance. However the vast majority of single engine fighters used in WW II didn't have any real range/endurance advantage over the Spitfire. Or if they did they had one or two other major failings like little or no protection and/or much less fire power. 
The Mustang, due to it's advanced aerodynamics, was in a class of it's own among planes built in large numbers. And it didn't become the "escort" fighter it is known for until the two stage Merlin was fitted. This was needed not only for the power to give performance at the high weight (compared to European fighters) but the extra weight of the engine and bigger prop compared to the Allison versions allowed the rear fuselage tank to be fitted and flown without degrading the flying characteristics to too great a degree. 
It took about 103 weeks (2 years) from the first flight of the NA-73X and the first flight of a Merlin powered prototype so any idea that the Mustang was _designed _as an "escort" fighter is ludicrous. Yes, it carried more fuel than most other V-12 powered machines but 150 imp gallons of internal fuel was nowhere near enough. Using the wing tanks only the P-51 was rated at around 150-200 miles combat radius depending on altitude and exact mission profile. This is more than many other single fighters could manage but obviously nowhere near what was needed for escorting bombers into Germany.

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## olaf von Bose (Feb 8, 2018)

To be honoust I find most American planes in Europe overrated. The Mustang only had 6 guns, no canons, P47 was too heavy as a fighter and lacked manouvreability, the B-17 was not fit for its task as a day precision bomber. The only reason they seemed to perform well was numbers compared to the German numbers. By the way the spitfire was also very vulnerable, 1 bullet in the cooler and it was over.

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 8, 2018)

They only "seemed" to perform well because of numbers? Do tell. MeThinks you're in for a surprise or two.

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## Shortround6 (Feb 8, 2018)

olaf von Bose said:


> By the way the spitfire was also very vulnerable, 1 bullet in the cooler and it was over.



same could be said for the P-51, P-40, P-39, Hurricane, Typhoon, Any Italian V-12 powered fighter, any Russian V-12 powered fighter just about any 109 (with a few hundred exceptions out of 33,000) and the FW 190Ds. 

If you include oil coolers then every single engine plane that flew could be brought down by a single bullet.

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## billrunnels (Feb 8, 2018)

olaf von Bose said:


> To be honoust I find most American planes in Europe overrated. The Mustang only had 6 guns, no canons, P47 was too heavy as a fighter and lacked manouvreability, the B-17 was not fit for its task as a day precision bomber. The only reason they seemed to perform well was numbers compared to the German numbers. By the way the spitfire was also very vulnerable, 1 bullet in the cooler and it was over.


I beg to differ with you regarding the B-17G. It was a very reliable, stable and rugged aircraft. It took us there and brought us back time after time. It had altitude, range and respectable armament.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 8, 2018)

olaf von Bose said:


> To be honoust I find most American planes in Europe overrated. The Mustang only had 6 guns, no canons, P47 was too heavy as a fighter and lacked manouvreability, the B-17 was not fit for its task as a day precision bomber. The only reason they seemed to perform well was numbers compared to the German numbers. By the way the spitfire was also very vulnerable, 1 bullet in the cooler and it was over.


For being over rated these aircraft took took the fight to the axis and won decisively. Come up with something more than a hipshot opinion and you'll get my attention

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## pbehn (Feb 8, 2018)

olaf von Bose said:


> To be honoust I find most American planes in Europe overrated. The Mustang only had 6 guns, no canons, P47 was too heavy as a fighter and lacked manouvreability, the B-17 was not fit for its task as a day precision bomber. The only reason they seemed to perform well was numbers compared to the German numbers. By the way the spitfire was also very vulnerable, 1 bullet in the cooler and it was over.


American fighters in Europe only had to fight German fighters and 6 x 0.5 cal was sufficient, some (not by any means all) preferred the P 51B/C with only 4 guns. The P47 didn't have to be maneuverable to defend the bombers, but at high altitude its turbo engine gave it excellent performance.

Any plane with a pilot in it can be taken out with one bullet, water cooled planes may have more points that can be disabled with a single hit but all planes had them. The V1 doodlebug was notoriously hard to take down because it was so small with few places to make a telling hit.

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## parsifal (Feb 8, 2018)

olaf von Bose said:


> To be honoust I find most American planes in Europe overrated. The Mustang only had 6 guns, no canons, P47 was too heavy as a fighter and lacked manouvreability, the B-17 was not fit for its task as a day precision bomber. The only reason they seemed to perform well was numbers compared to the German numbers. By the way the spitfire was also very vulnerable, 1 bullet in the cooler and it was over.


really? at the front, over the reich the fighters escorting th US bomber streams were nearly always at a numbers disadvantage.....do some basic research please before making statements like that.

Spitfire was no more vulnerable than any of its other contemporaries, provided it was used intelligently. the same really as any of its adversaries, or running mates. Again the numbers show that.

Sorry but you are just firing into the air for effect at this point.

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## pbehn (Feb 8, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Sorry but you are just firing into the air for effect at this point.





FLYBOYJ said:


> For being over rated these aircraft took took the fight to the axis and won decisively. Come up with something more than a hipshot opinion and you'll get my attention



From my understanding of German I suspect Olaf von Bose (Böse) has been here before.

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 8, 2018)

pbehn said:


> From my understanding of German I suspect Olaf von Bose (Böse) has been here before.



Wouldn't surprise me in the least.


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## pbehn (Feb 8, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Wouldn't surprise me in the least.


Böse has many meanings and uses in German, evil, bad, naughty, mischievous etc. Adler or Wurger will know better than me.


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## parsifal (Feb 8, 2018)

I wouldn't rely too much on that. My persona is based on the Germanic version of of Sir Percival, of the round table fame, made famous in German culture by Wagner's music.

I'm not a Knight, not the bulwark against evil, not suitable to retrieve the holy grail. I do like Wagner. Its my personae. this guy could be an alter boy in the local church for all I know. All I know at this point is that he is walking around on this earth with some significant lack of understanding about this particular moment in history and spruiking that to the world. To some people, the history is important.

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## pbehn (Feb 8, 2018)

parsifal said:


> I wouldn't rely too much on that. My persona is based on the Germanic version of of Sir Percival, of the round table fame, made famous in German culture by Wagner's music.
> 
> I'm not a Knight, not the bulwark against evil, not suitable to retrieve the holy grail. I do like Wagner. Its my personae. this guy could be an alter boy in the local church for all I know. All I know at this point is that he is walking around on this earth with some significant lack of understanding about this particular moment in history and spruiking that to the world. To some people, the history is important.


I love this forum, I just learned a new word, "spruiking".

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 8, 2018)

olaf von Bose said:


> To be honoust I find most American planes in Europe overrated. The Mustang only had 6 guns, no canons, P47 was too heavy as a fighter and lacked manouvreability, the B-17 was not fit for its task as a day precision bomber. The only reason they seemed to perform well was numbers compared to the German numbers. By the way the spitfire was also very vulnerable, 1 bullet in the cooler and it was over.



Now I know you are just trolling...

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## swampyankee (Feb 8, 2018)

olaf von Bose said:


> To be honoust I find most American planes in Europe overrated. The Mustang only had 6 guns, no canons, P47 was too heavy as a fighter and lacked manouvreability, the B-17 was not fit for its task as a day precision bomber. The only reason they seemed to perform well was numbers compared to the German numbers. By the way the spitfire was also very vulnerable, 1 bullet in the cooler and it was over.



Oh? And your opinion is supported by what evidence? 
As an aside, at high altitude, a P-47 would probably out climb and sustain a higher turn rate than _any_ German fighter except, possibly, the jet- or rocket-powered ones. 

As an aside, to the OP: why isn't the FW190 on the list?


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## billrunnels (Feb 8, 2018)

olaf von Bose said:


> To be honoust I find most American planes in Europe overrated. The Mustang only had 6 guns, no canons, P47 was too heavy as a fighter and lacked manouvreability, the B-17 was not fit for its task as a day precision bomber. The only reason they seemed to perform well was numbers compared to the German numbers. By the way the spitfire was also very vulnerable, 1 bullet in the cooler and it was over.


Allow me to make one other comment. Until you set in the nose of a B-17 at 25000 feet in the bomber stream and witness first hand the protection provided by the P-51 pilots I really don't think it is possible to assess the performance capability of either the B-17 or P-51. Having been there I can assure you the performance of both was outstanding.

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## parsifal (Feb 8, 2018)

And there it is. you cannot beat "being there" type experience....

We could all go home at this point.

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## billrunnels (Feb 8, 2018)

parsifal said:


> And there it is. you cannot beat "being there" type experience....
> 
> We could all go home at this point.


Don't rush off. I enjoy your company

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## Hansie Bloeckmann (Feb 8, 2018)

billrunnels said:


> Don't rush off. I enjoy your company


I, for one, have learned a great deal from your posts and replies, Bill. You were there in B-17's, and made it back to the USA--Until the P=51 Mustang flew fighter cover for your Squadron, did the USAAF have any long-range fighter protection for the B-17's, as the flight paths took you deeper into Eastern Europe- especially the vital Rumanian oil fields?? Somehow, and I don't mean to be excessively judgmental, I don't think Herr Bose has the experience that you have in the air--Hansie


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## billrunnels (Feb 8, 2018)

Hansie Bloeckmann said:


> I, for one, have learned a great deal from your posts and replies, Bill. You were there in B-17's, and made it back to the USA--Until the P=51 Mustang flew fighter cover for your Squadron, did the USAAF have any long-range fighter protection for the B-17's, as the flight paths took you deeper into Eastern Europe- especially the vital Rumanian oil fields?? Somehow, and I don't mean to be excessively judgmental, I don't think Herr Bose has the experience that you have in the air--Hansie


I was there in 1945 and our escort aircraft were based on the Continent, I think mostly in France, so they could go with us to all target areas.

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## billrunnels (Feb 8, 2018)

Sorry if I upset the apple cart on this thread, that was not my intention. You are entitled to know on what I based my opinion.

We were in the Jet Stream at bombing altitude headed for the target when a lone ME-109 puled up about 3 miles off to the right of our squadron. He assumed both our altitude and speed. Our 4 P-51 escort aircraft took up positions between our squadron and the ME-109. We remained in that posture for about 15 minutes until the ME-109 departed. Our escorts then resumed patrolling the section of the bomber stream they had been assigned.

I never thought the ME-109 was planning to attack, rather checking our altitude and speed for their gunners. However, we were not in or near a known flak zone. Who knows?

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## parsifal (Feb 9, 2018)

Perhaps scared off by the 4 p-51s?

And whats this talk about upsetting the apple cart? You make the history come alive sir, please keep it up!

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 9, 2018)

Two things, first, Mr. Runnels, feel free to upset this apple cart ANYTIME, because as parsifal says, you make history come alive, keep it up.

Second, if I were a lone 109 pilot and four Mustangs sidled up betwixt me and the bombers I'd be thinking hmm... "right now beer and brats with the hot Fraulein down at the Hofbrau is looking mighty good. Auf Wiedersehen boys"

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## Hansie Bloeckmann (Feb 9, 2018)

billrunnels said:


> I was there in 1945 and our escort aircraft were based on the Continent, I think mostly in France, so they could go with us to all target areas.


Thanks, Bill. I had a hunch that was the case, as in 1944-45 the Luftwaffe presence over the Channel and the Westernmost sectors of mainland France was diminished- to what extent, I can't say, as I was not there, as you were. Hansie


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## billrunnels (Feb 9, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Two things, first, Mr. Runnels, feel free to upset this apple cart ANYTIME, because as parsifal says, you make history come alive, keep it up.
> 
> Second, if I were a lone 109 pilot and four Mustangs sidled up betwixt me and the bombers I'd be thinking hmm... "right now beer and brats with the hot Fraulein down at the Hofbrau is looking might good. Auf Wiedersehen boys"

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## grampi (Feb 10, 2018)

billrunnels said:


>


It's truly an honor to share comments with someone who was there! Thank you for your service Sir!

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## billrunnels (Feb 10, 2018)

grampi said:


> It's truly an honor to share comments with someone who was there! Thank you for your service Sir!


Thank you it is my pleasure.

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## Walrus (Feb 15, 2018)

How on earth can anyone think that the P-51 and Spitfire were overrated...
Oh of course...lacking in German wundertenickluftsmagick! 

My bad

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## soulezoo (Feb 15, 2018)

billrunnels said:


> Allow me to make one other comment. Until you set in the nose of a B-17 at 25000 feet in the bomber stream and witness first hand the protection provided by the P-51 pilots I really don't think it is possible to assess the performance capability of either the B-17 or P-51. Having been there I can assure you the performance of both was outstanding.



You, Sir, win the internet with that post!

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## Builder 2010 (Feb 15, 2018)

In "Dunkirk", (spoiler alert), the hero Spitfire pilot with an engines-out situation due to no more fuel, shoots down a German Stuka. Now I know the Stuka was a ridiculously slow plane that was quite overrated due to its shock value on unprotected sites, but was this documented? And could a engine-off Spit glide that long?

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## YF12A (Feb 15, 2018)

Mr. Runnels if you don't mind, a person question. I was wonderingiif you might have known or flown with my former neighbor? His name was William S. Raper/Rader? He told me he was in the 303RD and the 306TH as X/O of one and C/O of the other, but I can't remember which one. I thank you for your time and input here.


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## billrunnels (Feb 15, 2018)

YF12A said:


> Mr. Runnels if you don't mind, a person question. I was wonderingiif you might have known or flown with my former neighbor? His name was William S. Raper/Rader? He told me he was in the 303RD and the 306TH as X/O of one and C/O of the other, but I can't remember which one. I thank you for your time and input here.


I don't recognize the name. He may have been there earlier than I. Thanks for asking.


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## Fighterguy (Feb 15, 2018)

Well, I voted the Me-262 as most overrated. To be clear, I think it was awesome looking, a leap in technical achievement, with superior performance, but was too little-too late. Here's some things that need to be addressed in these discussions; logistical support/supply requirements, ease of manufacture, reliability, durability, combat effectiveness, ease of maintenance, ergonomics (ease of use by the operator), and other "soft" statistics.
The Me-262's effectiveness in the air has become the primary focus. But that's just one particular aspect, it had a miserable record in every other regard. It required exceptionally skilled and experienced pilots to operate it. Something the Luftwaffe was in very short supply of. The Junkers Jumo 004 turbojet engine was highly unreliable, requiring intensive maintenance and replacement at extremely short intervals. As with many of the German weapons programs (V-1 & 2, Tiger I, and Panther), it caused a severe drain on scarce resources, was fielded too quickly while having unresolved technical issues, and was harder to produce than already established/proven platforms.

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## pbehn (Feb 15, 2018)

Builder 2010 said:


> In "Dunkirk", (spoiler alert), the hero Spitfire pilot with an engines-out situation due to no more fuel, shoots down a German Stuka. Now I know the Stuka was a ridiculously slow plane that was quite overrated due to its shock value on unprotected sites, but was this documented? And could a engine-off Spit glide that long?


I havnt seen the movie, but similarly unlikely attacks did happen. James Brindley Nicholson won a V.C. in the BoB for attacking a Bf110 while his Hurricane was on fire. Bob Doe continued an attack on a flight of Bf 109s after his engine cut out while FS Ray Holmes rammed a LW bomber over London. 

As for shooting down a Stuka with a dead engine, I suppose it depends how fast and how high you are, I believe it was possible to get across the channel at its narrowest with an engine failure at 20,000ft.

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## BiffF15 (Feb 15, 2018)

I think Robin Olds first kill was in a P-38 with both engines windmilling due to fuel starvation.

A kill is a kill.

Cheers,
Biff

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## pbehn (Feb 15, 2018)

Walrus said:


> How on earth can anyone think that the P-51 and Spitfire were overrated...
> Oh of course...lacking in German wundertenickluftsmagick!
> 
> My bad


Not really, there are some young people who think that the Spitfire was the only RAF fighter and reigned supreme throughout the war. Many modern news articles consider "Battle of Britain pilots", WW2 RAF fighter pilots and Spitfire pilots to be all the same thing. In that sense the Spitfire is over rated.

I believe it is a similar thing in USA but I am in no place to judge. The hard yards against the LW were done by the P51B/C but the P51D is much prettier, this is almost exactly the same as the Hurricane/Spitfire in the Battle of France and BoB. The poor old "bird cage Jug" was consigned to a darkened room of history until photos with a bubble canopy, polished alloy and nose art could be produced.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 15, 2018)

I will admit it. I voted the P-51 overrated.

I think it is one of the greatest aircraft built, but it’s overrated because people put it on such a pedistal that they forget about all the other aircraft contributions.

You would think the P-51 was the only fighter, transport, bomber, recon, torpedo bombing, dive bomber helicopter to serve in WW2. It single handedly killed Hitler, and dropped the bomb on Hiroshima...

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 15, 2018)

Oh and it won the BoB with Ben Affleck flying it, right after he captured the first Enigma machine for the US (which sealed the fate for Germany, since the Brits were just spectators).

Too bad we did not already have it in 1917. It would have made our job to save the French and British in WW1 much easier.

At least that’s what the average comment section on the internet is saying...

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## pbehn (Feb 15, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Oh and it won the BoB with Ben Affleck flying it, right after he captured the first Enigma machine for the US (which sealed the fate for Germany, since the Brits were just spectators).
> 
> Too bad we did not already have it in 1917. It would have made our job to save the French and British in WW1 much easier.
> 
> At least that’s what the average comment section on the internet is saying...


You know, as I do, deep down, the internet is a force for good. So many billionaires cannot be wrong.

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## billrunnels (Feb 15, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I will admit it. I voted the P-51 overrated.
> 
> I think it is one of the greatest aircraft built, but it’s overrated because people put it on such a pedistal that they forget about all the other aircraft contributions.
> 
> You would think the P-51 was the only fighter, transport, bomber, recon, torpedo bombing, dive bomber helicopter to serve in WW2. It single handedly killed Hitler, and dropped the bomb on Hiroshima...


Are you suggesting it didn't do all those things?

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## pbehn (Feb 15, 2018)

billrunnels said:


> Are you suggesting it didn't do all those things?


Not in that order, also the helicopter variant was post war.

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## parsifal (Feb 15, 2018)

My two bobs worth about the great p-51 debate. With all respect to bill, I think the poor schmucks forced to fly missions over Germany in lumbering B-17s saw the P-51s escorting them as the angels on their shoulders. Before the escorts being able to fly all the way to the targets and back the bombers were dangerously exposed, and losses were unsustainable. Just look at the Schweinfurt raids and that comes out in spades.

Its too easy to forget the bloodletting inflicted on 8AF before the escorts arrived. It was because of the very real salvation provided by these escorts that the real benefits they provided were transformed by the hyperbole from the stuff of reality to the stuff of legend. It gets important for those guys whose lives depended on it.....

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## Builder 2010 (Feb 15, 2018)

Aw come on... if it weren't for the Internet, I wouldn't be sitting here looking at this great forum and interacting with like-minded folks from half-way around the world. I've been spending the last hour and half reading the entire "Picture of the Day" thread. I'm on page 55, with only 455 more to go to be current. My modeling experience has been so much richer because of the forums on which I share and get shared with.


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## billrunnels (Feb 15, 2018)

parsifal said:


> My two bobs worth about the great p-51 debate. With all respect to bill, I think the poor schmucks forced to fly missions over Germany in lumbering B-17s saw the P-51s escorting them as the angels on their shoulders. Before the escorts being able to fly all the way to the targets and back the bombers were dangerously exposed, and losses were unsustainable. Just look at the Schweinfurt raids and that comes out in spades.
> 
> Its too easy to forget the bloodletting inflicted on 8AF before the escorts arrived. It was because of the very real salvation provided by these escorts that the real benefits they provided were transformed by the hyperbole from the stuff of reality to the stuff of legend. It gets important for those guys whose lives depended on it.....


You are correct, the P-51s were the angels on out shoulders. I can't overstate the comfort factor they represented. One trip to Berlin without them was a long, long day.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 16, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Not in that order, also the helicopter variant was post war.



Yeah and it first flown by Bon Jovi. 

(Notice how I keep sneaking in pot shots to a really terrible movie...)

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 16, 2018)

billrunnels said:


> You are correct, the P-51s were the angels on out shoulders. I can't overstate the comfort factor they represented. One trip to Berlin without them was a long, long day.



As I said Bill, I believe the P-51 is one of the greatest aircraft ever built. It was certainly one of the best of the war. It's contribution was paramount to allied victory. 

By overrated, I am referring to the usual "expert" on the internet who forgets there were all sorts of other contributors to the allied victory as well. Obviously these kind of people are not really found on a forum like this one either.

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## billrunnels (Feb 16, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> As I said Bill, I believe the P-51 is one of the greatest aircraft ever built. It was certainly one of the best of the war. It's contribution was paramount to allied victory.
> 
> By overrated, I am referring to the usual "expert" on the internet who forgets there were all sorts of other contributors to the allied victory as well. Obviously these kind of people are not really found on a forum like this one either.


In my opinion, both the P-51 and Spitfire were great aircraft for their time. Our Group Commander had access to a Spitfire. When he took off you set down and watched. He really put it through the ringer. Near the end of a mission the lead P-51 would come in real close and say, "Little brother to big brother give us a course home", He was close enough you could see the smile on his face. On receiving the requested information, he would waive, flap his wings a couple times and peal off. A wonderful exchange near the end of a long day.

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## at6 (Feb 16, 2018)

I was unable to vote because each aircraft was very good at what it used for at the appropriate time.

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## swampyankee (Feb 16, 2018)

All the fighters and bombers make people forget some of the most important planes: the trainers. 

Combat aircraft are all overrated


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## vinnye (Feb 16, 2018)

I have cast my vote for the Me262. I know that technologically it was a leap forward, but due to political infighting and ultimately the intervention of Hitler wanting it as his Blitz bomber, there were never enough in service at any time to make a difference.
It also had engine reliability issues which would be a major concern for any pilot - you would never be quite sure if you were going to have one or two or zero engines at any time!
IF the LW had these aircraft in quantity a couple of years earlier with some reliability - THEN it would have made a real difference!

I can see why some people have gone for the P51 - but I disagree. Once the Merlin engine was added, the P51 was the best long range escort! It made a huge difference once used correctly - ie being allowed to roam ahead of the bombers and engage the LW before they got to the bombers. The USAAF would probably have to have suspended daylight operations if not for the P51. Hence, in my opion it is not over rated!

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## billrunnels (Feb 16, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> All the fighters and bombers make people forget some of the most important planes: the trainers.
> 
> Combat aircraft are all overrated


I can't say much for the AT-11 in the turbelant


vinnye said:


> I have cast my vote for the Me262. I know that technologically it was a leap forward, but due to political infighting and ultimately the intervention of Hitler wanting it as his Blitz bomber, there were never enough in service at any time to make a difference.
> It also had engine reliability issues which would be a major concern for any pilot - you would never be quite sure if you were going to have one or two or zero engines at any time!
> IF the LW had these aircraft in quantity a couple of years earlier with some reliability - THEN it would have made a real difference!
> 
> I can see why some people have gone for the P51 - but I disagree. Once the Merlin engine was added, the P51 was the best long range escort! It made a huge difference once used correctly - ie being allowed to roam ahead of the bombers and engage the LW before they got to the bombers. The USAAF would probably have to have suspended daylight operations if not for the P51. Hence, in my opion it is not over rated!


I had a discussion with an Me-262 pilot who said they only had 55 minutes of air time and could make two flights before changing engines.

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## Dana Bell (Feb 16, 2018)

I had offered my opinion on the other "over-rated" thread, but since this is the active topic I'll repeat it here:

Most over-rated? That would have to be an aircraft that is still held in high esteem but that completely failed to perform up to its reputation. For me that would be the P-61 Black Widow. The "Queen of the Midnight Skies" failed to meet its minimum performance goals from its first evaluations through the end of the war. The "flyoff" against the British Mosquito was rigged against the Mossie, and proved only that the P-61 was the best available aircraft for US forces - the Mosquito was not available. By late 1944 Wright Field was wondering what to do about the aircraft, pulling the plug on further "improvements" and looking for a replacement aircraft.

The P-61 did have some successes, due to the aggressive nature if its crews, but overall too many enemy aircraft were able to escape before the P-61 could get close enough to engage.

Cheers,



Dana


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## drgondog (Feb 16, 2018)

I'm writing a new book "P-51B - The Bastard Stepchild that saved the 8th AF"

Some hyperbole, for sure and the 15th was part of the umbrella provided for POINTBLANK to achieve ultimate goal of complete air superiority over Normandy.

In the book, I will narrate many details currently not covered well in other books on Mustangs (or P-38/P-47) as it will trace the evolution in technology and design improvements necessary for US Long Rang Escort to go to Berlin and beyond.

While the mainstream topic is P-51B and what it took in evolution from model P-509 through NA-73, through P-51-1, A-36, P-51A and finally the conversion to RR as the A-36 contract was being executed - to present the P-51B-1 ready for duty - the book must also cover:

8th AF and Combined Bomber Objectives, the LW high command and leadership, the struggles as 8th and LW evolved through Blitz Week and Schweinfurt, the change in Org and creation of 15th AF positioned the Aurgument/Big Week campaign that initiated 'no place to catch your breath' for the LW.

The appendices has a 500+ entry Timetable from late 1939 through June 5, 1944 containing dates for communications and actions both political and technological to introduce pressurized combat tanks, external fuel tank capabilities, added internal fuel, performance enhancers like improved ailerons/boosted ailerons, water injection, paddle blades, etc.

It will include detail plots based on multiple, actual flight test reports for P-51B-1, P-51B-10, P-47C-2, P-47D-5/-15, P-38G/H/J-10, FW 190A5/A6 and A7, Bf 109G-2, G-6, G-6AS with snapshots for each May 31, 1943 & December 31, 1943 % May 31, 1944. The plots will include both MP/WEP/1.32/1,.42 ata for Speed and climb rates in comparison with each other. Necessary to get out of the 'best climb rate/speed' argument so often quoted to show that 'it depends' when talking about performance. Tables for SL, 5K, 15K, 20K, 25K and 30K will be shown to contrast Performance at each of those dates above. All of the data will be focused on Combat Loadout at take off for internal fuel and ammo, or as close as possible.

I am dabbling with the thought of reproducing an actual P-51 Performance Analysis Rpt but both of my potential publishers eye's glaze over.

I will be contacting some of you to see if you wish to contribute. Specifically, for a few more flight test reports as they may exist that aren't presented on Mike Williams or Kurfust websites for FW 190A-5/A-6 and Bf 109G-2 and 109G-6AS.

I am also looking for a classic Combat Radius chart showing P-47, P-38 and P-51B/D imposed over Europe as function of time. I don't have a quality image. Greg helped me with his pivot table presentation skills to present Victory credits as function of FG/sqdron by ac type for 8th and 9th. I'm nearly ready to have the data complete for MTO so that 15th AF is well represented in POINTBLANK.

PM me if you want to contribute?

Regards,

Bill

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## billrunnels (Feb 16, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> All the fighters and bombers make people forget some of the most important planes: the trainers.
> 
> Combat aircraft are all overrated


You make a good point about trainers. One highlight in my training was 10 hours in a J-3. Can't say the same about many hours in the AT-11 in the turbulent Texas sky

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## parsifal (Feb 16, 2018)

Cant wait DG. I hope it reaches print. Do you have some good pics to include?


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## drgondog (Feb 16, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Cant wait DG. I hope it reaches print. Do you have some good pics to include?


Yes -


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## Barrett (Feb 17, 2018)

Me 163 by 2 1/2 laps. Sensational performance but produced almost no benefit--accredited shootdowns vary from 9 to 16 for all that enormous R&D and production cost.

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## soulezoo (Feb 20, 2018)

I don't know of anyone who thought the Me 163 was overrated. I don't think it even _rates. _At least not anything more than an eyebrow raising curiosity.

An expensive roman candle? Yes. Probably the only aircraft more prone to self-immolation than a B-24 overloaded with fuel.


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## swampyankee (Feb 20, 2018)

soulezoo said:


> I don't know of anyone who thought the Me 163 was overrated. I don't think it even _rates. _At least not anything more than an eyebrow raising curiosity.
> 
> An expensive roman candle? Yes. Probably the only aircraft more prone to self-immolation than a B-24 overloaded with fuel.



The Me163 was probably one of the German _wunderwaffen_ more beneficial to the Allies than the nazis. Indeed, one wonders if its mere existence was the result of a subtle, very well-concealed, Allied plan.

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 21, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> *SNIP*
> 
> You would think the P-51 was the only fighter, transport, bomber, recon, torpedo bombing, dive bomber helicopter to serve in WW2. It single handedly killed Hitler, and dropped the bomb on Hiroshima...



*WHAT BLASPHEMY IS THIS?
*
Of course these things are true... what's your point?

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 21, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> *WHAT BLASPHEMY IS THIS?
> *
> Of course these things are true... what's your point?



You can’t put anything on the internet that isn’t true?


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## Fighterguy (Feb 21, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I havnt seen the movie, but similarly unlikely attacks did happen. James Brindley Nicholson won a V.C. in the BoB for attacking a Bf110 while his Hurricane was on fire. Bob Doe continued an attack on a flight of Bf 109s after his engine cut out while FS Ray Holmes rammed a LW bomber over London.
> 
> As for shooting down a Stuka with a dead engine, I suppose it depends how fast and how high you are, I believe it was possible to get across the channel at its narrowest with an engine failure at 20,000ft.


The Spitfire in the movie "Dunkirk" pulled this feat while at less than 1,000 feet, it seemed to fly forever, and the pilot had plenty of time to hand-pump his gear down for a smooth beach landing. Highly improbable.


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## pbehn (Feb 21, 2018)

Fighterguy said:


> The Spitfire in the movie "Dunkirk" pulled this feat while at less than 1,000 feet, it seemed to fly forever, and the pilot had plenty of time to hand-pump his gear down for a smooth beach landing. Highly improbable.


That would have been the Spitfire Mk 25, specially produced for future movies, it served as a model for video games having unlimited fuel and ammunition.

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## YF12A (Feb 21, 2018)

soulezoo said:


> I don't know of anyone who thought the Me 163 was overrated. I don't think it even _rates. _At least not anything more than an eyebrow raising curiosity.
> 
> An expensive roman candle? Yes. Probably the only aircraft more prone to self-immolation than a B-24 overloaded with fuel.




Any aircraft that uses fuel that will melt the pilot? Enough said.
About the B-24, my father was extremely unimpressed with the fuel plumbing on at least one Consolidated aircraft he saw in his career, can't remember which, and this was coming from someone whose second all time favorite airplane was the Pby-4/5.

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## swampyankee (Feb 21, 2018)

parsifal said:


> My two bobs worth about the great p-51 debate. With all respect to bill, I think the poor schmucks forced to fly missions over Germany in lumbering B-17s saw the P-51s escorting them as the angels on their shoulders. Before the escorts being able to fly all the way to the targets and back the bombers were dangerously exposed, and losses were unsustainable. Just look at the Schweinfurt raids and that comes out in spades.
> 
> Its too easy to forget the bloodletting inflicted on 8AF before the escorts arrived. It was because of the very real salvation provided by these escorts that the real benefits they provided were transformed by the hyperbole from the stuff of reality to the stuff of legend. It gets important for those guys whose lives depended on it.....



I remember a statistic: the casualty rate for strategic bombing by the 8th AF and its British equivalent was not only higher than the ground forces engaged in combat, but greater than the Japanese kamikaze squadrons.

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 22, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> You can’t put anything on the internet that isn’t true?



It's a rather specific set of legal implications, as long as it glorifies the P-51 it's true, anything else is illegal...

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## billrunnels (Feb 22, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> It's a rather specific set of legal implications, as long as it glorifies the P-51 it's true, anything else is illegal...


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## swampyankee (Feb 22, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> It's a rather specific set of legal implications, as long as it glorifies the P-51 it's true, anything else is illegal...


I think that that only applies to non-German aircraft, which _must_ be reported as technologically millennia more advanced than any other country's obsolete aircraft, which could have won only because of massive numerical superiority; the Allies were fighting with the aircraft equivalent to swords against the Luftwaffe armed with _Star Trek_ phasers and photon torpedoes.

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## kevb (Feb 22, 2018)

I'd say everyone is missing the forest for the trees as its not a bird that is the most overrated POS, its an engine, one engine in particular...the USA Allison engine. Look at how many birds got crippled by that under powered POS, to this day I'm convinced there was some serious dirty dealing going on with that company, that someone HAD to be getting some kickbacks by how hard that engine was being pushed.

But if you want a particular bird? The P-40 because sadly with the exception of the Klimov P-40 the Russians tried they were crippled by Allison engines their entire run. Oh how I would love to take out a Klimov P-40 or see what it would have done with a Merlin in a sim, because the Allison engines? Yeah...no, just no.

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## Walrus (Feb 22, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Not really, there are some young people who think that the Spitfire was the only RAF fighter and reigned supreme throughout the war. Many modern news articles consider "Battle of Britain pilots", WW2 RAF fighter pilots and Spitfire pilots to be all the same thing. In that sense the Spitfire is over rated.
> 
> I believe it is a similar thing in USA but I am in no place to judge. The hard yards against the LW were done by the P51B/C but the P51D is much prettier, this is almost exactly the same as the Hurricane/Spitfire in the Battle of France and BoB. The poor old "bird cage Jug" was consigned to a darkened room of history until photos with a bubble canopy, polished alloy and nose art could be produced.



There is a difference between an aircraft being overrated and an aircraft overshadowing other types.
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the general lack of due regard being given to the more workmanlike Hurricane and Thunderbolt.
I would add the B-24 Liberator to the list as it too is overlooked in comparison to the B-17. 
However, that does not mean that the performance and achievements of these aircraft should be dismissed due to the ignorance of an ill informed public imho

FWIW My model kit stash has far more Hurries than Spitfires.
P-47s and P-51s are about equal but only because I have enough Thunderbolts to do in various RAF schemes before I even consider USAAF liveries!

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## soulezoo (Feb 22, 2018)

kevb said:


> I'd say everyone is missing the forest for the trees as its not a bird that is the most overrated POS, its an engine, one engine in particular...the USA Allison engine. Look at how many birds got crippled by that under powered POS, to this day I'm convinced there was some serious dirty dealing going on with that company, that someone HAD to be getting some kickbacks by how hard that engine was being pushed.
> 
> But if you want a particular bird? The P-40 because sadly with the exception of the Klimov P-40 the Russians tried they were crippled by Allison engines their entire run. Oh how I would love to take out a Klimov P-40 or see what it would have done with a Merlin in a sim, because the Allison engines? Yeah...no, just no.


That's a little harsh on the Allison... P-38's seemed to do ok with them. The Soviets seemed to be happy with the P-39.
Maybe it wasn't a Merlin, but then again, only a Merlin was a Merlin. Except for a Packard of course.
The Allison v-1710 may not be "engine Uber Alles", but it was a solid engine and definitely not a POS. It needed to be used appropriately.
On Edit while thinking on this: IIRC, the Klimov was a lower powered engine forced into service on the P-40 as the VVS didn't have parts for the Allison. So if my memory is correct, why would you want the Klimov after what you just said about the Allison?

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## tomo pauk (Feb 22, 2018)

kevb said:


> I'd say everyone is missing the forest for the trees as its not a bird that is the most overrated POS, its an engine, one engine in particular...the USA Allison engine. Look at how many birds got crippled by that under powered POS, to this day I'm convinced there was some serious dirty dealing going on with that company, that someone HAD to be getting some kickbacks by how hard that engine was being pushed.
> 
> But if you want a particular bird? The P-40 because sadly with the exception of the Klimov P-40 the Russians tried they were crippled by Allison engines their entire run. Oh how I would love to take out a Klimov P-40 or see what it would have done with a Merlin in a sim, because the Allison engines? Yeah...no, just no.



Toss out you numbers, well sourced preferably, before going out to trash this or that piece of kit.

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 22, 2018)

kevb said:


> I'd say everyone is missing the forest for the trees as its not a bird that is the most overrated POS, its an engine, one engine in particular...the USA Allison engine. Look at how many birds got crippled by that under powered POS, to this day I'm convinced there was some serious dirty dealing going on with that company, that someone HAD to be getting some kickbacks by how hard that engine was being pushed.
> 
> But if you want a particular bird? The P-40 because sadly with the exception of the Klimov P-40 the Russians tried they were crippled by Allison engines their entire run. Oh how I would love to take out a Klimov P-40 or see what it would have done with a Merlin in a sim, because the Allison engines? Yeah...no, just no.



And how many birds were "crippled" by having the Allison V-1710 and in what way? True it isn't a Merlin, it has fewer moving parts and has better fuel consumption at certain altitudes, the lack of a two speed/two stage supercharger is more of an issue.

I second Tomo's suggestion, get some facts with documentation to back up your rather dubious claims.

Perhaps this will help, this guy was actually there, not that I'd cloud the issue with facts or anything... Conversations with N.Golodnikov

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 22, 2018)

> I think that that only applies to non-German aircraft, which _must_ be reported as technologically millennia more advanced than any other country's obsolete aircraft, which could have won only because of massive numerical superiority; the Allies were fighting with the aircraft equivalent to swords against the Luftwaffe armed with _Star Trek_ phasers and photon torpedoes.



Oh yeah, forgot about that clause...


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## swampyankee (Feb 22, 2018)

kevb said:


> I'd say everyone is missing the forest for the trees as its not a bird that is the most overrated POS, its an engine, one engine in particular...the USA Allison engine. Look at how many birds got crippled by that under powered POS, to this day I'm convinced there was some serious dirty dealing going on with that company, that someone HAD to be getting some kickbacks by how hard that engine was being pushed.
> 
> But if you want a particular bird? The P-40 because sadly with the exception of the Klimov P-40 the Russians tried they were crippled by Allison engines their entire run. Oh how I would love to take out a Klimov P-40 or see what it would have done with a Merlin in a sim, because the Allison engines? Yeah...no, just no.


There was a P-40 variant with a Merlin. It was still beaten by, among others, the Mustang. The P-40 is under-rated, but it’s still not spectacularly good.

The Allison was also quite solidly built and, overall, well-engineered. Allison was not, however, a big company and it did not have the resources that P&WA or Curtiss-Wright had on hand. There need not be corruption, but there was a powerful meme that high-performance aircraft needed V-12 engines.

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## SPYINTHESKY (Feb 22, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> There was a P-40 variant of ith a Merlin. It was still beaten by, among others, the Mustang. The P-40 is under-rated, but it’s still not spectacularly good.
> 
> The Allison was also quite solidly built and, overall, well-engineered. Allison was not, however, a big company and it did not have the resources that P&WA or Curtiss-Wright had on hand. There need not be corruption, but there was a powerful meme that high-performance aircraft needed V-12 engines.



Beat me to it a Merlin P40 was tested just as the Merlin P51 was tested however the former gained virtually no advantage whatsoever unlike the latter. Equally later the P40 was redesigned/re-engineered into one of the most beautiful looking prototypes of the war and it still couldn't compete with its contemporaries. Its innate aerodynamics and overall legacy design simply limited it too much to be anything but a decent supporting character but never the star. Which actually is a shame because it did stirling service in theatres where rugged reliability and reparability was more appreciated than supreme performance i.e. Middle East and Burma/China. Certainly it and the Hurricane thrived in the Middle East where the Spit could be a pain in the ass.

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## pbehn (Feb 22, 2018)

kevb said:


> But if you want a particular bird? The P-40 because sadly with the exception of the Klimov P-40 the Russians tried they were crippled by Allison engines their entire run. Oh how I would love to take out a Klimov P-40 or see what it would have done with a Merlin in a sim, because the Allison engines? Yeah...no, just no.


Flying a "sim" gives what the sim designer wants you to see. The P40L and P40F had the Merlin engine. To have an advanced design you need an advanced airframe and an advanced engine. Putting a Merlin engine in a P40 didn't overcome the shortcomings of the P40 just as putting the latest Merlin in a Hurricane didn't make it a front line fighter, just better than it was before. If Curtis produced the P51A from 1941 then the Allison engine would have a much better reputation.


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## chuter (Feb 22, 2018)

One measure of a plane ie what its opponents thought of it. The Mustang was good enough for some pilots of JG26 to refer to their D9s as Focke Mustangs. I don't know if that makes the Mustang grossly over rated or what ...


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## Stig1207 (Feb 22, 2018)

SPYINTHESKY said:


> Certainly it and the Hurricane thrived in the Middle East where the Spit could be a pain in the ass.


I guess by Middle East you mean the MTO? If the P-40 and the Hurricane thrived there, why was the the Spitfire sent there at all, rather than just belatedly?

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## tomo pauk (Feb 22, 2018)

SPYINTHESKY said:


> Beat me to it a Merlin P40 was tested just as the Merlin P51 was tested however the former gained virtually no advantage whatsoever unlike the latter. Equally later the P40 was redesigned/re-engineered into one of the most beautiful looking prototypes of the war and it still couldn't compete with its contemporaries. Its innate aerodynamics and overall legacy design simply limited it too much to be anything but a decent supporting character but never the star. Which actually is a shame because it did stirling service in theatres where rugged reliability and reparability was more appreciated than supreme performance i.e. Middle East and Burma/China. Certainly it and the Hurricane thrived in the Middle East where the Spit could be a pain in the ass.



Mustang got much better Merlins than the P-40, thus the small gain for the Merlinized P-40s vs. big gain for the Merlinized Mustangs.
XP-40Q was as fast or faster vs. XF8F-1, any F6F, F7F, F4U-1D, or Bf 109G6-AS/G-10, or the best Soviet ot Japanese fighters, or best Fw 190As, or Merlin Spitfires, or Spitfire XII. Slightly slower than P-38, Tempest of Fw 190D-9. Plus it was with competitive rate of climb. 
Kinda shows that aircraft need increase in engine power as much as possible, and that P-40s aerodynamics were still competitive in 1944-45, even if engines left a lot to be desired on serial-produced examples.
Neither of the Grummans' A/C, nor Corsairs, nor P-38 or P-47, nor the listed German A/C, nor Soviet, nor most of Japanese A/C featured bleeding-edge aerodynamics in 1944, let alone in 1945.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 22, 2018)

pbehn said:


> ”Flying” a sim



Fixed the quotation marks for accuracy...

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## pbehn (Feb 22, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Fixed the quotation marks for accuracy...


I believe you are trying to undermine my personal contribution to D-Day, I have screen shots to back up my claims.

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 23, 2018)

chuter said:


> One measure of a plane ie what its opponents thought of it. The Mustang was good enough for some pilots of JG26 to refer to their D9s as Focke Mustangs. I don't know if that makes the Mustang grossly over rated or what ...



You sure they weren't just referring to P-51's as Focke(n) Mustangs?

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## swampyankee (Feb 23, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> You sure they weren't just referring to P-51's as Focke(n) Mustangs?


Faux Mustangs?

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 23, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Faux Mustangs?



Or perhaps "FOCKE!... MUSTANGS!!!"


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## drgondog (Feb 23, 2018)

I am amused by the rant on the Allison V-1710 as a "POS". It did not have a two speed/two stage supercharger in time for the Mustang but it was a superb engine designed by Allison with a very small start up design team and little experience in building a world class Manufacturing group. The early years were characterized by failures to deliver promised production, their Liaison teams did not communicate changes well with the customer, but they got much better by 1942. RR and subsequently Packard got the jump with the better two speed/two stage design of the RR 61 and the packaging of the supercharger made it work in the Mustang whereas the much longer new V-1710 was a 'no show' for even consideration.

Yes, they had 'corporate leverage' both at GM and USAAF Material Command. There were many attempts to steer Rolls Royce 28(Packard 1650-1) away from installation in the Mustang when NAA tried to force the issue at GM Board late 1941. The British actions, without hindrance from our political swamps forced the decision by clearer heads at AAF-GHQ like Muir Fairchild and Barney Giles to enable the go ahead to proceed in parallel with RR/RAF for the XP-51B and set the framework for re-allocating Packard splits between RAF and AAF with a Priority 1 for NAA/Packard in summer 1942.

That said, the engine was lighter, longer times between overhauls, easy to maintain, cheaper and excellent Hp/weight ratio. The lower performance of the P-40 in comparison to Spitfire was due to weight and drag, not the engine through FTH of the V-1710

As mentioned above, the P-40Q increased performance over the P-40K/N but largely due to low drag wing radiators introduction as well as much higher power due to Water Injection. 

Ask the current maintainers about their perspective of RR vs Allison for a better balance of professional opinion.

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## tomo pauk (Feb 23, 2018)

drgondog said:


> ...
> V-1710 was a 'no show' for even consideration.
> ...
> That said, the engine was lighter, longer times between overhauls, easy to maintain, cheaper and excellent Hp/weight ratio. The lower performance of the P-40 in comparison to Spitfire was due to weight and drag, not the engine through FTH of the V-1710
> ...



I'd add a few things. Spitfire got even better engines vs. what P-40 got, so it (Spit) remained competitive until the end of the war. On comparable engines, indeed the P-40 was as fast as Spitfire, the Spitfire climbed much better being lihgter.
There was no new, low drag wing on the XP-40Q, it used leagcy wing from P-40 production. V-1710 never used 2-speed S/C, apart from prototypes, and then it was only 1-stage supercharged. 2-stage V-1710s used 1-speed drive for engine-stage S/C, and variable drive for auxiliary stage.
The 2-stage supercharged V-1710 was considered for the XP-51J.

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## swampyankee (Feb 23, 2018)

The US had some very good aerodynamicists, which is demonstrated by the simple fact that the P-40 showed comparable performance to the much smaller, lighter Bf109 on similar power. The US also had alternatives to the P-40 which was, at its base, an old design, older than the Spitfire. 

Don't get me wrong: I think the P-40 was an under-rated aircraft, but I don't think it was as good as the aircraft which replaced it, and I don't think the USAAF erred in placing more effort into more modern aircraft.

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## billrunnels (Feb 23, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> The US had some very good aerodynamicists, which is demonstrated by the simple fact that the P-40 showed comparable performance to the much smaller, lighter Bf109 on similar power. The US also had alternatives to the P-40 which was, at its base, an old design, older than the Spitfire.
> 
> Don't get me wrong: I think the P-40 was an under-rated aircraft, but I don't think it was as good as the aircraft which replaced it, and I don't think the USAAF erred in placing more effort into more modern aircraft.


I recall reading about a problem the early P-40 had in the fuel system. It was gravity fed and the flow would be interrupted in a tight turn causing the engine to stop. They lost one or two on the landing approach. Can any one verify this to be true?

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## drgondog (Feb 23, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> I'd add a few things. Spitfire got even better engines vs. what P-40 got, so it (Spit) remained competitive until the end of the war. On comparable engines, indeed the P-40 was as fast as Spitfire, the Spitfire climbed much better being lihgter.
> There was no new, low drag wing on the XP-40Q, it used leagcy wing from P-40 production. V-1710 never used 2-speed S/C, apart from prototypes, and then it was only 1-stage supercharged. 2-stage V-1710s used 1-speed drive for engine-stage S/C, and variable drive for auxiliary stage.
> The 2-stage supercharged V-1710 was considered for the XP-51J.


 Tomo - you are correct about the legacy wing for Q-1 and -2. I had read on a source I can no longer find that the Q-3 used the same engine as the P-63 as well as a NACA 66xxx low drag wing. I can not find any reference to low drag for the Q except the wing mounted radiators.


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## tomo pauk (Feb 23, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Tomo - you are correct about the legacy wing for Q-1 and -2. I had read on a source I can no longer find that the Q-3 used the same engine as the P-63 as well as a NACA 66xxx low drag wing. I can not find any reference to low drag for the Q except the wing mounted radiators.



Claim for the Xp-40Q having laminar-flow wing can be read at the 'Vee's for victory', the entra about the XP-40Q lineup, pg. 184. Unfortunately, that claim is not references in a book that is othewise awash with footnotes.
The test report of the XP-40Q (here) mentions just clipped wings on the specimen tested, plus radiators in the wing.
On same HP vs. altitude, the P-63E was faster than XP-40Q. XP-40Q was barely faster than P-51A (with 1-stage V-1710, obviously).

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## fredleander (Feb 24, 2018)

The P-39 can hardly be called the most over-rated fighter in WW2 as it, as is my impression, it is usually highly criticised, while the P-40 is not. I hold the P-39 in higher regard than the P-40E and the "B" version was a better dogfighter. That said the best dogfighter the AA had at the beginning of the war was the P-36, and I don't mean the Hawk 75. Even the Hawk 75 (heavier than the P-36) outflew the Spitfire in early comparison tests. Compare the P-36 with the Zero regarding speed, climb, turn rates and high-speed controllability. Under otherwise equal conditions I believe the P-36 was the only allied fighter that could dogfight the Zero at the beginning of the war. 

It compared favourable with the F4F except in armament. 

Fred


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## tomo pauk (Feb 24, 2018)

fredleander said:


> The P-39 can hardly be called the most over-rated fighter in WW2 as it, as is my impression, it is usually highly criticised, while the P-40 is not. I hold the P-39 in higher regard than the P-40E and the "B" version was a better dogfighter.



Agreed pretty much.



> That said the best dogfighter the AA had at the beginning of the war was the P-36, and I don't mean the Hawk 75. Even the Hawk 75 (heavier than the P-36) outflew the Spitfire in early comparison tests. Compare the P-36 with the Zero regarding speed, climb, turn rates and high-speed controllability. Under otherwise equal conditions I believe the P-36 was the only allied fighter that could dogfight the Zero at the beginning of the war.
> 
> It compared favourable with the F4F except in armament.



Several things might need a clearing up. Like - what month is start of the war? It certainly was not December of 1941. Did the P-36 really outflew the Spitfire in early comparison tests? State of amament and protection of the two during the tests? Yak-1 or La-5 vs. Zero? Spitfire IX or P-39N vs. Zero? Stripped-down P-39 vs. Zero? Ability to dogfight with few bursts/shells received prior the dogfight? What is altitude and speed at begining of dogfight? P-36 vs. Zero in 1941 or 1943, at 10000 or 20000 ft? Zero vs. Spitfire Va in 1941?


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## pbehn (Feb 24, 2018)

The British ordered 825 P-39s in total, only one squadron became operational and this performed 1 mission when 4 P-39s attacked barges near Dunkerque. 601 squadron then started using the Spitfire Vb.

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## fredleander (Feb 24, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Several things might need a clearing up. Like - what month is start of the war? It certainly was not December of 1941. Did the P-36 really outflew the Spitfire in early comparison tests? State of amament and protection of the two during the tests? Yak-1 or La-5 vs. Zero? Spitfire IX or P-39N vs. Zero? Stripped-down P-39 vs. Zero? Ability to dogfight with few bursts/shells received prior the dogfight? What is altitude and speed at begining of dogfight? P-36 vs. Zero in 1941 or 1943, at 10000 or 20000 ft? Zero vs. Spitfire Va in 1941?




Hi, tp - below is a transcript showing the results of RAF comparison tests made in 1939. I would like to comment a little on my earlier remarks. When I use the word "dogfighting" I mean an aerial engagement where the opponents fight it out, either in the capacity of the defense of own bombers or against enemy fighters defending their bombers. Also when refusing enemy fighters to enter, and stay in, a given air space. Everything else equal, the better dogfighter would eventually either shoot the other party down or chase it away, in both cases the dogfight is won.

The better dogfighter shall either chase the escorting fighter away because it is not able to defend itself, or shoot it down. The same applies if the better dogfighter is the escorting fighter. The P-40E was a good example. Apart from the fact that it had great difficulties in reaching the altitude of the enemy (Japanese) bombers in time, when/if it got there it had to dive away to save itself from the enemy escort fighters. The same applied if an allied bomber unit escorted by P-40 was attacked by Zeros. In both examples the P-40B was the better dogfighter than the "E" version because it climbed faster and handled better because it was lighter.

It is said that the P-40 had a better roll rate than the Zero. That might be but this was neutralized when starting to pull the turn because it was (nose) heavier than the Zero with higher wing loading. The Zero would always turn inside it. That the P-40 had better protection and an armament that could shoot down a Zero didn't help as, everything else being equal, it was not able to get on the Zero's tail. The P-40 could out-dive the Zero but the Zero out-climbed the P-40. The P-39 had the same weight problem as the P-40 (they had the same engine) and a similar roll rate but better longitudinal (fore-aft) balance. Sometimes too good.

This brings us to the P-36 - and I mean the P-36, not the Hawk 75, which was the export version. The Hawk 75 was heavier, because it had more weaponry, armour and sealed fuel tanks. So, the basic P-36 did not have any armour to speak of and it only had two .50 calibre Brownings in the nose. This is not an impressive armament but it worked against the equally unprotected Japanese fighters. It also had the 1.050 hp. Twin Wasp, the most reliable radial engine in the US. What this cooks down to is that it flew and climbed as fast as the Zero, handled as good, much better in the dive, actually, and flew as far. As a matter of fact a P-36 set a world dive speed record in 1939 in connection with the French acceptance tests. It blew the measuring instruments when passing 550 mph.

The P-36 also had a good development potential. In December 1941 the few samples in US service still had the 1.050 hp. Twin Wasp engine when Hawks ordered by the French and Norwegians already in 1940 had theirs delivered with the 1.200 hp. Twin Wasp. The Navy's F4F Wildcats were also delivered with this engine in this period. In other words the USAAC could have had several times more improved P-36s than P-40s simply because it was in production years before the war started. Pilots may like planes that can save them from destruction by leaving the battlefield, but that means aborting their mission.

Just to reiterate some info on the Hawk 75: The early French versions with the 850 and 1.050 hp. Twin Wasps and four, later 6, machine guns, held up well against the German Bf109's during the "phony war". The French pilots loved them. The 1.200 hp. versions arrived too late in France and many were taken over by the British and sent to other parts of the Empire. They flew in the CBI theatre as "Mohawks" till 1943 - if I remember correctly. The Finns got some of the ex-Norwegian ones captured by the Germans in Norway. The Finns were also quite fond of these. They flew till well after the war ended.

Fred

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Green & Swanborough's _US Army Air Force Fighters, Part 1_, part of Arco's WW2 Aircraft Fact Files, published in the mid-seventies:

"The Curtiss fighter was by no means an unknown quantity to the RAF, for as early as November 1939 a Hawk 75A-1 had been flown (in France) by Sqn Leader J F X McKenna on behalf of the A and AEE. His report had said that the Hawk was "exceptionally easy and pleasant to fly, the aileron control being particularly powerful" and that it was "more manoeuvrable at high speed than the Hurricane or Spitfire". This report naturally aroused considerable interest in official circles in Britain, and as a result arrangements were made for a Hawk 75 to be borrowed from _l'Armee de l'Air_ for further evaluation in Britain. The 88th Hawk 75A-2 was used, in consequence, at the RAE from 29 December 1939 to 13 January 1940 for a 12-hr flight programme covering handling in general, and specificallyby comparison with the Spitfire, Hurricane and Gloster F.5/34; mock combats were staged between the Hawk and a production Spitfire I (K9944), fitted with the early two-pitch propeller _(3-bladed De Havilland two-speed prop-HB)_.

"The Hawk 75A-2 was flown with aft tank empty at a loaded weight of 6,025 lb (2 733 kg) and the three RAF pilots participating in the evaluation were unanimous in their praise for the US fighter's exceptional handling characteristics and beautifully harmonised controls. In a diving attack at 400mph (644 km/h) the Hawk was far superior to the Spitfire, thanks to its lighter ailerons, and in a dogfight at 250 mph (402 km/h) the Hawk was again the superior machine because of its elevator control was not over-sensitive and all-around view was better; but the Spitfire could break off combat at will because of its very much higher maximum speed. In a dive at 400 mph (644km/h), the Spitfire pilot, exerting all his strength, could apply no more than one-fifth aileron because of high stick forces whereas the Curtiss pilot could apply three-quarter aileron.

"When the Spitfire dived on the Hawk, both aircraft travelling at 350-400 mph (560-645 km/h), the Curtiss fighter's pilot could avoid his opponent by applying its ailerons quickly, banking and turning rapidly. The Spitfire could not follow the Hawk round in this manoeuvre and consequently overshot the target. In the reverse situation, however, the Hawk could easily follow the Spitfire until the latter's superior speed allowed it to pull away. The superior manoeuvrability of the Hawk was ascribed mainly to the over-sensitiveness of the Spitfire's elevator, which resulted in some difficulty in accurately controlling the _'g'_ in a tight turn; over-correction held the risk of an inadvertent stall being induced.

"Because of the difference in propellers, the Hawk displayed appreciably better take-off and climb characteristics. The swing on take-off was smaller and more easily corrected than on the British fighter and during the climb the Hawk's controls were more effective; but the Curtiss fighter proved to be rather slow in picking up speed in a dive, making the Spitfire the more suitable machine of the two for intercepting high-speed bombers (which was, of course, the primary role for which the British aircraft had been designed).


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## tomo pauk (Feb 24, 2018)

fredleander said:


> ...
> The better dogfighter shall either chase the escorting fighter away because it is not able to defend itself, or shoot it down. The same applies if the better dogfighter is the escorting fighter. The P-40E was a good example. Apart from the fact that it had great difficulties in reaching the altitude of the enemy (Japanese) bombers in time, when/if it got there it had to dive away to save itself from the enemy escort fighters. The same applied if an allied bomber unit escorted by P-40 was attacked by Zeros. In both examples the P-40B was the better dogfighter than the "E" version because it climbed faster and handled better because it was lighter.



Thanks for the detailed post.
I've already agreed that P-40B was a better dogfighter than the over-weight P-40E.



> It is said that the P-40 had a better roll rate than the Zero. That might be but this was neutralized when starting to pull the turn because it was (nose) heavier than the Zero with higher wing loading. The Zero would always turn inside it. That the P-40 had better protection and an armament that could shoot down a Zero didn't help as, everything else being equal, it was not able to get on the Zero's tail. The P-40 could out-dive the Zero but the Zero out-climbed the P-40. The P-39 had the same weight problem as the P-40 (they had the same engine) and a similar roll rate but better longitudinal (fore-aft) balance. Sometimes too good.



If the P-40 is flown at reasonably high speed, trading altitude for even more speed, executing rolls while doing all of that, Zero can't initiate a turn in desired direction since it can't roll fast enough. Granted, the aircraft need to be already at suitable altitude and speed if it is to do all of that. Each pilot need to fly his A/C to it's stregths.
BTW - I don't think that either P-40 nor P-39 have suffered a loop-sided axchange ratio vs. Zero.



> This brings us to the P-36 - and I mean the P-36, not the Hawk 75, which was the export version. The Hawk 75 was heavier, because it had more weaponry, armour and sealed fuel tanks. So, the basic P-36 did not have any armour to speak of and it only had two .50 calibre Brownings in the nose. This is not an impressive armament but it worked against the equally unprotected Japanese fighters. It also had the 1.050 hp. Twin Wasp, the most reliable radial engine in the US. What this cooks down to is that it flew and climbed as fast as the Zero, handled as good, much better in the dive, actually, and flew as far. As a matter of fact a P-36 set a world dive speed record in 1939 in connection with the French acceptance tests. It blew the measuring instruments when passing 550 mph.



P-36 did not flew was fast as Zero, difference was 20-50 mph. Zero also climbed better.
I'd like to read a bit more about that 550 mph dive.



> The P-36 also had a good development potential. In December 1941 the few samples in US service still had the 1.050 hp. Twin Wasp engine when Hawks ordered by the French and Norwegians already in 1940 had theirs delivered with the 1.200 hp. Twin Wasp. The Navy's F4F Wildcats were also delivered with this engine in this period. In other words the USAAC could have had several times more improved P-36s than P-40s simply because it was in production years before the war started. Pilots may like planes that can save them from destruction by leaving the battlefield, but that means aborting their mission.
> 
> Just to reiterate some info on the Hawk 75: The early French versions with the 850 and 1.050 hp. Twin Wasps and four, later 6, machine guns, held up well against the German Bf109's during the "phony war". The French pilots loved them. The 1.200 hp. versions arrived too late in France and many were taken over by the British and sent to other parts of the Empire. They flew in the CBI theatre as "Mohawks" till 1943 - if I remember correctly. The Finns got some of the ex-Norwegian ones captured by the Germans in Norway. The Finns were also quite fond of these. They flew till well after the war ended.
> 
> Fred



The 1200 HP engines the P-36 migth got were not the same as what powered most of F4Fs. Those F4Fs (-3, -4) used engines with 2-stage, 2-speed supercharger. The R-1830-17, installed on some P-36s, was with 1-stage 1-speed S/C, making indeed 1200 HP for take off, but only 1050 at just 6500 ft. The 1-stage, 2-speed supercharged R-1830, like the -90 (1200 HP for take off and at 4900 ft, 1000 HP at 14500 ft) that was used on some F4Fs, was never installed on a P-36.
The P-40, with same degree of protection, armament and structural integrity, will be faster than a P-36 with then-current R-1830 - drag is cruel. P-40 was initially same as P-36 with new front part, and at any rate the production was excellent. USAF needed performers, not just another odd thousand worth of 320-330 mph fighters.



> ...
> "Because of the difference in propellers, the Hawk displayed appreciably better take-off and climb characteristics. The swing on take-off was smaller and more easily corrected than on the British fighter and during the climb the Hawk's controls were more effective; but the Curtiss fighter proved to be rather slow in picking up speed in a dive, making the Spitfire the more suitable machine of the two for intercepting high-speed bombers (which was, of course, the primary role for which the British aircraft had been designed).



Thank you again. 'Outflying' would've mean being better in crucial properties of a fighter, the P-36 did not offered that vs. Spitfire as far as we can read it.


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## Shortround6 (Feb 24, 2018)

I am not sure where this adulation for the P-36 comes from. The US Army bought P-40s for some very good reasons. 

People seem to think they can take the good handling P-36 and by the waving of some sort of magic wand turn it into some sort of Zero killer. 

Please see : http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/P-36/P-36_Operation_and_Flight_Instruction.pdf

For some real numbers. P-36 did NOT carry two .50 cal guns in cowl. It carried *ONE*. 2nd gun was a .30 cal. P-36C added a single .30 cal in each wing. 
the .50 weighed 73lbs while the .30 weighed 27lbs. so for those export Hawk 75s four RCMGs weighed within a few pounds (single digits) of the two guns in the P-36A, also please note that the ammo for the .50 cal gun weighed 50lbs. (which may be a bit light) while the ammo for the RCMG guns went 30-33lbs for 500 rounds. Yes there is some increase in weight for the ammo, about 50lbs for the four gun fighter. 

Now lets take a look at the "range" of the P-36A & C. The plane held 105 US gallons in the two normal tanks. Or about 87.5 IMP gallons, with a higher drag airframe I am having a tough time believing this plane is going to have more range than even a Hawker Hurricane _if flown at similar speeds and altitudes. 
_
I would note that ALL performance figures (speed and climb) are with the rear fuel tank empty. 

Yes there was the 57 US gallon (47.5 Imp gal) tank behind the pilots seat, however we run into two problems real quick. One, the normal gross weight of the P-36A _without _the rear tank filled was 5605lbs. max gross for safe flight was 5840lbs, only a 235lb margin. the extra fuel in the rear tank weighed 342 lbs and you need another 26lbs of oil to keep form running the engine dry when using the the fuel in the rear tank. SO you are 131lbs overweight for safe flight.
Problem two was that all the fuel weight was behind the CG and there were prohibitions about doing hard maneuvers with the rear tank full ( and the French and other operators found that the prohibitions were not to be ignored, crashing several Hawk 75s due to loosing control with rear tank filled.) 
Please note the P-36C with the wing guns had all of 2lbs (yes 2lbs) of margin between normal gross and max gross for safe flight. 

Look at the range charts, yes the P-36 could fly just over 900 miles *IF *you flew at 140-160mph at sea level or perhaps 160-185mph at 10,000ft. 

however with rear tank empty and flying at 210mph at 10,000ft this theoretical range (does not include warm up, take off or reserve let alone a combat allowance) 
the "range" drops to around 550miles. Actual range was probably a lot closer to 400 miles if you include warm up, take 0ff and and even 20 minutes of reserve. 

As far as "development" goes for the R-1830 engine, yes it was a great engine but development took time and cost weight. The -13 engine in the First P-36As weighed 1370lbs, the -17 engines were higher powered but it took more than just pouring 100 octane in the tanks and checking for lead fouled spark plugs. 
The -17s used lead coated silver main bearings, strengthened cylinders and a rigid propeller drive. weight went to 1403 lbs. When you get to the two speed R-1830s the weight goes to around 1480-1495lbs. The two stage engines as used in the F4F wildcat went 1550-1560lbs not including intercoolers and ducting. 
I would note that the 2 speed engines don't seem to show-up until mid 1940 (May and June leaving the P & W loading docks) and the two stage engines only show up to the tune of 98 engines in 1940 (81 of them in the last four months) and 507 in all of 1941. P & W built over 3000 single speed R-1830s in 1941 and 2862 two speed engines in 1941. 65 F4F-3A were built with two speed engines instead of two stage because of the shortage of two stage engines. Also all Martlet II & III aircraft were built with two speed engines. 

Hmmm, that 1350lb Allison is starting to look a a bit better isn't it? Granted it needed 292lbs of radiator and coolant for a total of 1642lbs but I hope people get the idea. 

Unless you leave the P-36 at 1938/39 level of development and performance it is going to mirror the wight increases in the P-40. more powerful engine means greater weight, better armament than one .50 and one .30 means an increase in weight. US authorities by the summer of 1940 considered any plane without armor or protected tanks a trainer. Unless you can change that and send P-36s into combat that will go up in flames like a Zero or Ki 43 you are going to gain weight. 
Unfortunately the increase in equipement weight is going to call for increased structural weight in order to keep the Government required "G" loading levels. 

I would also note that the initial P-36s had problems with wing skin buckling in service and spent periods of time grounded while fixes were worked out and put into place (read weight added). 

I would also note that the ONLY TIME the P-36 met enemy aircraft in combat was on Dec 7th over Hawaii. The sampling of combat results is simply too small to draw any valid conclusion from. One way or the other. That leaves the combat record of the Hawk 75.

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## Shortround6 (Feb 25, 2018)

As a further note, from P-40 Performance Tests

A P-40B at 6,835lbs take-off 

Climb at 30,000ft was 360fpm with the engine running at 2600rpm and making 490hp. time to 30,000ft was 20.3minutes with the engine being reduced in power from 3000rpm to 2600rpm after the first 5 minutes of climb climb speed was 195mph.

For the P-36C at 5,800lbs take-off climb at 30,000ft was 350fpm with the engine running 2550rpm making 410hp, time to 30,000ft was 19.5 minutes with the engine being reduced in power from 2700rpm to 2550 rpm after the first 5 minutes. climb speed at 30,000ft was 170mph.

Power is estimated from ground tests and power curves as neither engine was fitted with a torque meter to give direct readings in flight. 

I just don't see any big change in altitude performance for the P-36C (higher ceiling or that much better climb) that would justify the sacrifice in speed or firepower vs the P-40B (which had rudimentary armor, BP glass and self sealing tanks)


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## pinsog (Feb 25, 2018)

You don’t use the 57 gallon P36 tank unless you need it, just like a P51. You don’t top it off and then try to dogfight a Zero or 109 60 seconds after take off. You can also put 20 or so gallons in it, warm up, take off climb to 20,000, it runs dry, then you have a full fuel load in the other tanks. Or you fill it completely, take off escort your dive bombers to the target where it runs dry. Or you use it to ferry your fighters long distance between bases etc.

Weight alone doesn’t tell all the P36/P40 story. The P36 had a shorter nose, the P40 was not only heavier but the weight was farther out front, obviously more of an effect on turn. Would you rather have 300 extra pounds directly below your cockpit or 150 pounds hanging off each wingtip?

The H75 the brits flew in 1939 test had armour, 6 light machineguns and weighed 6025 pounds during the test where it had no trouble out turning the Spitfire. (I read somewhere an H75 could be on the tail of a Spitfire in 1 360 degree turn) If the H75 jumped the Spitfire, the H75 stayed on him until the Spitfire could outrun him.

Performance testing done in early 1942 by the brits on Cyclone powered H75 gave 302 mph at 14,000. The Cyclone powered P36 was 9 mph faster than the Martlet II tested by the British in April 1942 at 14,000 feet. The Martlet IV could do 298 at 21,000 while the H75 could do 292


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## pbehn (Feb 25, 2018)

I am at a loss in this discussion, the RAF received 225 Hawks and considered them obsolete.

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## Shortround6 (Feb 25, 2018)

In some case the P-37/H-75 does have an advantage in range/endurance over the Hurricane and Spitfire but not in all and in very few cases, if any, does it have a range/endurance advantage over the P-40. A P-40B could "cruise"at 286mph at 15,000ft using 600 hp. A P-36 at 15,000ft needed 600hp to do 265mph. P-40 has a 10% speed advantage on nearly the same fuel burn.
However part of the point was that many advocates of the P-36/Hawk 75 want all the benefits and none of the penalties. And then they want to modify it using parts made out of anti-gravitium.

Adding weight to the nose or lengthening the nose has nowhere near the same effect as adding weight to the wing tips. Pitch change happens much less rapidly than rolling. most fighters could roll 360 degrees in 4-5 seconds. A few, at optimum speed, could roll 360 degrees in 2.5 seconds.
Nobody was performing a loop or a 360 turn in under 10 seconds, you would break the plane due the "G" forces which brings us to your anecdote.
"(I read somewhere an H75 could be on the tail of a Spitfire in 1 360 degree turn)" I have no doubt you read it but think about. Where was the H75 starting from? A Spitfire could do a 360 turn in about 20 seconds just off the stall and pulling a little under 3 "G"S (any harder and it lost altitude)
WHat kind of turn is the H75 doing to go from in front of the Spit to behind it in 20-25 seconds?

It was _possible _for a Spitfire to do a 360 turn in under 13 seconds but the speed has to be just right and the altitude has to be just right and the plane lost thousands of feet of altitude doing the turn.

The longer heavier engine may affect how fast the plane starts to change pitch but pitch response has to be slower than roll response. Part of the H75 advantage in some of these early tests was that the Spitfire elevators were *too *light/sensitive and pilots used them with too much caution. This was changed later with either spring or bob weight?

Comparing the H75 (powered by either engine) to the Martlet II also doesn't tell us much. The Martlet II used the the two speed P&W engine, had armor and self sealing tanks, four .50 cal guns with 300rpg ( 360lbs of ammo) a fatter fuselage and 24sqft more wing area (10%). weighed around 1250lbs more than the Hawk (?) and could bounce around on carrier decks. 
No surprise it was slower.

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## pbehn (Feb 25, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The longer heavier engine may affect how fast the plane starts to change pitch but pitch response has to be slower than roll response. *Part of the H75 advantage in some of these early tests was that the Spitfire elevators were too light/sensitive and pilots used them with too much caution. This was changed later with either spring or bob weight?* .


This is what I see as important to the test. In 1939 the British were at war but their two front line fighters had not been tested apart from against each other. It seems completely logical to concentrate on areas where the Hawk was superior to the Spitfire and figure out if anything could be done about it. They had no real idea how a Bf109 performed but it was clear if France used Hawks one would fall into enemy hands.


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## swampyankee (Feb 25, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I am at a loss in this discussion, the RAF received 225 Hawks and considered them obsolete.



I think one thing that's happening is that, 3/4 of a century after the fact, we're looking at a small subset that is part of a large amount of data, scattered over tens to thousand of reports, memoranda, in-person conversations, and phone calls, with no permanent record kept of the last two. 

The RAF knew that the Hurricane was inferior to the Bf109 in many flight regimes, and, while the Spitfire was better, it wasn't _enough_ better to have a comfortable margin of superiority. Here's a foreign aircraft, which shows some areas of superiority to the Spitfire, possibly mostly in the horizontal plane, but which can't demonstrate the sort of superiority that the RAF feels it needs to deal with the Bf109 or, most importantly, the partner the Bf109 is likely to have soon. It's also possible the RAF felt an immediate prejudice against that round motor in front: _real_ fighters had V-12s, and that was considered a major point against the P-36. At this time, they couldn't yet know that fighters with round motors -- from Focke Wulf, Grumman, Vought, Lavochkin, Mitsubishi, and others -- would demonstrate that real fighters _did_ have round motors.

As for the longitudinal weight distribution, it's not going to affect steady-state turns, just the pitch acceleration. It will become a serious problem later, with jet aircraft, where the relation longitudinal and lateral mass distribution can have critical repercussions, as occurred on the F-100.

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## pinsog (Feb 25, 2018)

I’m going to retract the “P36 can get on Spitfire tail in 1 360 degree turn”, I can’t back that up and I think I am confusing another test.

On the other hand, I know the improved P36/H75 would gain a bit of weight. But, I think they could have built an improved P36 at around 6,600 pounds. 2 50’s, 4 30’s, 2 speed 2 stage engine, self sealing tanks. 1,000 hp at 21,000 feet rather than 600 and 860 hp at 25,000 vs 515 should improve performance dramatically. A 6,600 pound P36 should retain much more turning ability than an 8,000 pound P40. Even the Wildcat at the same weight beat the P40 in every category above 22,000

All the speed in the world matters little when Zeros and Betty’s just fly above your ceiling.


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## pbehn (Feb 25, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> I think one thing that's happening is that, 3/4 of a century after the fact, we're looking at a small subset that is part of a large amount of data, scattered over tens to thousand of reports, memoranda, in-person conversations, and phone calls, with no permanent record kept of the last two.
> 
> The RAF knew that the Hurricane was inferior to the Bf109 in many flight regimes, and, while the Spitfire was better, it wasn't _enough_ better to have a comfortable margin of superiority. Here's a foreign aircraft, which shows some areas of superiority to the Spitfire, possibly mostly in the horizontal plane, but which can't demonstrate the sort of superiority that the RAF feels it needs to deal with the Bf109 or, most importantly, the partner the Bf109 is likely to have soon. It's also possible the RAF felt an immediate prejudice against that round motor in front: _real_ fighters had V-12s, and that was considered a major point against the P-36. At this time, they couldn't yet know that fighters with round motors -- from Focke Wulf, Grumman, Vought, Lavochkin, Mitsubishi, and others -- would demonstrate that real fighters _did_ have round motors.
> 
> As for the longitudinal weight distribution, it's not going to affect steady-state turns, just the pitch acceleration. It will become a serious problem later, with jet aircraft, where the relation longitudinal and lateral mass distribution can have critical repercussions, as occurred on the F-100.


I see it a little differently, the tests were in November 1939, by the time the Hawk arrived diverted from French orders everything had already changed a lot, especially regarding props and fuels. As for V 12s being superior in the eyes of the RAF, they quite clearly were at that time, any radial engine plane had to beat what the RAF already had. The Spitfire in the test quoted was clearly much faster, so it wasn't even discussed. If such a prejudice existed it must have been well covered up, the Sea Fury had an air cooled radial engine that did not just appear from thin air. Long before any radial engine out performed the Spitfire the British had H and X type water cooled engines being developed in addition to air cooled radials. It is a simple fact that the Spitfire remained a top class front line fighter until the end of the war and the P-51 in a different role did too.

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## buffnut453 (Feb 25, 2018)

I'm not convinced by the whole "RAF prejudice against radial engines" concept. After all, most of the pre-war RAF biplane fighters had radial engines: Bulldog, Gauntlet, Gladiator etc. Indeed, the ONLY pre-war RAF biplane fighter with an inline engine was the Fury. I suspect, in reality, the RAF would have accepted a rubber-band engine if it delivered the required level of performance.

While the P-36/H-75 may have had some performance advantages over the Spitfire in the horizontal plane, the latter could effectively disengage at will courtesy of its higher speed and better acceleration. Successful fighter pilots maximize the strengths of their own aircraft and strive to minimize the advantages of their adversary's machine. Thus a Spitfire pilot would be foolish to get into a turning fight with the P-36/H-75 and even more foolish to stick with a turning fight instead of using his aircraft's better speed to break off and re-engage at a tactical advantage.

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## pinsog (Feb 25, 2018)

At low altitude the P36/H75 also outclimbed the Spitfire until the low altitude rated engine ran out of wind. I wonder, along with others, how well a continuing development of the P36/H75 would have done. 1000 hp instead of 600 at 21,000 feet, 860 instead of 515 at 25,000. Probably push the P36/H75 up closer to 340 mph. That might be close enough to be competitive.


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## parsifal (Feb 25, 2018)

The improved P-36 being theorised about sounds remarkably similar to the Amee De l’ Air’s Hawk 75A-3. 

http://www.wardrawings.be/WW2/Files/2-Airplanes/Allies/4-France/01-Fighters/Curtiss-Hawk75/Curtiss-Hawk75A-3.htm

It had a top speed of 323mph, a nominal ceiling of 31850 feet. It had 2 x HMG and 2 LMG offensive weapons, and some armour.

Generally it outflew the bf109, when flown by the exceptionally experienced FAF pilots. Theres the difference. FAF had been flying the H-75 since well before the war. The units flying this type were elite units of the FAF, fully worked up with exceptional commanders. They basically flew rings around the Luftwaffe.

None of that makes the H-75 A-3 subtype superior to the Bf109 and not superior to the Spitfire. It wasn’t even superior to the Hurricane in my opinion. It was just a ready design in 1940.

RAF and RIN units flew a few H-75 (I think A-3s) over Burma with not much success against JAAF units. In 1942, the type finally began pre-production, but with just 4 produced. The reason for its dis-continuance was that it just wasn’t competitive against the JAAF. RAF and RIN units continued to receive, and preferred, Hurricanes over this type almost to the end of the war, albeit as flying artillery.

I’m at a loss to understand what all the fuss is about to be honest

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## pbehn (Feb 25, 2018)

pinsog said:


> At low altitude the P36/H75 also outclimbed the Spitfire until the low altitude rated engine ran out of wind. I wonder, along with others, how well a continuing development of the P36/H75 would have done. 1000 hp instead of 600 at 21,000 feet, 860 instead of 515 at 25,000. Probably push the P36/H75 up closer to 340 mph. That might be close enough to be competitive.


This is becoming a circular argument, an additional 400HP at 21,000 ft is not in Curtiss domain, the USA was gearing up for 2000HP radials but officially war was not declared. The Wildcat was not a competitive fighter with RAF and LW land based fighters in 1940 neither was the P36.


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## buffnut453 (Feb 25, 2018)

The key question is where that extra 400hp is going to come from...and what changes does that force on the design? Bigger, more powerful engines typically weigh more and are thirstier, both in fuel and oil. All of that pushes the weight upwards before we consider armour plating or armament. If we increase weight without increasing wing area, we increase wing loading which impacts rate of climb, landing speed and, crucially, turn performance. There's no such thing as a free lunch. If the P-36 could be improved to the extent you identify, I'd imagine it would have happened in preference to the P-40. 

I'd be interested to learn whether the P-36 could still outclimb the Spitfire once the MkV started entering service with constant-speed propellers. Bear in mind that at the time of the quoted test, the Spit was barely being delivered with 2-speed props and still had the some of the earliest variant Merlins. Could the P-36 be updated in time to beat the Spit MkV into service? I suspect not given the extent of the modifications required.

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## pbehn (Feb 25, 2018)

buffnut453 said:


> The key question is where that extra 400hp is going to come from...and what changes does that force on the design? Bigger, more powerful engines typically weigh more and are thirstier, both in fuel and oil. All of that pushes the weight upwards before we consider armour plating or armament. If we increase weight without increasing wing area, we increase wing loading which impacts rate of climb, landing speed and, crucially, turn performance. There's no such thing as a free lunch. If the P-36 could be improved to the extent you identify, I'd imagine it would have happened in preference to the P-40.
> 
> I'd be interested to learn whether the P-36 could still outclimb the Spitfire once the MkV started entering service with constant-speed propellers. Bear in mind that at the time of the quoted test, the Spit was barely being delivered with 2-speed props and still had the some of the earliest variant Merlins. Could the P-36 be updated in time to beat the Spit MkV into service? I suspect not given the extent of the modifications required.


And (cough cough) 100 octane fuel.


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## tomo pauk (Feb 25, 2018)

pinsog said:


> I’m going to retract the “P36 can get on Spitfire tail in 1 360 degree turn”, I can’t back that up and I think I am confusing another test.
> 
> On the other hand, I know the improved P36/H75 would gain a bit of weight. But, I think they could have built an improved P36 at around 6,600 pounds. 2 50’s, 4 30’s, 2 speed 2 stage engine, self sealing tanks. 1,000 hp at 21,000 feet rather than 600 and 860 hp at 25,000 vs 515 should improve performance dramatically. A 6,600 pound P36 should retain much more turning ability than an 8,000 pound P40. Even the Wildcat at the same weight beat the P40 in every category above 22,000
> 
> All the speed in the world matters little when Zeros and Betty’s just fly above your ceiling.



The SAC for the F4F engine (2-stage, 2-speed R-1830) gives 1040 HP at 18400 ft, that works to 1000 HP at ~19000 ft, or 900 HP at 21000 ft (nor ram effect).
The P-40B has the same armament as stated for the proposed 'P-36 plus', it also features 93lbs of armor. Weights 6833 lbs equipped, ready for take off, with 120 gals of fuel. Good for 347+ mph at 15000 ft. Best cruise at 8.4 mi/gal, vs. 6.5 mi/gal for the P-36 that weighted 5800 lbs, and was good for 317 mph at 10000 ft. Granted, the 2-stage engine will make the P-36 going faster, while sticking the V-1650-1 on the P-40B airframe will make that one going even faster.
The P-40B needs 12 min to reach 25000 ft. That means it can climb on the 20000 ft altitude very fast. Zeros and Betties were flying well under the ceiling of any Allied A/C.


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## pinsog (Feb 25, 2018)

For the 1000 hp at 21,000, I was using the graph for the F4F-3 on wwiiaircraft performance, it must include ram to reach that figure. Same graph drops to 860 at 25,000. The single P36B shows 317 mph at 17,000 on 950 hp so there was obviously improvement left in the P36.

Looks like the P40B would have been a welcome addition to Darwin when the Japanese were coming in above the P40’s ceiling, hence he need for Spitfires. They also said the Japanese fighters and bombers came in above the P40’s ceiling in the Philippine invasion. At Guadalcanal only the Wildcats were capable of intercepting the high altitude, well above what the P39’s could climb to 

How, in your opinion does the P40B stack up against the Spitfire II and early Me109?


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## wuzak (Feb 25, 2018)

pinsog said:


> How, in your opinion does the P40B stack up against the Spitfire II and early Me109?



Since the P-41B first flew in March 1941, the question should be how did the P-40B stack up against the Spitfire V and Bf 109F? The answer, most likely, is very poorly.

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## wuzak (Feb 25, 2018)

buffnut453 said:


> I'd be interested to learn whether the P-36 could still outclimb the Spitfire once the MkV started entering service with constant-speed propellers. Bear in mind that at the time of the quoted test, the Spit was barely being delivered with 2-speed props and still had the some of the earliest variant Merlins. Could the P-36 be updated in time to beat the Spit MkV into service? I suspect not given the extent of the modifications required.



Surely the Spitfire Mk II has CS propellers, and Mk Is had them retrofitted at some stage. In 1940.


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## wuzak (Feb 25, 2018)

pinsog said:


> At low altitude the P36/H75 also outclimbed the Spitfire until the low altitude rated engine ran out of wind. I wonder, along with others, how well a continuing development of the P36/H75 would have done. 1000 hp instead of 600 at 21,000 feet, 860 instead of 515 at 25,000. Probably push the P36/H75 up closer to 340 mph. That might be close enough to be competitive.



The Spiftires high altitude rated engine also lacked at power at low altitude. If it had a 2 speed engine that would have been fixed.


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## wuzak (Feb 25, 2018)

pinsog said:


> The H75 the brits flew in 1939 test had armour, 6 light machineguns and weighed 6025 pounds during the test where it had no trouble out turning the Spitfire. (I read somewhere an H75 could be on the tail of a Spitfire in 1 360 degree turn) If the H75 jumped the Spitfire, the H75 stayed on him until the Spitfire could outrun him.



No doubt a Gloster Gladiator could out-turn the Spitfire. Perhaps the RAF should have stayed with them?

The Hurricane could also turn tighter than a Spitfire. Perhaps the RAF should have developed them more.


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## Shortround6 (Feb 25, 2018)

We have several "ceilings" service ceiling is pretty much useless except as a _relative indicator _between different designs. 
they generally figured you needed about 500fpm of climb in hand just for a small formation to _stay _in formation as it flew. 
In order to actually fight at an altitude (and not just dive down from a certain altitude) you need 1000fpm of climb. 

This brings the combat altitude of the P-36C down to somewhere under 25,000ft, perhaps 24,000ft? 
A MK I Spitfire using 6 1/2 lbs of boost and mere 2600rpm could climb at 1000fpm at 27,000ft. 

We have no tests in which they used the 5 minute combat rating for climb.
This is also the problem when comparing US tests of aircraft to British tests. 
The US used the 5 minute rating of the engine for the 5 minutes from sea level and then cut back to the max continuous power for the rest of the climb.
The British used a 30 minute rating for the entire climb and in the case of the Hurricane and Spitfire the 30 minute rating was changed from 2600 rpm and 6 1/2 lbs boost to 2850rpm and 6 1/2 lbs boost. SO climb improved at all altitudes even without going to the 5 minute rating let alone using the 12lb boost limit. 

Yes the P-36 and the Wildcat could both do a bit better if you used 2700rpm instead of 2550 rpm for climbing at high altitudes but obviously having an extra 400rpm beats the heck out of an extra 150rpm. 

As for a "light weight" Hawk using the two stage engine out of an F4F-3, it wasn't going to happen. Adding up the figures from AHT the powerplant of of a long nose P-40 went about 2440-2450lbs, cowl, mounts, engine, prop, accessories, starter and so on I do not include fuel system. the Power plant for the F4F-3 went 2560lbs, 10-15lbs out of 2550 is actually too close to call as you _might _have that much difference between two of the same plane on the production line. 

Now a P-36C, empty (but with radio) went 4628lbs. 
An export hawk with P&W engine went 4713lbs empty with a powerplant weight of 2170lbs (I don't have the list of equipment in the powerplant). An increase of roughly 400lbs in powerplant weight is going to call for some changes in other places. 
Now add some of the "extras" that creep in. Export Hawk allowed for 112lbs worth of radio instead of the 62lbs in the P-36 handbook. Ealy P-40s show 71lbs for communications but later ones go to around 130lbs and some P-40Ns go over 200lbs. 
Fuel tanks on a P-40 without protection went 171lbs, P-40B went 253lbs and the P-40C went 420lbs where the weight pretty much stayed unless they yanked out the forward tank like on the P-40L and N. Even leaving the rear tank unprotected is going add over 100lbs. 
Once you add hundreds of pounds you need to beef up the wing, and the fuselage to keep the 12 G ultimate load rating and you may need to beef up the landing gear (or at least fit bigger tires) 

Now in addition to the technical details you have two production problems and a major timing problem. Unless you can magic up a brand new factory, with tooling and a work force every super P-36 you build will be one less P-40, Want 300 super P-36s in 1941? then you have 300 fewer P-40s. Unless you also drastically change P&W's development schedule and production schedule for late 1940 and 1941 you will also have 300 fewer F4F-3s with two stage engines. 
And that brings us to the timing problem, Comparing the Super P-36 with two stage engine to Spitfire Is or long nose P-40s is a false comparison. By the time you get two stage P&W R-1830s in quantity (mid to late 1941) the Spitfire to beat is the MK V and the P-40E is in production and the P-40F with Merlin prototype has flown. Hurricanes have Merlin XX engines and twelve .303 guns. 

At which point what do you do with the Super P-36? it is useless in Europe vs Bf 109Fs, It's usefulness in the Dessert is doubtful, No subtititution of aircraft or an additional couple of squadrons are going to save the Philippines or Singapore.

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## wuzak (Feb 25, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Now in addition to the technical details you have two production problems and a major timing problem. Unless you can magic up a brand new factory, with tooling and a work force every super P-36 you build will be one less P-40, Want 300 super P-36s in 1941? then you have 300 fewer P-40s. Unless you also drastically change P&W's development schedule and production schedule for late 1940 and 1941 you will also have 300 fewer F4F-3s with two stage engines.



You could change the F4Fs to the R-1820, but what does that do for B-17 production? A small impact in overall production, but much bigger at a time when B-17 production was ramping up?


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## Shortround6 (Feb 25, 2018)

Some Hawks were built with the R-1820 but in two speed supercharger versions at best, no turbo, no two stage mechanical. 
P & W was building 10 single stage R-1830s for every two stage R-1830 in 1941 which is where the shortage of two stage R-1830s comes from. 

The export F4Fs with Cyclone engines didn't exactly set the world on fire. See Martlet I and IV. The IV gained over 700lbs in empty weight over the Martlet I
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f4f/martlet-I-ads.jpg

Can you say "sitting ducks" against Zeros?


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## Graeme (Feb 26, 2018)

buffnut453 said:


> II suspect, in reality, the RAF would have accepted a rubber-band engine if it delivered the required level of performance.



That's always how I've understood Britain's situation at the time. Purchase whatever they could if it looked usable. I've only just read that the RAF even placed an order for 100 Caproni Ca 311s in early 1940. That deal went south when Italy entered the war.

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## Stig1207 (Feb 26, 2018)

parsifal said:


> They basically flew rings around the Luftwaffe.



That is stretching it just a bit, don't you think?


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## tomo pauk (Feb 26, 2018)

pinsog said:


> For the 1000 hp at 21,000, I was using the graph for the F4F-3 on wwiiaircraft performance, it must include ram to reach that figure. Same graph drops to 860 at 25,000. The single P36B shows 317 mph at 17,000 on 950 hp so there was obviously improvement left in the P36.
> 
> Looks like the P40B would have been a welcome addition to Darwin when the Japanese were coming in above the P40’s ceiling, hence he need for Spitfires. They also said the Japanese fighters and bombers came in above the P40’s ceiling in the Philippine invasion. At Guadalcanal only the Wildcats were capable of intercepting the high altitude, well above what the P39’s could climb to



I'm not sure that Japanese A/C were flying above the ceiling of American fighters in any of the theaters, that would've mean that they flew above 30000 ft (= operational ceiling of the P-40E). Problem with US A/C was that they operated with barely any early warning, thus did not have enough of time to warm up and climb at or above 20000 ft. The P-40E will need almost 20 min to climb to 25000 ft (8 min more than P-40B), almost 12 min to 20000 ft, plus time for warming-up the engine.



> How, in your opinion does the P40B stack up against the Spitfire II and early Me109?



Speed is in the ballpark, Spit II and 109E having the edge in climb and turn, P-40 rolls better. The P-39C is faster than P-40B, but it featured no protection.
The P-40E and P-39D are helpless, except under 10000 ft. European machines are also earlier by a year or two, a crucial advantage for them.


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## swampyankee (Feb 26, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I see it a little differently, the tests were in November 1939, by the time the Hawk arrived diverted from French orders everything had already changed a lot, especially regarding props and fuels. As for V 12s being superior in the eyes of the RAF, they quite clearly were at that time, any radial engine plane had to beat what the RAF already had. The Spitfire in the test quoted was clearly much faster, so it wasn't even discussed. If such a prejudice existed it must have been well covered up, the Sea Fury had an air cooled radial engine that did not just appear from thin air. Long before any radial engine out performed the Spitfire the British had H and X type water cooled engines being developed in addition to air cooled radials. It is a simple fact that the Spitfire remained a top class front line fighter until the end of the war and the P-51 in a different role did too.



I didn't say it was a reason; I said there was a _possibility_ it was a reason. There was and is a perception that radial-engined aircraft had, intrinsically, much greater drag than did V-12 aircraft, and for _really _high performance, especially high speed, one needed a V-12. The two posited reasons for the largely non-existent extra drag are nose shape and cooling drag. 

Leaping back to the P-36, it's first flight was in 1935, the same year as the Bf109. I also wonder if we'd be having this conversation had the USAAC/USAAF not assigned a new designation when Curtiss stuck a V-12 into the P-36.

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## tomo pauk (Feb 26, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> I didn't say it was a reason; I said there was a _possibility_ it was a reason. There was and is a perception that radial-engined aircraft had, intrinsically, much greater drag than did V-12 aircraft, and for _really _high performance, especially high speed, one needed a V-12. The two posited reasons for the largely non-existent extra drag are nose shape and cooling drag.
> ...



The top-notch radial engine installation on the Fw 190A was much draggier than the Fw 190D V12 engine installation. Fusleage + coolig amounted for 0.299 m^2 of equivalent ftat plate on the Fw 190A-8, while it was just 0.1783 m^2 on the Fw 190D-9. A difference of 0.0507 m^2 = 10% drag reduction on max speed.
The radial engine installations that predate BMW 801 were not that well streamlined.

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## parsifal (Feb 26, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> That is stretching it just a bit, don't you think?




No, it is not stretching things at all.

During 1939–1940, French H-75 pilots claimed around 230 kills. Losses were just 29 aircraft in aerial combat. While making up only 12.6% of the French Air Force single-seater fighter force, the H-75 accounted for almost a 33% of the victories during the 1940 Battle of France. Of the 11 French aces of the early part of the war, seven flew H-75s. The leading ace of the time was Lieutenant Edmond Marin la Mesle with 15 confirmed and five probable victories in the type. On 12 May 1940 the Curtiss H-75s of GC I/5 ran into the Junkers Ju 87 B Stukas of 1./StG 76 sw of Sedan and claimed as many as 11 shot down in air combat - this happened in the locality of Bauillon-Ste Cecilé-Poury St. Remy. This may well have been the first time that the Stuka´s 'vulnerability' was demonstrated in large scale air combat. GC I/5 was the _Armée de l'Air _crack unit - claims for six Stukas, plus 12 more probably destroyed, were filed following this action by the five French pilots including Marin-la-Mesle, Sous-Lieutenant Jean Rey, Sous-Lieutenant François Perina, Sergent-Chef Dominique Penzini, and Sergent-Chef François Morel.

Some of the claims were as follows;

1./StG76 Junkers Ju 87 B-1. Shot down by Curtiss H-75s of GC I/5 in action south -west of Sedan 8.30 a.m. Crash-landed and burned out behind German lines east of Bouillon. BF Uffz Richard Kny badly wounded, FF Lt Haller unhurt. Aircraft 100% write-off.

1./StG76 Junkers Ju87 B. Badly damaged in attacks by south-west of Bouillon 8.30 a.m. Belly-landed near Bellevaux. BF Fw Friedrich Petrick badly wounded in stomach, FF Oberlt Wolfgang Unbehaun unhurt. Aircraft S1+KH 15% damaged but repairable. On return to base, radio contact was established with 'Zaratza' Unbehaun by the Staffelkapitän, Oberlt Dietrich Peltz, who picked up the crew by Storch within the hour.

2./StG76 Junkers Ju87B-1. Engine badly damaged in attack from below by Curtiss H-75s of GC I/5 during sortie east of Sedan and crash-landed in the Semois valley at ‘Les Longs Champs’ outside Dohan, east of Bouillon, 9.00 a.m. BF Uffz Helmut Gäth badly wounded in chest – died shortly after landing, FF Lt Heinz-Georg Migeod unhurt. Aircraft S1+MK 50% damaged but repairable. Helmut Gäth was originally buried in a field grave in an orchard off the Route du Sati on the north-eastern approach to Dohan. He now lies in Noyers-Pont-Maugis Cemetery, Block 3, Grave 1835.

2./StG76 Junkers Ju87 B. Returned damaged by Curtiss H-75s of GC I/5 during sortie east of Sedan 8.30 a.m. BF Gefr Ludwig Kirner slightly wounded, pilot unhurt.

French aviation blogger "Drix" is more scathing about the "Curtiss", as the French usually refer to the H-75;

" _the qualities of the Curtiss have been largely overestimated - it achieved what it achieved thanks the high quality of the French aces that flew it_.."

Accart and Marin la Mesle of GC I/5, were the top scorers in the Battle of France. GC II/5 appears to have been the only group to fly the Wright-engined Curtiss fighters on combat operations over the anchorage at Mers el-Kébir. S/Lt Trémolet (N° 2) and S/C Gisclon (N° 7) clashed with Skuas over the harbour on 3 July 1940. When Ark Royal's Swordfish attacked the Dunkerque for a second time on 6 July Gisclon claimed a Skua downed after a long dogfight, but although shore-based witnesses confirmed the 'kill' all of Ark Royal's aircraft returned safely.

it is worth noting that during the 6 weeks of fighting May 10th to June 25, the LW lost more a/c in combat than they did in the first 6 weeks of the boB, though total losses over England were higher. Luftwaffe did not defeat the FAF by qualitative advantage, they defeated it with superior tactical handling and sheer numbers. .

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## Stig1207 (Feb 26, 2018)

parsifal said:


> During 1939–1940, French H-75 pilots claimed around 230 kills.


We both know that their is usually a difference between what one side claimed and what the other side lost.


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## parsifal (Feb 26, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> We both know that their is usually a difference between what one side claimed and what the other side lost.


Yes of course, that is very true, however it cuts both ways really.

The 230 figure in my opinion isn't too far fetched. just after the war, the French were claiming well over 1000 LW a/c by the H-75 units. That has since been whittled down by cross referencing to LW records to the 230 LW a/c losses that I mentioned. They are a/c lost from the right units, in the right areas. its about as accurate as possible in the confusing state in france in the summer of 1940


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## Shortround6 (Feb 26, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> I'm not sure that Japanese A/C were flying above the ceiling of American fighters in any of the theaters, that would've mean that they flew above *30000 ft (= operational ceiling of the P-40E*). Problem with US A/C was that they operated with barely any early warning, thus did not have enough of time to warm up and climb at or above 20000 ft. The P-40E will need almost 20 min to climb to 25000 ft (8 min more than P-40B), almost 12 min to 20000 ft, plus time for warming-up the engine.



The problem is that the *operational ceiling * of the P-40 is actually around 20,000ft or lower. The P-40 is going to have trouble maintaining a formation at 25,000ft. 
Even a "D" with four guns took 15.9 minutes to hit 25,000ft but 35 minutes to hit 30,600ft. Granted this was at 2600rpm after about 13,000ft but if you are climbing at under 500fpm then a 5 minute burst of full military power really doesn't gain that much altitude and tends to push the engine up against the temperature limit. 
Think about it, you get one firing pass in a dive from above the Japanese (at 27-28,000ft) even if you had an hours warning. you pull out say 3,000 ft below them, it then takes 5-6 minutes to climb back up level with them (disregarding zoom climb) at best climb speed and then you have to accelerate to catch them. And this is straight line flying and in real life there would be turns that slow things down or make it harder to climb. 

However yanking a V-12 that can make 1000hp at 15,000ft or so and replacing it with a radial that makes 1000hp at 14,000ft (or under, 2 speed supercharger) sure doesn't solve the problem. You need a better supercharger on either engine.


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## tomo pauk (Feb 26, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The problem is that the *operational ceiling * of the P-40 is actually around 20,000ft or lower. The P-40 is going to have trouble maintaining a formation at 25,000ft.
> ..



30000 ft service ceiling for the P-40E: link
30600 ft service ceiling: link
28700 ft: link


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## Shortround6 (Feb 26, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> I didn't say it was a reason; I said there was a _possibility_ it was a reason. *There was and is a perception *that radial-engined aircraft had, intrinsically, much greater drag than did V-12 aircraft, and for _really _high performance, especially high speed, one needed a V-12. The two posited reasons for the largely non-existent extra drag are nose shape and cooling drag.



Leaping back to the P-36, it's first flight was in 1935, the same year as the Bf109. I also wonder if we'd be having this conversation had the USAAC/USAAF not assigned a new designation when Curtiss stuck a V-12 into the P-36.[/QUOTE]

It wasn't perception, it was actual * fact *_at a particular point in time or a particular time period. _
You can look at the test reports for the P-36 and P-40 and see how much power was needed for certain speeds. It was also estimated that the P-36 had 22% more drag than the early P-40s when you figured power available to speed achieved. 
However the state of the art for either type of installation did not stay static, both were evolving and the air cooled camp caught up (mostly). P & W by 1942 had a radial engine test bed P-40 (with the 2 stage R-1830) that showed only an 8% difference in drag compared to the Allison. What could be achieved by 1945 I have no figures for. 
In the very late 30s or first few years of the 40s the difference was there and it was real. 


This also gets intermingled with the fact that exhaust thrust was much easier to set up on a V-12.


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## Shortround6 (Feb 26, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> 30000 ft service ceiling for the P-40E: link
> 30600 ft service ceiling: link
> 28700 ft: link



We are confusing service ceiling with operational ceiling and combat ceiling. Service ceiling is a nice measure of aircraft performance but is _almost _useless for planning operations or for figuring out combat results. Except that a plane with a service ceiling of 34,000 will be able to operate _around _3,000ft higher than a plane with a service ceiling of 31,000ft.

However service ceiling is for a single plane, in factory new condition, still being able to climb at 100fpm, in other words it is moving only slightly faster than stall at that altitude. It has very little extra speed in hand and is flying straight and level, any but the most gentile of turns is going to cause the plane to loose altitude. 
Now lets try a formation of planes, say four. Not all have identical climb rates anymore than four identical cars have exactly the same acceleration one will always be just a bit faster (or climb better) than the others and one will always be just a bit slower.
Differences in climb tend to carry through. A plane that is 50fpm slower climbing than it's squadron mates at low altitude (not a big difference at low altitudes where you are climbing at 3000fpm) will be markedly slower climbing at high altitudes, perhaps 30fpm slower but if your squadron mates are climbing at 200-300fp and you are climbing at 170-270fpm for 5 minutes you are no longer in formation. Or say the formation turns 90 degrees, at what altitude will the 3 best planes be able to make the turn without losing altitude while poor #4 either falls behind or drops below? 

The British figured you needed 500fpm worth of climb in order to fly in formation. Poor #4 being on the outside of the formation when it made a turn? 
This cuts several thousand feet from the nominal service ceiling to the ceiling that small formations could even fly a patrol at with the intention of diving to to attack. 
Now try to figure what altitude you can effectively fight at, not do a single diving pass and then take 5-10 minutes to regain altitude for a possible 2nd pass. 
British figured they needed 1000fpm of climbing ability at a minimum. 
This was part of the reasoning in giving the Hurricane the Merlin XX engine. The Spitfire with a Merlin III had a higher climb rate than the Hurricane with the Merlin III and the British were estimating (based on captured 109) that the Hurricane needed better climb in order to fight the 109 at the higher altitudes, The Spitfire was superior to the 109 in climb at the higher altitudes the Hurricane I was not. Even if the Hurricane II was still slower than the 109 at least it could out climb it. 
and please remember that climb is an indication of ability to turn without loosing altitude. Doesn't do a lot of good to have a smaller turning circle if you loose hundreds of feet more per turn and wind up too low to get back in the fight. 

Going back to the P-40 this explains the difference (at least partly) between the factory figures for ceiling and the combat reports. Yes you could get a P-40 up to 30,000ft given enough time, but once there you couldn't really do anything except fly in a straight line. No weaving, gentle S turns. even flying a box search pattern would be difficult. Unless each corner had a radius of miles you were going to loose altitude on each turn and have to climb back up.
Also note that "cruising" at such an altitude requires the engine to be running only slightly slower (or slightly less boost) than max continuous. 
Lets face it, if max continuous power means a climb rate of 100-200fpm how much can you cut the throttle before you fall out of the sky  
Or at least start descending.

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## Smokey Stover (Feb 26, 2018)

I have a feeling this is going to make me rather unpopular but im afraid that one or two exceptions aside, for me its the B-17.
The B-17 was a 1930's design. With a shaky start (The prototype crashed on 30 October 1935, with test-pilot Major Ployer Peter Hill and Boeing employee Les Tower killed in the accident) And the contract was almost awarded to the Douglas B-18. But the airforce still had faith it was a sound bomber. And indeed it was. And as we know the B-17 doesnt stand alone in being a flawed concept. No matter how many guns you add to a bomber its meat and potatoes to enemy fighters. But why single out the B-17? Well for one it was basically obsolete by 1942/3 and with a tiny bomb capacity of just 4000lbs a mosquito could have done the same job without the terrible loss of men and machines. Without fighter cover daylight bombing was just suicide. And the B-17 holds the record for the most aircraft lost in one mission. To fly in daylight was suicide and the B-17's only saving grace was that it could absorb severe damage. A Lancaster could carry 14,000lbs standard in comparison and 22,000lb grandslam if modified. It's also overlooked that mechanical problems plagued the Boeing bomber, and their daylight high-altitude bombing accuracy turned out to be much less than advertised. The RAF tested a batch of B-17's and were less than impressed with the results. The test came to a dubious end after three of the 20 airplanes were lost to enemy action, five were destroyed in accidents, and the rest were grounded due to mechanical failure. In 39 sorties, only 18 Flying Fortresses managed to actually bomb a target. Only two bombs were believed to have actually hit the targets they were aimed at—and not a single German fighter had fallen to the Fortresses’ guns. The same goes for the B-29. A super fortress that inherited nearly all the flaws of its older brother and then some. The pressurization ended up being made redundant thanks to the gulf stream ruining any chance of high altitude bombing. The fact it could carry a few more bombs a little further is not much of a return. So there it is, the Boeing B family. Overrated but hey thats just my opinion coupled with some facts.

One last thing. I see some chaps mentioned the P-51 and Fw-190 as being overrated. That's absolutely absurd

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## tomo pauk (Feb 26, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> ...
> The British figured you needed 500fpm worth of climb in order to fly in formation. Poor #4 being on the outside of the formation when it made a turn?
> This cuts several thousand feet from the nominal service ceiling to the ceiling that small formations could even fly a patrol at with the intention of diving to to attack.
> Now try to figure what altitude you can effectively fight at, not do a single diving pass and then take 5-10 minutes to regain altitude for a possible 2nd pass.
> ...



The P-36 with better R-1830 in that light does not sound bad. The P-66 with that engine sounds even better.
While a thing or two can be pointed out to the pinsong's proposal (I do it often, not just to him  ), even the over-weight F4F-4 was good for service ceiling of 33000 ft, and the F4F-3 was supposedly good for more than 37000 ft.


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## Stig1207 (Feb 26, 2018)

parsifal said:


> The 230 figure in my opinion isn't too far fetched. just after the war, the French were claiming well over 1000 LW a/c by the H-75 units. That has since been whittled down by cross referencing to LW records to the 230 LW a/c losses that I mentioned. They are a/c lost from the right units, in the right areas. its about as accurate as possible in the confusing state in france in the summer of 1940


The figures I have seen is over a 1000 LW a/c claimed by all the French flown fighters, not just by the H 75 units; while the likely actual number shot down by French flown fighters is 355.
Secret Défense - Mai-Juin 40 : le mythe des "1000 victoires" aériennes définitivement explosé - Libération.fr


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## pbehn (Feb 26, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Leaping back to the P-36, it's first flight was in 1935, the same year as the Bf109. I also wonder if we'd be having this conversation had the USAAC/USAAF not assigned a new designation when Curtiss stuck a V-12 into the P-36.



It wasn't perception, it was actual * fact *_at a particular point in time or a particular time period. _
You can look at the test reports for the P-36 and P-40 and see how much power was needed for certain speeds. It was also estimated that the P-36 had 22% more drag than the early P-40s when you figured power available to speed achieved.
However the state of the art for either type of installation did not stay static, both were evolving and the air cooled camp caught up (mostly). P & W by 1942 had a radial engine test bed P-40 (with the 2 stage R-1830) that showed only an 8% difference in drag compared to the Allison. What could be achieved by 1945 I have no figures for. 
In the very late 30s or first few years of the 40s the difference was there and it was real.
This also gets intermingled with the fact that exhaust thrust was much easier to set up on a V-12.[/QUOTE]
There was also the perception that Water cooled V engines were complex and sophisticated while air cooled engines were staid low tech "cooking" technology. I think you posted earlier the finning on later model air cooled radials which is a work of art itself and complex to achieve. The British were frequently caught in a "needs must" situation, in 1940 the Merlin was pretty much the only dog in the fight, everything else was having problems. Proritising this over that and then that over this resulted in its post war four engine bombers having water cooled V12 engines, its best fighter had an air cooled radial engine while the fastest twin prop fighter still had Merlins and almost identical performance to the aircooled radial engine Grumman Tigercat.


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## tomo pauk (Feb 26, 2018)

pbehn said:


> ...
> Proritising this over that and then that over this resulted in its post war four engine bombers having water cooled V12 engines, its best fighter had an air cooled radial engine while the fastest twin prop fighter still had Merlins and almost identical performance to the aircooled radial engine Grumman Tigercat.



Sea Hornet was 15-30 mph faster than Tigercat (despite 15% less power) , difference being greater as altitude is increased. Sea Hornet climbed better and was with greater range, while RAF's Hornet was still a better performer.


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## SuperFire (Feb 26, 2018)

Re: P-40 vs. ME-109 early. Dog-fighting is an art at gun range. Certainly knowing the technical abilities of one's machine is critical, but never discount inspired imagination over dicipline in a one-on-one fight. The Germans were a far more disciplined fighting force than the French were, but they--on the whole--lacked the individuality of the French pilots. In an organized attack they were superior. One on one, they were at a loss to the chaos of imagination and passion.  Being essentially "nuts" and highly aggressive counts for a lot in the clutch.


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## Shortround6 (Feb 26, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> I have a feeling this is going to make me rather unpopular but im afraid that one or two exceptions aside, for me its the B-17.
> The B-17 was a 1930's design. With a shaky start (The prototype crashed on 30 October 1935, with test-pilot Major Ployer Peter Hill and Boeing employee Les Tower killed in the accident) And the contract was almost awarded to the Douglas B-18. But the airforce still had faith it was a sound bomber. And indeed it was. And as we know the B-17 doesnt stand alone in being a flawed concept. No matter how many guns you add to a bomber its meat and potatoes to enemy fighters. But why single out the B-17? Well for one it was basically obsolete by 1942/3 and with a tiny bomb capacity of just 4000lbs a mosquito could have done the same job without the terrible loss of men and machines. Without fighter cover daylight bombing was just suicide. And the B-17 holds the record for the most aircraft lost in one mission. To fly in daylight was suicide and the B-17's only saving grace was that it could absorb severe damage. A Lancaster could carry 14,000lbs standard in comparison and 22,000lb grandslam if modified. It's also overlooked that mechanical problems plagued the Boeing bomber, and their daylight high-altitude bombing accuracy turned out to be much less than advertised. The RAF tested a batch of B-17's and were less than impressed with the results. The test came to a dubious end after three of the 20 airplanes were lost to enemy action, five were destroyed in accidents, and the rest were grounded due to mechanical failure. In 39 sorties, only 18 Flying Fortresses managed to actually bomb a target. Only two bombs were believed to have actually hit the targets they were aimed at—and not a single German fighter had fallen to the Fortresses’ guns. The same goes for the B-29. A super fortress that inherited nearly all the flaws of its older brother and then some. The pressurization ended up being made redundant thanks to the gulf stream ruining any chance of high altitude bombing. The fact it could carry a few more bombs a little further is not much of a return. So there it is, the Boeing B family. Overrated but hey thats just my opinion coupled with some facts.
> 
> One last thing. I see some chaps mentioned the P-51 and Fw-190 as being overrated. That's absolutely absurd



Them thar is fighting words Smokey 

When making claims like that it is best to have all your ducks in a row and unfortunately your ducks are different breeds in different ponds.

Crash of prototype had nothing to do with the qualities of the aircraft, good or bad. They tried to take off without unlocking the control surfaces. Gust locks had been installed to keep the large control surfaces from flapping around in the wind and getting damaged. One thing that came of this accident was take-off check lists. Douglas got the contract, in large part, because a twin engine bomber was cheaper than a 4 engine. They could get a lot more planes for the money ( first order for B-18s was a whopping 82 aircraft) 

The 4000lb bomb load is a furphy that just will not go away. It seems to have got it's start in an offhand quote from a General to a war correspondent. B-17s routinely carried 5000lb loads to Berlin and 6000lbs on occasion to Berlin and often on shorter flights. The element of truth to the 4000lb load is that while the Berlin bound B-17s carried 5000lbs of iron bombs the ones carrying incendiaries carried a bit over 3000lbs so the average was 4000lbs. 
A B-17, with the external bomb racks (seldom used) could get 17,000lbs off the ground, it just couldn't go very far with it.  
External racks would hold a pair of 4000lb bombs (or smaller) and did not block the bomb bay. 
Mosquitoes could not carry the 4000lb cookie until 1944 so what they could or could not carry makes little difference to B-17s in action in 1942/43. Mosquitoes carried four 500lbs inside and two outside at best for the first year or more of operation. And they very rarely carried incendiaries except for target marking. 

The British "test" was flawed for a bunch of reasons. Despite being told that the B-17Cs they got weren't really ready for combat the British used them anyway, in the typical British "penny packet" numbers, rarely more than 3 aircraft per mission, which is hardly enough to set up the defensive formation quantity of fire the 'theory' depended on. The as fitted armament consisted of a single manually operated .50 cal out each waist window, one, 50 cal out the back of a ventral tub and the fourth out the top of the radio compartment, however field of fire and indeed field of view for the dorsal gunner were best described as restricted.




There was one additional .30 cal or .50 cal in the nose. British were using either two or three power turrets in most of their bombers at this point and why they thought that a handful of manually aimed .50 cal guns was such a big improvement as to allow daylight operation is beyond me. 

The B-17E was already on order when the RAF got their 20 Fortress MK Is and with double the number of guns and twin dorsal and ventral power turrets the firepower was significantly higher. Still not enough as it turned out but there was reason to discount earlier experience.

BTW you might want to check on that just a few more bombs a little bit further for the B-29 comparison also.

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## XBe02Drvr (Feb 26, 2018)

I'm with Smokey. But I go a little further. Boeing products have been victims of overhype from Alpha to Omega. As befits the biggest planemaker in the land that brought you Madison Avenue.
But it doesn't start with the B-17. With the notable exception of the 747 and possibly the 727, practically everything they've built has fallen short of its advertising. From the post WW1 biplane fighters, the Pshooter, the B-9, the 247, and on through the Stratocruiser, B-47 (a slippery, treacherous machine), B-52 (a sitting duck: Hanoi 12/'72), right on up to the 787(lithium battery fires), each has left a lot to be desired. In many cases, they were immediately followed by another manufacturer's product which was more developed but didn't beat them to market. (DC-3, B-10, B-24, DC-6/7)
I make exceptions for the 747, which was/is an outstanding achievement and deserves the hype, and the 727, which nailed the S-duct issue that had stood in the way of trijet design for several years.
My girlfriend, who spent the last couple years of her career flying 737-800s, likened it to " a Model A Ford retrofitted with a drive by wire system and an awesome stereo". A nice flying airframe, but not a fully integrated high tech airplane like the Embraers and Canadairs she'd been flying. 21st century electronics shoehorned into a 20th century airframe.
The one place where Smokey and I part ways is the P-51. Fantastic airplane, but one in a cluster of fantastic airplanes, and not the be-all and end-all the hype would have you believe.
Cheers,
Wes
PS: I know you guys SY, SR, DR, TP, BillR, Greg, and Biff, are going to pick me apart on this, but to quote MacBeth, "Lay on, MacDuff!". Burnham Wood is not yet come to Dunsinane.

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## Shortround6 (Feb 26, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> The P-36 with better R-1830 in that light does not sound bad. The P-66 with that engine sounds even better.
> While a thing or two can be pointed out to the pinsong's proposal (I do it often, not just to him  ), even the over-weight F4F-4 was good for service ceiling of 33000 ft, and the F4F-3 was supposedly good for more than 37000 ft.


and this is where the comparison or usefulness of the service ceiling comes in. The Wildcats didn't really fight at 30,000ft and up over Guadalcanal, but they could fight at 20-30,000ft much better than the P-40s and P-39s could at those altitudes.
I would also note that the "book" figures for ceilings apply to a 'standard' 59 degree F day at sea level and the corresponding temperature at altitude.
Go to the tropics and/or North African dessert and the temperature (and thus air density) at even 30,000ft is quite a bit warmer. Warmer/less dense air means less lift from wing and less power from the engine and a propeller with less bite so you can have a several thousand foot reduction in "practical" ceiling vrs the book numbers. For the Wildcat with a "book" number of 33-37K being reduced to 30-33K means you can still fight at 25-26K, If your "book" number was 29.5K then you are in deep crap trying to fight at over 20,000ft.

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## Shortround6 (Feb 26, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> I'm with Smokey. But I go a little further. Boeing products have been victims of overhype from Alpha to Omega. As befits the biggest planemaker in the land that brought you Madison Avenue.
> But it doesn't start with the B-17. With the notable exception of the 747 and possibly the 727, practically everything they've built has fallen short of its advertising. From the post WW1 biplane fighters, the B-9, the 247, and on through the Stratocruiser, B-47 (a slippery, treacherous machine), B-52 (a sitting duck: Hanoi 12/'72), right on up to the 787(lithium battery fires), each has left a lot to be desired. In many cases, they were immediately followed by another manufacturer's product which was more developed but didn't beat them to market. (DC-3, B-10, B-24, DC-6/7)
> I make exceptions for the 747, which was/is an outstanding achievement and deserves the hype, and the 727, which nailed the S-duct issue that had stood in the way of trijet design for several years.
> My girlfriend, who spent the last couple years of her career flying 737-800s, likened it to " a Model A Ford retrofitted with a drive by wire system and an awesome stereo". A nice flying airframe, but not a fully integrated high tech airplane like the Embraers and Canadairs she'd been flying. 21st century electronics shoehorned into a 20th century airframe.
> ...



I might have less trouble with the position if different arguments were used. However many of Smokey's arguments/facts were either not true or don't really apply. 
Plenty of good aircraft had the first prototype crash and a lot of them for something that was actually wrong with the aircraft and not a pilot/crew error. 

You also have to lay some of the blame on the customers at times. Or the users, In the case of the B-52 not quite the same thing, the customers were the guys who ordered the thing in the late 1940s and early 50s, The users who sent it over Hanoi in 1972 had been lieutenants or captains when it was purchased. 
Misapplication isn't quite Boeing's fault. 
While the Stratocruiser (307) wasn't really one of the worlds greats neither was the DC-4E.





1 built, sold to Japan just before WW II  
Had next to nothing to do with the DC-4 except the 4 engines and the DC-4 designation.

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## XBe02Drvr (Feb 26, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The users who sent it over Hanoi in 1972 had been lieutenants or captains when it was purchased.


And the users who flew it were in diapers!

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## XBe02Drvr (Feb 26, 2018)

Friend of mine talked with a young AF pilot who delivered a BUFF to the boneyard and was looking through old logs to discover it was commanded on its first operational mission by his grandfather!
Cheers,
Wes

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## Shortround6 (Feb 26, 2018)

We are getting a bit far of the track but on the B-52, is it a great plane because it has lasted as long as it has or Congress is too cheap to buy replacements?

I don't think when it was designed they ever thought it would last this long. Granted all the ones in service have been rebuilt/overhauled a number of times but it was originally designed to attack at high altitudes and when that mode of attack became non-viable (due to AA missiles) they adopted a low altitude, ground hugging attack profile which, by pure chance, the B-52 with it's long flexible wings could actual do. trouble was every hour spent at low altitude was worth 5-10 hours of high altitude flight in stress life for the airframe. Then you get to Vietnam and some genius/s decide to attack North Vietnam at similar altitudes and speeds to the attack profile deemed useless back in the late 50s due to...... wait for it.............the same AA missiles and AA guns the Russians had in the late 50s.  which North Vietnam now had in abundance. 
Granted the B-52s in 1972 had better electronic jammers but come on!

I have no idea if Boeing was selling the Air Force the new jammers or not


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## pbehn (Feb 26, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Sea Hornet was 15-30 mph faster than Tigercat (despite 15% less power) , difference being greater as altitude is increased. Sea Hornet climbed better and was with greater range, while RAF's Hornet was still a better performer.


I would say they were pretty comparable given the extra seat and armament of the Tigercat. My point was that through all the theorising and experimentation at the end of the propeller era two planes with completely different engines turned in just about the same, If the Hornet was superior then that shows that any previous bias towards water cooled V12s had some merit. Personally I don't think there was any bias and just as a jet engine isn't simple because it has only one moving part, air cooled radials were in no way simple or even cheap because they didn't have a water jacket. Their need for heat resistant and thermo conductive alloys and to be able to operate across a big temperature range made them just as complex.

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## XBe02Drvr (Feb 26, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Their need for heat resistant and thermo conductive alloys and to be able to operate across a big temperature range made them just as complex.


Not to mention the lubrication issues that go with that temperature and BMEP.
CHEERS,
Wes

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## pbehn (Feb 26, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The British "test" was flawed for a bunch of reasons. Despite being told that the B-17Cs they got weren't really ready for combat the British used them anyway, in the typical British "penny packet" numbers, rarely more than 3 aircraft per mission, which is hardly enough to set up the defensive formation quantity of fire the 'theory' depended on. The as fitted armament consisted of a single manually operated .50 cal out each waist window, one, 50 cal out the back of a ventral tub and the fourth out the top of the radio compartment, however field of fire and indeed field of view for the dorsal gunner were best described as restricted..


The British only ever received a penny packet number of B-17Cs, twenty in total. I have read precisely the opposite comments from the British side. That is the Americans said they were fit for service and the British said they weren't, The Americans concluding that the British didn't want it to work and so they didn't make it. From what I read there were lots of niggling problems with things icing up, not only guns but also oxygen systems and instruments. The idea of protective covering fire with the defence of a B-17C (fortress I) was a complete myth, a major problem was vapour trails as I remember.


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## XBe02Drvr (Feb 26, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The idea of protective covering fire with the defence of a B-17C (fortress I) was a complete myth, a major problem was vapour trails as I remember.


The USAAC hadn't experienced any actual combat since WW1, and their thinking encompassed P-26 class opposition. When the B-17 came out, it was nearly as fast as fighters then in service, and thus amenable to the "lightly armed fast bomber" concept. When fighter performance and armament "took off", bomber think didn't keep up on this side of the pond.
Cheers,
Wes

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## parsifal (Feb 26, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> The figures I have seen is over a 1000 LW a/c claimed by all the French flown fighters, not just by the H 75 units; while the likely actual number shot down by French flown fighters is 355.
> Secret Défense - Mai-Juin 40 : le mythe des "1000 victoires" aériennes définitivement explosé - Libération.fr



No the initial claims for LW losses to h-75 units was more than 1000 LW a/c. it is coincidental that this number coincides with total loss claims made by the FAF

In fact, if FAF were claiming to have shot down only 1000 LW aircraft, they would be seriously under claiming LW losses, as Overy clearly explains. 

LW losses were substantially higher than that. 

In May and June 1940 the Luftwaffe lost 1,482 aircraft destroyed in the air and a further 488 written off on landing. A further 219 were written off after being returned to the factories. Calculated losses inflicted by the RAF and the minors amounted to no more than 650 LW a/c. By deduction that means the FAF caused the loss of over 1500 LW aircraft, either as direct shoot downs or subsequent write offs. Because the campaign was so short, relatively few of the LW machines were lost in non-combat related incidents. Ive read somewhere it was in the order 200 a/c. French flak was negligible, perhaps 50 LW a/c in total. The lions share of LW losses were at the hands of the French fighter forces, which tore into the LW causing it damage from which it never recovered fully. 

The FAF destroyed more LW a/c than they (the French) had on strength at the beginning of the campaign The LW lost nearly half their total strength at the start of the battle, and well above the replacement rate from the factories. As the battle continued, the lack of large air reserves began to tell and French fighter aircraft began to inflict some severe losses on the LW. Allied air tactics, learned in the harsh school of battle, started to improve. Over the evacuation beaches at Dunkirk the Luftwaffe lost 240 aircraft in three days of fighting and von Kleist was forced to report “enemy air superiority (FC is believed to have been responsible for the loss of about 100 LW a/c, nearly all of the rest were at the hands of the FAF. 

Accidents, battlefield attrition, and Allied attacks on airfields all took their toll. Pilot losses were high, and by the end of the battle exhaustion and frayed nerves reduced Luftwaffe effectiveness even more. Their sortie rate fell from around 4 per airframe at the start of the campaign, to just under two per day at finish, whilst FAF moved in reverse, starting at 0.9 per day per a/c to about 2.1 sorties per day at the end.

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## swampyankee (Feb 26, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> I'm with Smokey. But I go a little further. Boeing products have been victims of overhype from Alpha to Omega. As befits the biggest planemaker in the land that brought you Madison Avenue.
> But it doesn't start with the B-17. With the notable exception of the 747 and possibly the 727, practically everything they've built has fallen short of its advertising. From the post WW1 biplane fighters, the Pshooter, the B-9, the 247, and on through the Stratocruiser, B-47 (a slippery, treacherous machine), B-52 (a sitting duck: Hanoi 12/'72), right on up to the 787(lithium battery fires), each has left a lot to be desired. In many cases, they were immediately followed by another manufacturer's product which was more developed but didn't beat them to market. (DC-3, B-10, B-24, DC-6/7)
> I make exceptions for the 747, which was/is an outstanding achievement and deserves the hype, and the 727, which nailed the S-duct issue that had stood in the way of trijet design for several years.
> My girlfriend, who spent the last couple years of her career flying 737-800s, likened it to " a Model A Ford retrofitted with a drive by wire system and an awesome stereo". A nice flying airframe, but not a fully integrated high tech airplane like the Embraers and Canadairs she'd been flying. 21st century electronics shoehorned into a 20th century airframe.
> ...



Actually, I never worked for Boeing, so I've no axe to grind, either way. Until the 707, Boeing was largely kept afloat by its military contracts; only when they were able to steal a march on Douglas, and get the 707 into service before the DC-8 did they really become a significant player in the commercial airline market. Boeing has survived its US competition -- Lockheed gave up commercial aviation and Douglas was having financial issues when it was merged with McDonnell, and McD/D's MD-11 follow-on to the DC-10 never met its guarantees, didn't sell, and probably put McD/D's finances into a tail spin.

The DC-2 and DC-3 pretty much killed the 247 in the market; probably about 120 times more DC-4s were built than 307s, Boeing built 56 377s; Douglas built over 700 DC-6s and over 300 DC-7s. Lockheed built about 400 commercial Constellations. Of course, Lockheed built the L-188 Electra, which promptly developed a rather bad reputation due to a sub-synchronous whirl mode. Convair tried, and failed, with the 880/990.


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## Stig1207 (Feb 27, 2018)

parsifal said:


> No the initial claims for LW losses to h-75 units was more than 1000 LW a/c. it is coincidental that this number coincides with total loss claims made by the FAF
> 
> In fact, if FAF were claiming to have shot down only 1000 LW aircraft, they would be seriously under claiming LW losses, as Overy clearly explains.
> 
> ...



Total LW operational losses, destroyed and written off were in the 1400-1500 range, but to all causes, not destroyed in the air.


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## parsifal (Feb 27, 2018)

you will have to take that up with overy and murray, who tell a different story


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## Stig1207 (Feb 27, 2018)

Perhaps take it up with the French?
La contribution des données chiffrées à la construction d’un mythe....
I don't read the language, but with a bit of Google translating, it shows that even the French don't support your assessment.


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## Smokey Stover (Feb 27, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Them thar is fighting words Smokey
> 
> When making claims like that it is best to have all your ducks in a row and unfortunately your ducks are different breeds in different ponds.
> 
> ...


Ok i admit i was a little unfair. And some of my facts where on the lamb. But there is little doubt that without the P-51 there is no way the airwar over europe would have ended so quickly. And if the 17 really was such a great aircraft why did they replace/build so many B-24's. Im not saying it was a bad aircraft. I just think its looks and fond memories of the lucky crews that made it back have overshadowed its capabilities. But i concede to some of your points. Just one last thing, the bombload was not increased until the B-17F came online and that was still only 8,000lbs. But at a cost. By using a stronger undercarriage, the maximum bomb capacity was increased from 4,200 lb (1,900 kg) to 8,000 lb (3,600 kg). Though this modification reduced cruise speed by 70 mph (And it was never what one would call fast to begin with) (110 km/h), the increase in bomb capacity was a decided advantage. But a number of other modifications were made, including re-integrating external bomb racks, but because of its negative impact on both rate-of-climb and high-altitude flight the configuration was rarely used and the racks were removed.


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## Smokey Stover (Feb 27, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> I'm with Smokey. But I go a little further. Boeing products have been victims of overhype from Alpha to Omega. As befits the biggest planemaker in the land that brought you Madison Avenue.
> But it doesn't start with the B-17. With the notable exception of the 747 and possibly the 727, practically everything they've built has fallen short of its advertising. From the post WW1 biplane fighters, the Pshooter, the B-9, the 247, and on through the Stratocruiser, B-47 (a slippery, treacherous machine), B-52 (a sitting duck: Hanoi 12/'72), right on up to the 787(lithium battery fires), each has left a lot to be desired. In many cases, they were immediately followed by another manufacturer's product which was more developed but didn't beat them to market. (DC-3, B-10, B-24, DC-6/7)
> I make exceptions for the 747, which was/is an outstanding achievement and deserves the hype, and the 727, which nailed the S-duct issue that had stood in the way of trijet design for several years.
> My girlfriend, who spent the last couple years of her career flying 737-800s, likened it to " a Model A Ford retrofitted with a drive by wire system and an awesome stereo". A nice flying airframe, but not a fully integrated high tech airplane like the Embraers and Canadairs she'd been flying. 21st century electronics shoehorned into a 20th century airframe.
> ...


Im a big supporter of the P-51 as i said below. How anyone could say that fighter was overrated is beyond me. Had it not been for that fighter the loss rate of 17's would have been so bad daylight raids would have surely been halted. Infact after the disaster at Ragensberg & Schweinfurt the US top brass were ready to switch to night bombing along with the British.


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## parsifal (Feb 27, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Perhaps take it up with the French?
> La contribution des données chiffrées à la construction d’un mythe....
> I don't read the language, but with a bit of Google translating, it shows that even the French don't support your assessment.



I suggest you get another translator. I do speak a little French and it is saying that essentially the question of losses is controversial and hard to conform, but at least 1000 Luftwaffe aircraft were destroyed in the air by the FAF, A/c destroyed in the air don't include aircraft that landed and were then written off. If you do include those numbers, losses inflicted on the LW by the French begin to climb toward the 1500 mark. What makes it difficult are that LW records are incomplete and we cant be sure who shot down what.

if you are going to use a foreign language source, it pays to have some idea of what you are posting.


This source does appear to be pretty good, though it is not properly referenced. It is possible that it has partisan positions to promote. There are some notoriously right wing French sources these days.....but it seems okay, thats about all i can say in its favour. But even if it is fairly balanced the centrepiece of its positioning is that it wants to challenge the established and accepted numbers. That's interesting and it is certainly not impossible but it is a far cry from proving anything, other than the author believes the numbers are contentious.


According to Peter Cornwell's "The battle of France then and now": between Sep 1939 to June 10th 1940 Luftwaffe lost 2168 aircrafts and about 3710 air crews killed or missing in the west, of which over 1800 were lost after 10 May. These losses do not include losses in Norway.

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## drgondog (Feb 27, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Im a big supporter of the P-51 as i said below. How anyone could say that fighter was overrated is beyond me. Had it not been for that fighter the loss rate of 17's would have been so bad daylight raids would have surely been halted. Infact after the disaster at Ragensberg & Schweinfurt the US top brass were ready to switch to night bombing along with the British.



It is true that there was significant discussion regarding 'joining RAF' in night bombing in October, 1943. A B-17 BG for training in night operations with H2X was established and Navigators, Bombardiers and Pilots were in fact trained in radar guided attacks.

That said, the issues far outweighed the possible benefits. First the training in the States and supply chain of both bombers (B-17 and B-24) all needed to be modified but only limited kits, and depots, were available with capacity to modify for night opertions - the lead time to 'get operational' was contemplated near mid 1944 to get same bomber force over targets. Second, there was legitimate skepticism that POINTBLANK objectives targeting destruction of aircraft manufacturing centers, Or degrading the LW in time for Overlord, could be achieved with RAF tactics. Third, there was not enough time or airspace to assemble both 8th AF and RAF BC over England without suffering horrendous attrition to accidents. Fourth, the P-51B-1 was arriving in a steady stream in October, 1943 as well as early arrivals of the P-38J, pointing to enough Long Range Escort (with Hoped for capability vs LW Day Fighter arm) to execute ARGUMENT/Big Week as planned for February, 1944. Last, the horrible daylight bombing environment due to northern Europe weather pointed to a 'stand down' for late fall 1943 - time to recover both aircraft and crews while continuing to bomb targets within range of P-47D escort with external pressurized combat tanks, 

Simply stated - at no time was an actual 'switch' to join RAF at night ever seriously planned.

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## SuperFire (Feb 27, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> We are getting a bit far of the track but on the B-52, is it a great plane because it has lasted as long as it has or Congress is too cheap to buy replacements?
> 
> ...



Is this a bad time to bring up space-based weapon systems including lasers and the fact that all conventional warfare is out-moded depending upon reliability and scalablity of the ultimate high-ground? But, black projects have no public proof to back them up; still, why buy new conventional bombers when an invisible beam can zap anything in a micro-second. At least food for thought. Of course the answer might be horrifically sobering about governance and the human races need for conflict.


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## Shortround6 (Feb 27, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Ok i admit i was a little unfair. And some of my facts where on the lamb. But there is little doubt that without the P-51 there is no way the airwar over europe would have ended so quickly. And if the 17 really was such a great aircraft why did they replace/build so many B-24's. Im not saying it was a bad aircraft. I just think its looks and fond memories of the lucky crews that made it back have overshadowed its capabilities. But i concede to some of your points. Just one last thing, the bombload was not increased until the B-17F came online and that was still only 8,000lbs. But at a cost. By using a stronger undercarriage, the maximum bomb capacity was increased from 4,200 lb (1,900 kg) to 8,000 lb (3,600 kg). Though this modification reduced cruise speed by 70 mph (And it was never what one would call fast to begin with) (110 km/h), the increase in bomb capacity was a decided advantage. But a number of other modifications were made, including re-integrating external bomb racks, but because of its negative impact on both rate-of-climb and high-altitude flight the configuration was rarely used and the racks were removed.



The B-17 may have been over hyped, both at the time and in popular writing since then. But I like to do analysis based on facts. 
The B-24 had several advantages over the B-17, unfortunately it also had a few disadvantages which did not come out until it had bee in service for a while.
as to one aircraft replacing another, that gets very difficult some times. 
For the B-17 the big change from the early planes came with the "E" model, This was ordered Aug 30 1940, well before the British had flown a Fortress I let alone used one in combat. It was in production in Sept of 1941 and by Dec 7th over 40 had been built (some were at Pearl harbor) and *plans *were made to produce it at two additional factories. The Vega plant ( a division of Lockheed ) and at a new factory run by Douglas, it takes time to build,equipe and staff factories and by the time these extra factories came on line they wound up building B-17Fs only 512 "E"s were built which is a small number compared to the overall total.
Now simultaneously the B-24 was going into production at Consolidated/San Diego and at Consolidated/Fort Worth and at Douglas/Tulsa. Ford/Detroit and North American/Dallas were brought in By Jan of 1942. First roll out of planes from these factories were months away. 
Trying to swap which factory produced which aircraft could lead to months of lost production not to mention hundreds of tons of parts in the supply chain from subcontractors. B-17 and B-24 used different engines so you either came up with a new model to use up the existing engine manufacturing capability or you changed one or more factories over to make the other engine. IN 1943 alone Chevrolet made over 23,000 P & W R-1830s under licence and Buick made over 24,000 more. Studebaker built over 23,000 Wright R-1820s that year (and almost 50% more in spare parts). 
Changing such programs in mid stream takes some awfully good reasons. 

I would really like to see some evidence that the B-17E or F cruised 70mph slower than the early ones because of changes to the airplane. SO you have to compare at the same altitude and using the same power settings (RPM and Boost) or close to it. Yes they were slower But the 70mph figure is a bit dubious.
Speeds for large formations were often quite a bit lower than what the aircraft could do when flying alone or with only a few companions. 
I would note that weight can play a large part also. And some of the early B-17s the weights they measured the performance at were absurdly low. 

I Know the racks were removed but claiming the B-17 was over rated because the Lancaster could (as modified by 2-3 squadrons worth of aircraft) carry a 22,000lb load is not a very good argument.

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## Smokey Stover (Feb 27, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The B-17 may have been over hyped, both at the time and in popular writing since then. But I like to do analysis based on facts.
> The B-24 had several advantages over the B-17, unfortunately it also had a few disadvantages which did not come out until it had bee in service for a while.
> as to one aircraft replacing another, that gets very difficult some times.
> For the B-17 the big change from the early planes came with the "E" model, This was ordered Aug 30 1940, well before the British had flown a Fortress I let alone used one in combat. It was in production in Sept of 1941 and by Dec 7th over 40 had been built (some were at Pearl harbor) and *plans *were made to produce it at two additional factories. The Vega plant ( a division of Lockheed ) and at a new factory run by Douglas, it takes time to build,equipe and staff factories and by the time these extra factories came on line they wound up building B-17Fs only 512 "E"s were built which is a small number compared to the overall total.
> ...



Ok, i dont mind a bit of intelligent banter. Let me dig out some of my reference notes/stats and i will get back to you.
To be continued....

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## Stig1207 (Feb 27, 2018)

parsifal said:


> I suggest you get another translator. I do speak a little French and it is saying that essentially the question of losses is controversial and hard to conform, but at least 1000 Luftwaffe aircraft were destroyed in the air by the FAF, A/c destroyed in the air don't include aircraft that landed and were then written off. If you do include those numbers, losses inflicted on the LW by the French begin to climb toward the 1500 mark. What makes it difficult are that LW records are incomplete and we cant be sure who shot down what.
> 
> if you are going to use a foreign language source, it pays to have some idea of what you are posting.
> 
> ...



I certainly didn't understand the linked source the way you do, but somehow I don't think getting another translator is going to change that 
So let's step back and review what you wrote earlier:



parsifal said:


> During 1939–1940, French H-75 pilots claimed around 230 kills. Losses were just 29 aircraft in aerial combat. While making up only 12.6% of the French Air Force single-seater fighter force, the H-75 accounted for almost a 33% of the victories during the 1940 Battle of France.



By my reckoning that would make for a total of about 700 victories for FAF fighters. Yet, in subsequent posts you have arrived at a score of 1500 victories for the French? A number that is also some 50% higher than they claimed?

Regrettably, I have not read Cornwell's BoFTN but others obviously have, and it seems that the over 1800 aircraft the Luftwaffe lost was for the period 3.9.1939-24.6.1940.
Luftwaffe losses France, 1940 • Axis History Forum


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## pbehn (Feb 27, 2018)

The Battle of France was not an air battle, it was a land battle to out flank and surround allied forces as quickly as possible. It is completely understandable that L/W sortie rates got lower, the range of missions increased daily. Air forces were involved but Germany had a military dedicated to campaigns, from their side the losses were worth it, overall it was a rout.

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## parsifal (Feb 27, 2018)

The French fighters might have shot down about 700 a/c, but loss tallies are far more than just those shot out of the sky . to be accurate,it needs include all losses, and many aircraft were lost after they had landed.

Your initial objection was that these (corrected) claims were overclaims. I would agree that claims data made at the time were usually grossly inaccurate, but corrected claims are a bit more reliable. not always, but fairly often, corrected claims are okay.

Another way to look at this might be to examine the numbers of LW aircrew captured. About 3500 according to Cambell. What might be the average numbers of aircrew per aircraft? most optimistically, if every one of the shoot downs was a bomber, carrying 4 aircrew, the losses cannot be less than 800aircraft shot down over enemy territory. But it will be less than four aircrew per shoot down ,some of those aircrew will be dead others wont be shot down over enemy territory and still others will make it back but the aircraft will never fly again.



.

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## Glider (Feb 27, 2018)

Anyone reading this thread would think that the French won. Does anyone really think that the H75 had a near 8 - 1 advantage over the Luftwaffe when you consider that lack of radar, organisation and command and control that the French suffered from?. 
I should add that I do believe that the H75 was the best plane they had but it wasn't better than the 109E

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## parsifal (Feb 27, 2018)

The reasons for the allied defeat in NW Europe in the Summer of 1940 are complex. But it was undeniably a defeat.

Some of the more general reasons should include poor command and control, outdated tactical concept, archaic communications, poor use of existing assets like tanks and aircraft.

In the air the defeat has some additional twists. At the top of the list are numbers, and this arose because of the pre-war confusion in the French aircraft industry. Prewar the world witnessed the embarrassing fact that whereas Italy was producing some 200 aircraft per month, the French were languishing at the pitiful 30 a/c per month. It took time to overcome these issues. In the panic that followed, French outputs easily overtook those of Germany, but the aircraft being poured out were new types, requiring extensive conversion training, that was never to occur. 

French tactical concepts in the distribution of air assets were very poor, especially at the beginning. Air assets tended to be allocated a bit at a time to support a particular army command. The result was dilution of effort. The French concepts for air support were poor compared to the LW. They favoured the concept of “Hedge hoppers”, which exposed their attack aircraft to heavy ground fire. The aircraft they used in these operations were not well protected for this work and losses to ground fire were fairly high. The French did not use their attack aircraft intelligently. There tended to be a delay in response times, especially on vital targets like bridges. Such delays allowed the germans to defend these vital targets comprehensively.

There were lots of lesser, but still noteworthy reasons for the defeat, But it is a mistake to equate the overall strategic failures to battlefield failures. In the air, the germans won a resounding strategic victory, and a large part of that victory arose from their intelligent use of airpower. Their aircrews were experienced and effective. But they did not win one sided tactical victories without taking very serious losses. On the contrary, LW loss rates during the battle can be quite forcefully argued as being the a major factor leading to the subsequent failures over England and the USSR. The LW was always a force in which all the assets were ‘in the shop window”. They never carried large reserves, of either pilots or machines, or indeed even spare parts, making the structure very vulnerable to losses. The lack of spares repeatedly meant that in prolonged operations sortie rates would also suffer. The lack of adequate maintenance and repair infrastructure at the front often meant that in prolonged operations there were long repair times. Many aircraft were needed to be sent back to the factories for repairs. In france there were few opportunities for counterattack, but in Russia, many LW a/c were lost to ground counterattacks by the Soviets

Losses on the ground were probably on the other foot. I haven’t read the full account, but according to Terraine, of the 430 hurricanes lost in France and the low countries in May/June 1940, only 80 were lost in air combat. Ive not verified that completely but also I have no reason to doubt it. Allied C&C was just that bad, that the losses on the ground reflected in these numbers are entirely plausible. French MS406 formations suffered similar attrition. The H-75s only lost 29 a/c in air combat, but lost over 100 a/c of that type overall.


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## parsifal (Feb 27, 2018)

Glider said:


> Anyone reading this thread would think that the French won. Does anyone really think that the H75 had a near 8 - 1 advantage over the Luftwaffe when you consider that lack of radar, organisation and command and control that the French suffered from?.
> I should add that I do believe that the H75 was the best plane they had but it wasn't better than the 109E





And those “anyones” would be badly misreading the debate.

It is what it is. The FAF was defeated, comprehensively. Does not mean the LW achieved their victory without suffering heavy losses in doing that.

Similar comparisons can be drawn in the case of the Polish air force. Despite the obvious obsolescence of its fighter, the PZl-11s that they were flying managed to shoot down some 114 Luftwaffe,aircraft in the air. This is more aircraft than there were P-11s in flyable condition at the beginning. Overall the Luftwaffe the lost in excess of 550 a/c in Poland. Doesn’t mean that the LW lost. They just did not achieve their victories in a bloodless way as is so often portrayed.

The misinformation about LW losses serves the victorious (by that I mean British) post war image, who want to portray the BoB as the pivotal battle in which the LW up to that point won cheap and easy victories over the continent, and were not finally defeated until they met the RAF over SE England. For the germans its convenient as well, because it provides their personas with a victory that they can laud, when if the truth came out the myth of their invincibility would be exposed.

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## parsifal (Feb 27, 2018)

Losses in Poland

Germans admitted they lost 285 planes in aerial combats, shot down by AA defence and lost in the crashes.
Amongst them:
63 recon planes
67 Bf-109
12 Bf-110
78 He-111 and Do-17
31 Ju-87 and Hs-123
12 transportation planes (mostly Ju-52)
22 naval and liaison planes
Moreover 263 or 273 (dependeing of German source) planes were damaged and only 70 of them were capable of repairing. Total losses suffered by the LW over Poland amounted to 

The arithmetic suggests the LW suffered 495 unrecoverable losses in or over Poland 

Polish losses:
118 fighters (P11 and P7)
32 of them were shot down by fighters, 10 by bombers, 7 by German air defence and 7 by Polish air defence. 4 were destroyed on the ground. It gives total number 60. The remaining 58 were destroyed due to crashes, damaged due to forced landings, damaged and abandoned.
11 PZL-37 "£o¶" and 2 destroyed on the ground
20 PZL-23 "Kara¶"
7 recon planes (3 R-XIII, 2 RWD-8, 2 Fokker F-VIIb)
Polish bombers shot down 13 Bf-109 (5 shot down by PZL-37 and 8 by PZL-23).
1 Bf-109 crashed while it attacked training plane PWS-26
One should add 1 Bf-109 shot down by Cpt. Boles³aw Le¶niewski from 55 eskadra (according to German sources he shot down 2 Bf-109 in a single flight). 

There is a mountain of source material to support these numbers. 

The Poles were even more outnumbered, also didn’t have radar, and their command system fragmented and dislocated by the german attacks. Why is it that they could mount an (ultimately) unsuccessful defence, yet extract such a heavy toll out of the LW, with worse a/c, and the French could not?

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## pbehn (Feb 27, 2018)

parsifal said:


> The misinformation about LW losses serves the victorious (by that I mean British) post war image, who want to portray the BoB as the pivotal battle in which the LW up to that point won cheap and easy victories over the continent, and were not finally defeated until they met the RAF over SE England. For the germans its convenient as well, because it provides their personas with a victory that they can laud, when if the truth came out the myth of their invincibility would be exposed.


I cannot agree to this conclusion. Firstly, the BoB was always portrayed in anything I read as the first time Germany had been stopped doing what it wanted to do. The strength of the LW at the start of the conflict, that is, after the Battle of France is stated as it was. There is always a disagreement about numbers but they are broadly similar. Secondly, in the previously quoted victories many were Ju87s, which were Germany's airborne artillery. They may have shot some down even a lot down but they didn't stop the army below doing what it wanted to do. After the first days of the war the Bf 109s were operating at increasing range and so their capacity to escort and protect became reduced. The French (like the B.E.F.) may have had some Stuka parties and other successes but down below their airfields were being over run. Thirdly the Germans didn't care about air losses, Goering was shocked at the reduction in strength of the LW prior to the BoB but he was the man in charge and he had paid no attention to it. The campaigns in Poland, Netherlands, Belgium and France had been a success. To reduce air to air losses with a more conservative approach may well have slowed up things on the ground and created a front over which losses would be much greater and eventual defeat almost certain. 
This is an aviation forum which sometimes attaches far too much importance to what happened in the air.


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## swampyankee (Feb 27, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Losses in Poland
> 
> Germans admitted they lost 285 planes in aerial combats, shot down by AA defence and lost in the crashes.
> Amongst them:
> ...



...and the Polish Air Force's aircraft were, on average, probably inferior to those of the Armée de l'Air, and the Polish Air Force had to deal with the Soviets on its other border.

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## parsifal (Feb 27, 2018)

We should probably apologise at this point. We have moved away from “most overrated aircraft” to “most overrated air force”. I don’t have a problem with that but some may. We need to be careful not to stray too far off topic.

In reply to your concerns about the point I have made.

1) _Firstly, the BoB was always portrayed in anything I read as the first time Germany had been stopped doing what it wanted to do_

I don’t disagree with that. I do disagree that in those earlier victories, the Luftwaffe did it easily. It did not. It suffered heavy casualties that affected it later.

2) _The strength of the LW at the start of the conflict, that is, after the Battle of France is stated as it was. There is always a disagreement about numbers but they are broadly similar_

Strongly disagree with that statement. Prior to the campaigns in the west, as of the end of March, LW returns including reserves was 3500 flyable airframes. By the end of the BoF it was under 1500. By the start of August it had recovered back to about 2800 and then levelled off, as the training schools were combed out to provide fillers for lost billets. The LW was already showing signs of combat stress by the time it went into battle over SE England 

3) _They may have shot some down even a lot down but they didn't stop the army below doing what it wanted to do_.

This relates to two things, the doctrinal advantages the LW enjoyed and secondly the numbers they enjoyed. And factually it does ignore what happened over Dunkirk, or are you suggesting the LW let the BEF and the French 1st army group escape because they wanted them to???? Kleist was reporting that the LW had lost air superiority over that sector don’t forget. People do tend to forget these details, papering over the cracks of the myths that we have all come to believe in.

4) _The Germans didn't care about air losses, Goering was shocked at the reduction in strength of the LW prior to the BoB but he was the man in charge and he had paid no attention to it. The campaigns in Poland, Netherlands, Belgium and France had been a success._

The luftwaffes defeat was caught up against the losses it was sustaining and the inability to adequately replace those losses. It was a very shallow outfit, lacking the depth and resilience to undertake sustained heavy combat on a continuous basis. The Luftwaffe was structured towards short, sharp campaigns, with relatively long pauses between the campaigns. Whilst that tempo could be maintained they were going to win, if the war dynamic changed, they were going to lose.

The LW was in more or less continuous combat from April 1940. There were some periods that were quieter, but no periods of complete rest. This explains why in June 1941, the LW was the same or similar strength to what it had been prewar. By comparison, the RAF had tripled in size. In that intervening 22 month, from 9/39 to 6/41, the LW had lost 15000 airframes, roughly three times its force structure. A percentage of those losses occurred in the BoF. 

_5) After the first days of the war the Bf 109s were operating at increasing range and so their capacity to escort and protect became reduced. The French (like the B.E.F.) may have had some Stuka parties and other successes but down below their airfields were being over run_

Bf109s also suffered from increasing serviceability issues. This slowed down their sortie rate as moreso over the increasing distances you mentioned. The very airfields you spoke about that were captured were quickly used by the LW as advanced airbases for LW a/c. conversely the allies were forced back to airfields across the channel and behind Paris, relatively speaking much further from the fighting than the advance LW bases, yet both the RAF and FAF increased their sortie rates, whilst the LW slumped. 

6) _To reduce air to air losses with a more conservative approach may well have slowed up things on the ground and created a front over which losses would be much greater and eventual defeat almost certain. This is an aviation forum which sometimes attaches far too much importance to what happened in the air._

German doctrine was an advantage, but tying one arm behind their backs and not providing the necessary logistic support to support their ambitions war plans was bordering on the criminal from the german perspective. Having made the decision to go to war, Germany absolutely needed to back up their war effort by going to a full war footing and stop loping along as if they were on a summer holiday romp. In this regard the British, even the French, were miles in front of the Germans. Their arrogance that they could win a war without raising a sweat is appalling history. They could have won, but chose to lose!!! Who does that!!!!!

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## Smokey Stover (Feb 27, 2018)

I think its fair to say the French airforce ranged from the ridiculous to the fanatical. But sadly the result was much the same. France upon realizing they were about to be overrun tried to get the RAF to deplete all its air strength in a futile attempt to stop a german invasion that by then was already happening. Records show the French airforce contributed little, and what they did contribute was used in totally the wrong way, not to mention heavily overestimated success wise. I agree that this was a ground war not an aerial war like the bob. And the whole French army/BEF were caught napping by the germans and didnt even realize their mistake until it was too late.
As Stalin said "How the hell did they let them (germany) capture half of europe so easily" Im sure he probably thought it was some kind of ploy against russia itself. And tbh who could blame him!


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## wuzak (Feb 27, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> I Know the racks were removed but claiming the B-17 was over rated because the Lancaster could (as modified by 2-3 squadrons worth of aircraft) carry a 22,000lb load is not a very good argument.



I believe only 617 squadron was equipped to carry the 22,000lb Grand Slam.

9 Squadron was the second to carry the 12,000lb Tallboy bomb, after 617, but I believe the mods required for that were minor, amounting to bulged bomb bay doors, which were also required to carry the 12,000lb HC blockbuster bomb.

The Lancaster could, of course, carry up to 14,000lb of smaller sized bombs - 500lb to 4,000lb. Just the fact that the Lancaster could carry the 4,000lb MC or HC bombs internally made it useful. The B-17 could not, due to its bomb bay size restrictions.

The Manchester could carry over 10,000lb of bombs, though not very high or far.


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## Shortround6 (Feb 27, 2018)

The Under wing racks were used on occasion. Near the end of the war several missions were flown using a pair of 4,500lb rocket assisted concrete penetrating bombs, called Disney bombs. A British designed and built bomb it was only ever dropped from B-17s.

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## Stig1207 (Feb 28, 2018)

parsifal said:


> The French fighters might have shot down about 700 a/c, but loss tallies are far more than just those shot out of the sky . to be accurate,it needs include all losses, and many aircraft were lost after they had landed.
> 
> Your initial objection was that these (corrected) claims were overclaims. I would agree that claims data made at the time were usually grossly inaccurate, but corrected claims are a bit more reliable. not always, but fairly often, corrected claims are okay.


The corrected claims might also be 355-500 per French sources. Now what about the 1500 that you also have given as the number of French victories compared to about a 1000 that they claimed?




parsifal said:


> Losses on the ground were probably on the other foot. I haven’t read the full account, but according to Terraine, of the 430 hurricanes lost in France and the low countries in May/June 1940, only 80 were lost in air combat. Ive not verified that completely but also


Norman Franks in FC losses vol. 1 writes ' only 75 Hurricanes losses were directly due to combat in the period _*May10-21* _' from memory as I no longer have the book at hand. 
Bemusingly he then goes on to list 180 Hurricane losses, mostly to combat, with some 140 lost in air combat. Losses include damaged aircraft, and the text is not always clear on whether force landed aircraft were abandoned right away or later or actually recovered.


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## swampyankee (Feb 28, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> I think its fair to say the French airforce ranged from the ridiculous to the fanatical. But sadly the result was much the same. France upon realizing they were about to be overrun tried to get the RAF to deplete all its air strength in a futile attempt to stop a german invasion that by then was already happening. Records show the French airforce contributed little, and what they did contribute was used in totally the wrong way, not to mention heavily overestimated success wise. I agree that this was a ground war not an aerial war like the bob. And the whole French army/BEF were caught napping by the germans and didnt even realize their mistake until it was too late.
> As Stalin said "How the hell did they let them (germany) capture half of europe so easily" Im sure he probably thought it was some kind of ploy against russia itself. And tbh who could blame him!



I think the comment “France...tried to get the RAF to deplete its air strength ...” assumes the French thought the British were naive and altruistic, whereas the general assumption of the French government was closer to the British being selfish and untrustworthy: after all, it was the British who did nothing and even fought France in their attempts to limit German re-militarization. As for Stalin? This was a man who refused to believe Hitler would break their bilateral non-aggression pact, despite warnings, even after German troops were invading. 

The RAF was in France to help Britain; helping France would be a side effect. 

France lost for a mix of military reasons and domestic political ones, the latter probably responsible for many of the military ones, including the poor state of the French Air Force.

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## parsifal (Feb 28, 2018)

corrected claims are not 355-400, they are 700-800 for direct shoot downs. Total losses for the LW as a result of French action are in the order of 1500,given that total losses for the LW, per several good sources from may 1 to June 25 for the LW exceed 2000 a/c (many loss lists don't include losses like write offs or noncombat losses. a loss is a loss is a loss in my book). Your sources incidentally are not saying what you are claiming they say. They are not saying 350-400 losses for the LW, they are not saying that losses are 700 or even 1000. They are saying that previous claims have tended to understate the efforts of the FAF, and that overall losses for the LW during that campaign remain rather shrouded. I will prefer Campbell and his verifiable lists any day thank you. I just wish I had my copy right now

Stop claiming that your sources are saying something when they don't.

As to "what about your claim about losses being 1500? I can only SAY AGAIN, for you to read some of the source material that Ive quoted, rather than making it up, or misrepresenting what you have posted.


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## Peter Gunn (Feb 28, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Peter Cornwell's "The battle of France then and now"



I admit to a huge gap in my knowledge of the Battle of France and would like to rectify that issue. This sounds like a good place to start, any other suggestions?

Thanks


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## parsifal (Feb 28, 2018)

A few suggestions 

Amazon product
_View: https://www.amazon.com/Lose-Battle-France-1940/dp/0141030658_


Maybe 

Frieser, The Blitzkrieg Legend

E. R. Hooton,"Phoenix Triumphant" 
Cornwells book though is formidable. He details every single known losses of German, British,France, Italy,Dutch and Belgian aircrafts loss

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## Ascent (Feb 28, 2018)

I would definitely agree about'To lose a battle' it's an excellent read and covers the political position and industrial unrest leading into the war. It's been on my shelf for years and and gets re-read every so often.


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## Stig1207 (Feb 28, 2018)

I'm not making up or misrepresenting anything, Parsifal.
You mentioned Murray in passing previously, so I guess that is a good enough source for you?

May-June 1940
Destroyed on operations:
Due to enemy action 1,129
Not due enemy action 216
Destroyed not on operations 83
Total: 1,428
Damaged are respectively 225; 183 and 80.
Total destroyed and damaged 1,916


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## pbehn (Feb 28, 2018)

parsifal said:


> 1) _Firstly, the BoB was always portrayed in anything I read as the first time Germany had been stopped doing what it wanted to do_
> 
> I don’t disagree with that. I do disagree that in those earlier victories, the Luftwaffe did it easily. It did not. It suffered heavy casualties that affected it later.
> 
> ...



I disagreed with your post saying that the British downplayed the performance of the Poles Czechs Dutch and French while exaggerating the power of the LW for their own ends. The fact is that they all fell very quickly. The British overestimated both the strength of the LW and Germany's aircraft production. German propaganda in this respect was so successful that the RAF shot down non existent aircraft in the BoB. Until long after the war only LW records showed how many aircraft were lost and what their strength at any time was.

After the BoB, nothing happened in the invasion of Russia to change the opinion that the LW as part of the German military was a very, very formidable opponent. The figures you quote are known now, they were certainly not known in 1940 but could possibly be surmised from the "maximum effort" raids on London, they were clearly running out of bombers.

As to your question, as far as I have read, it was a small group of fanatics who led Germany into war, to keep the population quiet they made sure as little effect was felt at home as possible. Until the army halted in Russia the German victories had been achieved at almost no cost to Germany at home. Of course by the time things changed it was too late.


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## Peter Gunn (Feb 28, 2018)

parsifal said:


> A few suggestions
> 
> Amazon product
> _View: https://www.amazon.com/Lose-Battle-France-1940/dp/0141030658_
> ...



Many thanks, I'll give them a look.

Thanks for your input as well Ascent, much appreciated.


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## fredleander (Feb 28, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Thank you again. 'Outflying' would've mean being better in crucial properties of a fighter, the P-36 did not offered that vs. Spitfire as far as we can read it.


TP, if you are of the opinion that the best property in a fighter is its ability to run because it is not able to hold its own at altitude, that is your prerogative. I would rather emphasize the other specifics mentioned in the RAF test - maneuverability, climb performance and controllability in a high power dive.

As for high power dive you shouldn't be surprised of the Hawk 75's diving ability. After all, the P-40 set a dive speed world record in 1942 and the P-36 was, apart from the engines, of a quite similar build. Here is a PR film of that P-40 record setting:


_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzlJg5vZO8k_

The P-36 550 mph. dive I mentioned (which you wanted to know more about) is referred to in Beauchamp and Cluny's book _Curtiss Hawk 75_ - the P-36 Bible (my opinion...). I have attached a scanned page from the book about the event. The background for the test was the final acceptance for the French orders, they wanted confirmation as to its ability to catch up with a Stuka in a dive. They got it. Please note the last paragraph in the text, which is why I was a little conservative in my "claim".

There is another item which is little talked about, the good range performance of the P-36. Its range, according to various manuals, was almost 1.000 miles at economic speed (200 mph.) at 15.000 feet. A nice feature in the Pacific. Curtiss test pilots in the USAAC acceptance trials stretched it to more than 1.200 miles flying at 170 mph. - at service weights, mind you! With the ability to stay with the bombers instead of diving away to save itself when enemy fighters approached.

Come to think if it, it would have been ideal for the Luftwaffe during Battle of Britain, flying circles around the Hurricanes and Spitfires and staying with the bombers with time and range to spare...

Fred


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## tomo pauk (Feb 28, 2018)

fredleander said:


> TP, if you are of the opinion that the best property in a fighter is its ability to run because it is not able to hold its own at altitude, that is your prerogative. I would rather emphasize the other specifics mentioned in the RAF test - maneuverability, climb performance and controllability in a high power dive.



If it is a fair air fight, it means one didn't use it's fighters strong points. Spitfire vs. P-36 need to use same tactics as the F4U or P-51 will use against Zero or against Oscar, or Bf 109 vs. Hurricane - keep it's speed high (and alittude if possible), make a pass, fire a burst or two if you have time, climb up, repeat if ncessary.
Let's mention the part of report where it is said that P-36 was not as good as Spitfire in acceleration when in dive. Rate of climb when Spitfire I is outfitted with a CS prop? On same fuel used (87 or 100 oct), Spitfire I with CS prop will climb faster.
How good the P-36 will be in catching bombers when compared with Spitfire? What happens with performance of P-36 once we attach protection on it, both for pilot and fuel tank?



> As for high power dive you shouldn't be surprised of the Hawk 75's diving ability. After all, the P-40 set a dive speed world record in 1942 and the P-36 was, apart from the engines, of a quite similar build. Here is a PR film of that P-40 record setting:
> 
> The P-36 550 mph. dive I mentioned (which you wanted to know more about) is referred to in Beauchamp and Cluny's book _Curtiss Hawk 75_ - the P-36 Bible (my opinion...). I have attached a scanned page from the book about the event. The background for the test was the final acceptance for the French orders, they wanted confirmation as to its ability to catch up with a Stuka in a dive. They got it. Please note the last paragraph in the text, which is why I was a little conservative in my "claim".



Thank you for the excerpt.
The penultimate paragraph in the text notes that such a high speed dive was not actually achieved. The 660 mph dive on P-40? The WW2 PR at it's best.



> There is another item which is little talked about, the good range performance of the P-36. Its range, according to various manuals, was almost 1.000 miles at economic speed (200 mph.) at 15.000 feet. A nice feature in the Pacific. Curtiss test pilots in the USAAC acceptance trials stretched it to more than 1.200 miles flying at 170 mph. - at service weights, mind you! With the ability to stay with the bombers instead of diving away to save itself when enemy fighters approached.
> 
> Come to think if it, it would have been ideal for the Luftwaffe during Battle of Britain, flying circles around the Hurricanes and Spitfires and staying with the bombers with time and range to spare...



I'm not sure what kind of fighter was "diving away to save itself when enemy fighters approached", when it performed escort?
Granted, the P-36 have had range advantage over the European fighters that were without drop tanks. Yet, all of the sudden the 310-320 mph P-36 becames scourge for the RAF, while the 350+ mph Bf 109 cant do it.

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## Shortround6 (Feb 28, 2018)

Once you fit the Constant speed prop the Hurricane out-climbs the Hawk at altitude. You can't escort bombers or intercept them by flying thousands of feet lower where the Hawk engine made it's power. It doesn't matter how fast the Hawk could climb at sea level or 5000ft, that is not were the combats were starting.


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## parsifal (Mar 1, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> I'm not making up or misrepresenting anything, Parsifal.
> You mentioned Murray in passing previously, so I guess that is a good enough source for you?
> 
> May-June 1940
> ...




what can I say. Murray is an older source and doesn't align with Campbell. For me Campbell is the go to reference for losses in the BoF. There are any number of idiosyncrasies in the reporting methodologies that might explain this.

if you want to claim that the FAF shot down 400 LW machines during the BoF, be my guest. I just don't agree with you.


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## parsifal (Mar 1, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I disagreed with your post saying that the British downplayed the performance of the Poles Czechs Dutch and French while exaggerating the power of the LW for their own ends. The fact is that they all fell very quickly. The British overestimated both the strength of the LW and Germany's aircraft production. German propaganda in this respect was so successful that the RAF shot down non existent aircraft in the BoB. Until long after the war only LW records showed how many aircraft were lost and what their strength at any time was.
> 
> After the BoB, nothing happened in the invasion of Russia to change the opinion that the LW as part of the German military was a very, very formidable opponent. The figures you quote are known now, they were certainly not known in 1940 but could possibly be surmised from the "maximum effort" raids on London, they were clearly running out of bombers.
> 
> As to your question, as far as I have read, it was a small group of fanatics who led Germany into war, to keep the population quiet they made sure as little effect was felt at home as possible. Until the army halted in Russia the German victories had been achieved at almost no cost to Germany at home. Of course by the time things changed it was too late.



Actually LW records are hard to read and understand. Many aircraft listed as damaged and never repaired remained on the LW quartermasters "available" lists for long periods, when there was not not the slightest chance of that airframe ever returning to service. This was done to appease the senior german leadership at the time. They were besotted with numbers basically.

So whilst technically correct to rely on German records, in practice you have to be VERY careful.

The fact that they fell quickly means what? The BEF was defeated as quickly as the French in 1940, and again in Greece, and Crete. With one exception....around tobruk....the british suffered successive defeats in the air and on the ground until June 1941. The BoB was not an outright victory, it was an avoidance of defeat, which made it a victory in a roundabout way.

Despite all this success, the Germans, even in the context of the early part of the war were facing technical defeats. Each time they stepped into the ring with an opponent, they lost something, something they could not afford to lose.

Discounting the effects of the continental European nations is dangerous. If not for their efforts, my opinion is that Germany would have entered the BoB far stronger than it did and in position to defeat FC in that battle.

It was not a "small group of fanatics" that led Germany to war. the nation was itself fanatical and bent on war. all of the major interest groups were in favour of war. it is a post war fiction to blame just a "few bad eggs" for the conflagaration. Luckily we have written rulings in the form of the Nuremberg declarations to settle this largely moral question. Germany at the end of the war was found to be guilty of waging an aggressive, illegal war....not just hitler, the german nation was guilty .....its an indictment that still applies to every german man, woman and child to this day (an unforeseen an unfortunate byproduct perhaps), because the indictment was made against the nation, not a specific person or persons 9if it had been made against a specific person or persons, the indictment would resolve when the person or persons died. for this "nation related' indictment to die, the nation of Germany will have to cease to exist...that might have occurred incidentally in 1952 with the reformation of the west German Republic ). from that basic indictment of war guilt, all the findings against the Nazi war criminals as individuals could be made. Without that indictment of national guilt, the individual crimes under the Nuremberg rules cannot stand. that's why no Russians have ever stood trial (things are in theory different today under the ICC rules) Without this mechanism in place, the german underlings could have mounted successful defences about " we were just following orders" or ' everyone else was doing it, so why shouldn't we". The war guilt clauses as they are known made, among other things, the following of illegal orders a crime in itself, but it was at least harder to prove the illegaility of an order, unless the purpose for which that order had been issued was itself amoral and illegal. That's why it was important, and valid, to find Germany as a ntion, guilty of a war crime, so to speak. 

Germany fuelled its war effort up to December 1941 by artificial pegging of the exchange rate , causing an influx of raw materials into Germany, the virtual complete shut down of industry outside Germany within the occupied territories. Opportunities to tap into European industrial complex were squandered by the Nazi short sighted policies, designed to prop up the failing german economy. It had other casualties, like destroying the economies of her allies as well . these allies were not impressed by that, and in the case of Rumania, extracted exorbitant special deals from the germans for their oil. In the case of finland, there was a virtual shut down of her vital mines. in the case of Spain, and Turkey, the germans were unable to pay for goods with their basically worthless currency ...they had to pay in manufactured items or foodstuffs ....a very inefficient way to run an advanced economy. The defeat in Russia was a product of that broken system, not a cause.


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## Greyman (Mar 1, 2018)

*





Spitfire I - 6.25 lb, 2600 rpm (6,050 lb)
Hurricane I - 6.25 lb, 2600 rpm (6,316 lb)
Mohawk II - 87 cm, 2550 rpm (5,962 lb)*

All A&AEE tests. The Mohawk is from the Norwegian order and has an R1830-SC3G engine. 

Does anyone know if there was supposed to be a difference with the R1830-SC3G engines given to France? French numbers seem to indicate critical alt was about 14,000 feet, not 10,000 feet as in the Mohawk II.

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## Stig1207 (Mar 1, 2018)

parsifal said:


> what can I say. Murray is an older source and doesn't align with Campbell. For me Campbell is the go to reference for losses in the BoF. There are any number of idiosyncrasies in the reporting methodologies that might explain this.
> 
> if you want to claim that the FAF shot down 400 LW machines during the BoF, be my guest. I just don't agree with you.



Well, you suggested I take it up with Murray, now you pull a new rabbit out of your hat. So how about you provide the sources that indicate that the French shot down some 1500 enemy aircraft,
some 50% more than they claimed to have shot down.

No, I have not claimed that the FAF shot down 400 LW machines; I have, however, linked to some French sources that regard the 1000 claims as being well optimistic. Their numbers are the 355-500 range, you don't agree with them, ok.


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 1, 2018)

Greyman said:


> The Mohawk is from the Norwegian order and has an R1830-SC3G engine.
> 
> Does anyone know if there was supposed to be a difference with the R1830-SC3G engines given to France? French numbers seem to indicate critical alt was about 14,000 feet, not 10,000 feet as in the Mohawk II.


Different blower gear??


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## tomo pauk (Mar 1, 2018)

Greyman said:


> *...
> Spitfire I - 6.25 lb, 2600 rpm (6,050 lb)
> Hurricane I - 6.25 lb, 2600 rpm (6,316 lb)
> Mohawk II - 87 cm, 2550 rpm (5,962 lb)*
> ...



Higher critical altitude was for 92 oct fuel, lower for 100 oct fuel?


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## parsifal (Mar 1, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Well, you suggested I take it up with Murray, now you pull a new rabbit out of your hat. So how about you provide the sources that indicate that the French shot down some 1500 enemy aircraft,
> some 50% more than they claimed to have shot down.
> 
> No, I have not claimed that the FAF shot down 400 LW machines; I have, however, linked to some French sources that regard the 1000 claims as being well optimistic. Their numbers are the 355-500 range, you don't agree with them, ok.



You have claimed that the LW lost "about 1000" airframes to the FAF, for an in-specific time period. You have quoted Murray with a figure of 1916, again time period not specified but that is a figure that is moving into the realm of the plausible.

Cornewell quotes figures of over 2180 a/c LW aircraft lost in the west from September 1939 through to 10 June 1940. over 1800 a/c were lost 9 May to 10 june by the LW. After 10 June the situation becomes very confused, plus none of these sources account for airframes that managed to return, were sent back to the factories for repair, but were written off. That process could take months sometimes ,

Damaged airframes would still be listed as 'available' in the LW quartermaster strength reports. those I don't have at the moment, but I have seen some of them in the past. To give some idea of the seriousness of these losses, for the polish campaign, losses immediately after the surrender stood at 280 LW machines, with 273 damaged. Of those 273, 203 were eventually written off, but they don't show up as losses in the immediate returns for the LW straight away. These losses are quietly spirited away from view by the quartermaster, and then eventually disappear while nobody is looking.

Same thing happened for the French campaign. There are 433 aircraft that were damaged in the French campaign that were written off, being dropped from the strength reports, weeks or months after the conclusion of the campaign.

Some of my figures are by deduction. Having worked out the total losses suffered by the LW based on
Cornewells figures, and then adding the write offs from other sources that were deducted months later, we arrive at a loss figure of 2500a/c lost on the western front September 1939 to June 10th​
We have fairly accurate losses inflicted by the RAF up to that time, as well as the Dutch, the Norwegians and other. by a process of subtraction from that raw, a figure of at least 1500 from the FAF is arrived at. That's a conservative figure and represents a minimum


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## wuzak (Mar 1, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Higher critical altitude was for 92 oct fuel, lower for 100 oct fuel?



Different boost pressures to go with different fuels would explain different critical altitudes.

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## Stig1207 (Mar 1, 2018)

parsifal said:


> You have claimed that the LW lost "about 1000" airframes to the FAF, for an in-specific time period. You have quoted Murray with a figure of 1916, again time period not specified but that is a figure that is moving into the realm of the plausible.



No the 'about 1000' are the FAF victory claims. Murray's figure of 1916 destroyed and damaged to all causes is May-June 1940, look at the attached chart.



parsifal said:


> Cornewell quotes figures of over 2180 a/c LW aircraft lost in the west from September 1939 through to 10 June 1940. over 1800 a/c were lost 9 May to 10 june by the LW. After 10 June the situation becomes very confused, plus none of these sources account for airframes that managed to return, were sent back to the factories for repair, but were written off. That process could take months sometimes ,



Are you sure those are the figures Cornwell quotes? In case you didn't follow it the first time, I'll link it again:
Luftwaffe losses France, 1940 • Axis History Forum



parsifal said:


> Some of my figures are by deduction. Having worked out the total losses suffered by the LW based on
> Cornewells figures, and then adding the write offs from other sources that were deducted months later, we arrive at a loss figure of 2500a/c lost on the western front September 1939 to June 10th​We have fairly accurate losses inflicted by the RAF up to that time, as well as the Dutch, the Norwegians and other. by a process of subtraction from that raw, a figure of at least 1500 from the FAF is arrived at. That's a conservative figure and represents a minimum



So Cornwell does not specifically state that the FAF shot down 1500 enemy aircraft? What are these other sources, that Cornwell apparently missed?


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## Smokey Stover (Mar 1, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> I think the comment “France...tried to get the RAF to deplete its air strength ...” assumes the French thought the British were naive and altruistic, whereas the general assumption of the French government was closer to the British being selfish and untrustworthy: after all, it was the British who did nothing and even fought France in their attempts to limit German re-militarization. As for Stalin? This was a man who refused to believe Hitler would break their bilateral non-aggression pact, despite warnings, even after German troops were invading.
> 
> The RAF was in France to help Britain; helping France would be a side effect.
> 
> France lost for a mix of military reasons and domestic political ones, the latter probably responsible for many of the military ones, including the poor state of the French Air Force.



The fact remains, no matter how hard the French airforce had fought they simply didnt have the aircraft capable of even coming close to putting up a fight. The fact remains their best and most numerous fighter was the Morane Saulnier MS 406, and Dewoitine D.520
The Morane, although sturdy and highly maneuverable, it was underpowered and weakly armed. I will concede Britain at that time luckily had two of the most advanced fighter interceptors in the world. Not to mention a defence network that was unlike anything else. Plus i think there was a little more to it than just using France as a buffer. In the early days of May 1940 RAF Fairey Battles were thrown against German held bridges and ground forces, be it right or wrong. On the 14th May seventy-one British bombers took off; forty did not return. No higher rate of loss in an operation of comparable size has ever been experienced by the Royal Air Force. The RAF lost 959 aircraft during the defence of France, of which 477 were fighters. The French also had all their hopes on the Dewoitine D.520 which coming so late in 1940 that pilots were simply not trained or savvy enough to make use of them. (Even though British Spitfire pilots had the same problem but faired a lot better)
Between May and June 1940, the German Luftwaffe overwhelmed the French _Armée de l’Aire_. While many French pilots such as Antoine Saint-Exupéry — author of _The Little Prince_ — went on to fight for the Allied cause, most French warplanes fell into the hands of the French Vichy regime. So while the French Dewoitine fighters _did_ see a lot more combat after the Battle of France, they mostly fought _against_ the Allies.However the relatively lightweight liquid-cooled engine was prone to overheating and bulky underwing radiators created additional drag, causing the type to fly just below the desired speed of 332mph, which is questionable. The testers chastised the French fighter for its difficult handling characteristics compared to the 109. The D.520 had a tendency to fall into a spin and experience “brutal stalls.” The Dewoitine’s confusing control scheme also left it prone to cartwheeling while taxiing on the ground!. Between 85 and 106 Dewoitines were lost during the Battle of France — though only 28 to 32 fell in air-to-air combat. However the relatively lightweight liquid-cooled engine was prone to overheating and bulky underwing radiators created additional drag, causing the type to fly just below the desired speed. The rest were either destroyed on the ground, crashed or captured. So yes, imo the French airforce were about as effective as a chocolate fireguard. 33 units were equipped with the D.520. For what good they did they should have took out the guns and tried to stop the Germans on the ground like they should have in the beginning.....

Plus i think some of you guys have your German loss rates a little off. They swing wildly from 1000 to 2800? Please. The real number was around 1500 and i seriously doubt it was even that high.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 1, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Different boost pressures to go with different fuels would explain different critical altitudes.


The R1830-SC3G engine used a 7.15 blower gear and was rated on 87 octane fuel.

The Handbook (advertising brochure?) for the Hawk 75 lists the the R1830-S3C3G in print with the R1830-SC3G written in pencil. 
The R1830-S3C3G used 8.0 supercharger gears and was rated on 95 octane fuel, however the list of P & W engines shows no users. 
These engines _seem _to be the commercial equivalents of the R-1830-17 (SC3G) except the -17 was rated on 100 octane and the R-1830-23 (S3C3G) 
used in ONE P-36B and then converted back to -17 specifications, also the -23 used 100 octane. 
There is also a difference in that allowable max rpm may have changed. The -17 had no "military" rating for example. 
Max take-off rpm was 2700rpm for all engines, Military Power, when given, was also at 2700rpm and in some case was only allowable with the higher grade fuels.
With the 87 octane fuel boost was restricted and in some cases it appears that max rpm was restricted to 2550rpm.

From a post war FAA type certificate sheet the SC3G engine was rated at 1050hp at 2700rpm for take-off using 42in of boost. 
It was rated max continuous at 900hp at 2550rpm at 34in at 12,000ft. Max continous at sea level was 900hp at 2550rpm and 36in of boost. 

This is all on 87 octane fuel. 
The almost identical S1C3-G engine was rated on 91-98 octane (didn't exist pre-war may may substitute for either 95 octane or prewar _American_ 100 octane?) 
For take-off it gave 1200hp at 2700rpm at 48in. Max continuous at altitude was either 1050hp at 2550rpm at 39.5in at 7500ft or 1000hp at 2700rpm at 37.5in at 10,000ft. 
The P & W data sheets say the S1C3-G engine was originally certified on 100 octane fuel and I would be pretty confident in say that was the American 100 octane prewar fuel. 
P & W had used a different supercharger with higher gear ratios on the Mid 1930s R-1830 engines but once you get to the engines of 1000hp and more it seems they had gone to a larger impeller and pretty much stuck to the 7.15 gear ratio for single speed engines, at least the ones they built in quantity. 
Changes in either strength of parts or cooling may have affected later engines in their ability to be rated at higher powers.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 1, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> The fact remains, no matter how hard the French airforce had fought they simply didnt have the aircraft capable of even coming close to putting up a fight. The fact remains their best and most numerous fighter was the Morane Saulnier MS 406, and Dewoitine D.520



These fact don't simply remain. The Curtiss Hawk was more numrous than D.520.



> The Morane, although sturdy and highly maneuverable, it was underpowered and weakly armed. I will concede Britain at that time luckily had two of the most advanced fighter interceptors in the world. Not to mention a defence network that was unlike anything else. Plus i think there was a little more to it than just using France as a buffer. In the early days of May 1940 RAF Fairey Battles were thrown against German held bridges and ground forces, be it right or wrong. On the 14th May seventy-one British bombers took off; forty did not return. No higher rate of loss in an operation of comparable size has ever been experienced by the Royal Air Force. The RAF lost 959 aircraft during the defence of France, of which 477 were fighters. The French also had all their hopes on the Dewoitine D.520 which coming so late in 1940 that pilots were simply not trained or savvy enough to make use of them. (Even though British Spitfire pilots had the same problem but faired a lot better)



MS.406 was not weakly armed, it sported a 20 mm cannon that fired heavy shells at excellent muzzle velocity, on very good RoF; plus two MGs. It was indeed lack of air defence network that was French undoing, along with doctrine and startegy. RAF did not use any Spitfires in combat above France. Actually, with no Spitfires in France, and just a number of Hurricanes, the air war above France was mostly French affair. UK opted to defend itself over UK, not over France.



> Between May and June 1940, the German Luftwaffe overwhelmed the French _Armée de l’Aire_. While many French pilots such as Antoine Saint-Exupéry — author of _The Little Prince_ — went on to fight for the Allied cause, most French warplanes fell into the hands of the French Vichy regime. So while the French Dewoitine fighters _did_ see a lot more combat after the Battle of France, they mostly fought _against_ the Allies.However the relatively lightweight liquid-cooled engine was prone to overheating and bulky underwing radiators created additional drag, causing the type to fly just below the desired speed of 332mph, which is questionable. The testers chastised the French fighter for its difficult handling characteristics compared to the 109. The D.520 had a tendency to fall into a spin and experience “brutal stalls.” The Dewoitine’s confusing control scheme also left it prone to cartwheeling while taxiing on the ground!. Between 85 and 106 Dewoitines were lost during the Battle of France — though only 28 to 32 fell in air-to-air combat. However the relatively lightweight liquid-cooled engine was prone to overheating and bulky underwing radiators created additional drag, causing the type to fly just below the desired speed. The rest were either destroyed on the ground, crashed or captured. So yes, imo the French airforce were about as effective as a chocolate fireguard. 33 units were equipped with the D.520. For what good they did they should have took out the guns and tried to stop the Germans on the ground like they should have in the beginning.....
> 
> Plus i think some of you guys have your German loss rates a little off. They swing wildly from 1000 to 2800? Please. The real number was around 1500 and i seriously doubt it was even that high.



Seems like that fact that cooling problems were remedied via installation of fuselage-mounted radiator on the D.520 is somehow lost on you.
Radiator of the D.520 were not any single bit bulkier than those of Bf 109, Spitfire, let alone Hurricane. The 'relatively light liquid-cooled engine' was not prone to overheating in series-produced D.520. Since when the D.520 featured "confusing control scheme"? More prone to ground accidents than Bf 109??


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## Peter Gunn (Mar 1, 2018)

A P-36 exceeding 575 - 600 MPH in a dive? Uh... my guess would be "No".

As the posted excerpt from the book states, instrumentation in the late '30's early '40's left a bit to be desired and even the Thunderbolt never exceeded 600 MPH.

So my conservative estimate is that the P-36 could probably top 400 MPH in a dive. I believe even the P-51D was rated to 505 MPH dive speeds.


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## parsifal (Mar 1, 2018)

_Are you sure those are the figures Cornwell quotes? In case you didn't follow it the first time, I'll link it again:
_

"According to Peter Cornwell's "The battle of France then and now": between Sep 1939 to May 9 1940 Luftwaffe lost 354 aircrafts and 445 air crews killed or missing in the west, and between May 10 to Jun 24 Jun 1940, Luftwaffe lost 1814 aircrafts and 3278 air crews killed or missing in the west". There is then some debate as to whether the cut off date should 24 June. With regard to that last comment, I cant be sure. But 1814 + 354 = 2168
. 
_So Cornwell does not specifically state that the FAF shot down 1500 enemy aircraft? What are these other sources, that Cornwell apparently missed? _

No he doesn't say 1500. I don't know that he did miss anything. He cannot list an aircraft still recorded as being "available" as being "destroyed". An aircraft sitting in the corner of a factory, or at the edge of a runway, a total wreck, but still being listed as "available" is a loss in my book, but in the context of accurate reporting Cornewell cannot do that. Until the LW quartermaster is going to admit that aircraft as a loss, its hard to show that it is, but it is still a loss.

This sort of chicanery is not limited to the germans. There are credible sources that report total French losses as 550-600 aircraft during the battle. The catch is the phrase "during the battle". in reality the LW forced out of the fight more like 2000 FAF aircraft, before the armistice. The RAF lost more like 900. The trick is to try and understand the aircraft listed as "damaged" and work out whether they ever actually were returned to service. Sometimes also a given report will not include aircraft listed as "missing" as a loss, though that's a lot less prevalent. 

The annoying thing about the German returns is that their loss returns could be fairly slow. The LW would not automatically list an aircraft as lost unless
it had suffered more than 70% damage, but in reality anything with more than about 40% damage was very unlikely to ever fly again. but because of the relative paucity of repair facilities at the front, these heavily damaged units would be transported back to the factories to await " further assessment"....and there they would stay for months sometimes, still listed as being on strength , but without the slightest chance of ever flying again. There were differences between the LW system and those of the RAF (and I think the French). The RAF system, in the first instance, a higher percentage of aircraft were repaired at the unit repair facilities, but if an aircraft was so damaged as to be returned to a factory, it was removed from the strength lists. I think also that the RAF were more realistic in declaring when an aircraft was a write off . it is likely the French were the same

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## Shortround6 (Mar 1, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> MS.406 was not weakly armed, it sported a 20 mm cannon that fired heavy shells at excellent muzzle velocity, on very good RoF; plus two MGs. It was indeed lack of air defence network that was French undoing, along with doctrine and startegy.



I agree with much of what you say except the above. Contrary to much of what has been Written it seems the majority of MS 406 aircraft were armed with the HS 7 or HS 9 cannon and while there was little to chose in the power of the individual cartridge between the HS 7/9 and the HS 404 the HS 7/9 fired at around 360-420 rpm or about 2/3 the rate of fire of the HS 404. 
The MAC 34 machine gun seems to have been pretty good (or at least no big complaints) but in the MS 406 it seems to have been fed from a 300 round "drum" or container for the belt while some other French aircraft used a more normal belt arrangement with more ammo per gun. 

The MS 406 carried 60 rounds of very powerful ammo to the 109s 110-120 rounds of 20mm ammo, and only 600 rounds of MG ammo to the 109s 2000rounds. 
The 109 was probably carrying to much but the MS 406 may have been carrying to little. 
The D 520 had four machine guns with 500rpg in addition to the cannon.

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## Stig1207 (Mar 1, 2018)

parsifal said:


> "According to Peter Cornwell's "The battle of France then and now": between Sep 1939 to May 9 1940 Luftwaffe lost 354 aircrafts and 445 air crews killed or missing in the west, and between May 10 to Jun 24 Jun 1940, Luftwaffe lost 1814 aircrafts and 3278 air crews killed or missing in the west". There is then some debate as to whether the cut off date should 24 June. With regard to that last comment, I cant be sure. But 1814 + 354 = 2168



Read again the post I linked to; because there it is implied that the poster made a mistake and instead of adding should have subtracted. So the 1814 is the total number of lost aircraft
3 Sep 39- 24 June 40, while 354 lost aircraft is 3 Sep 39-May 9 40; thus 1814-354 = 1460.
Since I don't have Cornwell's book I can't check the above numbers; but since it's your main source I suppose that you can?



parsifal said:


> No he doesn't say 1500. I don't know that he did miss anything. He cannot list an aircraft still recorded as being "available" as being "destroyed". An aircraft sitting in the corner of a factory, or at the edge of a runway, a total wreck, but still being listed as "available" is a loss in my book, but in the context of accurate reporting Cornewell cannot do that. Until the LW quartermaster is going to admit that aircraft as a loss, its hard to show that it is, but it is still a loss.



You mentioned that you had some additional losses, (400 something?) that the Lw quartermaster apparently covered up; that's the source I am asking you for.



parsifal said:


> This sort of chicanery is not limited to the germans. There are credible sources that report total French losses as 550-600 aircraft during the battle. The catch is the phrase "during the battle". in reality the LW forced out of the fight more like 2000 FAF aircraft, before the armistice. The RAF lost more like 900. The trick is to try and understand the aircraft listed as "damaged" and work out whether they ever actually were returned to service. Sometimes also a given report will not include aircraft listed as "missing" as a loss, though that's a lot less prevalent.
> 
> The annoying thing about the German returns is that their loss returns could be fairly slow. The LW would not automatically list an aircraft as lost unless
> it had suffered more than 70% damage, but in reality anything with more than about 40% damage was very unlikely to ever fly again. but because of the relative paucity of repair facilities at the front, these heavily damaged units would be transported back to the factories to await " further assessment"....and there they would stay for months sometimes, still listed as being on strength , but without the slightest chance of ever flying again. There were differences between the LW system and those of the RAF (and I think the French). The RAF system, in the first instance, a higher percentage of aircraft were repaired at the unit repair facilities, but if an aircraft was so damaged as to be returned to a factory, it was removed from the strength lists. I think also that the RAF were more realistic in declaring when an aircraft was a write off . it is likely the French were the same



The LW criteria for a writing of an aircraft was +60%. What's your source for the + 40% damaged not being repaired?
They would need to be be transferred back to the factories for repair with that amount of damage; but they were certainly not on strength with the unit after being transferred. Damaged aircraft were just as much 'lost' to their unit as destroyed aircraft, and would be replaced by new or repaired aircraft as required.


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## Greyman (Mar 1, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> So my conservative estimate is that the P-36 could probably top 400 MPH in a dive. I believe even the P-51D was rated to 505 MPH dive speeds.



British Pilot's Notes have max dive speed at 415 mph.

French manuals just give a maximum rpm for diving, which seems to indicate that was run into before the limiting airspeed.

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## parsifal (Mar 1, 2018)

_Read again the post I linked to; because there it is implied that the poster made a mistake and instead of adding should have subtracted. So the 1814 is the total number of lost aircraft_

_3 Sep 39- 24 June 40, while 354 lost aircraft is 3 Sep 39-May 9 40; thus 1814-354 = 1460._

_Since I don't have Cornwell's book I can't check the above numbers; but since it's your main source I suppose that you can?_

Im not in possession of my copy either at this minute, but Im trying to retrieve it. I saw that axis history forum discussion as well, and if I am reading that discussion correctly. It states (cutting and pasting from that forum discussion)

"_According to Peter Cornwell's "The battle of France then and now": between Sep 1939 to May 9 1940 Luftwaffe lost 354 aircrafts and 445 air crews killed or missing in the west, and between May 10 to Jun 24 Jun 1940, Luftwaffe lost 1814 aircrafts and 3278 air crews killed or missing in the west _

Then, as I acknowledge in my previous post, there is some discussion about when losses might apply. I can tell you that is not how I read Cornewells account present the information. Several other commentators that have also quoted those loss figures agree that it is 1814 + 354, and not 1814 – 354. 

_You mentioned that you had some additional losses, (400 something?) that the Lw quartermaster apparently covered up; that's the source I am asking you for._

Its based on a French report, which I don’t have at this minute. As I recall Cornwell does include some figures on damaged a/c. If I get my copy of the book back, I will check and get back to you.

However the figures for damaged aircraft is entirely plausible. For the Polish campaign I have confirmed data that 298 a/c were shot down outright, and a further 273 were damaged, of which 203 were eventually scrapped. You are going to get similar percentage for the LW after the BoF. 

_The LW criteria for a writing of an aircraft was +60%. What's your source for the + 40% damaged not being repaired?_

That account is contrary to John Foreman. In his book “1941 Part 2 – The Blitz to the nonstop offensive – The Turning Point, there is an account somewhere as to how the German repair system worked. I will concede that I now unsure whether a damaged unit sent back to a factory was included in the on strength numbers for the front line units, but it looks like they do. Costello, in his statistical references has a number of tables dealing with the LW, in which he has separate columns for available and serviceable for given units. “Serviceable” would generally be at about 50% of “available” numbers, even after periods of relative quiet.

As to the cut off being 60%, I don’t think that is correct.

In the first 5 pages of Foremans daily diaries for 1941 campaign, I found a whole bunch of entries for damaged aircraft for the LW, wherer the extent of damage exceeded 60%. There are some accounts of damage exceeding 80%. Usually Foreman notes where a diary entry listed is damaged is scrapped soon thereafter. For the entries I found there is no such entry, suggesting that they were retained on strength at least for a time.

It was Foreman as well that alerted me to the ‘40%” rule of thumb. 

_They would need to be transferred back to the factories for repair with that amount of damage; but they were certainly not on strength with the unit after being transferred. Damaged aircraft were just as much 'lost' to their unit as destroyed aircraft, and would be replaced by new or repaired aircraft as required._

The available and serviceable figures published by Costello don’t support that. I would also note in passing that numbers of airframes damaged were simply left strewn around airfields. This was something reported by the advancing US forces at the end of the war….vast numbers of damaged aircraft, many of which had been there for months or even years, just strewn around airfields. You did not find that at allied airfields


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## pbehn (Mar 1, 2018)

parsifal said:


> The misinformation about LW losses serves the victorious (by that I mean British) post war image, who want to portray the BoB as the pivotal battle in which the LW up to that point won cheap and easy victories over the continent, and were not finally defeated until they met the RAF over SE England. For the germans its convenient as well, because it provides their personas with a victory that they can laud, when if the truth came out the myth of their invincibility would be exposed.


I disagreed with this post because I have never seen any evidence of deliberate misinformation being used post war. What was known during the war was claims, only the Poles and Germans knew their losses and it took years for the information to become known. Is there any evidence of deliberate post war misinformation by the British?


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## parsifal (Mar 1, 2018)

It probably isn't deliberate misinformation, as a lack of in depth analysis.

I don't think ther is much evidence of deliberate misinformation, but there is a ton of poor information. The best myths that can stick are those with a half truth attached. It has always served British egos for them to be able to say they alone stopped the LW. in fact the truth is different to that. in part the LW stopped the LW, but so too were the losses they had already suffered before the battle with FC started. FC fought a near perfect battle and you are right that for the first time the LW was prevented from doing what they wanted. I think we agree on that. Where we differ is the effect of the lead in campaigns on the achievement of that win


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## buffnut453 (Mar 1, 2018)

Yes, the Luftwaffe suffered considerable losses prior to the summer of 1940 but are you really suggesting that it was those losses that meant the difference between success and failure for the Luftwaffe? Not sure I agree with that line of argument. Yes, there were losses in experienced crews but it's not like the Luftwaffe had a declining number of Gruppe between September 1939 and June 1940...indeed Luftflotten 2, 3 and 5 which were responsible for the Battle were reinforced by units from Luftflotten 1 and 4 in Germany. Simply throwing yet more aircraft into the fray isn't going to win the Battle of Britain for Germany.


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## parsifal (Mar 1, 2018)

buffnut453 said:


> Yes, the Luftwaffe suffered considerable losses prior to the summer of 1940 but are you really suggesting that it was those losses that meant the difference between success and failure for the Luftwaffe? Not sure I agree with that line of argument. Yes, there were losses in experienced crews but it's not like the Luftwaffe had a declining number of Gruppe between September 1939 and June 1940...indeed Luftflotten 2, 3 and 5 which were responsible for the Battle were reinforced by units from Luftflotten 1 and 4 in Germany. Simply throwing yet more aircraft into the fray isn't going to win the Battle of Britain for Germany.



They had suffered in the order of 3300 unrecoverable losses when Poland, Norway and the campaigns in the West are taken into consideration up to the end of june. The German replacement system was not able to adequately cope with even that loss rate. Numbers were maintained by successive comb outs of the training schools and the façade of strength maintained by a reliance on “available” numbers as opposed to “Seviceable” numbers. This at least partly explains the delay in the operations after the fall of france. Operations completed against the French on or before 25 June, yet serious operations against the main defences in England did not start until August. At least some of the German high command advocated a rapid move against the British, They were overruled by Hitler…..for sure because he believed the British would implode on their own, but also because of the hard realities that the LW was not in a position to carry the fight forward at full tilt straight away. They needed time to reorganise and recuperate. That process of recuperation was not a full recovery however.

The full extent of how much effect these earlier campaigns is debateable, but I take the view that everything contributed to the ultimate German defeat. Neither the BoB losses, or the earlier losses in 1939-40 can be said to have been sufficiently great as to stop the LW. The LW returned to the fray in April 1941 with the LW fully expecting they would finish the job they had started in the previous Autumn. For a while, according to Foreman, they were successful inflicting heavy losses on FC yet again and disrupting channel communications to the point of again closing the channel to British traffic. There was heavy damage inflicted on a number of british population centres 9notably Coventry) But the losses being suffered by the LW were steadily bleeding them white. By the time the LW crossed into the SU in June, LW reserves were on the ropes, and this showed in east as serviceability rates again plummeted to new depths. Crossing the border with about 2800 a/c at the start, by the time of Smolensk (in July/August, LW serviceability rates had crashed out to less than 1000 in the east. There was a partial recovery in late September through to when the snows hit, after which serviceability rates sank to about 40% and pretty much stayed there until the following summer. In the summer of ’42, according to Hayworth, the LWs best month was 59%, but usually about 45%.

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## Stig1207 (Mar 2, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Then, as I acknowledge in my previous post, there is some discussion about when losses might apply. I can tell you that is not how I read Cornewells account present the information. Several other commentators that have also quoted those loss figures agree that it is 1814 + 354, and not 1814 – 354.



A bit of copy/ paste of my own:

Interesting discussion!

Mars
Quote:"According to Peter Cornwell's "The battle of France then and now": between Sep 1939 to May 9 1940 Luftwaffe lost 354 aircrafts and 445 air crews killed or missing in the west, and between May 10 to Jun 24 Jun 1940, Luftwaffe lost 1814 aircrafts and 3278 air crews killed or missing in the west"

Is the 1814 a/c LW losses really for 10.5. - 24.7.40? The reason I ask is that if it is for 3.9.1939 - 24.6.40 it would be in line of the numbers given by Groehler and Hooton, but if it is number for those lost 10.5. - 24.6.40 it is 386 - 413 a/c bigger than those given by the other 2 authors.

Juha


you are correct, Juha, it is for 3.9.1939 - 24.6.40 ,I got confused in those tables


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## Stig1207 (Mar 2, 2018)

parsifal said:


> That account is contrary to John Foreman. In his book “1941 Part 2 – The Blitz to the nonstop offensive – The Turning Point, there is an account somewhere as to how the German repair system worked. I will concede that I now unsure whether a damaged unit sent back to a factory was included in the on strength numbers for the front line units, but it looks like they do. Costello, in his statistical references has a number of tables dealing with the LW, in which he has separate columns for available and serviceable for given units. “Serviceable” would generally be at about 50% of “available” numbers, even after periods of relative quiet.
> 
> As to the cut off being 60%, I don’t think that is correct.



Then I suggest that you do some further research on the Lw loss classifications before making sweeping conclusions.
I agree about the servicability issue; but while some unserviceable aircraft may be the result of combat damage that was deemed repairable at unit level, others would be unserviceable due to mechanical problems, etc.


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## pbehn (Mar 2, 2018)

parsifal said:


> It probably isn't deliberate misinformation, as a lack of in depth analysis.
> 
> I don't think ther is much evidence of deliberate misinformation, but there is a ton of poor information. The best myths that can stick are those with a half truth attached. It has always served British egos for them to be able to say they alone stopped the LW. in fact the truth is different to that. in part the LW stopped the LW, but so too were the losses they had already suffered before the battle with FC started. FC fought a near perfect battle and you are right that for the first time the LW was prevented from doing what they wanted. I think we agree on that. Where we differ is the effect of the lead in campaigns on the achievement of that win


We don't even disagree on the effect of the lead in campaigns. What we disagree on is whether the British misrepresented known facts to boost their ego's. The RAF especially fighter command is always represented as a multi national force. At the climax to the Battle of Britain the British were desperately holding on against what they thought was a much stronger force than it actually was while the Germans were certain the British were down to their last 50 fighters. When British fighter production reached 500 a month the British thought they were approaching parity, in fact Germany was only producing 200. A staggering number of German losses for whatever reason occurred on their own airfields. The British in France Belgium lost aircraft in the air, destroyed on the ground and captured on the ground. The only way to make any sense of any of it was to examine records after the war but they are not complete, not presented in the same manner and in the case of East Germany and Poland especially were not freely available.


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## parsifal (Mar 2, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Then I suggest that you do some further research on the Lw loss classifications before making sweeping conclusions.
> I agree about the servicability issue; but while some unserviceable aircraft may be the result of combat damage that was deemed repairable at unit level, others would be unserviceable due to mechanical problems, etc.



Foreman gives some very detailed particulars about each aircraft lost and each aircraft damaged for both sides, There is no doubt or uncertainty as to how an aircraft is damaged. and there are plenty of examples of aircraft from the LW with greater than 60% damage. 

I'm not sure of the usefulness, but Foreman gives the S/N of aircraft damaged. It might not be helpful given that a lot of german records were lost. but if not we could trace one or two examples of aircraft with greater than 60% damage and find out if and when they were finally removed from the "available " lists


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## parsifal (Mar 2, 2018)

pbehn said:


> We don't even disagree on the effect of the lead in campaigns. What we disagree on is whether the British misrepresented known facts to boost their ego's. The RAF especially fighter command is always represented as a multi national force. At the climax to the Battle of Britain the British were desperately holding on against what they thought was a much stronger force than it actually was while the Germans were certain the British were down to their last 50 fighters. When British fighter production reached 500 a month the British thought they were approaching parity, in fact Germany was only producing 200. A staggering number of German losses for whatever reason occurred on their own airfields. The British in France Belgium lost aircraft in the air, destroyed on the ground and captured on the ground. The only way to make any sense of any of it was to examine records after the war but they are not complete, not presented in the same manner and in the case of East Germany and Poland especially were not freely available.


Do you think that immediately after the war, and perhaps for 20 years after that, the popular histories were accurate in their reports for losses and effects of the battle?


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## parsifal (Mar 2, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> A bit of copy/ paste of my own:
> 
> Interesting discussion!
> 
> ...




I read that. I can tell you that is not how I read Cornwell


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## pbehn (Mar 2, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Do you think that immediately after the war, and perhaps for 20 years after that, the popular histories were accurate in their reports for losses and effects of the battle?


They are quite obviously inaccurate otherwise everyone contributing to this thread would be in complete agreement. The question is which is correct. Everyone has a different take on things. From my side, in the Battle of France, almost the whole of France including its military were knocked out of the war in 10 weeks. That is a success that the German leadership would be willing to suffer high losses for. Kill ratios in the air were only a part of the story when airfields were being over run and their planes, spares, pilots and technicians were being captured en masse. That is not to detract in any way from the performance of the men defending their country, or to exaggerate the strength of the Luftwaffe, it wasn't the LW doing the most damage, they were just part of it.


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## parsifal (Mar 2, 2018)

Extracts from Murray’s “strategy for defeat relevant to these campaigns

"Tables III through VI underscore the extent of German aircraft losses in the Battle of France. They suggest that the tendency to view the Battle of Britain as a separate episode from the defeat of France does not do justice to the resistance of Allied air forces in the spring of 1940 and distort the fact that for five months, from May through September, the _Luftwaffe,_ with only a short pause, was continuously in action. The break in morale of bomber pilots, reported over London in mid-September 1940, thus was the result not only of the strain of fighting over Britain but of operations that had been continuous from the previous May.


Serious German aircraft losses from the spring campaign greatly weakened the _Luftwaffe_ before the Battle of Britain. Had that been the only disadvantage under which the _Luftwaffe_ operated, German strategic problems would have been daunting enough, given the difficulties of mounting a major combined arms operation. Unfortunately for the Germans, the strain that recent battles had imposed on their military structure represented only a small portion of the problem; a whole host of strategic, economic, tactical, and technological problems had to be faced and surmounted before the _Reich_ could solve the "British question."

The rather long preparatory period between the end of the French campaign and the launching of the great air offensive against the British Isles was due to more than just German confidence that the war was over and that Britain would accept peace. The losses suffered in the spring and the extensive commitments of aircraft and aircrews in the May-June battles demanded considerable time for rest and recuperation as well as the integration of fresh crews into bomber and fighter units. Moreover, the speed of the German advance had caused several major redeployments of air units to keep up with ground operations. The attack on Britain now required another major redeployment and the preparation of permanent "













If the numbers damaged that are eventually written off are in the same ratio as was suffered by the LW after Poland, then of the 488 damaged in france some 370 will be written off. That raises the overall loss rate fro the campaign in the west to 1791 permanent losses.


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## parsifal (Mar 2, 2018)

pbehn said:


> They are quite obviously inaccurate otherwise everyone contributing to this thread would be in complete agreement. The question is which is correct. Everyone has a different take on things. From my side, in the Battle of France, almost the whole of France including its military were knocked out of the war in 10 weeks. That is a success that the German leadership would be willing to suffer high losses for. Kill ratios in the air were only a part of the story when airfields were being over run and their planes, spares, pilots and technicians were being captured en masse. That is not to detract in any way from the performance of the men defending their country, or to exaggerate the strength of the Luftwaffe, it wasn't the LW doing the most damage, they were just part of it.


 France was doomed no later than 3 June. The decisive battles that sealed her fate were fought 14 May to 26May. She succumbed for a number of reasons, some of them stretching as far back as 1917.

But, in going down, the French managed to inflict serious losses on the LW, as Murray and Cornwell demonstrate


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## Stig1207 (Mar 2, 2018)

The Lw system of reporting losses is another interesting discussion; but to our specific discussion about the number of aircraft actually shot down by the French it's a bit pointless.
After all, we are trying to verify 500+ Luftwaffe losses that the French *didn't claim to have shot down!*
So if these Lw 'losses' are missing, then it may be for a very good reason.


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## parsifal (Mar 2, 2018)

I have no idea what you are trying to say.


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## Stig1207 (Mar 2, 2018)

The 1500 that you have deduced that the French must have shot down; despite that they claimed 'about a 1000'. Actually the claims figures are in round numbers 700 confirmed and 250 probables.


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## pinsog (Mar 2, 2018)

Greyman said:


> *
> View attachment 484455
> 
> 
> ...



In Flying to the Limit, page 131, the British test of a Mohawk IV (H-75A-4) with 6 LMG and armor, showed best climb of 2,600 fpm at 8,000 feet. Climb rate did not fall below 1,000 fpm until 27,000 feet. 3.9 minutes to 10,000 feet. 6.2 minutes to 15,000. 8.8 minutes to 20,000. 13.3 minutes to 26,000. 18 minutes to 30,000. 23.2 minutes to 32,000. 302 mph at 14,000. Test was done in early 1941.


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## Smokey Stover (Mar 2, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Them thar is fighting words Smokey
> 
> When making claims like that it is best to have all your ducks in a row and unfortunately your ducks are different breeds in different ponds.
> 
> ...




Ok, sorry it's a bit late i had to dig out my files from the loft/attic.

Bombs: Although it theoretically could carry 17,417 lb of bombs, the B-17 rarely flew combat missions with more than 5,071lbs to 6,000lbs. This was because of its poor climb rate with load, poor performance at altitude and the low power to weight ratio of the Wright cyclones. (Although i have a feeling you will try and debate that)

12,732 B-17's were produced at a cost of $238,329 each. Today, the same aircraft would cost $2,781,367 apiece. That's a hefty price tag for a 1935 design. Not to mention most of them went down in flames.

Because of all the guns, which were basically redundant, it had a ten man crew. That's ten guys every time one went down. Admittedly a few managed to bail out but effectively for them the war was over. It was used wrong, despite the RAF's warnings thousands of young men were needlessly sacrificed on what was suicide missions. Without the P-51 the whole planes history would have been a disaster not a triumph as some seem to think. The Norden bombsight was nowhere near as accurate as claimed and time and again crews were sent out to bomb the same location day after day. The suits worn were totally inadequate and led to many deaths by asphyxiation and even electrocution. Also the B-17 was not a heavy bomber just because it had four engines. If anything it was a mediocre medium bomber.

Losses
These statistics came from the 398th BG newsletter. These numbers match up with what I have seen listed by individual unit histories and in reference books. It also matches up with the wall in front of the American Air Museum before the unit names were worn away by rain.
*Bomb Group* *Station* *Bomber
Type* *Missions
Flown* *Losses First number denotes amount of aircraft. Second number losses.*
34th Mendelsham B-17 170/ 34
91 Bassingbourn B-17 340 /197
92 Podington B-17 308 /154
94 Bury St. Edmonds B-17 324 /153
95 Horham B-17 320 /157
96 Snetterton Heath B-17 321 /189
100 Thorpe Abbots B-17 306/ 177
303 Moleworth B-17 364 /165
305 Chelveston B-17 337 /154
306 Thurieigh B-17 342 /171
351 Polebrook B-17 311/ 124
379 Kimbolton B-17 330/ 141
381 Ridgewell B-17 296 /117
384 Grafton Underwood B-17 314 /159
385 Great Ashfield B-17 296 /129
388 Knettishall B-17 306 /142
390 Framlingham B-17 300/ 144
398 Nuthampstead B-17 195 /58
401 Deenthrope B-17 256 /95
447 Rattlesden B-17 257/ 97
452 Deopham Green B-17 250/ 110
457 Glatton B-17 237 /83
486 Sudbury B-17 188 /33
487 Lavenham B-17 185 /48
490 Eye B-17 158 /40
493 Deebach B-17 158 /41
*Total* *10631* /*4145
Almost half of the amount of aircraft on each mission failed to return*

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## pinsog (Mar 2, 2018)

Reguarding the B17/B24 and the self defending bomber:
I’d like to point out that the Germany was probably the only country that could have effectively handled the B17 until at least midwar. 

The Japanese never got very good at shooting them down and when they did scratch a few down it generally took a LOT of Zeros vs a few B17’s to get it done. By the time they had built planes to deal with the B17, the B29 had appeared and they were back where they started.

In American tests it was reported that when the B29 was over 30,000 feet (exact height may have been 32,000 or 33,000 I can’t remember) that even the P38 and P47 had difficulty making attacks on the B29 because when they turned they tended to high speed stall. In essence, I believe all they could do was nice gentle turns which made them vulnerable to return fire from the bomber. I think B29’s at high altitude, especially at night would have been nearly invulnerable to German attacks.

Did you read of the B29 crew that bailed out over I think Iwo Jima, and a P61 Black Widow was told to shoot down the now crewless B29 on autopilot? They moved up to point blank range and emptied 4 20mm cannon an 4 50’s into the B29 before it finally went down. Sounds like a tough machine to me. 

Even at lower altitudes the B17 was never considered an easy victory by German pilots in a 1 on 1 situation. There is a reason they kept fitting more and bigger guns to their fighters as the war progressed.

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## Greyman (Mar 2, 2018)

pinsog said:


> In Flying to the Limit, page 131, the British test of a Mohawk IV (H-75A-4) with 6 LMG and armor, showed best climb of 2,600 fpm at 8,000 feet. Climb rate did not fall below 1,000 fpm until 27,000 feet. 3.9 minutes to 10,000 feet. 6.2 minutes to 15,000. 8.8 minutes to 20,000. 13.3 minutes to 26,000. 18 minutes to 30,000. 23.2 minutes to 32,000. 302 mph at 14,000. Test was done in early 1941.



Mohawk IV added







*Spitfire I - 6.25 lb, 2600 rpm (6,050 lb) - Merlin III
Hurricane I - 6.25 lb, 2600 rpm (6,316 lb) - Merlin III
Mohawk II - 87 cm, 2550 rpm (5,962 lb) - Twin Wasp SC3G
Mohawk IV - 103/95 cm, 2300 rpm (6,330 lb) - Cyclone G205A*

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## pbehn (Mar 2, 2018)

parsifal said:


> France was doomed no later than 3 June. The decisive battles that sealed her fate were fought 14 May to 26May. She succumbed for a number of reasons, some of them stretching as far back as 1917.
> 
> But, in going down, the French managed to inflict serious losses on the LW, as Murray and Cornwell demonstrate


But my point is this was a World War. If you take round figures a loss of 40% of bombers in a 10 week conflict is 4% per week. This is like Bomber Command making one, thousand bomber raid every week with losses of 4% or two per week with losses of 2%. That is about the best BC ever achieved not the worst. The numbers and losses suffered by the LW were not unusual compared to WW1, the surprise is they had no production or training system to sustain them. Before the BoB was over Germany was involved in the siege of Malta and at the beginning of 1941 in North Africa. The loss of 407 single engine fighters destroyed or damaged is only serious if you are not producing many, in terms of beating France it is a very small loss. The LW were to lose many more in the BoB getting nowhere at all.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 2, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Ok, sorry it's a bit late i had to dig out my files from the loft/attic.
> 
> Bombs: Although it theoretically could carry 17,417 lb of bombs, the B-17 rarely flew combat missions with more than 5,071lbs to 6,000lbs. This was because of its poor climb rate with load, poor performance at altitude and the low power to weight ratio of the Wright cyclones. (Although i have a feeling you will try and debate that)


http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/Halifax/Halifax_III_ADS.jpg
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/B-17/Fortress_III_Data_Sheet.pdf

Yep, poor performance at altitude. Service ceiling of 26,500ft at 64,000lbs vrs the Halifax III's service ceiling of 20,000ft at 65,000lbs. 



> Also the B-17 was not a heavy bomber just because it had four engines. If anything it was a mediocre medium bomber.



Yep, medium bomber, anybody else got a medium bomber that can carry 10,000lb of bombs 1640 miles? 



> Losses
> These statistics came from the 398th BG newsletter. These numbers match up with what I have seen listed by individual unit histories and in reference books. It also matches up with the wall in front of the American Air Museum before the unit names were worn away by rain.
> *Bomb Group* *Station* *Bomber
> Type* *Missions
> ...




Hmmmmm, 
305th Bomb Group Can Do | American Air Museum in Britain
"During their tour of duty the Group flew 337 missions in 9,321 sorties and dropped 22,363 tons of bombs. The Group lost 154 aircraft MIA; 13 of those losses occurred on the famous "2nd Schweinfurt" mission of 14-Oct-1943, the most losses of any Bomb Group participating in that action."

Each _mission_ consisted of multiple *sorties *(one aircraft flying one mission).

SO your statics are worthless in this case for figuring out losses. 
For this one bomb group operating out of this one airfield (and Chelveston was an air base, not a target) they *averaged *27.5 aircraft flown per mission
and they also averaged one loss for every 60.5 sorties flown, not the near 50% loss rate you are claiming.

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## parsifal (Mar 2, 2018)

I never said they "shot down' 1500, I said that the French were responsible for the loss of about 1500 aircraft. not all aircraft were lost in the French campaign were shot down. I went out of my way to make that very clear.

I'm not even saying that the French shot down 1000 a/c. If you track back through this conversation, I started this by saying the corrected claims for h-75 equipped units is 230 LW a/c for the loss in air combat of just 29 H-7s. Since then Ive pointed out that h-75 losses to all causes came to about 100 a/c

I pointed out that the H-75 claims accounted for some 33% of FAF fighter claims . 3 x 230 is 700a/c.

You responded by saying that" we both know that claims are notoriously inaccurate" I agreed but pointed out that these were post war corrected claims, to which you said total losses to all sources for the LW were about 1000, and from there we came to the realisation that total losses for the LW, from all causes and all sources, was much higher than "about 1000" that you initially were suggesting. For my part, using a process of what other nationalities could reasonably establish as their contribution to that overall loss rate for the LW, i arrived at a figure of 1500 for the french. There are difficulties with that, as we cant be 100% sure who was responsible for each loss. What we do have are reasonably accurate figures for the overall loss rate. Murray says 1916 a/c, plus a further 370 scrappings. Campbell says 1814 (you say, on the basis of a comment made in another forum that Cornwell is saying about 1400, without the benefit of actually having read the original source), Then we have the 500 or so lost in Poland. plus we have a number lost in Scandinavia. in total those losses amount to about 3300 aircraft from the beginning of the war, from all causes and from all sources. The 1500 is a derived figure taken from that overall total. I NEVER claimed they were shoot downs .


At one point you were making some rather unsupportable observations.... such as this gem

"T_he figures I have seen is over a 1000 LW a/c claimed by all the French flown fighters, not just by the H 75 units; while the likely actual number shot down by French flown fighters is 355"_.

Really???? And then misquoting the source material on which that observation was made.

....


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## pinsog (Mar 2, 2018)

B17 high altitude performance?

A B17E could get to 25,000 feet in 20.6 minutes 
A B24D could get to 25,000 feet in 18.4 minutes
A P40E could get to 25,000 feet in 19.4 minutes
(B17E at 40,000 pounds, B24D at 41,000 pounds)

A B17E at 40,000 pounds could beat a P40E or Wildcat to 30,000 feet by about 12 minutes.

Maybe they should have used B17’s at Guadalcanal as high altitude interceptors.....

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## pbehn (Mar 2, 2018)

I seem to remember Bill Runnels saying that forming up took over an hour.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 2, 2018)

DIfference between what the plane on it's own could do and what happened on operations and in formation. I would note that B-17s and B-24s at 40-41,000lbs were carry not much in the way of fuel and bombs. 

At 65,000lbs or so they took around 40 minutes to get to 20,000 ft but so did the Halifax and the Lancaster (Lancaster was at 68,000lbs) That would be one plane, pretty much flying straight, not circling as it climbed.


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## pinsog (Mar 2, 2018)

Shortround, You would a want a B17 or B24 light when operating in the interceptor mode......

And don’t worry about the escort, all a B17 or B24 has to do is dive above 300 mph and then out roll the Zero. Everyone knows you can outroll a Zero above 300 mph!

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## pbehn (Mar 2, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> DIfference between what the plane on it's own could do and what happened on operations and in formation. I would note that B-17s and B-24s at 40-41,000lbs were carry not much in the way of fuel and bombs.
> 
> At 65,000lbs or so they took around 40 minutes to get to 20,000 ft but so did the Halifax and the Lancaster (Lancaster was at 68,000lbs) That would be one plane, pretty much flying straight, not circling as it climbed.


An advantage of night operations was the aircraft involved didn't "form up" but had to be at a specific place and altitude and course at a specific time. I would think daylight operations needed more performance "in reserve" to allow changes to formation etc.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 2, 2018)

pbehn said:


> An advantage of night operations was the aircraft involved didn't "form up" but had to be at a specific place and altitude and course at a specific time. I would think daylight operations needed more performance "in reserve" to allow changes to formation etc.



The RAF BC bombers were trying to fly in a tight formation when penetrating a chosen part of the 'Himmelbelt'. They will reach the cruise altitue faster than the USAF heavies, since that altitude was lower by a large margin, 5-10 thousand feet.


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## pbehn (Mar 2, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> The RAF BC bombers were trying to fly in a tight formation when penetrating a chosen part of the 'Himmelbelt'. They will reach the cruise altitue faster than the USAF heavies, since that altitude was lower by a large margin, 5-10 thousand feet.


I don't think time to altitude was any problem at all Tomo. Some crews had a lot of time to waste between take off and the first way mark /time /altitude /direction.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 2, 2018)

The B-17 may well have been over rated. However this was due to it's prominence in pre-war news stories and news reels like the interception of the Italian Liner Rex and a good will flight to Brazil, and it's connections in some early war actions (that turned out not to be true) like the Colin Kelly story. 
Already more well known to the general public than some other US aircraft other news stories and News reels (propaganda) added to it. The Post war Movie 12 O'clock High in 1949 and the TV series in 1964-67 also helped cement the B-17 into the minds of the General Public. 
If someone wants to deconstruct the legend of the B-17 based on correcting some of the propaganda stories that is fine with me. 

But using bogus performance comparisons and bogus loss rates won't affect the legend.

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## wuzak (Mar 2, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Yep, medium bomber, anybody else got a medium bomber that can carry 10,000lb of bombs 1640 miles?



Could the B-17?


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## wuzak (Mar 2, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Bombs: Although it theoretically could carry 17,417 lb of bombs, the B-17 rarely flew combat missions with more than 5,071lbs to 6,000lbs. This was because of its poor climb rate with load, poor performance at altitude and the low power to weight ratio of the Wright cyclones. (Although i have a feeling you will try and debate that)



Where does 17,417lb come from? The theoretical maximum was 6 x 1,600lb SAP + 2 x 4,000lb bombs under the wing = 17,600lb. It may have been able to carry more, but the 6 x 1,600lb load was the maximum it could carry internally, due to size restrictions. 

But the 8th AF rarely used the 1,600lb SAP bomb. I believe the maximum load carried internally was 8 x 1,000lb GP. 2,000lb GP bombs could be carried internally, but only two at a time (smaller bombs could be carried along with them).

B-17 bomb loads were affected by two factors - range and type of ordnance. 

The farther the raid, the more fuel required and the less bomb load can be carried. 
The larger the amount on incendiaries carried, the lower the overall weight of bombs.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 2, 2018)

That is what the British Data sheets for the Fortress IIA and Fortess III say.

SO if they couldn't what does that say about the payload/range on the data sheets for the Lancaster and Halifax?

The bomb load is a bit of a trick, you could jam eight 1600lb AP bombs into the bombay but the load was pretty useless and almost never used (or never). the fatter 1000lb bombs dropped the payload to 6 bombs but then you had a lot more weight to use for fuel.
Like 1900 miles with 6800lbs?

I would note that if you keep the external racks you can do things like carry four 2,000lb bombs.


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## Smokey Stover (Mar 2, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/Halifax/Halifax_III_ADS.jpg
> http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/B-17/Fortress_III_Data_Sheet.pdf
> 
> Yep, poor performance at altitude. Service ceiling of 26,500ft at 64,000lbs vrs the Halifax III's service ceiling of 20,000ft at 65,000lbs.
> ...



Ok, firstly we are talking about why i think the B-17 was overrated. So comparing it with another aircraft (which i knew you would do) is irrelevant. Also your mis quoting me, i said nearly half not 50%. Secondly, where are you getting this 10,000lb payload from? Even the B-17G couldnt carry that load over 1600 miles. The bomb bay just wasnt designed/capable of carrying such a load unless your saying every gun was removed and half the crew. Even then it just didnt have the power to weight ratio to fly high enough to avoid anti aircraft defences. I know B-17 bombers and their crews were not a high priority for the US top brass, as lets face facts they were used as bait so hotshot P-51 pilots could shoot down German fighters that were so heavy with added firepower (To bring down bombers) they really didnt stand a chance. I think your patriotism is clouding your judgement. Im an aviation engineer that specializes in engines. Its not as simple as turning a key or pushing a button and away you go. How do think they stay up there, by magic perhaps? Time and time again i come across this made up history of the victors and after 70 years what amazes me most is how you all still swallow it. We can swap "stats" all day long. It doesnt mean the sources are accurate. Oh and btw, if it was such a great bomber, why did they build so many B-24's? Because it wasnt a great bomber, it wasnt even a good bomber unless your talking target practice for the luftwaffe. Im surprised you didnt tell me how America saved us all and if it wasnt for America, blah blah blah. We were doing just fine until Churchill sold his country down the river by giving away everything just for a few ww1 destroyers and some crappy old rifles. The war was already won (By Russia) before the states even dropped a bomb in anger. And im not trying to be personal, im simply stating a fact.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 2, 2018)

Then give us some real sources and not this made up crap. 

You claimed the B-17 had poor altitude performance, poor compared to what? if you don't compare it to any other aircraft what is your frame of reference. 

OK, nearly half is is not 50% but then the real loss rate was was under 2% which is a whole lot different than *nearly half *isn't it. 
give me some real statistics that make sense, not that mish-mash of confusion between missions and sorties. 

Look at the RAF data sheets. I will freely grant the B-17 seldom carried 10,000lb on operations. (although it carried 9000lbs on four missions, 78-79 sorties when using the Disney bomb). However as used and possible are often not the same thing. 
There are pilots manuals in the tech section of this site. I would suggest that you read then before claiming what was possible and what was not unlees you are claiming that the manuals were rewritten by the victors after the fact to make the B-17 look good. 
Charts in manuals says that a B-17 with 6000lbs inside and 4000lbs outside could still hold 2280 gallons (US) of fuel at a take off weight of 65,000lbs and that includes a crew of 9, nine guns and 3500 rounds of ammo, 144 gallons of oil, 900lbs of misc equip and 1500lbs for the auxiliary wing tanks.

Care to show any weight charts you have?


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## pinsog (Mar 2, 2018)

Smokey Stover, I’m having trouble believing your an aviation engineer if you don’t know why they built so many B24’s AND B17’s. Same reason they built so many P39, P40, Hurricanes, Zeros and so many other aircraft. The factories were built and the aircraft were being cranked out. As an engineer, you should know you don’t just turn a key or push a button and start building a whole different aircraft. Do you think it’s magic? All the tooling and special parts, jigs etc that are specific to a new aircraft don’t appear instantly out of thin air. Meanwhile the front line is desperately missing the aircraft which is not being produced.

Your not debating in good faith, your just stirring the pot to annoy people.

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 3, 2018)

pinsog said:


> Your not debating in good faith, your just stirring the pot to annoy people.


My Master Warning light is flashing, Betty is bitching, and the BS and TROLL annunciators are lit, compromising my night vision!

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 3, 2018)

It’s getting deep in here...

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## Ascent (Mar 3, 2018)

When discussing the Mosquito when people mention it could carry 4'000lb to Berlin it's often dismissed because it was the cookie bomb and not a typical load. 

Surely we need to look at the B17 in the same way? What was it's biggest practical load? Not theoretical maximums that were never used as a regular thing due to not being a practical load.

Also on the question of it being overrated, if you swap the B17 for another 4 engine heavy do you get the same results? I.e large casualties when unescorted but sustainable losses when the escorts are around.

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 3, 2018)

Ascent said:


> if you swap the B17 for another 4 engine heavy do you get the same results? I.e large casualties when unescorted but sustainable losses when the escorts are around.


Didn't the B24 have higher loss rates on comparable missions?

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## Stig1207 (Mar 3, 2018)

Well wiggled, Sir! 



parsifal said:


> I never said they "shot down' 1500, I said that the French were responsible for the loss of about 1500 aircraft. not all aircraft were lost in the French campaign were shot down. I went out of my way to make that very clear.





parsifal said:


> In May and June 1940 the Luftwaffe lost 1,482 aircraft destroyed in the air and a further 488 written off on landing. A further 219 were written off after being returned to the factories. Calculated losses inflicted by the RAF and the minors amounted to no more than 650 LW a/c. By deduction that means the FAF caused the loss of over 1500 LW aircraft, either as direct shoot downs or subsequent write offs. Because the campaign was so short, relatively few of the LW machines were lost in non-combat related incidents. Ive read somewhere it was in the order 200 a/c.* French flak was negligible, perhaps 50 LW a/c in total. The lions share of LW losses were at the hands of the French fighter forces, which tore into the LW causing it damage from which it never recovered fully.*



So I have misunderstood?



parsifal said:


> I pointed out that the H-75 claims accounted for some 33% of FAF fighter claims . 3 x 230 is 700a/c.
> 
> You responded by saying that" we both know that claims are notoriously inaccurate" I agreed but pointed out that these were *post war corrected claims*,



Post war? Still claims though, unless you mean that these are verified.



parsifal said:


> to which you said total losses to all sources for the LW were about 1000, and from there we came to the realisation that total losses for the LW, from all causes and all sources, was much higher than "about 1000" that you initially were suggesting



Ah no, I have pointed out that the FAF claimed about a 1000 enemy aicraft shot down. I have written that LW losses were in the range of 1400-1500 destroyed; this is for period May-June 1940, just to be clear.



parsifal said:


> For my part, using a process of what other nationalities could reasonably establish as their contribution to that overall loss rate for the LW, *i arrived at a figure of 1500 for the french*. There are difficulties with that, as we cant be 100% sure who was responsible for each loss. What we do have are reasonably accurate figures for the overall loss rate. Murray says 1916 a/c, plus a further *370 scrappings*. Campbell says 1814 (you say, on the basis of a comment made in another forum that Cornwell is saying about 1400, without the benefit of actually having read the original source), .



Murray's total is for destroyed and damaged to all causes May-June 1940; the 370 scrappings is a figure you have arrived at just like the 1500. You derived the 370 from 488 damaged aircraft in Murray's chart; so it doesn't make sense that you then add it to the total of 1916 a/c.
Cornwell says 1814, but it is unclear whether that figure is for Sep 3 '39- May 10 '40 or whether its May 10 -June 24 '40. However, the conclusion of the exchange between Mars and Juha, in the link that I posted twice already, was that Mars had got it wrong, and that the correct dates is Sep 3 '39- May 10 '40.



parsifal said:


> At one point you were making some rather unsupportable observations.... such as this gem
> 
> "T_he figures I have seen is over a 1000 LW a/c claimed by all the French flown fighters, not just by the H 75 units; while the likely actual number shot down by French flown fighters is 355"_.
> 
> Really???? And then misquoting the source material on which that observation was made.



I linked to Arnaud Gillet's figure of 355, so what did I misquote? I have also linked to Philippe Garraud, who has arrived at a figure of 500.
What unsupportable observations?


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## Smokey Stover (Mar 3, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Then give us some real sources and not this made up crap.
> 
> You claimed the B-17 had poor altitude performance, poor compared to what? if you don't compare it to any other aircraft what is your frame of reference.
> 
> ...



Firstly i apologize for some of my comments towards the end, that was unfair judgement of character. I just feel a little offended by the amount of people ready to jump on any and every mistake. Facts are important yes. But these manuals you refer to. Surely you are smart enough to understand the difference between whats on paper compared to how things work when the aircraft is actually flying. Even the manufacturers couldnt (and often didnt, admit to) certain actions or flight control systems. Especially pre, during, and post ww2. Many aircraft were on the cutting edge of technology and knowledge is often gained by unexpected/overlooked factors. The other problem is those manuals and stats are copied and re-printed over the years without any correction. 

But ok, if you want me to strip down the Wright cyclones, the turbochargers used and the aircrafts flight/handling and loading/altitude performance i will. It may take some time but i'd rather get stats from a working unit than trust any manual. It wont be 100% after all these years but i just happen to know a man that has a R-1820 on a jig. i wont confuse the issue by bringing the few 17's that were converted to Allison V-1710's, which ironically performed better. WTS....


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## Shortround6 (Mar 3, 2018)

Ascent said:


> When discussing the Mosquito when people mention it could carry 4'000lb to Berlin it's often dismissed because it was the cookie bomb and not a typical load.
> 
> Surely we need to look at the B17 in the same way? What was it's biggest practical load? Not theoretical maximums that were never used as a regular thing due to not being a practical load.
> 
> Also on the question of it being overrated, if you swap the B17 for another 4 engine heavy do you get the same results? I.e large casualties when unescorted but sustainable losses when the escorts are around.



1. I tend to dismiss it because of the context it is often put in. That being that the US should have used Mosquito's instead of B-17s because they carried the same bomb load. Which ignores the already mentioned huge manufacturing effort put into the B-17 and the facts that the first European B-17 operations (over France) were in Aug of 1942 While the Mosquito didn't carry a cookie to enemy territory until early 1944, which is a bit late to try to swap production around. There is no doubt the Mosquito was one of the great aircraft of the war and made a tremendous contribution, well out of proportion to the number of aircraft and crews involved due to it's pathfinder and propaganda raids. The last diverted German attention and efforts out of proportion to actual damage done. 

2. Much like other other bombers practical loads varied with range and desired bombing altitude. And yes, I will freely admit that the B-17 had either the smallest or one of the smallest, most restrictive (in terms of volume) bomb bays of any heavy bomber. I don't like the the use of the 1600AP bomb when figuring out bomb loads because it is deceptive but it does point out that the B-17 was more volume limited than weight limited. However bringing in Lancasters with 22,000lb grand slams also distorts the picture. Practical limit on B-17s was about 6000lbs, either six 1000lb HE bombs or twelve 500lb HE bombs. more usual was 5000lb. However they could carry this load and drop it several thousand feet higher up than the British bombers could. 
I would also note that the B-17s carried a wide variety of bombs, in part due to supply problems. In 1942/43 they often used British supplied 250lb and 500lb incendiary bombs before supplies of US incendiaries caught up. The US also changed types and sizes of incendiary bombs. Recommended types of bombs may have also changed for certain targets. And some of the recommendations may have not have been the best. This can also affect the "average" bomb load. Like twenty eight 100lb bombs for airfeild attack. a 2800lb bomb load? 

The Big British bombers routinely carried much heavier loads. B-17s could have flown at night and perhaps if flown at lower altitudes , used the external racks.

British bombers if flown by day would have suffered even greater losses than the US bombers, in part due to lower altitudes putting them in greater danger from flak. Perhaps they could have flown higher by restricting their payloads?

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## pbehn (Mar 3, 2018)

Any discussion of using Mosquitos for strategic bombing ignores the obvious fact that there were not enough to do all the other "stuff" people wanted of it, and also that it couldn't do it.


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## swampyankee (Mar 3, 2018)

In some ways, the B-24 was a better aircraft, with better payload/range performance and more versatility, but the B-17 was more damage tolerant and, reputably, easier to fly. 

While some marks of the Mosquito could carry the same bomb load to Berlin and return, the sort of massed raids needed for destruction would severely limit the Mosquito's cruising speed and ability to maneuver to avoid interception, increasing the Mosquito's vulnerability. The RAF and USAAF entered the strategic bombing campaign with very optimistic estimates of the effectiveness of defensive weapons on bombers; this pushed the RAF to night operations. The USAAF responded with ever-increasing loads of defensive weapons, which had multiple deleterious effects on both aircraft performance and bomb load. The worst extrapolation of this was the YB-40.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 3, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Firstly i apologize for some of my comments towards the end, that was unfair judgement of character. I just feel a little offended by the amount of people ready to jump on any and every mistake. Facts are important yes. But these manuals you refer to. Surely you are smart enough to understand the difference between whats on paper compared to how things work when the aircraft is actually flying. Even the manufacturers couldnt (and often didnt, admit to) certain actions or flight control systems. Especially pre, during, and post ww2. Many aircraft were on the cutting edge of technology and knowledge is often gained by unexpected/overlooked factors. The other problem is those manuals and stats are copied and re-printed over the years without any correction.



Manuals were aproved by military, even written by military, and were official documents for all people to follow and adhere to. No-one in miitary wanted to face court martial for aproving anything that might mislead the people on operations, while risking the lives of servicemen without a need. Facts are in manulas, how we today interpret them might and might not be facts.



> But ok, if you want me to strip down the Wright cyclones, the turbochargers used and the aircrafts flight/handling and loading/altitude performance i will. It may take some time but i'd rather get stats from a working unit than trust any manual. It wont be 100% after all these years but i just happen to know a man that has a R-1820 on a jig. i wont confuse the issue by bringing the few 17's that were converted to Allison V-1710's, which ironically performed better. WTS....



Why would be ironical that B-17 (XB-40) powered by V-1710s performs better than run-on-the-mill B-17? It was 1425 vs. 1200 HP (military power), four such engines = 900 HP more, with a bit less drag and a bit more weight.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 3, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Firstly i apologize for some of my comments towards the end, that was unfair judgement of character. I just feel a little offended by the amount of people ready to jump on any and every mistake. Facts are important yes. But these manuals you refer to. Surely you are smart enough to understand the difference between whats on paper compared to how things work when the aircraft is actually flying. Even the manufacturers couldnt (and often didnt, admit to) certain actions or flight control systems. Especially pre, during, and post ww2. Many aircraft were on the cutting edge of technology and knowledge is often gained by unexpected/overlooked factors. The other problem is those manuals and stats are copied and re-printed over the years without any correction.
> 
> But ok, if you want me to strip down the Wright cyclones, the turbochargers used and the aircrafts flight/handling and loading/altitude performance i will. It may take some time but i'd rather get stats from a working unit than trust any manual. It wont be 100% after all these years but i just happen to know a man that has a R-1820 on a jig. i wont confuse the issue by bringing the few 17's that were converted to Allison V-1710's, which ironically performed better. WTS....




I think you are confusing a few things and don't bother with Allisons. That comparison has been done to death and is a perfect example of (not a few but one aircraft) figures taken from a single aircraft on test and comparing them to a group of planes flying in formation on operations. 

The airplane (and crew and operation planners) doesn't care what the power to weight ratio of the _engine_ is. Or the power to weight ratio of the powerplant if you prefer. What matters is the performance of the plane as a whole. The B-17 (and B-24) were not built of anti-gravitium or coated with pixie dust. 
Their 1200hp engines did limit them on take-off compared to the British engines. However the large, bulky and several hundred pounds apiece turbo installations 
ment they offered as much or more power than the British engines over 20,000ft. The engines in a B-17 could give 1000hp apiece up to 23-24000ft for as long as the fuel held out (and at that power they were sucking down over 100 US gallons an hour each so the fuel wasn't going to last long). 
The two speed Merlin used in the Lancaster made about 1000hp at 15-16,000ft under max cruise conditions (2650rpm and 7lbs boost) and lost power from their on up. roughly 2 1/2 % per 1000 ft. or very roughly 20% by the time you get to 24,000ft (I didn't compound the percentages) so please figure your power to weight ratio accordingly. 5 minute ratings for bombers are pretty useless as it is going to take several minutes to accelerate to full speed or several minutes to even climb 1000ft for most of the planes when cruising at altitude. 
Hercules engine as used in the Halifax III may have been good for 1300hp at 13,500ft (2400rpm/6lb boost) at 30 minute climb rating, or roughly 1040hp at 21,500ft? what is the power to weight ratio of a Hercules XVI power plant at 1000hp? 

That is, not to pick on the British, what kept the B-17 and B-24 using the R-1820 and R-1830 engines. The US Wright R-2600 offered no real improvement at altitude (it didn't take to turbo charging well) even if it it might have improved take-off. It required more manufacturing effort. next step/s were the R-2800 (not enough to go around as it was) and the R-3350( and let's not get into that one) and both were better used in new aircraft.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 3, 2018)

I would also double check any R-1820s available. It may very well be comparable to the ones used in a B-17. One the other hand the R-1820 is the most developed and by that I mean the most changed, not the most advanced, aircraft piston engine in history. Production spans the early 30s to the 1950s if not the early 60s and power went from under 600hp to 1525hp in post war versions. many of which were used in helicopters.


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## parsifal (Mar 3, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Well wiggled, Sir!
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yes you did misquote


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## Stig1207 (Mar 3, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Yes you did misquote



Ok, but what did I misquote?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 3, 2018)

As an example of the B-17 engines I have decided to use the following tables, mainly because I can find them 






Please note the altitudes are with RAM or the maximum forward speed at the power listed. Power when climbing will have a bit lower altitude limit. 

Engine/s from a late model P-38. 





Now please note that despite 1600hp WEP rating and the 1425hp military rating the max continuous power rating is 1100hp compared to the Cyclones 1000hp and the max lean cruise rating is 795hp vs the Cyclone's 750hp rating. 

Difference in performance when flying in formations of hundreds of aircraft over hundreds of miles isn't not going to be anywhere near what the difference in max power suggests.

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## pbehn (Mar 3, 2018)

As far as I remember the RAF had no interest in higher altitudes for the bombers in the bomber stream because they started to form vapour trails.


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## Ascent (Mar 3, 2018)

I wasn't suggesting using Mosquitoes, that argument has been done to death, I'm just saying you shouldn't be looking at theoretical maximums but practical limitations.

Could you fix a Lancaster to fly at higher altitudes? Lighter bomb loads? A change of engines?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 3, 2018)

It is hard to say. They stuck a longer span wing and two stage engines on the Lancaster and called it a Lincoln. But then they pushed the normal gross weight to 75,000lbs and the max to 82,000lbs which kind of killed the altitude performance. 

There were a few Lancaster VIs (Nine according to Wiki) with Merlin 85 two stage engines. 
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/Lancaster/jb675-climb.jpg

Now since they didn't change the gross weight the extra 200lbs per engine and the weight/s of the intercooler radiators (and bigger main radiators?) has to come out of the bomb load or fuel load. 

Again, we have to make sure we are comparing like to like (similar gross or operating weights) as the ceiling on bombers can vary by thousands of feet due to changes in weight.


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## pbehn (Mar 3, 2018)

Ascent said:


> I wasn't suggesting using Mosquitoes, that argument has been done to death, I'm just saying you shouldn't be looking at theoretical maximums but practical limitations.
> 
> Could you fix a Lancaster to fly at higher altitudes? Lighter bomb loads? A change of engines?


Maybe you could but why would you, if you were Harris, it was against Harris' philosophy. Lighter pay loads means you need more planes to drop the same bomb load. Higher altitude means less accuracy and vapour trails which could be seen by moonlight. The use of both Halifax and Lancaster together in a bomber stream meant that the Halifax with its higher drag and weight carried a lower bomb load and the longer the mission, the bigger the difference, which is why Harris hated the Halifax and the company that made it.


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## pinsog (Mar 3, 2018)

I'm not sure what kind of fighter was "diving away to save itself when enemy fighters approached", when it performed escort?
Granted, the P-36 have had range advantage over the European fighters that were without drop tanks. Yet, all of the sudden the 310-320 mph P-36 becames scourge for the RAF, while the 350+ mph Bf 109 cant do it.[/QUOTE]

Tomo Pauk: I wanted to respond to this, just to toss out a scenario for everyone to think about.

A somewhat slower extremely maneuverable fighter might have been a very good escort fighter in certain conditions as long as climb rate and ceiling was close to the enemy and speed difference wasn’t extreme (Gladiator vs P47M)

Let’s bump the German P36 up to 320 mph at altitude along with climb rate (Shortround is right, it has to perform up at 25,000 or so where the combat is) Weaving above the HE111 or JU88, the P36 could always turn into an attack by either a Hurricane or Spitfire. (Picture John Thach during the Midway Torpedo escort mission) If a Hurricane or Spitfire got on its tail, a P36 could easily do a level turn to shake them off, remaining in position above the bombers. An ME109 that got a Hurricane or Spitfire on its tail had to dive away to shake them thereby driving them out of escort position and most likely out of the fight. Now, all that being said, it would not be the best choice as an offensive fighter (like the P51) if your actual aim is to use bombers as bait to destroy RAF fighters. For that you need speed and diving ability to pursue.

Tomo Pauk, a squadron of 310-320 mph P36’s above your bombers is a better escort than a squadron of 355 mph ME109’s that are halfway across the channel trying to make the airfield before the fuel runs out.

(I’m not saying it could have been done, I’m tossing out an idea for discussion)


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## tomo pauk (Mar 3, 2018)

pinsog said:


> Tomo Pauk: I wanted to respond to this, just to toss out a scenario for everyone to think about.
> 
> A somewhat slower extremely maneuverable fighter might have been a very good escort fighter in certain conditions as long as climb rate and ceiling was close to the enemy and speed difference wasn’t extreme (Gladiator vs P47M)
> 
> ...



My take is that somewhat good escort is better idea than no escort at all. No escort makes the job easier to the interceptors.

As for the odd escort fighter that might dive, in order to shake off the enemy fighter, that is a whole other situation than the claim from another poster: "With the ability to stay with the bombers instead of diving away to save itself *when enemy fighters approached*." (my bold) Diving away, presumably in droves, on sight of the enemy was not done by anyone when tasked to escort something.

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## pinsog (Mar 3, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> My take is that somewhat good escort is better idea than no escort at all. No escort makes the job easier to the interceptors.
> 
> As for the odd escort fighter that might dive, in order to shake off the enemy fighter, that is a whole other situation than the claim from another poster: "With the ability to stay with the bombers instead of diving away to save itself *when enemy fighters approached*." (my bold) Diving away, presumably in droves, on sight of the enemy was not done by anyone when tasked to escort something.



Oh ok. Your right, that certainly didn’t happen, at least not en mass before the battle started. I can see how a very maneuverable fighter would be handy for certain escort missions. Early on, P47’s when forced to dive, we’re unable to rejoin the bomber force due to poor climb rate and fuel supply. 

This tactic would be better to use when it’s more important to destroy the target than shoot down enemy fighters. Ship strikes come to mind. Knocking down a few enemy fighters is nothing compared to sinking a carrier, battleship, cruiser, troop ship etc. so an extremely maneuverable fighter that can constantly turn headon into an attack, causing just enough problems for enemy fighters that the bombers get through, might have been worth a try.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 3, 2018)

pinsog said:


> Let’s bump the German P36 up to 320 mph at altitude along with climb rate (Shortround is right, it has to perform up at 25,000 or so where the combat is) Weaving above the HE111 or JU88, the P36 could always turn into an attack by either a Hurricane or Spitfire. (Picture John Thach during the Midway Torpedo escort mission) If a Hurricane or Spitfire got on its tail, a P36 could easily do a level turn to shake them off, remaining in position above the bombers. An ME109 that got a Hurricane or Spitfire on its tail had to dive away to shake them thereby driving them out of escort position and most likely out of the fight.
> 
> Tomo Pauk, a squadron of 310-320 mph P36’s above your bombers is a better escort than a squadron of 355 mph ME109’s that are halfway across the channel trying to make the airfield before the fuel runs out.
> 
> (I’m not saying it could have been done, I’m tossing out an idea for discussion)



It might have been worth pursuing but the P-36 wasn't going to be it. 
TO get a P-36 up to 320mph at 25,000ft you need over 800hp at that altitude. Not going to happen without a two stage supercharger. and that won't happen till at least mid to late 1942 in prototype form so service use is how far away? 

Now the 2nd point is nobody could do a sharp turn at 25,000 without loosing altitude. The P-36 with it's roughly 25.4 lbs per sq ft wing loading isn't enough better (if as good) as the Spit or Hurricane to do sharper turn (pull more "G"s) and not loose as much or more altitude. A large part of the Hawks ability to out turn the Spit at low altitude was A. It's easier to modulate elevators, less likely to over control. B. it's more powerful engine (at low altitude) and constant speed prop meant it could replace energy lost in the turn better than a Spitfire with a 2 pitch prop. 
The 2 pitch prop helped take-off and that is it. at some were between 140-160mph while climbing away from the runway (and after the wheels were up) the plane with the 2 pitch prop shifted to course pitch and there the prop stayed (barring some really extreme circumstance) until the plane landed. 
The Spitfires were modified with either a bob weight or spring/bungee cord so that more effort was needed on the stick for the elevator and that did away with a lot of the oversensitivity.

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## pinsog (Mar 3, 2018)

Very nicely laid out Shortround.

What about (obviously very hypothetical) the first production version of the Zero?


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## Shortround6 (Mar 3, 2018)

Part of the Zero Legend is that there were two Zero's.
The first (the A6M2) came in two slightly different versions, the model 11 and the model 21 and used an engine with a single speed supercharger.
This version despite having a critical altitude of just under 15,000ft, was able to dominate the 2nd rate fighters in use in most of Asia in late 1941 and early 1942.
In large part due to it's light weight.
However the Japanese were not content to rest on what they had already achieved and the had flown the prototype Zero with 2 speed supercharger on July 15th 1941. This became the A6M3. The increase power at altitude didn't come without cost but the critical height of near 20,000ft kept it competitive with the majority of allied fighters for the rest of 1942. It was only the trickle of P-38s and the coming of the two stage F6F and F4U that really out performed the Zero on a technical level. (loss of pilot quality and poor Japanese logistics were eroding the Japanese superiority)

However the Zero would have been in a lot more trouble trying to fly in Europe in late 1941 or 1942 on either side.

The early Zero trying to act as an escort fighter at 25,000ft would have been in serious trouble. Being able to out turn 7500lb P-40s at over 20,000ft is one thing, low powered engine engine was trying to ahul around a fighter almost one ton lighter than the P-40s and Wildcats. 
The Spitfires and 109s were about 1/2 way in weight (or less) between the the Zero and the two American fighters and both had much more power in the mid 20,000ft foot band than the Zero and P-39/40. 
The later Zero might have done better against the early European fighters but by the middle of 1942 the game had already changed in Europe. MK V Spits were common and MK IXs were coming online and the Germans were introducing 109Gs.


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## Greyman (Mar 4, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Lancaster VIs



Found a reasonably close test to compare ...







Lancs are from A&AEE, Fort is from data sheet

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## parsifal (Mar 4, 2018)

Translation of the article linked in Post 514
(Part I)
The contribution of the figures to the construction of a myth. The "undefeated" Air Force in 1940.


“From the end of the military operations of the so-called "la campagne de France" (10 May-24 June 1940) which accompanied the signing of the Armistice of June 1940, the role of the Air force and the effectiveness of its action have ceased to be the subject of contro(versy) Often passionate, but also very interested on both sides; Each stakeholder endeavouring to justify itself and to bring to others the decisive responsibility for the very fast and unexpected military defeat of France. In the first time the controversy was essentially political and military. It was a matter of quickly finding leaders at the "Strange defeat" of 1940, according to the famous expression of the historian Marc Bloch. Politically, it is the action of the various Governments of the Third Republic that has been criticized and, in particular, successive ministers of Air: Pierre Cot en 1933-1934 (governments Daladier, Sarraut, Chautemps and Daladier) and 1936 to 1938 (Blum governments and popular Front Chautemps); And Guy the room from 1938 to 1940 (governments Chautemps, Blum and Daladier). On the military level, the action of the Air force was severely challenged and criticized by the Army officials.


In order to respond to the attacks it was subjected to, the French aviation political and military officials have tried to justify themselves, relying in particular on quantitative data from their own services1. From the outset, the figures have therefore been an essential and key source and resource of argumentation. Since the dark years, the controversy has never really ceased, even if over time it has often taken a more technical turn. Today, due to the gradual accumulation of scientific work, the cause appears to be widely heard, at least among specialists, and the weaknesses, limitations and constraints of the Air force and its action have been precisely Identified and analyzed in a non-controversial manner.


In fact, they were hampered in 1940 by several particularly heavy factors which limited their effectiveness: a numerical inferiority to German aviation (in the order of one to three), a lack of equipment technically Point, robust and reliable, renewal of unit equipment in the same time of fighting, organizational weaknesses and coordination difficulties at all levels, in industrial production as well as operational, because of the role Crucial time factor, etc. Some of these factors have been structural: plant exits and late deliveries of many devices; Equipment Calendar of units also late, depending on the output received; But also employment doctrine of cooperation with the Army, limiting the autonomy of the Air force and leading to divide and disperse the available means already in limited number to meet the specific requests of the latter (covers of Hunting of land units, bombardment of German columns) 2.

[Other factors have been much more cyclical, related to the weight of the concrete historical circumstances of this particular moment in the emergence of multiple constraints that have weakened its operational capability and refer to the game of these different Variables: Reequipment of the units while the decisive battle was engaged, due to both the material losses suffered but also the late deliveries of modern apparatus; Changes in airfields and withdrawal of units in front of the German advance forcing them to leave the aircraft out of state to fly; Low "exit rate" of the devices as pilots for both organization and fragility of the APPAREILS3; etc.] (note this paragraph is a poor translation)

On the other hand, the question of the "performance" of French aviation, which technically refers to the numbers compared to the aerial "victories" won and the losses of the Air Force, is an ancient subject of controversy and also of Mythology, but which has not been really decided from a scientific point of view. It is a land on which French military aviation historians are reluctant to engage for various reasons, starting with the complexity and the very technical nature of the data to be established and maîtriser4. It is true that this company is at least difficult and even perilous, the magnitude of the figures can vary in very large proportions according to the categories selected and their character more or less systematic and complete.


It does not seem to be necessary at all. Since quantitative data are essential instruments of argumentation, demonstration and finally legitimization, this debate, now more pacified, even if it is sometimes still passionate, is not only statistical and accounting. Through these controversies, it is finally the representation of the role of the Air force, its contribution to defeat, or on the contrary its "undefeated" or even "victorious" character, which are played, built and ARGUMENTENT5:


To understand what bitter victory or glorious defeat means [emphasis added], we must go through the forbidding account, but how edifying, the forces in presence, the victories and the dead in the field of honour. 6


In this field, the frequently mentioned figures of the "Thousand Victories" won as 500 to 900 aircraft lost by the Air force in May-June 1940 fall under the "pious myth", but socially and institutionally interested. The balance being in some way relatively equal between sustained losses and aerial victories won, this evaluation has as its function, if not to "prove" strictly speaking, at least to accredit and validate, with regard to the victories obtained in number Substantially equivalent, the idea of the relative effectiveness of the Air force and that of its non-responsibility in the defeat of 1940. Since this seems to have been one of the main issues of these accounting and statistical controversies for the institution and its representatives or advocates. A kind of functional equivalent comparable to that of "the undefeated Navy" in games that are both actors and representations aimed at imputing to other institutions the responsibility of defeat and imposing this belief, but which proves here Much more debatable and problematic

Historical work on the Air Force during this period is now relatively numerous, well documented and rich in information, and there is finally a critical synthesis in the matière7. However gaps still remain. We would like to focus here on this particular aspect of the debate by proposing to present, clarify and put into perspective the different data of the problem, in a manner as simple, legible and rigorous as possible. First, the first step is to establish critically the number of aerial "victories" won by the French Air Force mainly on its German counterpart, the Luftwaffe. Then, in a second step, we will then try to make a more exhaustive and realistic assessment of the actual losses, limiting themselves in one case as in the other exclusively to combat equipment (hunting, bombardment, recognition), category Of course having the greatest military meaning.

Two complementary phenomena, but opposite and reverse, can then be highlighted: On the one hand, that of a notable overestimate of the number of suspected enemy devices destroyed by the Air force; On the other hand, that of the equally significant underestimation of the losses suffered by the French military aviation which were much more numerous and important than it is most often mentioned. The taking into account of these two phenomena leads to a completely different balance of victories and losses that drastically changes the representation of the role of the Air force in May-June 1940"..

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## parsifal (Mar 4, 2018)

Translation of the article linked in Post 514
(Part II)
The contribution of the figures to the construction of a myth. The "undefeated" Air Force in 1940.



The number of victories won by the Air force. Official estimates to a critical assessment

In this area, it is important to note a significant overestimation which should be highlighted in the accounting mechanisms. Indeed, in May-June 1940, French aviation was not responsible for the destruction of 900 to 1 000 enemy aircraft, mainly Germans, but also Italians to a much lesser extent, as it is often claimed, but much more Modestly in the order of 500. It is therefore important to revisit the data available as strictly as possible.

The official "winners" of the French Hunt and the myth of the "thousand" victories

There is a great confusion about this, and there is a significant difference between the claimed victories and the actual destructions. The first source of confusion is the chronological delimitation of the period under consideration. In the estimation of the Air force's victory, the "Funny War" (3 September 1939-9 may 1940) is included in the vast majority of cases, which is a notable and significant source of confusion: one passes thus insensitively from the "Thousand Victories" French aviation (naval aeronautics included, as weak and marginal as its contribution) in 1939-40 to the "thousand victories" of the Air Force fighter aviation during the French campaign, which is already not quite the same thing.

The primary and essential source in this area is the "Harcourt report", the name of the general inspector of hunting during this period, which constitutes the approximate summation of the charts of the twenty-four main hunting units of The Air force (known at that time as hunting groups, GC as acronym), and its derivatives reviewed and corrected over the years. This table will not be reproduced in the sense that, on the one hand, its detail per unit does not interest us directly and where, on the other hand, it already appears in several publications8. This report provisionally establishes the number of victories homologated and thus officially claimed by the fighter aviation for the period 1939-1940 to 919. This figure is broken down into 675 victories considered "safe" and 244 qualified as only "probable", a distinction which must be returned, insofar as it introduces another major source of confusion and distortion. This allowed some to gradually move from the 919 victories officially homologated to the more symbolic and emblematic figure of the "thousand victories" 9, without however the report of Harcourt being directly at the origin of this myth.

But these very quickly hot figures in the days following the armistice of June 1940 are only an approximation based on the data and information available at a given time and centralized by the aviation Inspector of French hunting: Without having any aberrations, they sometimes contain errors of detail but are mostly incomplete and partial insofar as they do not take into consideration all units of the Air force. At this first official assessment, it is appropriate to add the respective "scores" of the following units which are not taken into account in the Harcourt report: multiplaced Hunting (six squadrons being the equivalent of three groups, Official designation of Air Force units): Ten registered safe victories; Polish GC: twelve; Air defence patrols or light squadrons (ELD) (DAT): twelve; Naval Aviation Fighter Squadrons: twelve; As well as the few complementary victories homologated in bombardment and Reconnaissance10 Aviation.

However, in total and overall, with the sole exception of a particular hunting group, however, these figures do not fish at all by excess, quite the opposite. Based on the systematic counting of March and Unit operations Journals (JMO), primary source, B.C. Ehrengardt reaches the figure of 713 "safe" and 266 "probable" victories, representing a total of 979 officially approved and therefore claimed victories (still this figure does not take into account the few victories obtained by the bombardment Aviation and of recognition).

On the basis of the Harcourt report but extrapolating to excess and much more recently, some authors even go so far as to assert, implicitly or explicitly, that by including German apparatus accidentally destroyed in return for missions in France, the French Air Force, and essentially the fighter aviation, would be responsible for the destruction of 1 300 planes, that is to say, the total German losses of the Luftwaffe during this campaign, as if the British Royal Air forces ( RAF) had not been present and she also strongly engaged in fighting. Fifty years after the events, this is what is not far from doing implicitly the author of the article presenting the various contributions devoted to the commemoration of the Battle of France in the Air News-Magazine of the Air Force, When he writes:.


“To these 733 victories of the hunt, are added those acquired by bombardment, assault, recognition or observation. (...) With the 120 aircraft slaughtered by anti-aircraft land forces and the few 450 casualties for war damage, the Luftwaffe actually loses 36.9% of its entire front-line fleet”

( quote from _For the honour of French wings, air News-Air Force Magazine, 1990.)_


For various reasons, these figures appear highly subject to surety, not as such (the number of victories claimed and officially homologated), but in their real meaning, namely the actual destructions. In particular, but not only, because of the inclusion of "probable" victories, which radically distorts the debate.

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## parsifal (Mar 4, 2018)

Translation of the article linked in Post 514
(Part III)
The contribution of the figures to the construction of a myth. The "undefeated" Air Force in 1940.


“

The losses inflicted: a necessary critical assessment

In order to achieve a more just and realistic assessment, we will therefore propose to proceed by successive approximations. A first necessity is the exclusion of "probable" victories, a new category which did not exist in 1914-1918 and invented by the Air Force, which is not found in any other military aviation (RAF, Luftwaffe, Air Force American, etc.). In the vast majority or almost all of the cases, they are totally hypothetical and do not correspond to any actual destruction, the device concerned and claimed being simply damaged in the best case. In all rigour, they must be considered as highly improbable overall. That's what C.-J does. Ehrengardt: Revisiting the list of units almost systematically and on the basis of stricter criteria, excluding in particular the "probable" victories and the double accounts, he reaches the figure of 693 victories homologated as "safe and therefore officially and institutionally claimed by the French aviation for the period 1939-1940.

Because of this more rigorous method, we are already significantly but definitely moving away from the "thousand Victories". For the campaign of France stricto sensu, the most acceptable starting figure is nearly 600 victories homologated as "safe" (very exactly 594 according to Martin12) from May 10 to June 24. Despite its approximations and some shortcomings, the report by Harcourt does not say anything else in its outline, since it covers the whole period 1939-1940. If we subtract the 70-80 safe victories homologated during the "Funny War" 13 (3 September 1939-9 May 1940) of the 675 victories of the Harcourt report for the period 1939-1940, we find this estimate of about 600 in round figure.

Second necessity: To exclude duplicate accounts, insofar as the Harcourt report is based on the summation of individual unit charts. Given the particular mode of attribution of victories to units and pilots in force in the Air forces at that time, the actual ranking of a unit is not the sum of the individual victories obtained by its pilots as the actual list Of the French hunt as a whole is not the sum of the victories recognized and attributed to its different units. The victories in cooperation (involving several pilots or several groups) are counted as individual victories both to the units as to the pilots, and not split, as for example in the Royal Air Force (RAF). Thus the homologated victory of a single enemy device but obtained in cooperation by several pilots or different units will be recorded to the individual credit of each of them, which has a certain

But this operation does not directly or substantially alter the starting figure insofar as it can be thought that this subtraction is largely offset by the few shortcomings of the Harcourt report (units not taken into account, as has been seen ). For the period 1939-1940, Ehrengardt establishes that the 675 victories claimed as "safe" mentioned in the report of Harcourt correspond to 713 official (homologated as "safe") according to the more precise counts of the units and to 693 excluding Double counting between units (– 20). If we still subtract the 80 safe victories officially homologated during the "Funny war", it always comes back to this figure of the order of 600 for the only campaign of France stricto sensu.

But it is still necessary to introduce another correction and, in particular, to try to distinguish between officially claimed victories through the administrative procedures for approval, which are marked by uncertainty Variable depending on the nature of the approval (extremely strong for "probable"; relatively low for "safe" but not zero for that), and the degree of reality of destruction. We must not fétichiser the official figures which are only approximations, which can only lead to taking all the victories homologated for real destruction, and to confuse the institutional procedure and the reality Effective14 .


Also, third and final requirement, it is necessary to weigh slightly this figure by about 600 by playing a final correction factor of the fact that any victory officially homologated as "safe" does not necessarily correspond and Systematically to an actual destruction found according to criteria if not entirely objective at least relatively objective. A margin of error, linked to the possibilities of observation, verification and confirmation, which cannot be forgotten, exists between the official registration of a claimed victory as "safe" and the actual destruction of an enemy apparatus. The detection and identification on the ground of the aircraft, in particular, is very seldom possible when the aircraft crashed into territory occupied by German forces; In which case it is necessary to use the eyewitness accounts of other pilots who may be subject to subjective and are not always totally reliable.

Of course, we are here in the field of the uncertainty of accounting on the spot, as well established as it is, and this rate is difficult to determine in all rigour and certainty. But it can be estimated that it is probably close to 10% of unfounded claims. Thus, for example, the French fighter aviation claimed several safe and probable victories over seas el-Kebir during the British attack of a squadron of the French Fleet in July 1940. In the light of the English operations reports, no loss is CONFIRMÉE15. And there is no reason to suspect these purely internal administrative and technical documents of any propaganda will, contrary to the figures made public in the Battle of Britain, of which we know today that they were on the side and Others largely inspired and conditioned by the PROPAGANDE16.

At the end of these various calculations and revisions, one can reasonably estimate that the air force or, more accurately, the French aviation as a whole (and therefore not only the fighter aviation or even the air Force, as weak as the Contributions of other specialties or naval aeronautics), is responsible during the campaign of France for the effective destruction of a number of enemy planes greater than 500 and in the order of 550 to the maximum; And for the period 1939-1940, 600 real wins, to stick to a round figure, seem to be a reasonable and realistic approximation.

This estimate seems to be in line with what has long been known of the German losses: 1 300 lost German aircraft (all causes) in operations in May-June 1940 on the Western Front (RAF and DCA included, not forgetting the Aviations Dutch and, to a lesser extent, Belgian) 17. In the end, the official data of the Air force and those based on German sources are not as contradictory and incompatible as it might appear at first glance, but with the imperative requirement to make it a reading and use Critical.

ASeule(???) outstanding question, to definitively clarify the figures and their distribution: the respective contributions of the French and English DCA and the share of the other aviations. To stick to round figures (necessarily approximate, but the important thing here is to set orders of magnitude more in line with the historical reality), if we credit the French aviation of 500 real victories for the campaign of France and the DCA of 100, we obtain a total approximate of 600 enemy aircraft destroyed by the French armies; If the RAF is credited with 400 real victories and the British DCA of 50 (total: 450), a total of 1 050 destroyed German aircraft is coming; This leaves about 250 real victories to the Dutch (surtout18) and Belgian aviations to a much lesser extent. This assessment, for the approximate reason that it is, remains perfectly compliant or compatible with the total German aircraft losses in May-June 1940, of which there is no reason to doubt the veracity.

Official figures for actual losses of a completely different magnitude. Significant underestimation of Air force casualties

In this field we observe a process comparable to the evaluation of victories won by the Air Force but in the opposite direction of a systematic underestimation: These are not 4 to 500 aircraft that the Air Force lost because of the fights of May-June 1940 But in the order of 1 500 to 2 000, much more and three to four times more. Again, it is necessary to show the accounting mechanisms and their effects on the representation of the effectiveness of the action of the French aviation.


Officially recognized material losses

This assessment of losses is also quite central, since it is based on a false balance of victories (significantly overstated by the official certification procedures, as has been seen) and losses (dumped) that the myth otherwise From the "victory" of the Air force, at least from an "undefeated" weapon in May-June 1940 was able to build up and develop widely until our jours19. The official figures are indeed very partial and it seems necessary to take them on as rigorous, precise and diverse a basis as possible, in order to correct them and to make them more in line with the historical reality.

A threefold conclusion can be reached: on the one hand, these data favour "noble" losses (directly in combat) in relation to the professional military ethics of airmen and according to a classification grid particularly Restrictive; On the other hand, they accredit the idea that the Air force held in some way "its rank" and was effective, the losses being less than the "thousand victories" otherwise obtained at least claimed; But unfortunately, they do not correspond to reality, and by far the total losses are of a completely different magnitude.

In the first place, it was essentially the combat casualties that were retained. In this area, estimates range from 410 to 575, with official data becoming increasingly uncertain towards the end of the campaign, as the Air force disorganized and the evacuation of the most exposed airfields and Threatened, many groups were even folded in North Africa in mid-June 1940 in the event of a possible continuation of the GUERRE21

Almost a thousand victories for the loss of 4 to 600 devices (more or less), it is with regard to this comparison speaking, apparently balanced but fundamentally biased that some have claimed to argue in favor of the thesis of an Air force "undefeated", even Even relatively "victorious", or whose contribution would have been important, if not decisive, with regard to the possibility of the RAF winning the Battle of Britain. Moreover, this figure of combat casualties, it is true relatively small, is not explained by any superiority but is the revealing part of the numerical inferiority of the Air force vis-a-vis the German aviation, and on the other hand, of Its low rate of exits linked to the shortage of devices as to a high rate of equipment unavailability. Here too, we must not be mistaken in interpretation.

This only estimate is still far too partial to be true. To combat casualties, it is appropriate to add, on the one hand, the ground losses by bombardment of the parking lots of the Air force units, which led to the destruction of 230 aircraft and, on the other hand, the accident losses which were also numerous (230); or more than 450 additional perdus23 devices. This makes for a more complete assessment of losses which is in the range of 900 planes to 1 000 depending on the sources (there also more or less complete and systematic) but the thesis of an "undefeated" Air force is still tenable insofar as , either the losses are still lower than the claimed wins, or the balance is still relatively balanced.

But these figures still remain significantly and even very strongly undervalued and do not conform to reality insofar as they do not take into account significant additional losses: on the one hand, abandonment and even self-destruction By the units themselves of devices not in flight and not repairable immediately on the airfield evacuated often in the precipitation before the German advance (thus numerous fighter jets Morane-Saulnier 406 and even of Dewoitine 520 Much more modern, rare and précieux24); On the other hand, abandonment of new devices pending delivery but not evacuated (whether or not they were taken into account by the Air force, no matter, ultimately, this essentially administrative distinction) in the parks of some CONSTRUCTEURS25; Finally, reformed later sometimes in the weeks or even the few months following the armistice of June 1940, but because of their direct participation in the fighting; Thus many of the hunters Morane-Saulnier 406 and Bloch 152 of the repair shop of the Air Force (ARAA) of Aulnat, near Clermont-Ferrand, stored after the armistice before being reformed because they could not be repaired.

In order to have a more complete and systematic view of the situation, it is necessary to complete this first assessment with a complementary analysis. The figure of actual physical losses of the Air force can be validated "hollow" by a critical reading of the inventories carried out in the aftermath of the Armistice by the military institution itself. Without this sensitive re-evaluation, we are obliged to note that several hundred machines that have been released from the factory and delivered to the Air force have disappeared or simply volatilized, without any explanation and without leaving any traces. As human losses are not subject to bail, only material losses that appear to have been considerable in a limited and relatively short period of time will be attached.

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## parsifal (Mar 4, 2018)

Translation of the article linked in Post 514
(Part IV)
The contribution of the figures to the construction of a myth. The "undefeated" Air Force in 1940.


The losses actually suffered: a "hollow" estimate

This estimate is made possible thanks to the numerous detailed, concordant and verified sources existing in this field. In principle, it consists in reporting the received production of combat equipment to inventories carried out immediately after the armistice of June 1940. These data are compiled according to the indications of specialized works on the different types of apparatus, particularly documented and rich in information, too often used in more scientifique26 work. In some cases it becomes even possible to know the individual fate of each of the devices in question. To go to the basics, and for fear of losing or tiring the reader by too much secondary data, we will not enter into the detail of this quantitative and accounting estimation. This data should be presented in relation to the 18 types of main aircraft equipped with Air Force combat units (hunting, bombing and reconnaissance groups), which is not necessary.

With regard to fighter aviation first of all, 2 000 modern aircraft (Morane-Saulnier 406, Curtiss H-75, Bloch 152 and Dewoitine 520, PAL 631 for the most part) were received on 10 May, which must be added the 627 devices delivered in May-June; A total of 2 627. Post-Armistice Inventories report 1 705 surviving aircraft, representing a difference of 923 aircraft lost (without even counting pending reform aircraft remaining in unoccupied areas). In the case of bombardment aircraft (no less than eight different types of main aircraft), 564 aircraft were received on 10 May to which the 473 aircraft delivered during the French campaign should be added, i.e. a total of 1 037. Post-Armistice inventories report 808 surviving aircraft, representing a difference of 229 lost aircraft. Finally, with regard to the reconnaissance devices (PAL 63 and derivatives and Bloch 174 essentially), 1 063 were received on 10 May and 136 subsequently delivered, a total of 1 199. Post-Armistice inventories report 569 aircraft survivors or a difference of 630 aircraft lost, with the loss of reconnaissance aviation having been particularly heavy due to the lack of hunting coverage and the solitary appearance of Their missions.

If total bombing and reconnaissance aircraft were made, 2 236 were received by the Air force prior to the armistice and 1 377 recorded after the armistice; A difference of 859 planes lost. And if we sum up the number of fighter planes, bombardments and Reconnaissances received before the armistice, we arrive at a total of 4 864 aircraft, which is an important production which is indicative of the gradual increase in power albeit late ( The figures for deliveries in May-June 1940 are evidenced by the French aeronautical industry. 3 082 of them only being counted after the armistice, a total difference of 1 782 combat aircraft lost (without even counting the aircraft pending reform in France due to the fighting and the hasty wear of the equipment, perhaps of Order from 2 to 300).

In view of these figures, it is therefore reasonable to assume that the Air force has lost, directly or indirectly, all causes (fighting, ground destruction, accidents, abandoned aircraft, irreparable and reformed aircraft, etc.), a Total number of combat equipment greater than 1 500 or even in the order of 2 000 in 1939-1940. Different factors, most often interdependent, can help explain these losses particularly important with regard to the limited duration of the May-June 1940 campaign (less than seven weeks): In particular a qualitative inferiority Marked (new fragile materials and little to no point having caused many accidents, types of devices too numerous and lack of standardization) 27, but also an organisation perfectible otherwise lacking (weakness of the means of repair Organic units for the repair of damaged or broken down aircraft, lack of conveyor drivers, or very unfavourable conditions of operations and action (need for units to abandon sometimes in emergency Their land before the speed of German advance, high rate of unavailability of the devices).

In all rigour and in order not to excessively blacken the table thus drawn up and presented, it should be clarified, however, that a proportion of these losses falls within the normal attrition rates of the equipment (i.e. the gradual but continuous decrease in Number of devices in use) due to training accidents inevitably associated with the implementation of aeronautical equipment, including in a "normal" situation of peace, especially at a time when the aircraft quickly retaliateed and had only a long of Life Limited.

At the end of this critical re-evaluation, and to stick to more talking round figures, it thus appears that the claimed "thousand victories" for the loss of about 500 combat aircraft are transformed into some 500 effective victories for the loss In the range of 1 500 to 2 000 aircraft. We then pass a positive ratio of losses/victories from one to two favorable to the Air force at a negative rate of three or even four to one. Therefore, the interpretation that can be made of the role of the Air force during the French campaign, the evaluation of the scope and the effectiveness of its action change drastically.

From the end of the French campaign, the Air force and its action were severely challenged and criticized both strictly military and political. In a second later stage, against the perception or belief of an "absent" or "non-existent" aviation, largely built and disseminated by some officials or representatives of the Terre28 Army, has gradually developed and Crystallized in reverse the myth of an Air force "undefeated" or "victorious" in terms of efficiency, which has managed to continue until today. It therefore appears that defenders of the institution (whether or not they belong to the Air force as such) have built and produced a system of representations and beliefs which has gradually diffused, but which is unfortunately not In line with the historical reality as it emerges from a critical analysis of the available figures. The data presented, discussed and put into perspective make it possible to establish it in a relatively rigorous manner.

However, it is necessary to underline the time-sensitive shift in these two phenomena affecting perceptions of the role of the Air force which do not fall within the same temporality. Indeed, it is after the events themselves that this myth of an Air force "undefeated" or even "victorious" is formed, which has a relatively late character since it takes over from the years 1960 to the years 1990. The report by Harcourt can help to base the myth because of the figures established but this was not its purpose or its function insofar as it constitutes a simple accounting and technical evaluation. And in this process, some actors played an active role as entrepreneurs of beliefs: especially, on the one hand and initially, Jean George, former fighter pilot in 1939-1945 then journalist, who has formatted and disseminated the myth and The very expression of the "thousand victories" over the three editions of his work from 1967 to 1990 (see bibliography); On the other hand, on a more institutional level, the Air Force Magazine News which aired this system of representations on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of France. And since the years 2000, it has been gradually put to bad and does not seem seriously tenable

What is now known as the "Duty of remembrance" is necessary and legitimate and it is true that Air force airmen were most often the forgotten ones of evocations or commemorations (whether they are television, editorial or cinematographic) Yet quite many of the tragic events of May-June 1940, when they did not figure "accused". But it must not be carried out against the historical reality and the facts, or otherwise distort them in a meaningful way, or even to disguise them completely. It is in no way detrimental to the memory of the fighters or even to the institution as such as to recognize it. Such an enterprise only participates in a "normal" scientific activity, legitimate and necessary, and it does not imply any value judgement on the men who faced this war situation under particularly difficult conditions, of which They were not responsible.

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## parsifal (Mar 4, 2018)

Table 1. Estimated number of aircraft lost by difference between the number of aircraft entered into service before the armistice and the number of aircraft identified after the armistice in July 1940






The Curtiss H-75 fighter aircraft, like the bombing of Glenn-Martin 167 and Douglas DB-7, are American aircraft ordered in 1938-1939 to try to compensate for the lack of French production to equip the Air force with airplanes. Modern. Delivered in crates, they were assembled in France for the first or in Morocco for the last two.

* * These data are only partial insofar as they do not take into account the older Amiot 143 and Bloch 210 transition bombers, which entered into service prior to the declaration of war, considered to be too vulnerable and outdated in May-June 1940 and relatively little used (mainly night missions), but also suffered losses. It is estimated that approximately 300 of these aircraft were still in service in 1940. It is for the bomber category that the losses still appear to be the most underrated.

We do not count here the Bloch 131 of recognition of which more than 100 copies were still in service at the declaration of War. Engaged in remote recognition missions without escort, they are withdrawn from the first lines and downgraded as early as October 1939 following the losses suffered.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

To summarise the gist of this article

The Harcourt review and other credible investigations suggest that the FAF shot down 600-900 LW aircraft, however for a number of reasons the author of this report considers it appropriate to arbitrarily downgrade that loss total to 550 a/c shot down by the FAF.

The analysis does not include “probables in the tally or losses suffered by the Germans to activities like landing accidents, getting lost or the like. However in the tally up for French losses, it does include losses to all causes

The best way to make a comparison of French losses to German losses to to compare apples to apples. That means it is necessary to prepare a comprehensive loss schedule to June 1940 for the germans and compare that to the comphrehensive loss numbers given for the French. Of cohe French total loss rate of 1782 a/c (I actually think that is too low….it should be closer to 2000 in my opinion) I ashould also acknowledge that there were other nationalities that also lost large numbers of aircraft. But there is some use to comparing

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## parsifal (Mar 4, 2018)

An alternative method (that is the same as is applied to the FAF in the preceding article)

Basically looking at new production and subtracting from that the “available figures at that time” to estimate LW losses in the same way as is applied to the FAF

*German Aircraft Industry and Production, 1933-1945, By Ferenc A. Vajda, Peter Dancey*


















It is reasonable to assume that reserves (aircraft generally not shown as “available” remained relatively constant

Germany entered the war with 3468 a/c on strength. Between September 1939 and the end of May 1940, 4823 a/c were added to that starting total.

At the beginning of the June quarter of 1940, the reported strength of the LW was 3732, from the combined total of aircraft on strength 1/9/39, added to that at start force being the 4823 a/c mentioned above. Since 9/39 the LW had lost 4554 a/c.

554 have been attributed to the Polish campaign. Im not sure about Scandinavia, but a credible figure would be in the order of 300 a/c. For the campaign in the west, commencing 9/39 and continuing to the end of May (simply because that is the last quarter of unadulterated data available), the losses to the LW in the campaigns in the west had been 3705 a/c.

The RAF was only moderately engaged during this period. The Dutch and the Belgians were quickly overrun (though losses to the LW in Holland were heavy because of the loss of several hundred transports there). LW losses in the low countries, might amount to 300 aircraft. The RAF on the continent and over Dunkirk is thought to have shot down about 450 LW aircraft. It is impossible to accurately know how many losses for the LW that aren’t enemy shoot downs can be attributed to each, but one could assume that noncombat losses are in proportion to the shoot downs attributed. If that is a correct assumption, in the specified time period, the FAF and if we accept 750 as the number of LW a/c shot down by the FAF, then the total losses attributable to FAF action (but not limited to direct shoot downs) is in the order of 2128 aircraft 9/39 to the beginning of June. In that same period the RAF is deduced to be responsible for about 1277 not included the losses incflicted on the LW in Scandinavia.

Remember, these are total losses from all causes. I am not claiming these are losses attributable to shoot downs.

To each of those nationalities. Its an assumption, but a reasonable one I think.

On that basis, the direct shoot downs that I know of for each of the four allied players are

Dutch: c50
Belgian: C 20
British: C450
French: C700

That’s 1220 direct

So in the period 9/39 to the beginning of June the LW lost 2128 a/c. in the period to the end of june, the FAF lost 1782 a/c

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## parsifal (Mar 4, 2018)

So my answer is you did misquote and misrepresent in your posts.


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## Stig1207 (Mar 4, 2018)

Surreal......


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## parsifal (Mar 4, 2018)

It can sometimes take some effort to analyse and understand the available data

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## Stig1207 (Mar 5, 2018)

I do agree, and therefore I think it's only prudent not to make hasty conclusions.



parsifal said:


> At the end of these various calculations and revisions, one can reasonably estimate that the air force or, more accurately, the French aviation as a whole (and therefore not only the fighter aviation or even the air Force, as weak as the Contributions of other specialties or naval aeronautics), is responsible during the campaign of France for the effective destruction of a number of enemy planes greater than 500 and in the order of 550 to the maximum; And for the period 1939-1940, 600 real wins, to stick to a round figure, seem to be a reasonable and realistic approximation.



If this is the misquote and/or misrepresentation I have made, I'll acknowledge that, as I was quoting 500.

As for the production less strength viewpoint, where you arrive at a total loss figure of 3705 for the LW in the west for 1. Sep '39-31 May '40; that seems to be somewhat at odds with Cornwell's figures and also those of Murray, Hooton, and Groehler.

However, taking your figures at face value:



parsifal said:


> So in the period 9/39 to the beginning of June the LW lost 2128 a/c. in the period to the end of june, the FAF lost 1782 a/c



Just to clarify, that these are 2128 a/c lost against the FAF? As that is what you infer in your breakdown of the 3705 total losses.

If so, and taking your number of direct shootdowns for the FAF of 700, and I'm not sure whether you here mean that this is to the end of May or to the end of the campaign ; but, anyhow, that leaves more than 1400 LW a/c which the FAF caused the destruction of , in some other way than in the air. Have you speculated by which means that they did so?


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## parsifal (Mar 5, 2018)

_If this is the misquote and/or misrepresentation I have made, I'll acknowledge that, as I was quoting 500.
_
The article speculates that there was an element of double claiming in the 'hollow estimate" They have already discounted every "probable" and every 'noncombat loss to get there, as well as simply ignoring the claims they consider as too high. no real investigation into that, just an assumption that the high claims have no value and should be disregarded. so to get to their estimate of 550 they have "turned left' as they say at every instant, to get the estimate as low as they can, and still give the aura of plausibility to their results. but then, just to lay the boot in a little further, they decide to knock 50 or 100 off that total as well, just for good measure. It is not a methodology that I'm impreunssed with to be honest. but it is what it is. 

_As for the production less strength viewpoint, where you arrive at a total loss figure of 3705 for the LW in the west for 1. Sep '39-31 May '40; that seems to be somewhat at odds with Cornwell's figures and also those of Murray, Hooton, and Groehler_.

It might not be comparable with those sources, though once again you are misquoting Murray again. Murrays figures are for the BoF, to the end of june, covering only two months, and Murray does not include damaged then scrapped after the end of june.

Not sure about those other sources though I should. I suspect they too are just for the May/June period, and don't include scrappings or some of the other sources of loss . but hard to really comment.


in any event we simply do not know the full methodology used in any if those other three sources. the purpose of this comparison was simply to apply exactly the same loss calculation method as is applied to the table appearing in Post 631, but for the germans. So that we could compare "apples to apples" the essential numbers in this analysis is to look at the starting number, add the numbers received to the beginning of 6/40, and then the new units received between 9/39 and then subtract t the numbers given for LW on strength at the beginning of 6/40. The result is the number of LW a/c lost 9/39 to 6/40 (as per the French method shown in Annex 1)

. Unless the LW was building up its reserves in that period (and that seems highly unlikely) these loss figures for the LW are a fixed point. 

These losses are using the same methodologies as is applied in the article you initially submitted . It set out in the table marked annexure 1 . 

_Just to clarify, that these are 2128 a/c lost against the FAF? As that is what you infer in your breakdown of the 3705 total losses.
_
We cant be certain of that. But it seems logical to reach that conclusion. We know the total losses 9/39 to 6/40 (beginning of the month). We have five possible sources of loss....Poland, Scandinavia, low countries, against the RAF, and against the FAF. into each of those areas of activity we have noncombat losses, sometimes referred to as non-operational loses, for which we cannot be sure the reasons for those losses. We can shuffle the deck chairs about a bit, and give a greater total to the RAF, but there seems no justification in doing that . The proportion of losses are distributed in proportion to the proportion of shoots downs each of Germany's opponents managed to achieve, on the assumption that those direct shoot downs are an indicator of the level of activity the LW poured into those opponents, and the level of activity is a surrogate measure of their nonoperational losses. From that the figure of 2128 is arrived at for the French 9to the beginning of June), which is consistent with Murray 9/39 to 6/40 and just about right also for Cornwell. 

_If so, and taking your number of direct shootdowns for the FAF of 700, and I'm not sure whether you here mean that this is to the end of May or to the end of the campaign ; but, anyhow, that leaves more than 1400 LW a/c which the FAF caused the destruction of , in some other way than in the air. Have you speculated by which means that they did so?_

The 700 is to June 25, so there is some error in there, but also, the LW losses are only to the end of May. There is some inaccuracy there which should be attended to.

The French article does not give firm numbers on this, but does speculate that the LW lost about 200 a/c to French bombers and about 100 to French flak

but this makes no difference really, we are doing a simple comparison at this point, comparing French losses, using a particular method to German losses, using the same methodology. Only if you think the total losses for the LW are wrong in some way do we have a problem here. if you think there is some over quoting for german losses, please produce your numbers and we can look at them.


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## Stig1207 (Mar 5, 2018)

As well as being a forum member, are you by any chance also a Member of Parliament, Parsifal?


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## parsifal (Mar 5, 2018)

No. I do work in the public service and have some experiences in the services, and then teaching in the service


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## Stig1207 (Mar 5, 2018)

parsifal said:


> From that the figure of 2128 is arrived at for the French 9to the beginning of June), which is consistent with Murray 9/39 to 6/40 and just about right also for Cornwell.



If the LW loss numbers you quoted from Cornwell, were all caused by the French, then they are about right; i.e. if the French don't cause any LW losses in June.

I haven't seen Murray's losses 9/39-6/40; but Murray's numbers for May-June have been posted a couple times, by both of us. From does figures it is apparent that the bulk of the LW losses you attribute to the French would have to have occurred prior to May, during the so-called Phoney war.


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## Peter Gunn (Mar 5, 2018)

*Parsifal* - Many thanks for translating that article, a fair amount of work! I now have reading material for lunch today and am looking forward to digesting (no pun intended) this in full as I begin my journey of learning much more on the Battle of France (in the air).

Thanks again.

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## kevb (Mar 16, 2018)

soulezoo said:


> That's a little harsh on the Allison... P-38's seemed to do ok with them. The Soviets seemed to be happy with the P-39.
> Maybe it wasn't a Merlin, but then again, only a Merlin was a Merlin. Except for a Packard of course.
> The Allison v-1710 may not be "engine Uber Alles", but it was a solid engine and definitely not a POS. It needed to be used appropriately.
> On Edit while thinking on this: IIRC, the Klimov was a lower powered engine forced into service on the P-40 as the VVS didn't have parts for the Allison. So if my memory is correct, why would you want the Klimov after what you just said about the Allison?



Yes because while the Klimov didn't have as high a top end what it DID have was a fast response time and acceleration, at least from every sim I have ever played that had the Klimov.

As for the P-38? It was an uber light body with twin engines, give me ANY engine with an uber light body and double the motors? it will kick some booty, just look at the FW 189 that used the lousy French captured engines but because the frame was so insanely light it often frustrated fighters despite being a recon bird simply by out turning them. 

Finally as for the Soviets and the P-39? The Soviets had a MAJOR boner for giant derp guns, heck they stuffed a 37mm tank gun into the LaGG 3 and ended up with a plane that literally ripped its own engine out just from firing the gun LOL. The Soviet pilots were incredible shots so it makes sense that they loved any plane that had a 1 shot kill capability and say what you will about the Airacobra if you hit a fighter with a 37mm HEF shell? That plane is confetti. It also helped that nearly all battles on the Eastern Front took place below 3500m, so you really didn't need much power to get a really small fighter (the P-39 is incredibly tiny, I got to run my hands down one at Lakland AFB and its smaller than my truck) to just 3000m.

But when you look at how many birds got saddled with the Alison, despite having much better engines from other companies available? Yeah..I smell something, be it kickbacks or friends in high places, someone was pushing the Alison HARD.

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## swampyankee (Mar 16, 2018)

I wouldn’t place too much credence in performance results from a game unless the programmers and designers are willing to completely document their sources and data and validate their results against test data or a professional modeling system; for engines, that would be something like Kiva, while for an airplane, it would be something like Panair or VSAERO.

Allison was the only player in the US V-12 engine town; Pratt&Whitney Aircraft and Curtiss-Wright made their money selling to airlines, who had given up on liquid cooling. Low-drag installations for liquid cooled engines were easier than for air cooled ones, and the relatively slender V-12 seemed to be much “cleaner” than a radial.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 16, 2018)

kevb said:


> Yes because while the Klimov didn't have as high a top end what it DID have was a fast response time and acceleration, at least from every sim I have ever played that had the Klimov.
> 
> As for the P-38? It was an uber light body with twin engines, give me ANY engine with an uber light body and double the motors? it will kick some booty, just look at the FW 189 that used the lousy French captured engines but because the frame was so insanely light it often frustrated fighters despite being a recon bird simply by out turning them.
> 
> ...



Some sims are 'tweaked' in order to get players to play them, or certain planes. no fun being shot down all the time.

The FW 189 didn't use captured engines, it use German Argus engines and later they made the French build them as a 2nd source, hardly captured.

While conspiracy/bribery theories are fun by the end of 1942 Allison had built over 22,800 engine compared to Packards 7,300 and was churning out Allison's at 1100-1300 a month, Packard was building 800 engine a month. 
Even if you could switch the Allison program over to Merlin production (hundreds if not thousands of sub contractors) how many months production would you loose? 

Trade several thousand few fighters in 1942 for better fighters in 1943?
By mid 1943 the bulk of P-39 and P-40 production was going to lend lease. Few, if any, new US squadrons were equipped with them. Already equiped squadrons got replacements until better aircraft could be supplied.


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## Peter Gunn (Mar 16, 2018)

kevb said:


> Yes because while the Klimov didn't have as high a top end what it DID have was a fast response time and acceleration, at least from every sim I have ever played that had the Klimov.
> 
> As for the P-38? It was an uber light body with twin engines, give me ANY engine with an uber light body and double the motors? it will kick some booty, just look at the FW 189 that used the lousy French captured engines but because the frame was so insanely light it often frustrated fighters despite being a recon bird simply by out turning them.
> 
> ...


Just FYI, the members of this forum don't use crap like War Thunder as any type of guide.

Also, it's blisteringly apparent you know nothing about the Allison engine.

Man, so much bovine fecal matter in this one post alone.

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## JimmyZ (Apr 12, 2018)

Hi all.

This is my first post on this forum 

Like a few others, I was surprised to see the P-51 Mustang voted as the most over-rated aircraft of WWII. 
Is the P-51 over-rated? Yes, it is. Is it THE MOST over-rated aircraft of WWII? No it isn't, how can it be? Let me explain why I don't think it is.

When I first became interested in aircraft and WWII (and especially WWII aircraft) as a kid (decades ago), the first planes I heard of while reading up on the subject was the Spitfire, the Mustang and the Zero - since I became interested in fighters before any other types. The reason why I came to know the finer details of these three aircraft before any other was because they are (some of) the most "hyped" fighters of WWII. They were highly regarded for different reasons. The Spitfire because it "single-handedly saved Britain". This is off course not true. It had a hand in the "saving" of Britain, but arguably it achieved less than the Hurricane, if we are only considering the Battle of Britain.

The Zero was hyped because "it completely outclassed anything the Americans could send up, and shot them down like it was nothing". This has some grain of truth in it, but the superiority was short lived, and American tactics soon equalized the Zero's superiority to a great extent.

I remember after reading about the Zero and asking my father about it, he told me it was almost impossible for an American fighter to shoot down a Zero due to its superior maneuverability. That is the (false) stories my father grew up with. Of course he wasn't interested in researching much for himself, like I am.

And finally getting to the Mustang. "The fighter that took the bombers all the way to Berlin, and brought the Luftwaffe to its knees". I don't believe the P-51 brought the Luftwaffe to its knees. I do think it did plenty to help achieve that. Off course it was the only aircraft that could escort the bombers all the way to Berlin consistently and in large numbers. I have not heard stories of anyone saying the Mustang outmaneuvered anything over Europe, nor did I hear it was the fastest (albeit at 30,000+ feet it went pretty fast comparing), or that it out-climbed the enemy, out-dived the enemy or any such thing. As a kid it actually took a while to realize what the real strength of the Mustang was (range), since I couldn't see evidence that it was the best at any single thing. If I heard any such stories before, I must have forgotten about it. I believe the war would still have been won had the Mustang not existed. I also believe many more thousands of lives would have been lost had it not.

Let's compare the perception around the Zero and the Mustang. Both are hyped plenty. In my opinion the Mustang a bit more than the Zero. However, the Mustang didn't achieve just a little bit more than the Zero. It achieved a whole lot more, and I don't think that can be disputed. "Over-rated" is about perception, since we cannot measure how much each aircraft is "rated" (we are only measuring in a small pool of WWII aircraft enthusiasts, opinions which aren't necessarily carried over to the rest of the world), versus what it in fact actually achieved (how to value a to a metric how much a single aircraft type achieved?).

Taking the above into account, how can the P-51 be more OVER-rated than the A6M, when it achieved so much more, and is regarded or hyped at about the same level as the Zero.

Maybe you have different perceptions than me or the people I've talked to in my life, or books and articles I've read. I do however in life perceive many people to “hate” what other people love, just because many people love it and no other logical reason. 
I do not believe the Mustang can claim the number 1 spot for over-rated here, not even close.

The A6M gets my vote. And the Bf 110, P-38, Spitfire and Me 163 being more over-rated in my opinion than the Mustang.

Cheers
Jimmy

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## Peter Gunn (Apr 12, 2018)

Welcome Jimmy,

Interesting post, personally I don't disagree with much of it, perhaps the issue of the Mustang bringing the Luftwaffe to its knees, in that we probably don't see eye to eye exactly. In my opinion, which is formed by the fact that the P-51 shot down more E/A then the Thunderbolt and Lightning combined even though ops were started later, the Mustang did bring the LW to its collective knees. YMMV.

Again, welcome to the forum, there's a lot to learn hear, I suggest reading some of the old and current threads, LOTS of good info there.

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## XBe02Drvr (Apr 12, 2018)

Welcome aboard, JimmyZ! You'll have a grand time here. Lots of facts, lots of opinions, lots of perspectives, and lots of camaraderie. If you like research you'll fit right in.
Cheers,
Wes

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## swampyankee (Apr 12, 2018)

This is a difficult decision to make with any sort of subjectivity, because most people, including me, are not going to go evaluate both the public relations reputation of dozens of aircraft and compare those to the aircraft's actual combat record. There is also a few cases of outright propaganda being accepted as fact, such as cases probably being the supposed enemy nicknames for the P-38 Lightning, F4U Corsair, and Beaufighter, none of which are seen in writings from German or Japanese pilots. 

I think one can readily make a case, though, for any of a half-dozen or more aircraft being over-rated, because these are aircraft that have reputations for effectiveness that are in excess of their actual effectiveness. I think German combat aircraft are especially prone to being over-rated, partly as there is a meme that German designers were so much better than anybody else (yeah, sure. That's why the Bf109 was barely faster than the P-40 despite being much lighter and smaller), partly as the Luftwaffe used better tactics, partly as Germany was dictating the strategic terms of engagement until at least late 1942, and partly as some advanced German aircraft, like the Me262 (overrated) got into service before comparable aircraft from the Allies.

I'll continue to advocate that the FW190 or Bf109 was most over-rated, not that either wasn't an effective, even great, warplane, but that neither was the invincible magical thing that it seems to have become in the eyes of some fanboys. Another aircraft that I think was clearly over-rated was the Me262, as its contribution to Germany's war effort is, in my opinion, vastly overblown.

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## maxmwill (Apr 19, 2018)

Jank said:


> P-51 Mustang.


I agree. I'm sure that more than a few of us has, or had, an uncle or other male relation who flew any US fighter, especially the Mustang, who would regale us with stories about how the P51 pretty much single-handedly won the war. I admit that it was a very fine flying machine, good qualities for a fighter, and relatively easy to maintain(as a mechanic, I've heard such stories from older mechanics over the years), but while it was nice, there were other, comparable fighters which also helped "win the war", which have become overshadowed by the Mustang Mystique.

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## Schweik (May 4, 2018)

davparlr said:


> Just a note on the P-39. It flew 30,547 sorties for the AAF in Europe. Lost 107 for a loss rate per sortie of .4%, the lowest of any Army fighter.



That is because they had it flying maritime patrols over empty ocean

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## Schweik (May 4, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> This is a difficult decision to make with any sort of subjectivity, because most people, including me, are not going to go evaluate both the public relations reputation of dozens of aircraft and compare those to the aircraft's actual combat record. There is also a few cases of outright propaganda being accepted as fact, such as cases probably being the supposed enemy nicknames for the P-38 Lightning, F4U Corsair, and Beaufighter, none of which are seen in writings from German or Japanese pilots.
> 
> I think one can readily make a case, though, for any of a half-dozen or more aircraft being over-rated, because these are aircraft that have reputations for effectiveness that are in excess of their actual effectiveness. I think German combat aircraft are especially prone to being over-rated, partly as there is a meme that German designers were so much better than anybody else (yeah, sure. That's why the Bf109 was barely faster than the P-40 despite being much lighter and smaller), partly as the Luftwaffe used better tactics, partly as Germany was dictating the strategic terms of engagement until at least late 1942, and partly as some advanced German aircraft, like the Me262 (overrated) got into service before comparable aircraft from the Allies.
> 
> I'll continue to advocate that the FW190 or Bf109 was most over-rated, not that either wasn't an effective, even great, warplane, but that neither was the invincible magical thing that it seems to have become in the eyes of some fanboys. Another aircraft that I think was clearly over-rated was the Me262, as its contribution to Germany's war effort is, in my opinion, vastly overblown.



You took the words out of my own mouth amigo. Well said.

I voted for the Bf 109, not because it's a bad plane, but because the reputation it has with some people is akin to what an F-16 would have in a WW2 context. it was good but it wasn't anywhere near that good. Depending on the version it was probably not as good as a Spit and barely better than a Yak-1, P-40 or a MC 202.

The main reason for German "superiority", and Axis superiority in general in the early months of the war, is that the other countries were not expecting to be attacked and it took them a while to get ready and reorient to the new reality. Because in the wake of the mass-catastrophe of WW1, most people thought it was crazy to start off another general war. Which it was, and we tend to forget that the leadership of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were in fact, crazy, even if many of their fighter pilots were skilled aviators and generally normal, decent people.

S

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## parsifal (May 4, 2018)

Bf 109 is a difficult one. On the one hand, on claims data at least, it was the most successful fighter of all time. on the other hand, and in the same breath almost, it lost more aircraft of that type than any other fighter during the war......how to process that????? I have no idea.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 5, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Bf 109 is a difficult one. On the one hand, on claims data at least, it was the most successful fighter of all time. on the other hand, and in the same breath almost, it lost more aircraft of that type than any other fighter during the war......how to process that????? I have no idea.


Well, as the most produced aircraft of all time, and one of the longest serving in all of its iterations, it's certainly a challenge to summarize.
I would suggest all the verified air to air kills vs all the verified air to air losses might be the best you could hope for.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Stig1207 (May 5, 2018)

We'll never know how many exactly, but there is no doubt the Bf 109 is the most successful fighter of all time, if the number of victories is the criteria. Even if the number of actual victories is way less than the claims; there is no other fighter that comes close. Whether number 2 is the P-51, Spitfire, Fw 190 or Hellcat, that is more difficult. 

It doesn't make the Bf 109 the best fighter, but it did, or rather the pilots that flew it, have more opportunity to rack up a higher number of victories than any other fighter.

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## tomo pauk (May 5, 2018)

kevb said:


> Yes because while the Klimov didn't have as high a top end what it DID have was a fast response time and acceleration, at least from every sim I have ever played that had the Klimov.
> 
> As for the P-38? It was an uber light body with twin engines, give me ANY engine with an uber light body and double the motors? it will kick some booty, just look at the FW 189 that used the lousy French captured engines but because the frame was so insanely light it often frustrated fighters despite being a recon bird simply by out turning them.
> 
> ...



Pray tell, since when the P-39, P-40, P-51 and P-38 became 'saddled with Allison'? Apart from a comparatively small number of R-2800s and V-1650s produced in USA in 1941-42 (and none of them in 1940, and many slated for USN, RAF or bomber production) what else was there to install in order to provide better powerplant than V-1710s? Let's install R-1820 on P-39 or P-38?
Since when the NS-37 became a tank cannon, and since when Soviet pilos became incredible shots? P-38 with uber-light-body?
So much claims in a single post, but no facts to back them up.



Schweik said:


> You took the words out of my own mouth amigo. Well said.
> 
> I voted for the Bf 109, not because it's a bad plane, but because the reputation it has with some people is akin to what an F-16 would have in a WW2 context. it was good but it wasn't anywhere near that good. Depending on the version it was probably not as good as a Spit and barely better than a Yak-1, P-40 or a MC 202.
> 
> ...



Bf 109 was a far better performer than Yak-1 (and longer ranged) and P-40. As a fighter, the 109 was about as close to Spitfire as possible, bar the Spitfire XIV.
I agree than there was much more to the German initial successes than just the Bf 109.

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## Schweik (May 5, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Bf 109 was a far better performer than Yak-1 (and longer ranged) and P-40. As a fighter, the 109 was about as close to Spitfire as possible, bar the Spitfire XIV.



Well the devil is in the details when it comes to all these types, and it varied year by year, sometimes month by month. Assuming a decent build quality (which could vary by factory and by batch) Yak-1 or Yak-7 were pretty closely matched to Bf 109E, (as was the Tomahawk for that matter, as the Russian pilots themselves noted) - Yak 1B or Yak 7B could take the Bf 109F or early G models (as could the later model P-40s). 

Spit I and II were roughly equal to Bf 109E, Spit Vb was a bit worse than Bf 109F, Spit Vc was a bit better - all versions of the Spit V were vulnerable to the Fw 190A. 

Spit IX was clearly significantly better than any model Bf 109 E -1 through the G-10 and was also superior to the Fw 190A series.

After that it gets less interesting for me because the outcome of the war was really no longer in question.



> I agree than there was much more to the German initial successes than just the Bf 109.



Yes and there is much more to the lingering hype around all German kit, 'experten', leadership, troop qualities and so forth than their actual merits 

S

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## Schweik (May 5, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> It doesn't make the Bf 109 the best fighter, but it did, or rather the pilots that flew it, have more opportunity to rack up a higher number of victories than any other fighter.



No it certainly didn't - you could have racked up kills just as easily with a Spitfire or a Zero on the Russian front in 1941 and 1942. So long as you had radios in them.

We all know the glorious victory tallies, but I think the vast number of them shot down (particularly over Russia) tends to get shall we say, de-emphasized.

S


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## tomo pauk (May 6, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Well the devil is in the details when it comes to all these types, and it varied year by year, sometimes month by month. Assuming a decent build quality (which could vary by factory and by batch) Yak-1 or Yak-7 were pretty closely matched to Bf 109E, (as was the Tomahawk for that matter, as the Russian pilots themselves noted) - Yak 1B or Yak 7B could take the Bf 109F or early G models (as could the later model P-40s).



Bf 109E is/was vastly better than any Yak fighter since it was available for two years when Yak fighters were not available - 1939 to 1940.
Once the Yak-1 is available - in 1941 - the Bf 109 is at F series, a performance edge for the 109. The Yak-7 does not add any new advantage for the Yak family apart for improvement in armament. In 1942, the 109F4 and G2 hold speed advantage as big as 50 km/h (or even greater is we accept Soviet data, they plotting the 109G2 at 410 mph), the edge epecially going to the 109 as altitude increases.
Any model of P-40 and any Yak were competitive if the Bf 109s were at low-ish altitudes, no such luck above 3-4 km.



> Spit I and II were roughly equal to Bf 109E, Spit Vb was a bit worse than Bf 109F, Spit Vc was a bit better - all versions of the Spit V were vulnerable to the Fw 190A.
> 
> Spit IX was clearly significantly better than any model Bf 109 E -1 through the G-10 and was also superior to the Fw 190A series.
> 
> ...



Spitfire IX vs. Bf 109E? That is a joke. At low and medium altitudes Spitfire IX have had performance parity vs. German opposition, it edged them out above 25000 ft, bar the 109s with AS engine and DB 605D (in the 109G-10s and K-4s mostly).
Spit VC was the underperformer due to too heavy armament on not so great HP, a mistake the Germans will repeat in 1943-44 with Fw 190s. The 109F-4 was with clear edge vs any Mk.V, so were the 190s, per German test report the 109F-4 held the performance advantage vs. 109A-2 as altitude increased. Spitfire VB and VC having firepower advantage over clean 109s.
The Bf 109F1 and F2 were as evenly matched with Spit VA and VB as possible.

The Spitfire V family was unfortunate to receive low standard of workmaship, bad carburetors, draggy exhausts and draggy U/C when rettracted vs. the 109F that got many aerodynamic improvements, and was already feturing a smaller size (good for performance, bad for growth potential - Spitfire excelled as a base for many non-land-based-fighter duties).

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## Schweik (May 6, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Bf 109E is/was vastly better than any Yak fighter since it was available for two years when Yak fighters were not available - 1939 to 1940.



By that logic the Gloster Gladiator is better than both... when the Yak 1 and Yak 7 appeared on the battlefields in Russia bf 109E were still in use, albeit mostly relegated to Jabo formations and so on. Similarly when the Tomahawk appeared in North Africa, 109E were still around, 109F were brojught in to replace them but that was not an instant process. As far as performance goes, I think perhaps you are ignoring the later Yak 1B, Yak 7B etc.



> Any model of P-40 and any Yak were competitive if the Bf 109s were at low-ish altitudes, no such luck above 3-4 km.



Yes - exactly- and what percentage of combats on the Russian Front, the only place where the Yak lived, took place above 3-4km?



> Spitfire IX vs. Bf 109E? That is a joke. At low and medium altitudes Spitfire IX have had performance parity vs. German opposition, it edged them out above 25000 ft, bar the 109s with AS engine and DB 605D (in the 109G-10s and K-4s mostly).



When the Spit IX was deployed in North Africa in 1942 there were still Bf 109E equipping squadrons, with plenty of 109F and a good number of G-2 and G-4, and some G-6 in 1943. The Spit IX squadrons wrought havoc against them all.



> The 109F-4 was with clear edge vs any Mk.V,


This is not borne out in the combat record over North Africa or Malta. 

Per Shores Mediterranean Air War series, the Spit Vc was out-fighting 109F and G2, and the Spit IX was dominating them.

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## tomo pauk (May 6, 2018)

Schweik said:


> By that logic the Gloster Gladiator is better than both... when the Yak 1 and Yak 7 appeared on the battlefields in Russia bf 109E were still in use, albeit mostly relegated to Jabo formations and so on. Similarly when the Tomahawk appeared in North Africa, 109E were still around, 109F were brojught in to replace them but that was not an instant process. As far as performance goes, I think perhaps you are ignoring the later Yak 1B, Yak 7B etc.



There was no real new advantage being brought by Yak-1B or -7B, apart from extra 100 HP under 3 km, and, despite that, a performance loss due to poor fit & finish. The Bf 109Fs were predominant fighter models in 1941, especially once Op Barbarossa kicked in, so I'll still pit those against Yaks in comparison, not the 109Es that were out of production by 10 months by mid-1941.



> Yes - exactly- and what percentage of combats on the Russian Front, the only place where the Yak lived, took place above 3-4km?



That Yaks were underperforming above 4 km was not a feature, but a bug. Bf 109s were able to do whatever the Yaks did, plus perform at high altitudes, plus with greater range. 



> When the Spit IX was deployed in North Africa in 1942 there were still Bf 109E equipping squadrons, with plenty of 109F and a good number of G-2 and G-4, and some G-6 in 1943. The Spit IX squadrons wrought havoc against them all.



Against the 109Es and G-6s - certainly. There is a small thing of having a numerical superiority, too.



> This is not borne out in the combat record over North Africa or Malta.
> 
> Per Shores Mediterranean Air War series, the Spit Vc was out-fighting 109F and G2, and the Spit IX was dominating them.



Seems like that combat record over Soviet Union does not matter.
It also seems like the Spit VC was barely holding it's own vs. Zeros, yet was outfighting the 109Fs and G2s, all while RAF brass made a descision not to press on with VC in 1943, but to concentrate on VB?


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## Schweik (May 6, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> There was no real new advantage being brought by Yak-1B or -7B, apart from extra 100 HP under 3 km, and, despite that, a performance loss due to poor fit & finish.









Yak 1





Yak 1B

Yak1B had the bubble canopy (therefore better pilot situational awareness), a new gunsight, and a heavy machine gun, better / more careful finish and various other non-negligable improvements. And 100 hp does make a difference! This is why when the Yak 1B came out (late 1942) it coincided with the 'tipping point' of German air supremacy, which began to slip noticeably after Stalingrad. As I'm sure you are well aware.



> The Bf 109Fs were predominant fighter models in 1941, especially once Op



I never said otherwise though you seem to be implying that I was. But Bf 109E were on the battlefield as well, more of them in North Africa than Russia but in Russia too. I think we have discussed this before but here, review the TO&E - notice how many squadrons are still flying Bf 109E in 06/41. Even in Dec 41 there are still quite a few E models flying and still quite a few in March of 42.

I agree 109F had an edge over the early Yak 1 and Yak 7, though not by much - the main issue was still availability and reliability of radios and build quality especially in 1942 when they were still moving factories around. But the larger issue for the Russians more generally is that most of their fighter squadrons still had I-16s, LaGG-3 and MiGs.



> That Yaks were underperforming above 4 km was not a feature, but a bug. Bf 109s were able to do whatever the Yaks did, plus perform at high altitudes, plus with greater range.



So what? The Yaks could out-turn the Bf 109s, was that a bug or a feature of the 109? 109s received gun-gondolas which degraded their performance badly against fighters but helped them shoot down lumbering Il-2s. Was that a bug or a feature?



> Against the 109Es and G-6s - certainly. There is a small thing of having a numerical superiority, too.


Do these excuses work both ways? We glorify German pilots for shooting down scores of biplanes and open cockpit I-16s with no radios, but somehow when the weather is bad or the other side deploys more planes their victories are irrelevant?

its worth keeping in mind the German army was larger than the Soviet army at the start of Operation Barbarossa.

But more to the point, in the Med in the era when the Spits began arriving from June 1942, Luftwaffe strategists typically achieved_ local _numerical superiority or parity in most air battles in 1942 or 1943, especially when facing late model Spitfires which they knew were superior to their own machines (and which they could not safely attack from above and disengage). The fact that DAF had 100 Hurricanes or early model Kittyhawks deployed somewhere else bombing and strafing Afrika Korps tanks didn't seem to bother the Luftwaffe commanders too much, they cherry picked their fights to maximize the victory tally, but that only yielded results for so long. Needless to say this contributed to friction with the ground commanders like Rommel who complained about this practice to the higher ups.



> Seems like that combat record over Soviet Union does not matter.



I mentioned Med and Malta because that is where the Spit V specficlally (which is what we were discussing in that point of the argument) was most active in this period, I think. Only one group of them in Russia (didn't do well) and action over England was limited to intercepting raids and intruders.

As for the Soviet Union I do think it does matter, but it also merits a closer look. As I mentioned, the tipping point of Luftwaffe dominance began to shift after Stalingrad. This coincides with the arrival of the Yak-1B, Yak-9, and La 5 on the battlefield. The test of who was superior to whom did not come out in favor of the Aryan super -race in the long run, did it? And that wasn't simply due to Germans freezing in the Russian winter. _Somebody _shot down most of those 30,000 Bf 109s that were built. And all the Fw 190s too.

The greatest number of German victories in the air in 1941-1942 _by far_ were against antiquated open cockpit I-16, I-53 biplanes - both lacking radios , flawed MiG -3, LaGG-3 (also lacking radios) obsolescent Hurricanes, and Il2 and various other bomber types.

Actual victories scored on the Russian front are still a hotly contested subject but even looking at Black Cross / Red Star Yaks, P-39s and P-40 squadrons do* not* seem to be taking the lions share of the losses, and these were conversely where the majority of Aces and HSU pilots were emerging on the Soviet side.



> It also seems like the Spit VC was barely holding it's own vs. Zeros, yet was outfighting the 109Fs and G2s, all while RAF brass made a descision not to press on with VC in 1943, but to concentrate on VB?



The Zero is another story entirely, i think it would be interesting indeed to see how Bf 109E or Fs would have fared against them. The Japanese had five Bf 109E7s they tested them against their own fighters and elected not to produce them or buy any more. They did like the engine though of course.

Based on Shores stats, the Spit VC seems to have had a marginally better combat record (i gather largely from better ammunition storage) than the VB, and comes out ahead over the F-4, but I can't say as to why the RAF brass decided to do what they did. They made a lot of decisions which appear odd to me but I was not there! Ultimately the Spit IX was the answer to all their pressing Luftwaffe problems.

S


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## Greyman (May 6, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> ... RAF brass made a descision not to press on with VC in 1943, but to concentrate on VB ...



Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? I don't follow.


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## Stig1207 (May 7, 2018)

Schweik said:


> As for the Soviet Union I do think it does matter, but it also merits a closer look. As I mentioned, the tipping point of Luftwaffe dominance began to shift after Stalingrad. This coincides with the arrival of the Yak-1B, Yak-9, and La 5 on the battlefield. The test of who was superior to whom did not come out in favor of the Aryan super -race in the long run, did it? And that wasn't simply due to Germans freezing in the Russian winter. _Somebody _shot down most of those 30,000 Bf 109s that were built. And all the Fw 190s too.



The Soviets were still losing 3 aircraft for every plane lost by the Luftwaffe in 1944; these are operational losses too all causes. This despite overwhelming numerical superiotity.



Schweik said:


> Based on Shores stats



What stats?


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## Vincenzo (May 7, 2018)

I've no time for check, but i near sure that Spit IX was not deployed in ME/NA in 1942. If there were some Emil in the 42 were in ground attack staffeln.
Nikademus time ago writed "My estimate suggests 144 Spitfires in trade for 82 Bf-109's for air to air based on a study of Shores's Malta book" he was taking of '42.


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## parsifal (May 7, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> The Soviets were still losing 3 aircraft for every plane lost by the Luftwaffe in 1944; these are operational losses too all causes. This despite overwhelming numerical superiotity.
> 
> 
> 
> What stats?




Actually I don't think that is correct. So many LW a/c were caught on the ground and destroyed by the advancing Soviets as to make this virtually an impossibility.

Another way of looking at this might be to look at some top down statistics. Soviet a/c losses are estimated to be 65000 1941 to 1945. No way to check that but it at least seems like a plausible number. of that number, more than 20000 were lost in the 1941 campaign .

Germany is estimated to have lost some 28000 a/c on the eastern front and to that we would also need to add a number for the other Axis. ive no idea what that number might be, but I think it would be substantial.

So the ratio of losses is not anywhere near 3;1 for 1942 and after. Perhaps in the air, but not as an overall total. .

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## Stig1207 (May 7, 2018)

Soviet losses were in the order of 88000, 46000 of them operational. The 20000 in 1941 were total losses, with some 10600 being operational.

Total German losses may well have been 28000, but operationally about 15000.

The operational loss ratios 1941-1944 were more than 3 to 1 every year for the Soviets compared to the Luftwaffe; losses of the smaller Axis will naturally lower the overall ratio, but probably not much.

I doubt that there are any loss figures for air to air, so what that ratio is anyone's guess.


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## Schweik (May 7, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Soviet losses were in the order of 88000, 46000 of them operational. The 20000 in 1941 were total losses, with some 10600 being operational.
> 
> Total German losses may well have been 28000, but operationally about 15000.
> 
> ...



What are your sources for those numbers?

The main issue with these numbers is 'what constitutes shot down'? The Germans reported aircraft damage by percentage, so for example if a plane gets a bullet in the radiator and makes a forced landing, but it subsequently recovered, radiator patched, new prop put on, and it's back in the air a week or two later, the Germans report it as 10% damaged. This is not usually included as a 'loss', but from the point of view of a Russian pilot who shot the bullet into it's radiator and made it force-land, it was indeed shot down.

Since Germans were fighting defensively for the most part after 1942, many of their lost aircraft were later recovered (at least until their situation really fell apart) and even aircraft reported by the Germans themselves as 40, 50 or even 80% damaged may not be counted as 'victories' in todays estimates of win / loss ratios, which often only count the totally destroyed German fighters but sometimes count all seriously damaged or crash landed Soviet fighters.

If anyone is curious, I decided to take a deeper dive into Soviet production and losses.

Some production figures:

Il2 Sturmovik - 35,000
SB bomber = 6,500 (all produced before 1942)
Su-2 bomber = 900
Tb 3 = 800
I-153 (3400) + I-15 (1000*) = 4,400 - still active on the front line into 1942
I-16 = 8,600 still active into 1943
LaGG-3 = 6,500 still active into 1943
MiG-1 (100) + MiG-3 = (3,400) = 3,500
PO-2 / U-2 = ~10,000

Hawker Hurricane 2,800











Easy for Luftwaffe to shoot down...











...not so easy for Luftwaffe to shoot down

Of the above list, I would consider most of the 13,000 open cockpit I-16 and I-15 / 153 biplane series fighters to be obsolete. Almost all of them were shot down, some by the Japanese and no doubt quite a few lost in accidents, but probably 3/4 shot down and claimed as victories by the Germans. Some of the later model I-16s were good enough to at least give a skilled pilot a chance so I'll not count those. Still, this was a fairly big chunk of the Soviet operational losses. Say 8,000 of them. I didn't count the PO -2 / U-2 because I don't know how many they lost, I know a lot of them were used for less risky night missions but I'm sure they lost a bunch regardless.

At the start of WW2 90% of the Soviet Bomber force were SB bombers. About 2,000 SB bombers were deployed on the Western Front, and were rapidly wiped out at an astonishing rate. By 1942 all of the original bombers and a large number of replacements were lost. Say conservatively 3,000 lost in combat conting replacements. (Not counting the more sophisticated AR-2 development of the SB since it was a more effective aircraft, albeit built in very small numbers, though most of them were destroyed too.)

TB-3 bombers were also, needless to say, completely obsolete and look like they belonged in another era. Nevertheless they too were used as front line aircraft and the majority were destroyed. Say 500.

*So of the German victories in 1941-1942, I would estimate 11,500 were obsolete biplanes, open-cockpit 30's era fighters with no radios, & obsolete bombers. Most of these were lost in 1942 so that is a fairly large chunk of that original 20,000.*

The Il2s were not obsolete, but part of their design / operational philosophy was that they were essentially expendable. Their mission was to destroy German tanks first, and survive second. According to this article, the Soviets lost ~11,000 Il2s in the war.

The LaGG-3 and MiG -3 weren't obsolete either, but they were substandard, as were the Hurricanes. Most were shot down by 1943. That is another big chunk of planes (~12,000) of which a lot were lost in accidents (as these were either unfamilair / unstable / twitchy types) probably at least half were claimed by the Luftwaffe. Lets say 6,000.


So to get back to the point about Yak series fighters, of 46,000 operational losses (if we accept that figure as accurate), it looks to me like ~28,000 of them were obsolete 1930's era aircraft, Sturmoviks, or substandard (LaGG-3 / MiG-3 / Hurricane).

That leaves 18,000 modern aircraft, to be divided among the production / wartime delivered modern aircraft:

mainly* Bombers* (Soviet and Anglo-American) ...
Pe-2 ~ 8,000 (11,000 total but some were made after the war)
Tu-2 ~1,500 (2,200 total but some were made after the war)
Il-4 - 1,500
A-20 - ~2,700
B-25 - ~500
Il-10 (uber Sturmovik so to speak) ~1,000

.. *Soviet fighters* ...
Yak-1 / 1B -8,700
Yak-7 - 6,300
La-5 / 5 FN / 7 - ~8,000 (some built after the war)
Yak-9 - ~15,000
Yak-3 - ~3,000 (4,800 total but some were made after the war)

.. and *Anglo-American fighters*
P-39 - ~4,000
P-40 - ~2,400
Spitfire Mk V ~140
Spitfire Mk IX 1,200
P-63 - ~3,000

Probably half of those remaining 18,000 lost aircraft were among the 15,000 modern bombers used by the Soviets during the war. So say 9,000.

the remaining 9,000 lost aircraft would be found among the modern fighters:

15,000 early Yaks, (1941 through 1943)
8,000 La 5 series (from mid 1942),
18,000 late model Yaks, (from late 1942)
5,000 modern Anglo-American fighters used in front line / VVS units. Many of these were used up in the earlier war years (1942-1943) while the remaining 5,700 (about half the P-40s, all the Spit IXs, and most of the P-63s) were used mainly for PVO (air defense of rear areas) or in the East. I also didn't count P-47s because I don't think the Soviets used them much. Not sure if there were any other British aircraft other than Hurricanes and Spitfires... did they use any English bombers?

My conclusion is that most of the modern Soviet aircraft, those designed after 1942, had a pretty good ratio of survival. The Soviets lost probably about 28,000 obsolete aircraft and vulnerable Sturmoviks, they lost another 9,000 or so modern bombers, and based on the 46,000 figure (if true) they probably lost about 9,000 modern fighters of ~50,000 available (including PVO units). Of that 9,000 I think probably a third were Anglo-American P-39s and P-40s. Assuming most of the Yak lost were the earlier types, assume about 5,000 or 1/3 of them were lost. This compares well as a wartime survival ratio to ALL of the modern German fighters, mainly the 33,000 Bf 109s and 20,000 Fw 190s being lost, albeit many in the West. The later model Yaks and La 5 series fighters obviously had a fairly good and improving outlook.

One of the other major significant changes that happened in 1943 was that Soviet planes started to have more functional radios, which is huge. Prior to that only the Lend-lease Anglo-American planes had good radios. Once most of the Soviet fighters in particular have functional radios they can compete on much more equal terms with the Luftwaffe. By then like the RAF and USAAF they had also adopted the German Rotte / Finger Four system of two pairs of fighters, which was also a major improvement. And of course build quality issues were being rapidly resolved.

So the *TL : DR* is that my guess from looking at the numbers is *not too many Yak fighters got shot down* compared to the number of Bf 109s lost,* especially later model Yak fighters*. Most of the glory of the experten was won in wiping out obsolete aircraft in 1941 and 1942. The losses in more modern Soviet fighters are probably comparable to the losses of Bf 109s and Fw 190s on the Russian Front. The obsolete or / more vulnerable Me 110 (6,000 built), Ju 87 (6,500 built), Do 17 (2,000 built), Hs 123 (250 built), He 111 (6,500 built) not to mention Italian MC 200, and so on could correlate with the more obsolescent or substandard Soviet fighters destroyed in the first couple of years of the war (at which time the Germans certainly had a substantial advantage). The more modern Ju 88 (15,00 built), Ju 188 (1,200 built), Do 217 (1,900 built), Hs 129 (800 built) etc. were also of course all destroyed by the end of the conflict.

S

* 3,300 I-15 were produced but per Wikipedia only 1,000 were still in active use at the outbreak of WW2. They continued in front line use (along with I-153) until 1942

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## Kryten (May 7, 2018)

Vincenzo said:


> I've no time for check, but i near sure that Spit IX was not deployed in ME/NA in 1942. If there were some Emil in the 42 were in ground attack staffeln.
> Nikademus time ago writed "My estimate suggests 144 Spitfires in trade for 82 Bf-109's for air to air based on a study of Shores's Malta book" he was taking of '42.



Rather a disingenuous statistic as it is ignoring the fact the RAF were constantly intercepting bomber raids not duelling with 109's in isolation!
The 109's had only the RAF fighters to engage!

Suffice to say the arrival of the Spit V changed the air battle considerably and ultimately defeated the Luftwaffe again.

Bit silly to try and tot up fighters alone in a strategic battle like Malta!


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## tomo pauk (May 7, 2018)

Perhaps my last participation for this thread: losses of the Soviet and German A/C, per Soviet records. Chapters of interest, in Spanish, are *4. Bajas de la aviación nazi *and* 5. Bajas de la aviacion soviética.* LINK
Easy to comprehend even without translation.

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## Schweik (May 7, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Perhaps my last participation for this thread: losses of the Soviet and German A/C, per Soviet records. Chapters of interest, in Spanish, are *4. Bajas de la aviación nazi *and* 5. Bajas de la aviacion soviética.* LINK
> Easy to comprehend even without translation.



It says the Soviets shot down more than 50,000 German combat aircraft which is interesting, but i don't know what their source is.


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## Vincenzo (May 7, 2018)

Kryten said:


> Rather a disingenuous statistic as it is ignoring the fact the RAF were constantly intercepting bomber raids not duelling with 109's in isolation!
> The 109's had only the RAF fighters to engage!
> 
> Suffice to say the arrival of the Spit V changed the air battle considerably and ultimately defeated the Luftwaffe again.
> ...



That were the losses in the air to air encounter 109 vs Spit the losses of Spit versus others aircraft are not include. The battle was win for many reasons and the quality of Spit V probabily not count, the would win the battle also using only Kittyhawk, with more losses but ever win


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## Schweik (May 7, 2018)

Vincenzo said:


> I've no time for check, but i near sure that Spit IX was not deployed in ME/NA in 1942. If there were some Emil in the 42 were in ground attack staffeln.
> Nikademus time ago writed "My estimate suggests 144 Spitfires in trade for 82 Bf-109's for air to air based on a study of Shores's Malta book" he was taking of '42.



Maybe you should check - my information says *No. 81 Sqn RAF arrived in Tunisia in November 1942 with a mix of Spit IX and VC.* Moved from there to Malta also in 1942, then Italy and then back to North Africa in the next few months. Data is sketchy though and I might be wrong - if so I'm willing to learn.

Most of the Spit IX groups and for example the Polish Fighting Team arrived in January and February of 1943.

I'd really like to see this famous post of Nikademus because I suspect his numbers are off. Like I've mentioned before, it depends what you count as a 'shot down' aircraft. Does that number include forced landings? 80% damaged? 50%? Are you counting aircraft destroyed or damaged by Flak or just by enemy aircraft? What are the criteria?

And perhaps more importantly - is it the _same_ criteria on both sides.

I'm not certain what "Shores Malta book" is precisely - I know he is a prolific author and has written numerous books on the Air War in WW2, but I have his two most recent Mediterranean Air War books (Vols II and III, & eagerly awaiting Vol IV later this year) and I can tell you it's tricky determining who shot down what since by the second half of 1942 in particular, most days include pilots of multiple aircraft types on both sides making claims.

I would be suspicious of the numbers you quoted though I don't think it was that lopsided.

I keep threatening to do my own counts with these books and at least get claims / loss lists for each side for every day but I never seem to have the time. Probably waste too much time posting here  i have done that for a couple of months, for example March of 1943 and Dec of 1942, and have been going through putting notes in the margins for a more comprehensive count but not sure when I can deliver on that.

S


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## Schweik (May 7, 2018)

(double post)


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## Vincenzo (May 7, 2018)

I've checked for the 81st it go in theater in november 42 but get the IX only in january '43, it used both the model, Vc and IX, until 11/43 when go to VIII, but was moved in CBI theater

I've checked also for the Emil at 1/11/42 there were on strenght 39 Emil on all the Jagd unit of LW, so this include the jabo staffeln, just for clear the total of fighter was 1452


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## Greyman (May 7, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I'm not certain what "Shores Malta book" is precisely - I know he is a prolific author and has written numerous books on the Air War in WW2, but I have his two most recent Mediterranean Air War books (Vols II and III, & eagerly awaiting Vol IV later this year) and I can tell you it's tricky determining who shot down what since by the second half of 1942 in particular, most days include pilots of multiple aircraft types on both sides making claims.









Certainly tricky. Fantastic book but things tend to be a bit slipperier than in his later works. Shores' game has certainly reached new levels in his latest books.

When you have big, confused dogfights in three languages with the results tending to end up in the sea - it makes for a few holes in the story

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## Schweik (May 7, 2018)

Greyman said:


> View attachment 492569
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Gotcha, understood. Yes I got the idea that his earlier stuff was less thorough - even in the current volume you can find some mistakes but so far based on other sources I have like squadron histories of several of the involved units, everything seems to check out fairly well in MAW II and III.

My information on 81 Squadron comes from this site:

No. 81 Squadron (RAF) during the Second World War

which says they got Spit IXs in May and June of 1942. There is a famous Spit IX from that squadron which was restored in Malta.

Schedule is a bit confusing as well but it appears they got into the Med in Oct 42 and into action in November.

September-October 1942: Wellingore
30 October 1942: To Gibraltar November 1942: Maison Blanche
*November 1942-March 1943:* Bone/ Tingley
March-May 1943: Souk-el-Khemis

Bone / Tingley is on the border between Algiers and Tunisia.

However, it may well be that they didn't get Spit IX until very early 1943. By Jan 43 though it's clear they were there and in numbers. Per Shores MAW Vol III, p. 290, a Spit IX of 81 Sqn claimed a Bf 109G 15m E of Cap Rosa (Tunisia) and a 322 Wing Spit IX claimed another Bf 109G in the same area. 81 Sqn also reported one lost that same day.

Polish Fighting Team arrived in Med in February with Spit IXs.

S


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## Schweik (May 7, 2018)

Vincenzo said:


> I've checked also for the Emil at 1/11/42 there were on strenght 39 Emil on all the Jagd unit of LW, so this include the jabo staffeln, just for clear the total of fighter was 1452



They may be rare by Nov 42 but as you can see there were still plenty of Emils flying in the Luftwaffe in March - I count over 150 including 26 with JG 77 alone, and still a significant number in June of 42 as well when the Spits first arrived in Tunisia.

Single engine fighters - 28.03.42

So per the original context, it's not wrong to compare Spit Vs or Yak 1s to Bf 109E in 1942. Spit IX ok I'll give you that, it's not there until Jan 43. Still some Emils around by then but not many.


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## Vincenzo (May 7, 2018)

My source for the 81st is Sqn Markings 81_P, in the history page i get the theater
and no squadrons get IX in may '42, the first sqadron to get the IX was the 64th in June and became operational the 28th July, the 2nd squadron was 611th get first IX the 23rd July both in Great Britain.

I've checked in same site In NA&Sicily at 1st march '42 all Jagd unit were on Friedrich, There was 1 Emil in a Zerstoerer Gruppe


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## Stig1207 (May 8, 2018)

Schweik said:


> What are your sources for those numbers


The Soviet figures are apparently from:
‘Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century’ by Krivosheev.

I don't know of any break down of losses by type or cause, but it seems that of the 46000 operational losses, an estimated 20000 were due to aerial combat.


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## GrauGeist (May 8, 2018)

Schweik, perhaps bring a credible source for your claims to the table instead of a website...

Sourcing that .ORG site is like using wiki, FFS.


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## parsifal (May 8, 2018)

before we can quote losses and sources< we at least need to agree on when a loss is a loss >

both sides have their loss tallies shrouded

Soviet losses are generally hidden behind their version of political correctness. Even sources like Krivosheev suffer from this affliction

German losses are incomplete for a start, and because of the way damaged aircraft were tallied and processed could often be hidden from view. aircraft were assesses according to damage. Aircraft damage above what the frontline formations could repair generally meant pulling the airframe out of theatre, back to Germany where it was either scrapped or repaired, but not as an airframe attached to the eastern front. Neither was it a loss recorded for the EF. 

As Ive said previously, determining losses for the EF with any accuracy is pretty much a lost cause

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## Stig1207 (May 8, 2018)

parsifal said:


> As Ive said previously, determining losses for the EF with any accuracy is pretty much a lost cause



We can pretty much agree on this; which makes the conclusions being drawn by various posters based on this 'data' all the more remarkable


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## Kryten (May 8, 2018)

Vincenzo said:


> That were the losses in the air to air encounter 109 vs Spit the losses of Spit versus others aircraft are not include. The battle was win for many reasons and the quality of Spit V probabily not count, the would win the battle also using only Kittyhawk, with more losses but ever win



If you bother to research the air battles over Malta you will find "encounters" between 109's and Spitfires were rarely isolated , but were part of massed air battles, the RAF had bombers, dive bombers and fighters to deal with, the 109's job was to keep the Spitfires from shooting down said bombers and dive bombers, you cannot isolate one type, you can only look at the relative numbers involved (the RAF fought massively outnumbered on most days) the losses and the result of the battle!

Plainly and obviously 109's will shoot down more Spitfires than they lose if they are only fighting Spitfires, whilst the numerically fewer Spitfires are having to deal with superior numbers of bombers and fighters and the priority is the bombers!
So your statistic in it's isolation shows nothing of realistic value!


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## Schweik (May 8, 2018)

Kryten said:


> Plainly and obviously 109's will shoot down more Spitfires than they lose if they are only fighting Spitfires



Really!?


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## Milosh (May 8, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Really!?



Yes as the Spit had Italian and German bombers and fighters to contend with.


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## Kryten (May 9, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Really!?


It's not rocket science,
The attacking forces consisted of bombers, dive bombers and their escorting fighters, the Spitfires had to deal with all of these with the priority being the bombers.

The 109's had just the Spits and the odd Hurricane which they had to keep away from the bombers, so it's ridiculous to isolate one type and try to make a comparison, if you want to draw any conclusion of the relative performances you have to take into consideration the losses of all types, and the number involved!

as an example at 18:00 on July 11th an incoming raid consisted of 10 -Ju88's, 16- Macchis and 24- Bf109, this was opposes by 24 Spitfires drawn from 3 different Sqdns (8 from each).

This was the third raid of the day, each time the defending Spits were outnumbered more than 2 to 1 and often much worse odds, so it's quite foolish to try and make like for like comparisons when it's plainly obvious the tactical situation dictates any engagement and it's outcome.


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## Schweik (May 9, 2018)

Kryten said:


> It's not rocket science,



What I meant is that the statement "Plainly and obviously 109's will shoot down more Spitfires than they lose if they are only fighting Spitfires" implies that if you have 20 Spitfires and 20 Bf 109s in a fight, the Bf 109s are going to shoot down more Spitfires than they lose. That may not be what he meant to say but that is how it reads.

Which I don't think is generally true, though it depends on the sub-variants of both.

Even when there is a big mix of planes in the air, the effect that has on how the combat goes depends more on the capabilities of the aircraft in question and the strategy. If the aircraft is too slow or lacks performance to disengage, then tactical options are limited so they are more or less stuck with the odds - and suffer losses accordingly if the odds are against them. Hurricanes, MC 200, Cr 42, Me 110 and so on, suffered from this problem. Spitifires, Bf 109s, MC 202 / 205, and P-40s could all disengage if they needed to so if they had sufficient operational flexibility in terms of their orders / chain of command, they could tackle the fight in different ways.

If they were ordered to go after the bombers and ignore the fighters, or conversely as an escort, if they were forced to stick close to the bombers, then the fighter casualties go up. If they were given more of a free hand then the fighter casualties go down. In MAW II and III, there were cases where both Allied and German fighter squadrons were able to cause devastating damage against much larger enemy formations even when badly outnumbered (including Spits & P-40s), and cases of the opposite where they got creamed.

Generally in mid 1942 when the Spitfires first arrived in the Med the British tactics were still a little bit messed up, overly rigid and they weren't always using pairs / wingmen. But by the fall they had adopted the 'Finger Four' type formations same as the Germans and given their fighter squadron a freer hand, though this still depended on the squadron commander. I remember reading about one engagement with Spits flying escort where they were being attacked from above, behind and to the left by some Bf 109s. The squadron commander ordered "break right" instead of "break left" and the RAF fighters did as ordered, resulting in 4 of them immediately getting shot down. Clearly a disastrous error by the squadron leader. But there were not too many cases like that. Most of the Spitfire squadrons seemed to do pretty well.

The German fighter squadrons were given plenty of tactical flexibility, almost to a fault, and tended to cherry pick the easiest and safest targets, which often meant low flying fighters, and they would disengage by climbing or diving away any time the fight went against them.

Which is why I say, as for the alleged numbers quoted, I wouldn't get too excited about it - I suspect those numbers are way off. The Devil is in the details of how they are counting the losses on both sides, and for example are they using the same criteria for both Axis and Allied squadrons. I have still yet to see this famous original post (I wish somebody would link it) but I suspect there may be something fishy in how the losses are being added up. This can be a little tricky because the damage and losses are reported differently in Shores MAW.

The RAF / Commonwealth losses are reported as "shot down" or "bailed out" or "damaged", but also "force landed" or "crash landed", results for crew (KiA, MiA, WiA, POW, "unknown" or "Failed to Return") and damage as "Cat I, Cat II", or (more rarely) "Cat III". It was quite common for P-40s in particular to return back to base as damaged "Cat II" but still manage to land normally. They will also specify the cause of the lost / damaged aircraft: to accident, enemy fighters, or Flak.

The USAAF and Free French losses don't have as much detail, but they will indicate "shot down by 109", "lost to flak", "damaged" or "badly damaged", "crash landed / force landed" and where (i.e. crash landed on the base or in the battle area) and sometimes "Late arrival club" for pilots who made it back to base by whatever means a day or two after an incident.

The German results while similar are based on percentage, so they will say "Damaged 10% or Damaged 90%", they will indicate "Force / Crash landed" or not, what happened to the pilot, and sometimes they use ambiguous terms like "blown up" which usually means shot down but can mean damaged on the ground by bombers / strafers, or "aircraft abandoned" which usually means bailed out but can also mean abandoned after a forced landing. They will also usually indicate what they think shot them down, such as Spitfires, P-40s, Hurricanes or enemy bombers - or Flak.

Italian results are much more vague and usually are either just "Failed to Return", "Crash landed" or "Damaged" plus the condition of the pilot / crew.
Another issue is that sometimes there are losses with no corresponding claims. Sometimes you can find these claims in the other volume - Vol II and III overlap in some periods but seem to come from different sets of records. So for example on a particular day you might find records of 3 lost Bf 109s with no corresponding DAF claims, but you check the other Volume and find 4 or 5 matching claims on that day. If you cant find them then I would say they don't count.

So there are some questions you must answer if you are going to evaluate this stuff which are a little complex. When I did some totalling up of several days actions for the Bf 109 vs P-40 thread, for me the following issues came to mind:

*Do you count aircraft destroyed by Flak / AAA? *I decided if I'm trying to match claims to losses such as between Spits and 109s, *I don't count "Flak kills"*, but there are a few cases where one side attributed a loss to Flak when it was clearly an enemy aircraft that got them so there are some exceptions to this.
*How do you count crash landed aircraft? *This is very tricky because as I mentioned previously, a single bullet hole in a radiator can force a plane down, but that same plane can be repaired in a few hours or less and right back into action. So there is definitely a difference, but it's clear at least when an aircraft had to 'force land' or 'crash land'. Rather than try to distinguish crash landed from shot down, *I just list them separately,* so for example on a certain day the RAF may have lost 3 Spitfires destroyed and 2 crash landed. 

*How do you count losses that seem to be in another battle area or a different time? *In the P-40 vs 109 thread, one guy argued a lot about one particular incident on March 24, 1943. USAAF 33rd FG P-40Ls escorting a B-25 raid had clashed with Bf 109G-2, G-4 and G-6s of at least two, possibly three different JG, claiming 10 & 5 damaged, and losing 1 P-40. The Germans claimed 7 P-40s (including two by Experten Hans Bar who the German report said shot down two P-40s that were giving his subordinates a lot of trouble) and lost 6 destroyed and 1 damaged 50%. The accompanying text described a long "running battle" from the site of the German airfield at Tebaga North in Southern Tunisia all the way back to the DAF airbase in North West Tunisia or Algeria (it wasn't clear where exactly). The issue was that 2 of the German losses were to 'unknown reasons' and they and one other loss were reported in North-East Tunisia. The ensuing argument was complicated but my general conclusion is, it's just a little bit too much of a mystery to delve deep into every single lost aircraft. It's possible there is a coincidental navigation error or engine malfunction for 3 of the 6 lost German fighters, but I doubt it. The bottom line though if you are trying to do this day by day, *I think the criteria should be if there are losses which can be matched to the claims on the same day and within the operational range of the aircraft involved, then they should be counted.* If there are odd circumstances you can put an asterix on it for further investigation later. But as we know, some people are so invested in one side or the other they just can't let things go - that's fine, it's how we figure a lot of things out frankly, but it needs to be separated so it doesn't bog down the count.

*How do you count damaged aircraft?* This one is tricky. On the DAF side, if it says Cat III damage, or "written off", "destroyed" etc., then I counted it as destroyed. If not damaged (and therefore not counted in the victory / lost ratio). For the Germans I counted any aircraft with more than 50% damage as destroyed, though that is a bit arbitrary. German losses were often reported as just damage percentage, 60%, 80% etc. I know there was a certain threshold beyond which many aircraft were out of commission for a long time and ultimately written off, as the repair capabilities in remote fields were limited, especially in late 1942 and 1943 as the Germans were often retreating and leaving a lot of planes behind (both in the Med and in Russia). But I'd have to do more research to find that out*. Bottom line is I think that *most lightly or moderately damaged aircraft should be ignored in the kill count and tallied separately, while severely damaged aircraft can be counted as killed so long as the criteria are clear and consistent.* I also think you should keep a separate tally of damaged aircraft because that does help paint the picture.
Obviously the most important is that the count of losses are done by as close to the same criteria as possible for all air forces on both Axis and Allied sides, and that these criteria are consistent. I do think that is a bit of a challenge but it's also doable.

S

* one other thing that occurred to me, this would take a fiendish amount of effort but in MAW, Shores does list the serial numbers of damaged planes, and then the serial numbers of planes "destroyed by own troops" presumably due to a base evacuation. So if you entered all this into a database or just painstakingly matched them one by one, you could probably determine with some degree of accuracy which German planes in particular that got damaged were ultimately destroyed before they could be repaired and put into action. So maybe those should be counted as destroyed.


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## Juha2 (May 9, 2018)

There were late Yaks and late Yaks. 4,239 Yak-9Ms were produced from May 1944 to June 1945, max speed at SL 518 km/h and 573 km/h at 3,750 m. Not necessarily a "Super fighter" in late 1944 or early 1945.


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## Juha2 (May 9, 2018)

According to Jefford's _RAF Sqns_ 81 sqn got Mk IXs in Jan 1943, it had got Mk VCs in Oct 1942. Used both until Nov 43 when it got Spit VIIIs.

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## Schweik (May 9, 2018)

Juha2 said:


> There were late Yaks and late Yaks. 4,239 Yak-9Ms were produced from May 1944 to June 1945, max speed at SL 518 km/h and 573 km/h at 3,750 m. Not necessarily a "Super fighter" in late 1944 or early 1945.



Lets try to be realistic though, by 1944 you had the Yak 9U (575 kph at Sea level 672 at altitude - with a 23mm cannon) and Yak 3 (567/646), not to mention La 5FN (583 / 634) and La 7 (613/661) so I think, between the better Yaks and Lavochkins, the Soviets gave the Germans plenty to think about, (and the Liebensraum they were longing for was back at home which they wish they had never left).


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## Freebird (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> By that logic the Gloster Gladiator is better than both...



By that logic the Whirlwind was the best...


Why isn't the He 177 on the list?

It would make the choice soooo easy....


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## Tieleader (May 10, 2018)

Overall I'd have to say the Mustang. Don't misunderstand,it was certainly a capable fighter but it only showed up in numbers later on. The P-38s and P-47s had born the brunt of an experienced and capable LW force. The 51s came on the scene after the LW wasn't even capable of defending itself much less Germany. Here is a well built fighter constructed by patriot Americans to the highest standards, flown by pilots that had an obscene amount of training in the states (and expanded upon by Clobber Colleges in England) going against an enemy that was forced to use replacement pilots that were lucky to have 20 hours training in an A/C that in all probability was built by untrained slave labor that sabotaged what they could get away with. Doesn't matter how good your airplane is if you're outnumbered 10-1 or more. Not to even mention the fuel differences.
All the earlier A/C did the heavy lifting, the Mustang just had a great PR guy...

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## Juha2 (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Lets try to be realistic though, by 1944 you had the Yak 9U (575 kph at Sea level 672 at altitude - with a 23mm cannon) and Yak 3 (567/646), not to mention La 5FN (583 / 634) and La 7 (613/661) so I think, between the better Yaks and Lavochkins, the Soviets gave the Germans plenty to think about, (and the Liebensraum they were longing for was back at home which they wish they had never left).



Realistic? I have no problems with Yak-3 and La-5FN and -7, even if the latter had its engine problems, but during the war in 1944-45 Soviets manufactured 1,700 more Yak-9Ms than -9Us. And VK-107A engine was problematic most of 1944, especially anoing was its tendency to overhear even in level flight with combat power, speaking nothing on climbing. So during the summer 1944 it was recommended that the use of combat power setting be avoided. Engine problems were mostly solved in late 1944 and during the test at the end of 44 and the beginning of 45 -9U was able to reach speeds you mentioned.


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## Juha2 (May 10, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> .... . Not to even mention the fuel differences...



What fuel differences? German late war C3 was appr 95+/130 PN. Fuel shortage was the main problem

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## Dan Fahey (May 10, 2018)

Think the most over rated aircraft was the Spitfire. Find for home defense just could not stay in the air more than an hour. Was not as rugged or versatile as the P40. Its main issues was it lacked range and second ruggedness. It was an expensive time consuming plane to build. Could it fight yeah.. like to know the shoot down numbers of the Spit.

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## Dan Fahey (May 10, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> Overall I'd have to say the Mustang. Don't misunderstand,it was certainly a capable fighter but it only showed up in numbers later on. The P-38s and P-47s had born the brunt of an experienced and capable LW force. The 51s came on the scene after the LW wasn't even capable of defending itself much less ermany. Here is a well built fighter constructed by patriot Americans to the highest standards, flown by pilots that had an obscene amount of training in the states (and expanded upon by Clobber Colleges in England) going against an enemy that was forced to use replacement pilots that were lucky to have 20 hours training in an A/C that in all probability was built by untrained slave labor that sabotaged what they could get away with. Doesn't matter how good your airplane is if you're outnumbered 10-1 or more. Not to even mention the fuel differences.
> All the earlier A/C did the heavy lifting, the Mustang just had a great PR guy...



NOT TRUE
Two Issues.. The P38 had the range but painful problematic tuning issues that caused a lot of turn backs. They never fully fixed them either. The P47 could barely get into France without turning back due to poor fuel range, just like the Spit. They could not reach the Fighters and Germans knew it. Only after Allied Troops landed in Europe and P47 range was not an issue could it contribute. However the P38 despite its issues had the range and shot down more Axis planes per sortie than the Thunderbolt. It was a far more maneuverable plane to take a shot at their prey. However the P47 was more survivable because it could roll and dive quickly like the P40.

Unlike the P51 the P38 and P47 were large easier targets to identify. These allied planes were picked off by the experienced Axis planes and AAA.

Most every Fighter Plane had comparable tools to shoot the other sides plane down. What made the difference was having the fuel and range and still have the competitive combat ability to shot down the other plane. This is what made the Zero so damn dangerous. Like the P51 raided your territory and the other side could not get to theirs.

In Africa the Range of the P40 allowed deep interdiction strikes on Rommel and German Airbases. A key issues the Axis single engine planes lacked. One of the understated features of the longer range US planes, by the time they got into enemy territory they were about 1000 lbs. lighter making very nimble fighters. 

The P51 shoot down almost twice as many planes as the P47 its closest rival and flew less missions doing it.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 10, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> NOT TRUE
> Two Issues.. The P38 had the range but painful problematic tuning issues that caused a lot of turn backs. They never fully fixed them either.


NOT TRUE. The P-38L had all those issues addressed and then some but by the time it was rolling out of the factory it was too little too late, at least in the ETO and especially in the eyes of the brass.

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## Stig1207 (May 10, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> Think the most over rated aircraft was the Spitfire. Find for home defense just could not stay in the air more than an hour. Was not as rugged or versatile as the P40. Its main issues was it lacked range and second ruggedness. It was an expensive time consuming plane to build. Could it fight yeah.. like to know the shoot down numbers of the Spit.



Strangely, though, the Spitfire wasn't gradually phased out and replaced by newer fighters by the RAF unlike a certain more 'rugged or versatile' fighter was by the USAAF.

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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> Think the most over rated aircraft was the Spitfire. Find for home defense just could not stay in the air more than an hour. Was not as rugged or versatile as the P40. Its main issues was it lacked range and second ruggedness. It was an expensive time consuming plane to build. Could it fight yeah.. like to know the shoot down numbers of the Spit.


Do you want them for 1939, 1940,1941,1942, 1943, 1944 or 1945, would a summary do? Of course the purely PR Spitfires didn't shoot any down, but it was one of the best A/C in the role throughout the war.


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Strangely, though, the Spitfire wasn't gradually phased out and replaced by newer fighters by the RAF unlike a certain more 'rugged or versatile' fighter was by the USAAF.



Wow you can sense a little sparkle of malice there lol.










I do think that is true - the Spitfire was never replaced, though calling a Spit XIV the same aircraft as the Spit I is a bit of a stretch. But I wouldn't rate an aircraft by it's being great from beginning of the war through the end necessarily. For one thing, the changes that a plane goes through from beginning to end of the design life-cycle can be fairly extreme. Different guns, different engine, different fuselage, even different wings. Whether you still call it by the same model name or ID number is a bit arbitrary.

All of the aircraft from WW2 were ultimately replaced and / or are obsolete by today's standards but we still like them. Same for the WW1 aircraft before them. Just because a fighter was 'in the mix' for a while and then replaced by another doesn't make it inferior to me. Personally I really like some of the early-war WW2 fighters, even the Spanish Civil War era ones.

I am a big fan of the P-40 and appreciate most of the American kit but the P-40 did have a major issue with the performance ceiling and I don't think the Spit is overrated. It was a short range fighter and did best as an interceptor, but it's importance was real and critical to the War Effort. Even though the Hurricane shot down a lot of planes in the BoB, it was the parity or edge (depending on who you believe in the endless debates) that the Spitfire had over the Bf 109 that made the crucial difference in morale and gave the British planners a tool they could use to affect the outcomes (put the Spitfires where they most needed to blunt the enemy). The English needed a fighter that could best the opposition, that they could believe (rightly or wrongly) was superior to it. It just wasn't enough to have one that could win 2 out of 5 times.

There is also simply no denying that the Spitfire was one of the most beautiful aircraft designed during the war. It's lovely to behold. I forget who it was that said but the beautiful planes usually (not always but usually) were the ones that were the most successful. You look at a Firefly, a Helldiver or a Seamew, and you can just tell something major is wrong with the design. You look at a Spitfire, and you are looking at something that seems to be from nature, a soaring predator of the skies.

My off the cuff list of the most beautiful mainstream warplanes of WW2:

Spitfire (for me especially the earlier ones, Mk 1 - Mk IX)
Yak-3 (I like the whole Yak series but the Yak 3 is the beauty queen of them all)
La-5 / 7
Mosquito
Beaufighter
Lancaster
Pe-2 Peshka
Fw-190D
Do -17
He-219 Uhu
D3A "Val"
A6M Zero-Sen
Ki-43 Hayabusa
Ki-46 "Dinah" (especially the Ki-46-III with the streamlined nose)
Ki-61 Hien
Bf 109 (for me especially the F-4)
SM. 79 Sparvierro
Re-2005 - the whole Re 2000 series really.
Dewoitine D.520
P-40 (for me personally especially the long tailed 'F')
P-51 (for me personally the B and C models)
Corsair, especially the later ones

To me all those planes have a certain elegance to their design which is just captivating. And it did also translate into good quality.

S

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## Milosh (May 10, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> Unlike the P51 the P38 and P47 were large easier targets to identify.



Both the P-51 and P-47 had recognition stripes added because they could be mistaken for Bf109s and Fw190s.


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## GrauGeist (May 10, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> ...The P47 could barely get into France without turning back *due to poor fuel range,* just like the Spit. They could not reach the Fighters and Germans knew it...


Not sure how you came to this conclusion.
The P-47's combat range was 800 miles without droptanks, which was almost twice that of the Spit. It was also nearly double that of contemporary Axis fighters.

There was no problem for it to cross the channel, get savage on Axis fighters and targets then return home.

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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Both the P-51 and P-47 had recognition stripes added because they could be mistaken for Bf109s and Fw190s.



Lets be real though AAA gunners could mistake a 747 for a Bf 109. Weren't all the Anglo-American aircraft from D-Day wearing those stripes?

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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

Juha2 said:


> Realistic? I have no problems with Yak-3 and La-5FN and -7, even if the latter had its engine problems, but during the war in 1944-45 Soviets manufactured 1,700 more Yak-9Ms than -9Us. And VK-107A engine was problematic most of 1944, especially anoing was its tendency to overhear even in level flight with combat power, speaking nothing on climbing. So during the summer 1944 it was recommended that the use of combat power setting be avoided. Engine problems were mostly solved in late 1944 and during the test at the end of 44 and the beginning of 45 -9U was able to reach speeds you mentioned.



I don't think it was unusual for higher performance fighters with newer high performance engines to have some engine issues (particularly overheating), which often partly depended on the season and the climate as well as the altitude, maintenance and other factors, and these were not necessarily debilitating certainly not with the Yak-9U. 

Since the Soviets had multiple variants of Yak with different performance levels - by 1944 they could concentrate the faster ones like the Yak-3 and 9U (and even the Yak-1B) against what was left of the more elite Ostfront Luftwaffe fighters - I think they manufactured more than enough for that- while the less zippy ones could focus on destroying the second string units and the few remaining German bombers and ground attack aircraft, as well as attacking flak and other ground targets.

Kind of like the way the English in the same era used Spitfires and Mustangs to counter German fighters when most necessary / crucial and sent P-47s and Typhoons out to do a lot of strafing and rocket and bomb attacks.

By 1944 most Allied fighters in every Theater were actually flying more ground-attack missions than anything else.

S


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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

In the air size doesn't matter the smaller aircraft is just presumed to be further away. The Typhoon was routinely confused with the Fw190.

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## Milosh (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Lets be real though AAA gunners could mistake a 747 for a Bf 109. Weren't all the Anglo-American aircraft from D-Day wearing those stripes?



Stripes added before D-Day. A single stripe, either yellow or white, on each wing and stab. Sometimes the fin/rudder.


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## Milosh (May 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Not sure how you came to this conclusion.
> The P-47's combat range was 800 miles without droptanks, which was almost twice that of the Spit. It was also nearly double that of contemporary Axis fighters.
> 
> There was no problem for it to cross the channel, get savage on Axis fighters and targets then return home.

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## Tieleader (May 10, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> NOT TRUE
> Two Issues.. The P38 had the range but painful problematic tuning issues that caused a lot of turn backs. They never fully fixed them either. The P47 could barely get into France without turning back due to poor fuel range, just like the Spit. They could not reach the Fighters and Germans knew it. Only after Allied Troops landed in Europe and P47 range was not an issue could it contribute. However the P38 despite its issues had the range and shot down more Axis planes per sortie than the Thunderbolt. It was a far more maneuverable plane to take a shot at their prey. However the P47 was more survivable because it could roll and dive quickly like the P40.
> 
> Unlike the P51 the P38 and P47 were large easier targets to identify. These allied planes were picked off by the experienced Axis planes and AAA.
> ...


Respectfully disagree on a couple of points.
1) The 51 was often mistake for 109s by BOTH sides.
2)P-47s did have the range all the way to parts of Germany with drop tanks. Not as far as 51s granted but still alot more that Spitfires.
3)the Zero wasn't so formidable after the basic built in flaws were discovered. A competant P-40/Wildcat pilot could beat it with the right tactics.
4) Flak shot at EVERTHING, even sometimes the German ones... They didn't pick and choose that way.
Have to agree about the survivabilty about the 47 though. A couple of 4th FG vets I knew wouldn't have survived otherwise.
Lastly, I didn't mean the 51 was crap, just not the be all and end all of WW2 fighters.

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## DarrenW (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I forget who it was that said but the beautiful planes usually (not always but usually) were the ones that were the most successful.



Great post Schweik. I think there are a lot of people out there that don't expect an "average" looking aircraft to do well. I also believe that's why it's hard for some to accept the success of aircraft such as the Grumman Hellcat and Brewster Buffalo. And although I personally find the Hellcat attractive in it's own special way, neither of these two aircraft possessed the grace and beauty of a Mustang or Spitfire. But they were very successful designs and accomplished much during the war. These would be two great examples of exceptions to the rule....

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## Tieleader (May 10, 2018)

Milosh said:


> View attachment 492887


A picture is worth a thounsand words!


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## Tieleader (May 10, 2018)

Juha2 said:


> What fuel differences? German late war C3 was appr 95+/130 PN. Fuel shortage was the main problem


What I had in mind. Just didn't state it very well...


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## DarrenW (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> In the air size doesn't matter...



I'll have to take my wife flying more often!!!!

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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> I'll have to take my wife flying more often!!!!


I was thinking of putting (darling) as I wrote that.

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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Wow you can sense a little sparkle of malice there lol.
> 
> View attachment 492882
> View attachment 492883
> ...


Great post Schweik, as you say all aircraft are superseded, however the Spitfire was a frontline competitive aircraft at the start of WW2 Sept 1939 and at the end Aug 1945. There were times when it was down against the opposition but not by much. Wars are won by crucial battles, the Spitfire won two, the BoB and the Malta, and played a major part in many others if not to win then to avert disaster. I am constantly perplexed by the argument about range. Apparently being able to fight 200 miles away is much more important than being able to fight at 20,000 ft. That is an attitude of someone who certainly wasn't a resident of Kent's airfields in 1940. From first to last the Spitfire series were almost completely changed, but so were the P-51 and P-47. Some events like the Spitfire intercepting German recon planes above 40,000 ft may seem inconsequential. However in the run up to D-Day German Recon could only be allowed where the allies wanted.

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## GrauGeist (May 10, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> Respectfully disagree on a couple of points.
> *1) The 51 was often mistake for 109s by BOTH sides.*
> 2)P-47s did have the range all the way to parts of Germany with drop tanks. Not as far as 51s granted but still alot more that Spitfires.
> 3)the Zero wasn't so formidable after the basic built in flaws were discovered. A competant P-40/Wildcat pilot could beat it with the right tactics.
> ...


Two very good points among several.
The first one, brings to mind an encounter of the Royal Bulgarian Air Force on 30 March 1944. Up to this point, they had successfully intercepted Allied bombers and P-38s in defense of their territory, particularly thier capitol, Sofia. On this day, however, P-51Bs were first used to escort Allied bombers and in the meleé that ensued, the Bulgarian pilots mistook the P-51s for their own Bf109Gs and allowed them to close, only realising too late that they were the enemy and losing 9 of their fighters in the process. This was the single highest loss suffered by the RBAF in a day.

The other, regrding flak, is emphasized by the disaster the Luftwaffe suffered during Operation Bodenplatt in January 1945. Several German flak units did not receive information about the operation and ended up downing several Luftwaffe aircraft as well as creating panic among the inexperienced pilots in the flights.

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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Great post Schweik, as you say all aircraft are superseded, however the Spitfire was a frontline competitive aircraft at the start of WW2 Sept 1939 and at the end Aug 1945. There were times when it was down against the opposition but not by much. Wars are won by crucial battles, the Spitfire won two, the BoB and the Malta, and played a major part in many others if not to win then to avert disaster. I am constantly perplexed by the argument about range. Apparently being able to fight 200 miles away is much more important than being able to fight at 20,000 ft. That is an attitude of someone who certainly wasn't a resident of Kent's airfields in 1940. From first to last the Spitfire series were almost completely changed, but so were the P-51 and P-47. Some events like the Spitfire intercepting German recon planes above 40,000 ft may seem inconsequential. However in the run up to D-Day German Recon could only be allowed where the allies wanted.



Nothing about the Spit is inconsequential, trust me. I am certainly not one of the people who thinks its overrated. They had a problem in 1942 with the deadly Fw 190, but they fixed that pretty much for good in my opinion, with the Spit IX. One of those brilliant "Stop Gap" design measures that ends up being a fantastic home run.

Do I think altitude limitations are more important than range limitations? I don't know, I think they are both limitations. 

The altitude one seems to be more widespread, I'm learning, than I had originally known. The fighter best known for altitude limits was arguably the P-40, then the P-39, and then the various Soviet fighters. But I have learned that these issues affected many others. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought one of the issues with the Spit V as it faced the Fw 190 was that it's performance declined a bit at altitude whereas the Spit IX with the ingenious Merlin 60 series and two stage supercharger drove like a Lion up to a much greater height, which helped (along with the sheer increase in horsepower) improve speed and overall performance up high. This is my understanding anyway.

The Fw 190 itself also eventually faced altitude limitations as the Allied fighters with turbos and two stage superchargers spread, and it too suffered from that deficit, requiring the development of the elegant 190D but a bit too late. 

Range does matter IMO, if you can't get to the fight you can't affect the outcome. I think this was the reason why the A6M was so good, or more precisely the combination of range, performance (esp. climb) and maneuverability. But yes I do think range is a very important feature for a fighter.

Which one matters more depends on the Theater doesn't it? On the Russian Front, altitude capability made little difference. If it did the MiG 3 would have been the hero. Range didn't matter that much either. In the BoB altitude mattered but range didn't as much (better range would have helped though particularly for the Germans). In the Pacific range was much more important and is the main reason the Spit didn't really excel there and a big part of why the A6M did. Over the heart of Germany again, range mattered. And I object to the dismissal of the P-51 as a flying gas tank, that is a bit absurd.

I think fighters with different capabilities are also better or worse for certain roles. The Spit was the best allied interceptor, bar none. The Mustang was the best escort fighter, though it came late and that matters too. 


I like what you did by pointing out that the Spitfire won two key battles, BoB and Malta. Here are a few which occur to me:

The A6M, the D3A won Pearl Harbor, and (with the G4M etc.), the first Battle of the Philippines, the Battle of Singapore and so on.

The Bf 109 and the Stuka won the Battle of Poland and the Battle of France.

I would say that the F4F and the Dauntless won Midway, Coral Sea, and Guadalcanal.

The F6F won the second Battle of the Philippines.

The P-40 won the (air) Battle of Burma and China

The P-40 won Milne Bay and Darwin and the Kokoda trail, (which together form the BoB of Australia.)

I would say the P-40 also helped win El Alamein and Tunisia but not alone.

I think the Yak-1, the P-40 and the P-39 helped save Leningrad and Moscow for the Russians. Credit for that also goes to the Il-2 for the battle _after_ Stalingrad. The Il-2 certainly helped win Kursk.


S
The P-47 and the Typhoon helped win the Battle of D-Day

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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Apparently being able to fight 200 miles away is much more important than being able to fight at 20,000 ft.



Another thought on this.

I was reading recently (as the result of another conversation here) about the Japanese air attack on the Philippines, and was shocked to notice that they flew their raid from Formosa (Taiwan - can you still say that?). 950 km from Taiwan to Clark Field! Paris to London is 344 km by comparison. London to Hamburg is 720 km. Imagine if the Allies had a (really good) fighter that could fly that distance in 1941. Imagine if the Spitfire could do it!? Would that have helped the war effort?

S


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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Another thought on this.
> 
> I was reading recently (as the result of another conversation here) about the Japanese air attack on the Philippines, and was shocked to notice that they flew their raid from Formosa (Taiwan - can you still say that?). 950 km from Taiwan to Clark Field! Paris to London is 344 km by comparison. London to Hamburg is 720 km. Imagine if the Allies had a (really good) fighter that could fly that distance in 1941. Imagine if the Spitfire could do it!? Would that have helped the war effort?
> 
> S


Of course it would, but the allies in 1941 were officially UK and Russia and primarily concerned with defence. Nice to think about flying to Hamburg and Paris but you will meet Bf109s

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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Of course it would, but the allies in 1941 were officially UK and Russia and primarily concerned with defence. Nice to think about flying to Hamburg and Paris but you will meet Bf109s



I think the point is if you had (good) fighters with that kind of range you wouldn't have to stay on the defensive. You could raid their airfields before they took off. You could escort your bombers to Hamburg and start bombing them back. You could bomb their fleet and pre-empt any invasion activity. If you were the Russians you could destroy their supply lines long before they even get to Stalingrad.

If you have ever been in a fist fight - defense and counter punching is fine but it helps a lot if you can put some pressure back on your opponent at the same time.

Of course you also have to have _enough _fighters and pilots to go on the offensive and England and Russia probably didn't in 1941.

S


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## GrauGeist (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Of course it would, but the allies in 1941 were officially UK and Russia and primarily concerned with defence. Nice to think about flying to Hamburg and Paris but you will meet Bf109s


And Fw190s!


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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I think the point is if you had (good) fighters with that kind of range you wouldn't have to stay on the defensive. You could raid their airfields before they took off. You could escort your bombers to Hamburg and start bombing them back. You could bomb their fleet and pre-empt any invasion activity. If you were the Russians you could destroy their supply lines long before they even get to Stalingrad.
> 
> If you have ever been in a fist fight - defense and counter punching is fine but it helps a lot if you can put some pressure back on your opponent at the same time.
> 
> ...


Yes if you have them in 1941 but who had them and how many? The Japanese had a huge area of widely spread targets around the pacific and frequently had the advantage of surprise. There was never any surprise in Europe neither were there any bombers that could make any impact. Any attack against Europe in 1941 was at the same disadvantages as the LW had in 1940 in the BoB.


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Yes if you have them in 1941 but who had them and how many? The Japanese had a huge area of widely spread targets around the pacific and frequently had the advantage of surprise. There was never any surprise in Europe neither were there any bombers that could make any impact. Any attack against Europe in 1941 was at the same disadvantages as the LW had in 1940 in the BoB.



I disagree since their main disadvantage was the range of their fighters.

If you had zeroes and whatever long range bombers (I don't know - Wellingtons?) you could attack German installations in France from almost any direction - from the Bay of Biscay. You could start hitting their rail yards, airfields etc. if the Japanese could do it to the Americans in the Philippines they could do it to the Germans in Belgium or France.

I mean what if you literally had zeroes. Sure you would have a high attrition rate but you had that anyway in the BoB. If you had the ability to hit back - you could shorten the battle quite a bit.

I would say this - a Zero, A6M2- was arguably as good as a Spitfire MK I or II in a one-on-one fight, and certainly better than a Hurricane. Superior maneuverability of course, but also 20mm cannons and climb like a jet. Add to that 3,000 km range...? You don't think that would help A LOT? I think that helps explain the value of the Zero.


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## BiffF15 (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Apparently being able to fight 200 miles away is much more important than being able to fight at 20,000 ft.



Pbehn,

A little more modern tie into range versus performance. In 2000 we took our F15As to Lange AB, Germany to fight the Luftwaffe MiG29As. Both of us were without external tanks. I did a one vs one Basic Fighter Maneuver (BFM or dogfight) sortie. We took off at 1255. I used full afterburner, he used Mil (non afterburner or AB). I climbed in min AB, he did not. I did two 180 degree full AB warm up turns. He did not. We then fought and when he called knock it off (KIO) for bingo fuel, I reformed on him for a quick battle damage assessment (BDA) as he pointed at the field about 10 miles away. He called the KIO at 1307 or 12 minutes after takeoff. I then went and found another fight before RTB.

The moral of the story is I would never fear an airstrike or having him show up in my pattern unannounced. Also if I were to participate in a strike against his field or something he is protecting my goal would be to get him airborne early then delay the fight. He will bingo out in the middle of the fight and he will die trying to get back on the deck. 

If you have a tool that your opponent does not then you can do something he can’t. Use it wisely and it’s an advantage.

Cheers,
Biff

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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Pbehn,
> 
> A little more modern tie into range versus performance. In 2000 we took our F15As to Lange AB, Germany to fight the Luftwaffe MiG29As. Both of us were without external tanks. I did a one vs one Basic Fighter Maneuver (BFM or dogfight) sortie. We took off at 1255. I used full afterburner, he used Mil (non afterburner or AB). I climbed in min AB, he did not. I did two 180 degree full AB warm up turns. He did not. We then fought and when he called knock it off (KIO) for bingo fuel, I reformed on him for a quick battle damage assessment (BDA) as he pointed at the field about 10 miles away. He called the KIO at 1307 or 12 minutes after takeoff. I then went and found another fight before RTB.
> 
> ...



Biff, the point I was making is that if your airfields are being attacked by bombers escorted by fighters at 20 to 25,00 ft the first thing to do is stop it, not to make plans to bomb a city on their northern coast or a capital city just captured by your enemy who he couldn't give a damn about.


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## BiffF15 (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Biff, the point I was making is that if your airfields are being attacked by bombers escorted by fighters at 20 to 25,00 ft the first thing to do is stop it, not to make plans to bomb a city on their northern coast or a capital city just captured by your enemy who he couldn't give a damn about.



Pbehn,

Understood. You must deal with the gators closest to the canoe first. Then when the opportunity arises kill the nest and you don’t have a gator problem for long.

The Spitfire and Bf109 are both what I would classify as Defensive Counter Air (DCA) or point defense fighters. They are pinnacle examples of that. It took until the Mustang to find a good solution to the range / performance equation.

Cheers,
Biff

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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I disagree since their main disadvantage was the range of their fighters.
> 
> If you had zeroes and whatever long range bombers (I don't know - Wellingtons?) you could attack German installations in France from almost any direction - from the Bay of Biscay. You could start hitting their rail yards, airfields etc. if the Japanese could do it to the Americans in the Philippines they could do it to the Germans in Belgium or France.
> 
> ...


In all discussions there is a time element. How many zeros did Japan have in 1939, or in 1940, then 1941? Between 1939 and 1943 there was no country able to undertake a strategic campaign worth the name in daylight.


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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Pbehn,
> 
> Understood. You must deal with the gators closest to the canoe first. Then when the opportunity arises kill the nest and you don’t have a gator problem for long.
> 
> ...


Seriously Biff until late 1943/44 what would you want to escort in daylight? Wellingtons Lancasters and early B24- B17s? The whole "enchilada" of the allied campaign came together in 1943/4 you cannot just leap forward 2 years, the UK didn't even have the airfields, Oh and there was a little problem in the Atlantic at the time.


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> In all discussions there is a time element. How many zeros did Japan have in 1939, or in 1940, then 1941? Between 1939 and 1943 there was no country able to undertake a strategic campaign worth the name in daylight.



Strategic is overrated. I'm thinking more Operational. Airfields, bridges, ships and railyards, rather than factories or God forbid cities. Wellingtons had an amazing range too (looked 'em up) and carried a good (4500 lb) bomb load. With effective fighter protection they could be pretty dangerous Operational pests IMO. Give me 200 A6Ms and 100 Wellingtons and I'll cause the Germans some headaches.

Just quickly looking in Wikipedia, it appears like they had about 1,500 A6Ms by April 1942 (65 model 11, 740 Model 21 built by Mitsubishi, 800 by Nakajima). Middle of 1941 they had maybe half that number.

Model 32 (A6M3) with two speed supercharger Sakae 21 came out in April 1942, and Model 22 came out in Dec 1942. 

A6M2 in particular was a really good fighter for 1941 IMO. They didn't really improve it though until the A6M5 in August 1943, which is too late.

S


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Seriously Biff until late 1943/44 what would you want to escort in daylight? Wellingtons Lancasters and early B24- B17s? The whole "enchilada" of the allied campaign came together in 1943/4 you cannot just leap forward 2 years, the UK didn't even have the airfields, Oh and there was a little problem in the Atlantic at the time.



Of course in any 'what if' scenario of this type it quickly gets absurd. I'm not trying to re-fight WW2 just trying to use an analogy to point out that the A6M zero was definitely not overrated and was a seriously dangerous plane and a nice weapon to have in your arsenal.

Yes it's true that with improved tactics and well trained pilots in 1942 Zeros were checked by P-40s and F4Fs - but that didn't mean they were _dominated_. Allies basically broke even against them at that point. Even in 1943 with a good pilot a Zero was dangerous. They shot down Pappy Boyington in one and he was no joke in his Corsair. Guys like Nishizawa were still racking up kills.

The mistake the Japanese made was not improving it a lot faster. Between 1940 and 1942 the Spitfire went from the 1 to the 5 to the lethal 9. Bf 109 went from the E to the F-2 and 4 to the G-2 and G-6. Even the humble P-40 went from a 1050 hp P-40B with two heavy and 4 light mgs to a 1,350 hp K or F with 6 .50 cals.

But like I said before I'm not of the school that just because the design didn't hold up through the whole war meant it wasn't a great plane.


Damnit as a result of this conversation now I have to "fly" a mission of A6Ms vs 109s on Il2 and I also want to buy a 1/72 scale Wellington and make it.

Sadly I have no F-15 to fly or even a Cessna.

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## pbehn (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Strategic is overrated. I'm thinking more Operational. Airfields, bridges, ships and railyards, rather than factories or God forbid cities. Wellingtons had an amazing range too (looked 'em up) and carried a good (4500 lb) bomb load. With effective fighter protection they could be pretty dangerous Operational pests IMO. Give me 200 A6Ms and 100 Wellingtons and I'll cause the Germans some headaches.
> 
> Just quickly looking in Wikipedia, it appears like they had about 1,500 A6Ms by April 1942 (65 model 11, 740 Model 21 built by Mitsubishi, 800 by Nakajima). Middle of 1941 they had maybe half that number.
> 
> ...


Which bridges and rail yards? Unless you are going to invade the enemy doesn't give a damn unless you hit Germany. The Wellington had a good range and a good bomb load but it didn't have a good range and bomb load, it was also very poorly defended like all early bombers.


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Which bridges and rail yards? Unless you are going to invade the enemy doesn't give a damn unless you hit Germany. The Wellington had a good range and a good bomb load but it didn't have a good range and bomb load, it was also very poorly defended like all early bombers.



Ok again, I am keeping in mind that this is total speculation and frankly a little ridiculous, but for the sake of discussion:

Wellington may be poorly defended (sort of - it was actually fairly well armed I'd just swap out the tail guns for 20mm cannons but whatevs) but so was a G4M let alone a Ki -21. I mean ultimately B-24s and B-17s were too poorly defended to fight _on their own_, right?

But protected by a swarm of zeroes ... big difference. A bf 109 would have to press home attacks to get to the bombers and that would be pretty dangerous. Substitute a swam of (unhistorical) ultra long range Spitfires. Same thing.

What targets? I say hit the airfields and all the supply arteries leading to them - the Germans have to bring fuel, ammunition, bombs, spare parts, replacement engines and crew to the airfields right? Wreck that s***t. Just like P-51s did after finishing bomber escort much later in the War.

S


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## Shortround6 (May 10, 2018)

The air wars in Europe and in the far east were way different. 






No AA guns in the blue part of the map. No radar in the blue part (at least in 1941).
No telephone system to report enemy formations in some areas of the green and brown parts let alone the blue part. 
Speeds and altitudes could be used in the Pacific that would have suicidal to try using in Europe. 

For that favorite whipping boy for short range, the P-47, it's range depended on what you wanted it to do. It could fly over 800 miles on internal fuel but at a low speed (around 200mph) and a low altitude (5-10,000ft) 
It took (clean) around 91 gallons of it's 305 gallons to warm up, take off and climb to 25,000ft. It only took 55 gallons to get to 10,000ft. At around 10,000ft that extra 36 gallons of fuel was worth around 125 miles of range at about 210mph. Combat radius has to plan for using fuel in combat and the P-47 could use up fuel over 4 times as fast at combat ratings as it did in slow cruise. Somewhat surprisingly the Zero, had it been used in Europe would have displayed a much shorter range. One book claims that while the early Zero could burn as little as 16.4 US gallons per hour at 180 kts ( altitude not given) just increasing to 190 kts increds fuel burn to 24.04 gallons an hour and 200kts took 26.15 gallons an hour. Max rated power took 91.14 gallons an hour. 
Range with a 10 minute combat allowance was an astonishing 125NM. But 20 minutes of combat time chopped range to 900NM. Now try to figure what the range would be if they had to climb to even 20,000ft while the drop tank was near full and then cruise at 200kts or so. 

Total fuel 228.5 US gallons (87.18 in the drop tank), 20 minutes of combat is worth about 30 gallons. Let's assume 30 gallons to get to 20,000ft (P-40E needed 40 gallons), that leaves about 160 gallons. At speeds of over 200 knts the extra low fuel consumption of the Sakae engine will tend to fade out. 

Granted if you can't get into fight 200 miles away because you lack range you have problems, but if you can't climb to 25,000ft before the bombers have come and gone then you don't have much of an interceptor regardless of how rugged the plane is or how many bombs it can tote for ground attack. 

British had somewhat solved the range problem on the Spitfire with the MK VIII (123 Imp gallons = 148 US gallons). All were sent overseas as the range problem was judged not that critical in Europe (other planes could do the long range escort). 

I believe the US received about 600 Spitfires (reverse lend lease) many of which were used in North Africa/Med to provide top cover for those OH so versatile P-40s and P-39s.

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## BiffF15 (May 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Seriously Biff until late 1943/44 what would you want to escort in daylight? Wellingtons Lancasters and early B24- B17s? The whole "enchilada" of the allied campaign came together in 1943/4 you cannot just leap forward 2 years, the UK didn't even have the airfields, Oh and there was a little problem in the Atlantic at the time.



Pbehn,

I concur. The early B17 B24 escort problems were handled as best that could be done. Either make a longer ranged fighter, change your target set, or accept / minimize the losses.

My point with my earlier comments centered on the age old apples and oranges comparison between the Spit, 109 and 51. 

Cheers,
Biff

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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> I believe the US received about 600 Spitfires (reverse lend lease) many of which were used in North Africa/Med to provide top cover for those OH so versatile P-40s and P-39s.



Dude I think you are mixing your metaphors - we were talking about A6Ms where do P-40s come into it? 

Also 



> Range with a 10 minute combat allowance was an astonishing 125NM.



Lolwut?

I see your point about being able to get further when you can safely drive slow and therefore Zeros are no good - but there are two issues with it. 

One, it's not going to lose that much range give me a break. You don't go from1600 miles range to Spitfire range just because you have to fly at a little faster cruise speed.

Two, you could still fly way out over the sea to attack from the Bay of Biscay or something like I was saying earlier.

(Also, nice anti submarine aircraft too!)

As for all that climb to altitude stuff, are you talking about A6M or P-40? I couldn't wade through that.

S


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## GrauGeist (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Ok again, I am keeping in mind that this is total speculation and frankly a little ridiculous, but for the sake of discussion:
> 
> Wellington may be poorly defended (sort of - it was actually fairly well armed I'd just swap out the tail guns for 20mm cannons but whatevs) but so was a G4M let alone a Ki -21. I mean ultimately B-24s and B-17s were too poorly defended to fight _on their own_, right?
> 
> ...


Just swapping out MGs for cannon isn't that simple. Can the mount handle the recoil? How much will the weight for the cannon plus sufficient ammo cause a performance penalty?

And "swarms" of Zeros were not enough protection for the G4M just as "swarms" of Bf109s were not enough for the Do17s and He111s. Taking it bit further, "swarms" of P-51s weren't enough to protect the B-24s and B-17s.

In a bombing campaign, you have to concentrate on what will set the enemy back the furthest. Bombing bridges, marshalling yards and other infrascructure sets back their ability to move supplies and troops. It also ties up manpower and replacement equipment during repairs.

Bombing airfields sets the enemy back only for as long as it takes to get the replacements and repair the tarmac/ramp, etc. but if you bomb the source of those replacement aircraft, you're killing the tree at the root.

Bombing factories, supply depots, power generation, fuel supplies and such, has an immediate effect.


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## Shortround6 (May 10, 2018)

When you are trying to compare aircraft please try to compare aircraft doing the same mission.
Long over water flights at 2-5000ft and at 180 kts or less bear no relation to what was going on Europe (not picking on the Zero, many people take the theoretical range for USN aircraft and try to use that a basis for using them as escort fighters in Europe).

The early Zero carried 141-142 US gallons without the drop tank ( and strangely less than 10 gallons difference from a P-40) . A Spitfire carried 100 US gallons. DO you really think that an extra 40 gallons is going to give hundreds of extra miles? like well over 200 miles more? 

Or do you think that the Zero can retain the drop tank while fighting 109Es?
Please note the early Zero really didn't have that spectacular of a climb performance. It was good compared to some of the stuff the US had in in the first 6-12 months of the war but not so good compared to some of the European fighters. What confuses things is climb angle. The Zero had a steep climb angle. 
It also wasn't that fast. This is the early ones with the single speed supercharger. Against a 109 it is slower, doesn't climb much different at some altitudes, turns better, isn't any better armed and has no protection.


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Just swapping out MGs for cannon isn't that simple. Can the mount handle the recoil? How much will the weight for the cannon plus sufficient ammo cause a performance penalty?



Gee, maybe take the 20mm tail gun off of a G4M or an He 111. Give me a break.



> And "swarms" of Zeros were not enough protection for the G4M just as "swarms" of Bf109s were not enough for the Do17s and He111s. Taking it bit further, "swarms" of P-51s weren't enough to protect the B-24s and B-17s.



Actually they were. They were more than enough. You don't have to protect every single bomber every single time, you just have to do enough to keep the attrition rate reasonably low. If P-40s could do that for A-20s and B-25s in Tunisia in 1942 and 1943, then I suspect A6Ms could do it for Wellingtons in 1941. P-51s certainly did it for B-17s and B-24s in 1944.

In one day (April 26, 1943) in a single raid on Bari the DAF destroyed more than 50 Luftwaffe aircraft including 19 Bf 109s and 12 Fw 190s, with another 21 BF 109 and 42 Fw 10s damaged 40-60%. Thats almost 100 front line fighters you don't have to shoot down the hard way. Can you imagine how that might be useful or no?



> In a bombing campaign, you have to concentrate (snip) Bombing airfields sets the enemy back only for as long as it takes to get the replacements and repair the tarmac/ramp, etc. but if you bomb the source of those replacement aircraft, you're killing the tree at the root.



In Tunisia they were bombing the crap out of Axis airfields and destroyed a ton of aircraft on the ground. They were also hitting the communications links, not just in the forward areas but much further back - around the airfields. This in combination did a great deal of harm to the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica. If you were in the BoB and suffering from a sustained bombing campaign you might want this too.



> Bombing factories, supply depots, power generation, fuel supplies and such, has an immediate effect.


'
Tell that to Albert Speer bruh.

S

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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The early Zero carried 141-142 US gallons without the drop tank ( and strangely less than 10 gallons difference from a P-40) . A Spitfire carried 100 US gallons. DO you really think that an extra 40 gallons is going to give hundreds of extra miles? like well over 200 miles more?



Yes, because that was what actually happened in the real world. The A6M had a vastly, _vastly_ longer range than any mark of the Spitfire and it didn't get an extra 1,000 miles range due to flying over water either. I don't think any of that is controversial. To say or even imply otherwise is intellectually dishonest.



> It also wasn't that fast. This is the early ones with the single speed supercharger. Against a 109 it is slower, doesn't climb much different at some altitudes, turns better, isn't any better armed and has no protection.



It was as fast as a Hurricane Mk 1 but much better armed, climbed much better, and was much more agile. It climbed at least as well as a Bf 109E which makes one of the favorite German tactics obsolete.

From what I understand some of the aircraft in the BoB weren't that well protected either. Regardless, two 20mm cannon can wreck any 1941 plane.

S

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## GrauGeist (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Gee, maybe take the 20mm tail gun off of a G4M or an He 111. Give me a break.


First of all, I doubt that the British would have much success in acquiring a Type 99 for their Wellington.
Secondly, the He111 does not have a tail-gunner. The only 20mm cannon it had, was a single MG/FF mounted forward.

Just arbitrarily mounting equipment *may* work in some cases and in some cases, will not. They tried a 20mm canon in the nose of a B-17 and found out the hard way the nose was not designed for that sort of stress.

So no break given.



Schweik said:


> Actually they were. They were more than enough. You don't have to protect every single bomber every single time, you just have to do enough to keep the attrition rate reasonably low. If P-40s could do that for A-20s and B-25s in Tunisia in 1942 and 1943, then I suspect A6Ms could do it for Wellingtons in 1941. P-51s certainly did it for B-17s and B-24s in 1944.


Plenty of cases where the escorts were not able to fully protect their force. Even in a fantasy scenario.



Schweik said:


> In one day (April 26, 1943) in a single raid on Bari the DAF destroyed more than 50 Luftwaffe aircraft including 19 Bf 109s and 12 Fw 190s, with another 21 BF 109 and 42 Fw 10s damaged 40-60%. Thats almost 100 front line fighters you don't have to shoot down the hard way. Can you imagine how that might be useful or no?


Unless the aircraft is completely destroyed, it'll either be back in service soon or cannibalized. And how did that raid stop replacement parts from coming in as soon as that evening? And how did that raid stop the neighboring Staffels from providing coverage until they got back to strength?
It didn't.

However, the Luftwaffe's raid on Bari a little while later focused on the harbor and did far more damage for about the same effort.

No need to "imagine"...facts speak for themselves.



Schweik said:


> In Tunisia they were bombing the crap out of Axis airfields and destroyed a ton of aircraft on the ground. They were also hitting the communications links, not just in the forward areas but much further back - around the airfields. This in combination did a great deal of harm to the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica. If you were in the BoB and suffering from a sustained bombing campaign you might want this too.


Communications = infrastructure.



Schweik said:


> Tell that to Albert Speer bruh.


Speer was able to prop up the German's effort, but the attrition was crippling their efforts and limited their ability to wage war by a great deal. So no need to tell him, he already knew, brah.


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## Shortround6 (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Gee, maybe take the 20mm tail gun off of a G4M or an He 111. Give me a break.




Give us a break. Not everybody used the same 20mm cannon. 
British 20mm Hispano was much longer and almost twice as heavy as the 20mm guns used by HE 111 or G4Ms. It won't fit where the short light 20mm MG/ff will. 
The Hispano fired faster and used a much more powerful round. 

Which is better, some poor gunner trying to heave a 20mm cannon around using muscles and the 20mm is slow firing and has a very small magazine (15-30 rounds?) or a power turret with two .303s that fire almost 3 times faster than the 20mm and have belt feeds? The power turrets had a much wider field of fire.

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## KiwiBiggles (May 10, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Give us a break. Not everybody used the same 20mm cannon.
> British 20mm Hispano was much longer and almost twice as heavy as the 20mm guns used by HE 111 or G4Ms. It won't fit where the short light 20mm MG/ff will.
> The Hispano fired faster and used a much more powerful round.
> 
> Which is better, some poor gunner trying to heave a 20mm cannon around using muscles and the 20mm is slow firing and has a very small magazine (15-30 rounds?) or a power turret with two .303s that fire almost 3 times faster than the 20mm and have belt feeds? The power turrets had a much wider field of fire.


And of course the purpose of a gun turret on a bomber is primarily to deter attackers, and I reckon a hail of 303 will do that just fine, even if the attacker survives.

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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> First of all, I doubt that the British would have much success in acquiring a Type 99 for their Wellington.



1 If they had A6Ms in the imaginary scenario, they could also have the G4M (or the Type 99 gun)
2 If the G4M could handle a 20mm cannon in the rear turret I'm certain that the notoriously strong Wellington could as well.



> So no break given.


You broke down in your own failed logic.



> Plenty of cases where the escorts were not able to fully protect their force. Even in a fantasy scenario.



The point isn't whether they could or couldn't in a given case, it's whether they could in aggregate, which they clearly and did in the case of the P-51, or for that matter in the case of A6Ms escorting numerous types of bombers in 1941 and 1942, as they had little trouble hitting their targets.



> Unless the aircraft is completely destroyed, ... providing coverage until they got back to strength? It didn't.



Actually it did, these kinds of raids are a major part of what broke the back of the Luftwaffe in Tunisia and then in Southern Italy. I don't think you know what you are talking about. Christopher Shores pointed this out himself - he was surprised how effective the bombing of airfields and associated infrastructure was in the Desert War were. It's one of the things which his research revealed quite plainly.



> However, the Luftwaffe's raid on Bari a little while later focused on the harbor and did far more damage for about the same effort.



I included shipping as a viable operational target. Just like trains. Wellingtons carried torpedoes too.



> Speer was able to prop up the German's effort, but the attrition was crippling their efforts and limited their ability to wage war by a great deal. So no need to tell him, he already knew, brah.



They produced as many or more planes tanks etc. at the end of 1944 as they did in 1941 so I would say it was pretty useless. The only Strategic target worth hitting was the oil, and that again is largely a question of range.

S


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Give us a break. Not everybody used the same 20mm cannon.
> British 20mm Hispano was much longer and almost twice as heavy as the 20mm guns used by HE 111 or G4Ms. It won't fit where the short light 20mm MG/ff will. The Hispano fired faster and used a much more powerful round.



We were talking about a (ridiculous) hypothetical scenario of using A6Ms to escort Wellingtons ... and you are giving me grief about an offhand suggestion that they put a 20mm gun on the Wellingtons tail? Seriously bruh? So use G4MS if you can't figure it out. Or borrow some ShVak cannon from the Soviets in reverse lend-lease...



> Which is better, some poor gunner trying to heave a 20mm cannon around using muscles and the 20mm is slow firing and has a very small magazine (15-30 rounds?) or a power turret with two .303s that fire almost 3 times faster than the 20mm and have belt feeds? The power turrets had a much wider field of fire.



A 20mm (or a HMG) is better because it has much longer effective range, especially for the tail gun. But the turrets on the Wellington did dish out some firepower.

S


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## Shortround6 (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Yes, because that was what actually happened in the real world. The A6M had a vastly, _vastly_ longer range than any mark of the Spitfire and it didn't get an extra 1,000 miles range due to flying over water either. I don't think any of that is controversial. To say or even imply otherwise is intellectually dishonest.



Ignoring the laws of physics is also a bit dishonest. The Zero was not that much lower in drag than an early Spitfire (if as low). 
A Spit I with a fixed pitch prop (hardly ideal) could fly 220mph true at 15,000ft on 27imp gallons an hour. 
At 7000ft it could do 200mph true while burning 24.1 imp gallons an hour. 
The Zero could run it's engine leaner, especially at low speeds which helped a lot but double or triple the range requires a bit of of swallowing. 

The Drop tank helped an awful lot but trying to fight 109s with the drop tank still attached might be a problem? 





> From what I understand some of the aircraft in the BoB weren't that well protected either. Regardless, two 20mm cannon can wreck any 1941 plane.



55 rounds per 20mm cannon doesn't last long.


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Ignoring the laws of physics is also a bit dishonest. The Zero was not that much lower in drag than an early Spitfire (if as low).
> A Spit I with a fixed pitch prop (hardly ideal) could fly 220mph true at 15,000ft on 27imp gallons an hour.
> At 7000ft it could do 200mph true while burning 24.1 imp gallons an hour.
> The Zero could run it's engine leaner, especially at low speeds which helped a lot but double or triple the range requires a bit of of swallowing.



What are you arguing exactly? That the Spitfire had the same range as the A6M ? If you are A) I am incredulous, and B) the problem with the theory is the entire wartime history of both planes. Are you just having a hard time getting your head around the history? It is what it is.

I can't tell you precisely _what_ made the Zero have such phenomenal range (and to be honest, while I'm interested in aeronautical engineering I'm not _that_ interested and frankly don't care exactly how it worked that much). I know it did have that phenomenal range and no amount of back of the envelope engineering math is ever going to convince me otherwise. Or anyone else. Zero fighters were routinely flying from Rabaul to Guadalcanal - that is over 1,000 km. They were able to fly that far, fight, and fly back to base. Saburo Sakai did it with one eye.

And it didn't require a drop tank on the whole time either!


S


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## Shortround6 (May 10, 2018)

G4M tail gun. 
No power assist in aiming. Limited field of fire. Recoil is transmitted to the gunner.









G4M waist gunner. It's a Lewis gun. 

Japanese type 99 cannon may have been much better than a Lewis gun for defense. How much of an improvement over power operated belt fed machine guns with twice the cycle rate of a Lewis gun is a different story.


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## wuzak (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> What are you arguing exactly? That the Spitfire had the same range as the A6M ? If you are A) I am incredulous, and B) the problem with the theory is the entire wartime history of both planes. Are you just having a hard time getting your head around the history? It is what it is.
> 
> I can't tell you precisely _what_ made the Zero have such phenomenal range (and to be honest, while I'm interested in aeronautical engineering I'm not that interested and frankly don't care exactly how it worked that much). I know it did have that phenomenal range and no amount of back of the envelope engineering math is ever going to convince me otherwise. Or anyone else. Zero fighters were routinely flying from Rabaul to Guadalcanal - that is over 1,000 km. They were able to fly that far, fight, and fly back to base. Saburo Sakai did it with one eye.
> 
> ...



He is telling you that the Zero could achieve that range because it flew largely over undefended airspace and so could fly at slow speeds and altitudes to maximise range. It didn't have to climb rapidly to altitude after take-off.

Flying from Britain to escort Wellingtons, the Zero would be picked up on German radar over their home base. 

To avoid being detected entering German controlled airspace, they would have to fly at just above ground level. Which is not a good place to escort Wellingtons, unless they are also at 0ft (which is not good either).


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## wuzak (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> We were talking about a (ridiculous) hypothetical scenario of using A6Ms to escort Wellingtons ... and you are giving me grief about an offhand suggestion that they put a 20mm gun on the Wellingtons tail? Seriously bruh? So use G4MS if you can't figure it out. Or borrow some ShVak cannon from the Soviets in reverse lend-lease...



The Britis didn't want to put a 20mm cannon in the Wellington's tail turret (even if it could fit).

Instead they trialed a 40mm cannon in a upper turret installation!
http://aviadejavu.ru/Images6/MY/MY86-10/5-2.jpg
Aeroplane Monthly 1986-10


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

wuzak said:


> He is telling you that the Zero could achieve that range because it flew largely over undefended airspace and so could fly at slow speeds and altitudes to maximise range.



And I'm telling you both that is a load of B.S.

S

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## wuzak (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Actually they were. They were more than enough. You don't have to protect every single bomber every single time, you just have to do enough to keep the attrition rate reasonably low. If P-40s could do that for A-20s and B-25s in Tunisia in 1942 and 1943, then I suspect A6Ms could do it for Wellingtons in 1941. P-51s certainly did it for B-17s and B-24s in 1944.



P-51s really didn't make much difference to the loss rates* of B-17s and B-24s in the ETO by escorting them. What they did do is destroy the Luftwaffe day fighter arm. More specifically they caused great attrition in the ranks of experienced Luftwaffe pilots - the experten.

As the Luftwaffe lost its ability to fight the 8thAF loss rates* did decline. 

*In terms of numbers of bombers shot down. The loss rate in percentage terms went down dramatically as the 8th AF grew in strength over the winter of 1943/44 so that instead of sending 300 bombers and losing 60, they would send 1,000 and still lose 60.


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## wuzak (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> And I'm telling you both that is a load of B.S.
> 
> S



Ok, so what speed would the Zero cruise at on long flights?

300mph TAS?

Or more like 200mph TAS?


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## Schweik (May 10, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Ok, so what speed would the Zero cruise at on long flights?
> 
> 300mph TAS?
> 
> Or more like 200mph TAS?



200 TAS is probably about right, so what? I show for A6M2 207 mph cruise speed 

Bf 109E had a cruise speed of 240 mph... again, so what? And a range of 410 miles. I know the P-51 had a very high cruise speed but that was 3 years later.

I also show A6M with 1,625 'typical' range and 1,929 'max'. Plus initial climb of 4,517 fpm which is nothing short of phenomenal for 1941, and climb to 19,685 in 7 minutes 27 seconds. Also excellent. Both far better than the Bf 109E (or the G-6 for that matter)

I think just about every fighter I ever heard of had a pretty low cruise speed in long flights. I know the comparison to the Spitfire was extremely disingenuous of him to make to begin with and of you to entertain. Like I said, I don't buy it. We have had these kinds of debates before on this forum and I don't think you to are on the level.

S


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## GrauGeist (May 10, 2018)

My God, we've gotten so far off topic, I doubt the thread can be salvaged at this point.

But in response to the ineffectiveness of bombing German factories - yes, they produced more aircraft in 1944 than any other year.

BUT, what you're not understanding, is that many of these airframes never made it to the front. Additionally, how many aircraft could Germany have fielded IF their factories were not bombed? 

The attacking of airfields are an immediate way to relieve pressure on a forward area, especially if the enemy has a precarious supply line. This is why it was effective in areas of the PTO and MTO, because the enemy's Supply Line was vulnerable. Solely focusing on airfields instead of infrastructure or source is folly. One of the reasons why the Allies worked so hard to take Ploesti out of commission as well as the Edersee and Mohne dams in the Ruhr River valley.

When you bomb a factory, you damage the machinery, tooling, dies and jigs - which all have to be replaced. You damage the building and it's confines, the inventory and essentials - this too, has to be rebuilt or replaced. There may have been skilled workers who perished in the attack, this means that the manufacturer has to replace them and skilled or experiences workers were becoming few and far between. All of this creates a costly interruption to production and can (and did) lead to a dramatic decline in quality.

A perfect example of the effects of bombing a factory, would be the Tego plant at Wuppertal. Tego film was crucial in the process of laminate wood used in several German aircraft, like the Ta154, He162 and the Ho.IX (Ho229). But with the loss of Goldmand's only factory, the Germans had to use an alternate which was too acidic and led to catastrophic failures of the aircraft.


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## Tieleader (May 10, 2018)

The other, regrding flak, is emphasized by the disaster the Luftwaffe suffered during Operation Bodenplatt in January 1945. Several German flak units did not receive information about the operation and ended up downing several Luftwaffe aircraft as well as creating panic among the inexperienced pilots in the flights.[/QUOTE]
Hell, the D-9s flown by the Sachenberg protection flight of JV44 had the ENTIRE underside of their birds painted bright red with white stripes and I think they still they got shot at. To the average German flak gunner at that time every airplane flying had to be an enemy bird...

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> 200 TAS is probably about right, so what? I show for A6M2 207 mph cruise speed
> 
> Bf 109E had a cruise speed of 240 mph... again, so what? And a range of 410 miles. I know the P-51 had a very high cruise speed but that was 3 years later.
> 
> ...



So who were you before becoming Schweik on March 15, 2018?


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## wuzak (May 11, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> When you bomb a factory, you damage the machinery, tooling, dies and jigs - which all have to be replaced. You damage the building and it's confines, the inventory and essentials - this too, has to be rebuilt or replaced. There may have been skilled workers who perished in the attack, this means that the manufacturer has to replace them and skilled or experiences workers were becoming few and far between. All of this creates a costly interruption to production and can (and did) lead to a dramatic decline in quality.



Not only that, but resources had to be expended to defend these industries. That is men and equipment that could have been used elsewhere.

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## wuzak (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> 200 TAS is probably about right, so what? I show for A6M2 207 mph cruise speed
> 
> Bf 109E had a cruise speed of 240 mph... again, so what? And a range of 410 miles. I know the P-51 had a very high cruise speed but that was 3 years later.



The P-51 could also cruise at slower speeds, and its maximum range could be achieved at lower speeds than they usually operated at.

A Spitfire V had a cruise speed for maximum range of around 220-230mph TAS, but they would not dare do that over France, particularly once the Fw 190 came into service.

Aircraft usually have a range of cruise speeds. Most economical (engine setting) cruise is much slower than maximum continuous (engine setting). They could cruise anywhere between them, and slower than most economical, if they wanted.


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## GrauGeist (May 11, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Not only that, but resources had to be expended to defend these industries. That is men and equipment that could have been used elsewhere.


Absolutely!
Establishing flak batteries required a tremendous resource of men, equipment and logistics that was desperately needed on the fronts.
Add to the flak defenses, the point-defense airfield Staffels that were also drawing upon precious resources that were desperately needed elsewhere, too.


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## parsifal (May 11, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> When you are trying to compare aircraft please try to compare aircraft doing the same mission.
> Long over water flights at 2-5000ft and at 180 kts or less bear no relation to what was going on Europe (not picking on the Zero, many people take the theoretical range for USN aircraft and try to use that a basis for using them as escort fighters in Europe).
> 
> The early Zero carried 141-142 US gallons without the drop tank ( and strangely less than 10 gallons difference from a P-40) . A Spitfire carried 100 US gallons. DO you really think that an extra 40 gallons is going to give hundreds of extra miles? like well over 200 miles more?
> ...



I haven't followed studiously this other debate about combat radii in the ETO, but for the Zeke on internal fuel it had a comat radius of just under 400 miles. that was travelling at reasonable transit speeds, say 250 mph. by comparison the hellcat had an effective combat radius at the same approach speeds of less than 250 miles, whilst the seafire, which had longer legs than the land based spitfire equivalent was a mere 185 miles.

With a standard drop tank (Ii don't know its capacity) the Zeke had a combat radius of about 650 miles. this is a far cry from the 'thousands of miles" recorded for it in its specifications, but it is still a very good endurance. You would know better than me, but I have read its long legs were the result of it small capacity engine and ultra light construction. Even so, to get from Formosa to Luzon and back, the Japanese had to develop new flying techniques and engine mixture settings to do it. 

Don't know if this helps. most of what you are saying I agree with, but Zekes on these long range escort missions were not just puttering along at training speeds. they were, to an extent at least, combat missions comparable in their ardor to anything in the ETO or the MTO.

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## parsifal (May 11, 2018)

In October 1944 Lt Law (RN) was sent to the US Naval Air Station at Patuxent River, Maryland, f to take part in a comparative performance trial between the Seafire LIIc and a captured Zeke 52. 

Results of Trials
The peak speeds of the two aircraft are:
Seafire LIIc - 338mph at 5,500ft
Zeke 52 - 335mph at 18,000ft
The comparative speeds in miles per hour are:

Height Seafire LIIc Zeke 52
Sea Level 316 292
5,000ft 337 313
10,000ft 337 319
15,000ft 335 327
20,000ft 328 333
25,000ft 317 327
30,000ft 317

Climb - The Zeke 52 climbs at a very steep angle and gives the impression of a very high rate of climb. The Seafire LIIc, however, has a much better initial climb and remains slightly superior up to 25,000ft.

The climb of the Seafire is at a higher speed, but at a more shallow angle. The best indicated climbing speeds of the Zeke and Seafire are 120mph and 160 mph respectively.

Manoeuverability Turning plane - the Zeke 52 can turn inside the Seafire LIIc at all heights. The Zeke 52 turns tighter to the left than to the right.

Rolling plane - the rate of roll of the two aircraft is similar at speeds below 180mph IAS, but above that the aileron stick forces of the Zeke increase tremendously, and the Seafire becomes progressively superior.

Dive The Seafire is superior in the dive although initial acceleration is similar. The Zeke is a most unpleasant aircraft in the dive, due to heavy stick forces and excessive vibration.

Tactics - Never dogfight with the Zeke 52 - it is too manoeuvrable.
At low altitudes where the Seafire is at its best, it should make use of its superior rate of climb and speed to obtain a height advantage before attacking.
If jumped, the Seafire should evade by using superior rate of roll. The Zeke cannot follow high speed rolls and aileron turns.

Conclusions The Seafire LIIc is 24mph faster at sea level, this difference decreasing to parity between 15,000 and 20,000ft. The Zeke 52 is 10mph faster at 25,000ft.
The Seafire can out-climb the Zeke up to 25,000ft.
The Zeke is very manoeuvrable and can turn inside the Seafire at all altitudes.
The Zeke fights best between 115 and 180mph IAS.
The rate of roll of the Seafire is better than that of the Zeke above 180mph IAS.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 11, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Strangely, though, the Spitfire wasn't gradually phased out and replaced by newer fighters by the RAF unlike a certain more 'rugged or versatile' fighter was by the USAAF.


That might have been due to budgetary or missions constraints rather than aircraft performance or longevity if you're referring to late WW2 ops or the post war era.


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## Stig1207 (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Wow you can sense a little sparkle of malice there lol.



No, but calling the Spitfire overrated and then comparing it as less useful than the P-40 at the same time is going a bit far, don't you think?



FLYBOYJ said:


> That might have been due to budgetary or missions constraints rather than aircraft performance or longevity if you're referring to late WW2 ops or the post war era.



The decision was made sometime in 1943, and in the MTO they began replacing them with P-47's at twice the unit price in September. The USAAF presumably had good reasons for doing so.


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## Schweik (May 11, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> No, but calling the Spitfire overrated and then comparing it as less useful than the P-40 at the same time is going a bit far, don't you think?



I never said the Spitfire was overrated, in fact I said the opposite - and I didn't say it was less useful than the P-40, you have me confused with another poster.


S


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## Schweik (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> So who were you before becoming Schweik on March 15, 2018?



I've never been on this forum before "becoming Schweik". I've been on plenty of forums but this is the first time I ever made an account on an aviation forum. I argued with those two on another couple of threads in here since I joined the forum, one about the best possible fighter design (originally something to do with a P-61) and some other one, with similar types of conversation. Didn't find them to be on the level entirely so I quit those threads.

S


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## DarrenW (May 11, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> (not picking on the Zero, many people take the theoretical range for USN aircraft and try to use that a basis for using them as escort fighters in Europe).....



I remember a discussion similar to this and I came to the conclusion that on average the navy fighters couldn't go as deep into Germany as the army fighters. By my calculations the Hellcat with a drop tank had enough fuel to get to Fankfurt and back, maybe even a little bit further but that was about it. That's while cruising at 25,000 feet and keeping a TAS of about 280 mph (zigzagging to stay with the bomber formation to the target). That's probably the extent of its effective combat radius in ETO, as carrying three external tanks (as it was capable of doing) would slow it down considerably and in all probability the tanks would have to be jettisoned as soon as the target area was reached anyway. As Shortround6 explained to me then, one of the keys to effective range has to do with internal fuel capacity because in most cases you would be using it to return home to friendly territory. You don't want to travel too deeply into enemy territory and find out after jettisoning your tanks you don't have enough internal fuel to get you home!


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## parsifal (May 11, 2018)

may I ask who are those "other two". I'm not a mod, perhaps I should just mind my own business. I'm just curious that's all.


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## GrauGeist (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I've never been on this forum before "becoming Schweik". I've been on plenty of forums but this is the first time I ever made an account on an aviation forum...


In saying "plenty of forums", would these be perhaps gaming forums?


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## Stig1207 (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I never said the Spitfire was overrated, in fact I said the opposite - and I didn't say it was less useful than the P-40, you have me confused with another poster.
> 
> 
> S


I responded to Dan originally; so I know you didn't call the Spitfire overrated. My response to you was only due to the 'malice' comment, nothing else.


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## Juha2 (May 11, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> Think the most over rated aircraft was the Spitfire. Find for home defense just could not stay in the air more than an hour. Was not as rugged or versatile as the P40. Its main issues was it lacked range and second ruggedness. It was an expensive time consuming plane to build. Could it fight yeah.. like to know the shoot down numbers of the Spit.



While I disagree with you I admit that there are some foundations to your opinion. But there are Spitfires and Spitfires and IMHO all but one Spit versions could stay in the air more than an hour in home defence ops, the only version with which I'm not sure is the Mk XII. And on the other end there were Mks VII and VIII. According to Wildcat, Longest Spitfire raid of WWII., "_On the 27th of Nov 1944, five spitfires from No. 549 sqn RAF and 2 spitfires from No.1 Fighter Wing, RAAF in conjuction with 4 B-25's from No. 2 sqn RAAF plus an ASR Catalina, attacked and destroyed a Japanese radar station at Cape Lore on Portuguese Timor. The raid was a round trip of some 850 miles taking 4.5 hours._" Spits were Mk VIIIs. In ETO the longest Spitfire escort mission I'm aware was that made by 131 Sqn on 11 Aug 44 to La Pallice, 690mls and took 3 hours 50 min. They were flying Spit VIIs. The Spits didn't have much fuel for combat in that mission but the assumption was that mere sight of Spit escort would be enough for the few LW fighters in the area to leave the formation alone. And that was what happened a few German fighters were seen but they turned away when noticed the Spits.

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## Juha2 (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I don't think it was unusual for higher performance fighters with newer high performance engines to have some engine issues (particularly overheating), which often partly depended on the season and the climate as well as the altitude, maintenance and other factors, and these were not necessarily debilitating certainly not with the Yak-9U.
> 
> Since the Soviets had multiple variants of Yak with different performance levels - by 1944 they could concentrate the faster ones like the Yak-3 and 9U (and even the Yak-1B) against what was left of the more elite Ostfront Luftwaffe fighters - I think they manufactured more than enough for that- while the less zippy ones could focus on destroying the second string units and the few remaining German bombers and ground attack aircraft, as well as attacking flak and other ground targets.
> 
> ...



IMHO before late 1944 Yak-9U problems with its VK-107A engine were worse than the usual early problems with a new engine. Of course the Germans had even more protracted problems with early 109 Gs and DB 605A, it took about a year to solve the problems with its 1.42 ata take-off and emergency power. And why not with the early BMW 801As.

IMHO Yak-9Ms were used mostly as fighters, from ground attack they had Yak-9B fighter bombers and of course the Il-2s and -10s. And Typhoon and P-47 were significantly faster than Yak-9M and their fire power was in different category even without their capacity to carry significant dropable loads, and they were all-metal planes so less vulnerable to ground fire.

At least Yak-9M was very sleek looking plane.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I've never been on this forum before "becoming Schweik". I've been on plenty of forums but this is the first time I ever made an account on an aviation forum. I argued with those two on another couple of threads in here since I joined the forum, one about the best possible fighter design (originally something to do with a P-61) and some other one, with similar types of conversation. Didn't find them to be on the level entirely so I quit those threads.
> 
> S



Maybe it is not them who is not on the level. No need to be condescending or insulting to anyone...


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## Jeff Hunt (May 11, 2018)

Just popped in to this thread for the first time. Have not read the posts but viewed the results of the vote. P-51 is not feeling the love of many.

Cheers,

Jeff

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## DarrenW (May 11, 2018)

Juha2 said:


> While I disagree with you I admit that there are some foundations to your opinion. But there are Spitfires and Spitfires and IMHO all but one Spit versions could stay in the air more than an hour in home defence ops, the only version with which I'm not sure is the Mk XII. And on the other end there were Mks VII and VIII. According to Wildcat, Longest Spitfire raid of WWII., "_On the 27th of Nov 1944, five spitfires from No. 549 sqn RAF and 2 spitfires from No.1 Fighter Wing, RAAF in conjuction with 4 B-25's from No. 2 sqn RAAF plus an ASR Catalina, attacked and destroyed a Japanese radar station at Cape Lore on Portuguese Timor. The raid was a round trip of some 850 miles taking 4.5 hours._" Spits were Mk VIIIs. In ETO the longest Spitfire escort mission I'm aware was that made by 131 Sqn on 11 Aug 44 to La Pallice, 690mls and took 3 hours 50 min. They were flying Spit VIIs. The Spits didn't have much fuel for combat in that mission but the assumption was that mere sight of Spit escort would be enough for the few LW fighters in the area to leave the formation alone. And that was what happened a few German fighters were seen but they turned away when noticed the Spits.



Interesting stuff. Do you happen to know the altitude and speed of the Spits during these escort missions?


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## Shortround6 (May 11, 2018)

parsifal said:


> With a standard drop tank (Ii don't know its capacity) the Zeke had a combat radius of about 650 miles. this is a far cry from the 'thousands of miles" recorded for it in its specifications, but it is still a very good endurance. You would know better than me, but I have read its long legs were the result of it small capacity engine and ultra light construction. Even so, to get from Formosa to Luzon and back, the Japanese had to develop new flying techniques and engine mixture settings to do it.
> 
> Don't know if this helps. most of what you are saying I agree with, but Zekes on these long range escort missions were not just puttering along at training speeds. they were, to an extent at least, combat missions comparable in their ardor to anything in the ETO or the MTO.



In reverse, I would not say that long over water flights in single engine aircraft were not difficult or nerve wracking, especially considering the state of Japanese air/sea rescue service. However the time, percentage wise, of the mission spent in 'hot zones' (AA fire or likely enemy aircraft action) was less than most European missions. Time spent in action (hot zone) could be every bit as bad as in Europe. 

we do have conflicting statements. 

"Even so, to get from Formosa to Luzon and back, the Japanese had to develop new flying techniques and engine mixture settings to do it."
"Zekes on these long range escort missions were not just puttering along at training speeds"

Aircraft range comes down to 3 things.

1. Drag= power needed to fly at desired speed
2. efficiency of the engine= pounds of fuel per HP hour.
3. amount of fuel carried. 

There is no way to get extra long ranges without "new flying techniques and engine mixture settings" unless they include "puttering along at training speeds"

Max range or endurance ( They are not quite the same) will be rather close to the max climb speed as that is the lowest drag speed. However the engine may or may not be at it's most efficient at that speed. Most of these engines are going to be within 10-15% of each other in fuel consumption (lbs per HP/HR) in lean cruise conditions. The Zero is probably on the low end or even a bit of an outlier. The Merlin was a bit on the high side. Allison's were about 5-8% more economical than Merlins when cruising. Nobody really figured that close most of the time. 

A P-47 burned about 0.45lbs per HP hour at most economical. However for a P-47 that meant 60 gallons an hour to make 800hp at 5000ft. You don't fly 12,000 planes of that size with the same fuel as planes less than half the weight. A P-38L burned 33 gallons an our (per engine) to make 425hp at 5000ft for 0.465lbs per hp hour. most economical. Very few engines get below around 0.42 and very few got above 0.50lbhp/hr. in lean cruise. Rich mixture is a whole different story. 

The British were teaching their pilots to use low revs and high boost to squeeze the most fuel economy out of their engines by 1941 or 42. The whole "lean into France" fiasco taught them that "cruising" in the low 200mph range was near suicidal over occupied territory. Almost anywhere of occupied Europe. 
You could keep a Spitfire in the air for almost 3 hours on the normal internal fuel, You just couldn't fight very long or go very fast. 

The Zero was light, (less induced drag) but it's form, while good, wasn't great, not in the sense of a quantum change great. You need a certain amount of power so the small engine was help ( a bit less internal friction and less weight) compared to using a very large engine at very low rpm. and the Zero, especially with large drop tank (Zero was within a few gallons of the P-40 for internal fuel) carried the most fuel on combat operations (not ferry) of any early war fighters (not recon aircraft). 
The Zero was a very good solution to the Japanese Navy's needs but take it out of it's element and plunk it into Europe in 1941/42 and things might turn out a lot different. Zero pilots with the same training as British pilots of 1941 vs German pilots of 1941? Zeros having to keep cruising speeds closer to 300mph rather than 200mph to minimize the disadvantage of being bounced? Ability to keep the drop tank or have to jettison to keep up performance vs Bf 109? Yes the allied fighters dropped their tanks and turned back after engaging interceptors and had a relief escort group take over.


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## Peter Gunn (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> *200 TAS is probably about right, so what? * I show for A6M2 207 mph cruise speed
> 
> Bf 109E had a cruise speed of 240 mph... again, so what? And a range of 410 miles. I know the P-51 had a very high cruise speed but that was 3 years later.
> 
> ...



So what is that cruising into France @ 200mph TAS is tantamount to suicide.
Cruising over undefended water, say Rabaul to Guadalcanal is not the same as crossing the channel and into France and then Germany.
Cruising in an A6M @ 300+ mph TAS _(remember, you have to get up to combat speed if bounced, that's why P-51's routinely cruised at high speed over Indian country)_ does not get you very far, I doubt it could range as far as the Thunderbolt at P-47 speeds.

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## Peter Gunn (May 11, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> Overall I'd have to say the Mustang. Don't misunderstand,it was certainly a capable fighter but it only showed up in numbers later on. The P-38s and P-47s had born the brunt of an experienced and capable LW force. The 51s came on the scene after the LW wasn't even capable of defending itself much less Germany. Here is a well built fighter constructed by patriot Americans to the highest standards, flown by pilots that had an obscene amount of training in the states (and expanded upon by Clobber Colleges in England) going against an enemy that was forced to use replacement pilots that were lucky to have 20 hours training in an A/C that in all probability was built by untrained slave labor that sabotaged what they could get away with. Doesn't matter how good your airplane is if you're outnumbered 10-1 or more. Not to even mention the fuel differences.
> All the earlier A/C did the heavy lifting, the Mustang just had a great PR guy...



drgondog posted numbers/info in previous threads that totally dispel this line of thinking. I've got too bad of a headache right now to look them up but in fewer sorties the Mustang garnered something like twice as many kills as the Thunderbolt and Lightening combined.

And it was against the cream of the crop, both Western front veterans and Eastern front veterans transferred over to stop the Combined Bomber Offensive, not 20 hour replacement pilots flying junk.

Nor were the Germans outnumbered 10-1, it was usually the Mustangs that were outnumbered as the LW could, and did, strike with a large force against thin escort areas. Read some after action reports, they are informative and some will make you start to sweat 70 years after the fact.

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## grampi (May 11, 2018)

Jeff Hunt said:


> Just popped in to this thread for the first time. Have not read the posts but viewed the results of the vote. P-51 is not feeling the love of many.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jeff


I couldn't believe the voting results when I viewed them, the Mustang is way ahead of every other plane for being overrated. I would go just the opposite and say it's the most underrated. Planes like the Spitfire, ME-109, Zero, and P-47 are the most overrated in my book, and none of these planes could do what the Mustang could do...

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

Jeff Hunt said:


> Just popped in to this thread for the first time. Have not read the posts but viewed the results of the vote. P-51 is not feeling the love of many.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jeff



I think everyone agrees it is one of the greatest aircraft ever built, but feel it is overrated because people put it on such a high pedestal that they forget there were many great planes contributing to the defeat of Germany.

You would think:

Best Fighter: P-51
Best Transport: P-51
Best Bomber: P-51
Best Seaplane: P-51

You get my drift...

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## Schweik (May 11, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> In saying "plenty of forums", would these be perhaps gaming forums?



I'm on some history and martial arts forums. I'm a history researcher in my spare time and have a few academic articles published on late medieval cities in Central Europe. I used to be on Rogan Board under this same handle (Schweik) until it got closed down a few months ago.

How about you, since we are sharing? Why would you assume gaming forums?

S


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## Peter Gunn (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I think everyone agrees it is one of the greatest aircraft ever built, but feel it is overrated because people put it on such a high pedestal that they forget there were many great planes contributing to the defeat of Germany.
> 
> You would think:
> 
> ...



That's it buddy... You are definitely OFF my Christmas Card list... 

grampi however, gets two cards...

PS You forgot Best Torpedo Bomber, Best Liason, Best Recon and best BESTEST ever plane...

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## grampi (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I think everyone agrees it is one of the greatest aircraft ever built, but feel it is overrated because people put it on such a high pedestal that they forget there were many great planes contributing to the defeat of Germany.
> 
> You would think:
> 
> ...


Even knowing this is an exaggeration it's ridiculous...sometimes I think people get carried away and over exaggerate (much like you did) about how the Mustang was regarded...what I take away form how it was regarded is that it was the best fighter of the war, and it was...I don't see how that's overrating it...

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## Schweik (May 11, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> So what is that cruising into France @ 200mph TAS is tantamount to suicide.
> Cruising over undefended water, say Rabaul to Guadalcanal is not the same as crossing the channel and into France and then Germany.
> Cruising in an A6M @ 300+ mph TAS _(remember, you have to get up to combat speed if bounced, that's why P-51's routinely cruised at high speed over Indian country)_ does not get you very far, I doubt it could range as far as the Thunderbolt at P-47 speeds.



I get the gist, but I don't think that the phenomenal range of the Zero especially and specifically as compared to the Spitfire or the Bf 109, suddenly drops 90% if they have to pick up their cruising speed to max continuous for part of the flight. When they brought Spit Vs to Australia they had major problems with them *due to range *- in spite of the luxury of being able to fly over water. The difference in reach was striking between the Spit and the Zero in that Theater, just as it would in any other.

I don't know precisely how _much_ the range would be reduced but I have seena min-max on range for the A6M2 of 1,600 to 1,900 miles. I assume that difference probably has something to do with the cruise speed. I do not believe as Shortround was suggesting that the range of the Zero would drop down to that of the Spitfire if they increased the cruise speed a bit. I think that is spurious logic - and "reaching" quite consciously.

As I also noted previously, they could use that phenomenal range to loop out into the Atlantic and attack from unexpected (and less protected) directions such as from the Bay of Biscay.

Nor do I think carrying a drop tank would be problematic. It wasn't problematic for P-51s, P-47s, P-38s and so on flying over Europe. You use the fuel for climbing up to altitude and forming up and everything from the drop-tank. Again, spurious and disingenuous.

The bottom line is it's a fact that the A6M2 had 5 times the range of a Spitfire, substantially longer even than the P-38, no matter how you slice it - if one has to slow down to raid France or Belgium, than so does the other. *And range does confer a Tactical as well as Strategic or Operational advantage*. Some people have a hard time getting their head around that but it's a fact, as inescapable as a good brass fishhook in the mouth of a catfish.

I think the P-51 has some limitations to it's greatness, and no doubt it's annoying for all the non-Americans to see it lauded to such ridiculous heights, mainly because it was such a late arrival and not good at everything (no fighter was). But it _was_ a great plane, because range speed and altitude capabilities, it did effectively win a battle as Parisfal put it. Or a couple of them. It broke the Luftwaffe, essentially.

It was only a factor in the war toward the end, late 1943 - 1945, and most importantly in 1944. And it wasn't so formidable by the Korean War of course. But that doesn't make it a bad plane. Similarly, the Zero was mainly a factor from 1941 through the middle of 1943 - by which time it began to fade as a threat. But it was pretty damn terrifying in it's heyday - and a formidable tool in the arsenal of the mighty IJN. I don't know why the Zero gets so much contempt these days but thems the facts.

No amount of back of the napkin horses**t arithmetic is going to convince me otherwise.

Could a Zero be brought down by a good pilot in a Wildcat or a P-40 - once it's traits and tactics were better known? Yes it could, but so could the Bf 109 and everyone still seems to give them mad respect. I think the difference has much more to do with the popularity of the propaganda from one of the factions in WW2 over all the others than with any actual technical _or_ historical knowledge of the facts.

S

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I'm on some history and martial arts forums. I'm a history researcher in my spare time and have a few academic articles published on late medieval cities in Central Europe. I used to be on Rogan Board under this same handle (Schweik) until it got closed down a few months ago.
> 
> How about you, since we are sharing? Why would you assume gaming forums?
> 
> S



I would have assumed simply because someone a long time ago used to frequent here with an S in various forms in his signature, and he was known on the gaming forum circuit. And then of course you talked as if you have had many discussions in the past on this forum.

He too liked to stir the pot.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> That's it buddy... You are definitely OFF my Christmas Card list...
> 
> grampi however, gets two cards...
> 
> PS You forgot Best Torpedo Bomber, Best Liason, Best Recon and best BESTEST ever plane...



Will saying it was the best rocket powered biplane helicopter with inverted sling load technology get me back on the list?

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

grampi said:


> Even knowing this is an exaggeration it's ridiculous...sometimes I think people get carried away and over exaggerate (much like you did) about how the Mustang was regarded...what I take away form how it was regarded is that it was the best fighter of the war, and it was...I don't see how that's overrating it...



I’m not over exaggerating a damn thing...


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## Shortround6 (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> 200 TAS is probably about right, so what? I show for A6M2 207 mph cruise speed
> 
> 
> I also show A6M with 1,625 'typical' range and 1,929 'max'. Plus initial climb of 4,517 fpm which is nothing short of phenomenal for 1941, and climb to 19,685 in 7 minutes 27 seconds. Also excellent. Both far better than the Bf 109E (or the G-6 for that matter)
> ...



Cruise speeds can be anywhere from just above minimum stable flight (often 30-50mph above clean stall) to whatever the speed you get an max continuous power. Obviously most cruising is done between those extremes. 

I would also be very leery of any source that gives numbers like "initial climb of 4,517 fpm which is nothing short of phenomenal for 1941, and climb to 19,685 in 7 minutes 27 seconds." as 7 minutes 27seconds to 19,685 averages 2642 fpm. any period of time spent at 4517fpm climb is going to require an equal period of time at 767fpm. That is simple math. 
Getting 4500fpm for a nearly 6000lb airplane from a 940 hp engine is phenomenal, so phenomenal as to be unbelievable. 

going back to the much maligned Spitfire, the MK II at 6172lbs could make 20,000ft in 7 minutes even and never climbed faster than 3,000fpm while doing so. 

Something is off in the climb figures given. 

I am not claiming the Spitfire can match the Zero for range, it can't, simply using it and the P-40 as benchmarks. Some of the performance figures for the Zero just don't make sense. 

If questioning performance numbers that fly in face of physics and common sense makes me not on the level then so be it.


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## grampi (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I’m not over exaggerating a damn thing...



Really? I don't ever recall the P-51 being regarded as the best seaplane, or best transport...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

grampi said:


> Really? I don't ever recall the P-51 being regarded as the best seaplane, or best transport...



Then you are purposely being obtuse about it. The point of the post, and why it is not over exaggeration is because for many people there was no other aircraft fighting the Germans. That is why many consider it overrated. Not because of it’s abilities or performance, or it’s contribution.

I made that very clear. Now if you just want to argue...


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## Schweik (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I would have assumed simply because someone a long time ago used to frequent here with an S in various forms in his signature, and he was known on the gaming forum circuit. And then of course you talked as if you have had many discussions in the past on this forum.
> 
> He too liked to stir the pot.




Well that is an odd coincidence I guess. I do take outlier positions on some things and I haven't been on the forum long enough to become part of the 'forum culture' yet so I'm sure I rub some folks the wrong way. But I make a conscious effort to keep a high "signal to noise" ratio in my posts for the most part, and personally try to keep my posts intellectually honest. When threads get too heated I'll ditch them (as I did in the other two threads, one in particular, where i was debating with Shortround and Wuzak on a similar "what if" topic)

I'm not really interested in stirring the pot - I am interested in planes, especially WW2 aircraft on and off since I was a kid. My dad was a Navy vet and a journalist who got me into it at a very young age, and I was lucky enough to meet some very interesting flyers and historians when I was a kid. I did used to do table top wargaming but haven't had the opportunity for more than 20 years.

Lately again I've been plunged into WW2 stuff again and I'm very interested in the planes, in part because a lot of new data has come out. I have been very excited by Christopher Shores recent work as I pointed out around here many times (can't wait for MAW Vol IV), and also books like Black Cross / Red Star even though it seems slightly more biased.

I'm also a big fan of David Glantz and his startling work on the history of the Russian / German war. I'm also an enthusiast and supporter of Dan Carlin who has probably got more people interested in history in the last 10 years than all the books printed in that time.

The direction the research is going is somewhat similar to the more recent research on medieval history and in other eras. It's exciting. I think some people embrace that and some people cling to the older Tropes. It's always that way.

S

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

And Grampi, my appologies for being abrupt. I have a splitting headache...


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## BiffF15 (May 11, 2018)

Schweik,

I'm a military / commercial pilot with somewhere in the vicinity of 8000 hours. Of those, less than 120 are in light aircraft. Don't be so quick to discount what SR6 is stating. He has a VERY good grasp of aircraft performance, and what happens when you change the variables in a given equation. I have nothing to quote at the moment, but am operating under the impression that the Zero cruised at a very low speed and that was the key to it's incredible range. Drag goes up quickly with speed, and fuel flow follows accordingly. Maybe Shinpachi or GregP can chime in with the actual numbers if they have them, but the point is you would be surprised by how much range goes down as speed goes up.

Cruising over the Pacific outside visual range of islands / radar is one thing (done at max range) versus cruising over bad guy land (ETO) is another.

The Eagle has a lower CD with two external wing tanks (and is much faster) than it does with one on the centerline. Range with the wing tanks is almost the same as range with all three on board (and they are all the same size / interchangeable). In max afterburner (AB) at low altitude the Eagle burned 140k per hour IIRC. Pulling the throttles back to mid AB cut that fuel flow by 1/3 and only slowed you by about 30-40 knots. 

Cheers,
Biff

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## Schweik (May 11, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Something is off in the climb figures given.
> 
> I am not claiming the Spitfire can match the Zero for range, it can't, simply using it and the P-40 as benchmarks. Some of the performance figures for the Zero just don't make sense.
> 
> If questioning performance numbers that fly in face of physics and common sense makes me not on the level then so be it.



This isn't the first time you have questioned the historical data in these discussions - I remember something similar about the Mosquito? Or maybe the Pe-2 I don't recall. If we were talking about theoretical flight models, like for a new plane that hadn't actually been built yet, then I would give you more credit, but we are talking about history. When I read through the Bf 109 vs P-40 thread I noticed a lot of the same thing. A handful of forum grognards doing back of the envelope calculations which they claimed proved that a Bf 109 could out-turn a P-40 - in spite of the fact that the wartime tests and almost every pilot on both sides noted that the reverse was actually the case.

It does help to know how to do a little math and understand the underlying physics and engineering. I have seen on other threads that you have an impressive knowledge of engines and superchargers - I learned from your posts.

But I think sometimes with a little knowledge can come hubris. Some of my clients who I work with are engineers and ship captains- very knowledgeable in their own field but they tend to assume they know about _every_ field, including mine. Comedy results.

When it comes to history, we have to remember the past is a foreign country. Maybe it doesn't make sense to you how a Zero has such a long range or climbs so well - but maybe there is a factor, or more than one, that you just weren't aware of and didn't make it into your calculations. I know from painful experience these things are complex and the devil is in the details. I am well aware climb rate declines quickly with altitude (that is why these days instead of initial climb rate we often see those "time to 20,000 feet" type statistics). 

Climb rate isn't even the be all - climb speed can matter more sometimes. P-38s could not out-climb Zeros but they could do a shallow climb at very high speed, which allowed them to do a type of boom and zoom attack which was very successful - it's how Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire racked up most of their kills.

In short, the Devil is in the details. Early analysis of the Zero may have led to some hyperbole, but they did learn some interesting things about it - notably how well streamlined it was. Flush rivets, guns embedded inside the wings, excellent streamlining, made in one piece instead of with separate wings bolted on. It did have a unique type of construction. It was an outlier in many ways.

Which is part of why it was such a great fighter.

S


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

So what’s a “forum grognard”?

Maybe come off the high horse a little too...

I think you underestimate the knowledge of this forum.


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## Schweik (May 11, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> The Eagle has a lower CD with two external wing tanks (and is much faster) than it does with one on the centerline. Range with the wing tanks is almost the same as range with all three on board (and they are all the same size / interchangeable). In max afterburner (AB) at low altitude the Eagle burned 140k per hour IIRC. Pulling the throttles back to mid AB cut that fuel flow by 1/3 and only slowed you by about 30-40 knots.



This is exactly the kind of thing I suspect came into play with the A6M. These things are counter-intuitive and if anybody else suggested this you (a very experienced pilot) might find outrage as a reaction - how could range be the same with 30% less fuel? But physics and aerodynamics are complex things. You routinely run into a lot of things which are conunterintuitive. Finding just a particular throttle setting which gives you good speed and good endurance and so on.

I've run into enough of this kind of thing with historical research that I've learned to trust the primary sources and the hard data even when I can't make sense of it.

S

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## Schweik (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> So what’s a “forum grognard”?
> 
> Maybe come off the high horse a little too...
> 
> I think you underestimate the knowledge of this forum.



I actually don't - and i can see there is a lot. I have already learned a great deal here and did so even before I joined - it's _why_ i joined. 

But I have read these forums for years and seen many of the same cliches and tropes repeated over and over, I've seen some people so invested in the ideology or propaganda of one side or the other that they let that cloud their opinions. I have read through some farcical debates on here when newly emerging data doesn't match peoples cherished beliefs. I read an old one last night about some action between the the Ta 152 vs Tempest. Data was fascinating, the subsequent debate was a bit disappointing.

I can tell I am ruffling some feathers right now, so be it. You are a mod, it's not my forum, if you don't want me here ban me. I may not agree with the consensus on some things like how crappy the A6M was and how Uber the 109 was, but I think I have something to offer regardless. I've tried to post some useful data and been careful in writing my posts. That's the best I can do brother.

S


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## Peter Gunn (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Will saying it was the best rocket powered biplane helicopter with inverted sling load technology get me back on the list?



Only if you include "with sprinkles on top"...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Only if you include "with sprinkles on top"...



Deal...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I actually don't - and i can see there is a lot. I have already learned a great deal here and did so even before I joined - it's _why_ i joined.
> 
> But I have read these forums for years and seen many of the same cliches and tropes repeated over and over, I've seen some people so invested in the ideology or propaganda of one side or the other that they let that cloud their opinions. I have read through some farcical debates on here when newly emerging data doesn't match peoples cherished beliefs. I read an old one last night about some action between the the Ta 152 vs Tempest. Data was fascinating, the subsequent debate was a bit disappointing.
> 
> ...



I’m not going to ban you, why would I. I just want you to tone it down...


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## grampi (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Then you are purposely being obtuse about it. The point of the post, and why it is not over exaggeration is because for many people there was no other aircraft fighting the Germans. That is why many consider it overrated. Not because of it’s abilities or performance, or it’s contribution.
> 
> I made that very clear. Now if you just want to argue...


That's just ridiculously insane. Absolutely no one thinks that...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I actually don't - and i can see there is a lot. I have already learned a great deal here and did so even before I joined - it's _why_ i joined.
> 
> But I have read these forums for years and seen many of the same cliches and tropes repeated over and over, I've seen some people so invested in the ideology or propaganda of one side or the other that they let that cloud their opinions. I have read through some farcical debates on here when newly emerging data doesn't match peoples cherished beliefs. I read an old one last night about some action between the the Ta 152 vs Tempest. Data was fascinating, the subsequent debate was a bit disappointing.
> 
> ...



I’m not going to ban you, why would ? I just want you to tone it down...


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

grampi said:


> That's just ridiculously insane. Absolutely no one thinks that...



Then you are blind to it, sorry. It happens all over the internet. Even here from time to time. Not so much with informed knowledgable people like most of the members here.


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## Schweik (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I’m not going to ban you, why would I. I just want you to tone it down...



No problem. The A6M fantasy thing has run it's course.

S


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## Ascent (May 11, 2018)

I think the P-51 is considered to be over rated by some as a lot of people (not necessarily on this forum) consider it the best at everything when in fact in most areas it was good to adequate. What makes it a great aircraft is that it was good to adequate over Berlin.

It wasn't a better dogfighter than the Germans but it was a good enough dogfighter that it could hold its own when it had to and meant that there was nowhere the bombers couldn't go where they didn't have an escort.

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## grampi (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Then you are blind to it, sorry. It happens all over the internet. Even here from time to time. Not so much with informed knowledgable people like most of the members here.


Sorry, I disagree. I spend A LOT of time in aviation circles and even the most uninformed know better than this...


Ascent said:


> I think the P-51 is considered to be over rated by some as a lot of people (not necessarily on this forum) consider it the best at everything when in fact in most areas it was good to adequate. What makes it a great aircraft is that it was good to adequate over Berlin.
> 
> It wasn't a better dogfighter than the Germans but it was a good enough dogfighter that it could hold its own when it had to and meant that there was nowhere the bombers couldn't go where they didn't have an escort.


I kind of agree and kind of disagree. In terms of performance, it wasn't the best in any category except for range (and sometimes speed), but it was near the top in all categories. Whether it was a better dogfighter or not against the Germans depended a lot on which variations of each plane you're comparing. In some comparisons it was better, in some it wasn't as good. But our pilot's training, and a dwindling of experienced German pilots favored the Mustang drivers...

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2018)

grampi said:


> Sorry, I disagree. *I spend A LOT of time in aviation circles *and even the most uninformed know better than this...
> 
> I kind of agree and kind of disagree. In terms of performance, it wasn't the best in any category except for range (and sometimes speed), but it was near the top in all categories. Whether it was a better dogfighter or not against the Germans depended a lot on which variations of each plane you're comparing. In some comparisons it was better, in some it wasn't as good. But our pilot's training, and a dwindling of experienced German pilots favored the Mustang drivers...



So do I...

I guess we agree to disagree, unless you want to argue, just to argue. Then I’m game...


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## Tieleader (May 11, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I think everyone agrees it is one of the greatest aircraft ever built, but feel it is overrated because people put it on such a high pedestal that they forget there were many great planes contributing to the defeat of Germany.
> 
> You would think:
> 
> ...


You forgot Best Trainer !!

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## Shortround6 (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I get the gist, but I don't think that the phenomenal range of the Zero especially and specifically as compared to the Spitfire or the Bf 109, suddenly drops 90% if they have to pick up their cruising speed to max continuous for part of the flight. When they brought Spit Vs to Australia they had major problems with them *due to range *- in spite of the luxury of being able to fly over water. The difference in reach was striking between the Spit and the Zero in that Theater, just as it would in any other.



Did I say the range would drop 90% aside from a typo? 

and lets not confuse range and radius. I have one source (and it may be in error) that gives a _range _of 1025nm (previous post was a typo) with 10 minutes of compat allowance. that is about 1180 statute miles, 10 minutes of combat allowance is worth roughly (91.14 gallons divided by 6=15.19 gallons) one hour at 180kt cruise ( 16.4 gallons an hour )for 207 miles further or 1387 miles. 
I would note that is it quite possible to find some rather bizarre ranges for many American fighters where they use "yardstick ranges". They figure the fuel consumption at a certain speed and altitude and then divide that into the fuel capacity and take no account of fuel used up in warming up, take-off and climb to cruising altitude, nor is any reserve allowed. 



> I don't know precisely how _much_ the range would be reduced but I have seena min-max on range for the A6M2 of 1,600 to 1,900 miles. I assume that difference probably has something to do with the cruise speed. I do not believe as Shortround was suggesting that the range of the Zero would drop down to that of the Spitfire if they increased the cruise speed a bit. I think that is spurious logic - and "reaching" quite consciously.
> 
> As I also noted previously, they could use that phenomenal range to loop out into the Atlantic and attack from unexpected (and less protected) directions such as from the Bay of Biscay.
> 
> Nor do I think carrying a drop tank would be problematic. It wasn't problematic for P-51s, P-47s, P-38s and so on flying over Europe. You use the fuel for climbing up to altitude and forming up and everything from the drop-tank. Again, spurious and disingenuous.



The Zero will have longer range than the Spitfire, just based on the extra 40% internal fuel capacity. However most of these comparisons seem to be a Zero with 80 something gallon drop tank vs Spitfire (or p-40 or P-38) without drop tanks. The Japanese sometimes fought with the drop tank attached. It may have been empty or nearly so and this may not have been by choice but dictated by logistics (not enough spare tanks) but early 1942 the drag of the attached tank was not that big a handicap vs some of the aircraft they were fighting against. In Europe with better supply they might well drop the tank whenever they engaged. 
The tactical problem with the drop tanks is if they are dropped when still part full the fighters who dropped the tanks have to turn for home or only accompany the bombers for a short period of time hopefully until the next relay of escort fighters arrive. Many times later bomb raids were escorted by a number of relays in succession. Early war tactics/methods may have been different. 

The bay of Biscay attack plan is pretty much a use once or twice and then forget it. How long will it take for the Germans to put a radar unit at Brest and either track the attack for several hours or force it well out to sea on circuitous route? Such a detour will significantly reduce the bomb loads of the bombers and it will increase operational losses, engine failure on the way in could result in the loss of the bomber. Early British bombers not being very good at flying on one engine. 




> The bottom line is it's a fact that the A6M2 had 5 times the range of a Spitfire, substantially longer even than the P-38, no matter how you slice it - if one has to slow down to raid France or Belgium, than so does the other. *And range does confer a Tactical as well as Strategic or Operational advantage*.


talk about spurious and disingenuous. a Spitfire had a range slightly over 400 miles and that included a warm-up and take-off allowance and *no external tank*. 
The P-38 comparison takes a lot of swallowing too. P-38 was rated at 910 miles at 230mph at 12,000ft on internal fuel and that is after deducting 40 gallons for warm up and take off, 260 gallons internal. Hang a pair of of 75 gallon tanks underneath and the range goes to about 1300 miles and with a pair of 150 gallon tanks it goes 1870 miles. range with 300 gallon drop tanks goes to ridiculous. These ranges are for P-38F from the pilots manual.


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## wuzak (May 11, 2018)

This shows an initial rate of climb for the Zero of 3,410ft/min and a time to 20,000ft in 6.84 minutes at military power. At rated (normal) power, the initial climb rate was 2,785ft/min and time to 20,000ft was 8.11 minutes.

Military power was at 2,600rpm and 40inHg MAP, normal power was 2,400rpm and 36inHg MAP. [Note that the critical altitudes for Military power was 6,100ft and 15,700ft and for normal power was 7,800ft and 15,500ft.]

This shows a maximum climb between 10,000ft and 15,000ft of 2,690ft/min (thought it actually says ft/s ) at an IAS of 130mph.

And this report on an A6M2 shows an initial climb of 2,710ft/min.

Note that on a long range escort mission there would be little need for a climb at military power.


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## wuzak (May 11, 2018)

Schweik said:


> When they brought Spit Vs to Australia they had major problems with them *due to range *- in spite of the luxury of being able to fly over water. The difference in reach was striking between the Spit and the Zero in that Theater, just as it would in any other.



The Spitfire Vs in Australia were defending Darwin. When an incoming raid was detected they had to climb hard, and fly quickly to intercept the Japanese attack. I very much doubt they were using power settings conducive to maximum range.

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## Juha2 (May 12, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Interesting stuff. Do you happen to know the altitude and speed of the Spits during these escort missions?


Sorry, I don't know. All what I know on the RAAF mission is from the Wildcat's message. IIRC the info on the 131 Sqn La Pallice mission is from one of Price's Spitfire books. All I can say that the Pilot's Notes for Spit VII and VIII says that for max range fly 170 mph IAS using 1,800 rpm and adjust the throttle to give the recommended speed, but do not exceed +7lb./sq.in. boost. Max obtained air miles was 7 AMPG, that was true at all heights from 10,000 to 25,000 ft and for Merlins 63 and 64. The notes says that the info for Merlin 66 and 71 will be given when available. Of course gallons are ImpG. Internal fuel load was 122 gal.

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## Schweik (May 12, 2018)

wuzak said:


> This shows an initial rate of climb for the Zero of 3,410ft/min and a time to 20,000ft in 6.84 minutes at military power. At rated (normal) power, the initial climb rate was 2,785ft/min and time to 20,000ft was 8.11 minutes.
> 
> Military power was at 2,600rpm and 40inHg MAP, normal power was 2,400rpm and 36inHg MAP. [Note that the critical altitudes for Military power was 6,100ft and 15,700ft and for normal power was 7,800ft and 15,500ft.]
> 
> ...




Climb rate of 4k + was probably at WEP and 2.7k was probably at normal (non military) power rating. In "routine" circumstances you only needed military power for takeoff depending on the aircraft. In a scramble or when enemy fighters appear above you of course WEP is indicated.

I have been challenged to provide better links than "some webpage" so I went to wwiiaircraftperformance.org and found some interesting stuff.

Here is Clive Caldwells report on the Zero vs. the Spitfire (Mk V). Clive was i think the squadron commander at Darwin. He basically said they had to boom and zoom (boom and climb) with a shallow high speed climb or climbing turn (very similar to how Bf 109s fought Spitfires or P-40s). Said the Spit was superior of course but it was a wartime article. He notes the Zero is strongly made and not flimsy.

1945 article about (a late model) Zero being tested against a Spitfire. Another comment that the Zero is 'strongly made and well designed'.

1942 report by the Navy on A6M2 says gross weight of 5,555 lbs. Says 1,175 mile range with internal fuel. Managed to get it up to 331 mph. Rate of climb 2,710 fpm at Sea Level and 1,760 fpm at 20k feet.

Very interesting 1943 report on A6m2 *comparing it to a P-40K and P-43* notes that all up weight *with a belly tank* was 5,600 lbs. Altitude performance was not good above 16k feet. Fuel was 147 gals internal (2 x 55 gal wing tanks and a 37 gal fuselage tank) all unprotected. 88 gal external tank. They noted testing was done on 91 Octane fuel and the engine seemed to be designed for 100 octane - the top speed they managed was 289 mph and 2050 rpm at 15,000'. The A6M had no radio. climb rate went from 2,690 at 10,000 feet to 1,785 at 20,000. *They noted a cruise speed of 245 TAS with a fuel consumption of 37 gallons per hour.* Which means about 4 hours endurance on internal fuel *or 980 miles at that speed. With external tank it's a bit over 6 hours flying time or 1470 miles.
*
Presumably, if you used internal fuel for takeoff, then external tank to fly up to altitude and form up, and fly to the edge of "Indian Country", then drop your external tank as soon as you saw enemy fighters, you would still have an impressive ~1,100 -1,200 mile range at a quite reasonable cruise speed of 245 mph. If you increased that speed to say, 280 once you got into "Indian Country" I suspect you would still have a good range and endurance.

They mentioned that the engine would flood in negative G.

*Comparison between A6M2 and P-40K*
They mention that the zero had poor controlability above 275 mph making it potentially vulnerable in a dive, and speculated that "maybe this is why they don't follow our planes even in shallow dives where they could keep up for a while".

One really interesting detail was that the P-40K apparently climbed faster than the A6M below 5,000 feet. Presumably on WEP 57" Hg (it just says 'full throttle and full rpm'). They did a kind of drag race where they put the A6M and the P-40 side by side at 200 mph and then went full throttle on both machines. Acceleration was the same for 7 seconds after which the P-40 "began to pull away very rapidly". 12 seconds later the P-40 was going 10 mph faster.

They also noted that the P-40K could fight the zero effectively via boom and zoom. _"The Zero is of course, vastly superior in manevuerability. It was found that the P-40 can, however, effectively fight the zero without necessarily diving away. This is accomplished by proceeding away from the Zero on intitial pass at high speed until approximately one and a half miles away, at which time a maximum turn is begun back into the path of the pursing Zero. This turn can be completed just in time for the P-40 to pass through the path of the zero and barely miss a collision. If the Zero does not dodge from his own attack, the P-40 can fire a very effective head on burst in this manner. Of course, the Zero can take evasive action, but he cannot maneuver into such a position as to get effective fire into the P-40 without also getting return fire."_

I found this amusing because this is exactly what I used to do when playing Il2 back in the day. If they do turn instead of playing chicken with a head-on pass then they are vulnerable to a deflection shot as you go by.

Speaking of the Mustang and Spit as compared to the Bf 109 G6- some interesting test results here. Many of you have probably already seen it but perhaps not all. Among other interesting tidbits to me, P-51 (Mustang III) faster by 30 mph at 16k feet and 50 mph at 30,000 feet. Bf 109 climbs better than P-51 up to 20k feet, after which the Mustang climbs slightly better. Mustang turns better, roll is the same, Mustang "steadily out dives" the Bf 109.

Spit IX superior in roll, turn, and climb, 25 mph faster from Sea Level to 16,000 feet, Bf 109 faster 16k-20k, Spit IX slightly (7 mph) faster above 20K feet. Bf 109 had significantly superior dive speed.

Of course they didn't mention acceleration which is another place I suspect the Bf 109 exceeds them. G-6 is also one of the least adept models though one of the most produced I think.

S


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## Schweik (May 12, 2018)

Here is another 1943 report on the "model II" Zero. not the Aleutian one I don't think as it metions it was flown "from an active combat zone" though I guess that could be Alaska. They said while testing they flew it 900 miles cross country and for 10 hours, and then 5 hours of 'general air work' including stalls, spins etc.

Weight once again is below what is usually reported at 5400 lbs. Sadly the report mentions they could not attain full power due to 'unknown power plant difficulties' they could only get to 2150 RPM instead of rated 2550. So no climb rate given. It mentions that it didn't have rudder or airleron trim tabs.

Mentions that the Zero had a "one shot fire extinguisher system" which is interesting.

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## Shortround6 (May 12, 2018)

I will admit I am getting old and bit confused, especially on Japanese engines/aircraft as there is a LOT of conflicting information on them. 

One of which is the proper ratings of the engines and the ability of them to operate on some WEP rating. Since the British and the Americans didn't always agree on what WEP rating should be (even on the same engine sometimes) trying to figure out what other nations were doing gets really tricky. 

The Americans and the British got "lucky" (read a lot of hard work in there too) in that they had very good access to 100/130 fuel which really helped with WEP settings. However a number of the American air cooled radials never got a WEP rating or settings. Assuming that everybody got WEP settings is way off the mark. 

Engines have a critical altitude, For the two speed R-1830 used in some early F4F-3s and some of the export wildcats that was 14,500ft and you had 1000hp. Engine is turning max rpm and throttle is wide open and supercharger is supplying all the air it can. Nothing you can do is going to give you more power above that altitude. Below that altitude when the Throttle is part closed, it is possible to open the throttle closer to max or to max and admit more air. This is the basis for WEP.
However it is subject to two/three things.

1. will the engine stand up to the extra power without breaking? 
1/A. will the engine be able to dissipate the extra heat? Or will parts of the engine overheat and cook the oil. Oil that turns into cruncy lumps doesn't lubricate well.
2. Will the higher boost pressure with the fuel in use result in detonation in the cylinders? Detonation, if severe, can wreck an engine in seconds. In air-cooled radials entire cylinders have been known to part company with the engine. 

For the US the P & W R-1830 never got a WEP rating (later engines were allowed to got to 1350hp but they had different cylinders with different cooling fins and other changes). The Wright R-1820 got either no WEP rating or a small one. This gets tricky as there are a number of different R-1820s with different crankcases, different crankshafts, different cylinders, etc. The 1300/1350hp version used in FM-2 wildcats used 20 studs per cylinder to hold them to the crankcase instead of the 16 studs on the 1200hp engines. Trying to get 1300/1350hp out of the early engine might be possible on a VERY short term basis. There were three different Wright R-2600s, none ever got a WEP rating.

For the Zero there were, to my understanding which may be wrong, three different basic engines. the original Sakae 12 with a single speed supercharger. The Sakae 21 with two speed supercharger and the Sakae 31 with two speed supercharger and water injection. 

I would note that while some sources (mostly wartime) say that the Japanese engines were designed to run on 100 octane the Japanese never supplied fuel higher than 92 octane to forces in the field. Now I am willing to grant that since much of the Japanese fuel came from Indonesia and that fuel was high in aromatic compounds the fuel _might _have been a bit better when running rich. However it appears (welcome to correction) the Japanese had no way to measure this or to sort out batches of fuel into better or worse categories. 

I would doubt that the original single speed engine had much in the way of a WEP rating. All single speed engines are a compromise and having more supercharger capacity than can be used normally is an expensive luxury. 

Getting enough extra power to increase climb by 50% (3000fpm to 4500fpm) is rather unlikely. I would note that for the Spitfire V going from 2600-2650fpm to 3700fpm climb required going from 2850rpm and 9lbs of boost to 3000rpm and 16lbs of boost. (plane was ballasted to represent 4 20mm guns) 

If your radial is already turing max rpm there is no gain there. 7 extra pounds of boost is 14in or about 35.6cm of manifold pressure. 

Getting to 4700fps required a lighter plane, a cropped supercharger impeller (less power to drive) and 18lb of boost, but the cropped impeer could only supply the 18lbs of boost to 3800ft and in fact could not even supply 9lb boost much above 12,000ft. 

Use of water injection on teh Sakae 31 can certainly be considered WEP, I don't know if there short term (5 min?) ratings on the early Sakae engines.

Please remember that one difference in British and US service between military power and WEP was that while military power short term (5 to 15 minutes) it did not require notation in log books or specially maintenance procedures. WEP did.


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## Schweik (May 12, 2018)

I can't say what for sure is or isn't a WEP setting on an A6M or what the precise difference is between military power and WEP for an A6M2, but I can observe tha:

1) It's clear they did not want to push the engine too hard for risk of blowing it, (as they needed to finish their testing and they didn't - I don't think- have any spares).

2) The second more detailed "competition" test while still interesting makes it pretty clear (I think) that they were not pushing the aircraft to it's limits, either because they were having some kind of engine / fuel problem or because they were being cautious per above, but 296 mph is not the top speed for an A6M2. The first test reflects what was probably the top speed (~ 331 mph).

From all the tests it looks like the Zero is pretty light (5600 lbs with a drop tank) - vs 5,900 for a Spitfire Mk 1 without a tank...and the Zero flew very far. ~240 mph cruise speed is pretty interesting too.

S


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## Shortround6 (May 12, 2018)

I have my doubts about 5600lbs with a full drop tank. 
87 gallons at 6lbs per gallon is 522lbs. 

One book says A6M2 went 3770lbs empty and 5555lbs gross ( I don't get worked up about 40-50lbs on these planes, especially with multiple conversions of metric to english units) with a useful load of 1430lbs, which doesn't add up but then there are two empty weights (empty and empty equipped). 

I would note that the A6M3 is listed as 3913 empty, 5155lbs gross, 5750 normal load and 6331lbs overload. 
The engine in the A6M3 is certainly heavier than in the A6M2 which accounts for most of the change in empty weight.
The A6M3 tested by the RAAF went 5650lbs without a belly tank. They tried to ballast for ammo.

Please note that full load of fuel (internal) with 87 gallon drop tank is 1368lbs which doesn't leave much for pilot, oil and ammo even if guns are included in the A6M2's 3770lb empty weight (most countries didn't include guns in empty weight but did in empty equiped or basic or some other term).

These captured examples were operated with some different limits to be sure. One test used 36in for "normal" and 40in for military power (5min) on the Sakae 21 while another used 35in on the Sakae 12. I would note that both seem more than a bit odd. The P & W R-1340 in a T-6 trainer used 36.5in for take-off for example.


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## Schweik (May 13, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> I have my doubts about 5600lbs with a full drop tank.
> 87 gallons at 6lbs per gallon is 522lbs.




The report was pretty explicit about the weight, and I have no reason to assume they were wrong, whether you can square it or not. It also matches the other two reports.

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## DarrenW (May 13, 2018)

Juha2 said:


> Sorry, I don't know. All what I know on the RAAF mission is from the Wildcat's message. IIRC the info on the 131 Sqn La Pallice mission is from one of Price's Spitfire books. All I can say that the Pilot's Notes for Spit VII and VIII says that for max range fly 170 mph IAS using 1,800 rpm and adjust the throttle to give the recommended speed, but do not exceed +7lb./sq.in. boost. Max obtained air miles was 7 AMPG, that was true at all heights from 10,000 to 25,000 ft and for Merlins 63 and 64. The notes says that the info for Merlin 66 and 71 will be given when available. Of course gallons are ImpG. Internal fuel load was 122 gal.



Thanks Juha2. So basically true air speed could vary from approximately 204-255mph and still obtain the same mileage (when allowing for the 15,000 foot change in altitude between 10,000-25,000 feet). By the way, could explain the difference between AMPG and MPG? I haven't seen that notation before....


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## DarrenW (May 21, 2018)

Schweik said:


> The F6F won the *second* Battle of the Philippines.



By "second" you must be referring to the Battle of Leyte Gulf (Oct 23-26 1944). The Hellcat also "won" the Battle of the Philippine Sea, (June 19-20, 1944). These are two of the greatest sea battles in modern history where the Hellcat seized control of the air, allowing carrier attack squadrons to sink or damage a large majority of the enemy's remaining wartime fleet. It must also be stressed that during the Battle of Leyte Gulf countless allied ships were spared from_ Kamikaze_ attack, due in no small measure to the umbrella of aerial protection provided primarily by the Grumman fighter.


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## Dan Fahey (May 26, 2018)

I have had a reconsideration about most over rate fighter during WW2.
That would be the Spitfire!
Reasons.
It was a fragile aircraft compared to the P40.
Did not do well in ground attack 
It was hard to build and maintain. 
The Merlin’s engine got less than half the life time of a Allison.
It’s use was rather limited compared to the P40.
As a Defense fighter or Intectptor it was ok.
Range was half that of a P40 which limited its combat effectiveness.

2 cents

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## Shortround6 (May 26, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> I have had a reconsideration about most over rate fighter during WW2.
> That would be the Spitfire!
> Reasons.
> It was a fragile aircraft compared to the P40.
> ...


 You can, of course, prove some of those points?
And considering that there were multiple models/versions of P-40s and multiple models/versions of the Spitfire perhaps you could narrow it down a bit as to which versions you are comparing and in what year? 
The engine life claim needs some looking at too. Merlins may not have lasted as long as Allisons but less than 1/2? what years, what conditions?
The Range claim also appears suspect. Plane with 123 imp gallons of fuel inside has *twice* the range of of a plane (that is lighter and more streamlined) with 84 imperial gallons? 50% more range I could easily agree with. 
as to your 6th point "_As a Defense fighter or Intectptor it was ok_." well as a Defensive fighter or interceptor the P-40 was far from OK so where does that leave us?

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## Dan Fahey (May 28, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> You can, of course, prove some of those points?
> And considering that there were multiple models/versions of P-40s and multiple models/versions of the Spitfire perhaps you could narrow it down a bit as to which versions you are comparing and in what year?
> The engine life claim needs some looking at too. Merlins may not have lasted as long as Allisons but less than 1/2? what years, what conditions?
> The Range claim also appears suspect. Plane with 123 imp gallons of fuel inside has *twice* the range of of a plane (that is lighter and more streamlined) with 84 imperial gallons? 50% more range I could easily agree with.
> as to your 6th point "_As a Defense fighter or Intectptor it was ok_." well as a Defensive fighter or interceptor the P-40 was far from OK so where does that leave us?


Yes...British built the Spitfire like their Merlin’s. Slow, expensively and labor intensive. Merlin were improved dramatically with better US bearings. Read up on Yancy who rebuilds those engine. Mechanics called the Merlin a Watchmakers engine. P40 consistently carried more internal fuel,and more ammo. Allowing it to stay in a fight much longer. Spitfires in combat were just not as rugged as the P40 especially not suitable for ground operations. These are all well documented! The narrow track was difficult to land and carrier operations a lot of bent wings. They were withdrawn in Korea. As a point defensive fighter did well. P40 with the 100/130 fuels their performance improved dramatically as did the P51/A36 Mustangs. 

P40 was just a more versitile Fighter and fought in every theater.

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## wuzak (May 28, 2018)

Spitfire production was slow to ramp up, but once it did they built over 20,000 of them.

Of the Merlins built, 2/3 of them were made in Britain. Hardly slow production.

The benefit of the American bearings was small. Made no difference to power.

Rugged is another way of saying over-built.

P-40s also had narrow undercarriage, and the Spitfire was not regarded as difficult to land.

Spitfires were modified for carrier operations. No-one even suggested that a P-40 be modified as such.

Seafires at least made it to the Korean war. Don't recall too many P-40s flying there.

Spitfire performance also improved with the availability of 100/130 fuel.

You could argue that the Spitfire's 2 20mm cannons were more effective than the P-40's 4 or 6 0.50" hmgs, so less ammo was required.

The Spitfire carried less fuel because it was designed for a specific role - interceptor. But the extra fuel in the P-40 hardly made it a long range aircraft.

The USAAF modified a Spitfire IX to achieve a significantly longer range. Obviously they thought it was worth the effort - something that would not have happened for an overrated, underperforming aircraft.

The use of Spitfires outside of Britain was restricted because priority was on home defence. Once production had ramped up and enough were available, they were sent to all theatres, or at least most of them.

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## Shortround6 (May 28, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> Yes...British built the Spitfire like their Merlin’s. Slow, expensively and labor intensive. Merlin were improved dramatically with better US bearings. Read up on Yancy who rebuilds those engine. Mechanics called the Merlin a Watchmakers engine. P40 consistently carried more internal fuel,and more ammo. Allowing it to stay in a fight much longer. Spitfires in combat were just not as rugged as the P40 especially not suitable for ground operations. These are all well documented! The narrow track was difficult to land and carrier operations a lot of bent wings. They were withdrawn in Korea. As a point defensive fighter did well. P40 with the 100/130 fuels their performance improved dramatically as did the P51/A36 Mustangs.
> 
> P40 was just a more versitile Fighter and fought in every theater.




Perhaps you should do a bit of reading?
Ford of England was mass producing Merlins with tight tolerance and interchangeable parts before the the US and Packard ever got into the act. 
Most allied engines got better as the war went on, overhaul life for Allison's improved dramatically also. 
Merlin engines in fighters were rated at 240 hours in 1939 and this increased to 300/360 hours in 1944/45 despite making much greater power. 
Bomber engines improved from 300 hours to 360/420 hours. 
Merlins used alot more fasteners to hold things like covers on. A pain in the butt to service but has no bearing on the durability or reliability of the engine. 
P-40s using Merlins in North Africa tended to use them up pretty quick due to the change in air intake location compared to Allison P-40s and no air filter (or ineffective one). This was made worse by lack of sufficient spare engines and parts in US supply chain. British Hurricanes and Spitfires did have dir filters. But few engines could swallow dirt and keep running for long.
Many US bombers got rather large, high drag airscoops in order to house dirt filters. 

Wheel track of the Spitfire was 5 ft 8 1/2 inches. Which is a bit narrow but the P-40 was hardly a wide track with 8ft 2 1/2 inches. A P-51 was 11ft 10 in. 
Criticising the Spitfire for carrier landing problems is really stretching things. How many P-40s ever landed on a carrier? They were put on board with cranes and flown off once, usually with reduced fuel and ammo. 

Let's see, Spitfires withdrawn from use in Korea, P-40s withdrawn from US in US forces in 1944, for the most part. Yeah, I can see how that makes the SPitfire look bad. 
Mid/late war Spitfires got bigger fuselage tanks, some got wing leading edge tanks and some got rear fuselage tanks. MK VIIIs carried 120 Imp gallons of fuel inside without using rear tanks. They also got 30 and 45 gallon slipper tanks with some of them being self sealing and could be carried in combat. Result was that many of the later Spitfires could hold more fuel than a P-40 and those crappy two stage Merlins made a lot more power than any Allison used in a P-40, while running on 100/130. 
MK VIII Spitfire was rated as having a 680 mile range while carrying a 500lbs bomb and dropping it at 1/2 range. (340 mile radius) 

Some of this is from "The Merlin in perspective -the combat years" by Alec Harvey-Bailey.
SOme of it is from WWII Aircraft Performance

want to list your sources?

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## GrauGeist (May 29, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> P40 with the 100/130 fuels their performance improved dramatically as did the P51/*A36 Mustangs.*


FYI, the A-36 was called the "Apache".


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## KiwiBiggles (May 29, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> The narrow track was difficult to land and carrier operations a lot of bent wings.


Grammar aside, the serviceability rate of Seafires in Korea was the same as that of F4Us. The Spitfire was not fragile, it was not slow, it was not undergunned. As far as I can see, the only thing it wasn't was American.

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## rochie (May 29, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> Grammar aside, the serviceability rate of Seafires in Korea was the same as that of F4Us. The Spitfire was not fragile, it was not slow, it was not undergunned. As far as I can see, the only thing it wasn't was American.


Bingo !


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## Marcel (May 29, 2018)

Don't touch the Spitfire here


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## rochie (May 29, 2018)

Marcel said:


> Don't touch the Spitfire here


Oh you can.
Just be objective

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## Marcel (May 29, 2018)

Hmmmm, objective... here?..........


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## rochie (May 29, 2018)

Marcel said:


> Hmmmm, objective... here?..........


Yeah, what the hell was i thinking


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## Marcel (May 29, 2018)

But seriously, you're right. One should be able to have objective critique on airplanes. And quite often, this happens as well. Still, we've got so many nationalities and sentiments, that quite often people react with a biased view.
I'm not biased, it's just the undisputed fact that the Fokker G-1 was the best twin engined aircraft of the start of the war, has nothing to do with me being Dutch. It just was......

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## Juha2 (May 29, 2018)

Dan Fahey said:


> I have had a reconsideration about most over rate fighter during WW2.
> That would be the Spitfire!
> Reasons.
> It was a fragile aircraft compared to the P40.
> ...



Hello Dan
I have already answered to your range point in Most Overrated aircraft of WWII.....?
I have no firm opinion how well Spits did the ground attack job but at least in 1944 Mk IXs usually carried twice the normal bomb load of P-40s (1000 lb vs 500 lb). P-40 was a rugged plane and the normal gun armament of the later versions (6 x .5) might well be better for strafing than that of the most usual armament of Spits, namely 2 x 20 mm + 4 x .303 but stll P-40 was powered with a vulnerable liquid cooled engine and after dropping the bomb(s) IMHO a Spit could watch after itself better than a P-40.

Juha


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## Shortround6 (May 29, 2018)

I may have this wrong but the argument seems to be that since the Spitfire wasn't as good at ground attack as a P-40 then the Spitfire was over rated?

Arguments like the Spitfires problems with carrier landings are brought in to attempt to show how superior the P-40 was. A Spit MK I landed at about 67mph. later ones came in a bit faster. P-40Es landed at about 84mph at 7500lbs. A early P-40 (no letter) landed at 80mph at 6655lbs. There was no way anybody was really going to try using P-40s from a carrier, and extra few feet of wheel track notwithstanding. 

Bomb, fuel loads and range get rather complicated. Yes some P-40s operated with larger bomb loads than Spitfires, please note the _some. _mostly in Italy at very short ranges. The P-40Ns (at least later ones) were rated for three 500lbs which is more than Spitfires but that was in 1943 and it had already been decided that the P-40 would no longer be issued to new_ fighter _squadrons.
Attempts to make the P-40 a better interceptor/higher altitude fighter included pulling two guns and restricting the ammo to 200/201 round per gun and yanking a fuel tank to cut the fuel to 87 US gallons (or 72 imp gallons) so there goes any advantage in range the P-40 had and certainly makes the firepower claim a bit suspect. 

P-40s did a lot of good work and often performed in combat better than might be expected. That doesn't really mean other planes were overrated.

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## swampyankee (May 29, 2018)

Considering something over- or under-rated is, intrinsically, subjective. If we look at _any _aspect of combat performance, tactics, training, and operational considerations can easily be more important than aerodynamics. An example would be the Israeli Air Force vs Syria’s. Switch the hardware, but leave all else the same. Who wins?

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## Juha2 (May 29, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> ...Bomb, fuel loads and range get rather complicated. Yes some P-40s operated with larger bomb loads than Spitfires, please note the _some. _mostly in Italy at very short ranges. The P-40Ns (at least later ones) were rated for three 500lbs which is more than Spitfires but that was in 1943 and it had already been decided that the P-40 would no longer be issued to new_ fighter _squadrons..



Thanks for correction, Dean's bible mentioned only 500 lb centreline bomb and seldom used light bombs under wings and a quick look on Wolf's USAAF Jabos reveals only the same info, but yes, digging out Kinzey's P-40 Warhawk Part 2 (in detail series) reveals than from N-20 onwards three 500 lb was possible bomb load, that means that appr. 3/5 of the P-40Ns were able to carry 1500 lb bomb load.


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## Schweik (May 29, 2018)

Juha2 said:


> Thanks for correction, Dean's bible mentioned only 500 lb centreline bomb and seldom used light bombs under wings and a quick look on Wolf's USAAF Jabos reveals only the same info, but yes, digging out Kinzey's P-40 Warhawk Part 2 (in detail series) reveals than from N-20 onwards three 500 lb was possible bomb load, that means that appr. 3/5 of the P-40Ns were able to carry 1500 lb bomb load.



They were doing that in the field with Kittyhawks in North Africa and Russia by mid - 1942. The 23rd Fighter Group (successor to the AVG) also did similar field modifications. The Russians also put rockets on them by 1942.

But that doesn't affect which was the best _fighter_ or which _fighter_ was overrated. There is such a thing as pilots who preferred the P-40 to the Spit in certain Theaters and for certain purposes, but there were far more pilots who preferred the Spit. The Spitfire was the ultimate "pilots fighter" on the Anglo-American side, fast, high flying, turned on a dime, low drag, and yes tough, it was a fighter and had armor and self-sealing tanks, if not perhaps as tough as a P-47 or a Fw 190, few fighters were.

I am hardly an Anglophile, but the Spitfire was without a doubt the best interceptor of the Western Allies in the whole war. It was the best interceptor and defensive fighter available to the UK in 1940, was the best in 1941 and to the UK _or_ USAAF in 1942 (even when it was outclassed by the Fw 190 for a while, it was the best we had), best in 1943, best in 1944 and probably still the best in 1945 though it was, by then, a very different aircraft and still a Spitfire in name only.

The range limitations were of course, very real and the advantages of the Spitfire didn't apply equally in all Theaters. It didn't do very will in the South Pacific or in Russia. But I don't think the Spitfire is overrated. It's a beautiful aircraft, of racing pedigree, it matched or exceeded the Germans and Italians in performance (most of the time), exceeded them in maneuverability and gave the Allies their only really "superior" tool to use against the Germans in particular until probably mid 1943.

Many other Allied fighters were adequate or even probably at or near parity, but only the Spitfire can truthfully be called _superior_ to the German types in this time period, even if this waxed and waned somewhat. The importance of this reality for morale and Strategic planning cannot be overstated. The English may have been able to win the Battle of Britain without the Spitfire, on paper, but in the hearts of the brave men who won that engagement, they needed that plane, they needed something special.

Yes it was mainly a defensive fighter but think of how important that was. They needed to defend Britain from a rain of bombs. Couldn't survive without that. Later on they needed to defend Malta from being flattened and starved of supplies. This was critical to the war effort. The Spitfire accomplished this mission admirably.

That said I think we have a double standard. The Mustang isn't my favorite aircraft of the war because it came so late, basically past the tipping point, and I like planes which fought in the more bitterly contested years and months of the war. But a lot of people around here and elsewhere will dismiss the P-51 as a 'mere' escort fighter, while failing to qualify the Spitfire as what it was, basically an interceptor or defensive fighter. Certainly a short range fighter. Similarly we all in the Anglophone world tend to ignore the excellence of the Yak-3, La 5FN and other Soviet types, because they were essentially low altitude fighters. So what? The battlefield in Russia was at low altitude. We dismiss the Zero because it wasn't as dominant in 1944 as it was in 1941. But in 1941, nobody in England, the US, or even Russia or Germany was dismissing that plane.

The only way you would have an aircraft which could excel at _all _categories would be to bring a Mig 15 or a F-16 or Rafale or (pick your jet) back in time to WW2.

And lets not pretend the Americans are more jingoistic than the British. Please.

S

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## Shortround6 (May 29, 2018)

> That said I think we have a double standard. _The Mustang isn't my favorite aircraft of the war because it came so late, basically past the tipping point_, and I like planes which fought in the more bitterly contested years and months of the war. But a lot of people around here and elsewhere will dismiss the P-51 as a 'mere' escort fighter, while failing to qualify the Spitfire as what it was, basically an interceptor or defensive fighter. Certainly a short range fighter. Similarly we all in the Anglophone world tend to ignore the excellence of the _Yak-3_, La 5FN and other Soviet types, because they were essentially low altitude fighters. So what? The battlefield in Russia was at low altitude. We dismiss the Zero because it wasn't as dominant in 1944 as it was in 1941. But in 1941, nobody in England, the US, or even Russia or Germany was dismissing that plane.



The Yak-3 didn't show-up until about 5-6 months after the Merlin Mustangs. The First nearly 200 carried 1/2 the armament of a late Spitfire. One 20mm and one 12.7mm machine gun. After that they got a 2nd 12.7mm. Fuel was roughly 100 US gallons/83 Imp gal? later ones got around 3-4 more gallons? 
The Yak-3 would have been a great plane at the end of 1942 or during 1943. In 1944, while it was very good at what it did, it was pretty much a one trick pony. A low altitude, short range/endurance dogfighter.


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## Schweik (May 29, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The Yak-3 didn't show-up until about 5-6 months after the Merlin Mustangs. The First nearly 200 carried 1/2 the armament of a late Spitfire. One 20mm and one 12.7mm machine gun. After that they got a 2nd 12.7mm. Fuel was roughly 100 US gallons/83 Imp gal? later ones got around 3-4 more gallons?
> The Yak-3 would have been a great plane at the end of 1942 or during 1943. In 1944, while it was very good at what it did, it was pretty much a one trick pony. A low altitude, short range/endurance dogfighter.



I can't say I'm surprised, but you are completely missing my point while providing a good example of what I think is wrong with a lot of WW2 Aviation analysis. You are applying a single yard stick to an area where it doesn't fit.

What is the mission of the Yak 3 (or any Soviet fighter at almost any part of the Soviet involvement in WW2?)

A hint - it does not need to shoot down vast fleets of high flying He 111s and Do -17s like the Spit did in the BoB. It does not need to shoot down hundreds of B-17s and B-24s like the Germans were trying to do over Berlin. It doesn't need to shoot down Sturmoviks over the Russian Front, like the Germans had to do*.

It needs to _shoot down German fighters, _and German light ground attack aircraft, especially Stukas which were the main German close support aircraft throughout the war. By 1944 you can pretty much rule out the Stuka so for the Yak 3, the mission was essentially just to shoot down German fighters and thus protect the Sturmoviks so they can destroy German tanks. Pretty straitforward. So given that is the mission, consider a few facts:


One 20mm cannon and two 12.7mm machine guns actually superior armament to what was considered the top German dogfighter of the War - the Bf 109F series (and also the early G series through the G-4 I think).
A 20mm cannon firing through the prop hub, not to mention the other nose guns, is _plenty_ of firepower to shoot down a Bf 109 or a Ju 87. Add the two 12.7mm guns and you have what you need to bring down a Fw 190 I think.
They are not shooting down B-17s or B-24s, or Sturmoviks like the Germans have to by that point, hence there is really no need to mount cumbersome wing gondolas with extra guns.
The Yak 3 is a highly specialized dogfighter designed specifically to take over the air space over the giant tank and infantry war which was the Russian Front. It was the best plane ever made for that purpose, and scared the crap out of the Germans.

It was without a doubt one of the best aircraft of the war.

It was, by the way actually on track to be developed by 1942 or 1943, circumstances prevented that, though the La - 5FN was there thankfully to fill the gap, not to mention the earlier / mid war Yak (-1b, 7b and 9) variants. All of the above did better in the field than the Spitfire did in this particular Theater.


* of course they did have some Hs 129 and other dedicated (and larger and / or more armored) bombers and ground attack types, but not enough of them to affect the war.

S

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## Shortround6 (May 29, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I can't say I'm surprised, but you are completely missing my point while providing a good example of what I think is wrong with a lot of WW2 Aviation analysis. You are applying a single yard stick to an area where it doesn't fit.
> 
> What is the mission of the Yak 3 (or any Soviet fighter at almost any part of the Soviet involvement in WW2?)
> 
> ...



YOu are going from "highly specialized dogfighter designed specifically to take over the air space over the giant tank and infantry war which was the Russian Front" and turning it into "without a doubt one of the best aircraft of the war".

Which are two different things. By the Summer of 1944 "fighters" that would have trouble with large bombers, could not fight at high altitudes (and high in this case may not even be 20,000ft), had a useful endurance of about 40 minutes in a combat area ( for Russia this is take off to landing), and had minimal ground attack capability would have been a luxury for many Air Forces. 
The Yak-1M prototype for instance was only faster than a 109G-2 up to about 18,700ft. At 23,000ft the G-2 was 31mph faster. The G-2 was in production in June/July of 1942. Granted the G-2 didn't have all the lumps and bumps of 1944 109s, but then it didn't have a 1944 engine either.
Perhaps the Germans screwed up by not having East Front and West Front engines and Aircraft. They could probably have gotten a couple hundred extra HP out of a DB605 optimised for under 12,000ft.

I would also be leery of taking statements like " In climb rate up to 16,400ft (5,000m) the Yak-1M was unrivaled among the world's fighters, including the various Bf 109 sub-types." at face value. A Spit VB with a Merlin 50 (cropped impeller) could match almost to the second the time needed to climb to that altitude. Of course the Merlin 50 starved for air worse than the VK-105PF once you got into the hi teens. MK IX Spits could also match if not exceed that climb rate while using 18lbs of boost and using 100/130 fuel.
Please note that due to poor construction standards many early production aircraft suffered a 15-20km/hr speed loss from the prototypes and were up to 0.5 minutes slower climbing to 16,400ft.

It may have been a delight to fly and allowed Russian pilots an advantage over the Germans but I have trouble seeing it as _one of the best aircraft of the war_
when the Russian Air Force needed so many other aircraft to fill in the holes in the Yak-3s repertoire.
Also interesting the the number built after the war, perhaps as few as 737(?) compared to about 1400 of the Yak-9U and the continued development of the LA radial series.

edit: Performance data from "Soviet Combat Aircraft of The Second World War"
By Gorden and Khazanov for the YAK-3 and prototypes. (and Bf-109G-2)
Climb for Spitfires from WWII Aircraft Performance

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## pbehn (May 29, 2018)

When discussing ease of production it is important to consider the expected production run. If the first order for Spitfires was 10,000 not 300 the design would have been different, as far as production engineering goes. When the hurricane and spitfire first flew it was a fair bet that war was coming but no one knew when. The first USAAC ordered 525 P-40s (April 1939) it was the biggest order it had ever placed. By the time discussions started about the P-51 the war was already started and it was clear production would be in thousands. If the production line and tooling used to build the P-51 was used for 300 aircraft the company would fold and heads would roll.


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## Shortround6 (May 29, 2018)

Some sources say when the "C" wing was designed for the Spitfire the opportunity was taken to make it at least somewhat easier to build. 

Very few planes were built over a period of years in large numbers where the number of man hours needed didn't fall quite a bit as new tools, techniques and jigs/fixtures were brought into play or were developed. 

The whole state of the art in mass production of just about everything was constantly changing and as pbehn has suggested, truly large scale production requires truly large scale investment.

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## pbehn (May 29, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Some sources say when the "C" wing was designed for the Spitfire the opportunity was taken to make it at least somewhat easier to build.
> 
> Very few planes were built over a period of years in large numbers where the number of man hours needed didn't fall quite a bit as new tools, techniques and jigs/fixtures were brought into play or were developed.
> 
> The whole state of the art in mass production of just about everything was constantly changing and as pbehn has suggested, truly large scale production requires truly large scale investment.


I have seen video of the P-51 production line, very much like car plant practice of the day. You cannot take a Mk1 spitfire and do that, it is done at the design stage. I am sure there were many mods to the Spitfire to make it easier and quicker to make but it is always best when designed for mass production to start with.


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## pbehn (May 29, 2018)

I wish uncle Joe had told us he had the best plane of the war, we could have stopped sending Hurricanes and Spitfires.

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## wuzak (May 29, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I have seen video of the P-51 production line, very much like car plant practice of the day. You cannot take a Mk1 spitfire and do that, it is done at the design stage. I am sure there were many mods to the Spitfire to make it easier and quicker to make but it is always best when designed for mass production to start with.



I think one of the improvements was the way they produced the spar.

I can't recall how it was made originally, or how it was improved, as I am away from my books.

Edit: IIRC, the original was some sort of composite structure, while the later ones were simplified.

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## Shortround6 (May 29, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I have seen video of the P-51 production line, very much like car plant practice of the day. You cannot take a Mk1 spitfire and do that, it is done at the design stage. I am sure there were many mods to the Spitfire to make it easier and quicker to make but it is always best when designed for mass production to start with.



It is done both at the design stage of the aircraft _and_ the design stage of the factories to produce it. A good design will use fewer parts (and fasteners) and go together in major sub-assemblies but good tooling (jigs/fixtures/platforms and short distances from parts supply to work station) can help a lot.
A lot of early US aircraft production was in less than ideal conditions.





Build airplanes outdoors in California is one thing, doing it in Buffalo , New York is another in winter.

Found a Flickr account concerning the Curtiss Factory. 100 photos
Curtiss-Wright Aircraft Production: Buffalo 1941

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## Schweik (May 29, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> YOu are going from "highly specialized dogfighter designed specifically to take over the air space over the giant tank and infantry war which was the Russian Front" and turning it into "without a doubt one of the best aircraft of the war".



There is absolutely no contradiction between those two statements. You are just having a failure of imagination. The Spitfire lacked the range to make a good fighter in the Pacific, and lacked a host of qualities necessary on the Russian front, but it too was obviously one of the best fighters of the war - (or maybe you could say it was 'several of the best fighter(s) of the war').



> Which are two different things. By the Summer of 1944 "fighters" that would have trouble with large bombers,



How about 'fighters' that couldn't fly 600 miles? Every fighter design had it's limitations. Do you even have a point?



> could not fight at high altitudes (and high in this case may not even be 20,000ft),



What percentage of combat on the Russian Front was taking place at 20,000 feet?



> would have been a luxury for many Air Forces.



Which Air Force specifically? The Martian Air Force? What you seem to have a tough time grasping is that the quality of a fighter is directly related to it's degree of success *Where. It. Was. Fighting. *Not it's degree of success in calculations you make on the back of an envelope, or in WarThunder, or in your imagination. The Yak 3 was so dangerous in the Russian Front that Lufwaffe Lieutenant General Walter Schwabedissen noted after the war:

_"Whereas the German Bf109G and Fw190 models were equal to any of the afore mentioned Soviet fighter models in all respects, this cannot be said of the Soviet Yak-3, which made its first appearance at the front in the late summer of 1944. This aeroplane was faster, more manoeuvrable and had better climbing capabilities than the Bf109G and the Fw190, to which it was inferior only in armament"._
Source: 'The Russian Air Force in the Eyes of German Commanders'



> Perhaps the Germans screwed up by not having East Front and West Front engines and Aircraft. They could probably have gotten a couple hundred extra HP out of a DB605 optimised for under 12,000ft.



Coulda woulda shoulda. If their factory hadn't been bombed the Yak 3 would have been flying in 1943 and who knows the outcome on the war.
Yes, they should have - that is exactly the idea behind the Yak 3 - or the Spit for example. Specialization to excel at a particular task (in a specific environment)



> I would also be leery of taking statements like " In climb rate up to 16,400ft (5,000m) the Yak-1M was unrivaled among the world's fighters,



Shortround- who are you arguing with here? What makes you think I'm taking that statement any way at all? I don't remember talking about a Yak 1M - do you mean the Yak 9M or the Yak 3?



> It may have been a delight to fly and allowed Russian pilots an advantage over the Germans but I have trouble seeing it as _one of the best aircraft of the war _



What you can and cannot see, thankfully, is not my responsibility. All I can say is that the Yak 3 shot down many, many more German aircraft than it lost. It was still in production 7 years after the war ended. The Yak 3 was not clumsy, it was not slow, it was not undergunned. As far as I can see, the only thing it wasn't was English (or American).



> when the Russian Air Force needed so many other aircraft to fill in the holes in the Yak-3s repertoire.



Hmmm... in 1944 lets see the US had the P-51B/C, P-51D/H, P-40 (yes, still operating them right up to 1945), P-47, P-38, P-61 night fighter, P-70 (night fighter version of the A-20) [Army] plus the F4F-4 / FM2, F6F, and F4F / F2G Corsair, plus the Bearcat and F7F Tigercat waiting in the wings (Navy / USMC), the English had the Hurricane (still), Mosquito, Beaufighter, Gloster Meteor Jet, Tempest, Typhoon, and at least 6 operational variants of the Spitfire including .... wait for it.... specialized low altitude variants with clipped wings and modified superchargers with cropped impellers and so on...* Imagine that! 





So what exactly was your point again?*

So between USAAF, USMC, USN and RAF / Fleet Air Arm / Coastal Command, that's 8 American types plus 6 British (not counting night fighters or the F8F or the F7F- counting the Spit as only one fighter, and counting the P-51 only once) for ... 14 types.

In 1944 the Russians had the Yak 9, Yak 1B (a few left), Yak -3, La 5FN, La 7... and that's about it. By my count it's 5 types. What am I missing here?



> Also interesting the the number built after the war, perhaps as few as 737(?) compared to about 1400 of the Yak-9U and the continued development of the LA radial series.



That's 737 more than the Fw 190 or the Me 109 (not counting that odd looking thing made by Spain).

It's also 737 more than the P-47. I think any WW2 prop fighters still being produced after 1945 were probably pretty good.

S

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## Schweik (May 29, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I wish uncle Joe had told us he had the best plane of the war, we could have stopped sending Hurricanes and Spitfires.



This is disingenuous for the following reasons:

Implies I'm a fan of, or identify with "Uncle Joe" because I respect some Russian fighters.
Implies that I said the Yak was "*the* best plane of the war" as opposed to "*one of the* best [fighter] planes of the war*."

What do you say to people who like the Bf 109 or Fw 190?

Implies anyone was still sending Hurricanes in 1944.
Implies that the Russians _wanted_ Hurricanes in 1944.
Implies Spitfires were being used on the front line in 1944.
Answer me this - when the Normandie Niemen [as I'm sure everyone knows - French volunteer] squadron had choice of any aircraft they wanted, including Spits or every other Anglo-American type available, why did they choose the Yak 3?

By 1944 surviving Hurricanes in Russia were being used as "Meteorological Reconnaissance**", for artillery spotting, and as two-seat trainers.

* To be clear, by my estimation Yak 3 would be in the Top 5***.
**They would have used Po-2s for this but they were needed on the Front Line
***By the way, google top 5 fighters ww2 or similar and see what rises to the top...


S


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## wuzak (May 29, 2018)

Schweik said:


> and at least 6 operational variants of the Spitfire including .... wait for it.... specialized low altitude variants with clipped wings and modified superchargers with cropped impellers and so on...* Imagine that! *



What Spitfires would they be?
Mk.IX 
Mk.XIV
Mk.XI (PR)
Mk.X (PR)
Mk.V - doubtful that any ones with cropped impellers remained in service to 1944 since they were now new when they had the modified engines fitted and were in specific response to the Fw 190A in late 1941/early 1942. It was merely an emergency measure - an emergency that did not exist in 1944.
Mk.VIII - far east deployment

There was also the Mk.XVI, but that was basically the IX with a (Packard built) Merlin 266.

There would have been Mk.IXs with Merlin 63s (F.IX), Merlin 66s (LF.IX) and Merlin 70s (HF.IX). Mk.VIIIs were either Merlin 66 (LF.VIII) or Merlin 70 (HF.VIII). Not sure if any VIIIs were built with earlier engines. The engines could be easily changed from one to another, if it was so desired. And while the Merlin 66 was a lower altitude rated version of the 2 stage Merlin, its altitude was still higher than most contemporary engines (turbo engines not included).

The MK.XII was withdrawn from service in early 1944, replaced by XIVs.

Vs were probably still around, but decreasing in number and used in secondary roles, like ground attack.

But to summarise, the Spitfire force in 1944 was predominately Mk.IXs, with Mk.XIVs and PR versions.

PS: Clipped wings was to improve roll rate, not to do with low altitude performance.

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## Schweik (May 30, 2018)

What is y'alls deal with the Russians anyway? You do know Stalin is dead right? Putin doesn't "Win" if you admit the Yak was a good fighter.

Etc.



wuzak said:


> What Spitfires would they be?
> Mk.IX
> Mk.XIV
> Mk.XI (PR)
> ...



That is seven right there thanks for saving me the effort. Mk VIII wasn't just in the far east either. Mk V was still in fairly wide use by the way.

And of course these all came in various subvariants, such as with clipped or (god forbid) extended wings, or with various types of guns.



> Merlin 66s (LF.IX)
> 
> PS: Clipped wings was to improve roll rate,* not to do with low altitude performance*.



Actually, I believe the Merlin 66 engine was specifically rated for low altitude. And the *LF Mk VIII* and *LF MK IX* were low altitude Spit variants. From the wiki:

_"Many Spitfires had their elliptically "pointed" wingtips replaced by shorter, squared off fairings, this slightly improved maximum speed at *low altitude* and enhanced the roll rate. While many "LF" Spitfires (e.g. the LF.IX) had the "clipped" wings, a number did not. The true distinguishing feature of "LF" versions was the fitting of* low-altitude versions of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine*." 
_
Like the Merlin 66 in the LF Mk VIII and IX.

S


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## Greyman (May 30, 2018)

'Low altitude' being a relative term in the case of the Merlin 66.

Compared with the Merlin 61, the 66's critical altitudes were only about 5,000 feet less (11,000 and 22,000 feet), so it was still performing its best at 20,000 to 25,000.

EDIT: You wanna talk low altitude versions - look no further than the Merlin 45M. Regular Merlin 45 = 20,000 feet, Merlin 45M = 6,000 feet.

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## wuzak (May 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Actually, I believe the Merlin 66 engine was specifically rated for low altitude. And the *LF Mk VIII* and *LF MK IX* were low altitude Spit variants. From the wiki:



I don't believe that either the IX or the VIII typically had clipped wings, even in their LF version.

XIIs did, for the reason of roll rate, have clipped wings, the engine not giving good altitude performance.

Some Vs were as well, combined with the Merlin 45M or 50M modified engine.

Some XIVs had their wings clipped for structural reasons - there was some localised skin buckling on the wing, so it was suggested to clip the wings to lower the stresses, though Supermarine were confident it was not a problem.


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## wuzak (May 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> That is seven right there thanks for saving me the effort. Mk VIII wasn't just in the far east either. Mk V was still in fairly wide use by the way.



Firstly, I consider the IX and XVI to be the same aircraft, since the only difference was the source of the engine (the Packard built Merlin 266 was identical in performance to the the Merlin 66).

I would exclude PR versions, because they are the specialist photo-recon aircraft, and were identical in any case.

Which leaves you with models of Spitfire.

The VIII was not in use in the ETO. So 3 models there.

The XIV wasn't in use in the MTO or PTO, so a maximum of three models there.




Schweik said:


> And of course these all came in various subvariants, such as with clipped or (god forbid) extended wings, or with various types of guns.



The variants I described did not come with extended wing tips.

The Mk.VI (Spitfire V with Merlin 46 or 47 and extended wing tops) and Mk.VII (similar to Mk.VIII but with extended wing tips), but were not built in large numbers, because the high altitude threat did not materialise. The VI and VII had pressure cabins, the VIII did not.

Morgan and Shacklady show the HF VIII with extended wingtips, and suggest that the LF could be fitted with clipped wing tips. But I am not sure how many would have been - I believe most were produced with the standard wing.

In any case, with the wing tips could be removed and replaced with clipped or extended versions in the field. The wing tips were, essentially, bolt-on items.

Regarding armament, from the Mk.V the universal (C) wing was used. It could be fitted with 8 x 0.303", 2 x 20mm + 4 x 0.303" or 4 x 20mm. 

Few were fitted with 4 x 20mm, basically only those Vs converted from the II (and not having the universal wing) had the 8 x 0.303" combination.

The vast majority of Spitfires were, thus, armed with the 2 x 20mm + 4 x 0.303" combination.

At some point in 1944 the E-wing went into production. This was based on the C-wing, but had the 0.303" gun ports blocked off, with the 20mm cannon moving from the inner to outer cannon bay, with the inner cannon bay taken up by the 0.5" Browning.

Presumably the C-wing could have used the 2 x 0.50" + 2 x 20mm combination, and the E-wing could have used the 4 x 20mm combination. But neither of these seem to have occurred.

It may have been possible for the gun configuration to be changed in the field, like was done for the P-40 with guns being yanked to give the plane a chance*.


* Some Spitfires (Vs, IIRC) had all but 2 or 4 0.303" mgs taken out, as well as other weight saving measures, in order to make high altitude interceptions early in the war.


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## Stig1207 (May 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> What you can and cannot see, thankfully, is not my responsibility. All I can say is that the Yak 3 shot down many, many more German aircraft than it lost.



So what are the numbers and the sources ?


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## Vincenzo (May 30, 2018)

Near 80 operational RAF squadrons operated the Spit V in 1944, not all were fighter squadrons and most operate it for few months but almost until the spring was a main aircraft of RAF, more that a half dozen operate with it also in '45

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## pbehn (May 30, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> It is done both at the design stage of the aircraft _and_ the design stage of the factories to produce it. A good design will use fewer parts (and fasteners) and go together in major sub-assemblies but good tooling (jigs/fixtures/platforms and short distances from parts supply to work station) can help a lot.
> A lot of early US aircraft production was in less than ideal conditions.
> View attachment 495460
> 
> ...


I remember seeing sub assemblies of the P-51 being assembled then transported on a sort of monorail system, that takes a lot of forward thinking and spending. For an order of 300 planes I think you could assemble all planes in the factory without having a line at all, as in your pic of the P-40.


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## pbehn (May 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> This is disingenuous for the following reasons:
> 
> Implies I'm a fan of, or identify with "Uncle Joe" because I respect some Russian fighters.
> Implies that I said the Yak was "*the* best plane of the war" as opposed to "*one of the* best [fighter] planes of the war*."
> ...


I was just making a point, whatever a Hurricanes strengths or weaknesses were it trumped everything on the Allied side by being available in numbers in 1940. Please check which was the most numerous model of Spitfire sent to Russia.

From wiki
The Soviet Union was then supplied with some 1,200 Mk.IXs from 1943. Soviet pilots liked them but they did not suit Soviet combat tactics and the rough conditions at the forward airfields close to the front lines. Spitfires Mk. IXs were therefore assigned to air defence units, using the high altitude performance to intercept and pursue German bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. By 1944, the Spitfire IX was the main fighter used in this role and would remain so until 1947. unquote

However I believe these were not MK IX but the Packard engined MK XVI .


For all the macho discussions of performance here, a huge number of Spitfire MK XIVs were produced in the armed recon version. This is because intelligence wins battles and conflicts. If there was one area where the allies completely trumped Nazi Germany it was intelligence of which photo recon was a major part, the allies were prepared to use large numbers of their best aircraft for it, Spitfire, Mosquito and P-51. By the reverse, preventing enemy recon is also vital when on the offensive, as above this was done by Spitfires in Russia, it doesn't make many kills of have dramatic exchanges but is vital. The allies managed to maintain an almost complete blackout of the UK in 1944, that was vital for D-Day. also do not disparage "met recon", in the early days of the allied bomber offensive many lives were lost and raids executed completely ineffectively because of poor "met-recon" and the D-Day landings hinged on a weather window that was known because of good "met-recon"


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## Juha2 (May 30, 2018)

As Vinzenzo wrote in the message #856, Spit Mk Vs were still in use in 1944, and at least 64 and 402 Sqns flew ops with Vbs on D-Day and 234, 345, 350, 501 and 611 Sqns with LF Mk Vbs. And Kingaby got his last kill while flying a LF V over Normandy during the summer of 44.

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## wuzak (May 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Hmmm... in 1944 lets see the US had the P-51B/C, P-51D/H, P-40 (yes, still operating them right up to 1945), P-47, P-38, P-61 night fighter, P-70 (night fighter version of the A-20) [Army] plus the F4F-4 / FM2, F6F, and F4F / F2G Corsair, plus the Bearcat and F7F Tigercat waiting in the wings (Navy / USMC), the English had the Hurricane (still), Mosquito, Beaufighter, Gloster Meteor Jet, Tempest, Typhoon, and at least 6 operational variants of the Spitfire including .... wait for it.... specialized low altitude variants with clipped wings and modified superchargers with cropped impellers and so on...* Imagine that! *



I think you meant P-51D/K - H was a different model, whereas the K was the same model produced in another factory.

F8F didn't happen in 1944.
F7F didn't happen in 1944.

The Navy planes were, mainly, for aircraft carriers - which the Soviets did not have, so didn't need that class of aircraft.

When it went operational, there were only 5 squadrons on P-70s. Most of these changed to P-61s or Beaufighters before going into action. P-70s saw a little action in the PTO, but not for very long before being replaced by the P-61.

The Mosquito and Beaufighter performed roles other than night fighting - bombing, attack, PR, etc.

The Meteor was Britain's first jet service aircraft, and was used only over Britain in 1944.

The Typhoon and Tempest would be the closes British aircraft to a specialist low altitude fighter, and much of the time they operated as fighter-bombers.

I had too look back to see what this was all about....

The Allies did not need to fill the gaps with their variety of aircraft, but rather replacement aircraft arrived where they were needed to most, so Spitfire V squadrons took time to replace with IXs - as there were so many of them.

P-51D/K replaced P-51B/C over a period of months, or more.

P-40s in key regions were replaced with P-51s or P-47s.

New versions of P-38s replaced old versions, etc.

PS: How many P-40 variants were still in use in 1944?

Es? Fs? Ks? Ns? Ms?


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## Vincenzo (May 30, 2018)

Adding i can write, excluding errors, there were 30 RAF squadrons with V in 6/44
26, 32, 63, 64, 73, 87, 118, 130, 185, 208, 234, 249, 253, 303, 310, 318, 326, 335, 336, 345, 350, 352, 402, 452, 457, 501, 504, 611, 615, 1435

p.s. add 327th

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## Shortround6 (May 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> There is absolutely no contradiction between those two statements. You are just having a failure of imagination. The Spitfire lacked the range to make a good fighter in the Pacific, and lacked a host of qualities necessary on the Russian front, but it too was obviously one of the best fighters of the war - (or maybe you could say it was 'several of the best fighter(s) of the war').



Well, I seem to suffer from either a failure of imagination or too much. You can have fighters that are good (very good) at one or two particular jobs and you can have fighters that good at multiple jobs and you can have fighters that are good or very good at most ever job they are called upon to do. 
Which ones should be considered _great_? The one or two trick ponies or the all rounders? 





> How about 'fighters' that couldn't fly 600 miles? Every fighter design had it's limitations. Do you even have a point?



The MK VIII could fly 640 miles and carry a 500lb half way. Had the British needed planes that could fly 600 miles it was quite easy to get the Spitfire to do it. 
It is a lot harder to get a Yak-3 to do it because of the small wing, (where to put the fuel and lift) and with the low powered engine (comparatively speaking) performance takes a bigger hit with every pound of weight. 





> What percentage of combat on the Russian Front was taking place at 20,000 feet?
> Which Air Force specifically? The Martian Air Force? What you seem to have a tough time grasping is that the quality of a fighter is directly related to it's degree of success *Where. It. Was. Fighting. *Not it's degree of success in calculations you make on the back of an envelope, or in WarThunder, or in your imagination.



We are back to considering a plane "*GREAT*" if it excels in one small area of the sky?
BTW I have never played WarThunder ore even looked at the website except when it comes up in a search but will plead guilty to the back of the envelope calculations which you seem to despise. They help explain WHY some aircraft behaved the way they did or got the results they did, they do leave out the human factor. 

I like to play the "swap" game. That is to say, if you want to consider a plane truly great on the world stage (and not just best plane on Eastern front or Med or....) try the mental exercise of swapping it into another airforce to fly other missions. But I guess I will have to stop doing that because I lack imagination. 

I also have a tough time reconciling the positions that the P-51 wasn't truly great because it came in after the "tipping point" and yet was not only in combat but shooting down (or destroying on the ground) hundreds of German aircraft for 5-6 months before the Yak-3 showed up. 




> Coulda woulda shoulda. If their factory hadn't been bombed the Yak 3 would have been flying in 1943 and who knows the outcome on the war.
> Yes, they should have - that is exactly the idea behind the Yak 3 - or the Spit for example. Specialization to excel at a particular task (in a specific environment)




Aircraft designers and their planes are often at the mercy of the engine designers (and fuel supply) what you can do with a 1000hp engine is a lot different than what you can do with a 1500hp engine. 
The Spit was designed to be a fighter (and a heavily armed one for it's day) using a 1000hp class engine and to be able to operate at any practical altitude in the mid to late 30s. When it was designed it had comparable range to most (but not all) other fighters in the world. 

The Russian designers were skilled and imaginative but they were hindered by being stuck for the duration of the war with a V-12 engine that barely exceeded the capability of a Merlin III from 1940. If you want world class speed and climb in 1943-44 with such an engine you do what the Russians did. You limit the size of the plane, you limit the fuel load and you limit the armament. The last was saved from being a disaster by the Russian guns being very light for their power. 
The guns didn't have the service life of western guns but they made an effective package. 
Some countries didn't have the luxury of knowing that all the planes they built would be used on one front or in one campaign with rather favorable operating conditions (winter aside) like no long over water flights. There is also a difference between making a general purpose airframe that can be modified for different purposes and making airframes that are tailored to a specific operating purpose/mission. 
The Germans could not put a small, crappy but low power drain supercharger in a 109 because they didn't know if a particular 109 was going to the eastern front or the western front or to Italy. Not without screwing up their logistics worse than they were. 




> Shortround- who are you arguing with here? What makes you think I'm taking that statement any way at all? I don't remember talking about a Yak 1M - do you mean the Yak 9M or the Yak 3?


The Yak-1m was the prototype small Yak flown in Feb/March of 1943. It is where a lot of the performance numbers come from. Others come from the 2nd prototype, sometimes known as the Yak-1M 'doubler'. Mass production was authorized in Oct 1943 as the Yak-3. First production plane completed March of 1944. 

What I am getting at is that a lot of statements are made about the Yak-3 that don't hold up. The same can be said for many other aircraft. 





> What you can and cannot see, thankfully, is not my responsibility. All I can say is that the Yak 3 shot down many, many more German aircraft than it lost. It was still in production 7 years after the war ended. The Yak 3 was not clumsy, it was not slow, it was not undergunned. As far as I can see, the only thing it wasn't was English (or American).



It wasn't clumsy and it wasn't slow, I never said it was. Undergunned is debatable for a 1944 aircraft. The 109 was undergunned in 1944 however wonderful a single MG 151 and a pair of MG 131s were in 1943 (sarcasm). 





> Hmmm... in 1944 lets see the US had the P-51B/C, P-51D/H, P-40 (yes, still operating them right up to 1945), P-47, P-38, P-61 night fighter, P-70 (night fighter version of the A-20) [Army] plus the F4F-4 / FM2, F6F, and F4F / F2G Corsair, plus the Bearcat and F7F Tigercat waiting in the wings (Navy / USMC), the English had the Hurricane (still), Mosquito, Beaufighter, Gloster Meteor Jet, Tempest, Typhoon, and at least 6 operational variants of the Spitfire including .... wait
> ... 14 types.
> 
> In 1944 the Russians had the Yak 9, Yak 1B (a few left), Yak -3, La 5FN, La 7... and that's about it. By my count it's 5 types. What am I missing here?



Part of what you are missing is that some of those aircraft were functionally interchangeable. Bomber escort could be done P-51B/C, P-51D/H, P-47, P-38, granted some were better than others. They could also undertake ground attack missions with the SAME aircraft. Required a bit different training but didn't require a different airplane like the IL-2. Nice job trying to confuse things with carrier based aircraft. Also nice job including the P-70.
also nice job of lumping all the Yak-9s together. 4 or more different Yak-9s being in use? 





> That's 737 more than the Fw 190 or the Me 109 (not counting that odd looking thing made by Spain).
> 
> It's also 737 more than the P-47. I think any WW2 prop fighters still being produced after 1945 were probably pretty good.


War ended for the Germans which put an end to aircraft production. For the P-47, war ended in Aug 1945, P-47 production stopped in Dec 1945. 
US had thousands of P-47s in stock and they continued in use until at least the Korean war (not used there) if not after in the Air National Guard. 
What nations used for WW II aircraft after WW II has a lot more to do with money and availability than how good a particular aircraft was.
What could they get cheap (or for free) and how much money they had to spend and who their likely opponent/s were likely to be.


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## wuzak (May 30, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> War ended for the Germans which put an end to aircraft production. For the P-47, war ended in Aug 1945, P-47 production stopped in Dec 1945.
> US had thousands of P-47s in stock and they continued in use until at least the Korean war (not used there) if not after in the Air National Guard.
> What nations used for WW II aircraft after WW II has a lot more to do with money and availability than how good a particular aircraft was.
> What could they get cheap (or for free) and how much money they had to spend and who their likely opponent/s were likely to be.



Not only that, but the USAAF, in particular, and the RAF were rapidly transitioning to jet aircraft after WW2.

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## Schweik (May 30, 2018)

wuzak said:


> F8F didn't happen in 1944.
> F7F didn't happen in 1944.



If you are going to be pedantic, at least read what you are replying to. I said "waiting in the wings". F8F first flight was August 1944, F7F first flight November 1943. I also didn't count the night fighters by the way.



> The Navy planes were, mainly, for aircraft carriers - which the Soviets did not have, so didn't need that class of aircraft.



I don't see why that matters even if it was true but
... it's not true, obviously. F4Us and F4Fs were used quite a bit from land. F4Us were in wide use by the USMC and some land based USN squadrons, plus replacing P-40s for the New Zealanders in 1944.
Like the Brewster Buffalo in Finnish hands, or even the Gladiator on Malta, the 'Carrier aircraft' designation didn't necessarily affect a given fighters capabilities from a land base. Certainly not with the Corsair. (Maybe Fairey Fulmar...)


> When it went operational, there were only 5 squadrons on P-70s. Most of these changed to P-61s or Beaufighters before going into action. P-70s saw a little action in the PTO, but not for very long before being replaced by the P-61.



So what? I didn't even count night fighters anyway. I just mentioned them to make a point.



> The Mosquito and Beaufighter performed roles other than night fighting - bombing, attack, PR, etc.



So did every other fighter in 1944.



> The Meteor was Britain's first jet service aircraft, and was used only over Britain in 1944.



As far as I know, Yaks were only used over Russia and Eastern Europe in 1944...



> The Typhoon and Tempest would be the closes British aircraft to a specialist low altitude fighter, and much of the time they operated as fighter-bombers.



Again, so did every Soviet fighter.



> The Allies did not need to fill the gaps with their variety of aircraft, but rather replacement aircraft arrived where they were needed to most, so Spitfire V squadrons took time to replace with IXs - as there were so many of them.



Again, why would you think this was unique? Every air force in the world was replacing older types with newer types (and also introducing more specialized types like the Spit IX LF and so on)




> PS: How many P-40 variants were still in use in 1944?
> 
> Es? Fs? Ks? Ns? Ms?



What does that have to do with anything? The answer is all of the above plus Ls.

S


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## Shortround6 (May 30, 2018)

The US and the British continued to build piston planes but they were not, for the most part, planes that had been in production in the middle of 1944.
A few contracts were run out to use up some parts but 1946/47 production used engines not available in 1944/45. Compare F4U-5 to F4U-1D for example. 


I would note that the Russians spent a lot of time trying to develop high altitude engines and fighters but were hampered by both fuel and materials, so that few made it into service. German capability to put high flying aircraft (bombers and recon planes) over Russian cities, production centers, transport hubs declined as the war went on making the production of high flying interceptors less of a priority. Not that the Russians didn't want their own in order to reduce dependency on the west. Let's not mention the the high altitude interceptors provided under lend lease. 
Or count lend lease aircraft in the types operated by the Russians or the operational flexibility they gave them.


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## Schweik (May 30, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The US and the British continued to build piston planes but they were not, for the most part, planes that had been in production in the middle of 1944.
> A few contracts were run out to use up some parts but 1946/47 production used engines not available in 1944/45. Compare F4U-5 to F4U-1D for example.
> 
> I would note that the Russians spent a lot of time trying to develop high altitude engines and fighters but were hampered by both fuel and materials, so that few made it into service. German capability to put high flying aircraft (bombers and recon planes) over Russian cities, production centers, transport hubs declined as the war went on making the production of high flying interceptors less of a priority. Not that the Russians didn't want their own in order to reduce dependency on the west. Let's not mention the the high altitude interceptors provided under lend lease.
> Or count lend lease aircraft in the types operated by the Russians or the operational flexibility they gave them.



A couple of fairly obvious points.

The Yak 3 was a low altitude, short range air superiority fighter variant of the larger Yak family. It still had a ceiling of 35,000 feet so it wasn't quite the submarine some people imply, and it was also used for ground attack so it's not the 'special snowflake' others imply either. But it was specialized, somewhat for that specific job - shoot down German fighters over the Front. But in the "Yak Family" they also had Yak 1B, Yak 7B, Yak 9K (CAS), Yak 9D (long range), Yak 9U (high speed - 435 mph - / high altitude) etc.

Though the Soviets did have some problems initially developing engines in the early parts of the war, the narrative or Trope that they were still using 1100 hp Hispano Suiza variants even late in the war is false. The VK 107 in the Yak-9U may have had it's serious issues but it generated 1,600 hp. Depending on the variant, the Shvestov ASh-82 (as seen on the La 5) generated 1,850 hp at Sea level and 1,450 at 15,000 feet.

Needless to say all countries faced problems with their engines. The superb merlin had the infamous carbeurator flood cutout with negative G. The Allison V-1710 had the infamous altitude performance ceiling limitations we have discussed so much in here. Even the DB engines had some issues.

You may have "problems" understanding how the Yak 3 performed as it did, as you have mentioned before many times with many other aircraft in threads here that I have been part of, but this really doesn't mean anything. If you really think the numbers are off on several of the famous aircraft that we discuss in here then write a book and source your references. In the mean time Occam's Razor tells me it's far more likely that you are simply leaving something out in your calculations. 

Your repeatedly demonstrated lack of imagination in discussions like this in several threads makes this seem much more likely to me. If you start with an assumption and try to find data to fit, you are always going to be a bit perplexed whenever you circle back around to the Historical record and compare your theories to it.

Recon is important, I agree. The Soviets had their own high altitude planes starting with the MiG 3 (which performed well at high altitude even though it lacked capability down low) and high alt versions of the Pe-2R / Pe-3. So it's not like they couldn't manage it. And sure long range recon was an important thing, high flying Ju 86P's, Fw 189s were a problem for the allies in general. Luckily for the Russians they did not have to contend with Ki-46 or Mosquitoes. The Germans certainly went out of their way to shoot down Tac-R planes too, often successfully. But recon was not the same level of importance to the overall war effort that front line fighters were, if only because recon planes often lived or died based on the fighters escorting or chasing them.

The Spitfire came in to the Russian Front originally in the form of the Spit V in 1943. The Soviets were careful with it and did a work-up, but it just didn't perform that well during a period of intensive air combat. The Spit IX which came later was assigned to PVO units where it's main mission was not, in fact, to intercept German Ju-86P or Fw 189s, but rather to stop the occasional Operational level large scale German bombing raid of Ju 88s, He 111s and so on, which had done some serious damage on a few occasions to Soviet production and infrastructure assets in 1941-1943. So I think you are barking up the wrong tree there. The Spit IX was given the job of protecting C3I and factories and leadership. Just like later model P-40s and MiG 3s earlier in the war.

The long and short of it is, the Spit just didn't match the needs of the Theater well enough to be used on the Front Line. Of course they found a use for it, and no doubt an important one, but that can be said of many aircraft in many Theaters that didn't "make the team" for the front line Air Superiority contest. My point being that while clearly a great fighter, the merits of the Spitfire were not universally suited to all Theaters.

None of what I am saying is controversial, I am just pointing out that the quality of a given aircraft in WW2 (to be specific) is a *combination *of the traits of the aircraft with the conditions in the Theater and the training and maintenance. Suggesting that the Yak 3 was one of the best fighters of the war is also not controversial in general, in spite of what some people in this forum might think.

By the way, to correct yet another (accidental or otherwise) mischaracterization of what I actually said, I never suggested the P-51 wasn't a great fighter, I just said it wasn't my personal favorite because it came rather late. The same can indeed be said for the Yak 3, Ta-152 or Griffin Engined Spitfires. I like the early to mid-war fighters for the most part which is just a matter of personal preference. But the P-51 is without a doubt one of the best fighters of WW2.

My personal top 10 WW2 "Day Fighter" list, for the record:

A6M Zero
Spitfire (Early to mid war variants)

Yak family (Yak 1, 7, 9 and 3)
F4U Corsair

Fw 190A

La 5 family (5, 5 FN, and 7)
Bf 109 (Early to mid-war variants)

P-51 B,C,D

F4F
Ki-43 II
Each plane on that list makes the cut for different reasons and I freely admit - this is not a scientific list (how could it be). It's just my opinion. And unlike perhaps some people *I can distinguish between facts and my own personal preferences.*

In a top 20 list I'd add the Italian '5 Series' fighters (Reggianne, Macchi, and Fiat), the P-47, P-38, P-40, P-36, MC 202 & 200, Hurricane, Typhoon, Beaufighter, D.520 and Ki-61. Roughly in that order.

S


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## Milosh (May 30, 2018)

Is May 10, 1942 late?


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## Schweik (May 30, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Is May 10, 1942 late?



If you are referring to the P-51, I believe the 'A' (Alllison engined / A-36 / Mustang I & II) versions were not really used as a fighter but rather as recon (with some fighter overlap) and as a dive bomber (with some fighter overlap). Why that is I'm not sure, on paper it looks like it would be a good fighter even with the Allison engine. I asked this question before in fact in this forum, maybe even earlier in this thread I think. But I don't think I got a very convincing answer.

But as a fighter, it was not until the Merlin engine was added that it came into it's own. This was done in late 1942 experimentally, but from what I gather production started in Summer 1943 and these planes started hitting operational units in Winter of 1943. So that is on the edge of being late. Still in the game but a little late.

The great conquests of the Mustang were later in 1944, with the D and later versions. And that is definitely late. Personally I like the B / C and Mustang III versions best. But the D and K and H are the ones that did the real damage. They just wrecked a Luftwaffe (and IJN and IJA air force) which were already at least partly broken in my opinion. Admittedly - just my opinion.

S


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## pbehn (May 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> If you are referring to the P-51, I believe the 'A' (Alllison engined / A-36 / Mustang I & II) versions were not really used as a fighter but rather as recon (with some fighter overlap) and as a dive bomber (with some fighter overlap). Why that is I'm not sure, on paper it looks like it would be a good fighter even with the Allison engine. I asked this question before in fact in this forum, maybe even earlier in this thread I think. But I don't think I got a very convincing answer.
> 
> But as a fighter, it was not until the Merlin engine was added that it came into it's own. This was done in late 1942 experimentally, but from what I gather production started in Summer 1943 and these planes started hitting operational units in Winter of 1943. So that is on the edge of being late. Still in the game but a little late.
> 
> ...


The Allison engine Mustang was a good fighter, the problem was getting anything to fight with it.


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## fubar57 (May 30, 2018)

The P-51H did not see active service in WW2

North American P-51H Mustang

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## Schweik (May 30, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The Allison engine Mustang was a good fighter, the problem was getting anything to fight with it.



In 1943? Sorry I don't buy that. Still plenty of fighting going on including where they were deploying them like in Italy.

S

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## Milosh (May 30, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The Allison engine Mustang was a good fighter, the problem was getting anything to fight with it.



Tactical reports from RAF army cooperation units were laudatory. The Mustang I and IAs were able to take an incredible amount of battle damage. The long range of the Mustang made it an excellent tactical reconnaissance aircraft and its heavy armament made it effective against most ground targets. In 18 months of operation 200 locomotives and 200 barges were destroyed or severely damaged, and an undetermined number of enemy aircraft were destroyed on the ground. This was accomplished at the expense of only one Mustang being shot down by enemy fighters, five lost to flak, and two vanishing with no record of their fate. *At low altitudes, the Mustang was faster than either the Bf 109 or the Fw 190. At sea level, the Mustang could run away from any enemy aircraft.* The flaps were very useful in combat to reduce the turning radius.

Mustang Is and IAs served with the RAF up until 1944. It knew few equals in the role of low-altitude interdiction and reconnaissance.


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## Shortround6 (May 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> A couple of fairly obvious points.
> 
> The Yak 3 was a low altitude, short range air superiority fighter variant of the larger Yak family. It still had a ceiling of 35,000 feet so it wasn't quite the submarine some people imply, and it was also used for ground attack so it's not the 'special snowflake' others imply either. But it was specialized, somewhat for that specific job - shoot down German fighters over the Front. But in the "Yak Family" they also had Yak 1B, Yak 7B, Yak 9K (CAS), Yak 9D (long range), Yak 9U (high speed - 435 mph - / high altitude) etc.
> 
> ...



My "Occam's razor" tells me that if something seems to be too good to be true, then it probably is. Like 390 mph early P-39s. The Bell factory certainly used a lot of imagination (and elbow grease to apply 20 coats of paint hand sanded between each coat to help get that speed).

I also like facts to line up. Not stretches of imagination like "t*he narrative or Trope that they were still using 1100 hp Hispano Suiza variants even late in the war is false. The VK 107 in the Yak-9U may have had it's serious issues but it generated 1,600 hp.*"

True, they weren't using 1100HP Hispanos but then they weren't using *VK 107s *or even VK 106s in the majority of the Yaks either. Leaving the M-82s to the La-5/7s that leaves either _modified _Hispanos or rubber bands. Since the last is hardly practical we are left with the _modified _Hispanos. True they weren't making 1100hp, they were rated for 1280-1300 (?). the question is at what altitude?
I would note that My comparison to the Merlin III was a bit of a trick, The Merlin III in 1940 was rated at 1310hp at

Recon is important, I agree. The Soviets had their own high altitude recon planes starting with the MiG 3 (which performed well at high altitude even though it lacked capability down low). So it's not like they couldn't manage it. And sure long range recon was an important thing, high flying Ju 86P's, Fw 189s were a problem for the allies in general. Luckily for the Russians they did not have to contend with Ki-46 or Mosquitoes. The Germans certainly went out of their way to shoot down Tac-R planes too, often successfully. But recon was not the same level of importance to the overall war effort that front line fighters were, if only because recon planes often lived or died based on the fighters escorting or chasing them.

The Spitfire came in to the Russian Front originally in the form of the Spit V in 1943. The Soviets were careful with it and did a work-up, but it just didn't perform that well during a period of intensive air combat. The Spit IX which came later was assigned to PVO units where it's main mission was not, in fact, to intercept German Ju-86P or Fw 189s, but rather to stop the occasional Operational level large scale German bombing raid of Ju 88s, He 111s and so on, which had done some serious damage on a few occasions to Soviet production and infrastructure assets in 1941-1943. So I think you are barking up the wrong tree there. The Spit IX was given the job of protecting C3I and factories and leadership. Just like later model P-40s and MiG 3s earlier in the war.

The long and short of it is, the Spit just didn't match the needs of the Theater well enough to be used on the Front Line. Of course they found a use for it, and no doubt an important one, but that can be said of many aircraft in many Theaters that didn't "make the team" for the front line Air Superiority contest. My point being that while clearly a great fighter, the merits of the Spitfire were not universally suited to all Theaters.

None of what I am saying is controversial, I am just pointing out that the quality of a given aircraft in WW2 (to be specific) is a *combination *of the traits of the aircraft with the conditions in the Theater and the training and maintenance. Suggesting that the Yak 3 was one of the best fighters of the war is also not controversial in general, in spite of what some people in this forum might think.

By the way, to correct yet another (accidental or otherwise) mischaracterization of what I actually said, I never suggested the P-51 wasn't a great fighter, I just said it wasn't my personal favorite because it came rather late. The same can indeed be said for the Yak 3, Ta-152 or Griffin Engined Spitfires. I like the early to mid-war fighters for the most part which is just a matter of personal preference. But the P-51 is without a doubt one of the best fighters of WW2.

My personal top 10 WW2 "Day Fighter" list, for the record:

A6M Zero
Spitfire (Early to mid war variants)

Yak family (Yak 1, 7, 9 and 3)
F4U Corsair

Fw 190A

La 5 family (5, 5 FN, and 7)
Bf 109 (Early to mid-war variants)

P-51 B,C,D

F4F
Ki-43 II
Each plane on that list makes the cut for different reasons and I freely admit - this is not a scientific list (how could it be). It's just my opinion. And unlike perhaps some people *I can distinguish between facts and my own personal preferences.*

In a top 20 list I'd add the Italian '5 Series' fighters (Reggianne, Macchi, and Fiat), the P-47, P-38, P-40, P-36, MC 202 & 200, Hurricane, Typhoon, Beaufighter, D.520 and Ki-61. Roughly in that order.

S[/QUOTE]


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## pbehn (May 30, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Tactical reports from RAF army cooperation units were laudatory. The Mustang I and IAs were able to take an incredible amount of battle damage. The long range of the Mustang made it an excellent tactical reconnaissance aircraft and its heavy armament made it effective against most ground targets. In 18 months of operation 200 locomotives and 200 barges were destroyed or severely damaged, and an undetermined number of enemy aircraft were destroyed on the ground. This was accomplished at the expense of only one Mustang being shot down by enemy fighters, five lost to flak, and two vanishing with no record of their fate. *At low altitudes, the Mustang was faster than either the Bf 109 or the Fw 190. At sea level, the Mustang could run away from any enemy aircraft.* The flaps were very useful in combat to reduce the turning radius.
> 
> Mustang Is and IAs served with the RAF up until 1944. It knew few equals in the role of low-altitude interdiction and reconnaissance.


I agree completely Milosh, my point was how much did Germany put into stopping them. They weren't much bothered about French locos.


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## Shortround6 (May 30, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Mustang Is and IAs served with the RAF up until 1944. It knew few equals in the role of low-altitude interdiction and reconnaissance.



As of Jan 1943 Allison powered Mustangs served in 15 different RAF squadrons, at their peak they served in 21 squadrons. 

In June of 1944 5 RAF squadrons still used Allison Mustangs and two squadrons were still operating them until V-E day. 

That is an awful lot of recconasance. 

Source AHT. Other sources differ. 
Squadrons that were supposed to have used Mustang I, Ia and IIs were no, 2, 4, 16, 26, 63, 168, 169, 170, 171, 225, 231, 239, 241, 268, 285, 309, 400, 414, 430, 516 and 613.


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## ykickamoocow (May 30, 2018)

With determining the most overrated aircraft of WW2 how much do we need to take into account that in the latter half of the war the Western Allies were not really fighting the cream of the Luftwaffe? I mean most of the Luftwaffe was heavily engaged in Eastern Europe and you can't even compare the training a new Luftwaffe pilot received in 1943 and onwards compared to the training they got in 1939 and 1940. Would it be fair to say that the new Luftwaffe pilots in 43 onwards were no where near as well trained as the pilots from 4 years earlier?

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## swampyankee (May 30, 2018)

ykickamoocow said:


> With determining the most overrated aircraft of WW2 how much do we need to take into account that in the latter half of the war the Western Allies were not really fighting the cream of the Luftwaffe? I mean most of the Luftwaffe was heavily engaged in Eastern Europe and you can't even compare the training a new Luftwaffe pilot received in 1943 and onwards compared to the training they got in 1939 and 1940. Would it be fair to say that the new Luftwaffe pilots in 43 onwards were no where near as well trained as the pilots from 4 years earlier?



Should we then also take into account that the _Luftwaffe_ for the first year or so of the was frequently fighting unprepared opponents?

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## ykickamoocow (May 30, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Should we then also take into account that the _Luftwaffe_ for the first year or so of the was frequently fighting unprepared opponents?



To be honest I think we should. To me the Luftwaffe was never stronger than the start of the Battle of Britain and then the start of Operation Barbarossa. Once 1942 came along the Luftwaffe were always in a slow decline to the point where by mid 1944 the odds of a Western Allies fighter craft being shot down by German fighter craft was quite low, at least compared to a few years earlier. It is very easy to make the late WW2 fighter aircraft look really strong simply because they had almost no opposition.

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## wuzak (May 30, 2018)

Schweik said:


> If you are going to be pedantic, at least read what you are replying to. I said "waiting in the wings". F8F first flight was August 1944, F7F first flight November 1943. I also didn't count the night fighters by the way.



I did realise that after I had posted, sorry.

Yes, they flew during or before 1944, but were not in service in 1944.




Schweik said:


> I don't see why that matters even if it was true but
> ... it's not true, obviously. F4Us and F4Fs were used quite a bit from land. F4Us were in wide use by the USMC and some land based USN squadrons, plus replacing P-40s for the New Zealanders in 1944.
> Like the Brewster Buffalo in Finnish hands, or even the Gladiator on Malta, the 'Carrier aircraft' designation didn't necessarily affect a given fighters capabilities from a land base. Certainly not with the Corsair. (Maybe Fairey Fulmar...)



The point about the navy fighters were that they were designed to be used aboard carriers. A specialist role that land based fighters could not, generally, succeed at.

Yes, navy fighters were used from the land, but the fact that they were designed for carrier use explains their existence.




Schweik said:


> So what? I didn't even count night fighters anyway. I just mentioned them to make a point.



I honestly don't know what the point you are trying to make is?




Schweik said:


> So did every other fighter in 1944.



Not nearly to the same extent.




Schweik said:


> As far as I know, Yaks were only used over Russia and Eastern Europe in 1944...



Yes, but they engaged enemy aircraft.

Meteors shot down V-1s, but not much else. They really didn't go into battle.




Schweik said:


> Again, why would you think this was unique? Every air force in the world was replacing older types with newer types (and also introducing more specialized types like the Spit IX LF and so on)



I didn't say it was unique.

You suggested that the Allies were filling gaps with the multiplicity of types. I disagree with that.




Schweik said:


> What does that have to do with anything? The answer is all of the above plus Ls.



What does the number of types and sub-types of Spitfires have to do with anything?


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## Schweik (May 30, 2018)

ykickamoocow said:


> With determining the most overrated aircraft of WW2 how much do we need to take into account that in the latter half of the war the Western Allies were not really fighting the cream of the Luftwaffe? I mean most of the Luftwaffe was heavily engaged in Eastern Europe and you can't even compare the training a new Luftwaffe pilot received in 1943 and onwards compared to the training they got in 1939 and 1940. Would it be fair to say that the new Luftwaffe pilots in 43 onwards were no where near as well trained as the pilots from 4 years earlier?




That is a fair point, but the converse is also true. When considering the merits of German fighters (and the glory of the experten) it does bear considering that most of the Allied pilots they faced in 1940-1942 were hastily trained and flying aircraft which were either new and flawed designs still being debugged or obsolescent types- scrambling to defend their bases from an (often numerically) overwhelming onslaught. Probably at least half the German victories on the Russian Front in the first two years were against (I-15 / 153 series) biplanes and open-cockpit 30's era (I-16 series) fighter planes. Not to speak of parasol winged P-11s, obsolescent Morraine 406s and buggy Bloch 152s and so forth.

Maybe it all comes out in the wash I don't know, but I think it's interesting how much people praise the German planes and pilots to the skies for steamrolling over the ill prepared air forces of countries that didn't expect to be attacked in the early years of the war. If anything the most impressive thing is how the British, Russians and Americans all rallied fairly quickly and stood up to the aggression they faced.

That is, for me, why the _middle_ (say June 1942 - June 1943) is the most interesting part of the Air War. You still have a lot of very experienced and well trained Axis (German, Italian and Japanese) pilots, but by this point the Allies also have some good / experienced / adequately trained pilots and have weeded out the worst designs and substantially improved the rest.

S

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## Schweik (May 30, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The point about the navy fighters were that they were designed to be used aboard carriers. A specialist role that land based fighters could not, generally, succeed at. Yes, navy fighters were used from the land, but the fact that they were designed for carrier use explains their existence.



Navy fighter is just another specialization (the Russians had a naval air force too though no aircraft carriers).



> Not nearly to the same extent.



Soviet fighters were heavily engaged in ground attack. They almost all had cannon by 1942 and were carrying rockets from the beginning of the war (unlike Anglo-American types).



> Meteors shot down V-1s, but not much else. They really didn't go into battle.



They were used for defense only, much like the Spit IX's in Soviet service.



> I didn't say it was unique.
> 
> You suggested that the Allies were filling gaps with the multiplicity of types. I disagree with that.



Nope. Shortround dismissed the Yak 3 as being an overspecialized soviet type and claimed the Soviets had to fill all sorts of gaps with a wide variety of types. I pointed out, correctly, that the Americans and English both fielded more types of fighter aircraft than the Soviets (I didn't even include the English naval fighters but I should - Gladiator, Fulmar and Firefly that's 3 more). So the argument is invalid and in fact, ridiculous.

Not that I'm saying having specialized fighters is bad. Yak 3 was an effective low altitude fighter among the broader Yak family, so was the clipped winged Spit VIII LF, Spit IX LF, LF MK XVI, and earlier Merlin 45, 50, and 55 variants like the Spit LF Mk V. etc.

And the Allison engined P-51 too.

Nor by the way do I think it was a mistake of the Soviets to build a dedicated ground attack aircraft in the Sturmovik as Shortround implied. That is ridiculous. The Sturmovik was extremely effective in the long run and destroyed a whole lot of German tanks.

I do think they should have put defensive guns on it earlier, but I think it was a sound design.

Hurricane IID, HS 129, Stuka Ju-87G etc. also played a useful role.



> What does the number of types and sub-types of Spitfires have to do with anything?



Same as the number and types of Yaks. See above and re-read the thread if necessary.

S


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## Milosh (May 31, 2018)

Schweik said:


> They were used for defense only, much like the Spit IX's in Soviet service.



Meteors did offensive patrols when based in Belgium, tho A2G not A2A.

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## pbehn (May 31, 2018)

ykickamoocow said:


> To be honest I think we should. To me the Luftwaffe was never stronger than the start of the Battle of Britain and then the start of Operation Barbarossa. Once 1942 came along the Luftwaffe were always in a slow decline to the point where by mid 1944 the odds of a Western Allies fighter craft being shot down by German fighter craft was quite low, at least compared to a few years earlier. It is very easy to make the late WW2 fighter aircraft look really strong simply because they had almost no opposition.


In terms of bomber strength it was strongest at the start of the Battle of France.


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## pbehn (May 31, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Meteors did offensive patrols when based in Belgium, tho A2G not A2A.


I think meteors were used with US forces "clobber colleges" to practice/train in ways of dealing with the 262 over Germany.


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## Shortround6 (May 31, 2018)

Oh, boy.........



Schweik said:


> Navy fighter is just another specialization (the Russians had a naval air force too though no aircraft carriers).



Yeah, it is a specialization that calls for different landing speeds and different low speed handling characteristics and different landing gear strengths (greater vertical impacts) than you can get away with in land based aircraft. Most of the time this has to be designed in from the start. British got away with the Hurricane and Spitfire conversions because both had been designed for use from small airfields using relatively low take-off *thrust* power plants. This called for low stalling speeds at least so they were partway there. For the US a P-39 needed 3 times the take-off distance as an F4F. A Land based "naval air force" is just a force of land planes that co-operates with naval forces and/or operates over water. 





> Soviet fighters were heavily engaged in ground attack. They almost all had cannon by 1942 and were carrying rockets from the beginning of the war (unlike Anglo-American types).



Heavily engaged refers to rate of use or number of missions flow. It says nothing about the effectiveness of the attacks, like how many sorties were needed to get a given effect. The Russian 20mm cannon was not particularly good at armor penetration. Not as bad as some but not as good as others. A single 20mm cannon firing under 100 gram shells and backed up by two 7.62/12.7mm machine guns is better than nothing for ground attack but hardly leading the way. The rockets were more of a moral weapon (so were the British 3in rockets to some extent) as they were good only for area targets (hitting a single tank was like hitting 21 in blackjack on the first draw) and the target effect was poor. Using an expensive aircraft to deliver the equivalent of 6-8 81mm mortar bombs is not a good return on investment. Better than not supporting the ground troops at all but hardly ideal. Few countries were doing much better in 1941 but the Russians didn't progress much during the war. Other Countries did increase the ground attack capabilities of their fighters and the need for light bombers/ground attack planes of the single engine variety faded away. The ones they had (contracted for) were shuffled off to secondary theaters. 



> Nope. Shortround dismissed the Yak 3 as being an overspecialized soviet type and claimed the Soviets had to fill all sorts of gaps with a wide variety of types. I pointed out, correctly, that the Americans and English both fielded more types of fighter aircraft than the Soviets (I didn't even include the English naval fighters but I should - Gladiator, Fulmar and Firefly that's 3 more). So the argument is invalid and in fact, ridiculous.



I dismissed the Yak-3 from consideration as one of the greatest fighters of the war due to it's specialization, By 1944 most countries expected fighters to be more all round air planes. There is also a difference between fielding a bunch of different aircraft of a "type" like fighter bombers (you can have multiple models of fighter bombers) and fielding different "types" (perhaps a better word is categories?) of aircraft. The Yak-3 may have been a very good low altitude, short range air superiority fighter but the Russians needed to Field other types for other missions. For the US late model P-38s, P-47s and P-51s were somewhat interchangeable as to the missions they flew. They all could fly bomber escort, they all could fly fighter fighter sweeps, they all could perform intercepts of enemy recon or bomber aircraft, they all could perform ground attack missions (with substantial war loads). One or another was better at a given task but should the need arise they all could substitute for each other. 
The same cannot be said for some of the Russian fighters. You want to escort bombers more than few hundred kilometers? You better have Yak-9Ds or 9DDs, La-5/7s won't do it and neither will Yak-3s. You want to really blow stuff up? Better get the IL-2s or PE-2s because the Russian single engine fighters carry crap bomb loads. 




> Nor by the way do I think it was a mistake of the Soviets to build a dedicated ground attack aircraft in the Sturmovik as Shortround implied. That is ridiculous. The Sturmovik was extremely effective in the long run and destroyed a whole lot of German tanks.



You might do better if you don't use _your imagination_ to interpret what I write. The Russians were forced by circumstances to build the IL-2 in large numbers.
It wasn't a "mistake" given the situation they were in. Their single engine fighters didn't carry much of a war load for ground attack. An IL-2 using a single pilot and a single engine (although larger) and airframe(also larger) could carry the war load of 2-3 single engine Russian fighters and was a different type target to shoot down. Slower but with the armor presented different problems. 
Of note here is that the Russians quickly realized that the 20mm ShVak cannon in the early IL-2s weren't really that good against armored vehicles and they quickly changed to the 23mm gun which was over twice as powerful per shot. Claiming a single 20mm ShVak cannon with 120-150 rounds made a good ground attack plane in company with a pair of machine guns seems a bit of a stretch for the V-12 powered planes. 
The IL-2 was effective way to deliver ground support from both a manufacturing point of view and from a pilot/crew training point of view. Using the same resources (and the same number of pilots) would not have given anywhere near the same target effect if used by typical Russian single engine fighters. 
This does not mean the Western allies missed the boat in not adopting an IL-2 type aircraft. With the greater engine power used in Western fighters (from about 1942 on) they carried heavier gun armament and heavier bomb loads than Russian fighters and with the much greater time spent on training they were more likely to land the ordnance closer to the target (although accuracy was still pretty dismal at times) with green or inexperienced pilots. IL-2s slower speed may have helped with accuracy?
The US cancelled thousands of dive bombers for Army use once they started using fighter bombers in numbers.

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## Schweik (May 31, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Oh, boy.........



Shortround, I'll give you credit for this post because at least you clearly articulated your arguments and we can actually resolve the disagreement to some extent rather than going round and round with flip comments. I still disagree however, I am comfortable with multiple ways of looking at the same problem ala Roshemon, I think in many respects with History you have to settle for that in many cases because no one 'model', theory or system can fully encompass the reality.



> Yeah, it is a specialization that calls for different landing speeds and different low speed handling characteristics



What defined a Carrier aircraft varied quite a bit nation by nation and was not a hard science. The very general rule was that Carrier planes carried more stuff they were supposed to be at least a little inferior to land based planes. This _potentially _means stuff like arrestor hooks, folding wings (sometimes with corresponding mechanical or hydraulic systems), more navigational gear including all weather instruments, radio direction finders and extra radios, and sometimes even a second or third crewman to help with navigation or spotting etc. (see Fairey Fulmar and Firefly), also extra fuel as longer range is usually required, and extra maritime survival gear for the crew like inflatable rafts, potable water and so on. Sometimes also stuff like anti-submarine detection capabilities and ASW weapons capacity.

Naval planes more generally (beyond just carrier planes) do also often have to take on more kit of this type so it's incorrect to suggest that (non carrier) naval aircraft are identical to land based planes. It may be relatively easy to adjust them from one mission to the other (say PB4Y to B-24, its not that wide of a leap .. or just de-navalizing an F4U) but there is still a difference.

But in practice the actual aircraft that came out of the factories overlapped enough that it really didn't make that much difference. A Fairy Fulmar may not have been a good enough fighter to take on land based fighters, but the A6M, F4F, F6F and Corsair most certainly were. As was the Seafire if you could get the carrier close enough 


Some of the characteristics you listed like stronger landing gear and suitability for shorter landings and takeoffs is applicable to carrier planes, but not necessarily. The Corsair for example defies the definition in many respects. The Corsair also turned out to be in no way inferior to land based fighters, in fact quite to the contrary.






But the larger point is simply this as I already stated - *Naval planes in general are just another specialization. *Specialization, in turn, is not grounds for dismissal. The F4U - arguably only marginally suitable for Carrier operations**, together with the F6F and the F4F were all among the Great fighters of WW2. Some of these were more generalist than the others. The F4F in particular was not particularly good at ground attack (nor was the Spitfire) but it performed an extremely important mission in breaking the back of the IJN Carrier forces at Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal.






The Yak 3 was a specialized (smaller and faster) variant of the Yak 1, while the Yak 9 was another specialized variant of the (slightly larger and higher flying) Yak 7 (itself originally a simplified trainer variant of the Yak 1). The Yak 9 was very successful, and also one of the great fighters of WW2 without a doubt, while the Yak 3 was 'extra' successful and accelerated the demise of the Luftwaffe while enabling the VVS to destroy the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS forces which had invaded their homeland. Together though the Yak 1, Yak 3 and 9 are at least as closely linked as say, a Spit I is to a Spit XIV. And as I already pointed out several times, the Spitfire was also made quite consciously with low altitude variants.



> Heavily engaged refers to rate of use or number of missions flow. It says nothing about the effectiveness of the attacks, like how many sorties were needed to get a given effect. The Russian 20mm cannon was not particularly good at armor penetration.



You have described your theory before that Russian planes weren't any good at destroying German military vehicles because they didn't carry heavy enough ordinance. And you think Russian Rockets weren't effective either.... 60 & 80mm mortars aren't good at destroying tanks etc. All of these are nice theories but they are no more than that - as you know, back of the envelope calculations do not trump historical evidence for me, in fact to the contrary. So post some historical evidence* to support your outlier theory here - *until then don't expect anyone else to operate as if your theories are facts. *





Specifically to do with rockets and cannon - as you are probably aware, heavy tanks remained rare in the German army. Not every German tank was a Tiger. Rocket and cannon attacks may or may not be good at knocking out or disabling Tigers, but they are more than capable of destroying all the other vehicles and ordinance that made up the German armed forces. Everything from horse drawn carts, to trucks and prime movers, to halftracks, open topped Marders and Wespes and all sorts of artillery and AT guns, are extremely vulnerable to 20mm cannons and the equivalent of 80mm mortars. In fact, actual light and medium caliber mortars probably destroyed more German troops and kit than almost any other weapon.






A Tiger or Panther tank with no fuel and ammo, and no support from infantry, AT guns or artillery, will in most cases quickly be abandoned. See the Falaise pocket as a good example. Typhoons and Thunderbolts may not have blown the turrets off of that many Panthers, but they wrecked enough of the other stuff that the German tank units were brought to a halt. And the tank crew is going to slink out of the battle area on foot.






We also do have evidence that large numbers of German medium tanks and assault guns (Pz III, Pz IV, StuGG III etc.) were destroyed by Russian fighters, dive bombers, and Sturmoviks especially in 1943 - 1945. I'm not sure about the heavy tanks and Jagdpanzer type vehicles as I haven't dived that deep into it. But if necessary I can provide sources for the above.

*Ground attack and close air support, precision vs tonnage*
You and I (and some other people in this forum) have a long running debate about the value of a bomber. This came up repeatedly in discussions in other threads about the Pe-2, the Mosquito and many other fighter related arguments including earlier in this one I think. You, and some others here, attribute effectiveness for ground attack to heaviness of ordinance. The notion of the bomber as "bomb truck" - perhaps best summed up as whether a Lancaster is ultimately a better bomber than a Mosquito.

But when we zoom in from bombers in general to the more narrow field of close air support, I think it is obvious and very well established that the role of accuracy is key. For one thing, it's very important not to hit your own troops. This is one of the reasons why their was, and still is a subtype of CAS aircraft that is relatively light, slow and highly maneuverable. For the Russians in WW2, the I-15 / 153 series of biplane fighters were very helpful for CAS for this exact reason. The Germans also used biplanes (see He 51), and today this particular niche is partly taken up by attack helicopters, but also by light aircraft like the Super Tucano, Bae Hawk, Aero L-159A etc..






Ultimately in WW2 the Luftwaffe got the most mileage out of the Ju 87 Stuka. Slow and ungainly like a giant vulture, this single engined bomber carried a fairly light bomb load. On paper it looked like a loser. But in the field, it was the Germans best tank destroyer, even before they specialized it by adding 37mm guns. The reason in a nutshell was not weight of ordinance but precision. As a dive bomber it could hit it's targets vastly, vastly more often than a medium altitude level bomber, while suffering fewer losses. The Sturmovik was the same in terms of accuracy- although it relied more on rockets and cannon.

Today the equivalent of the Sturmovik in Russia is the Su-25, and in the West is the A-10. It continues to be a big debate in the US military, but even though a modern fighter-bomber can do almost everything, for CAS they still specialize.

Conversely, while a B-26 can carry vastly more bombs than a Ju 87 or a Sturmovik, it was far _less_ effective historically in destroying enemy tanks. The Anglo Americans did try to use medium and even heavy bombers numerous times for Tactical strikes, but quite often it was a failure, sometimes a truly grotesque failure when they accidentally bombed their own forces. Such as when the USAAF killed 1,000 of their own men in an attempted breakout during Operation COBRA in 1944. 

You can move a lot of earth and not actually effect the enemy. I have brought this up before many times. During Vietnam, the B-52 carried far more ordinance than an A-1 / AD Skyraider, but the latter was more effective certainly for CAS.



> For the US late model P-38s, P-47s and P-51s were somewhat interchangeable as to the missions they flew. They all could fly bomber escort, they all could fly fighter fighter



But actually they really weren't. P-51s pretty quickly became the main, then the only escort fighter. P-47s were increasingly relegated to ground attack and frontal defense - and late in the war they made the specialized super fast sprinter P-47M specialized specifically for dogfighting the new German jets. P-38s meanwhile were basically phased out of use in Europe when P-51s became available. Spitfires remained the main interceptor for the Anglo-American forces through the end of the war. So they did specialize. Everyone did.



> This does not mean the Western allies missed the boat in not adopting an IL-2 type aircraft.



Ah but you are wrong, they did adopt Il2- type aircraft, or more precisely, they specialized existing aircraft to be more like an Il2. They put two 40mm bofors cannons on the Hurricane IID, as you may recall, they put a 75mm cannon and 10-14 machine guns in the nose of B-25s (the main production run of them for a couple of years in fact), made similar (multi gun) modifications to the A-20 and produced dedicated ground attack aircraft like the Douglas A-26.



> The US cancelled thousands of dive bombers for Army use once they started using fighter bombers in numbers.



You are making an assumption as to _why_ though. They apparently started using fighters as bombers, specifically P-40s and Hurricanes in lieux of Blehnheims, at the suggestion of pilots fighting in the Western Desert. Possibly instigated by Australian Ace Clive Caldwell (this claim is made in one of his biographies). Caldwell pointed out that the Blenheims were so slow it forced escorting P-40s to fly along at near stall speed (~100 mph) to keep near them, making them extremely vulnerable. P-40s and Hurricanes turned out to make fairly precise bombers, by one estimate 4 times as effective as Blenheims, and since Axis air power was often not to be found over many battlefields of the Western Desert on a given day, it made sense to make use of otherwise under-utilized fighters to destroy enemy troops and _materiel _so the change in Tactics was made. Whether this actually saved any fighter pilots though is another question as many fighters were caught low down on strafing and bombing missions by Luftwaffe fighters.

US and British dive bombers didn't come to the fore, because the newer designs were largely a failure. Vultee Vengeance and so forth just didn't work out. The Helldiver was purchased but probably due to corruption and in spite of serious design flaws, certainly for the first year or so of it's deployment it was a dangerous and disliked beast by it's crews. The best Anglo-American dive bomber was the old Douglas Dauntless, a good aircraft and one of the wars greats certainly thanks to it's destruction of so many Japanese ships, but also a fairly slow early war design which was vulnerable to German fighters. Nevertheless the Army did use it however as the A-24, a bit more than most people realize since it doesn't get that much press. The Free French also used it in the Med for CAS. It was surprisingly effective but took heavy losses.





Because by 1943 it was too slow. So the USAAF also, let us not forget, made the Allison engined P-51 into a Dive Bomber. This tends to get papered over but that was the job of that plane in the USAAF. One wonders why they didn't make it into a fighter but that's what they did - put dive brakes on it and everything. It had the speed to escape Luftwaffe fighters so it did have good characteristics for that niche..

The Brits also had the formidable Beaufighter, a fighter but really most suited for ground (and naval) attack roles, and adapted the Typhoon and Tempests largely to ground attack too. The Americans designed the excellent*** Douglas A-26 Invader as a dedicated ground attack aircraft though it came too late to see very wide scale use, it was deployed and did well particularly in Italy.

The USAAF used fighters as fighter-bombers more generally because they weren't able to make dedicated bombers that were fast and / or survivable enough (with the exception of some late arriving types like the A-26). The extra guns on the B-25 were as close as they came. The Germans of course had the He 51, Ju 87G, Hs 129 and Fw 190F series.

So the bottom line is, in my opinion, specialization for ground attack or dogfighting wasn't so rare nor was it some kind of sign of flawed policy. It was in fact fairly universal. What's more, necessary and effective. Therefore it's not a valid argument to dismiss the *Yak 3 *as a great plane "because it's too much of a specialist", it *was one of the best of the war*. As was the Yak 9 and the La 5FN / La 7. I think these are all pretty mainstream positions among aviation writers.

S

* I don't mean cite references like in an academic article but just cite some general examples .... if you can.

** worked better when further specialized by the British

*** Although disliked by General Kenney in the Pacific, the 9th Air Force operating in Italy specifically asked to replace all of their A-20s and Martin B-26s with Dogulas A-26s ASAP after flying successful 8 test missions with them in 1944. They were also used by the 12th Air Force against targets in Germany.

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## wuzak (May 31, 2018)

Schweik said:


> But in practice the actual aircraft that came out of the factories overlapped enough that it really didn't make that much difference. A Fairy Fulmar may not have been a good enough fighter to take on land based fighters, but the A6M, F4F, F6F and Corsair most certainly were. As was the Seafire if you could get the carrier close enough



I don't think the F4F was good enough to take on contemporary land based fighters such as the Fw 190A or Bf 109F.

The F6F is surely marginal against land based contemporaries too, having Spitfire V performance in mid 1943.

A6M? Had some success against land based fighters, but I don't think it was good enough for very long.

Seafire was definitely inferior to the Spitfire, but IIRC its range without drop tank(s) was simialr to the F6F's.


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## wuzak (May 31, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Because by 1943 it was too slow. So the USAAF also, let us not forget, made the Allison engined P-51 into a Dive Bomber. This tends to get papered over but that was the job of that plane in the USAAF. One wonders why they didn't make it into a fighter but that's what they did - put dive brakes on it and everything. It had the speed to escape Luftwaffe fighters so it did have good characteristics for that niche.



The story is that the USAAF did not have funds to put towards fighters, so could not procure the P-51. But they did have funds for attack aircraft, so the A-36 was born.


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## Shortround6 (May 31, 2018)

Schweik said:


> What defined a Carrier aircraft varied quite a bit nation by nation and was not a hard science............Some of the characteristics you listed like stronger landing gear and suitability for shorter landings and takeoffs is applicable to carrier planes, but not necessarily. The Corsair for example defies the definition in many respects. The Corsair also turned out to be in no way inferior to land based fighters, in fact quite to the contrary.
> But the larger point is simply this as I already stated - *Naval planes in general are just another specialization.*



But a necessary one. The worst (longest distance for take-off) American carrier fighter out of 9 models/variations required 88% of the distance of the Best (shortest distance) Army fighter. An F4U-1 (early) could take off in about 1/3 the distance of a P-47C if both were clean. One reason they never tried using P-47s from carriers. Perhaps also a reason they used Navy fighters from Island airstrips? Not the only one, but needed shorter air strips might be an advantage. This despite being 'burdened' with all the stuff of a naval fighter. Yes, Chance-Vought mucked up a few things with the Corsair but for the most part, you don't take land planes and turn them into carrier planes and just accept a slight performance penalty. At least not after monoplanes came into vogue. 






> You have described your theory before that Russian planes weren't any good at destroying German military vehicles because they didn't carry heavy enough ordinance. And you think Russian Rockets weren't effective either.... 60 & 80mm mortars aren't good at destroying tanks etc. All of these are nice theories but they are no more than that - as you know, back of the envelope calculations do not trump historical evidence for me, in fact to the contrary. So post some historical evidence* to support your outlier theory here - *until then don't expect anyone else to operate as if your theories are facts.*



Again, please don't use your superior imagination to change my positions from what I have written. Somehow, due to somebody's "imagination" _not as good_ has turned into _weren't any good. _They are not the same thing and there is a lot of grey in effectiveness instead of black and white. 



> Specifically to do with rockets and cannon - as you are probably aware, heavy tanks remained rare in the German army. Not every German tank was a Tiger. Rocket and cannon attacks may or may not be good at knocking out or disabling Tigers, but they are _more than capable of destroying *all the other vehicles *and ordinance that made up the German armed forces._ Everything from horse drawn carts, to trucks and prime movers, to halftracks, open topped Marders and Wespes and all sorts of artillery and AT guns, are extremely vulnerable to 20mm cannons and the equivalent of 80mm mortars. In fact, actual light and medium caliber mortars probably destroyed more German troops and kit than almost any other weapon.



The 20mm ShVAK would not kill MK III and MK IV tanks. It would be lucky to kill the Czech tanks and as for the Lowly MK II





The ShVak was rated at penetrating 24mm of armor at 100m distance with a 90 degree impact angle according to one source. Now let's use those _despised back of the envelope calculations _to check a few things. The thin armor on top is rarely going to be hit at 90 degree angle (needs a near 90 degree dive), so going to more reasonable impact angles Like an included angle of 30 degrees, (plane is diving at 30 degrees from horizontal) geometry tells us that the projectile will have to travel a path through 20mm of armor in the 10mm armor areas. However at these extreme impact angle there is a tendency for the projectile to skid or ricochet to a greater or lesser extent depending on projectile so the protection is even more effective than plain geometry tells us. The shallower the dive the worse it gets. Using a steeper dive angle means firing from further away in order to leave room to pull out. 
Some of the 15mm side armor is a better target. But here geometry tells us that a 45 degree impact means a path of 21mm, any less angle and things get tough real quick. Please note that 20mm projectiles fall off in armor penetration with range pretty quick and the 20mm ShVak was among the worst. This of course assumes the gun is loaded with predominantly AP ammunition. HE and HE-frag ammo is going to have about 0mm penetration on armor. 

I would also note that in one test the hit rate for the ShVak cannon against a _column of tanks_ was 9.4%. Even at 800rpm (13.3rps) that is about 4 hits for 3 second burst (and not necessarily on the same tank). I am sure that _some_ German light tanks were knocked out by Russian 20mm aircraft guns and the guns would do a good job against unarmoured or open top vehicles (maybe, one or two hits inside a half track are certainly going to cause casualties, destroy the vehicle is another story).

Now compare the Dreaded Lagg-3 or Yak-1 strafing a German column compared to the near useless Lend lease Hurricane with four 20mm guns.
The Lagg-3 or Yak is firing, at best, 13.3 rounds per second of 20mm ammo. Depending on exact Lagg-3 or Yak-1 you have two 7.62s firing around 50 shots per second or a single 12.7 firing 13.3 or a pair firing 27 rps (rounded up) The Hurricane is firing 40 20mm shots per second. Each projectile weighs about 30% more than the Russian 20mm projectiles for either armor penetration or almost double the HE content with more metal for fragments. The MV of the Hispanos ws 11-17% higher than the ShVak. The standard Lagg-3 fighter is carrying 120 rounds of 20mm ammo plus 650 rounds of 7.62 machine gun ammo. The Yak-1 carries 120-140 rounds of 20mm ? plus 760 rounds or 7.62 or 240-480 rounds of 12.7 depending on one or two guns fitted? The Hurricane is carrying 360 rounds of 20mm ammo. 
Or lets compare a Long nose P-40, 780 rounds of 12.7mm ammo (a ridiculous amount given the rate of fire of the cowl guns ) plus 1960 round of .30 cal ammo, not much good against armor but then the Russian 7.62 guns in the I-15, I-15bis, I-153 and the majority of the I-16s aren't very good against armor either.
However neither round bounces off of trucks, wagons, horses or men. 
P-40E and later hold over 1400 rounds of 12.7mm ammo and fire over 75 rounds per second. 
I am using up a lot of envelopes here but you get the idea (I hope) If we assume a somewhat equal hit rate and that the Russian pilots are not possessed of superhuman sight and reflexes then the Western fighters are carrying more ammo and firing more ammo per firing pass or unit of time. Which should cause more destruction. 

we haven't even gotten to rockets, small and large bombs.


*



Ground attack and close air support, precision vs tonnage

Click to expand...

*


> You and I (and some other people in this forum) have a long running debate about the value of a bomber. This came up repeatedly in discussions in other threads about the Pe-2, the Mosquito and many other fighter related arguments including earlier in this one I think. You, and some others here, attribute effectiveness for ground attack to heaviness of ordinance. The notion of the bomber as "bomb truck" - perhaps best summed up as whether a Lancaster is ultimately a better bomber than a Mosquito.
> 
> But when we zoom in from bombers in general to the more narrow field of close air support, I think it is obvious and very well established that the role of accuracy is key. For one thing, it's very important not to hit your own troops. This is one of the reasons why their was, and still is a subtype of CAS aircraft that is relatively light, slow and highly maneuverable. For the Russians in WW2, the I-15 / 153 series of biplane fighters were very helpful for CAS for this exact reason. The Germans also used biplanes (see He 51), and today this particular niche is partly taken up by attack helicopters, but also by light aircraft like the Super Tucano, Bae Hawk, Aero L-159A etc..



A lot of this so called accuracy of the biplane went out the proverbial window when a lot of them were used for night harassment missions.
Low and slow for ground attack also tends to work best the the guys on the ground have 2nd (or 3rd) rate AA systems. Check out the scale of issue of AA guns in the BEF in France in 1940 to the scale of issue of AA guns in the British army in Europe in 1944. 
Most of the modern "light aircraft" are planed to be used for counterinsurgency warfare, not full intensity conflicts. I would also note that the Bae Hawk at Max gross weight is heavier than a P-47N with a pair of 165 gallon drop tanks. Light is relative.







> But actually they really weren't. P-51s pretty quickly became the main, then the only escort fighter. P-47s were increasingly relegated to ground attack and frontal defense - and late in the war they made the specialized super fast sprinter P-47M specialized specifically for dogfighting the new German jets. P-38s meanwhile were basically phased out of use in Europe when P-51s became available. Spitfires remained the main interceptor for the Anglo-American forces through the end of the war. So they did specialize. Everyone did.



I am not saying that they were the equal of each other, I am saying that should the need arise, squadrons or groups could be transferred or given new tasks using the planes they already had. P-38s were not as good an escort as the P-51 and I would be foolish to try to say so but they had the range, the speed and and altitude capability to escort B-17s well into Germany even if their kill to loss ratio wasn't as good as the P-51. They could at least keep the Bomber losses within bounds even if not as low as the P-51s 
For the Russians it was the Yak-9D &DD or nothing, there was NO second best. They didn't have another fighter that had the range regardless of well or poorly it might fight when got there. If you aren't there to fight your success rate is zero. 
But then the Yak 9DD wasn't a good air superiority fighter. Or perhaps I should say it less than the best. It was heavier and slower climbing than the Regular Yak-9s.

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## Schweik (May 31, 2018)

wuzak said:


> I don't think the F4F was good enough to take on contemporary land based fighters such as the Fw 190A or Bf 109F.



Maybe you should think harder. They definitely tangled with Me 109Fs in the Med in 1942 and 1943 and they didn't exactly get slaughtered either. They started out fighting mostly Vichy French fighters which they finished off during Operation Torch. Up in Norway too with the FAA as the Martlet. From the wiki:

*"In March 1945, Wildcats shot down four Messerschmitt Bf 109s over Norway, the FAA's last victory with a Wildcat."*

Source is listed as Thetford, Owen. _British Naval Aircraft Since 1912, Fourth Edition_. London: Putnam, 1978. ISBN 0-85177-861-5.

So it appears Wildcats were still shooting down Bf 109s (presumably those were Gs or later model) all the way until 1945. In case this gets challenged! I found this thread on our favorite forum with a little more data on that incident:

"On 26 March 1945, in a last action, FM-2's from 882 Squadron
Lieut Comdr. GAM Flood, RNVR) off Searcher, escorting a flight of
Avengers along the coast of Norway, was attacked by a flight of
eight III Gruppe JG 5 Me-109Gs. The Wildcats (now called
“Wildcat” instead of “Martlet” as the FAA adopts the USN names
for carrier aircraft) shot down four of the Me-109Gs at a cost of
one Wildcat damaged. A fifth 109 was claimed as damaged."

German records show there were three 109’s lost werk# 412398 (Fw. Hermannn Jaeger), #782139 (Uffz. Gottfried Rösch), and #782270 (Fw. Heinrich Dreisbach) & one other 109 crashed, (pilot not listed) on landing,



> The F6F is surely marginal against land based contemporaries too, having Spitfire V performance in mid 1943.



Ah, no wrong again. F6F annihilated IJA fighters in the Pacific. Didn't have too many encounters in the Atlantic but did have some and again, didn't get slaughtered. According to the Wiki 52 German aircraft were shot down by FAA Hellcats in 18 engagements. 

Once incident:

May 1944. On 8 May, F6F's from the Fleet Air Arm's No. 800 Squadron (Lieut. Comdr. SJ Hall, DSC, RN), off HMS Emperor, while escorting a flight of Barracudas were jumped a mixed group of Me-109's and FW-190's. Two F6F's were lost, one, probably, to anti-aircraft fire (one source indicates that both F6Fs were lost in a mid-air collision, not to any German fire of any kind); the RN pilots were creditied with 2 Me-109's and one FW-190. Available Luftwaffe loss listings show three Me-109Gs lost in this action, werk# 14697 (Ofw. Kurt), 10347 (Uffz. Brettin), and unknown # (Fw. Horst). On the Luftwaffe side, Uffz. Hallstick claimed two F6Fs and Lieut. Prenzler claimed one.



> A6M? Had some success against land based fighters, but I don't think it was good enough for very long.



That is laughable. A6M was still shooting down plenty of Allied aircraft, including Spitfires and Corsairs, at a fairly high rate in 1943. Started tapering off in 1944 but that is largely due to pilot quality (and the Germans were having the same problem weren't they)

S

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## Schweik (May 31, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Again, please don't use your superior imagination to change my positions from what I have written. Somehow, due to somebody's "imagination" _not as good_ has turned into _weren't any good. _They are not the same thing and there is a lot of grey in effectiveness instead of black and white.



And yet you make sweeping statements to dismiss a whole class of fighters based on spurious logic. I'm supposed to take that seriously?



> The 20mm ShVAK would not kill MK III and MK IV tanks. It would be lucky to kill the Czech tanks and as for the Lowly MK II



Practice what you preach- I never said specifically that 20mm cannon killed the tanks, (I am not ruling it out, but I don't know it for a fact) I said Russian fighters and Il2s killed plenty of Mk III and Mk IV tanks and many other armored vehicles on the Russian Front in several battles.



> The ShVak was rated at penetrating 24mm of armor at 100m distance with a 90 degree impact angle according to one source. Now let's use those _despised back of the envelope calculations _to check a few things.



We had this same debate in another thread. You'll have to forgive me if i don't buy your assumptions or your math. I suspect your thumb is on the scale with regard to the specific ammunition used or the subtype, but I don't care enough about the issue to wade deep into it yet again. Suffice to say that I believe (like many WW2 pilots and engineers) that nose mounted guns were more accurate than wing mounted, that 20mm cannon, with AP or API ammunition, hit harder than 12.7mm, and I know for a fact that most vehicles and ordinance in the German army could not withstand automatic 20mm cannon-fire.

You have been arguing, in this and other threads, that Soviet fighters were all but useless at ground attack - or at least greatly inferior to Anglo-American fighters in this regard. I pointed out the Russians were using rockets since 1940 and had cannon on almost all their fighters, and you try to claim their cannon and rockets were no good. It's a bogus argument, spurious logic, though there is some imagination involved... 



> we haven't even gotten to rockets, small and large bombs.



Don't waste your time unless you are going to post actual historical accounts or data.



> A lot of this so called accuracy of the biplane went out the proverbial window when a lot of them were used for night harassment missions.



You are thinking of U2 and Po 2 types. I-153s were still being mostly largely in daylight until at least 1943. I think they were still being used as fighters in addition to CAS.



> I am not saying that they were the equal of each other, I am saying that should the need arise, squadrons or groups could be transferred or given new



And I'm calling BS on that. If the P-51s went away they would have had to stop flying heavy bomber missions into Berlin that same day. P-47s and P-38s were not going to cut it.



> For the Russians it was the Yak-9D &DD or nothing, there was NO second best. They didn't have another fighter that had the range regardless of



But why would they? The Russians didn't have nearly as much of a need for a long range fighter. That wasn't their mission. They were concentrated on the Tactical war. If they had decided to get into Strategic Bombing they would have developed more long range fighters (or gotten some via Lend Lease) but they did not need to do that to win the war. By 1944 the Soviet War Machine was unstoppable by the Germans. Patton thought he could take it on but that is highly dubious.

Sorry man you haven't come close to convincing me.

S


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## pbehn (Jun 1, 2018)

Schweik said:


> And I'm calling BS on that. If the P-51s went away they would have had to stop flying heavy bomber missions into Berlin that same day. P-47s and P-38s were not going to cut it.


How does an aircraft type "go away" some mystery virus or new found metal eating bacteria? I used to enjoy this forum but there are now too many smart alec posters with fantasy opinions calling "BS" on any sensible discussion with fantasy scenarios.

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## Schweik (Jun 1, 2018)

pbehn said:


> How does an aircraft type "go away" some mystery virus or new found metal eating bacteria? I used to enjoy this forum but there are now too many smart alec posters with fantasy opinions calling "BS" on any sensible discussion with fantasy scenarios.



I'm sorry you couldn't follow the Thread. I'm just answering Shortround who claimed that all late war USAAF Fighters were fully interchangable, in direct contrast to the Soviet fighters which he claimed were overly specialized, and therefore "not Great".

I was pointing out that they were not, in fact interchangeable and that deep raids into places like Berlin were only possible because of the P-51.

How would an aircraft type "go away"? Well it's pointless to speculate since it didn't happen to the P-51 - i was only making a point, a point so obvious I shouldn't have had to make it. I certainly can't think of any way that P-51 production could have stopped. Some promising aircraft types however did not get made, or weren't made in sufficient numbers, because the factories were bombed or certain strategic metals were not available in sufficient supply and so on.

Personally, I prefer to ground my observations on WW2 on *data from WW2*. You want to know which fighter design worked best? Study how many of them were shot down vs how many they shot down. Want to know which bomber design worked best? Research which one destroyed their targets best for the fewest losses. I'm a history researcher in some other time periods, I have learned to have faith in _the sources_ - and I feel strongly that it is contingent on us, people with interest in the past, to make our theories fit the data and *not* the other way around.

For example, when somebody tells me that a Wildcat couldn't shoot down a Bf 109 because it's too slow or has 145 gallons of fuel in the tank or only 400 rounds of ammunition for it's guns, or an 11.7 m/s climb rate, I'd rather check and see what the historical record says about actual encounters between Wildcats and Bf 109s. And low and behold! It turns out they were not so inferior after all.

S

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## Schweik (Jun 1, 2018)

By the way, I like this forum too. I have learned a lot here both lurking and as an active participant. i respect Shotround for his knowledge on superchargers and other matters from which I learned a great deal in other threads. I just don't accept all of his theories as gospel.

I do also notice sometimes more generally in here you can get shouted down in here for daring to voice fairly mainstream opinions like that the Yak-3 or the Zero were great fighters. I guess that is just the nature of forum discussions. But to be honest this place is better than most.

Maybe I should just stick to praising the Spitfire or the Fw 190...

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## DarrenW (Jun 1, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The F6F is surely marginal against land based contemporaries too, having Spitfire V performance in mid 1943.



Are you sure because the record certainly doesn't reflect this. Which "land-based" fighters ever gave the Hellcat any trouble?

And if the Spitfire V was the equal of the F6F then I suppose it would have "broke the back" of the IJN and IJA before the Hellcat even arrived, but it didn't. That didn't happen until after the Hellcat's arrival.



wuzak said:


> Seafire was definitely inferior to the Spitfire, but IIRC its range without drop tank(s) was simialr to the F6F's.



You forgot to mention that it was also definitely inferior to the Hellcat. That's why the FAA purchased 1263 copies of the American fighter instead of being content with their own indigenous carrier-born design. And I'd recheck your figures concerning the Seafire's range. It was most assuredly less than that of the Hellcat, both with and without external tanks.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 1, 2018)

Schweik said:


> We had this same debate in another thread. You'll have to forgive me if i don't buy your assumptions or your math. I suspect your thumb is on the scale with regard to the specific ammunition used or the subtype, but I don't care enough about the issue to wade deep into it yet again. Suffice to say that I believe (like many WW2 pilots and engineers) that nose mounted guns were more accurate than wing mounted, that 20mm cannon, with AP or API ammunition, hit harder than 12.7mm, and I know for a fact that most vehicles and ordinance in the German army could not withstand automatic 20mm cannon-fire.
> 
> 
> 
> Don't waste your time unless you are going to post actual historical accounts or data.



Have it your way, at 96 gram projectile of 20mm diameter with a muzzle velocity of 750 meters a second is fully the equal of a 128 gram projectile of 20mm diameter with a muzzle velocity of 880 meters a second when it comes to armor penetration and'or destructive power.
And 140 rounds of such ammo is equal to 360 rounds (or more) 

And, oh yes, the earth is flat.


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## Schweik (Jun 1, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Have it your way, at 96 gram projectile of 20mm diameter with a muzzle velocity of 750 meters a second is fully the equal of a 128 gram projectile of 20mm diameter with a muzzle velocity of 880 meters a second when it comes to armor penetration and'or destructive power.
> And 140 rounds of such ammo is equal to 360 rounds (or more)
> 
> And, oh yes, the earth is flat.



That would be a devastating comeback if I ever claimed that a Russian 20mm cannon shell is equal or superior to a Hispano, or Mauser. Fortunately for me I didn't. Please make careful note of that fact.

The various traits of each cannon are interesting, and perhaps worthy of a thread of their own (I googled penetration values for various cannons but found little, I may try later on JSTOR). But I never made the claim that Russian 20mm cannon were _better_ than Hispano-Suiza or even that they hit as hard.

I am not, by the way, conceding that they were necessarily worse either. There are other factors besides velocity and weight of the shell - for example types of ammunition available, weight of the gun itself (important in an airplane), reliability (how often did they have jams or stoppages) and rate of fire.

What I actually said was that Russian _fighters_ were at least as good, generally speaking, at ground attack as Anglo-American fighters, which is a very different statement, and I pointed out that Russian fighters mostly had 20mm cannon - but that is only one factor. I do say that a 20mm cannon is superior to a machine guns in terms of impact against armored or unarmored vehicles.

I'll break down why I think Russian fighters were just as good at CAS:

*Russian fighters*
Were using small rockets since the Winter War in 1939-1940.
Were using larger and / or more effective rockets from 1942.
Were carrying bombs since the Winter War,
Were agile and maneuverable.
Had armor and self-sealing fuel tanks* and were strongly built..
Had mostly nose-mounted guns (which I believe were more accurate).
Had (with the Exception of the MiG 3 and I-153) 20mm cannon since 1941.
Were also sometimes fitted with heavier cannon (23mm, 37mm, and 45mm) from fairly early on.
Have a well documented history of destroying German tanks, ships, vehicles and materiel from 1941 - 1945.

*Anglo-American fighters*
Had wing mounted guns (with the exception of the Tomahawk) which I think are somewhat less accurate than nose mounted.
Started being used as fighter bombers comparatively late (I think 1942).
Started using rockets much later still (I think 1943).
Were agile and maneuverable.
Had armor and self-sealing fuel tanks and were strongly built.
Either had machine guns (P-40s, Hurri I, Hurri IIB) or cannon with very limited ammo (Hurri IIC and Spit VB had 60 rpg for cannons, not sure about the early P-38).
Generally had more guns and ammunition.
May have had more powerful cannon and larger rockets.
Were sometimes fitted with heavier cannon (40mm bofors on Hurri IID, plus 37mm on P-39 though they were pretty limited in use in the med)
Have a well documented history of destroying German tanks, ships, vehicles and materiel from 1941 - 1945.

From this I conclude that* Soviet fighters were not inferior to Anglo-American fighters in ground attack.* Notice I didn't say they were necessarily better. That could be an interesting discussion if you want to dive deeper into it. But in the context of our earlier discussion (the merits of the yak 3) i think it's basically a diversion and a deflection.

I also never claimed the earth is flat, I contend that it is square**.

I hope this helps further clarify what we were actually arguing about.

S

* as distinct from say, Japanese fighters which I think you could make a case, were not so great for ground attack though they too were used this way with some success particularly in the early war.

** just kidding.


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## pbehn (Jun 1, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I'm sorry you couldn't follow the Thread. I'm just answering Shortround who claimed that all late war USAAF Fighters were fully interchangable, in direct contrast to the Soviet fighters which he claimed were overly specialized, and therefore "not Great".
> 
> I was pointing out that they were not, in fact interchangeable and that deep raids into places like Berlin were only possible because of the P-51.
> 
> How would an aircraft type "go away"? Well it's pointless to speculate since it didn't happen to the P-51 - i was only making a point, a point so obvious I shouldn't have had to make it. I certainly can't think of any way that P-51 production could have stopped. Some promising aircraft types however did not get made, or weren't made in sufficient numbers, because the factories were bombed or certain strategic metals were not available in sufficient supply and so on.


If the P-51 didn't exist, then the US would know it didn't exist, the P-47N was in almost all respects the equal of the P-51 including range. It is therefore an issue of how quickly a P-47N version or similar could be brought into service and what offensive operations would be done in the meantime.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 1, 2018)

On July 7th '44 P-38s flew escort for B-24s to Halle and Bernberg Germany (about 60-70 miles southwest of Berlin?) _claiming _18 German aircraft for no losses. 
Operational planning charts show a radius of 650 miles for P-38 J&L when carrying 165 gallon drop tanks. 
Operational planning charts show a radius of 425 miles for P-47D (with 305 gallons internal) when carrying 150 gallon drop tanks.
Operational planning charts show a radius of 600 miles for P-47D (with 370 gallons internal) when carrying 150 gallon drop tanks.
Operational planning charts show a radius of 450 miles for P-51 (with 184 gallons internal) when carrying 75 gallon drop tanks.
Operational planning charts show a radius of 700 miles for P-51 (with 269 gallons internal) when carrying 75 gallon drop tanks.

The P-51 was certainly the best choice. It was not the only choice.

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## Schweik (Jun 1, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> On July 7th '44 P-38s flew escort for B-24s to Halle and Bernberg Germany (about 60-70 miles southwest of Berlin?) _claiming _18 German aircraft for no losses.
> Operational planning charts show a radius of 650 miles for P-38 J&L when carrying 165 gallon drop tanks.
> Operational planning charts show a radius of 425 miles for P-47D (with 305 gallons internal) when carrying 150 gallon drop tanks.
> Operational planning charts show a radius of 600 miles for P-47D (with 370 gallons internal) when carrying 150 gallon drop tanks.
> ...



yes but it's funny how you put 165 gallon tanks on the P-38 and 75 gallon tanks on the P-51, as if that is the only type they carried. This is what I mean when I refer to a 'thumb on the scale.' And how would the plane perform with 165 gallon external tanks? 

Actually 108 gallon seems to be more typical for both P-38 and P-51 types when operating in Europe. The memo I link below indicates a maximum range ("radius of action") for the P-38 of 585 miles. If we assume 165 gal tanks that is still only 650 miles. Per the memo you will note below, the P-51 had an escort range of 850 miles as of March 1944. here I'll add it to your list:

Operational planning charts show* a radius of 850 miles for P-51 *(with 269 gallons internal) when carrying two 108 gallon drop tanks.

The more important point in the memo notes that "With such equipment, the P-51 permitted the exploitation of the full range capabilities of the heavy bomber force.". For a more readable view of the memo click here. 

I will concede that eventually they had P-38s able to make it to Berlin (barely), and kudos for providing an example where they successfully escorted bombers with P-38s deep into Germany, but I don't think I would be going out on a limb if I pointed out that range was considered very limited in comparison to the P-51 (see the charts below) and combat performance against German fighters doubly so. I think these maps have been posted here before of course.

P-47 could certainly acquit itself better than a P-38 at high altitude but lacked the range for escort (in a free ranging fighter sweep they could go a bit further apparnertly). P-47M came a bit later of course to be relevant.

So I stick to my assertion they could not have conducted the deep raids into Berlin etc. without the P-51.

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## pbehn (Jun 1, 2018)

Without the P-51 they could have used the investment not made in two factories into additional capacity for p-47s and a design with more fuel in the wings, there, you wished a plane out of history and I just replaced it.


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## Schweik (Jun 1, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Without the P-51 they could have used the investment not made in two factories into additional capacity for p-47s and a design with more fuel in the wings, there, you wished a plane out of history and I just replaced it.



Fair enough. Does this somehow mean the Yak 3 is a second rate fighter?

S


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## pbehn (Jun 1, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Fair enough. Does this somehow mean the Yak 3 is a second rate fighter?
> 
> S


Did I ever say that it was? My point about Spitfires and Hurricanes did not even say they were particularly good for the needs of Russia, just better than they had at the time. In all your arguments you seem to overlook some pretty basic stuff. Like Russia being a huge land mass accessible overland by Germany while the UK is a small island group. Russia was fighting a land war from the second war started. The UK was fighting a defensive war on Islands everywhere except N Africa pretty much until 1944.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 1, 2018)

My "thumb on the scale." consisted of copying the figures from the chart on page 599 of "America's Hundred thousand" By Frances Dean.
These were the ONLY drop tanks listed in the chart. I didn't leave any out.
If that doesn't meet your standard of _fairplay_...To bad. 

On the next page is a similar chart which includes P-47Ns and P-51Hs. Since those aircraft are really not pertinent to a discussion of Fighter escorts in Europe in 1944 I didn't bother to include them. That would have been "tipping" the scale".

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## DarrenW (Jun 1, 2018)

Schweik said:


> And how would the plane perform with 165 gallon external tanks?



From the Flight Operation Instruction Charts I've studied those two wings tanks sorely affected the Thunderbolt's optimum cruise speed at bomber heights, dropping it to around 230 MPH.The fuel burn rate went up as well, about 20 GPH. This cannot be a great situation for an escort fighter in Europe to be in when it was paramount to stay high and fast. On the other hand, a "clean" Mustang can range just as far as a Thunderbolt laden with drop tanks, and it could do it at a much greater airspeed. Place two drop tanks on the Mustang and you have an airplane which could thoroughly out range and out perform the Thunderbolt, period.

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## Schweik (Jun 1, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Did I ever say that it was? My point about Spitfires and Hurricanes did not even say they were particularly good for the needs of Russia, just better than they had at the time. In all your arguments you seem to overlook some pretty basic stuff. Like Russia being a huge land mass accessible overland by Germany while the UK is a small island group. Russia was fighting a land war from the second war started. The UK was fighting a defensive war on Islands everywhere except N Africa pretty much until 1944.




Keep in mind pbehn, this discussion involves multiple people. As a review, I pointed out offhand that the Yak-3 was one of the great fighters of the war, I didn't think that was controversial but I should have known better. Then Shortround and some others kind of pounced on me starting a wide ranging debate running all over the place which then you and others chimed in on as you got annoyed by something I said.

I don't even grasp precisely what your beef is here, still but I guess you feel like I'm badmouthing the British fighters. I don't see why, in this very thread I put Spitfires in my top 10 list (I think number 2 or 3) for the whole war and hurricanes in the top 20. In bringing up that neither plane was ideally suited for Russia, I am merely trying to prove the point that not all aircraft were perfectly suited for all Theaters (or necessarily, for the whole duration of the war). This is not an attack on English (or American) airplanes. I don't think there is or was such a thing as a military aircraft suited for every Front in every Theater for every type of operation. I think that is a myth.

I may seem to pick on hurricanes somewhat but I just think that the airframe outlived it's lifespan a bit. Similar to the P-40 which is one of my favorites.

Hurricane dates back to 1936 and was a useful front line fighter I think until 1941. Once the Bf 109F and A6M came on scene I think it was no longer suitable for that role but still useful as a fighter bomber and naval fighter (etc.) through 1943. Probably shouldn't have been built after 1943.

P-40 dates from 1941 and was a useful front line fighter in the Med, Russia and Pacific I think through 1943. It started having trouble with the arrival of the Bf 109G and wasn't suitable for high altitude escort more generally. It still remained viable in the Pacific though limited by range and only really useful at low to medium altitude so limited effectiveness as an interceptor for level bombing raids.

Spitfire dates from 1939? And remained the best Anglo-American interceptor, in it's various incarnations, through the end of the war. With the relatively brief interlude of the early Fw 190 reign of terror in 1942, the Spit was dominant over all German types from 1940-1945. Did pretty well against the Japanese too as an interceptor though longer ranged fighters were better for the Pacific Theater.

Yak and Lavochkin fighters ultimately proved the best adapted for the conditions on the Russian Front, not surprisingly 






The Russians did have some naval warfare going on, fairly intense at times, particularly around Leningrad and as related to the siege of Leningrad, but also in the Black Sea. They were using A-20s as torpedo bombers among other interesting things

Here is an interesting clip from a Soviet film on naval action during the War (I think these are IL-4 and maybe I saw a Pe 2). Looks like your typical depressing Russian movie interspersed with cool footage of planes getting shot at and dropping torpedoes.



here is an interview with a Russian A-20 torpedo bomber pilot

Interview with R.S.Demidov

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## Schweik (Jun 1, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> My "thumb on the scale." consisted of copying the figures from the chart on page 599 of "America's Hundred thousand" By Frances Dean.
> These were the ONLY drop tanks listed in the chart. I didn't leave any out.
> If that doesn't meet your standard of _fairplay_...To bad.



Fair enough, my apologies- I shouldn't have assumed malicious intent.



> On the next page is a similar chart which includes P-47Ns and P-51Hs. Since those aircraft are really not pertinent to a discussion of Fighter escorts in Europe in 1944 I didn't bother to include them. That would have been "tipping" the scale".



post the data I'd be interested to see it. Don't have that book yet.

S

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 1, 2018)

Everyone:

Don’t let this thread get out of hand.


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## DarrenW (Jun 1, 2018)

pbehn said:


> If the P-51 didn't exist, then the US would know it didn't exist, the P-47N was in almost all respects the equal of the P-51 including range. It is therefore an issue of how quickly a P-47N version or similar could be brought into service and what offensive operations would be done in the meantime.



Yes, the N model Thunderbolts were very hot aircraft, but their overall performance was dependent on how much fuel they carried in the wing tanks. To get the "Mustang like ranges" you would need to fill the wing tanks to maximum capacity, but this of course affected performance and handling drastically. Climb alone was basically cut in half, when compared to aircraft with only the fuselage fuel tanks in use. I am quite certain that it's maneuverability was hampered as well. The longer ranges required in the PTO allowed for most of the wing tank fuel to be burned before combat was initiated, whereas in Europe this most likely would not have been the case. The N model was designed from the start for operations in the Pacific and first shipments didn't arrive until April '45. It would have been a non-player in Europe until then anyway, so how do we provide "quality escort service" before it's arrival if the Mustang never existed in the first place? I suspect that the war would have dragged on much longer than the history books record if this were the case.

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## pbehn (Jun 1, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Keep in mind pbehn, this discussion involves multiple people. As a review, I pointed out offhand that the Yak-3 was one of the great fighters of the war, I didn't think that was controversial but I should have known better. Then Shortround and some others kind of pounced on me starting a wide ranging debate running all over the place which then you and others chimed in on as you got annoyed by something I said.
> 
> I don't even grasp precisely what your beef is here, still but I guess you feel like I'm badmouthing the British fighters. I don't see why, in this very thread I put Spitfires in my top 10 list (I think number 2 or 3) for the whole war and hurricanes in the top 20. In bringing up that neither plane was ideally suited for Russia, I am merely trying to prove the point that not all aircraft were perfectly suited for all Theaters (or necessarily, for the whole duration of the war). This is not an attack on English (or American) airplanes. I don't think there is or was such a thing as a military aircraft suited for every Front in every Theater for every type of operation. I think that is a myth.
> 
> ...



It all hinges on the term greatness I suppose. The Yak-3 appeared in 1944 same as the Tempest, whatever their performance was they didn't influence the direction of the war. In that respect, in my view the Hurricane was a far more significant and "great" aircraft that the plane two generations later from Hawkers the Tempest. There were many aircraft and some were for a time the best in one or two niches and from that changed the course of the whole conflict, it is to these few aircraft the term "greatness" applies.

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## pbehn (Jun 1, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Yes, the N model Thunderbolts were very hot aircraft, but their overall performance was dependent on how much fuel they carried in the wing tanks. To get the "Mustang like ranges" you would need to fill the wing tanks to maximum capacity, but this of course affected performance and handling drastically. Climb alone was basically cut in half, when compared to aircraft with only the fuselage fuel tanks in use. I am quite certain that it's maneuverability was hampered as well. The longer ranges required in the PTO allowed for most of the wing tank fuel to be burned before combat was initiated, whereas in Europe this most likely would not have been the case. The N model was designed from the start for operations in the Pacific and first shipments didn't arrive until April '45. It would have been a non-player in Europe until then anyway, so how do we provide "quality escort service" before it's arrival if the Mustang never existed in the first place? I suspect that the war would have dragged on much longer than the history books record if this were the case.


My point was that the P-51B/C didnt suddenly arrive in mid 1943 out of the blue. There was a lot of research and development put into it. If it had never existed then a similar amount could and would have been put into other possibilities.

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## DarrenW (Jun 1, 2018)

pbehn said:


> My point was that the P-51B/C didnt suddenly arrive in mid 1943 out of the blue. There was a lot of research and development put into it. If it had never existed then a similar amount could and would have been put into other possibilities.



But that could be said of any aircraft that was eventually chosen for frontline service. If it didn't exist something else would have been created to fill that particular role. I hope you don't believe that the Spitfire came about without an extensive and exhaustive development period as well. All that time and energy spent before its introduction could have been equally used creating a totally different fighter which may or may not have done as well as the Spitfire. 

The point that I was making earlier is that when one looks at every viable escort fighter available in the Fall of 1943, the P-51 was far and away the best option of them all. It was a very easy decision for the USAAC to select it for that role, and when they did it supplanted all other escort fighters seemingly overnight.That says a lot about how much better it really was.


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## pbehn (Jun 1, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> But that could be said of any aircraft that was eventually chosen for frontline service. If it didn't exist something else would have been created to fill that particular role. I hope you don't believe that the Spitfire came about without an extensive and exhaustive development period as well. All that time and energy spent before its introduction could have been equally used creating a totally different fighter which may or may not have done as well as the Spitfire.
> 
> The point that I was making earlier is that when one looks at every viable escort fighter available in the Fall of 1943, the P-51 was far and away the best option of them all. It was a very easy decision for the USAAC to select it for that role, and when they did it supplanted all other escort fighters seemingly overnight.That says a lot about how much better it really was.


Darren, I was responding to the fictional scenario that the P-51 disappeared from our history books.[, I agree with all your points. Historically the Hurricane wone the Battle of Britain, but historically the UK would not have allowed itself to just have circa 130 monoplane fighters in Sept 1939.

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## wuzak (Jun 1, 2018)

Schweik said:


> For example, when somebody tells me that a Wildcat couldn't shoot down a Bf 109 because it's too slow or has 145 gallons of fuel in the tank or only 400 rounds of ammunition for it's guns, or an 11.7 m/s climb rate, I'd rather check and see what the historical record says about actual encounters between Wildcats and Bf 109s. And low and behold! It turns out they were not so inferior after all.



Nobody told you that the F4F couldn't shoot down a Bf 109 or Fw 190.

There is more to whether one plane shoots down another than the quality/ability of the aircraft.

The tactical situation, for example.

In "leaning into France" the RAF discovered this too. The Luftwaffe engaged the intruders at their own discretion, and mostly when the odds were stacked heavily in their favour.

The actual encounters you cited were from 1945. When even you admitted that German pilot quality had deteriorated substantially.


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## wuzak (Jun 1, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Are you sure because the record certainly doesn't reflect this. Which "land-based" fighters ever gave the Hellcat any trouble?



I'm sure that the Bf 109 and Fw 190 would have given the F6F some grief.

Not sure about Japanese land based fighters. I believe they got better later in the war, but the pilots lacked experience and training by that stage.




DarrenW said:


> And if the Spitfire V was the equal of the F6F then I suppose it would have "broke the back" of the IJN and IJA before the Hellcat even arrived, but it didn't. That didn't happen until after the Hellcat's arrival.



The Spitfire V could break the back of the Japanese because:
1. it wasn't there early enough
2. it wasn't there in enough numbers
3. it wasn't there in the right places

The Spitfire was constrained by its range limitations, which the F6F and F4F got around by having mobile bases.

I still don't know if the F6F should be credited with breaking the back of the Japanese - I think that credit goes largely to the F4F.

I still maintain that the performance of the F6F was similar to that of the Spitfire V.




DarrenW said:


> You forgot to mention that it was also definitely inferior to the Hellcat. That's why the FAA purchased 1263 copies of the American fighter instead of being content with their own indigenous carrier-born design. And I'd recheck your figures concerning the Seafire's range. It was most assuredly less than that of the Hellcat, both with and without external tanks.



Yes, the Seafire was inferior to the Hellcat.

Wartime Seafires were largely based on the Spitfire V, and lagged behind in development.


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## Milosh (Jun 1, 2018)

Didn't a _George_ get into a fight with many F6Fs and come out ahead?


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## fubar57 (Jun 1, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Didn't a _George_ get into a fight with many F6Fs and come out ahead?



Wasn't me

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## DarrenW (Jun 1, 2018)

wuzak said:


> I'm sure that the Bf 109 and Fw 190 would have given the F6F some grief.



I was talking historically and not speculatively. The F6F never found itself disadvantaged with any of the various fighters it encountered. This even goes for the one rare occasion where it met Luftwaffe fighters. I will agree though that it would have to be flown much closer to the margins if flown in the ETO for any extended length of time. If we were to speculate I would say that the FW 190D and late BF 109Gs and Ks were obviously more dangerous than the earlier versions that it met in Norwegian waters. But like you said, German pilot quality was suffering late in the war so I think that would have evened things up quite a bit.



wuzak said:


> I still don't know if the F6F should be credited with breaking the back of the Japanese - I think that credit goes largely to the F4F.



The Wildcat was instrumental in helping to tip the balance towards the allies at Midway and Coral Sea but it was the Hellcat which ensured an allied victory by destroying any hopes of a Japanese reprisal. Read up on the battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf and you will understand why this is true.



wuzak said:


> I still maintain that the performance of the F6F was similar to that of the Spitfire V.



Not the F6F-5, nor the F6F-3 with water injection, which were faster at all altitudes, had much greater range (even when land-based), and could take far more punishment. Why did the Spit suffer so at the hands of the Zeros in NG if it was the equal of the Hellcat? There was never a period of the war where F6Fs had their arses handed to them by the Japanese as was often the case with the oh so popular Spitfire.....

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## DarrenW (Jun 1, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Didn't a _George_ get into a fight with many F6Fs and come out ahead?



That was pure Japanese propaganda. The pilot in question was actually flying a Zero at the time and the story spun out of control from there.


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## DarrenW (Jun 1, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Darren, I was responding to the fictional scenario that the P-51 disappeared from our history books.[, I agree with all your points. Historically the Hurricane wone the Battle of Britain, but historically the UK would not have allowed itself to just have circa 130 monoplane fighters in Sept 1939.



I hear you and agree that the Hurricane was the true champion of the Battle of Britain.


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## BiffF15 (Jun 2, 2018)

Gents,

We seem to get completely focused on the performance aspects of these planes as if it can be boiled down to a winning formula. While one formula will give you better odds than another it’s no guarantee due to the wild cards of the set up / situation, and the pilot. 

The set up is who has the advantage of position or first tally and subsequent maneuvering to a position of advantage. 

The pilot introduces the variables of knowledge, skill, and luck for better or worse. 

If a pilot in a better plane approaches one in a lessor model, but fails to adhere to tactics designed to insure success he or she is asking to get their collective buttocal regions handed to them. Another way of saying this is you have to respect your adversary. He is out to win as well and may have some knowledge or skill you don’t.

Trust me on this last point as I have lived it and took particular delight in delivering that lesson.

Cheers,
Biff

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 2, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Gents,
> 
> We seem to get completely focused on the performance aspects of these planes as if it can be boiled down to a winning formula. While one formula will give you better odds than another it’s no guarantee due to the wild cards of the set up / situation, and the pilot.
> 
> ...



Don’t stop the F6F love fest...

We can make June Pride month for it.

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## fubar57 (Jun 2, 2018)



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## swampyankee (Jun 2, 2018)

As I've said before, "over-rated" is subjective, and has little to do with the aircraft's actual performance in combat; it's all about how people report its relative performance and contribution. Personally, I think the two main fighters of the _Luftwaffe_ are over-rated because many people, a few (hopefully very few) of whom may have a political agenda favoring some of the nazi ideology, seem to assume _every_ technological advance of the WW2 came out of Germany (see below). Statistics that I think are _completely_ irrelevant to whether an aircraft is over- or under-rated include, incidentally, which ones the aces flew: that says more about opportunity, tactics, and pilots than about aircraft.

There are other fighters which may be considered over-rated, such as the P-51 (it was not as much better as other US fighters as some seem to believe; it was better than the others used in the ETO as a long-range escort, but was no better in other roles than its contemporaries, and was inferior in some aspects to them, including in air combat; see, for example, the comparative trials conducted by the US between the F4U and the P-51, where the Corsair was superior in a broad altitude range), but there are none which are no so consistently over-rated as the FW190 (which did not teach anybody how to produce a low-drag installation of a radial engine; the US and UK engineers already knew how to do so, and the fan was a crutch both groups eschewed) and the Bf109 (which actually had the worst zero-lift drag coefficient of any single-engine fighter to serve in significant numbers after 1941). 

It's easier to agree on the aircraft of the Allies that are under-rated, mostly because these are actually the aircraft that did the heavy lifting before the next generation of fighters.

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## DarrenW (Jun 2, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Don’t stop the F6F love fest...
> 
> We can make June Pride month for it.



That's something I can get onboard with, seeing that June 26th will be the 76th anniversary of it's first flight. But let's not get too greedy here. We should definitely leave the other 11 months alone in order to drool over the two greatest Nazi killing machines of all time, the BF 109 and FW 190. God knows that will make certain folks here extremely giddy....


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 2, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> That's something I can get onboard with, seeing that June 26th will be the 76th anniversary of it's first flight. But let's not get too greedy here. We should definitely leave the other 11 months alone in order to drool over the two greatest Nazi killing machines of all time, the BF 109 and FW 190. *God knows that will make certain folks here extremely giddy....*








Good someone needs to balance you out...


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## swampyankee (Jun 2, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> As I've said before, "over-rated" is subjective, and has little to do with the aircraft's actual performance in combat; it's all about how people report its relative performance and contribution. Personally, I think the two main fighters of the _Luftwaffe_ are over-rated because many people, a few (hopefully very few) of whom may have a political agenda favoring some of the nazi ideology, seem to assume _every_ technological advance of the WW2 came out of Germany (see below). Statistics that I think are _completely_ irrelevant to whether an aircraft is over- or under-rated include, incidentally, which ones the aces flew:  that says more about opportunity, tactics, and pilots than about aircraft.
> 
> There are other fighters which may be considered over-rated, such as the P-51 (it was not as much better as other US fighters as some seem to believe; it was better than the others used in the ETO as a long-range escort, but was no better in other roles than its contemporaries, and was inferior in some aspects to them, including in air combat; see, for example, the comparative trials conducted by the US between the F4U and the P-51, where the Corsair was superior in a broad altitude range), but there are none which are no so consistently over-rated as the FW190 (which did not teach anybody how to produce a low-drag installation of a radial engine; the US and UK engineers already knew how to do so, and the fan was a crutch both groups eschewed) and the Bf109 (which actually had the worst zero-lift drag coefficient of any single-engine fighter to serve in significant numbers after 1941).
> 
> It's easier to agree on the aircraft of the Allies that are under-rated, mostly because these are actually the aircraft that did the heavy lifting before the next generation of fighters.



Quoting myself. How derivative. Or recursive.

But, "see below" requires some more.

The idea that the Me262 had wing sweep to deal with compressibility is a myth; it was swept because of center of gravity issues. In other words, it was swept because somebody did their sums wrong.

Swept wings for high speed flight were considered and analyzed well before WW2; investigation of high-speed flight, including design of wings for supersonic flight was quite active _and quite international _in the 1930s; Google the Fifth Volta Conference. While many of the leading aerodynamicists of the era were German, they were also British, American, Italian, French, Japanese Russian (in the extended sense of "subject to the Soviet state," not just ethnic Russians), and Japanese. It's rather telling, although I don't know telling of what, that many German aircraft used NACA airfoils.....

NACA and Townend had radically reduced the drag of radial engines (and liquid-cooled engines of the era also had quite high drag, as many used shell-and-tube radiators, not plate-fin ones; the former had much higher pressure losses; Stan Miley has reported that net cooling drag does not significantly differ between cowled air-cooled radials and liquid-cooled in-lines).

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 2, 2018)

And now we can return to our regularly scheduled programming...

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## rochie (Jun 3, 2018)

Chris i admire your patients and restraint under provocation.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 4, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> View attachment 495938​


"OK pass, #3 wire, on speed, on glideslope ATW, 4.0!"


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## Schweik (Jun 5, 2018)

So I was in my local Hobby Shop (a real nice one I call "The Airplane Shrine" though it seems to be getting taken over lately by some strange Japanese robots and other odd modern innovations)

Anyway I saw a new Osprey book titled something like "Air Vanguard / Allison Engined P-51 units". Given that this specific type of aircraft came up in a few conversations in the last several pages here, I was curious enough to shell out $20 and buy the thing.

I noticed a few interesting facts in the book which I thought people here might find worthy of posting. Forgive me if I'm slightly vague, this is from memory since I'm at a rather boring meeting at work and don't have the book on hand, but it's not far and I can provide more specific references on demand.

There were a lot of them in use. I was surprised by the production and operational deployment numbers. They made about ~ 1,800 of them through the end of the War. About 500 were given to the British who used them as Mustang I or II for Army Cooperation Command and I'm not sure what other units. 

Another 500 were used as A-36 or P-51A in the Med (mostly as A-36 dive bombers), but this didn't start until the raids on Pantelleria and Lampadusa in June of 43, which is why I didn't notice them much in Shores MAW yet because MAW III ends in May I think. MAW IV is coming at the end of the year.

Another 200 or so were used in the CBI as A-36 and P-51A.
They were pretty good as Dive Bombers. From the list of destroyed targets they seem to have been pretty effective at dive-bombing particularly in Italy, two FB (Fighter Bomber) groups were deployed with I think 3 squadrons each, destroying many enemy airfields / planes and gun positions (notably at Anzio) and even sinking a couple of warships. Bombing accuracy was considered very high. Casualties, mainly to Flak, were also high and eventually they were phased out from the Dive Bombing mission and reverted to strafing and 'glide bombing' whatever that means.
They described an interesting detail of flying DB missions, with flight leader of 4 watching terrain to navigate, his wingman on his port side but looking right (and only right for E/A), the second flight leader also watching terrain features in case he has to navigate back to base, and his wingman on his starboard side looking left (and only left) for E/A. Sounded pretty tense!
Apparently they weren't so great as fighters. The book mentioned that there was only one Ace. Maybe this means only among the Americans or only among A-36 pilots I'm not sure. They mentioned I think about 80 victories total in the Med but didn't get into too much detail about fights. 

In Burma they mentioned several specific missions. P-51A were used on long range escort missions, in one case in 1943 or 1944 they were jumped by Ki-43s from the 64th Sentai near ling ling and lost 4 without scoring victories. They listed 3 or 4 other engagements in 1944 where the P-51As suffered similarly lopsided losses against Ki-43s and Ki-44s of 64 or 50 Sentai, the latter down near Hong Kong IIRC. This was attributed in the book to poor Tactics and it mentioned they were ordered not to engage in "dogfights" with Japanese fighters.

That is a bit odd to me seeing as that tactic dated back to 1941 and should have been known, also P-40's were still doing quite well at that point in the same Theater. I have Ospreys 23rd Fighter Group book, P-40 Aces of the CBI book, and Ki-43 vs. P-40 in 1944 book. P-40s seem to have been doing quite well by then.

Osprey doesn't give loss results from both sides though, so to find some other sources I googled and found an old thread from this very forum which among other things mentions a fight between 5 P-40s facing a raid by 32 A6M5s piloted by flight school instructors and experienced veterans, in which 9 A6M were shot down for the loss of 1 P-40. Apparently the P-40s pilots were warned and had plenty of time to prepare for the raid and used very good tactics while the Japanese pilots, in spite of their experience, did not.

That thread also mentions incidents (comparing claims and losses on both sides) in which P-40s were shooting down plenty of Ki-43, Ki-44 and Ki-84s in various engagements. It was an interesting read.


I don't really understand why Allison engined P-51s were not doing so well in air to air combat. Regular Packard Merlin engined ones did quite well obviously including in Burma (I think... I mean I haven't looked deep into it but 23rd FG book makes it seem so). P-51A had the altitude limitation but so did the P-40... and P-51A could hit 400 mph. It may boil down to tactics, leadership and training... but even that seems odd if the low number of combat victories is seen in the Med, in British service and in Burma.

S

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## Schweik (Jun 5, 2018)

Also shows you how deadly that Ki-43 was, even in 1944. Don't need tons of guns or 450 mph speed to kill enemy fighters.

Imagine what the Finns could have done with 100 of those lol.

S

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## GrauGeist (Jun 5, 2018)

The A-36 first saw action in North Africa (April '43), attached to the 27th FBG, from there, it participated in the MTO and Lt. Russo became an Ace in that theater against German and Italian fighters.

The A-36 arrived in the CBI (September '43) attached to the 311th FBG - unfortunately, the altitudes involved in the Burma area did put the A-36 at a disadvantage against Japanese fighters.

It appears that of the 500 A-36s built, their numbers were almost equally divided between Europe and the Pacific.


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## Milosh (Jun 5, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Another 500 were used as A-36 or P-51A in the Med (mostly as A-36 dive bombers)



P-51A was NA99. Four wing guns only. No dive brakes. 310 built.
A-36 was NA97. Four wing guns and 2 fuselage guns. 500 built.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 5, 2018)

Milosh said:


> A-36 was NA97. Four wing guns and *2 fuselage guns*. 500 built.


Often referred to as "cheek guns".

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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

Milosh said:


> P-51A was NA99. Four wing guns only. No dive brakes. 310 built.
> A-36 was NA97. Four wing guns and 2 fuselage guns. 500 built.



So impatient. I told y'all I was posting from work. I'm at home now with the book in my hand. This is the book.

What you posted is a partial list. Total production of this plane was 1720 units not counting prototypes.

England ordered 320 NA 73 and 300 NA 83 (all as Mk I), and 92 NA-91 (as Mk 1A) and 50 NA 99 (as Mk II) for a total of 762 Allison Engined P-51s.
The US ordered 458 P-51s of various subtypes (see below) plus the 500 A-36 for a total of 958 Allison Engined P-51s.

Total production was therefore 1720 not counting 3 prototypes. It was not clear to me initially if the 86 recon versions were made originally for that purpose (this is why I originally thought total production run was ~1800). But I checked and read it a bit more carefully - they were apparently diverted from British orders, converted into recon planes and used in Tunisia and from England including over D-Day. These are the production numbers:

320 x Mk I (NA-73) Nov 41 to May 42. Serial Nos AG345 to AG664
200 x Mk I (NA-83) Apr to Aug 42. Serial Nos AL 958 to AM257
100 x Mk I (NA-83) Jul to Aug 42. Serial Nos AP164 to AP 263
92 x Mk IA (NA-91) Sept 42 to Jan 43 Serial Nos FD438 to FD 567
148 x P-51 (NA-91) Serial Nos 41-37320 to 41-37469
500 x A-36 (NA-97) Serial Nos 42-83663 to 42-84162
100 x P-51A-1 (NA -99) Serial Nos 43-6003 to 43-6102
55 x P-51A-5 (NA-99) Serial Nos 43-6103 to 43-6157
155 x P-51A-10 (NA-99) Serial Nos 43-6158 to 43-6312

Of the English models 51 were converted to F-6A and 35 converted to F-6B recon planes.
*
Allison Engined Mustangs in Combat*
According to the book, page 42, the A-36 arrived at operational units (27th and 86th FBG) in March 1943 *but did not fly a combat mission until 6 June 1943 *against Pantelleria and Lampedusa. It may be possible however that some of the recon (F-6) birds may have been used before that.

Michael T Russo was an ace flying A-36s with the 16th Bomb Squadron in Italy. Apparently he was the only Ace with the type which is surprising considering ~1,600 of them were fairly heavily engaged over a long period of time. Does not compare well with say, the P-40F or the P-40K. Or the say, Yak-7.

The first unit that got mauled in Burma was the 311 FB group operating out of Kyurmitola India. They had 40 A-36s plus some P-51As. November 25 8 Mustangs flew escort to B-25s to Mingaladon Iarfield in Rangoon. They were bounced by four Ki-43s from the 64th Sentai. Two Mustangs were shot down for no claims. Shortly after another escort mission for B-24s was jumped again by 64th Sentai Ki-43s, losing 4 Mustangs including the 311 FG commanding officer, Colonel Harry Melton. One Ki-43 was shot down and one made a forced landing.

On Dec 1 1943 311 FBG escorted Liberators to Rangoon, got jumped again losing 1 P-51.

On Feb 14, 1944 13 P-51As were escorting B-25s to a raid at Zaundiaing. While strafing the target they were bounced by Ki-43s from the 50th Sentai. Two P-51s were lost and 3 damaged. No Japanese losses are mentioned.

They mention two more combats in March and April 1944 in which "several" Ki-43s of 50th Sentai were shot down, and one on March 16 where 50th Sentai Ki-43s "bounced" P-51As on takeoff and one was shot down with the pilot badly burned.

Like I said, a fairly dismal air to air combat record. You'll be happy to know though the book says several times that the P-51A was way better than the P-40 and even claims it was better in combat than the P-38. Better no doubt in many ways except in the sense of shooting down enemy aircraft while not getting shot down...

It does seem like it was a good dive bomber though and that changes my understanding of the DAF a bit, the existence of a good high speed dive bomber on the Allied side definitely puts an interesting twist on the whole war in that area. The USAAF had their own Stuka and it went 400 mph and had a ~1200 mile range.

S

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 6, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Like I said, a fairly dismal air to air combat record.


Weren't they restricted to "close escort, no dogfighting"? Kinda like one hand tied behind?


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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Weren't they restricted to "close escort, no dogfighting"? Kinda like one hand tied behind?



After one of the encounters with 64 Sentai they were given orders for "no dogfighting" in the sense of do not get into a low speed turn fight with the Japanese fighters. This was SOP in the CBI since 1941 for I think all Allied fighters.

I'm not sure about the close escort rule but I can't imagine why their tactics would be any different from the P-40, P-47, P-38 or Merlin engined P-51 Squadrons operating in the same Theater.

It is possible that this is just down to poor tactics, poor training or inexperience, but that would mean English / Commonwealth pilots, US pilots in the Med, and in the CBI all having the same problems. I'm not sure how many squadrons you get out of 1600 planes but it's a fair amount. Maybe 20 or 30. I would expect more Aces especially that late in the war. They may not have been encountering that many enemy aircraft though due to the nature of the missions most of them were flying and the lack of enemy planes that late in the war, especially in the Med and CBI.

But just by comparison, they only made about 2000 P-40F & L, and they had 16 pilots make Ace while flying just on those types in USAAF units in the Med (including one double Ace, Levi Chase), plus at least two in the Pacific (1Lt Henry E. Matson and 1Lt Jack Bade) and 3 Commonwealth pilots who made ace while flying the type with 260 RAF and 3 RAAF, all in about 6 -8 months mostly in the first half of 1943. So 19 Aces.

There were at least twenty pilots who made Ace while flying the P-40K (if you count US - especially 23rd FG, Commonwealth and Russia) including at least 4 Double Aces (John Hampshire and Bruce Holloway with 23FG, Earnest Hariss with 49 FG, and Konstantin Dmitrievich in Russia) plus one quadruple Ace (Kuznetzov) and there were only 1300 of those built, though it was in deployment for a bit longer (mid 42-late 44). One double Ace Denisov Konstantin Dmitrievich scored all of his 13 victories while flying the P-40K. M.V. Kuznetzov also got most of his 22 P-40 kills while flying P-40K.

Note I didn't count pilots who were Aces and scored victories in those types but who got some of their victories while flying other subtypes. There were a large number of Commonwealth Aces in particular who flew P-40K, F or L at some point in their career, and many Russian aces who flew the P-40K at some point. Most of the P-40 victories in WW2 were made while flying P-40B/C (Tomahawk II and IIB) and P-40E (Kittyhawk I and Ia) types earlier in the war when the air combat was more intense.

According to Carl Moleseworth P-40's shot down 64% of the Japanese planes destroyed in the CBI.

S

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 6, 2018)

Schweik said:


> It is possible that this is just down to poor tactics, poor training or inexperience


Or maybe a different mission? The A-36 was primarily an attack plane with its performance optimized for the lower levels, and training probably emphasized that role, with the plane's performance dedicated to escape rather than ACM. The other planes you're comparing it to are dedicated fighters with the training and attitudes to match. How many kills did Marine bomber-configured F-4s make in 'Nam compared to Navy and Air Force Phantoms flying in the fighter role? And any commander who sends non turbo Allison fighters to escort bombers over the hump deserves to be relieved.
Cheers,
Wes

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## GrauGeist (Jun 6, 2018)

The A-36 was not a fighter, it was a dive-bomber.

It was most certainly capable of defending itself it challenged, but that was not it's mission profile.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 6, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The A-36 was not a fighter, it was a dive-bomber.
> 
> It was most certainly capable of defending itself it challenged, but that was not it's mission profile.


Nor its training, most likely. Defending yourself against the occasional attacker is quite different from going out looking for kills.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Peter Gunn (Jun 6, 2018)

Good find Schweik, I'll have to snag one off Amazon or Ospreys site, the A model always interested me but also confused me for the exact same reasons listed, never understood why it didn't have a better air to air record. Although as Wes says, training for a different type of mission has a lot to do with it I'm sure.

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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The A-36 was not a fighter, it was a dive-bomber.
> 
> It was most certainly capable of defending itself it challenged, but that was not it's mission profile.





XBe02Drvr said:


> Or maybe a different mission? The A-36 was primarily an attack plane with its performance optimized for the lower levels, and training probably emphasized that role, with the plane's performance dedicated to escape rather than ACM. The other planes you're comparing it to are dedicated fighters with the training and attitudes to match. How many kills did Marine bomber-configured F-4s make in 'Nam compared to Navy and Air Force Phantoms flying in the fighter role? And any commander who sends non turbo Allison fighters to escort bombers over the hump deserves to be relieved.
> Cheers,
> Wes



Yes but there are some problems with these theories.

of the ~1700 Allison Engined Mustangs, only 500 were A-36. Another 80 were recon F6. But what about the other 1120 planes?
Most Anglo-American fighters (P-40s, Hurricanes, P-47s, even Spitfires) were flying mostly Fighter-Bomber missions in the Med or CBI from mid 1942. But they still got victories.
Non turbo Allison engined P-40s, notably from the 80th and 51st Fighter Groups, and I think 23 FG too, were flying escort missions over "The Hump" successfully.
Maybe you could draw another conclusion - the P-51 wasn't that great at air to air combat at low altitude! Maybe that's why they didn't emphasize it as a fighter very much until it got the Packard-Merlin.

Or maybe there are other reasons, but I don't think you can explain this by saying that they were all A-36s. We should try to make the theories fit the data instead of the other way around.

S

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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Good find Schweik, I'll have to snag one off Amazon or Ospreys site, the A model always interested me but also confused me for the exact same reasons listed, never understood why it didn't have a better air to air record. Although as Wes says, training for a different type of mission has a lot to do with it I'm sure.



Maybe they just needed to develop slightly different tactics for the Mustang that they didn't get around to in the comparatively low density air to air environment most were operating in. The Merlin engined Mustangs with 8th AF were in the mix pretty quickly as high altitude escorts for the heavy bombers, so they had to work out how to fight with them pretty fast. It's a little more murky with the 9th or 15th AF.

For the British to have a 400 mph fighter in early 1942 is pretty interesting to me, I'm surprised they didn't do more with it. The book didn't say much about what they in fact did except for some action at Dieppe and some individual Rhubarb (etc.) raids such as one mentioned where they strafed German planes at an airfield near Paris. Seems like they could have done more with it, like escorting Mosquitoes or Beaufighters say.

It's possible the plane wasn't properly exploited.

Some questions I still have:


Why did the USAAF decide to make the NA-73 into a dive bomber?

What are the performance differences, if any, other than altitude and top speed, that set P-51A and B/C apart?
Was Russo really the only Ace? Maybe there were some in the English squadrons that just got ignored in the summaries for some reason. Wouldn't be the first time.
How did the Merlin engined P-51s do in the CBI? I always assumed well but I haven't really drilled down into it. I have some sources for that that I can check. I know most pilots liked the Mustang.
Why were P-40s still doing so well in the CBI, even at high altitude, as late as 1944?
Why didn't the British use Mustang I or IIs against Fw 190s when they were having all that trouble with low level 190 raids in 1942? Or did they?
S


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## Milosh (Jun 6, 2018)

Schweik said:


> So impatient. I told y'all I was posting from work. I'm at home now with the book in my hand.



If you were as studious as you have claimed, you would have known the A-36 and the P-51A were not the same a/c. Noobs make that mistake all the time.



Schweik said:


> Why did the USAAF decide to make the NA-73 into a dive bomber?



This has already been commented on.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 6, 2018)

There also seems to be a little confusion to the Mustang types.
The NA-73 (and NA-83) were RAF Mustang Mk.I and only two were retained by the USAAF for evaluation (XP-51)
The NA-91 was the P-51/Mustang Mk.IA and was the type first accepted into service with the USAAF.
The NA-99 was the P-51A/Mustang Mk.II and saw improvements to the Allison and armament, etc.
The NA-97 was the A-36, intended to be a dive-bomber from the onset (for reasons explained many times in this thread).

Lt. Russo was the only Ace who made all his victories while flying the A-36 (NA-97). The A-36 only saw service with the USAAF, the RAF only had one NA-97 aircraft for evaluation (s/n EW998).


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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

Milosh said:


> If you were as studious as you have claimed, you would have known the A-36 and the P-51A were not the same a/c. Noobs make that mistake all the time.



Hmmmm. Can you point out where I claimed that A-36 and P-51A were the same a/c? In all my posts on this subject I was referring to a book (which I linked in case anyone was confused) called "Allison Engined P-51 Mustang" which combined the history of both (or technically, all four or five aircraft types since you also have Mustang I and II, F-6A and B and so on). Both P-51A and A-36 were actually used in many cases for the same missions, apparently though there were certainly differences. I explicitly spelled out all of the a/c subtypes upthread by transcribing a page from the Osprey book, precisely to avoid any such confusion, maybe you missed it?

I pointed out that my first post on the Allison Engined Mustangs was off the cuff and from memory, which I followed up with a more precise post with data from the book when I got home from work. I thought people in the thread would find the book interesting. Did something about this data displease you? 



> This has already been commented on.



The notion that it was just due to funding seems a bit thin to me. But you are right I should have mentioned it.

S


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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> There also seems to be a little confusion to the Mustang types.
> The NA-73 (and NA-83) were RAF Mustang Mk.I and only two were retained by the USAAF for evaluation (XP-51)
> The NA-91 was the P-51/Mustang Mk.IA and was the type first accepted into service with the USAAF.
> The NA-99 was the P-51A/Mustang Mk.II and saw improvements to the Allison and armament, etc.
> The NA-97 was the A-36, intended to be a dive-bomber from the onset (for reasons explained many times in this thread).



Well not by me. Forgive me for reposting from Post 936 in this thread, this is from the Osprey book:

320 x Mk I (NA-73) Nov 41 to May 42. Serial Nos AG345 to AG664
200 x Mk I (NA-83) Apr to Aug 42. Serial Nos AL 958 to AM257
100 x Mk I (NA-83) Jul to Aug 42. Serial Nos AP164 to AP 263
92 x Mk IA (NA-91) Sept 42 to Jan 43 Serial Nos FD438 to FD 567
148 x P-51 (NA-91) Serial Nos 41-37320 to 41-37469
500 x A-36 (NA-97) Serial Nos 42-83663 to 42-84162
100 x P-51A-1 (NA -99) Serial Nos 43-6003 to 43-6102
55 x P-51A-5 (NA-99) Serial Nos 43-6103 to 43-6157
155 x P-51A-10 (NA-99) Serial Nos 43-6158 to 43-6312

Of the English models 51 were converted to F-6A and 35 converted to F-6B recon planes.



> Lt. Russo was the only Ace who made all his victories while flying the A-36 (NA-97). The A-36 only saw service with the USAAF, the RAF only had one NA-97 aircraft for evaluation (s/n EW998).



Yes, my question was did any other (American or Commonwealth) pilots flying (non A-36) Allison Engined Mustang variants reach Ace status, or was Russo the only one?

S


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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 6, 2018)

Schweik said:


> The notion that it was just due to funding seems a bit thin to me.


Hey, it was still peacetime (in the US), and under the rules of peacetime capitalist economics you don't hold a production line open if you have nothing for it to do, no matter how promising its potential future product. The costs and timeloss of retooling, rehiring and retraining are just too great. And in a country still recovering from the depression, breaking the penny pinching rules by playing fast and loose with budget categories wasn't an option.
Cheers,
Wes

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## GrauGeist (Jun 6, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Hmmmm. Can you point out where I claimed that A-36 and P-51A were the same a/c?


Here:


Schweik said:


> Why did the USAAF decide to make the NA-73 into a dive bomber?


The USAAF didn't make the NA-73 into a dive bomber. North American decided to make it and it was based on the NA-91 (developed in parallel with the NA-99).

And I thought I'd also touch on this while we're at it:


Schweik said:


> What are the performance differences, if any, other than altitude and top speed, that set P-51A and B/C apart?


The main performance difference between the P-51A and the P-51B/C, is the Merlin engine in the B/C...there's more, obviously...


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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Hey, it was still peacetime (in the US), and under the rules of peacetime capitalist economics you don't hold a production line open if you have nothing for it to do, no matter how promising its potential future product. The costs and timeloss of retooling, rehiring and retraining are just too great. And in a country still recovering from the depression, breaking the penny pinching rules by playing fast and loose with budget categories wasn't an option.
> Cheers,
> Wes



Ok fair enough, but I think they were still making some A-36 after Dec 1941 right? This could certainly be all chocked up to bureaucracy / corporate bottom line etc., there was certainly a lot of that in WW2 and in the US in particular. It just seems like a wasted opportunity if that was indeed the case.

The explanation of why they went with A-36 initially does make sense but I still smell a bit of a mystery here (maybe my Noooob instincts are off!)

S


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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 6, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Ok fair enough, but I think they were still making some A-36 after Dec 1941 right?


My understanding is that the A-36 was built to hold the production line open until: 1) the USAAF could get more fighter funding and 2) the Merlin Mustang was sorted out.
Production momentum would carry A-36 production on for awhile after December 7.
Cheers,
Wes


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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Here:



Sorry brother, but that is *not even close* to me saying P-51A and A-36 are the same aircraft. If you are claiming that it is I call BS. If that is not what you are claiming then I apologize. I am trying to operate on the assumption that people I'm discussing planes with here are competent, on the level and of goodwill, and I'd appreciate reciprocation. After all we are all just some guys who really like WW2 planes right?

My reference to the NA-73 is to the original design and by extension, the NA-73X prototype which famously crashed. That is the most succinct way I can think of to refer to this family of army co-operation / dive bomber / fighter bomber / low altitude fighter / recon aircraft which goes by Mustang I and II, P-51, P-51A, F-6 and F-6B. I guess I could say "Allison Engined Mustang" but that isn't entirely accurate either since the A-36 was called 'Apache' and sometimes unofficially as 'Invader'.

Going forward, if you or others in the Thread want to suggest a shorthand name for this whole family of aircraft other than the NA-73 or P-51 family then I'll go along with the consensus. I realize differentiating between NA 73 or P-51 as a family of planes vs. individual subtype requires sussing out the context. "Allison Engined P-51 / Mustang / Apache variants" seems a little too long to me though.



> The USAAF didn't make the NA-73 into a dive bomber. North American decided to make it and it was based on the NA-91 (developed in parallel with the NA-99).



Actually they did - they developed the original NA-73 design into the very similar NA-91, which was a "combat ready"* derivation of the original NA 73 to which was added dive brakes and a few other minor changes. But was a very similar plane.



> And I thought I'd also touch on this while we're at it: The main performance difference between the P-51A and the P-51B/C, is the Merlin engine in the B/C...there's more, obviously...



I apologize, I thought that was implicit when I said speed and altitude. I referred to Merlin engined variants to distinguish from Allison engined variants repeatedly in my posts so I thought it was clear.

S


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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> My understanding is that the A-36 was built to hold the production line open until: 1) the USAAF could get more fighter funding and 2) the Merlin Mustang was sorted out.
> Production momentum would carry A-36 production on for awhile after December 7.
> Cheers,
> Wes



According to Wikipedia, A-36 production was actually based on a contract in April 42, started up in Sept 1942, and went on well into 1943 and I think 1944. The last 310 A-36 were apparently ordered by USAAF without dive brakes per the Wiki. The wiki has some more information, notably that A-36s were still being used until June 1944 when they were replaced by P-40s and P-47s. They mention that the center body radiator was considered an 'Achilles Heel' in ground attack missions, maybe they should have put some protection on it.

All in all, it does sound like the A-36 was misdirected somewhat by military / corporate bureaucracy. But the other possibility is that a high speed low altitude dive bomber was very useful particularly during the more fraught days of the Italian campaign (finishing up Tunisia, invasion of Sicily, invasion of Italy, Anzio etc.) and they really needed it for that job.

Similarly as others have pointed out, a recon plane fast enough not to get shot down is certainly a valuable asset. I still don't really have a complete grasp of what the British did with the Mustang I and II but Tac /R and other types of recon mission seems to be part of it.

S


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## wuzak (Jun 6, 2018)

I haven't read this, but it seems it may answer some of your questions.
E-GEH-16

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## Milosh (Jun 6, 2018)

Since you like on Wiki so much,

"No funds were available for new fighter contracts in fiscal year 1942, but General Oliver P. Echols and Fighter Project Officer Benjamin S. Kelsey[4] wanted to ensure that the P-51 remained in production.[5]

Since appropriations were available for an attack aircraft, Echols specified modifications to the P-51 to turn it into a dive bomber."



Schweik said:


> The last 310 A-36 were apparently ordered by USAAF without dive brakes per the Wiki.



So there was 810 A-36s ordered not 500?


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## pbehn (Jun 6, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Since you like on Wiki so much,
> 
> "No funds were available for new fighter contracts in fiscal year 1942, but General Oliver P. Echols and Fighter Project Officer Benjamin S. Kelsey[4] wanted to ensure that the P-51 remained in production.[5]
> 
> ...


69 were wrecked in training accidents


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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

wuzak said:


> I haven't read this, but it seems it may answer some of your questions.
> E-GEH-16



I think *Wuzak *provided us with answers (to several of my questions anyway). The memo linked above is an August 1943 report to the commanding Air Force general in North Africa, summarizing English use of the P-51A / Mustang I & II or whatever you want to call it. Several key passages stand out particularly toward the end.

If you want to know, as I did, why they didn't use the P-51A more as a fighter, and why did it have trouble with Ki-43, here is your answer I think:
_
" 34. Actual combat has proven that the aircraft can run away from anything the Germans have. It’s only inferior points are that it can’t climb as well as the ME-109 and FW-190 and that *at the slower speeds of close combat it loses effectiveness of aileron control and therefore has a poor rate of roll – *but its turning radius with a slight amount of flap is shorter than either of the German aircraft. "_

The use of flaps for sharper turns was also done with P-40s and many other aircraft too, in fact IIRC the German planes had 'maneuver' flap settings and Ki-43s had automatic flaps that engaged when in bank. Interesting that they say it allowed them to out-turn Bf 109s though. Did they ever fix this aileron problem with P-51 B/C and D etc.? I thought P-51 rolled pretty well.

If you are wondering why Spitfires may not have the same range as some other aircraft types in spite of having a lot of fuel (as was speculated upon recently in this forum by Shortround though I can't remember if it was in this same thread)

_" 33. This aircraft is powered with the Allison 1710-39 engine having a rated power of 1150 H.P. at 3000 R.P.M. and 44” Hg. at 12,000 ft. The engine was originally equipped with an automatic boost control limiting the manifold pressure at the lower altitudes to 44”. The British remove this so as to get the vastly increased performance at lower altitudes thru the judicious use of over-boost. As has been mentioned before, they have had exceptionally good service out of these engines and due to its smoothness at low RPM’s, they are able to operate it so as to obtain a remarkably low fuel consumption giving them an operational range greater than any single engine fighter they possess (the fact that the Merlin engine will not run well below 1600 prevents them from obtaining an equivalent low fuel consumption and therefore limits its usefulness for similar operations). "_

Did they ever figure out this problem with the low RPM on Merlins? I would guess P-51B and later had some way to run 'economical' eh?

If you are wondering a little bit about that overboost mentioned above and perhaps looking for some comfirmation of that infamous 1942 Allison memo about overboosting to 70" ... this is highly applicable because it refers to the V-1710-39 which is the same engine as the P-40E / Kittyhawk IA so widely used in the Middle East, Africa and the CBI especially in 1942

_" 36. In view of the British operation and the fact that we have an approved war emergency rating on the 1710-39 engine of 56”, it is suggested that immediate steps be taken to remove the automatic boost controls from our P-51 airplanes in this theatre and that the instrument dials be marked with the proper lights. *The British have operated at full throttle at sea level (72” Hg) for as much as 20 min. at a time without hurting the engines. *According to them, the Allison is averaging 1500 hours between bearing failures as compared to 500 to 600 hours for the Merlin. The Allison, they have found, will drag them home even with the bearing ruined. "
_
Wow. 20 minutes at 72 Hg!? No wonder Fw 190s couldn't catch those things. How fast does a P-51 go at ~1750 hp?

S

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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Since you like on Wiki so much,
> 
> "No funds were available for new fighter contracts in fiscal year 1942, but General Oliver P. Echols and Fighter Project Officer Benjamin S. Kelsey[4] wanted to ensure that the P-51 remained in production.[5]
> 
> Since appropriations were available for an attack aircraft, Echols specified modifications to the P-51 to turn it into a dive bomber."



I'm well aware of this - in fact, I referred to it repeatedly upthread when I noted that I'm not convinced this is the whole story. I also posted the link to the wiki, right? 

But I think it's quite clear now that there were other reasons.

Don't assume what I like and don't like, or what I think, or how new I am or anything else. We don't know one another.



> So there was 810 A-36s ordered not 500?



I was just quoting what the Wiki said, though my best guess would be that is a subset of the A-36 order. I really don't know though and to be clear, am not pretending that I do.

S


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## pbehn (Jun 6, 2018)

I guess we will just have to wait for Drgondogs book to come out.


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## Milosh (Jun 6, 2018)

What Wiki said:
The USAAF later ordered 310 P-51As, which were essentially A-36s without the dive-brakes and nose mounted weapons, leaving an armament of four wing-mounted 0.50 in (12.7 mm) Browning machine guns.

What you said,


Schweik said:


> The last 310 A-36 were apparently ordered by USAAF without dive brakes per the Wiki.



That would mean only190 A-36s were produced which is definitely wrong.


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## wuzak (Jun 6, 2018)

Schweik said:


> If you are wondering why Spitfires may not have the same range as some other aircraft types in spite of having a lot of fuel (as was speculated upon recently in this forum by Shortround though I can't remember if it was in this same thread)



The Spitfire certainly did not have "a lot of fuel".

Range was affected by drag, so would not fly as far as a P-51 on the same amount of fuel with the same engine.


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## Schweik (Jun 6, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The Spitfire certainly did not have "a lot of fuel".
> 
> Range was affected by drag, so would not fly as far as a P-51 on the same amount of fuel with the same engine.



I see I'm gonna get picked apart for every shorthand comment unless I spell everything out to the nth degree. What I was specifically referring to was somebody making back of the envelope calculations comparing a Spitfire with I forget what other plane with twice the range, and working out how many gallons in the tank vs how many gallons per minute and concluding that the range numbers were all wrong because the Spits gas tanks held like 3/4 as much fuel or some such. I think they were talking about the Hellcat.

What the memo you found actually says is that the Merlin engines didn't run well when you were running them at 1600 RPM or below which they said in turn affected range.

S


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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 6, 2018)

Hey guys, sounds like you're talking past each other here.
Now this is just speculation, based on my experience of the principles of aircraft performance and facts presented by various participants in this thread, but it sounds like the Spit, and to a lesser extent, the Merlin 'Stang are forced by the low RPM limitations of their engines to cruise at a speed higher than optimum for airframe aerodynamic range.(>than max L/D speed) The Merlin was less tolerant of "oversquare" (low RPM, high MAP) operation than the Allison. If you really want to cruise your Spit at max L/D for the airframe, you have to run your Merlin at 1600+ RPM with a really low manifold pressure, which will burn more fuel and negate the benefits of your slow cruise. Besides, this leaves you less able to respond quickly to a bounce. Not good.
Oversquare operation puts extreme stresses on an engine, as BMEPs are high and RPM is low and bearings and long "flexible" parts like crankshafts and camshafts are subject to heavy bending, torsional, and harmonic forces, and demand near perfect balance to keep vibration below destructive levels. There also needs to be adequate margin from pre-ignition and detonation as the high MAPs make the cylinders run hotter. The more efficient supercharger in the Merlin comes back to bite here, as charge temperatures are apt to be higher.
Cheers,
Wes

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## wuzak (Jun 6, 2018)

That may be, but flying over contested air space at low speed cruise is not the cleverest thing to do.

Also, was it that the Merlin couldn't do it, or that it was rough doing it?


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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 7, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Also, was it that the Merlin couldn't do it, or that it was rough doing it?


Don't know. I'm not a Merlin ex-spurt, but from I've read here and about, I think it had something to do with the vibration levels becoming a problem at or below 1600 RPM and high MAP, such that it threatened bearing failure. Whether this was a matter of bearing design and manufacture, engine balancing, bending strength of various parts, uneven mixture distribution, or any of a whole host of other potential problems, is a drgondog question.
Cheers,
Wes


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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 7, 2018)

Milosh said:


> That would mean only190 A-36s were produced which is definitely wrong.


You missed the point here. 500 Apaches ordered, then 310 more, then 310 dive brakes and nose guns deleted, and; "Presto-Change-O", 310 P-51As miraculously appeared! Don't you just love that sleight of hand stuff?
Cheers,
Wes

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## drgondog (Jun 7, 2018)

1942 was a very complex year to trace the evolution of NA-73 to NA-102. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because many events, political and technology driven shaped the emergence of the P-51B. I am a little hesitant in detailing the late 1941 through mid 1942 machinations and politics between NAA, the AAF CAS disciples who believed that airpower had a major role in battlefield air supremacy, the Bomber Mafia and the obstructionist Oliver Echols in charge of Procurement and Production. What is important is (IMO) the CAS wing were able to influence re-thinking about P-51 and bypass Material Command to unleash the P-51 testing from Wright Field to Eglin Field and gain momentum in keeping the NAA Mustang line going.

Several waves contributed to a perfect storm as 1.) the Dive Bomber was deemed a sitting duck re: airframes in existence and proposed because they simply were defenseless, b.) the attributes of the XP-51 became known, c.) the awareness of the Merlin 60 emergence in the Rolls Rolls product line to promise high altitude performance Without the AAF standard "turbo" preference. The critical period was (IMO) November 1941 through March 1942.

Neither the A-36 nor the P-51A was deemed the 'complete' solution by the CAS and they were the FIRST to direct earliest possible switch of P-51A to P-51B/Merlin in approximate August 1942. Echols was still trying to kill NAA fighter production and switch to B-25 as late as August 1942.

IMO, the primary deficiency of the Mustang I, IA, A-36 and P-51A in air to air combat from low level to 11-15K was the original aileron design combined with throw angles. The earlier Allison Mustang had +/-10 degree deflection. NACA and NAA improved the shape, sealed it to improve aero efficiency and increased the deflection angles for the P-51B-1. They were first tested on the NA-101 XP-51B.

The P-51-1/-2 had the -39, the P-51A had the -81 and the A-36 the -87. The latter developed maximum Hp at 5400 feet at 52", the -81 developed max HP at 11,800 feet at 57". All adequate to maintain a speed advantage from SL to mid altitude

The Brits achieved much better max HP by removing boost controls and as a result the Mustang I/IA were both faster and climbed about the same as the FW 190 and Bf 109 but they avoided engagement as much as possible as they would nearly always be at a tactical disadvantage based on altitude common to Rhubarbs. The A-36 were at a similar disadvantage - even with more powerful engine below 6000 feet. The A-36 was also slower than Mustang I at low to medium low altitude due to drag of bomb/fuel pylons and dive brake 'leakage' parasite drag.

All of these were similarly limited in roll performance. All were at a disadvantage in turn if the first deployment of flaps didn't achieve the desired effect of achieving deflection, simply because the increased drag hurt the primary advantage of the very clean airframe.

Against the Ki 43, the A-36 and P-51A (and P-51B/C) were simply overmatched in low speed maneuvering flight, as ALL US fighters found themselves, at low altitude. 

That said, the P-51A achieved better than parity perhaps because the original deployment of the A-36 to CBI proved the case - Do NOT engage in low and slow gunfight with Japanese a/c. the 311th FG (primary destination for CBI P-51A) produced several aces including England and Mulhollem obtained all of their victories in them before converting to P-51C. The 23rd FG also received P-51A but at a later stage and were first to get P-51B-1 in very late 1943. Tex Hiil nailed two in the P-51A for example.

All that said, consider that both P-47D and P-38J Fighter pilots relegated to low level CAS had very few aces despite flying an order of magnitude more missions in the ETO/MTO.

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## pbehn (Jun 7, 2018)

I thought it was something like that Dg.

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## Schweik (Jun 7, 2018)

Very interesting post drgondog, much appreciated!



drgondog said:


> IMO, *the primary deficiency of the Mustang I, IA, A-36 and P-51A in air to air combat from low level to 11-15K was the original aileron design combined with throw angles.* The earlier Allison Mustang had +/-10 degree deflection. NACA and NAA improved the shape, sealed it to improve aero efficiency and increased the deflection angles for the P-51B-1. They were first tested on the NA-101 XP-51B.



This is probably the key issue right here.



> The Brits achieved much better max HP by removing boost controls and as a result the Mustang I/IA were both faster and climbed about the same as the FW 190 and Bf 109 but they avoided engagement as much as possible



interesting that the Brits were doing this but not the USAAF groups? I'd look into it to find out if the latter did it too. The 1942 Allison memo about this exact thing being done with P-40 engines indicates that the practice started with the Australians but quickly spread to Americans in the North African Desert. Allison even acknowledged agreeing to an unofficial "WEP" setting of 60 Hg. The memo did also suggest that overboosting beyond that level would become more dangerous in terms of engine damage with the later model engines like the -81 due to the changed gear ratio.



> All of these were similarly limited in roll performance. All were at a disadvantage in turn if the first deployment of flaps didn't achieve the desired effect of achieving deflection, simply because the increased drag hurt the primary advantage of the very clean airframe.



yeah you can't always use flaps in a turn for a variety of reasons, so turn was an issue too. i wonder if that was improved somewhat as well in later Mustang models?



> Against the Ki 43, the A-36 and P-51A (and P-51B/C) were simply overmatched in low speed maneuvering flight, as ALL US fighters found themselves, at low altitude.
> 
> That said, the P-51A achieved better than parity perhaps because the original deployment of the A-36 to CBI proved the case - Do NOT engage in low and slow gunfight with Japanese a/c. the 311th FG (primary destination for CBI P-51A) produced several aces including England and Mulhollem obtained all of their victories in them before converting to P-51C. The 23rd FG also received P-51A but at a later stage and were first to get P-51B-1 in very late 1943. Tex Hiil nailed two in the P-51A for example.



That's interesting so there was in fact more than the one Allison P-51 Ace then? England and Mullhollem were P-51 aces?

P-40 squadrons with 23rd FG, 51st and 80th FG etc., did well against Ki-43 and other Japanese types like Ki-44. Aviation historian Robert Molesworth, not normally given to hyperbole, noted that_ "...the P-40 simply dominated the skies over Burma and China. They were able to establish air superiority over free China, northern Burma and the Assam valley of India in 1942, and they never relinquished it."_. There were at least 70 P-40 Aces in the CBI and Pacific. According to a Thread I found on this forum, P-40s even did well against late model Japanese fighters like Ki 61 and Ki 84.

One of the tactics which developed for later model P-40s against Ki-43 or A6M was to extend _in level flight,_ i.e. not by diving away, and then execute a sudden and very swift turn as soon as a certain distance was achieved and come back for a head-on attack. This technique, tested against a captured Zero as described in this War Dept memo (see page 7), is an example of something which may have been harder to do in an A-36 or P-51A given roll and turn rates.

Another technique described by P-40 Ace Robert DeHaven was the "Low yo-yo" to out turn an A6M or Ki-43, which if I understand correctly requires both good roll and turn capabilities.



> All that said, consider that both P-47D and P-38J Fighter pilots relegated to low level CAS had very few aces despite flying an order of magnitude more missions in the ETO/MTO.



And yet you had quite a few Aces in P-40s at low altitude in the Med. At least 46 Commonwealth Aces and 14 USAAF, not to mention 45 in the CBI where they also did primarily FB sorties.

DAF squadrons flew a mix of missions but certain subtypes, like the P-40K, did mostly fighter-bomber sorties, and yet they scored many air to air victories.

Neither P-47 nor P-38 excel at low altitude, it's worth noting, in spite of the fact that they were often given such missions.

S


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## Schweik (Jun 7, 2018)

To be clear, the reasons I bring all this up, are one to point out that the P-40 was indeed one of the more _under_ estimated fighters in WW2 (and also the Ki-43 though I haven't gotten as deep into that deadly plane yet), but also to show what I think this fascinating deep dive into the early P-51 makes clear.

When evaluating fighters it's not sufficient to look at some basic numbers like top speed, firepower or range or what have you, you also need to look at the historical combat record. That in turn can help you find factors which can _seem_ counter-intuitive, such as the subtle differences (like a relatively tiny adjustment to Aileron deflection angles, better ammunition or a new gun sight) which make an aircraft more suitable to achieve victory in a given Theater.

The recipe for victory is often reduced down to the obvious ones like speed and firepower. But sometimes, as with the Ki-43, or say, the Bf 109F, (comparatively) lightly armed planes with seemingly modest performance, proved to be some of the most effective war-machines of the war in terms of enemy aircraft destroyed.

In many cases, like with the B-239 or P-39, or the P-51, success seems to be a matter of developing suitable tactics and training for the enemy at hand, and finding both major (i.e. a new engine) and seemingly minor technical changes that are done as the result of early combat trials. Together technical modifications and training / tactics make the difference from poor or mediocre combat results to good or excellent ones. But of course this can take time, and how 'rough' the early combat debut of a fighter was has to do with how intense early combat experiences were before the bugs were worked out and the tactics optimized.

I.e. Allied planes which had their debut in 1940, 41 or the first half of 1942 may have faced a steeper and harsher learning curve (so to speak) than planes that rolled out in the second half of 1942 or later.

On the other hand perhaps this was an advantage that planes which were around from the beginning of the war and did get through that rough shakedown process, such as the Spitfire, Hurricane, Bf 109, A6M, Ki-43 or Yak 3 over some other later types which had to work out teething problems at a slower pace before they achieved excellence (like the P-51 or the Typhoon).

S


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## drgondog (Jun 7, 2018)

Schweik said:


> To be clear, the reasons I bring all this up, are one to point out that the P-40 was indeed one of the more _under_ estimated fighters in WW2 (and also the Ki-43 though I haven't gotten as deep into that deadly plane yet), but also to show what I think this fascinating deep dive into the early P-51 makes clear.
> 
> When evaluating fighters it's not sufficient to look at some basic numbers like top speed, firepower or range or what have you, you also need to look at the historical combat record. That in turn can help you find factors which can _seem_ counter-intuitive, such as the subtle differences (like a relatively tiny adjustment to Aileron deflection angles, better ammunition or a new gun sight) which make an aircraft more suitable to achieve victory in a given Theater.
> 
> ...


You tackle a complex evaluation, which as noted is not all about top speed or close in maneuver battles at low speed.

The P-51B and subsequent, were poster boys for Speed - at all altitudes - combined with near equivalent maneuverability at extremely long ranges. The P-51A was an interim solution leading to the emergence of the Rolls/Packard Merlin 1650-3 and 1650-7. Our fighter pilots entered operations with the P-51B-1 with highly trained pilots of the 354th FG, then 357th, then saddled up with combat experienced P-47D pilots of 4th, 352nd, 355th. You can't overlook combat pilot talent in any evaluation. The 23rd FG continued to kill with P-40N in conjunction with P-51B/C because they a.) knew their opponents Very well and had the experience and discipline to 'fight the fight' when the advantage was available - and extend when it wasn't.

The P-40E and F4F-3 did well against superb IJN pilots in SW Pacific for the above reasons. The Russians did very well with P-39D/Q/N when we were converting from the Iron Dog as fast as possible.

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## drgondog (Jun 7, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Very interesting post drgondog, much appreciated!
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Like the A-36 and P-51A and F4F and P-40 and P-39 - the AAF and Commonwealth 'made do' with what they had. There is a reason that P-51B/D destroyed more than any Commonwealth or US fighter by a significant total.

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## Schweik (Jun 7, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Like the A-36 and P-51A and F4F and P-40 and P-39 - the AAF and Commonwealth 'made do' with what they had. There is a reason that P-51B/D destroyed more than any Commonwealth or US fighter by a significant total.



Yes but partly the reason was that by 1943 / 44 the Axis Air forces were in decline. The Japanese Army and Navy pilots faced by Hellcat pilots in the Marianas in 1943 were very different than the ones faced in the Philippines in 1941. Similar for the P-51 pilots compared to the Spit pilots from the BoB.

Also that gyro gunsight helped a lot once they got it.

Do you know the difference in roll rate between P-51A and B? That would be interesting to see.

I think in general, the ability to disenage and extend away when a fight isn't going well seems to be one of the key factors that defines many, if not all good fighters in WW2. The P-51 certainly had that most of the time. The P-40 was able to do it too pretty easily in the CBI and Pacific, and they could in the Med too to some extent though not as easily. One of the flaws with the P-38 is that they couldn't use their weight and power to dive away from a fight, though in the Pacific and CBI they learned that they could disengage with a high-speed climb.

With the extended range and flying time duration, you also gain the ability to set yourself up to attack when, where and how you want to, pick your fight so to speak, especially in combination with high speed. Attack where the enemy is weak and avoid them where they are strong, almost like good cavalry in another era. Operational level flexibility you might say.

I've been reading a biography of Clive Caldwell which gets into a lot of detail into the problems they were having with the Spit V and one of the issues with endurance, was not so much range as in distance on the map, but the ability fly around, get up to altitude, and position themselves relative to the enemy before their fuel ran out. He wished they had Mustangs instead.

And I think he's right. With it's phenomenal range and two stage supercharger, the P-51 was be very good in this sense. Much better for defending Australia. Spit VIII worked out as well enough, though it came a little late for the "main show" at Darwin.

S


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## wuzak (Jun 7, 2018)

P-51B would also have been late for Darwin.

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## Schweik (Jun 8, 2018)

wuzak said:


> P-51B would also have been late for Darwin.



Perhaps but it was pretty close. Caldwell knew about Mustangs and wanted them for Darwin, that's quite clear from the biography.

The first significant Spitfire battle in Darwin was in March 1943. The first production P-51B flew in May 1943.

They were still having significant combat by May. One of the big engagements that damaged the rep of the Spit V was on 2 May, and significant raids were going on through July. I think they could have gotten P-51Bs there by then though it would have had to have been a priority. Not realistic politically but they could have gotten some there as early as June, probably. 

P-38s or Spit VIIIs may have been more realistic but Darwin just wasn't that much of a priority, and I think that was Caldwells real beef. For the middle of 1943 the Spit V is a bit long in the teeth. The Aussies apparently asked for P-38s but were told they were all committed up in the Solomons etc.

S


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## Milosh (Jun 8, 2018)

Schweik said:


> The first production P-51B flew in May 1943.



The first P-51Bs didn't arrive in Europe til late 1943.


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## Peter Gunn (Jun 8, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Like the A-36 and P-51A and F4F and P-40 and P-39 - the AAF and Commonwealth 'made do' with what they had. *There is a reason that P-51B/D destroyed more than any Commonwealth or US fighter by a significant total.*



Music to my ears... or rather... eyes.


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## Schweik (Jun 8, 2018)

Milosh said:


> The first P-51Bs didn't arrive in Europe til late 1943.



I was just reading on the Wiki, the raids went on into the fall of 43. Caldwell himself shot down a Ki-46 in August. The last two substantial raids (20+ aircraft and 9) took place in September and November so they definitely could have gotten P-51Bs to Australia by then. Point is moot though I don't think there was still a serious threat of invasion any more.


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## Milosh (Jun 8, 2018)

Only if there was enough P-51B/Cs to go around. The ETO got most and a few to the MTO. 

There never was a serious threat of invasion.


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## Schweik (Jun 8, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Only if there was enough P-51B/Cs to go around. The ETO got most and a few to the MTO.



I think that was basically Caldwells beef, what modern Aviation researchers now recognize as the "Bomber Mafia" was basically calling the shots in the USAAF and they got the priority. But that didn't have to be the case.



> There never was a serious threat of invasion.



That is easy to say in retrospect. But I'm not even sure if it's true. If the Battle of Coral Sea and subsequent narrowly thwarted invasion attempts (Milne Bay, Kokoda trail etc.) had gone the other way, I suspect Australia might very well have been invaded. The Philippines was basically a cakewalk for the Japanese in spite of a very heavy garrison. They defeated a numerically superior force of 150,000 men in 5 months and only suffered about 10,000 casualties. They were already in New Guinea and Coral Sea etc. was basically about their completely taking it over (i.e. gaining control of Port Moresby and the Southern Coast) which would have given them bases from which to stage an invasion.

I don't know how many trained troops were available in Australia in 1942 was it more than 150,000 ? 

S


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## GrauGeist (Jun 8, 2018)

The Japanese goal was not to invade Australia, but rather isolate her by restricting her much needed transport traffic.

They had already quite a curtain hanging over Australia that reached from Burma to the Gilberts and had they successfully taken (and held) PNG, defeated the Allies at Coral Sea (forcing a USN and Allied withdrawel) as well as forcing the Royal Navy to withdraw from the Indian Ocean after Operation C, they may have some succees in that goal.

In regards to Japan actually invading Australia, it simply was not feasable, as they did not have the manpower nor resources for such an adventure, but blockading Australia to force terms would be a viable alternative.

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## Peter Gunn (Jun 8, 2018)

S - I wouldn't say the Philippines campaign was a "cakewalk" for the Japanese, rather I think they were surprised it came off quicker than what they planned for. The terrain allowed them some of their typical flanking maneuvers and while I'll not say the defense, while a "heavy garrison" as you say, was second string, it was cut off from decent supply.

I'm of the thought its (Philippines) defensive structure was more paper tigerish than anything, but the Japanese devoted what was needed to get the job done. As far as Australia, I'm not sure they could have seriously invaded and accomplished much, they could have taken a port but hell, the 5 foot spiders alone would have kicked their collective asses... ok, just a bit of hyperbole but I think you get my meaning.

Had the Japanese actually invaded a port in NW or Northern Australia I'd wager the US would have kicked in harder and sooner, I think it would have been reasonable that the allies would have cut off and killed off whatever invasion force made it ashore, maybe not right away, but much like the island outposts left to die on the vine they would have cut off their supply and it would be the Philippines in reverse (they're the ones cut off and forced to surrender).

I could be full of hot air too, it's just my two cents worth.

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## Kevin J (Jun 8, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> S - I wouldn't say the Philippines campaign was a "cakewalk" for the Japanese, rather I think they were surprised it came off quicker than what they planned for. The terrain allowed them some of their typical flanking maneuvers and while I'll not say the defense, while a "heavy garrison" as you say, was second string, it was cut off from decent supply.
> 
> I'm of the thought its (Philippines) defensive structure was more paper tigerish than anything, but the Japanese devoted what was needed to get the job done. As far as Australia, I'm not sure they could have seriously invaded and accomplished much, they could have taken a port but hell, the 5 foot spiders alone would have kicked their collective asses... ok, just a bit of hyperbole but I think you get my meaning.
> 
> ...


The Australians were fighting for national survival and it made all the difference. That's why they fought so well along the Kokoda Trail and defeated them at Milne Bay. Their troops were more inspired than the American troops.

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## Schweik (Jun 8, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The Japanese goal was not to invade Australia, but rather isolate her by restricting her much needed transport traffic.



Again, easy to say in retrospect. I'm not sure that is necessarily the case either. If things had gone a little smoother for them around New Guinea I think they may well have invaded Australia. What would stop them? They certainly considered it. if their "Operation FS" had succeeded the Navy may have been able to convince the Army to 'have a go'.

An invasion of Australia and the capture of one or more of the major cities, even if only partly successful (i.e., even if they were eventually pushed out) would seriously degrade the economic and military contribution of what turned out to be a pretty important (if small) proponent of the Allied War Effort.

Strategically, it could have meant that rather than having 300 - 400k IJA troops tied down in Manchuria or wherever, or sitting on some forlorn Islands waiting to starve (or force Americans to pay a sharp but ultimately insignificant price for capturing it), they could tie down a large number of Australian (and other Allied) troops and resources in what would have to become a major priority for the Allied War effort. All those Aussie planes and troops would be focused on pushing out the IJA instead of say, helping win El Alamein.

Keep in mind, nobody thought the Japanese Empire could knock over Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia or the Philippines, let alone cripple half of the US Pacific Fleet in one day. For the Aussies in 1942, the threat was very real.



> defeated the Allies at Coral Sea (forcing a USN and Allied withdrawel)



Well, I'm sure you realize that is an outlier position. The Strategic goal of the IJN was to allow the army to invade Port Morseby and the Southern Coast of New Guinea (since it proved basically impossible to march across the Owen Stanley range) as well as some of the southern range of the Solomon islands. The naval battles may have gone slightly in the favor of the Japanese but their transport ships turned around and with the help of a bitter and desperate air battle there, Port Morseby was not invaded. That is why it is almost universally (as far as I know) considered an Allied Strategic Victory.



> In regards to Japan actually invading Australia, it simply was not feasable, as they did not have the manpower nor resources for such an adventure, but blockading Australia to force terms would be a viable alternative.



I don't think you actually know that. The IJA agreed with you but the IJN did not, and in 1942 I certainly don't think anyone knew what would happen, especially if Midway had gone the other way (and as we know, Midway was a close run thing).

S

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## GrauGeist (Jun 8, 2018)

Let's be realistic here:
Imperial Japan had only so many assets and manpower to go around.
They already held Manchuria, vast swaths of China, Formosa, Hong Kong, Burma, French Indo-China, Korea, Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Brunei, Borneo, Java, Timor, a majority of PNG, Nauru, the Carolines, the Marshalls, the Solomons, the Marianas, the Gilberts plus Attu, Kiska, Wake and Guam. Add to that, Ryukyu, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Sakhalin, Kuriles and Japan proper.

Then look at Australian topography: there are coastal towns/cities seperated by vast tracts of wildland with no real resources to draw from. Then there's the Australian interior, which really needs no explanation. To invade Australia and have any hope of success in holding it, would have taken the entire sum of the Japanese military amd they would have been fighting the Aussies on their home turf. Every single nook and cranny would have revealed determined Diggers who would have made the Japanese pay dearly for their folly and a clear example of this determination can be seen in their defense of PNG.

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## Milosh (Jun 8, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I think that was basically Caldwells beef, what modern Aviation researchers now recognize as the "Bomber Mafia" was basically calling the shots in the USAAF and they got the priority. But that didn't have to be the case.



The American-British staff conversations opened in Washington on 29 January 1941 and continued through fourteen sessions to 29 March, when the delegates submitted a final report, commonly known as ABC-1. [42] At the outset, the British stated their position clearly and fully:

1. The European Theater is the vital theater where a decision must first be sought.

2. The general policy should therefore be to defeat Germany and Italy first, and then deal with Japan.

3. The security of the Far Eastern position, including Australia and New Zealand, is essential to the cohesion of the British Commonwealth and to the maintenance of its war effort. Singapore is the key to the defense of these interests and its retention must be assured.

In line with this strategy, U.S. naval Forces, after appropriate dispositions for defense of the Western Hemisphere, should be employed mainly in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, the British stated. But they also declared that the United States should maintain in the Pacific a fleet large enough to prevent the Japanese from prejudicing the main effort in the Atlantic.

There was no disagreement between the Americans and the British on the first two points. Both sides were agreed that Germany was the main enemy and their first objective. They agreed further that the Atlantic would be the decisive theater of the war and the principal effort of the two nations would be made there. The delegates also recognized the legitimate interests of each side, an indispensable basis for co-operation. On the American side, the security of the United States and the defense of the Western Hemisphere were considered of paramount interest, with first call on American forces. British interests were broader, encompassing the security of the British Commonwealth of Nations. "A cardinal feature of British strategic policy," the delegates agreed, "is the retention of a position in the Far East such as will insure cohesion and security of the British Commonwealth and the maintenance of its war effort." 

Germany First


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## Schweik (Jun 8, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Let's be realistic here:
> Imperial Japan had only so many assets and manpower to go around.
> They already held Manchuria, vast swaths of China, Formosa, Hong Kong, Burma, French Indo-China, Korea, Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Brunei, Borneo, Java, Timor, a majority of PNG, Nauru, the Carolines, the Marshalls, the Solomons, the Marianas, the Gilberts plus Attu, Kiska, Wake and Guam. Add to that, Ryukyu, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Sakhalin, Kuriles and Japan proper.



Needless to say, I think I am being realistic. On a map, and perhaps in TO&E charts, Japan looks too small to invade and conquer China and Burma, let alone all the other places listed, but they came damn near to completely doing that didn't they. In spite of some success in the air Allied ground forces held on by the skin of their teeth in the CBI through 1943. The Japanese even invaded India briefly, losing 54,000 casualties in the process so I guess on a fairly large scale. Maybe those troops would have been better spent invading Brisbane.



> Then look at Australian topography: there are coastal towns/cities seperated by vast tracts of wildland with no real resources to draw from. Then there's



I never suggested they could have conquered all of Australia, at least not before beating the US, and I'm sure for that matter the entire Japanese War Effort was ultimately doomed, but I don't think in 1942 that seemed to be a certain thing by any stretch of the imagination.

As I wrote earlier, an invasion of Australia that captured one or two significant cities, say Brisbane or Sydney, or even Darwin or one of the smaller towns on the North East coast of Queensland*, would have tied down a lot of Allied troops and I suspect, caused the Australians to reorient their strategic objectives away from helping the British defeat Rommel or what have you and focus much more close to home.

In the second half of WW2 the Japanese had a lot of formidable army divisions just sitting around as occupation forces not doing much. Quite a few ended up being bypassed on islands that ultimately had little Strategic value, or waiting in Manchuria for a Soviet Army that never came until the very end of the War when it was way too late. If I was Tojo in 1942 I definitely would have considered invading Australia. It was a long shot but then, so was the whole war.

Needless to say the supply lines were long and exposed but the Navy though they could handle it (correctly or otherwise). If we hadn't cracked their code who knows.

S


*Not sure if any of those were being used as wartime ports but if they were that would make a good target.


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## Schweik (Jun 8, 2018)

Milosh said:


> The American-British staff conversations opened in Washington on 29 January 1941 and continued
> 
> Germany First



I'm well aware of the "Germany First" policy (who here isn't?) but Item #3 on your list was subject to a certain amonut of wiggle room in their priorities. Obviously we know what did actually happen, but it's not written in stone that it's the only way it could have happened.

When it came down to deployment of specific aircraft types the Air Force generals were able to decide, at least initially. And nobody really know how Strategically valuable Mustangs would turn out to be in the beginning or middle of 1943. That in part explains why they took so long to be deployed in large numbers.

S


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## wuzak (Jun 8, 2018)

> During the Second World War, the city was host to more than 50,000* American and Australian troops and air crew, and it became a major staging point for battles in the South West Pacific. A large United States Armed Forces contingent supported the war effort from seven airfields and other bases around the city and in the region. The first bombing raid on Rabaul, in Papua New Guinea, on 23 February 1942 was carried out by six B-17s based near Townsville*.



*These points were marked "citation needed"



> In July 1942, three small Japanese air raids were conducted against Townsville, which was by then the most important air base in Australia.[20] Several 500-pound (230-kilogram) bombs were dropped in the harbour, near the Garbutt airfield and at Oonoonba, where bomb craters are still clearly visible.[21] No lives were lost and structural damage was minimal, as the Japanese missed their intended target of the railway and destroyed a palm tree. Although the Japanese aircraft were intercepted on two of the three raids, no Japanese planes were shot down.



Townsville - Wikipedia

Note that Townsville to Rabaul is 1,771km (1,100 miles) and Tonwsville to Sydney is over 2,000km (1243 miles).

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## Schweik (Jun 8, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Townsville - Wikipedia
> 
> Note that Townsville to Rabaul is 1,771km (1,100 miles) and Tonwsville to Sydney is over 2,000km (1243 miles).



Interesting. Port Moresby to Townsville is 1,000 km...

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## Shortround6 (Jun 8, 2018)

Schweik said:


> And nobody really know how Strategically valuable Mustangs would turn out to be in the beginning or middle of 1943. That in part explains why they took so long to be deployed in large numbers.



A large part of why they took so long to deploy was that it took a long time to build the infrastructure to build the required P-51s. 
All the Allison powered planes were built in California. NAA got a contract for 400 P-51Bs (Aug 1942)a few weeks before the A-36 first flew (Sept 1942). 
NAA Dallas got a contract for 1350 Merlin powered P-51Cs in early Oct 1942, This is before either a Mustang X flies in England or XP-51B Flies in the US. 
At the end of Feb the 201st and 202nd P-51Bs are assigned to be prototypes for the P-51D. Please note that actual production of the P-51Bs is not really underway at this point. First production P-51B flies May5th 1943.
Please note that it took until the end of April 1943 for Packard to build eight (yes eight) two stage Merlins. The initial contract for single stage Melrins was drawing to a close and best month saw 864 engine built. Production per month was doubled in the last 4 months of 1943.
at some point in July 1943 Packard has delivered 173 Merlis to NAA, while NAA has built 534 airframes. Please note that NAA Dallas delivers it's first P-51C in Aug of 1943. In addition to the order listed above NAA Dallas was awarded a contract in May of 1943 for 2500 Mustangs, 400 more "C"s, 800 "D"s and the rest "K"s (Ds with different props).

You need all the back up industries in place, Packard to build many more engines in the later contracts than the original. You need NAA to vastly increase work space and employees (and train them) and in Places like Texas you even need to build housing for the workers. You also need the propellers, landing gear, radiators and all the other "stuff" the main factory does not make in house. 
If not the Premier fighter the P-51 was certainly seen as one of the top 3/4 american ones at the start of 1943.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 8, 2018)

Here's a great wartime video that shows not only the genesis of Packard's Merlin production, but also how Packard met the increased demand not only from the USAAF and RAF, but the USN, too.

It's 20 minutes long, but worthwhile.


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## slaterat (Jun 9, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Like the A-36 and P-51A and F4F and P-40 and P-39 - the AAF and Commonwealth 'made do' with what they had. There is a reason that P-51B/D destroyed more than any Commonwealth or US fighter by a significant total.



Francis K Mason, in "The Hawker Hurricane", States the Hurricane as as responsible for 51.5% of the 11,400 claims that are in traceable RAF air combat reports.
That gives the Hurricane 5,871 claims , compared to 5163 for the Hellcat and 4,950 for the Mustang in air to air claims. ( last 2 sourced from the internet). However I do see the Mustang also has claims for 4131 aircraft destroyed on the ground, that's pretty impressive.

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## drgondog (Jun 9, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Perhaps but it was pretty close. Caldwell knew about Mustangs and wanted them for Darwin, that's quite clear from the biography.
> 
> The first significant Spitfire battle in Darwin was in March 1943. The first production P-51B flew in May 1943.
> 
> ...


Not really. The first P-51B-1-NA was completed save Packard 1650-3 which didn't arrive until end of April, leading to Chilton's first flight on May 5, 1943. Packard didn't deliver 20 more 1650-3s until the end of June and NAA production of engineless Mustangs continued through July. The first P-51B-1 arrived in Liverpool in September 1943 and didn't achieve Group level number of 75 for the 354th FG until late November. The RAF was receiving Mustang III in late October but basically gave them all back in December to assist equipping the 357th FG.

The other complicating factor for Darwin deployment would have been equipping P-51B-1 and P-51B-5, early series through October 1943, was that the US Depots did not have the 85 gallon fuselage tank kits - and the offshore Depots not until November. ALL of the 85 gallon kits went to BAD2 Warton in England.

Simply not enough to go around and the 23rd FG was first in CBI to get a few - not enough to equip the Group until July-August 1944

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## drgondog (Jun 9, 2018)

slaterat said:


> Francis K Mason, in "The Hawker Hurricane", States the Hurricane as as responsible for 51.5% of the 11,400 claims that are in traceable RAF air combat reports.
> That gives the Hurricane 5,871 claims , compared to 5163 for the Hellcat and 4,950 for the Mustang in air to air claims. ( last 2 sourced from the internet). However I do see the Mustang also has claims for 4131 aircraft destroyed on the ground, that's pretty impressive.


The total of 4950 is an oft quoted victory credit for the Mustang and represents Only US ETO/MTO (and low). The final total of Mustang air victory credits (after claims processed) for US and Commonwealth, for all types and theatres, is ~ 6300

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## Milosh (Jun 9, 2018)

The faery godmother flicks her wand and poof in an instant 1000s of P-51s are built, pilots are trained to fly them and ground crew are there to maintain them.

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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

drgondog said:


> The total of 4950 is an oft quoted victory credit for the Mustang and represents Only US ETO/MTO (and low). The final total of Mustang air victory credits (after claims processed) for US and Commonwealth, for all types and theatres, is ~ 6300



Those are impressive numbers. I don't know what the total is for P-40s but Carl Molesworth notes that P-40 pilots made 973 claims in the CBI which he says is 64% of the total in that Theater. According to this American flown P-40s came in 5th in total number of victories at *2225.5
*
After the P-51, F6F, P-38, and P-47 but better than the F4F+FM2 and F4U

*Aircraft Type* *ETO - MTO - * *PTO - * *CBI - * *Total*
P-51(Includes F-6 and A-36) 4239 1063 297 345 *5954*
F6F 8 0 * 5160* 0 *5168*
P-38 497 1431 * 1700* * 157* *3785*
P-47 2685.5 263 696.67 16 *3661*
P-40 0 592 660.5 973 *2225.5*
F4U 0 0 * 2140* 0 *2140*
F4F 0 26 986 0 *1012*
FM-2 0 0 422 0 *422*
Spitfire 15 364 0 0 *379*
P-39 & P-400 2.5 25 288 5 *320.5*
SBD 0 0 138 *138*
P-61 59 0 63.5 5 *127.5*
TBF/TBM 0 0 98 0 *98*
Beaufighter 6 25 0 0 *31*
F2A 0 0 10 0 *10*
P-43 0 0 3 3 *6*
P-36 0 0 5 0 *5*
P-70 0 0 2 0 *2*
P-26 0 0 2 0 *2*
P-35 0 0 1 0 *1*
Mosquito 0 1 0 0 *1*

However, *that is just American flown victories*. All of these are also just "confirmed" victory claims it will probably turn out to about 1/3 of that for all types when and if they ever calculate verified victories based on actual lost enemy planes.

I am not sure how many Russian and Commonwealth P-40 victory claims there were but I would suspect it's at least 2000 if you put them all together. I'd really like to know those numbers because if you add them up together I suspect the P-40 actually works out to be one of the top Allied fighters in terms of enemy aircraft destroyed.

P-51s also have a significant number of Commonwealth victories to their credit though I don't know how many. P-39s a lot of Russian ones of course. F2A / B239 had quite a few in Finland (496 according to Joe Baugher)

Anyone know of a list like above which includes all Allied claims?

would also be interesting to see a list like that for Axis types. How many did the Ki-43 shoot down?

S


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## fubar57 (Jun 9, 2018)

Before anyone gets their pee-thing in a knot, the above numbers are only for American flown aircraft, thus the reason for the low Spitfire numbers

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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> Before anyone gets their pee-thing in a knot, the above numbers are only for American flown aircraft, thus the reason for the low Spitfire numbers



I did mention that. Anyone have Commonwealth or Russian numbers by type? I think this would help in rating "most overrated" and "most underrated" aircraft...

S


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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Not really. The first P-51B-1-NA was completed save Packard 1650-3 which didn't arrive until end (snip)
> Simply not enough to go around and the 23rd FG was first in CBI to get a few - not enough to equip the Group until July-August 1944



Ok you have convinced me. They should have got some P-38s or Spit VIII a little earlier then.

Interesting that Caldwell already seems to have had a pretty good idea of the merits of the P-51 in early 1943. Probably rumors about the top speed had filtered around...

S


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## fubar57 (Jun 9, 2018)

LMAO!!!

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## GrauGeist (Jun 9, 2018)

So then the numbers for the P-40 in the CBI wouldn't include victories scored by IJA pilots flying the P-40s of the 2 Hiko Chutai (in Rangoon)

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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> So then the numbers for the P-40 in the CBI wouldn't include victories scored by IJA pilots flying the P-40s of the 2 Hiko Chutai (in Rangoon)



They should absolutely include those! All victories must be counted! Lol 

S


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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

It's interesting how low the victory numbers are for P-38s in the ETO (497), though they did quite well in the Med (1431). Presumably most of those are in Italy after mid 1943 when the better P-38 variants started showing up.

The Hellcat numbers are very impressive to me, 5160 that is amazing! Especially considering how late they came and that they only operated in the Pacific Theater. I suspect the Hellcat may really be one of the most underrated fighters.

Also worth noting that the P-40 had by far the most victories in the CBI, 973 vs 345 for the next one down, the P-51, though the latter came quite late to the party needless to say.

Anyone know where to find Commonwealth / RAF numbers by type? I'm having little luck, my google-fu is failing me.

This article says that Hurricanes scored 1,593 out of the 2,739 total victories in the BoB, but that is just the tip of the Iceburg.

S


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## GrauGeist (Jun 9, 2018)

The F6F also appeared in the ETO and was operated in support of the D-Day landings and follow-up support. Hellcats of VF-74, from the USS Kasaan Bay (CVE-69) and VOF-1 from the USS Tulagi (CVE-72) covered the landing zones as well as flying support missions well inland. On 21 August, it was mainly Hellcats from Tulagi that caught and annhilated a long retreat column of German ground forces near Remoulins.

They encountered and downed several Luftwaffe types except for the Fw190 to the best of my knowledge.


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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The F6F also appeared in the ETO and was operated in support of the D-Day landings and follow-up support. Hellcats of VF-74, from the USS Kasaan Bay (CVE-69) and VOF-1 from the USS Tulagi (CVE-72) covered the landing zones as well as flying support missions well inland. On 21 August, it was mainly Hellcats from Tulagi that caught and annhilated a long retreat column of German ground forces near Remoulins.
> 
> They encountered and downed several Luftwaffe types except for the Fw190 to the best of my knowledge.



Yeah that list shows 8 victories in the ETO must have been from that period. I remember seeing a cool video of a Hellcat strafing a Flak Tower I think during D-Day but have never been able to find it since. I think the British / FAA got about ~30 victories with Hellcats too (I believe I posted this upthread). But basically they were just operating in the Pacific.

I don't know of the overall quality of that list I posted (looks like an 'Amateur' site) but the P-40 numbers do match what is in some of my Osprey books, which may have been his source. And I gather the P-51 number looks right.

Still no luck with Commonwealth numbers.

S


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## GrauGeist (Jun 9, 2018)

The famous "Flak Tower" photo was actually mis-captioned by the war department. It was actually a water tower and was strafed for a couple reasons: one, enemy infrastructure and secondly, it was a high-point that could be used for artillery spotting and/or a sniper position.

The attacking aircraft was actually a P-47 of the 376th/361st FG flown by Capt. Franks and the gun camera footage is from Capt. Frank's wingman, Lt. Laxton.

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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

Neat, wow it really looked like a hellcat I guess because dark. Do you have a link to the video clip?


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## KiwiBiggles (Jun 9, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> Before anyone gets their pee-thing in a knot, the above numbers are only for American flown aircraft, thus the reason for the low Spitfire numbers


So even the limited use the US made of the Spitfire saw it get more victories than the P-39.

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## Milosh (Jun 9, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The famous "Flak Tower" photo was actually mis-captioned by the war department. It was actually a water tower and was strafed for a couple reasons: one, enemy infrastructure and secondly, it was a high-point that could be used for artillery spotting and/or a sniper position.
> 
> The attacking aircraft was actually a P-47 of the 376th/361st FG flown by Capt. Franks and the gun camera footage is from Capt. Frank's wingman, Lt. Laxton.
> 
> View attachment 497012



Yes a well known photo of the P-47 attacking the water tower.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 9, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Neat, wow it really looked like a hellcat I guess because dark. Do you have a link to the video clip?


I don't have a link to the footage at the moment, but some digging around should turn it up.


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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> I don't have a link to the footage at the moment, but some digging around should turn it up.



It used to show up all the time in History Channel shows etc. but I can never find it in the last several years. Maybe copyright issues.


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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 9, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The famous "Flak Tower" photo was actually mis-captioned by the war department. It was actually a water tower and was strafed for a couple reasons: one, enemy infrastructure and secondly, it was a high-point that could be used for artillery spotting and/or a sniper position.
> 
> The attacking aircraft was actually a P-47 of the 376th/361st FG flown by Capt. Franks and the gun camera footage is from Capt. Frank's wingman, Lt. Laxton.
> 
> ...


I've always wondered about that picture ever since I first saw it as a teenager. What's a Hellcat doing in France, and doesn't that look more like Thunderbolt?
Mystery solved, and thanks Grey Ghost!
Cheers,
Wes

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## P-39 Expert (Jun 9, 2018)

I voted for the P-38 Lightning.
Given the perfect vision of hindsight the AAF's vast resources could have been better deployed.
Most here agree that the P-51 Mustang with a two stage engine was the ultimate fighter especially with regard to endurance.
So with 20/20 hindsight the AAF should have developed the two stage (Merlin or Allison) ASAP, which would have tremendously helped the P-39 and P-40 also. 
It had all the measurables, it was fast, could climb well, high ceiling, excellent endurance with big drop tanks and maybe the best armament installation of any AAF plane.
Just didn't dive well or turn well. Excellent when it had a 70mph speed advantage over the Japanese fighters, but in Europe where the 109 and 190 were just as fast it was just a big plane that didn't dive or turn well.
Twice the cost of a P-51, twice the maintenance requirements, and a real handful for a new pilot.
The P-38 performed yeoman service and its pilots were brave. But not the best use of resources in my opinion.

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## fubar57 (Jun 9, 2018)

60+ P-38 aces in Europe and Mediterranean.


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## wuzak (Jun 9, 2018)

I have just had the feeling in the past several pages of this thread that the suggestion is about to be made that the P-40 should have received the V-1650-3, not the P-51....


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## pbehn (Jun 9, 2018)

wuzak said:


> I have just had the feeling in the past several pages of this thread that the suggestion is about to be made that the P-40 should have received the V-1650-3, not the P-51....


I want to know why valuable time and resources were wasted putting Merlins into Spitfires and Hurricanes, a sad lack of foreward thinking

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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

wuzak said:


> I have just had the feeling in the past several pages of this thread that the suggestion is about to be made that the P-40 should have received the V-1650-3, not the P-51....



Not from me. Would have been 'neat' to have some V-1650-3 powered P-40s, but the P-40 never would have had the range or the speed of the Mustang. The P-51 was the plane they needed for the rest of the war in the ETO for sure. And the bottom line is nothing like that happened so speculation is mildly interesting at best.

I'm less interested in "coulda woulda shoulda" kind of stuff and more interested in what actually happened. History is what scratches my itch so to speak. What is nice about this forum is that the tidbits of Aviation History does emerge in these discussions aside from the rest of what goes on. Like that memo on the Allison engined P-51s, that thing is *gold*. I probably never would have found it. I look at WW2performance but I hadn't been interested in the Mustangs that much and if that whole argument about Allison Mustangs hadn't started up you wouldn't have posted it it. Really helps open up the whole 'overboosting' thing, 70" Hg for 20 minutes without damaging the engine... that is some heavy duty hot rodding! I also now know why early P-51s didn't do so well in combat and why they weren't a more famous / important fighter prior to the B model.

As far as the P-40 goes, I'd really like to know what the Commonwealth victory claim numbers were. That may that beleagured US fighter shine a bit brighter in the estimation of all those folks who still call it 'obsolete from the start of the war', 'rugged but unmaneuverable' and so forth. If they had 2200 victory claims in USAAF service, how many were there under Commonwealth, plus Russian? Russian numbers might be out of reach for another year or two (unless somebody in here from Russia has some they can translate for us) but I suspect Commonwelath numbers are out there somewhere.

If the Gold Standard is 5950 for the P-51, I'd be very interesting to see just how close the P-40 actually got if you added up all the victory claims from everyone who used it. I think it would be close.

The P-40 was a flawed design, the engine / performance ceiling issue crippled it, but it seemed to knock down a lot of enemy planes in spite of that problem.

S


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## Schweik (Jun 9, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I want to know why valuable time and resources were wasted putting Merlins into Spitfires and Hurricanes, a sad lack of foreward thinking



Ok, I'll bite - I've made my admiration for the Spitfire pretty clear, and the Hurricane was indispensable in the early years of the war. But I certainly would agree they would have been much better off putting those Merlins wasted in any Hurricanes (XX or whatever model) after 1942 in something else... I know the devil is in the details as to what would be most feasible of course.

But rather than debating that pointlessly in circles I'd rather see the total Victory numbers on the Hurricane, maybe it will turn out to have done better post 1941 than I thought it did...

S


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## Kevin J (Jun 9, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Not from me. Would have been 'neat' to have some V-1650-3 powered P-40s, but the P-40 never would have had the range or the speed of the Mustang. The P-51 was the plane they needed for the rest of the war in the ETO for sure. And the bottom line is nothing like that happened so speculation is mildly interesting at best.
> 
> I'm less interested in "coulda woulda shoulda" kind of stuff and more interested in what actually happened. History is what scratches my itch so to speak. What is nice about this forum is that the tidbits of Aviation History does emerge in these discussions aside from the rest of what goes on. Like that memo on the Allison engined P-51s, that thing is *gold*. I probably never would have found it. Really helps open up the whole 'overboosting' thing, 70" Hg for 20 minutes without damaging the engine... that is some heavy duty hot rodding!
> 
> ...


I think you'll find that the USAAF operated less than half the total number of P-40's that were built and many of them were used as trainers. So, as a guess, look at 4400 victories at least. I don't know if this helps at all for RAAF and RNZAF victories.Pacific Victory Roll - Home

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## slaterat (Jun 10, 2018)

drgondog said:


> The total of 4950 is an oft quoted victory credit for the Mustang and represents Only US ETO/MTO (and low). The final total of Mustang air victory credits (after claims processed) for US and Commonwealth, for all types and theatres, is ~ 6300



Well you could also add the Fleet Air Arm claims made in Hurricanes, plus whatever claims were made by the Soviets 3000 lend lease Hurricanes, to the 5,871 RAF Hurricane claims, and the number must be pretty close to the Mustangs total claims. Probably hard to verify, maybe someone here has those numbers?

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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I think you'll find that the USAAF operated less than half the total number of P-40's that were built and many of them were used as trainers. So, as a guess, look at 4400 victories at least. I don't know if this helps at all for RAAF and RNZAF victories.Pacific Victory Roll - Home



yes, I think that is a safe bet.

P-40s became more interesting to me when a bunch of data started coming out 15 or 20 years ago, mostly from Russian and Commonwealth sources that undermined some of the old Tropes about the plane. Some US sources too. There was an Australian author, Russell Brown, who was one of the first to actually check the victory claims against losses and pointed out that many of the experten claims were wildly inflated. Unfortunately his book is hard to find outside of Australia. But Christopher Shores in particular took that concept and ran with it. He has done a lot of hard work particularly in his Mediterranean Air War series, comparing victory claims with actual losses on both sides. Christoph Bergstrom et al has done something similar with Black Cross / Red Star series. Hopefully we will see more of these.

Getting back to your comment, given the large number of P-40s used by the RAF, RAAF, RNZAF, RSAF, and Free French (in descending order of impact), and the large number (at least 46 that i know of) of Commonwealth Aces who scored 5 or more of their victories while flying P-40s, I suspect that Commonwealth pilots shot down a large number of planes with them. Similarly if you look at a list of Soviet aces you'll see that a large number of them flew P-40s at one time in their career, some almost exclusively. That site lists 1338 Soviet Aces, a quick count tells me that about 50 flew the P-40 in at least part of their career, including some of their top guys. They had three twice HSU recipients who flew P-40s and at least four quadrouple, and well over twenty double aces on the P-40. And as we know the Soviets had higher-scoring aces than any of the other Allies.

I suspect the actual grand total of P-40 victory claims might be as high as the neighborhood of 5,000.

Whether it's 4,000 or 5,000 though, that would put the P-40 in the top 3 US produced fighters, above the P-38 and P-47. It's already above the F4U and F4F/FM2 which is impressive. Maybe one day the rep of this machine will be a little more realistic. It was a deeply flawed design but also clearly had some significant merit in Air to Air combat. The old Trope that it was a 'rugged but obsolete fighter-bomber' is looking a bit weak.

Of course once this is proven it will start a new debate about actual losses vs. mere claims, but I welcome that too! The facts are much more intriguing than the legends.

S

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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

slaterat said:


> Well you could also add the Fleet Air Arm claims made in Hurricanes, plus whatever claims were made by the Soviets 3000 lend lease Hurricanes, to the 5,871 RAF Hurricane claims, and the number must be pretty close to the Mustangs total claims. Probably hard to verify, maybe someone here has those numbers?



I doubt you'll find a lot of Hurricane victories in Russia, though probably enough to put the Hurricane over the P-51 number and therefore top of the heap on victory claims. 5871 is impressive all by itself!

Anyone know what the Spit or Yak numbers are? 

Or the Axis planes, esp. Ki 43?

S


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## GrauGeist (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> ...It was a deeply flawed design but also clearly had some significant merit in Air to Air combat. The old Trope that it was a 'rugged but obsolete fighter-bomber' is looking a bit weak.


The P-40, born from the P-36, was a design embedded in the 1930's. It truly had the aerodynamics of a brick when compared to later aircraft designs of the war. The fact that it soldiered on, across all fronts from the start of the war, to the end, is a testament to Curtiss' design.

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## Kevin J (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> yes, I think that is a safe bet.
> 
> P-40s became more interesting to me when a bunch of data started coming out 15 or 20 years ago, mostly from Russian and Commonwealth sources that undermined some of the old Tropes about the plane. Some US sources too. There was an Australian author, Russell Brown, who was one of the first to actually check the victory claims against losses and pointed out that many of the experten claims were wildly inflated. Unfortunately his book is hard to find outside of Australia. But Christopher Shores in particular took that concept and ran with it. He has done a lot of hard work particularly in his Mediterranean Air War series, comparing victory claims with actual losses on both sides. Christoph Bergstrom et al has done something similar with Black Cross / Red Star series. Hopefully we will see more of these.
> 
> ...


As the saying goes "history is written by the victors" and as the Curtis company didn't exist post-war, it certainly wasn't one of them.


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## drgondog (Jun 10, 2018)

slaterat said:


> Well you could also add the Fleet Air Arm claims made in Hurricanes, plus whatever claims were made by the Soviets 3000 lend lease Hurricanes, to the 5,871 RAF Hurricane claims, and the number must be pretty close to the Mustangs total claims. Probably hard to verify, maybe someone here has those numbers?



So, find them and add them.

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## swampyankee (Jun 10, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> As the saying goes "history is written by the victors" and as the Curtis company didn't exist post-war, it certainly wasn't one of them.


The Curtiss company still exists: Curtiss-Wright Corporation - Company - History.

Of course, it's left the engine business and the airframe business

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## Stig1207 (Jun 10, 2018)

The problem with using victory claims as an indication of fighter planes success, is that claiming accuracy varied quite a lot. Taking the list for US claims posted earlier as an example; late war ETO has the most accurate Allied claiming, which is good news for the P-51 and P-47 as the large proportion of their victories were scored in this theater. However, the ETO is an outlier, claiming accuracy being less, even much less, in the other theaters.
It's difficult to say much about the RAF/ CW claiming accuracy, though the late war ETO accuracy would also apply.
When it comes to the Eastern Front, any claims numbers should be considered more than just 'optimistic'.

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## P-39 Expert (Jun 10, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> 60+ P-38 aces in Europe and Mediterranean.


Yep, widely used and certainly appreciated by it's pilots in the Pacific.
But when you factor in cost to build and operate, you could have had twice the P-51As or P-39Ns.
How many of these victories came in the P-38J&L after the Luftwaffe had been defeated in mid-'44? 
The P-38J-25 and L were great planes, but they came after the heavy lifting had been done. 
Cost too much, too complicated, handling problems, took twice as long for a new pilot to become proficient, and took way too long to develop into a top tier plane. And you froze your ass off at altitude.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The P-40, born from the P-36, was a design embedded in the 1930's. It truly had the aerodynamics of a brick when compared to later aircraft designs of the war. The fact that it soldiered on, across all fronts from the start of the war, to the end, is a testament to Curtiss' design.



Compared to many of it's contemporaries instead of much later aircraft the P-40 actually did rather well in regards to aerodynamics. It was much faster than the Hurricane II when both used the same engines despite weighing considerably more. It was faster than the 109E despite being much, much larger and heavier (talking about the long nosed P-40 to try to keep the timing right).
The P-40 was heavy sucker and that affected climb but in straight speed it did rather well for it's size (wing area) and weight (induced drag). Again this is for 1930s fighter or very early 1940s, the P-51 and later aircraft changed the playing field considerably.

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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Ok, I'll bite - I've made my admiration for the Spitfire pretty clear, and the Hurricane was indispensable in the early years of the war. But I certainly would agree they would have been much better off putting those Merlins wasted in any Hurricanes (XX or whatever model) after 1942 in something else... I know the devil is in the details as to what would be most feasible of course.
> 
> But rather than debating that pointlessly in circles I'd rather see the total Victory numbers on the Hurricane, maybe it will turn out to have done better post 1941 than I thought it did...
> 
> S


Every one would agree with that, but what? If all the Merlins were put into P-40s from the start you have a slightly better P-40 and no Hurricanes. It would be a complete shock for any later plane not to out perform the Hurricane and they did. However it was the ease of production and repair of the Hurricane that meant Germany did not have a free hand anywhere, even to the point of being used as a disposable single use catapult launched fleet defence aircraft.

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## eagledad (Jun 10, 2018)

P-39 Expert

I don’t believe that the J-25 and L model P-38s scored that many victories in the ETO/MTO. Most of the victories were scored in earlier models up to the J-15. The pre J model P-38’s did quit a bit of heavy lifting. Data from the book ”Adorimini A History of the 832nd FG in World War II” by Steve Blake has the first P-38J arriving in the group on March 20th 1944. (page 143) One of the earliest all P-38J mission flown by the 82nd was on June 2nd 1944. There was at least 2 P-38G’s lost flying a mission on May 29th 1944. (page 295). Of the 548 victories, the author of the book, credits to the 82nd (page 291) I count 387 credits to the pre J models (through March 20, 1944) with another 2 credited to G’s between March 21 through May 29th, with another 52 undetermined by model in the same time frame. At least 70% of the 82nd victories were credited to pilots flying pre J model P-38’s. As an aside, when of the first recorded P-38L lost was listed on Nov 7th 1944. FYI

Eagledad


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The P-40, born from the P-36, was a design embedded in the 1930's. It truly had the aerodynamics of a brick when compared to later aircraft designs of the war. The fact that it soldiered on, across all fronts from the start of the war, to the end, is a testament to Curtiss' design.



That is the sort of cliche / Trope I've seen written about the P-40 for many years, and is completely meaningless. As Shortround pointed out, for an 'Aerodynamic Brick' it was quite fast on a 1000 hp engine. As fast or faster than all the other 1930's designs like the Spitfire, Hurricane, Bf 109 or A6M.

For a professional assessment of the flying traits of the plane, I encourage you to watch this clip by Jeff Ethel. 



He noted that until he flew one, he himself had repeated many of the 'aerodynamics of a brick' type cliches, but having flown one he notes (starting at 09:25 on the video)

"Airplane is a good maneuvering airplane. It's _much_ more maneuverable than a Mustang. Mustang is locked in cement compared to this thing. This is a lot like a Pitt's with an Allison engine on the front. Wonderful ailerons. The first time I did an aileron roll on this thing I hit my head on both sides of the canopy because I was used to the Mustang so I did a full deflection roll. Holy Mackerel that thing really got a hold of me."

13:42

"After years of reading that the P-40 couldn't maneuver, particularly with the Zero, I had come to accept the general opinion that it was outlclassed by almost everything else flying. Sitting here in the cockpit with the controls in my hand, having written a book about the aircraft and having said all those things, the accepted History just isn't accurate.* No question it didn't have the top speed and high altitude performance of later fighters, but it did have the best maneuverability of the American fighters*, and many pilots particularly in China, preferred it over the Mustang. And it could certainly make diving, slashing attacks as few fighters we had. All I have to do is shove the nose down and I can hit 400 mph in short order."

So I'm pretty confident in his opinion, which matches what I've seen emerging from dozens of Aces who actually flew the plane, as well as the statistics that are coming out including this 'total victory claims' number.

S

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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Cough cough, the war started on Sept 3rd 1939.


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> The problem with using victory claims as an indication of fighter planes success, is that claiming accuracy varied quite a lot. Taking the list for US claims posted earlier as an example; late war ETO has the most accurate Allied claiming, which is good news for the P-51 and P-47 as the large proportion of their victories were scored in this theater. However, the ETO is an outlier, claiming accuracy being less, even much less, in the other theaters.
> It's difficult to say much about the RAF/ CW claiming accuracy, though the late war ETO accuracy would also apply.
> When it comes to the Eastern Front, any claims numbers should be considered more than just 'optimistic'.



This is the expected next wave of excuses, the implication that Allied victory claims are invalid because they overclaimed so much more than the Axis. However this data is emerging, as I already pointed out with numerous specific examples to you in another thread, we can see clearly from the German and Allied records that the Germans overclaimed, sometimes wildly. For example from Shores Mediterranean Air War vol III, Germans overclaimed by 5-1 (on March 23 1943), 7-1 (on March 24) and 5-2 (on March 29) while USAAF claims on the same days were far more accurate.

Even on the Russian Front, it does not look like overclaiming was as wild as has been implied by you and many, many others who can't imagine that the Luftwaffe could be defeated. One wonders how all those 30,000 bf 109s were lost, were Luftwaffe mechanics that bad?

The truth is that generally speaking overclaiming was roughly a constant somewhere around 2-1 or 3-1 depending on the specific time and place. It waxed and waned depending on conditions and verification policies. Obviously it's harder to confirm a victory for a plane shot down in the Ocean. At one point the Soviets instituted a policy that the wreck had to be recovered, and the ID plate of the aircraft located, in order for the claim to be credited. 

Pilots had an incentive to claim as many kills as possible, and it was normal for 3 or 4 pilots who had shot at a plane before it went down to assume they were the one who got it (or for each of them to claim a separate victory). This was especially true in the Luftwaffe where the emphasis on 'experten' was so pronounced. But the Air Forces had an interest in knowing how many enemy planes were actually destroyed and took pains to get accurate numbers. The two forces were at odds but balanced out somewhat.

And the actual day to day numbers are coming to light more and more, as in Shores MAW series and you and I have already started to look into that in another thread 

S


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## swampyankee (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik, air forces also have an interest in propaganda, and aces were, to some extent, the automatic box office heroes of the day.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> That is the sort of cliche / Trope I've seen written about the P-40 for many years, and is completely meaningless. As Shortround pointed out, for an 'Aerodynamic Brick' it was quite fast on a 1000 hp engine. As fast or faster than all the other 1930's designs like the Spitfire, Hurricane, Bf 109 or A6M.


The P-40 in all of it's versions that saw service, did NOT have aerodynamic qualities that benefitted it's performance. It was a very capable aircraft and it's predecessor, the P-36, was a very maneuverable aircraft, well liked by it's pilots.

The P-40 retained much of these traits, however, with it's additional armament, self-sealing tanks, armor, radiator and it's V-12 engine (1,400 pounds versus the P-36's 1,200 pound radial) was still a 1934 design.

Curtiss went to great lengths and spent a great deal of effort to clean it's lines, all of which went no where.

Types like the YP-37:






The XP-42 (one of several iterations):





XP-47:





XP-60A:





XP-60C:





Matter of fact, there were five different types of the XP-60...

The point here, is that the P-40 was strong enough and solid enough that it was able to be a contender in battle. The true "trope" here, is the steadfast belief that it was a world beater by 1942/43. It simply was not, as it's mid-30's design was being surpassed by improved engine and aerodynamic designs.

What gives it impressive victory numbers, is that it's nearly 14,000 airframes participated in every theater across the globe across the span of nearly five years.

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## fubar57 (Jun 10, 2018)

I laughed at "trope", toilet paper word of the day, well over used

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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Claims have very little significance, the worst thing making incorrect claims does is to fool your own side into believing you are doing better than you are.

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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> I laughed at "trope", toilet paper word of the day, well over used


trope
[trəʊp]
NOUN

a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression.
"both clothes and illness became tropes for new attitudes toward the self" · "my sense that philosophy has become barren is a recurrent trope of modern philosophy" · "perhaps it is a mistake to use tropes and parallels in this eminently unpoetic age"
a significant or recurrent theme; a motif.
"she uses the Eucharist as a pictorial trope"



Now, any idea what it means? I havnt a clue.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 10, 2018)

The word "trope" can have a vague application of an over used theme, but that's not it's primary definition.


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The P-40 in all of it's versions that saw service, did NOT have aerodynamic qualities that benefitted it's performance. It was a very capable aircraft and it's predecessor, the P-36, was a very maneuverable aircraft, well liked by it's pilots.



As was the P-40 by a lot of it's pilots, and was also maneuverable - per Jeff Ethel the most maneuverable American made fighter of the war.



> Matter of fact, there were five different types of the XP-60...



You are perhaps accidentally forgetting that they also made numerous variations of the actual combat P-40 types.






Tomahawk / P-40C





Kittyhawk I / P-40E





P-40K





P-40F (late model) or L





P-40N

As should be obvious, aerodynamics changed from the early to the later types.



> The point here, is that the P-40 was strong enough and solid enough that it was able to be a contender in battle. The true "trope" here, is the steadfast



Strong and solid doesn't cut it alone, if that was the case the Bf 110 would have been a world beater.



> What gives it impressive victory numbers, is that it's nearly 14,000 airframes participated in every theater across the globe across the span of nearly five years.



If that was a valid argument, you could say the same thing about the 30,000 airframes of the Bf 109 

S

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## tomo pauk (Jun 10, 2018)

Well, that will teach David a lesson or two about P-40s, the aircraft he barely knows. Especially about the obvious things, like aerodynamics.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> As should be obvious, aerodynamics changed from the early to the later types.



Aerodynamics changed significantly due to changing the reduction gearon the engine?
Adding 20in to the fuselage (but kept horizontal stabilizer and elevators at same relative position to the wing/CG)?
Aerodynamics changed by moving the carb intake from the top of the fuselage to the bottom on the Merlin engine examples?

yes they did to very minor extent/s.

However the compared to GrauGeist's post where the XP-46 (color photo) was an entirely new airplane, just used the same engine and the XP-60 used a new, larger wing with a different airfoil (not to mention changes in the fuselage to accommodate different engines/superchargers) the amount of change was minor.


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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Reading the posts on the P-40 I find it hard to understand why production finished in 1944 and it was used in a training role. Was this a forward thinking practice to use your best types for training, as with the P-39?

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## GrauGeist (Jun 10, 2018)

Waiting to hear how this variant was used in deep penetration raids, long-range escort and high altitude interception.






Oh wait! The USAAF already had one in service before this variant was made!

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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> I laughed at "trope", toilet paper word of the day, well over used



I don't appreciate the word 'toilet paper' friend. If you don't like the word "Trope", substitute what Jeff Ethel said: *"the accepted History just isn't accurate."*

I'm a history researcher on other time periods, far further back from the mid 20th Century. In ancient history, the word Trope means specific popular interpretations of certain types of stories. Kind of like literary cliches.



Spoiler: Segue about Tropes



David slaying Goliath is a trope. One common context is in Greek plays - certain stories tend to go a certain way and have a certain ending based on tradition and audience expectations. In a lot of academic literature, there are ongoing debates over whether historical events recorded in primary sources really happened the way it was written, or if they were written to conform to Literary (or oral tradition) tropes that were popular in the culture back then. There has been a lot of debate about Herodotus, whether he wrote Tropes or history, or Seutonious.

As another example, there was a long running debate about the Icelandic sagas as to whether they were telling true stories or Literary tropes. The best experts on the subject, academics in Iceland who spoke the language, insisted that these were totally made up stories, and therefore Literature ala Shakespeare or the Canterburry Tales, rather than any kind of history which they felt would reduce the stories to the status of Chronicles. Starting with the discovery of the L'Anse aux Meadows site on Newfoundland in the 60's, and now much more recently at least two others, we have come to accept that those documents were in part historically accurate.

In case anyone is interested in Tropes per say, this is a pretty good website which explains the concept and gives a lot of amusing examples from contemporary popular culture. They also have their own definition of the term as it relates to modern use. Personally I think Tropes exist but perhaps ironically, I don't think everything is a Trope and generally feel the concept is a little overused. It does fit in some cases though and I think it fits specifically in Aviation history.



I have a tendency to use shorthand terms sometimes i had no idea the word 'Trope' would set people off or be so confusing. Like many of you, I have an amateur interest in Aviation history, I know we have some pilots and professionals here too. I have done serious academic research in other fields myself but for aircraft, it's a hobby for me. And like many others here, I read the books written in the post-war period, in the 60's and 70's and 80's, and took them at face value. However, I learned over time that not everything in those books was accurate. Some new data started to appear in the 90's and with the onset of the internets, we have a plethora of new data. Sites like ww2aircraftperformance.org aggregating ww2 era documents for example, or Shores most recent work, or this forum where many things come to light.

In the last twenty years or so I have learned many of the things I read in books in my youth were incorrect. For example I learned that P-39s were not primarily used as anti-tank weapons by the Soviets, but rather, for the most part, as air superiority fighters. I learned that the US didn't even ship them AP / anti-tank ammunition for their 37mm gun. That was a part of the inaccurate "accepted History" as Jeff Ethel put it. New data and sources, for example Soviet sources, helped us dispel some of these specific legends or whatever you pefer to call them, but they often have a certain inertia because "accepted History" becomes part of a general narrative that people become comfortable with. The whole notion that the Soviets used P-39s exclusively for CAS was a way to explain why the Soviets did so much better with that fighter than the Americans who actually designed and built it.

I think, similarly, some people are really invested in what I would call the Trope of German superiority in all things and don't like the notion that lots of German pilots were shot down by Soviet pilots. This too, touches on wider themes.



swampyankee said:


> Schweik, air forces also have an interest in propaganda, and aces were, to some extent, the automatic box office heroes of the day.



Quite true, but for their internal records it was important for commanders to know how many enemy aircraft they were actually destroying. You can't make new plans if you don't know the results of your previous efforts. There was tension between these two agendas (and many others) and this helps explain why overclaiming did vary from time to time even in the same Theater.

But I think the implication that the Soviets overclaimed by some wild amount like 20 to 1 is not in fact supported by the evidence. Nor the Commonwealth. They did overclaim but not always and not by a huge amount. As i said the typical ratio seems to be about 3-1 across the board.

S


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Reading the posts on the P-40 I find it hard to understand why production finished in 1944 and it was used in a training role. Was this a forward thinking practice to use your best types for training, as with the P-39?



If anyone here had claimed that the P-40 was the best type in 1944 that would be a devastatingly effective argument.

Maybe you got confused with another discussion Thread somewhere else?

Or maybe the numbers rub you the wrong way for some reason so you feel the need to win an argument nobody is actually making. Who knows, maybe this site is wildly inaccurate. All I can say is that some of the numbers correspond with some of my other sources but those are secondary literature at best (Osprey books). 

I'm eager to learn more hard numbers or pertinent data if you or anyone else has them. The Hurricane figure is quite impressive and interesting.

S


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Waiting to hear how this variant was used in deep penetration raids, long-range escort and high altitude interception.
> 
> Oh wait! The USAAF already had one in service before this variant was made!



Never claimed it was friend. For the record I stipulate that the P-51 was vastly better than any other Allied type for deep penetration raids, long-range escort and high altitude interception*. I don't believe I ever said anything that contradicts that.

S

* some Spitfire or P-47 variants may have been better in this role. But certainly not the P-40.


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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> If anyone here had claimed that the P-40 was the best type in 1944 that would be a devastatingly effective argument.
> 
> Maybe you got confused with another discussion Thread somewhere else?
> 
> ...


If you are a history researcher I would respectfully suggest that the biggest "game changer" in the performance of the Spitfire against the Bf-109 in 1940 to 41 was the change in commanders from Dowding/Park to Leigh Mallory. Park performed his role as "general" of 11 group as close as anyone in military history to tactical and operational perfection, Leigh Mallory was an incompetent idiot un fit for the role, and unaware what the role was. You will never ever produce any "number" that rubs me up the wrong way because they are not my interest, I view history in a different way.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> If that was a valid argument, you could say the same thing about the 30,000 airframes of the Bf 109


In regards to this statement, Messerschmitt spent a tremendous amount of time and effort to improve the Bf109, which was another 1930's design that was being edged out by newer types.
In the end, the Bf109 had to remain in front line service as Germany was not able to bring a new type into full production, so the Bf109's numbers (and victories) reflect that service from 1937 until 1945.

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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> In regards to this statement, Messerschmitt spent a tremendous amount of time and effort to improve the Bf109, which was another 1930's design that was being edged out by newer types.
> In the end, the Bf109 had to remain in front line service as Germany was not able to bring a new type into full production, so the Bf109's numbers (and victories) reflect that service from 1937 until 1945.


To me it doesn't reflect badly at all on any aircraft type that the nation which produced it had the wit and resources to produce a better one a year later.

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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Aerodynamics changed (snip) ?
> 
> yes they did




























Thank you yes, yes they did. If you look at a P-40B/C and a late model P-40K or P-40F and can't tell that there are substantial aerodynamic differences then you are not trying hard enough.

I'm no engineer, and yes I know they had the same wing (why wouldn't they- it was a very good wing design) but I am aware of how little it takes to actually affect aerodynamics.

I'm also well aware of the various abortive attempts by Curtiss to replace the P-40 as well as the general saga of that company. 

S


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## Shortround6 (Jun 10, 2018)

I would be a little leery of the 70in of MAP and especially the 1700hp.

The 1700hp is for standard conditions. That is 59 degrees F at sea level with a certain percentage of humidity (dry) and sea level pressure at 760mm or 29.92 in of mercury. As the temperature goes up the air density and the power goes down for the same manifold pressure. 
One book on car engines claims the difference in power between 32 degrees F and 100 degrees F is 12.5%. 
The 70in is pressure and not actual airflow in either cubic ft per minute or pounds per minute. The last is what is really needed to figure power production. 
The use of 70in of MAP is also highly dependent on aircraft speed as it depends quite a bit on RAM. 

please look at this;
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/P-40/V-1710_Service_Use_of_High_Power_Outputs.pdf

The ability to hit 70in of pressure is at very low levels only and only at high forward speed or by over revving the engine (or both). 
Please note that _without ram_ for all the talk about 1700hp and up the engine was down to around 1500hp at 5000ft at 3000rpm. At 5000ft the supercharger can not come close to supplying 70in of map.


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> If you are a history researcher I would respectfully suggest that the biggest "game changer" in the performance of the Spitfire against the Bf-109 in 1940 to 41 was the change in commanders from Dowding/Park to Leigh Mallory. Park performed his role as "general" of 11 group as close as anyone in military history to tactical and operational perfection, Leigh Mallory was an incompetent idiot un fit for the role, and unaware what the role was.



I wonder which commander was responsible for switching to the wingmen / finger 4 type system (and it's variants) that was certainly a major improvement that came a little late. One thing I noticed reading about the Western Desert was that some of the important Tactical and Operational changes actually bubbled up from below. Clive Caldwell seems to have been the first suggest (or more precisely insist) that it made more sense to put bombs on the Tomahawks and Hurricanes than to escort Blenheims at 100 mph. And I already mentioned his innovation for gunnery training.

But certainly leadership does play an important role, it's one of many relevant factors to the success of a given unit in a given Theater.



> You will never ever produce any "number" that rubs me up the wrong way because they are not my interest, I view history in a different way.



One thing that i have learned in doing research on my own period for about 20 years, is that it helps a lot if you can learn to view things from a variety of different perspectives. For example many people view history through the lens of "great men", there is even a whole body of theory based on this idea, dating back to the 19th Century.

For me, no historical model is iron clad, all theories and systems are provisional. History often fails to conform to theories and then it's always tempting to filter the data to better fit the model. I think it works better if you do it the other way around. Models, theories, and historical approaches are useful tools. I once learned a great deal in my own field from reading a book about salt. But I try not to be too welded to any one approach. I don't necessarily agree with 'great man' theory but I don't dismiss it outright either. The War in the Desert would have probably been different if Rommel hadn't been in charge of the Arfika Korps. Then again the availability of more or less fuel, inferior or superior tanks, and an extra division or two on one side or the other could also affect the outcome.

When it comes to WW2 aircraft, I think the technical specifications of the planes, the training of the pilots, their leadership as you pointed out, the maintenance, supply and ground conditions, and the nature of the fighting are all relevant. That is one of the reasons why I think it's better to consider a fighter or bomber in the context of the Theater rather than making broad generalizations. The Spitfire did better over England than it did in Burma or Darwin. The P-39 did better in Russia than in either of those places.

For sources, pilot interviews, commanders memoirs, day to day records of operations, corporate and government memos, archeological data, old photographs and film footage, and various forms of analysis (like comparing victory claims to loss ratios) are all valuable sources. General interpretations and theories sometimes have more to tell us about the time and place they were written than about the historical subject they cove. The histories which do rise above that are the ones which become widely read and renowned among scholars.

S


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> I would be a little leery of the 70in of MAP and especially the 1700hp.
> 
> (snip)
> 
> ...



Shortround, I am very familiar with that document, thank you! I highly recommend you read _this_ document.

E-GEH-16

In particular I bring to your attention items 33 and 36:

" 33. This aircraft is powered with the Allison 1710-39 engine having a rated power of 1150 H.P. at 3000 R.P.M. and 44” Hg. at 12,000 ft. The engine was originally equipped with an automatic boost control limiting the manifold pressure at the lower altitudes to 44”. *The British remove this so as to get the vastly increased performance at lower altitudes thru the judicious use of over-boost. *As has been mentioned before, they have had exceptionally good service out of these engines and due to its smoothness at low RPM’s, they are able to operate it so as to obtain a remarkably low fuel consumption giving them an operational range greater than any single engine fighter they possess (the fact that the Merlin engine will not run well below 1600 prevents them from obtaining an equivalent low fuel consumption and therefore limits its usefulness for similar operations). 

36. In view of the British operation and the fact that we have an approved war emergency rating on the 1710-39 engine of 56”, it is suggested that immediate steps be taken to remove the automatic boost controls from our P-51 airplanes in this theatre and that the instrument dials be marked with the proper lights. *The British have operated at full throttle at sea level (72” Hg) for as much as 20 min. at a time without hurting the engines. *According to them, the Allison is averaging 1500 hours between bearing failures as compared to 500 to 600 hours for the Merlin. The Allison, they have found, will drag them home even with the bearing ruined. "

Bold emphasis was added by me.

In my opinion this further corroborates the practices described in the Allison memo, and in fact expands on it a bit. As you are well aware the V-1710-39 is the same engine used in the P-40E.

S


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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I wonder which commander was responsible for switching to the wingmen / finger 4 type system (and it's variants) that was certainly a major improvement that came a little late. One thing I noticed reading about the Western Desert was that some of the important Tactical and Operational changes actually bubbled up from below. Clive Caldwell seems to have been the first suggest (or more precisely insist) that it made more sense to put bombs on the Tomahawks and Hurricanes than to escort Blenheims at 100 mph. And I already mentioned his innovation for gunnery training.
> 
> But certainly leadership does play an important role, it's one of many relevant factors to the success of a given unit in a given Theater.
> 
> ...


So it isn't all about numbers then? That is why no number "rubs me up the wrong way". One pilots anecdote about an aircrafts handling doesn't change anything, neither does one anecdote in a aerial victory. A war is a meeting of national forces using all they have at hand to win. The Hurricane set the base level of performance in 1939 (the Spitfire was only just an operational type). By 1940 the Spitfire was taking over the "base level" but the UK was out producing Germany in single engine fighters, this meant that Germany had to produce much better fighters or lose the game. This is only discussing combat between UK and Germany, by 1941 Germany had taken on Russia and at the end of 1941 also the USA.

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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> So it isn't all about numbers then? That is why no number "rubs me up the wrong way".



Any number, whether it's top speed, roll rate, production totals or total victory claims, is just another data point. It's the combination of different data that make the picture. And the picture does always change at least a little.

As for the idea that it rubbed you the wrong way, all I did was link to and mention the total number of victories by type when the subject came up. I was surprised by that list, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Then all the sudden several people including yourself started making snarky posts. That the number bothered you was my best guess. 



> One pilots anecdote about an aircrafts handling doesn't change anything, neither does one anecdote in a aerial victory.



No but the commentary of say, a dozen of the top aces for a given Theater might carry a bit more weight. The plural of anecdote is not a statistic, but when it comes to this kind of war where a small number of people can be so influential on the outcome of the battle, it isn't something you just dismiss outright, in my opinion. 15 experten in North Africa scored well over half of the victory claims in that Theater, for example. On the other hand, one Australian pilot seems to have shot down 4 of those experten* and killed two of them, another Canadian ace shot down two more and killed another. So I feel like these fellows were significant to the Air War in this Theater and value their analysis. 

Nothing is decisive needless to say. But even small details can be relevant. Something like learning about the aileron problem with the P-51A / A-36 / Mustang I / Mustang II / F-6A / F-6B did help me understand some larger issues.

S

* These "experten" were:
Leutnant Heinz Schmidt of JG 27, 26 June 1941 
Haptmann Wolfgangg Lippert (KIA), Gruppenkommandeur of II.JG27, 29 August 1941
Haputman Ergo Graf von Kageneck (KIA) (claimed as 'damaged'), III.JG27, 24 December 1941
Leutnant Arnold Stahlschmidt I./JG 27, Feruary 1942

Caldwell also fought off experten Leutnent Werner Schorer, severely damaging his Bf 109E7, and shot down his wingman in a heavily damaged P-40 after being bounced and wounded.

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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Any number, whether it's top speed, roll rate, production totals or total victory claims, is just another data point. It's the combination of different data that make the picture. And the picture does always change at least a little.
> 
> As for the idea that it rubbed you the wrong way, all I did was link to and mention the total number of victories by type when the subject came up. I was surprised by that list, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Then all the sudden several people including yourself started making snarky posts. That the number bothered you was my best guess.
> 
> ...


Thanks for producing an individual anecdote to prove your point, or were you proving mine?


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Thanks for producing an individual anecdote to prove your point, or were you proving mine?



I don't claim to prove anything. I am pointing out that:

1) Some anecdotes are 'weighted' a bit more than others in my book, because as I already noted, it is the nature of fighter combat that a few key people did make a difference, but...
2) ... the main / broader point is that I wouldn't just have a filter that said "anecdotes are bad - ignore" or "anecdotes are good - they trump all other data". Rather, I think if you look at multiple anecdotes and see if you can detect a pattern which can be compared with other data to form a picture.

With regard to the P-40, I've read descriptions of the aircraft from almost all of the high scoring aces who flew the type. In North Africa, the CBI, the Pacific and the Russian Front. The majority of the aces I can find interviews with, while well aware of the flaws of the P-40, noted that it was well capable of shooting down the best enemy fighters they faced: Bf 109s, MC 202, Fw 190, Ki-43, and A6M (something they proved personally.)

Let me put it this way - do you think Erwin Rommels opinion on how the Pz III performed in warfare in North Africa would be significant or not?

So yes I do think anecdotes do matter, even if they are difficult to precisely quantify, along with day by day analysis of victories vs losses reported, military and corporate memos, the overall victory claim numbers, the commentary of German, Italian and Japanese pilots (who were quite mixed on their opinion, but mostly dismissive) and so on, all add up to a big picture.

YMMV

S


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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I don't claim to prove anything. I am pointing out that:
> 
> 1) Some anecdotes are 'weighted' a bit more than others in my book, because as I already noted, it is the nature of fighter combat that a few key people did make a difference, but...
> 2) ... the main / broader point is that I wouldn't just have a filter that said "anecdotes are bad - ignore" or "anecdotes are good - they trump all other data". Rather, I think if you look at multiple anecdotes and see if you can detect a pattern which can be compared with other date to form a picture.
> ...


Production ceased in 1944 as with the Hurricane. Everything else is whataboutery,


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Production ceased in 1944 as with the Hurricane. Everything else is whataboutery,



No, I don't agree, and I don't buy that type of argument. I wouldn't say the P-51 was a crap plane because the MiG 15 eventually came along. 

By 1944, they were still using P-40s in combat and still scoring victories with them, in fact all the way until 1945. That didn't mean it was still one of the best types, certainly it was long in the teeth by 1944. But I would say the fact that a pilot could still survive in that environment in 1945 does suggest that it was still in the game, so to speak.

I've tried pretty patiently to explain my perspective, perhaps a bit too much, but you still seem pretty bitter about it. I guess we'll both just have to live with that mate.

In the meantime maybe other folks reading the thread will get something out whatever I post.

S


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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I've tried pretty patiently to explain my perspective, perhaps a bit too much, but you still seem pretty bitter about it. I guess we'll both just have to live with that mate.
> S


I think you consider every other poster here in need of education, especially from you. I have been posting here but more importantly reading posts here for five years. Your perspective seems to be that you are right, because you are better read. On every issue you switch the goal posts so that your production numbers or claims or kill ratios or performance metric, or telling anecdote carries the discussion in your favour. Well it doesn't and it is boring.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> ...In the meantime maybe other folks reading the thread will get something out whatever I post.


I'm afraid that what other folks are gathering from your posts _may_ not be what you had in mind...

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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I think you consider every other poster here in need of education, especially from you. I have been posting here but more importantly reading posts here for five years. Your perspective seems to be that you are right, because you are better read. On every issue you switch the goal posts so that your production numbers or claims or kill ratios or performance metric, or telling anecdote carries the discussion in your favour. Well it doesn't and it is boring.



This is the sequence of events: some other people were talking about kill numbers for the mustang and other types in the context of the main thread subject. I googled mustang ww2 victories and found that site with the totals. Noticed it matched some other numbers I had so I posted it. People had been talking about numbers, I figured this would add to the debate.

All seemed to be fine until me and some other guy commented on what some of the implications were regarding the P-40, then suddenly you and one or two others start making snarky posts. I get challenged on numerous things and I replied defending my position.

I never claimed to have the last word on anything. All I have is whatever data I can find, and my opinion, take it or leave it.

The rest of the above is all you breh. You ought to ask yourself why you are so bent out of shape. It's just a bunch of guys on a Sunday yakking about airplanes from 70 years ago, and I've been posting data to the thread. To me all the angst is what is boring.

S


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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> I'm afraid that what other folks are gathering from your posts _may_ not be what you had in mind...



Right back at you


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## Shortround6 (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Thank you yes, yes they did. If you look at a P-40B/C and a late model P-40K or P-40F and can't tell that there are substantial aerodynamic differences _then you are not trying hard enough_.
> 
> I'm no engineer, and yes I know they had the same wing (why wouldn't they- it was a very good wing design) but I am aware of how little it takes to actually affect aerodynamics.



If you think the changes in aerodynamics were _substantial _then you are trying too hard. 

Main difference between the P-40C and the D/E was they changed the reduction gear which moved the propeller and thrust line up 6 inches. This might be substantial. It might not. However the radiator and oil coolers stayed in the same place (they were not lowered). Airflow through the radiator/oil cooler is governed by the exit flaps, not the size of the intake/s. Cross section of the engine cowl did not change. Actual effect of the different nose shape is?

Report on the P-40B called for a speed at 15,000ft of 306mph at 2280rpm using 698hp while weighing (or taking off at) 6833lbs.
Report on the P-40D called for a speed at 15,175ft of 307.5mph at 2280rpm using 725hp while weighing (or taking off at) 7740lbs.

*Actual* engine power is unknown as the power is from charts based on ground running in a test house. They had no way of measuring power in flight. There were minor variances in the engines. Now the question is does the so called more streamline nose on the older plane really help? the D has to fly with slightly more incidence on the wing (angle of attack) so support the extra 900lbs at the same speed and that raises drag. 

Aerodynamic difference between a D/E and the later versions is pretty much the surface drag of the 20 in fuselage extension. The extended fuselage did make the plane more stable in dives and required less rudder to maintain "trim" in a high speed dive. 

As far as the difference between the Allison versions and the Merlin versions go, you are kidding right? 
that is like saying the 109 with tropical filter had different aerodynamics





Than a non filter 109. 

There were greater differences between the P-40E and F than the aerodynamics of the carburetor inlet scoop. 
The Merlin engine was enough heavier that the order of use of the fuel in the internal tanks was changed to keep around 200lbs of fuel in the behind the seat tank to help maintain the CG. With the fuel in the rear tank the CG may have been the same as the E but as the weight is more spread out (further from CG?) the initial response to elevator movement may have been a bit slower. 

There are a lot of other planes that changed external shape a lot more than the P-40. And none of the changes to the P-40 (at least production ones) were in the quest for higher speed.

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## pbehn (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> This is the sequence of events: some other people were talking about kill numbers for the mustang and other types in the context of the main thread subject. I googled mustang ww2 victories and found that site with the totals. Noticed it matched some other numbers I had so I posted it. People had been talking about numbers, I figured this would add to the debate.
> 
> All seemed to be fine until me and some other guy commented on what some of the implications were regarding the P-40, then suddenly you and one or two others start making snarky posts. I get challenged on numerous things and I replied defending my position.
> 
> ...


I have been reading the posts and not getting involved mainly because your posts were so esoteric and verbose that they said everything and nothing, mainly just moving the air and thinking out aloud. Even this evening my comment about Dowding/Park and Leigh Mallory went completely over your head, it was much more than use of looser formations like "finger fours". Park won the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Malta, Leigh Mallory was a disaster when "leaning towards France". That is a well known historical fact, you cannot discuss loss rates in those battles without reference to that, but you did, that is when I got involved. I am in no way "bent out of shape" perhaps it is the idea that more data will give a truth previously undiscovered is where we differ.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 10, 2018)

Schweik said:


> This is the sequence of events: some other people were talking about kill numbers for the mustang and other types in the context of the main thread subject. I googled mustang ww2 victories and found that site with the totals. Noticed it matched some other numbers I had so I posted it. People had been talking about numbers, I figured this would add to the debate.
> 
> All seemed to be fine until me and some other guy commented on what some of the implications were regarding the P-40, then suddenly you and one or two others start making snarky posts. I get challenged on numerous things and I replied defending my position.
> 
> ...


But you aren't posting data, you are posting opinion (as you mentioned) and fractured data backed by some pilot's observations.

Add to this, the attitude with which it's being presented: some guys yakking about planes - as if you were the absolute authority (which you are not) on this subject.

No one here's bent out of shape, except for yourself, as seen by the lengthy, repetitive and circular dissertations in an attempt to prove your opinions are fact.

And this:


Schweik said:


> Right back at you


is laughable at best. My posts regarding the P-40 have not been based on speculation or opinion, so anyone reading my posts can easily cross-reference the information from peer-reviewed sources to see if it's on the level or not.

And many of these "guys yakking on a sunday" around here are engineers, pilots, historians/authors and so on...so perhaps you should rethink your social approach and data presentation. It just may produce better conversation in the future.

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## Schweik (Jun 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> But you aren't posting data, you are posting opinion (as you mentioned) and fractured data backed by some pilot's observations.



The post that set you two off was this list of total victories by type. It was after I posted that that all the angry posts started.

Neither that or any of the other data points I or you or anyone else presented in this thread comes close to the standard of a peer reviewed academic article, thank god. I know because I've written those and they are a pain in the ass. Even with all the grief you guys are trying to give me this is still much more fun than writing an academic paper.

And Jeff Ethel wasn't just some pilot, he was an author and an expert on WW2 Warbirds, which he had more experience flying than most people alive today.



> And many of these "guys yakking on a sunday" around here are engineers, pilots, historians/authors and so on...so perhaps you should rethink your social approach and data presentation. It just may produce better conversation in the future.



You seem to be suggesting, once again, something I never said.

Regardless of our status or profession, right here we are all guys yakking about 70 year old planes on a Sunday. I never put myself above that level. Nobody in 2018 lives or dies by the roll rate of a Spitfire in 1942 or the number of rounds carried by a P-51D in 1944. We are all into this subject because we find it interesting. Get real.

S

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 10, 2018)

Time to let this thread cool down a bit. Will be reopened soon...

Thread reopened.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 17, 2018)

Schweik said:


> So impatient. I told y'all I was posting from work. I'm at home now with the book in my hand. This is the book.
> 
> What you posted is a partial list. Total production of this plane was 1720 units not counting prototypes.
> 
> ...


You gave a good breakdown of Allison engined Mustangs. The confusion of the introduction of the different models is based on several factors:
- NAA the plane for the British (RAF), the US Govt ordered and paid for 2nd British order (Mustang MkIA) then held back for USAAF the remaining undelivered order after attack on Pearl Harbor, and MOST importantly the last Allison engine Mustang variant was assign as 'P-51A' (A is normally used for 1st assigned variant).

A brief order, from beginning to end:
- Mustang MkI to RAF, two fr this order were retained for USAAC (later the USAAF) and designated as XP-51.
- Mustang MkIA to RAF (only change was the armament to 4 20mm cannons, two in each wing), after PH the US Govt the remainder of this British order was held back, and were designed P-51-1 (and P-51-2 due to slight production change) by USAAF. To complicate further, most of these P-51-1 and -2s became F-6A since they were fitted w cameras for Photo-Recon roll.
- A-36A (notice that the -A following the number is for the first variant dive bomber; the USAAF finally gets it right!) dive bomber, initially called Invader/Apache but 'Mustang' and identification cards introduced by RAF in late 1942 likely influenced its use to avoid confusion over 'friend or foe' identification. Note that the A-36A was the first variant to have wing hard points for external fuel stores (drop tanks, initially 75 US gal capacity; note that the USAAF restricted aircraft manufacturers from making fighters capable of carrying external fuel stores [US Navy had no such restriction] and this did not change until 1943). However, a junior USAAF test pilot assigned to Lockheed, convinced chief designers to 'incorporate drop tank capability anyway; as he believe this next war was going to be a long range war'; these drop tank P-38Fs were coming off the production line when the Japanse attacked PH!
- P-51A for USAAF (first fighter variant ordered, retaining wing hard points for bombs/drop tanks), a fair number were converted for Photo-Recon and redesignated as F-6B (however, most if not all retained the 'black stenciling of P-51A on the left fuselage just forward of cockpit). 50 aircraft from the Amerian order were furnished to the British (RAF) as Mustang MkII, as replacement of confiscation of the MkI variant. 

Notes: The RAF got 1500 hrs on the Allison, but only 400 hrs on the Merlin before engine major overhaul. Several RAF MkIs that entered service in mid-1942 were still flying combat missions (photo-recon) when the war ended in May 1945. The first single engine fighter to enter Germany since France was overrun were RAF Mustang MkI(s) in 1942 when they escorted Wellington bombers. The first known long range escort by USAAF Mustangs were A-36A(s) escorting B-26 Maurders from Africa (and back) to bomb German facilities in Northern Sicily/Southern Italy in 1943.

It is true that the 1st Air Command Group had to learn air-to-air tactics against the Japanese, just as Chenault taught his Flying Tigers, and 56th FG Commander Hub Zemke with his P-47s in the ETO. The real advantage in the CBI was that the P-51A (as well as A-36A) required a shorter runway to get airborne. Since makeshift runways were cut in the jungle (at least 3 time taking nearly 3 days to complete) as The Chindits advanced against the Japanese, this was an important attribute of the Allison engine Mustang over the P-47, which initially was used to replace lost P-51A. Also, bomb placement was expertly done with these low tree level attacks.
When Replacement aircraft were needed, an officer on leave toured training bases in Florida and Georgia and had these used but well maintained P-51A Mustangs shipped to the 1st ACG!

The P-51A also had a better horsepower due to an auto supercharger, a larger propeller . . . giving it a 20 mph gain in speed from 388 to 409 and higher performance from 17.000 to 20,000 ft.

Navalwarrior

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## Schweik (Jun 17, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> You gave a good breakdown of Allison engined Mustangs. The confusion of the introduction of the different models is based on several factors:
> - NAA the plane for the British (RAF), the US Govt ordered and paid for 2nd British order (Mustang MkIA) then held back for USAAF the remaining undelivered order after attack on Pearl Harbor, and MOST importantly the last Allison engine Mustang variant was assign as 'P-51A' (A is normally used for 1st assigned variant).
> 
> A brief order, from beginning to end:
> ...



Fascinating stuff. I still don't get why this plane didn't get a bit wider use particularly in 1943. Seems like with the 20mm cannon and all that speed, and the range, and decent performance up to 20,000 ft, it would be valuable in the Med particularly vs. Fw 190s.

S


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## Kevin J (Jun 17, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Fascinating stuff. I still don't get why this plane didn't get a bit wider use particularly in 1943. Seems like with the 20mm cannon and all that speed, and the range, and decent performance up to 20,000 ft, it would be valuable in the Med particularly vs. Fw 190s.
> 
> S


Only 150 were built, 93 went to the RAF, the USAAF kept the rest. That's enough for about 3 squadrons over 2 years.


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## tomo pauk (Jun 17, 2018)

A very good post, I stil have a nitpic, though:



Navalwarrior said:


> ...
> 
> The P-51A also had a better horsepower due to an auto supercharger, a larger propeller . . . giving it a 20 mph gain in speed from 388 to 409 and higher performance from 17.000 to 20,000 ft.



The P-51A have had better altitude performance due to the engine's impeller spinning faster - max 28800 rpm vs. 26400 rpm at earlier 1-stage V-1710s at fighters. That meant the air is more compressed = more boost at choosen altitude = more power. A small price to pay for this was a slight loss of low altitude performance.
IIRC both P-51 and P-51A have had the same prop, or at least of same diameter.


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## pbehn (Jun 17, 2018)

The problem faced by any single engine aircraft based in UK from 1940 to 1944 is that the only targets it could reach and damage were actually on the allied side. Shooting up a train may have some effect but it may be a train full of French people or goods for French people etc.

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## Kevin J (Jun 17, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The problem faced by any single engine aircraft based in UK from 1940 to 1944 is that the only targets it could reach and damage were actually on the allied side. Shooting up a train may have some effect but it may be a train full of French people or goods for French people etc.


They certainly weren't allowed to destroy Dutch or Norwegian assets, they were definitely on our side. As for the French, they had joined the enemy. The issue at stake was continuing American support. At that time, America was a third German, a third Irish, 10% British and the rest came from all over Europe, so the RAF had to attempt precision bombing, even at night, and drop their bombs if they couldn't hit their targets accurately. A lot of German cows got killed.


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## pbehn (Jun 17, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> They certainly weren't allowed to destroy Dutch or Norwegian assets, they were definitely on our side. As for the French, they had joined the enemy. The issue at stake was continuing American support. At that time, America was a third German, a third Irish, 10% British and the rest came from all over Europe, so the RAF had to attempt precision bombing, even at night, and drop their bombs if they couldn't hit their targets accurately. A lot of German cows got killed.


Unless you provide some support for that I consider it a creation from your own head to support your present world view. Please bear in mind that speaking German does make someone politically "German" since Germany only united in the 1870s.

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## swampyankee (Jun 17, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> They certainly weren't allowed to destroy Dutch or Norwegian assets, they were definitely on our side. As for the French, they had joined the enemy. The issue at stake was continuing American support. At that time, America was a third German, a third Irish, 10% British and the rest came from all over Europe, so the RAF had to attempt precision bombing, even at night, and drop their bombs if they couldn't hit their targets accurately. A lot of German cows got killed.



You do realize that proportionately more Dutch people actively assisted the German invaders("the Netherlands saw one of the highest levels of collaboration during the Holocaust of any occupied country" http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Netherlands_in_World_War_II) than did those in France? And Vidkun Quisling gave his name to a category of traitor? All of the occupied countries had volunteers, especially from extreme right-wing organizations, but also from the police helping the nazis.

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## Kevin J (Jun 17, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Unless you provide some support for that I consider it a creation from your own head to support your present world view. Please bear in mind that speaking German does make someone politically "German" since Germany only united in the 1870s.


My father's family was Anglo-Italian, living in the UK at the time of WW2, so yes its from my head, nobody wants to fight kith and kin. The UK had to beware of American sensibilities and also of keeping its allies on board.


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## KiwiBiggles (Jun 17, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> You do realize that proportionately more Dutch people actively assisted the German invaders("the Netherlands saw one of the highest levels of collaboration during the Holocaust of any occupied country" Netherlands in World War II) than did those in France? And Vidkun Quisling gave his name to a category of traitor? All of the occupied countries had volunteers, especially from extreme right-wing organizations, but also from the police helping the nazis.


Irrelevant. The Dutch government was an Ally, as were the Norwegians. The French government (Vichy) was part of the Axis, and actively fought against the Allies at a state level. Technically, the Free French under de Gaulle were rebels.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 17, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> *They certainly weren't allowed to destroy Dutch or Norwegian assets, they were definitely on our side*. As for the French, they had joined the enemy. The issue at stake was continuing American support. At that time, America was a third German, a third Irish, 10% British and the rest came from all over Europe, so the RAF had to attempt precision bombing, even at night, and drop their bombs if they couldn't hit their targets accurately. A lot of German cows got killed.


Not sure where you're going with all that, but the Allies certainly did bomb Holland, particularly the shipyards at Rotterdam, as well as fighter sweeps later in the war (which entailed extensive strafing of the railyards and infrastructure).

Norway was also the focus of not only bombing, but Commando raids by the British. It was also the FAA of the Royal Navy's "Operation Judgement", conducted on 4 May 1945, that was the last bombing raid of the European theater.

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## pbehn (Jun 17, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> My father's family was Anglo-Italian, living in the UK at the time of WW2, so yes its from my head, nobody wants to fight kith and kin. The UK had to beware of American sensibilities and also of keeping its allies on board.


Technically (whatever that means) The residents of the UK are referred to as Anglo Saxons, so their conflict with Germany was purely a Germanic conflict. When every nation has claimed the people of the USA as their "own" then the USA has a population of between two and three billion.


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## wuzak (Jun 17, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> Irrelevant. The Dutch government was an Ally, as were the Norwegians. The French government (Vichy) was part of the Axis, and actively fought against the Allies at a state level. Technically, the Free French under de Gaulle were rebels.



Vichy France was not all of France.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 17, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> A very good post, I stil have a nitpic, though:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Resp:

There are too many sites that list incorrect data, but the 'A' variant (P-51A), although produced along side the A-36A (the production of the A-36A began a little earlier) was the only Allison engine variant to have the larger propeller. (I will continue to ck sources and update if needed).

As an example, you will see photos of a two tone upper surface camouflage with US roundels with red dot centers. These are Mustang MkI slated for the British. This was done since the US was neutral when the British made the order. British roundels were applied once they reached England (there is a color photo of both camouflaged and solid green Mustangs, which are for the British and USAAF, respectively). The dead giveaway is the USAAF did not paint insignias on both wing tops (yes, ETO P-47s often had one on each wing's undersurface.

In 1943 Africa, the British requested the use of an Allison engine Mustang due to its longer range over its Spitfire and Hurricane. At the time, only an A-36A was available, so a dive bomber was fitted with cameras (funny!). Apparently, the British used it so long, that they painted roundels on it (cannot verify this).

The first Mustang to be fitted with a Malcolm Hood was an Allison engine variant, in Sept 1943 (Gen H. Arnold viewed it on his trip to 8th AF. For some reason, the RAF would not fit Photo-Recon Mustangs with the hoods, although the USAAF put them on nearly all Mustangs except the dive bomber version (A-36A). There may be exceptions, but if done, it would be after their arrival in Northern Italy.

Note that when A-36As escorted B-26s to Italy in 1943, Gen Doolittle took notice. The Mustang was a distance maker. Who ever thought of using the A-36A as an escort fighter (likely a dive bomber pilot) should have been promoted (my personal view)! 

When the dive bomber groups began to be retro-equipped with P-40s due to combat/accident losses, the pilots drew straws to see who would keep the A-36As; the pilots liked them so much. When P-47s arrived, no one wanted to use them either, over the tried and true A-36A.

RAF and USAAF Mustangs did the 'picture taking' of Normandy prior to the and post invasion.

An advantage of Allison engined Mustangs in the CBI, is that they could get spare engines since most Groups used the P-40 or the P-38 as late as 1944. Also, even though these Mustangs were not rated to carry two 1,000 lb bombs, the 1st ACG did so with success. I believe that this was because 1,000 pounders were used by the B-25 Groups and getting special bombs (or engines over the Hump was not the way to keep up operations). The 1,000 lb bombs seemed to always be available and the Mustangs still used less runway than P-47s.

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## KiwiBiggles (Jun 17, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Vichy France was not all of France.


No, the non-Vichy part was occupied by Germany. There was no part of France which was part of the Allies.


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## pbehn (Jun 17, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> No, the non-Vichy part was occupied by Germany. There was no part of France which was part of the Allies.


In territory that is correct, but in terms of the people living there not correct.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 17, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> 
> There are too many sites that list incorrect data, but the 'A' variant (P-51A), although produced along side the A-36A (the production of the A-36A began a little earlier) was the only Allison engine variant to have the larger propeller. (I will continue to ck sources and update if needed).
> 
> ...



Source of larger diameter propeller for P-51A:
- The Encyclopedia do Aircraft of World War II, by General Editor: Paul Eden, Amber Books, 2017, page 403 under NA-99. Also, I want to say that Martyn Chorlton's book 'Allison Engined P-51 Mustangs' also mentions this point, although I cannot find the book at the moment.


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## wuzak (Jun 18, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> No, the non-Vichy part was occupied by Germany. There was no part of France which was part of the Allies.



The people of occupied France were not enemies of the Allies.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 18, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> No, the non-Vichy part was occupied by Germany. There was no part of France which was part of the Allies.


There were a large number of French Partisans that would disagree with this...

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## KiwiBiggles (Jun 18, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The people of occupied France were not enemies of the Allies.


So why did they fight against the Allies? There were non-trivial campaigns waged by Vichy in Syria, North Africa and Madagascar. Allied troops died fighting against the French. Most French didn't join the resistance until after the liberation of Paris.

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## wuzak (Jun 18, 2018)

But Vichy France was not occupied France.

Northern France was occupied by Germany, while Vichy France consisted southern France and the colonies.

After attacks on Vichy France by the Allies, Germany occupied the remainder of France itself.


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## swampyankee (Jun 18, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> So why did they fight against the Allies? There were non-trivial campaigns waged by Vichy in Syria, North Africa and Madagascar. Allied troops died fighting against the French. Most French didn't join the resistance until after the liberation of Paris.




One reason is that Vichy was still sovereign and resisted invasion of its territories, both by the Allies and by the Japanese.

Resistance movements in all the occupied countries of western Europe were very much minorities, frequently groups that had been on the political fringes pre-war, and even groups that had been actively persecuted by the pre-war governments.
The German occupiers were also vicious, with a habit of rounding up and killing large numbers of people, more or less at random, for any kind of anti-German act.


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## Kevin J (Jun 18, 2018)

wuzak said:


> But Vichy France was not occupied France.
> 
> Northern France was occupied by Germany, while Vichy France consisted southern France and the colonies.
> 
> After attacks on Vichy France by the Allies, Germany occupied the remainder of France itself.


Vichy administered all of France including the German occupied territories that faced the Atlantic.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 18, 2018)

Schweik said:


> So impatient. I told y'all I was posting from work. I'm at home now with the book in my hand. This is the book.
> 
> What you posted is a partial list. Total production of this plane was 1720 units not counting prototypes.
> 
> ...


Response:
It does sound like the Allison engine Mustang had a dismal air to air combat record, but how many really served in or as a fighter? In Africa/MTO the Mustangs used by the Americans were F-6As and A-36As, neither of them assigned (or trained?) for air-to-air interception. Their job was photo-recon and dive bombing, respectively. Russo, the sole A-36A 'ace' performed his kills . . solely thru opportunity, rather than as his mission. So, to me the lack of air-to-air engagements is no surprise to me.

ETO: The RAF dedicated their Mustang MkI, MkIA and MKIIs to Photo-recon, allowing strafing of targets of opportunity on egress. The Americans did the same with their F-6Bs flying from England, although stressed the photo collection as their sole duty. So air-to-air kills were few for these Allison Mustangs.

Burma: Colonels Cochran and Alison of the 1st Air Commando Group (supporting Gen Windgate's ground forces) should have known the air threat since both had extensive air-to-air combat experience (Alison having been trained by Gen Chenault as a Flying Tiger Ace). However, their fighter compliment was only 30 P-51As, and those P-51s (rumor has it that they only had one A-36A, but were not for dive bombing) were usually loaded with 2 1,000 lb bombs (not rated for the poundage, but carried just the same) for destroying Japanese forces opposed to Windgate's guerrilla tactics. On at least 3 separate occasions, forward airstrips were cut out of the jungle, usually taking several days to clear trees and grade a runway, enabled P-51As of the 1st ACG to fly ground strikes from. In this role, (I am just thinking out load!!) if the makeshift airfields could only handle a small number of aircraft, and if those aircraft were primarily used for destroying ground forces w bombs, maybe air-to-air cover was lacking! However, their record for assisting Gen Windgate's forces was considered very successful due to their ability to destroy Japanese ground forces; exactly what they were trying to accomplish. Once again, these fighters were not primarily employed as fighters. These P-51s were ideal for the task as they required little runway to get airborne from these makeshift runways.

However, the escort missions by other Groups/Squadrons in the CBI does reveal weaknesses either of aircraft, pilots and/or tactics and training. What did Chenault teach? Never turn with a Zero, always attack from above and use your top speed to dive away (breaking off the engagement)! Was the fighter escort too low or too close to the bombers to engage effectively? I think so, but that is only a guess.
Navalwarrior

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## Kevin J (Jun 18, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Response:
> It does sound like the Allison engine Mustang had a dismal air to air combat record, but how many really served in or as a fighter? In Africa/MTO the Mustangs used by the Americans were F-6As and A-36As, neither of them assigned (or trained?) for air-to-air interception. Their job was photo-recon and dive bombing, respectively. Russo, the sole A-36A 'ace' performed his kills . . solely thru opportunity, rather than as his mission. So, to me the lack of air-to-air engagements is no surprise to me.
> 
> ETO: The RAF dedicated their Mustang MkI, MkIA and MKIIs to Photo-recon, allowing strafing of targets of opportunity on egress. The Americans did the same with their F-6Bs flying from England, although stressed the photo collection as their sole duty. So air-to-air kills were few for these Allison Mustangs.
> ...


IIRC the Allison powered Mustang was designed as a fast long range low altitude recon fighter as opposed to an interceptor / escort / air superiority fighter. View over the nose for deflection shooting was bad, rear view was bad. the ailerons needed re-sizing etc. It took a bit of re-development to turn it into the war winning Merlin powered Mustang. I'm surprised any of the original Allison powered Mustangs shot down anything at all. In the CBI, they kept the Warhawks for the interceptor / air superiority role and used their Allison powered Mustangs for counter air ops.


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## Milosh (Jun 18, 2018)

It is a wonder any fighter shot down an e/a with the view over the nose. Razor back fighters all had bad rear view.

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## Kevin J (Jun 18, 2018)

Milosh said:


> It is a wonder any fighter shot down an e/a with the view over the nose. Razor back fighters all had bad rear view.


The Hurricane had quite a good view over the nose if you take a close view and they did of course shoot down over twice the number of aircraft than the Spitfire did in the BoB.


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## tomo pauk (Jun 18, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> ...
> Note that when A-36As escorted B-26s to Italy in 1943, Gen Doolittle took notice. The Mustang was a distance maker. Who ever thought of using the A-36A as an escort fighter (likely a dive bomber pilot) should have been promoted (my personal view)!
> ...



I could not agree more  However - Ethel notes that they escorted B-17s and -24s (presumably when those were flying at unusually low altitudes?)
I've just checked it out at Gruehagen's 'Mustang' - indeed he notes that P-51 have had a prop of 10'6'', while the one at A-36 and P-51A was 10'9''; steel vs. aluminium blades.



Kevin J said:


> IIRC the Allison powered Mustang was designed as a fast long range low altitude recon fighter as opposed to an interceptor / escort / air superiority fighter. View over the nose for deflection shooting was bad, rear view was bad. the ailerons needed re-sizing etc. It took a bit of re-development to turn it into the war winning Merlin powered Mustang. I'm surprised any of the original Allison powered Mustangs shot down anything at all. In the CBI, they kept the Warhawks for the interceptor / air superiority role and used their Allison powered Mustangs for counter air ops.



Allison powered Mustang was designed as a 'better P-40' - a general use fighter. Later variants also have had bad over-the-nose wiev (retified with the barnd new 'lightweight Mustangs'). Other aircraft also have had bad over-the-nose wiev, like Spitfire, La-5 or Corsair, they also managed to bag thousands of enemy A/C. Looks like a minor problem to me.



Kevin J said:


> The Hurricane had quite a good view over the nose if you take a close view and they did of course shoot down over twice the number of aircraft than the Spitfire did in the BoB.



Did it?

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## GrauGeist (Jun 18, 2018)

The view over the nose of the P-51 was no worse than the view over the nose of the P-40, Spitfire or YaK-9.

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## Kevin J (Jun 18, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The view over the nose of the P-51 was no worse than the view over the nose of the P-40, Spitfire or YaK-9.


it was with on the first models


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 18, 2018)

Milosh said:


> It is a wonder any fighter shot down an e/a with the view over the nose. Razor back fighters all had bad rear view.



Resp:

Mirrors were fitted, both to the outside and inside of the canopy (usually either or). Since none of the ETO Allison engined Mustangs served primarily as fighters, fitting mirrors was a low priority. Note that the first Malcolm hoods were designed for Allison engined Mustangs, although the most common photos that we see are the ones fitted to the B and C model. Gen Hap Arnold viewed a prototype, likely on a F-6B in Sept 1943 while visiting 8th AF bases. Also note that the Malcolm hood was designed by an NAA engineer assigned to England at the time, although a British company by the name of Malcolm produced it. With the hood so fitted, a pilot could actually move/turn his head more than one piloting a D or K model.

Just not sure the 'nose' issue caused any significant loses. As a 'fighter' it was surely less than ideal, but I believe Allison Mustangs deserve credit for performing their assigned duties well. There was no glory in dive bombing, at least compared to pilots who made 'Ace' status, but just ask the infantry who could then advance because A-36As hit their mark, or the Chindits who were able to subdue a superior force with fewer loses because the P-51As' bombs hit their mark. Ask the Allied troops who landed at Normandy about the accuracy of the photos taken by F-6Bs in preparation of the assault. Whoever planned the mission in 1943 that used A-36As to escort B-26 Marauders from Africa to Southern Italy and back, deserves credit in a most successful bombing attack, and who opened the eyes (and changed Doolittles's view of the need for fighter escort) of the next 8th AF Commander. So most historians aren't aware of the Allison Mustang's contributions. When one studies WWII, the CBI is the least researched/known theater. These first Mustangs get little credit.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 18, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> it was with on the first models


Might want to rethink that...

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## Milosh (Jun 18, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The Hurricane had quite a good view over the nose if you take a close view and they did of course shoot down over twice the number of aircraft than the Spitfire did in the BoB.



You will find that the Spit had a better kill/loss record than the Hurricane.


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## Milosh (Jun 18, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Note that the first Malcolm hoods were designed for Allison engined Mustangs



Nope, the first Malcolm hoods were for Spitfires which were adopted to the Mustang.

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## pbehn (Jun 18, 2018)

RAF Mustangs were used to escort RAF bombing missions to Germany, its performance and range were no surprise at all, it just had an issue at altitude.


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## Kevin J (Jun 18, 2018)

Milosh said:


> You will find that the Spit had a better kill/loss record than the Hurricane.


Only if you count all the Hurricane squadrons in the UK. If you just count those in the battle, where the fighters were equal in number, the position reverses.


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## Milosh (Jun 18, 2018)

What Hurri and Spit squadrons didn't participate in the BoB that were active during the BoB?


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## Shortround6 (Jun 18, 2018)

On the Mustang propellers.
AHT say's the XP-51 prototype had a 10 ft 6 in prop. It doesn't say what the British Mustang Is had. It does say that the early P-51s used a 10 ft 9 in prop.

The Merlin powered planes used either an 11ft 2 in Hamilton Standard or an 11 ft 1 in Aeroproducts propeller. 

One drawing shows 76.5 in from the centerline of the prop to the ground with the plane in the horizontal position ( tail up) for the B & C. That leaves you with 9.5 in of ground clearance. The shocks in the main landing legs had 8.0 in of travel. I don't know how much they were compressed (if any) with that 76.5 prop center line to ground measurement. 

There is not a whole lot of room for larger props than were used before there is a real danger of prop strikes.


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## Schweik (Jun 18, 2018)

Milosh said:


> What Hurri and Spit squadrons didn't participate in the BoB that were active during the BoB?



There as at least one Hurricane squadron in Egypt in 1940. Roald Dahl was one of the pilots and became an Ace

No 80 squadron was operating Hurricanes in Egypt by June 1940. I believe 2 Squadron SAAF may have switched to hurricanes before the end of the BoB as well but I'm not sure.

That is probably it. I don't think any hurricanes made it to the Far East until 1942

S


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 18, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Nope, the first Malcolm hoods were for Spitfires which were adopted to the Mustang.


Sorry, I wasn't clear. The first bulged sliding hoods of the Spitfire should not be confused with the 'Malcolm' hoods developed and used on early Mustangs. Generally, the term 'Malcolm hood' refers to those hoods retro fitted to Mustangs that originally had lattice framed canopies, although I have seen a similar hood fitted to razorback P-47s.


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## Greyman (Jun 18, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The view over the nose of the P-51 was no worse than the view over the nose of the P-40, Spitfire or YaK-9.



The Allison Mustangs might have had the worst 'fighting view' of any fighter in WWII. This is measured by looking at the angle from the sighting line to the obstruction line.

Here is a Typhoon to illustrate:







The air intake limited this to about 2.66 degrees in the Allison Mustang. The Tomahawk was approximately 3.0 degrees and the Spitfire just over 3.75 degrees.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 18, 2018)

pbehn said:


> RAF Mustangs were used to escort RAF bombing missions to Germany, its performance and range were no surprise at all, it just had an issue at altitude.


Resp:
It is true that the RAF used Mustangs to escort long range bombers on missions. However, this discussion was on Allison engine Mustangs. The RAF flew very few daylight bombing missions as they soon realized, or believed the losses of aircraft (bombers and crews) was too great during daytime, so they began bombing at night, where fighters were seen as unnecessary. I know of only one early mission to Germany in 1942 where the RAF used Mustang MkIs for escort, which were Wellington bombers to just inside the west border of Germany. When the first RAF Merlin engined Mustangs arrived, they were the Mustang MkIII. By the time the RAF employed these Merlin Mustangs for daylight bomber escort missions, the Americans were flying relays (where one group of fighters would provide ingress, another group to target and initial return, with a third group provide egress for the last leg home). So the RAF was essentially escorting US bombers. The new models incorporated the high altitude Merlin engine, which solved the issues of the lower altitude Allison engine


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## Kevin J (Jun 18, 2018)

Milosh said:


> What Hurri and Spit squadrons didn't participate in the BoB that were active during the BoB?


Battle of Britain - Wikipedia


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## wuzak (Jun 18, 2018)

Milosh said:


> What Hurri and Spit squadrons didn't participate in the BoB that were active during the BoB?



Those in groups other than 11 Group (main group fighting BoB) and 12 Group (they of the Big Wing thinking).

There was 10 Group (South-West England) and 13 Group (Scotland, Northern Ireland, Northern England). Among others.


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## Milosh (Jun 18, 2018)

But squadrons were rotated in and out of the Groups.

There was 71 accredited RAF squadrons that participated in the BoB.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 18, 2018)

Greyman said:


> The Allison Mustangs might have had the worst 'fighting view' of any fighter in WWII. This is measured by looking at the angle from the sighting line to the obstruction line.
> 
> Here is a Typhoon to illustrate:
> 
> ...


While that's interesting, how would the degree of view be effected when the pilot ajdusts his seat?


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## Greyman (Jun 18, 2018)

I imagine you could help it a bit, but then the sight graticule would be out of view. The eye freedom on most sights was under 2 inches.


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## drgondog (Jun 19, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Sorry, I wasn't clear. The first bulged sliding hoods of the Spitfire should not be confused with the 'Malcolm' hoods developed and used on early Mustangs. Generally, the term 'Malcolm hood' refers to those hoods retro fitted to Mustangs that originally had lattice framed canopies, although I have seen a similar hood fitted to razorback P-47s.


NAA designed a sliding hood that was tested on a Mustang IA and deemed noisy but acceptable. The report was written December 1942.

BPC/RAF requested that future deliveries of Mustangs (III) be delivered with a NAA equivalent to Malcolm Hood - which was at same time that both the XP-51F contract was in progress as well as the bubble canopy MCR was issued for the NA-102 Spec for P-51B-1-NA (March 1943). During this same time the NA-106 was in progress, which originally began as a six gun wing/bird cage canopy version of the P-51B-5 for mid block release.

NAA also dabbled with a sliding hood which was tested in wind tunnel July/August 1942 - similar to Japanese A6M. Windshield and aft enclosed section fixed, with center section sliding to the rear.

Summary, there were no Malcolm Hoods on any RAF Mustang until late November 1943 when the first of the P-51B-5-NA's were delivered to RAF and two were sent to R.Malcolm. Those two were re-assigned along with several more to 9th AF in December 1943 as 357 FG was ramping up with new Mustangs from States,

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## Smokey Stover (Jun 19, 2018)

Glider said:


> Zero It had a reputation of being unbeatable but it never was and in the early days when it gained the reputation, it often fought second string fighters, not the latest. Hurricanes and P39's in particular.



RAF pilot Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown evaluated a Zero at the A&AEE and said later of the aircraft “the Zero had ruled the roost totally and was the finest fighter in the world until mid-1943”. It is a compelling irony that this invader from the land of the Rising Sun led to the twilight of the British Empire.

The illustration depicts the Mitsubishi A6M Model 22 (Although unlikely, most probably mistaken identity, as the A6M2 type 0 to 11 is more likely) ‘White 13’ of Feldwebel Heinz Bar 1./JG 51, September 1940. By this time Bar had scored 12 victories. His final total was 220 confirmed kills in over 1000 combat sorties.


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## Milosh (Jun 19, 2018)

Must be a time machine in use as the Model 22 afaik wasn't in service til Dec '42.

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## Smokey Stover (Jun 19, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Must be a time machine in use as the Model 22 afaik wasn't in service til Dec '42.



Agreed, i didnt notice that. But you are right. I think it should be the A6M2 type 0-11. But don't quote me on that. Japanese aircraft and model types aren't my speciality....


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 19, 2018)

drgondog said:


> NAA designed a sliding hood that was tested on a Mustang IA and deemed noisy but acceptable. The report was written December 1942.
> 
> BPC/RAF requested that future deliveries of Mustangs (III) be delivered with a NAA equivalent to Malcolm Hood - which was at same time that both the XP-51F contract was in progress as well as the bubble canopy MCR was issued for the NA-102 Spec for P-51B-1-NA (March 1943). During this same time the NA-106 was in progress, which originally began as a six gun wing/bird cage canopy version of the P-51B-5 for mid block release.
> 
> ...


Resp:
The RAF refused the 'sliding hoods' on all Mustangs slated for Photo-Recon duties. And yes, most Mustang MkIIIs were retro-fitted with the 'Malcolm's hood. However, several units flying the MkIII based outside of England retained the 'lattice' canopies. It appears that the units closest to England received the sliding hoods. The USAAF outfitted its England based F-6B with these hoods, while units in/from the MTO retained the lattice framed canopies. The Tuskegee unit came up through the Italian campaign, so their P-51Cs were not retro fitted with Malcolm hoods. I have seen no documentation of A-36As so fitted.

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## Smokey Stover (Jun 19, 2018)

Some RAF Mustangs were also fitted with x4 20mm hispano cannon in replace of the x6 .50 cals. The same gun configuration was also used on the RAF F4U corsairs. Mustang la/lla i believe were the only marks fitted with the twin canon arrangement, as it became impractical to change guns so later marks were excepted with the standard x6 ..50 cals. Although i have seen contradictions to this information. So im open to be corrected.

British ordered 150 aircraft, NA-91/P-51, 41-37320-37469, FD418-FD567.

93 aircraft where shipped to England as Mustang IA
FD438/41-37340 - FD449/41-37351
FD465/41-37367
FD470/41-37372-FD509/41-37411
FD528/41-37430-FD567/41-37469

55 retained by USAAC for photo recon variant P-51-1NA, later F-6A.

2 aircraft retained for Merlin modification (NA-101, XP-51B).
FD450/41-37352 & FD519/41-37421
Data source: My own research/+ RAF gound mechanic operators manual for Mustang l/ll/lll/lV


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 19, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Some RAF Mustangs were also fitted with x4 20mm hispano cannon in replace of the x6 .50 cals. The same gun configuration was also used on the RAF F4U corsairs. Mustang la/lla i believe were the only marks fitted with the twin canon arrangement, as it became impractical to change guns so later marks were excepted with the standard x6 ..50 cals. Although i have seen contradictions to this information. So im open to be corrected.
> 
> British ordered 150 aircraft, NA-91/P-51, 41-37320-37469, FD418-FD567.
> 
> ...



Resp:
The combination of 303 and a single 50 cal in each wing of the Mustang MkI was deemed too light for attacking vehicles, etc. When the US Govt submitted/paid for a second order for the British, the RAF requested one change; 20mm cannons, two in each wing (4 cannons). These RAF Mustangs became MkIA. When the US held back the undelivered MkIAs after the attack on Pearl Harbor, these Mustangs became P-51-1 (and -2) which kept the 20mm guns. Almost all of these P-51-1 and -2 were redisginated F-6A, as cameras were fitted for their new role as Photo-Recon aircraft.

When the USAAF placed orders for the A-36A dive bomber, the 4 20mm guns were exchanged for 6 50 cal MG. The two nose guns (50 cal MG) were deleted on the USAAF's first fighter Allison Mustang, which were designated as P-51A. So only wing 50 cal MG, two in each wing, remained. The US govt gave 50 P-51As to the British to replace the MkIAs held back after Pearl Harbor. These 50 were designated Mustang MII, which retained the 4 50 cal MG (no cannons). Sorry. Cannons were not considered better, as they fired much slower than 50 cal MG (from post WWII analysis).
Navalwarrior


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 19, 2018)

A Trivia Question: Inre to Allison engine Mustangs
I have seen photos of P-51As and F-6Bs showing a 'small window panel' on the L side of the forward window plate of the forward windscreen. This panel looks like it could be opened from the inside, without opening the main lattice canopy.

Did other variants of the Allison engine Mustang ever use these/outfitted?


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## drgondog (Jun 19, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> The RAF refused the 'sliding hoods' on all Mustangs slated for Photo-Recon duties. And yes, most Mustang MkIIIs were retro-fitted with the 'Malcolm's hood. However, several units flying the MkIII based outside of England retained the 'lattice' canopies. It appears that the units closest to England received the sliding hoods. The USAAF outfitted its England based F-6B with these hoods, while units in/from the MTO retained the lattice framed canopies. The Tuskegee unit came up through the Italian campaign, so their P-51Cs were not retro fitted with Malcolm hoods. I have seen no documentation of A-36As so fitted.


The only sliding hood the RAF were offered by NAA were the bubble canopy P-51D/Mark IV derivatives. 1944. The RAF preferred the Malcolm Hoods but R.Malcolm could not meet the combined demand for P-51B/C & F-6C for 8th/9th AF so they were never an option for 15th. That said, some P-51B/C remained behind in Italy during the Shuttle missions and soldiered on in the MTO. As a result many Mk I/IA and some Mark III retained birdcage canopy for the above reasons. 

I haven't seen either a P-51-1/-2 NA (F-6A) or a F-6B (P-51-3 NA) w/ Malcolm but it was not different significantly to fit a R.Malcolm Hood on ay Mustang if the squadron could acquire one.

As an example the 67th Recon Group in ETO were equipped with mixed bag of P-51-3 NA (F-6B) and P-51B/C converted to Photo version. I have seen pics of Malcolm Hood on the B/C but not the A, but there is no reason other than shortage of supply that the P-51A-3 could not have been so modified.



Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> The combination of 303 and a single 50 cal in each wing of the Mustang MkI was deemed too light for attacking vehicles, etc. When the US Govt submitted/paid for a second order for the British, the RAF requested one change; 20mm cannons, two in each wing (4 cannons). These RAF Mustangs became MkIA. When the US held back the undelivered MkIAs after the attack on Pearl Harbor, these Mustangs became P-51-1 (and -2) which kept the 20mm guns. Almost all of these P-51-1 and -2 were redisginated F-6A, as cameras were fitted for their new role as Photo-Recon aircraft.
> 
> *Not quite right. The Mark I also had two cheek 50 caliber in addition to the wing armament and was more heavily armed than the A-36, P-51A, P-51B and P-51C. The Mark IA reverted to one of NAA early proposals on the P-509 (the -2) which was forerunner of NA73, which replaced the 4x30 2x 50 wing and 2x 50 cowl guns with 4x20mm Hispano II. That same armament was proposed by NAA for the "Ground Attack Airplane" but AAF changed to 4x50 caliber for the NA-97 A-36. NAA was also requested by RAAF to provide 2x50 cal 2x20mm for the NA-107 which later became NA 110 for Australia but replaced the combined 50 cal/20mm wing battery with six 50's.*
> ...



The prototype A-36 was not the NA-91 (P-51-1/-2 Mark IA. It was a NA 83 Mark I and carried that armament, including cowl guns during the production cycle for the first P-51-1 NA irst delivered in June 1942 timeframe. AM 118 first flew a month before the first P-51-1 NA was delivered. The first production Allison engined Mustang fighter accepted by AAF (other than XP-51 from Mustang I delivery) was the P-51-1, not the A-36, not the P-51A.

Late 1941 through fall 1942 is a very complex and muddled history.

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## eagledad (Jun 19, 2018)

Drgondog and all.

As suspected, Malcolm hoods were used on Allison powered P-51's.

From Jeff Ethell's book Mustang A Documentary History ,page 41

Picture credited to T.R. Bennett

Eagledad

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## Smokey Stover (Jun 19, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> The combination of 303 and a single 50 cal in each wing of the Mustang MkI was deemed too light for attacking vehicles, etc. When the US Govt submitted/paid for a second order for the British, the RAF requested one change; 20mm cannons, two in each wing (4 cannons). These RAF Mustangs became MkIA. When the US held back the undelivered MkIAs after the attack on Pearl Harbor, these Mustangs became P-51-1 (and -2) which kept the 20mm guns. Almost all of these P-51-1 and -2 were redisginated F-6A, as cameras were fitted for their new role as Photo-Recon aircraft.
> 
> When the USAAF placed orders for the A-36A dive bomber, the 4 20mm guns were exchanged for 6 50 cal MG. The two nose guns (50 cal MG) were deleted on the USAAF's first fighter Allison Mustang, which were designated as P-51A. So only wing 50 cal MG, two in each wing, remained. The US govt gave 50 P-51As to the British to replace the MkIAs held back after Pearl Harbor. These 50 were designated Mustang MII, which retained the 4 50 cal MG (no cannons). Sorry. Cannons were not considered better, as they fired much slower than 50 cal MG (from post WWII analysis).
> Navalwarrior



With respect i disagree with the post war analyst on the effectiveness of the 50 cal compared to canons. If their findings only argument is that the 50 was more effective than canon because it had a faster rate of fire is well, quite frankly no argument at all. Thats like saying building a new roof on your house using a hammer is not as effective as using a nail gun just because its faster. My first question is how does one account for the fact most pilot aces axis and allied flew aircraft equipped with a wide variety of canon, with some ie: the Bf 109 & Me 262 were fitted with 30mm canon. The Fw 190, A6M zero and Hawker Typhoon/Tempest and Spitfire to name just a few. The only all MG aircraft using the 50 cal were mostly American machines. And if analysts found the 50/MG's to be better, why has every aircraft post ww2 been fitted with canon and not MG's. I dont buy it. It just doesnt make sense. If there are stats that prove me wrong i'd like to see them.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 19, 2018)

A US AN/M2 .50 MG had a RoF of 750 to 850 rpm. It produced between 10,000 and 15,000 ft/lb of energy and the bullet typically weight about 700gr (ranged from 647gr to 800gr depending on type).

A battery of four to six .50 MGs firing short bursts was enough to shred aircraft skin, damage engine components, penerate moderate armor and tear a pilot apart.

The Luftwaffe went to a caliber close a fifty: the MG131 which was 13mm. It had a RoF of 900 rpm.
So did the Imperial Japanese Navy with their Type 3 13.2x96mm which had a RoF of 800 rpm.

The .303/7mm caliber may have been good for an infantry round, but the .50 carries considerable energy and does a great deal of damage. Cannons are effective, both in 20mm and 30mm but they are not light weapons. Also, the larger the caliber, the heavier the ammo and less space to store it.

The AN/M2 weighed 64 pounds, the Hispano Mk.V weighed 92 pounds.
The German's MG151/20 (20mm) weighed 92 pounds, their Mk108 (30mm) weighed 128 pounds and the Mk103 (30mm) weighed 311 pounds.

So while cannons may offer a better punch, the .50 offered longer firing duration and a reduced weight penalty (or equivelant weight but more ammunition stores) while delivering serious hurt to anything downrange.


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## Milosh (Jun 19, 2018)

The WWII Fighter Gun Debate: Gun Tables

Gun Tables


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## BiffF15 (Jun 19, 2018)

Gents,

Just an observation regards the 50 vs cannon discussion. 

I understand that the Brits upped the ante to cannons due to shooting down bombers. Same for the Germans and Japanese.

Could it be that the US built fighters were protecting bombers and everyone else was trying to shoot them down? Please don’t interpret this as a US arrogance thing but as a reality of the situation.

Fifties were more than good enough for a fighter vs fighter combat, while the cannon really helped with the heavies problem.

On a different note I would think a larger amount of .50 ammo (more trigger time) would have an advantage over cannons and their lower round count / less trigger time for the average WW2 fighter pilot and the training they had / available aiming tools.

Food for thought.

Cheers,
Biff

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## Milosh (Jun 19, 2018)

Why were some F6Fs and F4Us equipped with 20 mm cannon?


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## BiffF15 (Jun 19, 2018)

And the P38...


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## Milosh (Jun 19, 2018)

The P-38 had a 20mm from the beginning as was to be an _interceptor_.

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## wuzak (Jun 19, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Gents,
> 
> Just an observation regards the 50 vs cannon discussion.
> 
> ...



The USAAC/F's preferred cannon for shooting down bombers was the 37mm M4.

It was used in the P-39. It was supposed to be used in the P-38.

The XP-54 was to have 2 of them (plus 2 or 4 0.50" mgs). The YFM-1 had 2 of them.

The XP-67 design was a long range bomber destroyer, sort of an insurance in case the UK fell. It was to have 6 of the 37mm M4 cannon!

Aircraft such as the P-40 and the P-51 were more general role type fighters, compared to the P-38 (and P-39) which was designed as an interceptor (to destroy bombers).

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## wuzak (Jun 19, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Why were some F6Fs and F4Us equipped with 20 mm cannon?



The Navy had different ideas to the USAAF.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 19, 2018)

The U.S. was exlporing with the idea of 20, 23 and 37mm cannons at the time that they were still entrenched in the .30/.50 MG outfitting, too.

Even the P-36 was trialed with a pair of 23mm Madsen cannon.

It does seem that the early thought process was cannon for bomber interceptors and MGs for fighters.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 20, 2018)

A lot of it was timing.

The US .50 cal was better than poke in the eye with a sharp stick in the 1930s (sarcasm) but a lot happened very quickly in 1940-41.
I had previously thought that the improvement in ammunition came in the mid to late 30s but it seems it was very, very late 30s or 1940/41 when the big change came from 2500fps to 2880fps. There may not have been any incendiary ammunition in the 1930s either. It was late 1940 or early 1941 when the cycle rate was changed from 600rpm (at best and unsynchronized ) to the 800rpm of the mid to late war guns (only few thousand of the even higher rate guns showed up in very late 1944/45).

This makes the British decision to pass on the .50 cal Browning much more understandable during the 30s. The gun was almost 3 times heavier than a .303, fired at 1/2 the rate of fire, the ammo was 5 times heavier per round. And it didn't explode or set things on fire. 

By Dec of 1941 the Americans were in much better shape. Each round had picked up around 25% in striking energy, the gun fired 33% faster and there were some sort of incendiary bullets (copied from the British?). Even if wing mounted guns tended to jam at an alarming rate if the plane was pulling much in the way of "G"s.
This got better as the war went along but still presented problems in some aircraft even it 1943. US also switched to the M8 API round instead of mixed belts with only portion of the ammo being incendiary. However each M8 API round only carried a small amount of incendiary material but since over 90% of the ammo in the belt was The M8 there was a fair (but not large) amount of incendiary material being fired every second.
Most of us know the sad (near criminal) story of the American 20mm guns. What the Navy wanted and what they (and a few Army fighters) got was not it. 
I would note that a fair number of the P-70 night fighters, the P-61, and a number of the Navy single engine night fighters got the 20mm guns so there is certainly something to the idea of 20mm being intended for anti-bomber duty. There is also the idea that night fighters only get ONE firing pass at a target (they often had trouble finding the same aircraft again in the early part of the war) and they had to inflict the most amount of damage in a short period of time. 

As far as firing time goes. The Rifle Caliber Machine Gun ammo went around 24 grams per cartridge (give or take) while the German 13mm went 72-76 and the American .50 went about 112 grams depending on bullet. The 20mm Hispano (the heaviest common 20mm used during the war in aircraft)went about 257 grams per round. The Hispano fired at about 600rpm so 120 rounds was good for 12 seconds. US Navy fighters with 20mm guns carried 200round or more per gun for 20 seconds or more of firing time. 

The US battery of 4-6 .50s worked but it was heavy. Especially if the ammo load was near or above 400 rounds per gun(120lbs of ammo per gun) . 

Please note the 20mm Hispano had over 3 times the striking energy and often carried 9-10 times the explosive or incendiary material. It did weigh roughly double what the.50 cal gun weighed (weights for the Hispano often do not include either the drum or the belt feed mechanism).

A few US fighters, in an attempt to lighten them up, gave up a lot of trigger time. Some P-40s only carried 200-201 rounds per gun and just four guns(for four guns that is still 240lbs of ammo).

For the US .50 cal a lot depended on what year, and what plane (with what engine)was carrying it. Those P & W R-2800s could lug around a lot of guns and a LOT of ammo.

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## drgondog (Jun 20, 2018)

Interesting to note that the 50 cal vs 20mm debate reared its ugly head with frustrated F-86 pilots reporting stitching a MiG 15 at high altitude - with usually reliable API - to no apparent effect until the MiG dropped below 35K, then often caught fire. GUNVAL was instituted with 10 F-86E/F's configured by NAA with 20mm cannon and deemed a success. There were issues such as compressor stalls encountered but solvable, and Thereafter all the Century series stipulated 20mm cannon, beginning with F-100.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 20, 2018)

I would note that behind the scenes the US ordnance dept did not see the .50 cal as the be-all, end-all of aircraft armament. 
There were multiple programs and projects to develop faster firing .50 cal gus which took several years to bear fruit, at least at the standard of reliability the US wanted.
There were also programs and projects for high velocity .50 cal ammo (including necked down 20mm cannon cases) and hybrid .60 cal project/s. These all required a larger receiver than the .50 cal Browning. The fat .60 caliber case was the parent of the 20 x 102mm round used in the Vulcan gun (and the M39 revolver gun, the prototypes that were trialed in Korea as Drgondog states) . 

From Anthony Williams website CALIBRE GROUPS





The 2nd group of cartridges from the 15.2x114 to the 16x99RB were American experimental rounds of the WW II era. Standard .50 is all the way on the left (12.7x99). 
The US was interested in high velocity guns in order to simplify air to air shooting, much less lead being needed for deflection shooting. 
Unfortunately with the propellants of the time barrel life was extremely short. The standard .50 was hard enough on barrels. Once again _timing _is important as later guns got either chrome lined barrels or stellite inserts (or both?) to combat barrel wear. 
The High velocity machine guns also tended to be as heavy as 20mm cannon (not surprising as many of the prototypes were rebarreled 20mm cannon.) and the actual increase in effectiveness was debatable. 

The US was also trying to introduce what would become the M23 incendiary round, which was a very thin walled incendiary bullet with a large amount of incendiary material that also had high velocity due to it's light weight ( incendiary material being much lighter than steel). 
Drgondogs father and friends apparently had some tales to tell about this round when it was being combat tested in Europe near the end of the war.
It was plagued with premature ignition (lighting up in the gun barrels or right in front) all too often and post war it went in and out of production several times and the manufacturing plant changed several times in attempts to solve the problem. Apparently it reached an acceptable state of reliability (or standards were relaxed?) for wide spread use during the Korean war. 
The USAAF was NOT trying to fight in Korea with WW II guns and ammo even if they did stay with .50 cal too long. 
I would note that the Navy was also not fighting in Korea with WW II 20mm cannon. They were using improved (faster firing) guns and working on more powerful guns/ammo.

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## P-39 Expert (Jun 20, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Interesting to note that the 50 cal vs 20mm debate reared its ugly head with frustrated F-86 pilots reporting stitching a MiG 15 at high altitude - with usually reliable API - to no apparent effect until the MiG dropped below 35K, then often caught fire. GUNVAL was instituted with 10 F-86E/F's configured by NAA with 20mm cannon and deemed a success. There were issues such as compressor stalls encountered but solvable, and Thereafter all the Century series stipulated 20mm cannon, beginning with F-100.


What was the significance of the altitude 35K'?


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## Peter Gunn (Jun 20, 2018)

P-39 Expert said:


> What was the significance of the altitude 35K'?



Not enough oxygen for the incendiary round to ignite a fire.

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## P-39 Expert (Jun 20, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Not enough oxygen for the incendiary round to ignite a fire.


Thanks.

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## Clayton Magnet (Jun 20, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Sorry. Cannons were not considered better, as they fired much slower than 50 cal MG (from post WWII analysis).


What post war analysis determined that cannons were not better than .50 caliber machine guns? Even for fighter vs fighter combat, explosive firing cannons are/were demonstrably more effective than machine gun armament.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 20, 2018)

one shot, Glacier girl's cannon

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## Peter Gunn (Jun 21, 2018)

Now what did that barrel do to deserve that?

Yeah, that's a pretty good punch.


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## P-39 Expert (Jun 21, 2018)

Wow. That barrel is made from pretty thick steel.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 22, 2018)

P-39 Expert said:


> What was the significance of the altitude 35K'?





Milosh said:


> Nope, the first Malcolm hoods were for Spitfires which were adopted to the Mustang.





drgondog said:


> NAA designed a sliding hood that was tested on a Mustang IA and deemed noisy but acceptable. The report was written December 1942.
> 
> BPC/RAF requested that future deliveries of Mustangs (III) be delivered with a NAA equivalent to Malcolm Hood - which was at same time that both the XP-51F contract was in progress as well as the bubble canopy MCR was issued for the NA-102 Spec for P-51B-1-NA (March 1943). During this same time the NA-106 was in progress, which originally began as a six gun wing/bird cage canopy version of the P-51B-5 for mid block release.
> 
> ...


Resp:
There is a b/w photo of an Allison engined Mustang, with unit commander LTC George Peck, and boxer Joe Lewis on either side of wing (although there is no notation that it is Lewis), viewing the cockpit. The Malcolm hood is in opened position. The photo caption gives the Mustang notation as an F-6A, attached to the 67th Photo Recon unit. However, I believe the small panel on the left forward windscreen makes it a later F-6B (redesignated fr the P-51A series). I am unaware that any F-6A Mustangs went to England (the 20mm wing guns are a dead giveaway). Again, it seems that the Mustangs closest to England received the Malcolm hoods. However, RAF Mustangs assigned to Photo Recon refused the Malcolm hoods, likely due to the belief that they hindered visibility for such duty. Also, does anyone have a photo of an Allison engined Mustang with rear view mirrors? 
Navalwarrior


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 22, 2018)

Clayton Magnet said:


> What post war analysis determined that cannons were not better than .50 caliber machine guns? Even for fighter vs fighter combat, explosive firing cannons are/were demonstrably more effective than machine gun armament.[/QUOTE
> Resp:
> I read it last year in one of the popular aviation mags covering WWII fighters. I do not expect agreement (is there any on this blog?) even with official source approval. What the article said (my brief analysis) was that various size/caliber guns, along with their arrangement gave/got the best results in (a moving/rolling) dogfight . . . were four 50 cal MG, two in each wing. Smaller than 50 cal were too weak for most shots at any distance, and cannons carried too few rounds and fired too slow. It did not say .303s or 20mm were ineffective; just that 50s had range, did enough damage and carried more rounds than cannons. When jets replaced props, the move to cannons became more important, as with NAA's F-86 could make hits further out against an escaping M-15.
> Navalwarrior


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## GrauGeist (Jun 22, 2018)

The F-6A saw recon service with the 107th OS/TRS. They were stationed in England from late '42 onward, not sure when they started using their F-6As, but they did see extensive recon missions before, during and after D-Day in and around Normandy.


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## tomo pauk (Jun 22, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> I read it last year in one of the popular aviation mags covering WWII fighters. I do not expect agreement (is there any on this blog?) even with official source approval. What the article said (my brief analysis) was that various size/caliber guns, along with their arrangement gave/got the best results in (a moving/rolling) dogfight . . . were four 50 cal MG, two in each wing. Smaller than 50 cal were too weak for most shots at any distance, and cannons carried too few rounds and fired too slow. It did not say .303s or 20mm were ineffective; just that 50s had range, did enough damage and carried more rounds than cannons. When jets replaced props, the move to cannons became more important, as with NAA's F-86 could make hits further out against an escaping M-15.
> Navalwarrior



20mm cannons fired pretty fast - 520 to 800 rpm, from early ww2 to mid war (what is early war for the US, it is mid-war for Germany, UK, or late-war for Japan). I don't understand why 4 .50s would've been better than 5 .50s, let alone 8 of those - amout of flag waving in that article can be felt acros the pond. Or, that 4x.50s will out-power 4xMG-151 that Fw 190s carried often. US Navy is said to equate 1 Hispano II cannon to 3 .50 BMGs, and made effort to have the cannons installed in their fighters. The Hispano V, that was making 750-800 rpm will do even better.
Fighters often carried 140-200 rounds per cannon from 1941 on - I guess if that is not enough to make a kill or two than what is enough?

edit - there is plenty of threads in the forum debating relative merits of armament set-ups


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 22, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The F-6A saw recon service with the 107th OS/TRS. They were stationed in England from late '42 onward, not sure when they started using their F-6As, but they did see extensive recon missions before, during and after D-Day in and around Normandy.


Resp:
Thanks GrauGeist. This may explain the misidentification of an F-6B with the 67th Photo Recon unit. Apparently, the 67th had both types. The F-6B were drop tank capable, while the F-6A were not.
Navalwarrior

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 22, 2018)

I think the problem with that assessment is what type of targets were they using in this comparison.

I think you will see that the larger cannons like the 20 mm were chosen by the Germans because what was their main target? Large four engine bombers...

What was the P-51’s main target? A single engine fighter. A .50 cal is perfectly fine for that...

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## Dan Fahey (Jun 22, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Source of larger diameter propeller for P-51A:
> - The Encyclopedia do Aircraft of World War II, by General Editor: Paul Eden, Amber Books, 2017, page 403 under NA-99. Also, I want to say that Martyn Chorlton's book 'Allison Engined P-51 Mustangs' also mentions this point, although I cannot find the book at the moment.



Concur, all the books I read indicate the P 51 A got the Larger 3 Blade Prop


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## Peter Gunn (Jun 22, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I think the problem with that assessment is what type of targets were they using in this comparison.
> 
> I think you will see that the larger cannkns like the 20 mm were chosen by the Germans because what was their main target? Large four engine bombers...
> 
> What was the P-51’s main target? A single engine fighter. A .50 cal is perfectly fine for that...



I totally agree with this assessment, it's pretty much in line with my thoughts.

Only thing is, try as I might, and maybe my Google-Fu is lacking, but I'm still not sure what "cannkns" are...

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## Clayton Magnet (Jun 22, 2018)

Almost certainly an American magazine, and probably involving Barrett Tillman in some capacity. A new thread could be created, "Most Overrated Aircraft Armament". My nomination would be an all .50 caliber machine gun arrangement. At least against anything other than early-mid war Japanese fighters.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 22, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> ...Only thing is, try as I might, and maybe my Google-Fu is lacking, but I'm still not sure what "cannkns" are...


They's all kin to the cannon clan - old'uns, young'uns, we'uns and yer'uns! 

In regards to the .50 MG detractors, it's fairly obvious that the AN/M2 made it's presence felt across all theaters against Axis types.

In reading pilot biographies (Axis and Allied) over the years as well as viewing guncam footage, very few Axis targets managed to get away intact after receiving one or more vollies from the .50 MGS (regardless of the combination).

I'm not sure why there is such a push to downplay the fifty's contribution to the war effort and I certainly don't see how supporting the .50's historical performance is "flag waving" when other nations used that caliber as well.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 22, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> I totally agree with this assessment, it's pretty much in line with my thoughts.
> 
> Only thing is, try as I might, and maybe my Google-Fu is lacking, but I'm still not sure what "cannkns" are...



Fat fingering my iPhone...lol

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## Clayton Magnet (Jun 22, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> I'm not sure why there is such a push to downplay the fifty's contribution to the war effort and I certainly don't see how supporting the .50's historical performance is "flag waving" when other nations used that caliber as well.


Claiming that an all .50 armament is superior to all else, with the dubious claim that a post war evaluation proved it, seems like "flag waving" to me. We have all seen the American gun camera footage, of the A6M bursting into flames or the 190 shedding a wing, but I assume those are specifically hand picked shots, for the western post war public. I may be wrong, as it happens more than I would like. But I also assume that footage of a P-51 folding up under fire from a 190 would be less palatable to the same public, and less readily shown.

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## Tieleader (Jun 22, 2018)

I don't get all hate for the .50 cal. If it was such a piece of crap it still wouldn't be in use by the US military today. Just sayin'...

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## Clayton Magnet (Jun 22, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> I don't get all hate for the .50 cal. If it was such a piece of crap it still wouldn't be in use by the US military today. Just sayin'...


Not as a primary fighter armament.

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## Kevin J (Jun 22, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> I don't get all hate for the .50 cal. If it was such a piece of crap it still wouldn't be in use by the US military today. Just sayin'...


Post war, the F-86D used 20 mm cannons as it was a bomber interceptor. The .5 in was more than adequate against single and twin engine Luftwaffe fighters and Jap planes but you needed something bigger for intercepting bombers which is why the RAF used 20 mm cannon in WW2.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 22, 2018)

Clayton Magnet said:


> Claiming that an all .50 armament is superior to all else, with the dubious claim that a post war evaluation proved it, seems like "flag waving" to me. We have all seen the American gun camera footage, of the A6M bursting into flames or the 190 shedding a wing, but I assume those are specifically hand picked shots, for the western post war public. I may be wrong, as it happens more than I would like. But I also assume that footage of a P-51 folding up under fire from a 190 would be less palatable to the same public, and less readily shown.


There's a great deal of unedited, original guncam footage from both Allied and Axis sources that are readily available. 
Plenty of Allied footage showing the devestating effects the fifties had on all types of Luftwaffe aircraft: Bf109, Fw190, Me262, various transports, bombers and even a Me163.

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## Shortround6 (Jun 22, 2018)

Unfortunately the reference to this "study" is so vague as to be almost worthless. 

While the "study" is supposed to be done post war are they evaluating actual WW II performance of guns and Ammo ( four 800rpm guns with M8 API ammo?) and please note that the US four .50 cal gun fighters were pretty much the FM-2 Wildcat, the P-51B & C (some Ds) a few hundred stripper P-40s and the P-38 if the 20mm gun jammed. 
Since something like 8000 fast firing .50s (1200rpm) had been delivered before the war ended ( but combat use was ????) the reference to fast firing .50 to slow firing 20mm cannon might make sense, even if not quite correct/fair. 
For war time guns see the Glacier girl gun video. You can get roughly two .50s for one 20mm cannon ( for about the same weight) and get 26 rounds per second vers 10 of those exploding shells per second. As far as ammo goes, without links you get about 230 rounds of .50 cal ammo for every 100 rounds of 20mm ammo.
Now split the 230 rounds between two guns and _surprise! _the actual amount of trigger time isn't that different (10 seconds per hundred for the 20mm and 8.8 seconds for the pair of 50 cal guns. 
SO are 26 .50 cal round per second equal to 10 of those 20mm rounds? 

Post war and Korea get real messy as the Navy was using faster firing 20mm cannon. The Air Force was using the fast .50s and different ammo.

I would also note that bringing in the F-86D is a complete off the track distraction. US F-86Ds carried no guns instead they used a retractable rocket pack of 24 mighty mouse rockets. Some were later rebuilt using a quartet of M24 cannon (750rpm and lighter projectiles/higher mV but that wasn't until the mid 50s or after. )

The American .50 cal got the job done, it would be foolish to say it didn't. But it was heavy for the amount of power it had and the long trigger times only came at the cost of a lot of weight tied up in ammunition. For instance the guns and ammo in a MK IX Spit (four .303s) went just about 650lbs. The guns and ammo in a P-40N stripped went just about 550lbs and the firing times were 12 seconds for the SPit's cannon and and about 15.5 seconds for the P-40.
you want the high trigger time of a four gun FM-2? With full ammo boxes the guns and ammo went about 800lbs. Yes you had just over 30 seconds of firing time but????


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 22, 2018)

drgondog said:


> The only sliding hood the RAF were offered by NAA were the bubble canopy P-51D/Mark IV derivatives. 1944. The RAF preferred the Malcolm Hoods but R.Malcolm could not meet the combined demand for P-51B/C & F-6C for 8th/9th AF so they were never an option for 15th. That said, some P-51B/C remained behind in Italy during the Shuttle missions and soldiered on in the MTO. As a result many Mk I/IA and some Mark III retained birdcage canopy for the above reasons.
> 
> I haven't seen either a P-51-1/-2 NA (F-6A) or a F-6B (P-51-3 NA) w/ Malcolm but it was not different significantly to fit a R.Malcolm Hood on ay Mustang if the squadron could acquire one.
> 
> ...


Resp:
I am not sure where you are getting the designation: P-51A-3. Normally, the first production model aircraft for the USAAF would be given the letter 'A.' As in P-51A, but the USAAF dubbed the British Mustang MkIA held back after Pearl Harbor for their own use as P-51-1 (later blocks of this same aircraft were given the designation of -2, [or P-51-2] & possibly -3, although I have never seen it in print or stenciled on Mustangs). When the USAAF failed to follow established procedure, we got/get a confused sequence of the models built with the Allison engine. You are correct in that the first Mustang accepted for service was the MkIA, redesignated as P-51-1. Note that when they converted most of these P-51s to the Photo Recon mission, the USAAF designated them correctly as F-6A (the A meaning the 1st model of the photo version). To add to the confusion, the stenciling of these camera equipped F-6As were left as P-51-1 (-2, possibly -3 and so forth; wiring, or some change maintenance would be 'flagged' by the different tacked number).
However, the 1st USAAF's 'order' for a fighter version . . . was the P-51A; the last Allison Mustang variant, which was produced side-by-side the A-36A (however, actual production of the P-51A did not begin until well after the dive bomber A-36A was underway). I hope this helps with solving some of the confusion. 
What most followers of this Allison engined Mustang (aka: Invader/Apache) fail to realize is that the P-51A (last of the variants) was given significantly improved performance over the earlier variants.
Navalwarrior


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## drgondog (Jun 22, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> There is a b/w photo of an Allison engined Mustang, with unit commander LTC George Peck, and boxer Joe Lewis on either side of wing (although there is no notation that it is Lewis), viewing the cockpit. The Malcolm hood is in opened position. The photo caption gives the Mustang notation as an F-6A, attached to the 67th Photo Recon unit. However, I believe the small panel on the left forward windscreen makes it a later F-6B (redesignated fr the P-51A series). I am unaware that any F-6A Mustangs went to England (the 20mm wing guns are a dead giveaway). Again, it seems that the Mustangs closest to England received the Malcolm hoods. However, RAF Mustangs assigned to Photo Recon refused the Malcolm hoods, likely due to the belief that they hindered visibility for such duty. Also, does anyone have a photo of an Allison engined Mustang with rear view mirrors?
> Navalwarrior


Somewhere I mentioned the 67th Recon as having P-51A/F-6B plus P-51B/C/F-6C having Malcolm Hoods in ETO. Ditto 10th PRG but IIRC the 10th had only a few F-6B before F-6C from start of combat ops in Feb 1944. I believe you are correct that no F-6A made it to ETO. All the operational ones I recall were in MTO, which deployed with 68th TRG as first Mustangs deployed to US combat ops in Africa. No Malcolm Hoods installed in MTO or CBI or SWP.

I have seen pics of Mustang I with field installed single Spitfire mirror. Larry Davis - North American P-51 Mustang -A photo Chronicle pg 17 for example of mirror on Mustang I and pg 27 for F-6B w/Malcolm Hood (10th PRG)


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## Shortround6 (Jun 22, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> I don't get all hate for the .50 cal. If it was such a piece of crap it still wouldn't be in use by the US military today. Just sayin'...



Like many pieces of equipment, there are some niches that are hard to to fill, or hard to improve on. The .50 in the ground role falls into a niche. It is about as big as can be manhandled (although well over 90% of all moves are by motor vehicle), it is substantially more powerful/longer ranged than rifle caliber machine guns, it is reliable and rugged, many have been rebuilt numerous times. However that means it is heavy for an aircraft gun. The ground guns also fire slower, around 450rpm and most of the ones in service (unless some remote 3rd world country) have either chrome lined or stellite lined barrels to help with barrel life. 

trying to use jeep mounted (or tank turret roof) 20mm cannon means a weapon that is even bigger and heavier with harder to store ammo than the .50 (if it needs more than a burst from the .50 cal just use a tank shell).

The .50 is still a useful weapon, just not in air to air combat.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 22, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Somewhere I mentioned the 67th Recon as having P-51A/F-6B plus P-51B/C/F-6C having Malcolm Hoods in ETO. Ditto 10th PRG but IIRC the 10th had only a few F-6B before F-6C from start of combat ops in Feb 1944. I believe you are correct that no F-6A made it to ETO. All the operational ones I recall were in MTO, which deployed with 68th TRG as first Mustangs deployed to US combat ops in Africa. No Malcolm Hoods installed in MTO or CBI or SWP.
> 
> I have seen pics of Mustang I with field installed single Spitfire mirror. Larry Davis - North American P-51 Mustang -A photo Chronicle pg 17 for example of mirror on Mustang I and pg 27 for F-6B w/Malcolm Hood (10th PRG)


Resp:
Thanks drgondog
Another feature separating the A-36A and P-51A/F-6B from the earlier Allison engined Mustang variants, is the wing hard points for bombs/drop tanks under each wing, which are located just outside the landing gear. These hard points form a significant protrusion, so can be easily seen from the side, front or bottom. All other Allison Mustangs variants, whether RAF or USAAF, do not have these distinct protrusions on the underwing. This information should help determine which variant one is looking at.

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## swampyankee (Jun 22, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> They's all kin to the cannon clan - old'uns, young'uns, we'uns and yer'uns!
> 
> In regards to the .50 MG detractors, it's fairly obvious that the AN/M2 made it's presence felt across all theaters against Axis types.
> 
> ...



No one has said it wasn’t adequate, only that it wasn’t optimal.


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## wuzak (Jun 22, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> I am not sure where you are getting the designation: P-51A-3.



Might be a production block. Joe Baugher has:



> Three production blocks were built with the following serials:
> 
> 43-6003/6102 P-51A-1-NA
> 43-6103/6157 P-51A-5-NA
> 43-6158/6312 P-51A-10-NA



North American P-51A Mustang

As to the first production versions of fighters having the A designation, the P-35, P-38, P-40 and P-43 went into initial production without the A suffix and were delivered to the USAAC/F.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 22, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Might be a production block. Joe Baugher has:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Resp:
Thanks. You just answered the 'tack' designation for the P-51A; P-51A-1 NA, P-51A-5 NA and P-51A-10 NA. Again, the USAAF departed from the norm by using P-51-1 and P-51-2 for the acquired Mustang MkIAs. Note that these same aircraft became F-6A (the USAAF got it right by using 'A' for the first photographic variant Mustang). The A-36A, the first (and only) dive bomber variant, again the USAAF the 'A' designation. 
For the P-35, P-38, etc., they did use a 'letter' on the first accepted aircraft, as in P-47B. The reason Republic had


wuzak said:


> Might be a production block. Joe Baugher has:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Resp:
In the case of P-51-1, P-51-2, etc? Yes, they were likely denoting production blocks. But he was associating 
P-51-3 with the last variant, the P-51A. If so, it was a completely different variant, rather than a 'block' separation. 
Also, in the case of say, a P-47B as the first accepted production variant, the USAAF likely decided on a major change, which necessitated moving to another letter. In this case, the P-47A became a P-47B as the first produced in volume that was delivered to the USAAF. So, if done according to practice, the first Allison engined Mustang accepted by the USAAF, should have been designated as P-51A, rather than P-51, or P-51-1. Again, when the USAAF redesignated them for the Photo-Recon role, they were designated as F-6A. Yea, they got it right!


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## wuzak (Jun 22, 2018)

The XP-47/XP-47A was a completely different aircraft to the P-47B. The XP-47 and XP-47A were Allison V-1710 powered, the latter an unarmed version of the former.

The XP-47B was a completely different design.

The first production P-39 was the P-39C.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 22, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The XP-47/XP-47A was a completely different aircraft to the P-47B. The XP-47 and XP-47A were Allison V-1710 powered, the latter an unarmed version of the former.
> 
> The XP-47B was a completely different design.
> 
> The first production P-39 was the P-39C.


Resp:
Yes. Exactly. Either was preceded by a letter (X before a P) or followed by a letter (A, B, C, etc). P-51-1, etc has neither!


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## wuzak (Jun 22, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Yes. Exactly. Either was preceded by a letter (X before a P) or followed by a letter (A, B, C, etc). P-51-1, etc has neither!



There was XP-40 and a P-40, but no YP-40.

There was an XP-38, several YP-38s and production P-38s.

The P-51 was different in that the prototype (NA-73X) was built for the British, and was not procured by the Air Force other than 2 production aircraft were set aside for testing.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 22, 2018)

wuzak said:


> There was XP-40 and a P-40, but no YP-40.
> 
> There was an XP-38, several YP-38s and production P-38s.
> 
> The P-51 was different in that the prototype (NA-73X) was built for the British, and was not procured by the Air Force other than 2 production aircraft were set aside for testing.


Resp:
But the first two were designated what? XP-51. You have answered your own question. So the first accepted model for service should have been with a LETTER, and not as P-51 or P-51-1.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 22, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Thanks. You just answered the 'tack' designation for the P-51A; P-51A-1 NA, P-51A-5 NA and P-51A-10 NA. Again, the USAAF departed from the norm by using P-51-1 and P-51-2 for the acquired Mustang MkIAs. Note that these same aircraft became F-6A (the USAAF got it right by using 'A' for the first photographic variant Mustang). The A-36A, the first (and only) dive bomber variant, again the USAAF the 'A' designation.


The Mustang Mk.IA was an NA-91, same as the P-51.
The P-51A-1NA, P-51A-5NA and P-51A-10NA were NA-99 types.

Here is a link to a solid P-51 resource that will help with the types, production blocks and NAA model codes:
P-51 Mustang Production - MustangsMustangs.com

Joe Bauer's site is also pure gold for details, too.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 23, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> But the first two were designated what? XP-51. You have answered your own question. So the first accepted model for service should have been with a LETTER, and not as P-51 or P-51-1.


Typically, when the USAAC/USAAF accepted a type on a limited basis, it was delivered as a "YP-XX", like a YP-61", etc. Then when the type's full production version was approved, it was designated as such with an "A" suffix (P-61A).

In the case of the P-51, it was a foreign ordered type that was adopted without a trial purchase. So there was no "Y" prefix applied.

The "Y" stands for "Service test pending production orders" and the Mustang was an unusual exception to the standard process.


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## Tieleader (Jun 23, 2018)

Clayton Magnet said:


> Not as a primary fighter armament.


Sorry,I meant for AFVs. Fingers can't anyways keep up with brain...


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 23, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Typically, when the USAAC/USAAF accepted a type on a limited basis, it was delivered as a "YP-XX", like a YP-61", etc. Then when the type's full production version was approved, it was designated as such with an "A" suffix (P-61A).
> 
> In the case of the P-51, it was a foreign ordered type that was adopted without a trial purchase. So there was no "Y" prefix applied.
> 
> The "Y" stands for "Service test pending production orders" and the Mustang was an unusual exception to the standard process.


Resp:
I think the horse is already dead; however, I believe this thread is a result of the confusion of which the USAAF played a dominant role. Thanks to all who have participated. You cannot change what actually happened (history). My attempt, and that is all that I believe I accomplished . . . was to explain the confusion, as A is the first letter of the alphabet. It should have come first, rather than last.


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## fubar57 (Jun 23, 2018)

Well....that settles it....I'm done here....Peace, out!

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## Shortround6 (Jun 23, 2018)

About the only thing that was consistent about the USAAC use of the letter A in the designations of aircraft was it's inconsistency.
The first 77 P-35s were just that P-35, The A was used on the P-35s the US got after embargoing the Swedish aircraft. 
The first 210 P-36s were called P-36A's. No plann P-36. 
The P-39 jumped from YP-39 to P-39C, no plain P-39 or P-39A or P-39B (unless on paper?) 
The first 534 P-40s were (at the signing of the contract) P-40's with no letter, The letters came later as the contract was amended to cover changes in equipment. 
The P-43 went from the YP-43 (13 built) to the P-43 (54 built) to the P-43A (80 built) to the P-43A-1 ( 125 ordered for China) and finally the P-43B which were modified P-43s, P-43As and P-43A-1s with cameras added. Apparently there was no difference in designation regardless of the original model of the aircraft. 

given that history it is not surprising (or out of character) for the first squadron use of the P-51 first production model to carry no letter.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 23, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> Well....that settles it....I'm done here....Peace, out!


You 'n me both.

An old adage comes to mind: "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."


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## Smokey Stover (Jun 23, 2018)

Tieleader said:


> I don't get all hate for the .50 cal. If it was such a piece of crap it still wouldn't be in use by the US military today. Just sayin'...


I dont think anyone is suggesting the 50 cal was a piece of crap as you put it. Yes it suffered now and then from stoppages (but what gun didnt) and it was not as effective in range as cannons, but it was still a very cheap, easy to mass produce and generally reliable bullet. But to say it was better than cannon for aerial combat is a bit like blowing smoke to me. Or as someone correctly suggested, "flag waving" The fact is for an experienced pilot, cannon could take out an enemy a/c in just one or two shots. And i dont care what anyone says. Cannon is head and shoulders above MG calibre armament all day long....

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## Kevin J (Jun 23, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> I dont think anyone is suggesting the 50 cal was a piece of crap as you put it. Yes it suffered now and then from stoppages (but what gun didnt) and it was not as effective in range as canons, but it was still a very cheap, easy to mass produce and generally reliable bullet. But to say it was better than canon for aerial combat is a bit like blowing smoke to me. Or as you correctly suggested, "flag waving" The fact is for an experienced pilot, canon could take out an enemy a/c in just one or two shots. And i dont care what anyone says. Canon is head and shoulders above MG calibre armament all day long....


Think about this. You're a British interceptor trying to shoot down either a diesel powered Ju-86R or maritime patrol BV-138, bullets aren't going to be very effective, you need the destructive power of cannon shells. Sure, 0.5 inch bullets are going to wreck large German transports, although I'm sure the British 0.303 was just as effective. Axis bombers with armour, I'm the 0.5 in was much more effective than our 0.303, but us Brits needed cannon for our air war.

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## Smokey Stover (Jun 23, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Think about this. You're a British interceptor trying to shoot down either a diesel powered Ju-86R or maritime patrol BV-138, bullets aren't going to be very effective, you need the destructive power of cannon shells. Sure, 0.5 inch bullets are going to wreck large German transports, although I'm sure the British 0.303 was just as effective. Axis bombers with armour, I'm the 0.5 in was much more effective than our 0.303, but us Brits needed cannon for our air war.


Oh i absolutely agree. The major complaint british pilots had during the b.o.b, was the clear disparity between the spitfire and hurricane .303's and the Bf-109 with it's two 20mm cannons. At least one hurricane was retro-fitted with two cannon during mid 1940, but because the early merlin engines had not yet reached full potential it was rather slow and sluggish in its flight controls because of the added weight. But as soon as the Mk ll hurri & Mk V spit began in full production both machines were outfitted with cannons and would continue this configuration to the end of the war.

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## pbehn (Jun 23, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Oh i absolutely agree. The major complaint british pilots had during the b.o.b, was the clear disparity between the spitfire and hurricane .303's and the Bf-109 with it's two 20mm cannons. At least one hurricane was retro-fitted with two cannon during mid 1940, but because the early merlin engines had not yet reached full potential it was rather slow and sluggish in its flight controls because of the added weight. But as soon as the Mk ll hurri & Mk V spit began in full production both machines were outfitted with cannons and would continue this configuration to the end of the war.


One squadron of Spitfires had cannon fitted during the BoB but they had problems with the drum feed and jamming, it took time to get them sorted with a belt feed.

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## Smokey Stover (Jun 23, 2018)

pbehn said:


> One squadron of Spitfires had cannon fitted during the BoB but they had problems with the drum feed and jamming, it took time to get them sorted with a belt feed.


Yes, there were also problems with freezing at altitude. They had problems perfecting a reliable heating system to stop the guns from icing up. One squadron of Spitfires had cannon fitted during the BoB but they had problems with the drum feed and jamming, it took time to get them sorted with a belt feed.
Although, by this time, production of the Spitfire had started to increase, a Merlin XX powered Hurricane Mk I was built and first flew on 11 June 1940. The initial Mark II, later known as the *Mark IIA Series 1,* went into squadron service in September 1940 at the peak of the Battle of Britain.

Hawker had long experimented with improving the armament of the fighter by fitting cannons. Their first experiments used two 20 mm (.79 in) Oerlikon cannons in pods, one under each wing, (one aircraft was tested during 1940 with 151 Squadron[8]) but the extra weight and drag seriously compromised the aircraft's performance and manoeuvreability, and the limited amount of ammunition carried coupled with the frequent stoppages suffered by the drum-fed guns, meant the arrangement was unsatisfactory at that time.


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## pbehn (Jun 23, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Yes, there were also problems with freezing at altitude. They had problems perfecting a reliable heating system to stop the guns from icing up. One squadron of Spitfires had cannon fitted during the BoB but they had problems with the drum feed and jamming, it took time to get them sorted with a belt feed.
> Although, by this time, production of the Spitfire had started to increase, a Merlin XX powered Hurricane Mk I was built and first flew on 11 June 1940. The initial Mark II, later known as the *Mark IIA Series 1,* went into squadron service in September 1940 at the peak of the Battle of Britain.
> 
> Hawker had long experimented with improving the armament of the fighter by fitting cannons. Their first experiments used two 20 mm (.79 in) Oerlikon cannons in pods, one under each wing, (one aircraft was tested during 1940 with 151 Squadron[8]) but the extra weight and drag seriously compromised the aircraft's performance and manoeuvreability, and the limited amount of ammunition carried coupled with the frequent stoppages suffered by the drum-fed guns, meant the arrangement was unsatisfactory at that time.


The Hurricane was already approx. 30MPH down on the opposition, adding cannon in pods was not any type of solution.

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## Kevin J (Jun 23, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Oh i absolutely agree. The major complaint british pilots had during the b.o.b, was the clear disparity between the spitfire and hurricane .303's and the Bf-109 with it's two 20mm cannons. At least one hurricane was retro-fitted with two cannon during mid 1940, but because the early merlin engines had not yet reached full potential it was rather slow and sluggish in its flight controls because of the added weight. But as soon as the Mk ll hurri & Mk V spit began in full production both machines were outfitted with cannons and would continue this configuration to the end of the war.


I think the only thing that perhaps that we could have done better would have been to rearm our Kittyhawks with two cannon and two 0.5's, likewise our Hurricanes and Spitfires. IIRC, you could fit a pair of 20 mm cannons in the Kittyhawk, but it was never done. The 1944 E wing Spitfires had that combination and the Soviet Hurricanes in 1942 also. Some Canadian Hurricanes and Fulmars were fitted with four 0.5 in guns so it obviously could have been done. Think how much more effective our Kittyhawk air superiority fighter (bombers) in the Middle East and Hurricane interceptors / fighter bombers in the Far East would have been if we had done this from 1942 onward for these two planes. Not so sure about the Spitfire Vc/IXc/VIII though as I don't think there would have been enough spare 0.5 in guns from the re-armed Kittyhawks available.

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## Kevin J (Jun 23, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The Hurricane was already approx. 30MPH down on the opposition, adding cannon in pods was not any type of solution.


The Spitfire II was 30 mph down on what it should have been in 1940. I remember reading one of my uncles aircraft books from 1940 as a child, the Spitfire II was supposed to have done 387 mph but once you add all the mods to make it combat worthy, it only did 354 mph, not much more than the Hurricane IIa at 342 mph. Also don't forget a late 1942 Sea Hurricane IIc did 342 mph and a Seafire IIc depending on its armament did 342/345 mph. The Spitfire had the four cannon wing added to it so the effect was that it reduced its speed to that of a comparable Hurricane, cleaned up versions came later. The big advantage of a Spitfire was that it could dive and climb faster. Another example would be the Hurricane V with the Merlin 32 which did 327 mph at 500 feet, or a Seafire LIIc with the same engine that did 316 mph at sea level.


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## Smokey Stover (Jun 23, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I think the only thing that perhaps that we could have done better would have been to rearm our Kittyhawks with two cannon and two 0.5's, likewise our Hurricanes and Spitfires. IIRC, you could fit a pair of 20 mm cannons in the Kittyhawk, but it was never done. The 1944 E wing Spitfires had that combination and the Soviet Hurricanes in 1942 also. Some Canadian Hurricanes and Fulmars were fitted with four 0.5 in guns so it obviously could have been done. Think how much more effective our Kittyhawk air superiority fighter (bombers) in the Middle East and Hurricane interceptors / fighter bombers in the Far East would have been if we had done this from 1942 onward for these two planes. Not so sure about the Spitfire Vc/IXc/VIII though as I don't think there would have been enough spare 0.5 in guns from the re-armed Kittyhawks available.


While i agree in general im not sure if the spitfire would have comfortably housed that kind of configuration. Even though the wings were elliptical and had quite a large surface area they were incredibly thin and the extra weight of the 50 cal + ammunition might have had some negative effect on performance. The Hurricane on the other hand had a much thicker wing andd was a much better gun platform than the Spitfire. Some mk's were after all fitted with 8 .303 MG's in each wing for a total of 16 machine guns. The Spitfire could never have coped with such a heavy amount of wing loading. Oh and the only ww2 Spitfire to carry x4 cannon was a few limited Mk Vc's sent to Malta. The Spitfire would not make that configuration of armament standard until the Mk 22/24 post war.Which with the use of the Rolls Royce Griffin engine over the slower Merlin could easily offset the weight.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 23, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> About the only thing that was consistent about the USAAC use of the letter A in the designations of aircraft was it's inconsistency.
> The first 77 P-35s were just that P-35, The A was used on the P-35s the US got after embargoing the Swedish aircraft.
> The first 210 P-36s were called P-36A's. No plann P-36.
> The P-39 jumped from YP-39 to P-39C, no plain P-39 or P-39A or P-39B (unless on paper?)
> ...


Resp:
Well said. My only train of thought is that there is much confusion that inhibits an accurate description of the sequence of these Allison engined Mustangs. If you go to a Squadrons's website that flew razorback (P-51B and C) Mustangs, you often see a b/w photo of an F-6B, etc. As if all Razorbacks are the same. The site I am thinking of did not fly these early models, but rather B, C and D (possibly K as well) Mustangs. Not all Mustangs were drop tank capable. The USAAC (USAAF) restricted aircraft manufacturers from incorporating fighters destined for their service the capability of carrying external fuel stores (drop tanks) since 1939. The Navy had no such restriction. Only the A-36A and P-51A/F-6B variants had plumbing/hard points for drop tanks. 8th AF P-47s first began a retro-fit for a single belly tank (75 gal originally built for P-39) in September 1943. Retro-fit was a slow process, as each squadron from each FG had to wait their turn. The F4U got its second drop tank in April 1943. F4Us could have escorted bombers to Berlin and back. But this is another story. 
I just finished re-reading a story about a guy who flew the A-36A with the 27th FBG, 12th AF in the Feb 2017 'Flight Journal.' He stated: "Some of the A-36s in our squadron were armed with 20mm cannon in the wings instead of MG." This statement needs verifying. Were any F-6As parked on their field, or were they actually 
A-36 dive bombers? The confusion continues!


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## Shortround6 (Jun 23, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I think the only thing that perhaps that we could have done better would have been to rearm our Kittyhawks with two cannon and two 0.5's, likewise our Hurricanes and Spitfires. IIRC, you could fit a pair of 20 mm cannons in the Kittyhawk, but it was never done. The 1944 E wing Spitfires had that combination and the Soviet Hurricanes in 1942 also. Some Canadian Hurricanes and Fulmars were fitted with four 0.5 in guns so it obviously could have been done. Think how much more effective our Kittyhawk air superiority fighter (bombers) in the Middle East and Hurricane interceptors / fighter bombers in the Far East would have been if we had done this from 1942 onward for these two planes. Not so sure about the Spitfire Vc/IXc/VIII though as I don't think there would have been enough spare 0.5 in guns from the re-armed Kittyhawks available.



Problem here is the P-40 was overloaded as it was. 
Weight wise you need to trade 2 two .50s for each cannon. The US tried cutting some P-40s back to four guns from six to get the weight down. 
The P-40Es also didn't carry a lot of ammo. _Design load _was 235 rounds per gun (for six guns) max load was 312 rounds for the inner guns, 291 rounds for the middle guns and 240 rounds for the outer guns. 

If you are trying to build air superiority fighters Both the P-40 and Hurricane were a bit lacking in performance. If you are trying to build ground attack planes it makes a bit more sense. 
Please note that what the Russians did was not doable by the western nations, or at least a lot harder to imitate. The Russian 20mm cannon was 50-60lbs lighter than the Hispano cannon and 100 rounds of Russian 20mm ammo was over 16lbs lighter than 100 rounds of Hispano ammunition. The Russian 12.7mm machine gun was around 20lbs lighter than a US .50 cal Browning. ammo was close in weight. The Russian suite of 20mm/12.7mm guns/ammo used in the Hurricanes would be over 200lbs lighter than using the Hispano and Browning. 

The P-40D had _provision _for hanging a 20 mm gun *under* the wing. I have yet to read a good description of this (or see diagram/photo). The Pilots manual says " Cannon: Provisions for external attachment of 20mm Hispano-Suiza Brikgit cannon are made on the underside of the wings outboard of the outer .50 cal gun. One cannon may be mounted under wing panel by the making of the proper skin cutouts and the installation of the equipement_. "_

This leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Was the gun faired in or hung out totally exposed? What kind of feed was used? drum or Belt? How far below the wing surface was the gun? If Belt feed, where did the Belt go? 

They only built about 30 of the D model and the whole 20mm cannon thing was forgotten about on the E.

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## pbehn (Jun 23, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The Spitfire II was 30 mph down on what it should have been in 1940. I remember reading one of my uncles aircraft books from 1940 as a child, the Spitfire II was supposed to have done 387 mph but once you add all the mods to make it combat worthy, it only did 354 mph, not much more than the Hurricane IIa at 342 mph. Also don't forget a late 1942 Sea Hurricane IIc did 342 mph and a Seafire IIc depending on its armament did 342/345 mph. The Spitfire had the four cannon wing added to it so the effect was that it reduced its speed to that of a comparable Hurricane, cleaned up versions came later. The big advantage of a Spitfire was that it could dive and climb faster. Another example would be the Hurricane V with the Merlin 32 which did 327 mph at 500 feet, or a Seafire LIIc with the same engine that did 316 mph at sea level.


All combat aircraft are slower in service, there is no way at all that a Spitfire and Hurricane were separated by 12 MPH in service with the same engine.

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## Smokey Stover (Jun 23, 2018)

pbehn said:


> All combat aircraft are slower in service, there is no way at all that a Spitfire and Hurricane were separated by 12 MPH in service with the same engine.


Not only that, but the gap in speed only increased time after time as the Spitfire was able to be constantly improved and updated, while the Hurricane was very limited to how far it could be advanced. Ergo, the design and manufacture of the Typhoon & Tempest. But even the Spitfire Mk l was 35-40mph faster than a Hurricane


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## pbehn (Jun 23, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Not only that, but the gap in speed only increased time after time as the Spitfire was able to be constantly improved and updated, while the Hurricane was very limited to how far it could be advanced. Ergo, the design and manufacture of the Typhoon & Tempest. But even the Spitfire Mk l was 35-40mph faster than a Hurricane


The Spitfire and Hurricane were not competitors, Camm and Hawkers knew that the Hurricane was behind the times in technology, but that was an advantage in some respects...it was easy to make, repair and keep in service. The Typhoon and eventually the Tempest were supposed to replace the Spitfire but only did at low level.


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## wuzak (Jun 23, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> Yes, there were also problems with freezing at altitude. They had problems perfecting a reliable heating system to stop the guns from icing up. One squadron of Spitfires had cannon fitted during the BoB but they had problems with the drum feed and jamming, it took time to get them sorted with a belt feed.
> Although, by this time, production of the Spitfire had started to increase, a Merlin XX powered Hurricane Mk I was built and first flew on 11 June 1940. The initial Mark II, later known as the *Mark IIA Series 1,* went into squadron service in September 1940 at the peak of the Battle of Britain.



To be clear, the Mk IIA Series 1 had 8 x 0.303" mgs, the Mk IIB/Mk IIA Series 2 had 12 x 0.303" mgs, the Mk IIC had 4 x 20mm and the Mk IID had 2 x 0.303" mgs and 2 x 40mm Vickers S cannon.

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## wuzak (Jun 23, 2018)

Smokey Stover said:


> The Hurricane on the other hand had a much thicker wing and was a much better gun platform than the Spitfire. Some mk's were after all fitted with 8 .303 MG's in each wing for a total of 16 machine guns.



12 rifle calibre machine guns, 6 in each wing, in the IIB.

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## Smokey Stover (Jun 24, 2018)

wuzak said:


> 12 rifle calibre machine guns, 6 in each wing, in the IIB.


Yes sorry, my mistake. You're quite right sir it was twelve. I've been researching modified Soviet Hurricanes and there were some good, bad and downright bizarre alterations made to them.


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## drgondog (Jun 24, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Well said. My only train of thought is that there is much confusion that inhibits an accurate description of the sequence of these Allison engined Mustangs. If you go to a Squadrons's website that flew razorback (P-51B and C) Mustangs, you often see a b/w photo of an F-6B, etc. As if all Razorbacks are the same. The site I am thinking of did not fly these early models, but rather B, C and D (possibly K as well) Mustangs. Not all Mustangs were drop tank capable. The USAAC (USAAF) restricted aircraft manufacturers from incorporating fighters destined for their service the capability of carrying external fuel stores (drop tanks) since 1939. The Navy had no such restriction. Only the A-36A and P-51A/F-6B variants had plumbing/hard points for drop tanks. 8th AF P-47s first began a retro-fit for a single belly tank (75 gal originally built for P-39) in September 1943. Retro-fit was a slow process, as each squadron from each FG had to wait their turn. The F4U got its second drop tank in April 1943. F4Us could have escorted bombers to Berlin and back. But this is another story.
> I just finished re-reading a story about a guy who flew the A-36A with the 27th FBG, 12th AF in the Feb 2017 'Flight Journal.' He stated: "Some of the A-36s in our squadron were armed with 20mm cannon in the wings instead of MG." This statement needs verifying. Were any F-6As parked on their field, or were they actually
> A-36 dive bombers? The confusion continues!



Just a couple of points. The extended range experiment in July-August 1943 for the P-47 involved first the 200 gallon unpressurized Ferry tank, then the 75 and then the 110, The driver behind the evolution for pressurization and belly shackle (pre-production mods) was Col. Cass Hough, second in command to 8th AF ATS.

Like you, I have read the "Flight Journal" article as well as Peter Smith's "Straight Down" about the 27th, Interesting reads. From my own deep dives into the A-36, the proposal for the A-36 to AAF (began Oct 1941 and submitted 1/28/1942) incorporated 20mm cannon as an alternative. The P-51/Mustang IA and the original P-509-2 proposal that led to the NA-73 contract all had 20mm installation designs for the original six gun bays. I wouldn't dispute a field mod, but none of the issued A-36/P-51A/Mustang I/II Manuals mention 20 mm installations and maintenance or structural repairs.

The NAA correspondence with both bomb rack/sway brace contractors and NAA Structural analysis reports cite the requirement for beefing up the spar, bomb racks and skin/shear panel to take out the fore/aft drag loads of the 500 and 1000 pound bombs in addition to the 'normal' analysis for the additional vertical/lateral loading. I could not find any analysis for recoil loads imposed by 20mm Hispano's.

What is nearly 100% certain is that the P-51-1/-2 could NOT be field modified for bomb rack, fuel line mods or dive brakes. From Contract award to first flight of NA-73 AM 118 in May was more than 30 days. The first Dive Brake functional test occurred a month later. The first Cannon firing test in a Mustang was Chilton's test of modified NA-83 AM-190 on 6-9-1942. NA-91 P-51-1 (#1) Before F6 camera mods was delivered to AAF the next day.

The first external wing tank test for AM-118 was on 7-4-1942 and the first dive bombing test was 7-18-1942. Also during this timeframe the 1710-39, F-14R, 1710-21R, 1710-F3R engines and four blade props were installed and tested.

I go through this boring litany of NAA reports and Chilton Logbook to illustrate that I am skeptical that critical airframes (P-51-1/-2) could be taken out of service and modified to serve with A-36 (dive brakes/pylons, etc) or A-36 could be certified by AAF Group level Engineering office to replace 4x50 cal with 4x20mm. It would be easy to do but damned dangerous to fire 20mm cannon while in a dive with drag loads imposed on wing by Brakes and 1000 pound bomb.


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## drgondog (Jun 24, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> The F4U got its second drop tank in April 1943. F4Us could have escorted bombers to Berlin and back. But this is another story.



I forgot to debate this.

In research for my new book, I considered introducing F4U-1 as 'technically' possible alternative for Long Rang escort in the ETO.

I could not get enough data from sources regarding projected cruise speeds and specific fuel consumption at 25-30,000 feet to conclude that it would be feasible. USN Doctrine and testing pointed to best cruise speeds and altitudes around 15,000 feet, at near 200 mph TAS. Presumably the cruise speeds would increase 10-20% for same SFC due to decrease in Parasite drag at 20-25K. 

That said, I can't find any evidence that the Combat Radius of the F4U-1 with 361 gallons of internal fuel at the Necessary cruise speeds faster than B-17/B-24s at 25,000 feet could be as much as 500 miles. 

Both the P-51B and P-47D-25 cruised at 25K w/2x110s at ~270mph TAS and 300 mph TAS after tanks dropped. Additionally the 2800-8 continuously lost power from 15K (not literally true but close enough) whereas 2nd Stage Merlin 1650-3 maintained power from 25-29K and the Turbo charged R-2800 for the P-47 maintained power to 31K.

And we don't need to dwell on the politics and priorities...

What data do you have that corrects my impressions?

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## BiffF15 (Jun 24, 2018)

drgondog said:


> The first external wing tank test for AM-118 was on 7-4-1942 and the first dive bombing test was 7-18-1942. Also during this timeframe the 1710-39, F-14R, 1710-21R, 1710-F3R engines and four blade props were installed and tested.



Bill,

Do you have any pictures of the Allison powered Mustangs with 4 bladed props you could share? I didn't know they were even conceived let alone tested.

It's also surprising to not have shown up in post war racing. I think I remember seeing a picture of a P40 with a 4 bladed "airscrew".

Cheers,
Biff


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 24, 2018)

drgondog said:


> I forgot to debate this.
> 
> In research for my new book, I considered introducing F4U-1 as 'technically' possible alternative for Long Rang escort in the ETO.
> 
> ...


Resp:
The F4U was drop tank capable. The USAAF had a restriction on manufacturers against making their fighters drop tank capable since 1939. The Navy did not have restrictions against drop tanks for fighters. The only reason the P-38 was being produced (on production line before Pearl Harbor) as drop tank capable was because the junior USAAF test pilot assigned to Lockheed pressured (convinced) them by saying 'the next war will be a long range affair.' Their contract forbid it. Thank God for junior officers, who often see what us old guys can't see. This officer saved a lot of lives. 

2 yrs ago I found a letter written by Gen Hap Arnold, directing his staff to find an existing fighter that could be modified, or a new design built . . . that could provide long range escort for 8th AF bombers. It was written in mid 1943, long before the missions to Schweinfurt. Keep in mind that the first Merlin Mustangs did not fly their first long range mission until Dec 1943! In early 1943 (I want to say Mar) the USAAF sponsored a Joint Fighter Meet at Elgin Field, FL where all services were allowed to fly the other service's aircraft. The USAAF pilots who flew the F4U and raved about its ability. It easily out manuvered the P-38, Allison P-51 and their P-47. The F4U was the champion fighter there, as per USAAF pilots who flew it. Within 30 days, the US Army Material Command wrote a report on the F4U and why it should NOT be adopted! 
I wrote a multi-page assessment/story that I sent to two magazines, but it was seen as a 'could have' story, and we're not interested. My calculations may have been off, but I believe this fighter would have been able to enter deep into German airspace.

I have spent years researching this issue. I gave up, as it appears no one wants to talk about it. I do understand why the Air Force became its own service. 
I will have to dig for my notes. The data is out there. I do not claim to be an expert on calculating fuel consumption due to drag, rpms, etc. However, I do believe the Corsairs were available; Navy was not using them on carriers at this time, Marines got some and we were giving them to the Fleet Air Arm in 1943. Later, the RNAF flew the F4U. 
So, could have diverted 75 aircraft for testing by 8th AF for trial in 1943? I think it was doable.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 24, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> I wrote a multi-page assessment/story that I sent to two magazines, but it was seen as a 'could have' story, and we're not interested. My calculations may have been off, but I believe this fighter would have been able to enter deep into German airspace.
> 
> I have spent years researching this issue. I gave up, as it appears no one wants to talk about it. I do understand why the Air Force became its own service.
> I will have to dig for my notes. The data is out there. I do not claim to be an expert on calculating fuel consumption due to drag, rpms, etc. However, I do believe the Corsairs were available; Navy was not using them on carriers at this time, Marines got some and we were giving them to the Fleet Air Arm in 1943. Later, the RNAF flew the F4U.
> So, could have diverted 75 aircraft for testing by 8th AF for trial in 1943? I think it was doable.



We have been over this a bunch of times.

The main problem with using the F4U as an escort fighter is NOT getting it into Germany, it is GETTING IT OUT.

The P-47 had 305 gallons of internal fuel, the F4U had 237 gallons of protected storage. After you drop the tanks (of whatever size/capacity/number) that is the fuel you have (less some used in warm up-take-off and initial climb out) to fight with and make your way back to England. Both planes could suck down around 70 gallons in 15 minutes at high power settings. Even if a new group of planes arrive to take over escort duties you cannot fly back to England at 200mph at 15,000ft or less. You need a high altitude, high speed cruise (it may not need to be 210 IAS but it better be near that) to keep from being bounced (or being a flak target) and the P-47, with the turbo, was better at that.

Hang a pair of 150 gallon tanks on the F4U and you can easily get in further than you can get out.

The AIr force figured the extra 65 gallons inside the later P-47s was worth an extra 100 miles of Radius without drop tank and an extra 175 miles with a pair of 150 gallon tanks, 600 miles vs 425 miles. If you only have 234 inside does that cut you down to around 300 miles (or less) regardless of drop tank capacity?

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 24, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> We have been over this a bunch of times.
> 
> The main problem with using the F4U as an escort fighter is NOT getting it into Germany, it is GETTING IT OUT.
> 
> ...


Resp:
I am talking mid 1943 to Dec 1943. The P-47 didn't get its 1st drop tank (75gal) until Sept 1943. It was @ Mar 1944 before P-47D-15s with wing hard points started to arrive. It like took much longer to get enough to make a difference in the 'range arena'. The Corsair got its 2nd drop tank in mid 1943. All I am saying is, there may have been a fighter available that could go further (with the bombers) than what was available in that 1943 (actually 1944, as P-51s were in short supply) time frame. This fighter may have kept the losses down until the P-47/P-51 were perfected. A Corsair pilot, in his 90s who flew in 2 tour in the Pacific (recalled to Korea) and taught newbees how to fly the F4U in 1944. routinely took them up to 30,000 ft.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 24, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> I am talking mid 1943 to Dec 1943. The P-47 didn't get its 1st drop tank (75gal) until Sept 1943. It was @ Mar 1944 before P-47D-15s with wing hard points started to arrive. It like took much longer to get enough to make a difference in the 'range arena'. The Corsair got its 2nd drop tank in mid 1943. All I am saying is, there may have been a fighter available that could go further (with the bombers) than what was available in that 1943 (actually 1944, as P-51s were in short supply) time frame. This fighter may have kept the losses down until the P-47/P-51 were perfected. A Corsair pilot, in his 90s who flew in 2 tour in the Pacific (recalled to Korea) and taught newbees how to fly the F4U in 1944. routinely took them up to 30,000 ft.




You are missing the point. I am using the P-47 as a frame of reference. The F4U with just 237 of protected fuel wasn't going to go much past the Rhine regardless of the number/sizeof the drop tanks, unless you are suggesting trying to fight with a drop tank still attached (and being non-self sealing a few small bullet holes can have the F4U landing in the Channel). British had figured out back in 1941/42 that Spitfire Vs had better be cruising at around 300mph to have good chance of surviving if bounced and that was NOT escorting bombers. 

The F4U was just not going to be a deep penetration fighter/escort in European conditions regardless of how far it could fly over water (no AA guns and no enemy fighter fields along the route back.) in the Pacific. 
Ignoring that reality would have lead to high losses (unsustainable) among the F4U escorts regardless of how many B-17s they saved in the weeks or few months before you ran out of F4Us. 

BTW I like the F4U, my father worked for Chance Vought for several years during WW II and a good friends father flew with VMF-124 after it was reconstituted later in the war. 






*2nd Lt Gilbert Dixon Boyd *on the right.

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## tomo pauk (Jun 24, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> I am talking mid 1943 to Dec 1943. The P-47 didn't get its 1st drop tank (75gal) until Sept 1943. It was @ Mar 1944 before P-47D-15s with wing hard points started to arrive. It like took much longer to get enough to make a difference in the 'range arena'. The Corsair got its 2nd drop tank in mid 1943. All I am saying is, there may have been a fighter available that could go further (with the bombers) than what was available in that 1943 (actually 1944, as P-51s were in short supply) time frame. This fighter may have kept the losses down until the P-47/P-51 were perfected. A Corsair pilot, in his 90s who flew in 2 tour in the Pacific (recalled to Korea) and taught newbees how to fly the F4U in 1944. routinely took them up to 30,000 ft.



P-47C, G and early D have had a belly tank that was able to hold 200 gals, workable between SL and ~15000 ft due not being pressurized (fuel will be boiling above that altitude). People at England were filling it half full, sent them towards German-held Europe, combat radius was ~350 miles. People in Australia were faster on the ball, and produced metalic tanks in Brisbane, that IIRC were able to be pressurized, and held 200 gals. Flat-ish shaped.
Americans were flying a quantitiy of P-47s via Iceland, using two wing drop tanks, August 1943. Per 'America's hundred thousand'.
F4U should not have problems flying well above 30000 ft.
Vought data states combat radius of the F4U at, IIRC, 325 miles with 1 drop tank, and 350 miles with two; stated is that internal fuel is the limiting factor.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 24, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> You are missing the point. I am using the P-47 as a frame of reference. The F4U with just 237 of protected fuel wasn't going to go much past the Rhine regardless of the number/sizeof the drop tanks, unless you are suggesting trying to fight with a drop tank still attached (and being non-self sealing a few small bullet holes can have the F4U landing in the Channel). British had figured out back in 1941/42 that Spitfire Vs had better be cruising at around 300mph to have good chance of surviving if bounced and that was NOT escorting bombers.
> 
> The F4U was just not going to be a deep penetration fighter/escort in European conditions regardless of how far it could fly over water (no AA guns and no enemy fighter fields along the route back.) in the Pacific.
> Ignoring that reality would have lead to high losses (unsustainable) among the F4U escorts regardless of how many B-17s they saved in the weeks or few months before you ran out of F4Us.
> ...


Resp:
Roger. Missed the obvious.


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## drgondog (Jun 24, 2018)

QUOTE="Navalwarrior, post: 1413040, member: 74258"]Resp:
The F4U was drop tank capable. 

*Internal fuel is the key to combat range, which is what All F6F and all F4U after the -1 with fuel reduced from 361 to the 237 gal of the F4U-1D would never have performed long range escort in the ETO. The latter internal fuel is only 77% of the P-47D's 305 internal gallons and until the -25, the P-47D could not go past Brunswick. The F4U-1D might not have had an operation combat radius at bomber altitudes beyond Emden*

The USAAF had a restriction on manufacturers against making their fighters drop tank capable since 1939. The Navy did not have restrictions against drop tanks for fighters. The only reason the P-38 was being produced (on production line before Pearl Harbor) as drop tank capable was because the junior USAAF test pilot assigned to Lockheed pressured (convinced) them by saying 'the next war will be a long range affair.' Their contract forbid it. Thank God for junior officers, who often see what us old guys can't see. This officer saved a lot of lives. 

*That would be Ben Kelsey, who indeed collaborated with Kelly Johnson to install a pylon and plumbing and sway brace to accommodate the 165 and 310 gallon tanks designed by Lockheed. The F4 (April 1942-Australia) was the first P-38 type deployed and the P-38Es were retrofitted. That said, it wasn't until late 1943 that the 165/310 passed tests for Combat tanks.* 

2 yrs ago I found a letter written by Gen Hap Arnold, directing his staff to find an existing fighter that could be modified, or a new design built . . . that could provide long range escort for 8th AF bombers. It was written in mid 1943, long before the missions to Schweinfurt. 

*That letter was to his deputy Chief Air Staff, Barney Giles. One week after the letter, Giles placed a fire under Echols/Branshaw at Material Command which resulted in NAA getting authority to install a stainless steel fuselage tank on or about July 6, 1943. The first flight was ,about one week later by Chilton (July 6 to 7-14 for installation of fuel lines, tank and first functional test in 43-12112, and 7-16-43 for first Long range test by Chilton) *

Keep in mind that the first Merlin Mustangs did not fly their first long range mission until Dec 1943! In early 1943 (I want to say Mar)

*The first combat sorties by 9th AF 354FG in P-51B-1 was flown with 75 gallon tanks on a Fighter Sweep of French/Dutch coast. The first escort mission was December 11 to Emden and 13th to Kiel. The first with 85 gallon internal fuel tank kit installed was 20th Feb to Leipzig/Bernburg areas - roughly equivalent to Berlin. The key components were not only the labor intensive 85 Gallon tank and fuel lines but also the 50% increase to oxygen that went with it. *

the USAAF sponsored a Joint Fighter Meet at Elgin Field, FL where all services were allowed to fly the other service's aircraft. The USAAF pilots who flew the F4U and raved about its ability. It easily out manuvered the P-38, Allison P-51 and their P-47. The F4U was the champion fighter there, as per USAAF pilots who flew it. Within 30 days, the US Army Material Command wrote a report on the F4U and why it should NOT be adopted! 

*I have Chilton notes from 12-1-1943 through 11 for that joint conference - logged as camera missions and aerial gunnery. He made no notes regarding impressions. What he later wrote re: "impressions" was that XP-51F/G were the two best aircraft that he flew during WWII. I have searched for a memo that you reference above but have never seen it (doesn't mean that I question existence- just unfortunate). 

As an aside, the AAF would not have needed to write a memo arguing against F4U purchase simply because the USN were co-equals on the War Production Board and the USN never could get enough for USN and USMC. By the time that conference was over and reports submitted, the P-51B was operational and Spaatz had appealed to Arnold for all P-51B deployment to ETO. Had the AAF been wildly enthusiastic, they certainly would have dictated enough mods - like self sealing wing tanks, fuel tank pressurization systems, more oxygen - to name a few and delivery probably would have started after D-Day at the earliest.*

I wrote a multi-page assessment/story that I sent to two magazines, but it was seen as a 'could have' story, and we're not interested. My calculations may have been off, but I believe this fighter would have been able to enter deep into German airspace.

*I do not question that F4U would have been successful. The issue is Long Range Escort according to AAF Strategic Bombing Doctrine in ETO. I question that the F4U could go more than say 50-75 mi more than the P-47D's through D-Day. Both the P-51B w/85 gallon tanks and in-line engine, and P-38J w/LE tanks could go much farther than the F4U-1/-2 and -3.

The question I raised was how much fuel consumption efficiency does the F4U with the R-2800-8 lose if forced to cruise at >250mph TAS at 25,000 feet The F4U had much more Parasite drag but less Induced drag than the P-51B so the question begs real data and test validation.*

I have spent years researching this issue. I gave up, as it appears no one wants to talk about it. I do understand why the Air Force became its own service.
I will have to dig for my notes. The data is out there. I do not claim to be an expert on calculating fuel consumption due to drag, rpms, etc. However, I do believe the Corsairs were available; Navy was not using them on carriers at this time, Marines got some and we were giving them to the Fleet Air Arm in 1943. Later, the RNAF flew the F4U. 
So, could have diverted 75 aircraft for testing by 8th AF for trial in 1943? I think it was doable.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 24, 2018)

drgondog said:


> QUOTE="Navalwarrior, post: 1413040, member: 74258"]Resp:
> The F4U was drop tank capable.
> 
> *Internal fuel is the key to combat range, which is what All F6F and all F4U after the -1 with fuel reduced from 361 to the 237 gal of the F4U-1D would never have performed long range escort in the ETO. The latter internal fuel is only 77% of the P-47D's 305 internal gallons and until the -25, the P-47D could not go past Brunswick. The F4U-1D might not have had an operation combat radius at bomber altitudes beyond Emden*
> ...


Resp: I was referring to the F4U-1 and F4U-1A, not the -1D. So does your theory hold water with 361 internal fuel? I do not have my spread sheet in front of me. My research material is not handy.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 24, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp: I was referring to the F4U-1 and F4U-1A, not the -1D. So does your theory hold water with 361 internal fuel? I do not have my spread sheet in front of me. My research material is not handy.


In reading about the 78th and 56th FGs of the 8th AF who flew P-47s, I was amazed at their willingness to gain a few more miles in hostile territory. Taking off from their base and landing at a base further East, just to top off their tanks to gain a few more miles . . . showed dedication. Installing 200 gal (only filled partially) bathtub shaped ferry tanks, that were supposed to be jettisonable (but often failed to release) showed dedication to providing needed bomber protection. It may have been foolhardy, but the 78th was able to surprise German fighters! This was before Sept 1943, when their P-47C/Ds were made to carry a single 75 gallon belly tank.
So, if the F4U did have an internal fuel capacity of 361 gallons over the P-47's 305 gallons, how much would it have been able to offer protection by escort? I would think that the Royal Navy could have given up our F4U-As once their carrier reach England. If the boys flying the P-47s were willing to fly with 'bathtub' tanks, I think that they would have jumped with the idea of taking the F4U to war! Just to surprise the Luftwaffe once again.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 24, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp: I was referring to the F4U-1 and F4U-1A, not the -1D. So does your theory hold water with 361 internal fuel? I do not have my spread sheet in front of me. My research material is not handy.



The Problem is the wing tanks were not fitted with self sealing material. There was a CO2 system to fill the vapor space as the fuel was used to help with fire protection but it does nothing for preventing leaks due to minor combat damage. The wing tanks were integral tanks (wing structure formed the walls of the tank) so adding fuel bladders might have been difficult? 
Depending on fuel that might not be there due to a few 7.9mm bullet hits (or flak fragments) to keep you from swimming the channel might not be a good idea.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 24, 2018)

The Germans wouldn't be too surprised at the sight of a Corsair, the Royal Navy operated them in Europe.

The FAA's first combat with the Corsair was in April 1944 as they flew cover for the attack on the Tirpitz.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 24, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The Germans wouldn't be too surprised at the sight of a Corsair, the Royal Navy operated them in Europe.
> 
> The FAA's first combat with the Corsair was in April 1944 as they flew cover for the attack on the Tirpitz.


Yes, but I am talking Apr/May/Jun 1943. The Fleet Air Arm (Royal Naval Air Force) were just getting their Corsairs in 1943. And I do think that it would have been a surprise seeing them that far inland, flying cover for the bombers! The 78th surprised the Luftwaffe the day they went deeper eastward with their 'ferry' tanks. But, I get the sense that no one wants to do or look at the numbers. Shortround6 quoted numbers when he used the figure 237 against 305. Now he admits the fuel was there, but now uses the excuse that the tanks were substandard. I yielded to you in good faith. I think all who are reading would like to know the range calculations, if only to see that it was possible to fly further with an F4U than the current P-47 at that time. I think you should do the figures, since you have experience along this line, and were quick to point out that I was wrong. We can't change history, and shouldn't try. Shortround6 said it was not possible to go farther than the P-47. The numbers, please.


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## pbehn (Jun 24, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Yes, but I am talking Apr/May/Jun 1943. The Fleet Air Arm (Royal Naval Air Force) were just getting their Corsairs in 1943. And I do think that it would have been a surprise seeing them that far inland, flying cover for the bombers! The 78th surprised the Luftwaffe the day they went deeper eastward with their 'ferry' tanks. But, I get the sense that no one wants to do or look at the numbers. Shortround6 quoted numbers when he used the figure 237 against 305. Now he admits the fuel was there, but now uses the excuse that the tanks were substandard. I yielded to you in good faith. I think all who are reading would like to know the range calculations, if only to see that it was possible to fly further with an F4U than the current P-47 at that time. I think you should do the figures, since you have experience along this line, and were quick to point out that I was wrong. We can't change history, and shouldn't try. Shortround6 said it was not possible to go farther than the P-47. The numbers, please.


A surprise, is, by definition, a one or at most few times event. In early 1943 the LW in Europe were not a force to be played around with. Also in all the discussion about fighters, what would they escort, the USA was also re equipping its bomber force with newer better bombers particularly with regard to frontal armament. As I understand it the USA called a halt to long distance bombing activities pending new bomber and fighters and a new strategy/philosophy, the build up started in the summer of 1943, but involved a massive amount of training.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 24, 2018)

pbehn said:


> A surprise, is, by definition, a one or at most few times event. In early 1943 the LW in Europe were not a force to be played around with. Also in all the discussion about fighters, what would they escort, the USA was also re equipping its bomber force with newer better bombers particularly with regard to frontal armament. As I understand it the USA called a halt to long distance bombing activities pending new bomber and fighters and a new strategy/philosophy, the build up started in the summer of 1943, but involved a massive amount of training.


Resp:
Negative. I have read the 'after action' reports of most of 1943. I take it you are talking about the G model B-17. The period that is under discussion missions were being flown, as the Invasion of 1944 was not far away. The pressure was on to reduce Germany's effectiveness, particularly air assets, so any suspension of missions would have been relatively short.


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## wuzak (Jun 24, 2018)

pbehn said:


> As I understand it the USA called a halt to long distance bombing activities pending new bomber and fighters and a new strategy/philosophy, the build up started in the summer of 1943, but involved a massive amount of training.



A number of bomber groups were transferred from VIII Bomber Command (which would become the 8th AF in 1944) to the 12th AF, which moved to North Africa after Operation Torch.

It took a while for VIII BC to regain its strength during the early parts of 1943. But they did not stop bombing.


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## fubar57 (Jun 24, 2018)

Army Air Force F4U Corsair


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## Shortround6 (Jun 24, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Yes, but I am talking Apr/May/Jun 1943. The Fleet Air Arm (Royal Naval Air Force) were just getting their Corsairs in 1943. And I do think that it would have been a surprise seeing them that far inland, flying cover for the bombers! The 78th surprised the Luftwaffe the day they went deeper eastward with their 'ferry' tanks. But, I get the sense that no one wants to do or look at the numbers. Shortround6 quoted numbers when he used the figure 237 against 305. Now he admits the fuel was there, but now uses the excuse that the tanks were substandard. I yielded to you in good faith. I think all who are reading would like to know the range calculations, if only to see that it was possible to fly further with an F4U than the current P-47 at that time. I think you should do the figures, since you have experience along this line, and were quick to point out that I was wrong. We can't change history, and shouldn't try. Shortround6 said it was not possible to go farther than the P-47. The numbers, please.




The numbers are not just about flying a certain distance. They are about flying that distance at a certain speed and altitude. The numbers are also about what happens _*after *_the drop tanks are gone. Standards changed, late war standards were for 5 minutes at WEP, 15 minutes at military power and an egress from the battle area at 210IAS at 25,000ft. No allowance for fuel saved in descending from 25,000ft and an allowance of 30 minutes at minimum cruise power. 
Perhaps in 1943 they were different? 

BTW in the original post where I mentioned the 237 gallons I did state " the F4U had 237 gallons of *protected storage*."

I did not change things at a later point in time. 

Use of the wing tanks is a bit iffy. Not a lot, but not quite 'normal'. The Pilot's manual says:

"In general, for high power operations at high altitude, use the fuel from the main tank, which is pressurised to maintain adequate fuel flow. It is possible, on planes equipped with wing tanks in the outer panels ( prior to the installation of of center section twin pylons), to operate under the above conditions while using fuel from the wing tanks if the auxiliary fuel pump is switched "ON"; under such conditions keep a close watch on the fuel pressure and cylinder head temperature. Some attention should be paid to the fuel quantities in the wing tanks to keep the fuel consumption in the tanks approximately equal in order to to maintain the airplane in approximate lateral balance., keeping the quantity in the right tank somewhat greater than that in the left tank, since the airplane has a tendency toward left wing heaviness in the landing condition with power on. Since no quantity gages are provided for the wing tanks, the quantities of fuel consumed must be determined from the time of operation on each tank." 

In another area of the manual we get this;
"The main fuel tank maintains a standpipe reserve of 50 U.S. gallons of fuel (42 Imp. gallons) after the fuel supply through the main line is exhausted. Bear in mind that the reserve fuel is made available as the quantity necessary for the final operation before landing, when the main fuel supply is exhausted and as noted below" 

This is pretty standard except for the 50 gal reserve which may be taking into account having to queue up to land on a carrier which can take longer than a land runway. There is no separate tank, just a valve which accesses the tank at a lower point than the main fuel line. However, like most planes.

"Set fuel tank selector on "RESERVE" for take-off, landing, diving and maneuvers. DO NOT CRUISE ON "RESERVE."

there is a section on when to use the auxiliary electric fuel pump. No mention is made of transferring fuel from one tank to another. Iti s also there in case the engine driven fuel pump fails. 

The main tank was pressurized above 12,000ft. This was automatic with a manual override. 

The Co2 system is a bit interesting. 

a few notes 
"This system does not force fuel out of the tanks."

"WARNING"
The vapor dilution system must not be used when operating on fuel from the outer tanks. Injection of the CO2 would result in the interruption of fuel flow through the lines. However, use of the vapor dilution system does not render the gasoline in the outer tanks unfit for further use"

I will leave it the members of this forum who are pilots to decide if any of these instructions raise any warning flags. 

I will also note that almost an entire squadron of Mustangs was lost when unanticipated winds blew them scores of miles off course returning from a raid, and while it was in 1944 the US lost around 80 planes during the Great Marianas turkey shoot due to running out of fuel. (more would have been lost except for measures like turning on ships lights and pointing search lights into the sky).
Cutting things too close can have very serious consequences.

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## drgondog (Jun 25, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Bill,
> 
> Do you have any pictures of the Allison powered Mustangs with 4 bladed props you could share? I didn't know they were even conceived let alone tested.
> 
> ...


Biff - I do not personally have any photos of the four blade prop - only the reference in the Chilton logbook. I think the P-40 you are referring to is the P-40Q but I will have to look


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## Peter Gunn (Jun 25, 2018)

One of the issues I was curious about when I first started posting here was the whole F4U v. P-51 debate, could the Corsair do the Mustangs job and vice versa. This place answered that for me.

If you peruse some of the threads here, it's apparent that the short answer is "No", in it's historical configuration the Corsair could not reasonably do the job of the P-51 in the ETO. I think it *could *have been made to work, but for the reasons posted, it wasn't needed and really had nothing to offer the AAF in Europe that wasn't already addressed better by the P-47. By the time all the issues had been overcome, the Mustang would have been flying ops anyway.

Now to really get feathers ruffled, could the Mustang do the Corsair's job? I say "Yes". The range of the P-51 stands it in good stead over the Pacific and it's more than the equal performance wise, of any IJA/IJN fighter it see's.

Korean War loss rates clearly dictate that the F4U had no clear advantage in the ground attack role over the Mustang either.

All that said, I still like the Corsair and still think it is a premier fighter of WWII that probably could tackle any role handed to it.

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## drgondog (Jun 25, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Yes, but I am talking Apr/May/Jun 1943. The Fleet Air Arm (Royal Naval Air Force) were just getting their Corsairs in 1943. And I do think that it would have been a surprise seeing them that far inland, flying cover for the bombers! The 78th surprised the Luftwaffe the day they went deeper eastward with their 'ferry' tanks. But, I get the sense that no one wants to do or look at the numbers. Shortround6 quoted numbers when he used the figure 237 against 305. Now he admits the fuel was there, but now uses the excuse that the tanks were substandard. I yielded to you in good faith. I think all who are reading would like to know the range calculations, if only to see that it was possible to fly further with an F4U than the current P-47 at that time. I think you should do the figures, since you have experience along this line, and were quick to point out that I was wrong. We can't change history, and shouldn't try. Shortround6 said it was not possible to go farther than the P-47. The numbers, please.



You have reason to raise the question "what would the operational Combat Radius for the F4U-1 have been if accepted by AAF for Long Range escort". That said, there are several practical factors that have to be addressed:
1. any F4U entering combat ops with 8th/9th AF would be required to have self sealing tanks. That is not a trivial task as the tanks would have to be ordered (short cycle but more than a month) per design specs presented from Vought to contractor (Goodyear, Firestone). The design features not only require installation of the tank during production, but also be addressable for removal and replacement due to damage. The change probably has to begin at Depots to avoid disruption of the F4U production plan. For comparison, the cycle from prototype fuselage fuel tank test of P-51B-1 to first assembled Kits delivered to Depots, was mid July 1943 to late October 1943. The actual production design release occurred in late September. NAA Field Services worked closely with Engineering to assist in the assembly of the Kits (including changes for 50% increase in O2). In addition, a 100 page Installation guide was developed to illustrate to the Depots what steps were required to modify existing Mustangs already produced before the production insertion. The insertion into the production cycle occurred in late December with the P-51B-10-NA block.
2. If the F4U O2 supply was designed to support SOP middle altitude combat ops vs 25,000 feet, then the changes to increase O2 bottles and possibly bulkhead/fuselage location - this may not be trivial. If you have the manual (I don't), look up the Oxygen supply information for both capacity and servicing requirements.
3. The actual testing for high altitude Long Range requirements (i.e greater speed than B-24 after bomb load dropped on return leg ~ 230mph TAS cruise) with drop tanks. The drag for the external drop tanks are significant. More than 40mph for Mustang (much cleaner) with 2x110 gallon tanks at 25,000 feet. I have no idea what the SFC at best cruise speed is for -8 in the F4U-1. As a rule of thumb, the best cruise settings for the P-47D achieved just under 3 miles per gallon at best cruise settings for Range. Less for Endurance. By contrast the P-51B w/85 gallon tank and 269 gallons of internal fuel was ~ 5 miles per gallon at 25K - more than 60% over the P-47D.

IF the R-2800-8 in the F4U was equal to the P-47D series with respect to cruise efficiency at 25K, the F4U-1 was indeed capable of performing long range escort to possible Berlin-Leipzig-Munich radius as the P-47D-25, introduced into ETO ops in June/July 1944.

So, we have arrived at my stopping point. I do not possess any flight test data that USN flew above 15000 feet but I do know that comparing maximum range (estimate) for Ferry purposes between a P-47D (305 gallons internal) and a F4U-1D (237 internal) using same SFC of 0.50 lb/HP/Hr for the R-2800 is 1135 vs 811 per the tables reproduced by Dean. I do know that AAF test flights for the P-47C/early D used the same SFC. I presume that they applied to F4U R-2800 also. 

These data below are for 10,000 feet. Using this set for calcs, the cruise efficiency extrapolated indicates that the Ferry Range advantage of 40% for 2% more P-47D-25 fuel (370gal) than F4U-1A (361gal). -----------------> points to about 9% less range for F4U-1A on same fuel. With 18% more internal fuel of F4U-1A than P-47D through the -22, then we project that the F4U-1A will have a Ferry Range close to the later P-47D-25. but 150 miles less than P-51B and about the same as the P-38J with LE tanks. 

So the F4U-1 with 361 gallons by the rule of thumb math above in terms of Combat Radius as defined by AAF, fits with P-47D-25 in July 1944. The Combat Radius reproduced by Dean on pg 599 is P-38J=275 miles with 410 gallons; P-47D-25 =225 miles w/370 gallons; P-51B= 375 miles w/269 gallons of internal fuel. The earlier P-47C and D's had only 125mi CR.

These Ferry Ranges are calculated based on Breguet theoretical optimal cruise capability - not actual.

F4U-1A Combat Radius --------->225 miles without external tanks, after 20 minutes of Combat (15 minutes at MP, 5 min WEP)
All data for 25,000 feet. 

The problem for practical extrapolation is that AAF would have had to intercept and over ride all delivery of the modified F4U-1 (combat tanks-wing, O2, remove arresting gear) by the time the P-47C was being delivered in late 1942 for combat ops in ETO in April/May 1943 That would speculatively require that Vought complete design changes in early 1942 for insertion into the production sequence. 

USN up to that? No. AAF up to that? No. Any awareness that Fighter escort to Berlin was necessary in late 1941 to initiate the transfer the prized USN asset based on Executive Order by Roosevelt?. No. Would the F4U-1A be better in air to air combat than P-4&C/D at 25000 feet? Probably but much less speed and dive capability. Below 20,000 feet? F4U-1A moderately superior maneuverability but slower.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The numbers are not just about flying a certain distance. They are about flying that distance at a certain speed and altitude. The numbers are also about what happens _*after *_the drop tanks are gone. Standards changed, late war standards were for 5 minutes at WEP, 15 minutes at military power and an egress from the battle area at 210IAS at 25,000ft. No allowance for fuel saved in descending from 25,000ft and an allowance of 30 minutes at minimum cruise power.
> Perhaps in 1943 they were different?
> 
> BTW in the original post where I mentioned the 237 gallons I did state " the F4U had 237 gallons of *protected storage*."
> ...


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## davparlr (Jun 25, 2018)

At the start of the war, the Japanese used unprotected fuel tanks and were noted for burning easily, not a configuration one would like to fight with.



Navalwarrior said:


> In early 1943 (I want to say Mar) the USAAF sponsored a Joint Fighter Meet at Elgin Field, FL where all services were allowed to fly the other service's aircraft. The USAAF pilots who flew the F4U and raved about its ability. It easily out manuvered the P-38, Allison P-51 and their P-47. The F4U was the champion fighter there, as per USAAF pilots who flew it.




In early ’43, the F4U would be the -1 version without water injection and the P-51 would be the baseline version with the -39 engine. The P-51A with the -81 engine, which was coming out at this time was a great performer even in the ETO where it was equal to or was out performing most Allied and Axis fighters up to 15K, maybe a bit higher. The data I have, mostly from Spitfireperformance shows the P-51A outperforming the F4U-1, often significantly, in both airspeed and climb up to about 23k ft, where the F4U-1 catches up. Unfortunately, the P-51A performance at these altitudes, was NOT deemed acceptable for combating the latest German fighters as power was dropping off quickly, AND, since the the F4U-1 had less than or similar performance of the P-51A, and, power was also dropping off quickly at altitude, neither would be acceptable as a high altitude bomber escort. Why would the AAF select a completely different aircraft when a better performing P-51A was coming off the assembly line, and the clearly superior P-51B was being built and was in flight test. In August, 1943, the water injected F4U-1(A) became operational and was a significant improvement over the F4U-1, mission operations began later in October. However, on December 1, 1943, about a month later, the P-51B flew its first sweep over France. It is apparent that the F4U would not have provided an acceptable bomber escort before the P-51B Mustang became available.


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## Clayton Magnet (Jun 25, 2018)

davparlr said:


> At the start of the war, the Japanese used unprotected fuel tanks


It is worthy of note, and often overlooked, but so did the US.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

drgondog said:


> You have reason to raise the question "what would the operational Combat Radius for the F4U-1 have been if accepted by AAF for Long Range escort". That said, there are several practical factors that have to be addressed:
> 1. any F4U entering combat ops with 8th/9th AF would be required to have self sealing tanks. That is not a trivial task as the tanks would have to be ordered (short cycle but more than a month) per design specs presented from Vought to contractor (Goodyear, Firestone). The design features not only require installation of the tank during production, but also be addressable for removal and replacement due to damage. The change probably has to begin at Depots to avoid disruption of the F4U production plan. For comparison, the cycle from prototype fuselage fuel tank test of P-51B-1 to first assembled Kits delivered to Depots, was mid July 1943 to late October 1943. The actual production design release occurred in late September. NAA Field Services worked closely with Engineering to assist in the assembly of the Kits (including changes for 50% increase in O2). In addition, a 100 page Installation guide was developed to illustrate to the Depots what steps were required to modify existing Mustangs already produced before the production insertion. The insertion into the production cycle occurred in late December with the P-51B-10-NA block.
> 2. If the F4U O2 supply was designed to support SOP middle altitude combat ops vs 25,000 feet, then the changes to increase O2 bottles and possibly bulkhead/fuselage location - this may not be trivial. If you have the manual (I don't), look up the Oxygen supply information for both capacity and servicing requirements.
> 3. The actual testing for high altitude Long Range requirements (i.e greater speed than B-24 after bomb load dropped on return leg ~ 230mph TAS cruise) with drop tanks. The drag for the external drop tanks are significant. More than 40mph for Mustang (much cleaner) with 2x110 gallon tanks at 25,000 feet. I have no idea what the SFC at best cruise speed is for -8 in the F4U-1. As a rule of thumb, the best cruise settings for the P-47D achieved just under 3 miles per gallon at best cruise settings for Range. Less for Endurance. By contrast the P-51B w/85 gallon tank and 269 gallons of internal fuel was ~ 5 miles per gallon at 25K - more than 60% over the P-47D.
> ...





davparlr said:


> At the start of the war, the Japanese used unprotected fuel tanks and were noted for burning easily, not a configuration one would like to fight with.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Res


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Res


Resp: Well said, boys! Thank you for taking the time to outline it for me. 
Why we waited for drop tanks, bomber crews of the 8th AF were getting slaughtered; on two separate missions we lost 60 4 engined bombers, for a total of 1200 lost in the last quarter of 1943. General Arnold was a very perceptive man; in 1940 he read the reports of the F4U when it broke 400 mph in level flight using the P&W R-2800. He immediately cancelled a request for P&W to build an inline engine, telling them to concentrate on refining the 2800, which went into the P-47 and F4U. Just think how things would have been different if the USAAC hadn't forbid building fighters capable of carrying external fuel stores in 1939. The P-47 would have been capable of flying deep penetration of Germany at the outset. But we cannot change history.


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## Kevin J (Jun 25, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp: Well said, boys! Thank you for taking the time to outline it for me.
> Why we waited for drop tanks, bomber crews of the 8th AF were getting slaughtered; on two separate missions we lost 60 4 engined bombers, for a total of 1200 lost in the last quarter of 1943. General Arnold was a very perceptive man; in 1940 he read the reports of the F4U when it broke 400 mph in level flight using the P&W R-2800. He immediately cancelled a request for P&W to build an inline engine, telling them to concentrate on refining the 2800, which went into the P-47 and F4U. Just think how things would have been different if the USAAC hadn't forbid building fighters capable of carrying external fuel stores in 1939. The P-47 would have been capable of flying deep penetration of Germany at the outset. But we cannot change history.


It seems to me that in 1939/40 no air forces had drop tanks, so was there a problem with the fuel transfer technology that prevented their use?


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> It seems to me that in 1939/40 no air forces had drop tanks, so was there a problem with the fuel transfer technology that prevented their use?


Resp:
The A6M Zero was outfitted with one drop tank. In fact, Gen Chennault sent a full report to Gen Marshall on the capabilites, to include range. In April 1941, Chennault went to Hawaii to brief AAF (and possibley Navy) pilots on the attributes of the Zero. Drop tanks not only increase range, they give defenders longer loitering times (as in air patrols).


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## eagledad (Jun 25, 2018)

Drgondog

Would these SAC's help with range calculations of the F4U at 25.000 feet?

Also, weren't F4Us used as escorts for B-24s over Truk and Rabaul?

Just trying to be helpful.

Eagledad


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## Kevin J (Jun 25, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> The A6M Zero was outfitted with one drop tank. In fact, Gen Chennault sent a full report to Gen Marshall on the capabilites, to include range. In April 1941, Chennault went to Hawaii to brief AAF (and possibley Navy) pilots on the attributes of the Zero. Drop tanks not only increase range, they give defenders longer loitering times (as in air patrols).


The Zero was first deployed in small numbers in 1940/41. This was the time that the Luftwaffe was building and operating the Bf 109E-7 with drop tank capability and when the RAF was experimenting with fixed tanks on the Hurricane I/II and Spitfire II so what the Japs were doing was in line with their European opponents. Drop tank capability appeared in 1941 on the P-40C after a change in the P-40's internal fuel capacity. Drop (slipper) tanks were fitted to the Spitfire Vb in 1941. Might I suggest that drop tanks appeared in the P-47 and P-51 later because both planes development had been rushed in order to get them into service fast so is that the same issue with the F4U-1/1A that the outer wing unprotected fuel tanks were there initially as a substitute for drop tanks.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

Resp
Attached is an EOV Range Map of allied fighter ranges. Let's look at the escort issue as if we were tasked to use the F4U-1A in the May 1943 time frame. Personal points asside, we have been ordered to incorporate the Corsair to support 8th AF in Long Range Escort. It is late May/early June 1943, and a Fleet Air Arm carrier just anchored in England, with 48 Corsairs on board. Gen Hap Arnold has ordered a plan for their use in LRE. We, the blog members are charged with coming up with a workable plan. 
As you can see on the EOV chart, the P-47 w/o drop tank can go 230 miles before it must turn from home. The Spitfire can go 175 miles before turning for home. 


drgondog said:


> You have reason to raise the question "what would the operational Combat Radius for the F4U-1 have been if accepted by AAF for Long Range escort". That said, there are several practical factors that have to be addressed:
> 1. any F4U entering combat ops with 8th/9th AF would be required to have self sealing tanks. That is not a trivial task as the tanks would have to be ordered (short cycle but more than a month) per design specs presented from Vought to contractor (Goodyear, Firestone). The design features not only require installation of the tank during production, but also be addressable for removal and replacement due to damage. The change probably has to begin at Depots to avoid disruption of the F4U production plan. For comparison, the cycle from prototype fuselage fuel tank test of P-51B-1 to first assembled Kits delivered to Depots, was mid July 1943 to late October 1943. The actual production design release occurred in late September. NAA Field Services worked closely with Engineering to assist in the assembly of the Kits (including changes for 50% increase in O2). In addition, a 100 page Installation guide was developed to illustrate to the Depots what steps were required to modify existing Mustangs already produced before the production insertion. The insertion into the production cycle occurred in late December with the P-51B-10-NA block.
> 2. If the F4U O2 supply was designed to support SOP middle altitude combat ops vs 25,000 feet, then the changes to increase O2 bottles and possibly bulkhead/fuselage location - this may not be trivial. If you have the manual (I don't), look up the Oxygen supply information for both capacity and servicing requirements.
> 3. The actual testing for high altitude Long Range requirements (i.e greater speed than B-24 after bomb load dropped on return leg ~ 230mph TAS cruise) with drop tanks. The drag for the external drop tanks are significant. More than 40mph for Mustang (much cleaner) with 2x110 gallon tanks at 25,000 feet. I have no idea what the SFC at best cruise speed is for -8 in the F4U-1. As a rule of thumb, the best cruise settings for the P-47D achieved just under 3 miles per gallon at best cruise settings for Range. Less for Endurance. By contrast the P-51B w/85 gallon tank and 269 gallons of internal fuel was ~ 5 miles per gallon at 25K - more than 60% over the P-47D.
> ...


Resp: 
The F4U-1A still had the two 62 gallon wing tanks. From the 863rd aircraft, the P&W R-2800-8W had a water injected engine, giving it 2250 HP. Would the water injection help at altitude?


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> It seems to me that in 1939/40 no air forces had drop tanks, so was there a problem with the fuel transfer technology that prevented their use?


Resp:
Captain Claire Chennault, USAAF, while flight operations officer at Barksdale Field, LA argued for figher drop tank capability in 1936. He was force to resign/retire, which was granted Jan 1937.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 25, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> It seems to me that in 1939/40 no air forces had drop tanks, so was there a problem with the fuel transfer technology that prevented their use?


There was several philsophies in play by all the major militaries that delayed the use of droptanks.

In the case of Japan, particularly the IJN, their aircraft were desigend with long range in mind, so droptanks were not a primary concern.
However, they did use them. Case in point: Mitsubishi's A5M4 variant, which was in use in the later part of the 1930's, did have provisions for drop tanks and did use them to give them the range needed to escort the G3M bombers.

Here's an A5M4 of the Akagi in flight, 1938.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The Zero was first deployed in small numbers in 1940/41. This was the time that the Luftwaffe was building and operating the Bf 109E-7 with drop tank capability and when the RAF was experimenting with fixed tanks on the Hurricane I/II and Spitfire II so what the Japs were doing was in line with their European opponents. Drop tank capability appeared in 1941 on the P-40C after a change in the P-40's internal fuel capacity. Drop (slipper) tanks were fitted to the Spitfire Vb in 1941. Might I suggest that drop tanks appeared in the P-47 and P-51 later because both planes development had been rushed in order to get them into service fast so is that the same issue with the F4U-1/1A that the outer wing unprotected fuel tanks were there initially as a substitute for drop tanks.


Resp:
Possibly, but in April 1943 the F4U-1 (-1A) got its second drop tank. But as has been posted, the 'main' issue to long range flying was 'protected internal fuel.'

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 25, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Captain Claire Chennault, USAAF, while flight operations officer at Barksdale Field, LA argued for figher drop tank capability in 1936. He was force to resign/retire, which was granted Jan 1937.


He was an unconventional, loudmouth, insubordinate, PITA who couldn't keep his mouth shut, even when ordered to, as people who have truer vision than their superiors so often are. I remember reading somewhere that the final straw was that he was discovered surreptitiously teaching pilots in his squadron "boom and zoom" tactics to keep them alive in combat, whereas AAC doctrine called for a Lufberry style turning fight. This, of course, was long before P-40 vs KI-43.
Cheers,
Wes


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## drgondog (Jun 25, 2018)

eagledad said:


> Drgondog
> 
> Would these SAC's help with range calculations of the F4U at 25.000 feet?
> 
> ...


The striking thing is that best cruise speed is 186 mph for 1550 mi ferry range w/361 gallons. Didn't see altitude but guessing 10K.

186mph TAS cruise in ETO means that F4U-1A can't keep pace with B-17. Also suggests that Bf 109s and FW 190s enter combat with 2X speed advantage.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

eagledad said:


> Drgondog
> 
> Would these SAC's help with range calculations of the F4U at 25.000 feet?
> 
> ...


Resp: 
When I reviewed individual AAR by 8th AF pilots for the year 1943, I was surprised that most bomber formations were @ 12,000 to 14,000 ft. Also noted that weather (pilot mentioned cloud ceiling) brought flying altitudes much lower than what was preached. If I remember correctly, P-47s flew 2 to 3 thou ft above the bombers. However, this all depended on 'ceiling' visibility.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

davparlr said:


> At the start of the war, the Japanese used unprotected fuel tanks and were noted for burning easily, not a configuration one would like to fight with.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Resp:
Likely true. However, one drop tank on the P-47 was insufficient. The first production variant with wing hard points for two additional drop tanks was the P-47D-15, which arrived about 4 mos later than the arrival of of the P-51B. And when they did arrive, their numbers were few. What I mean to say is the arrival of the Merlin Mustang did not immediately solve the escort issue plaguing 8th AF. It was a beginning.


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## drgondog (Jun 25, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> When I reviewed individual AAR by 8th AF pilots for the year 1943, I was surprised that most bomber formations were @ 12,000 to 14,000 ft. Also noted that weather (pilot mentioned cloud ceiling) brought flying altitudes much lower than what was preached. If I remember correctly, P-47s flew 2 to 3 thou ft above the bombers. However, this all depended on 'ceiling' visibility.


In 1942 and early 1943 8th AF planners directed the Bomb Wings to bomb from 9,000 to 17,000 on several missions (but not Most) to sub pens - but consistent doctrine throughout the ETO war was 22-27K. Later in 1944, B-24s were all combined into 2nd BD and they bombed primarily from 21-22K as the formation flying with B-24s was increasingly tricky above 24K. 

From mid October through February, the cloud cover was pervasive which stimulated development of radar imaging/targeting via H2X. Very bad weather frequently made flying at high altitudes problematic because of layered cloud cover ranging up to 30K. The mission leader for each division had option to seek better cruise conditions but flak was increasingly more accurate as altitudes dropped from plan.


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## Dawncaster (Jun 25, 2018)

I think the Corsair had a good 'range'.







However, there is a kind of range and it has different 'Combat Radius' depending on the mission profile. No matter how much fuel Corsair could have, if most of it's an extra fuel, It's not suitable for combat. In simple terms, the maximum combat radius refers to the situation in which the Corsair maintains 237 gallons of protected internal fuel as it enters the aerial combat and it's enough for combat and return. more extra fuel than that makes the Corsair to have a drop tank in air combat.

well, According to the 1945 Aircraft Action Reports, Corsairs take off for cap & fighter weep with two 150 gallon drop tanks or one 175 gallon drop tank and sometimes kept the drop tanks when they returned. However, it's fundamentally dangerous and the drop tank had been stated to cause buffeting in action report.

Another problem was the altitude performance of the dash 1 Corsairs.






Curve 5 shows the range at 1.5k, 15k and 25k under the same conditions. (3 for internal 237 gal only, 4 for 1 drop tank, 5 for 1 drop tank + 1 permanent tank)

As you can see, the range was decreasing as the cruise altitude increases.

at 1,500ft = 1895 miles with 176 mph - 100%
at 15,000ft = approx 1850 miles with 205 mph - 97.6%
at 25,000ft = approx 1750 miles with 250 mph - 92.3%

but case of ETO USAAF trio,





P-51s





P-38s





P-47s

Their range was increasing as the cruise altitude increases.

If internal fuel only, Corsair's range seems to be longer than the early USAAF trio, because it's calculated with best* cruise altitude. However, at altitude required by ETO USAAF, it was actually similar or shorter than trio. at 25,000 ft, perhaps it still would be slightly longer than the early P-38/47 without later version's additonal internal fuel tanks, but It's clearly shorter than the early P-51B/C.

* especially at 6,500ft that stated in pilot's hand book for dash 1 corsairs. it showed 1150 miles with 237gal intenal fuel - approx 15% longer than ACP's range at 1,500 feet.

As the early P-38/47 did, it seems clear that the Corsairs was also unable to fully escort the heavy bombers. And according to the requirements on the war, they and the Corsair were upgraded in different directions. Therefore, there is no need to consider the cruising speed required for deep and high escort. it's inappropriate.

Anyway, the dash 1 Corsair was not a particularly low altitude fighter, It's critical altitude was similar to Fw 190 A/D or Typhoon/Tempest. compared to them, enough performance, good maneuverability, high payload, and longer range would be good to use as medium altitude fighter or fighter-bomber, as in PTO.

Of course, there was no need for a 'new' fighter of such type for the USAAF in ETO.

However, Once the Corsairs of the Marine Corps was considered for special mission. It's the following incident.

_*'One of the most intriguing aspects of US Marine Corps aviation in World War II involved events far, far removed from the Pacific. In mid June 1944 German bases in northern France began launching V1 “buzz bombs” against London and environs. The early cruise missiles were wildly inaccurate but caused widespread damage.

Project Danny was the US Navy/US Marine Corps portion of the broader Allied effort called Operation Crossbow – air attacks on V1 sites. Because the launch batteries were so small, they were both hard to find and to strike by conventional bombers. One of the options seriously considered was placing US Marine Corps F4U squadrons on escort carriers in European waters, arming the aircraft with 12.75in. Tiny Tim rockets and using them against the “doodlebug” sites. The US Navy was serious enough to assign a full Marine air group to Danny – five Corsair squadrons of Col Edward Pugh’s MAG-51. Training proceeded on both coasts, with carrier qualifications (CQs) and specialized weapons qualification. However, low Tiny Tim production hampered pilot familiarization with the weapon.

The program soon ran afoul of more serious problems on the home front too – the “battle lines” along the Potomac River. The US Army chief of staff, Gen George C. Marshall, harbored a lingering resentment toward the US Marine Corps dating from the Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918, when two “devil dog” regiments grabbed most of the headlines despite them serving in a US Army division. Vice Adm Patrick Bellinger, Commander Naval Air Forces Atlantic Fleet, arranged for a Joint Chiefs briefing on Danny, with Cdr Thomas Moorer conducting the presentation. Marshall listened to part of the briefing, then stood up. On the way out he said, “There will never be a Marine in Europe as long as I’m chief of staff.” 

Moorer, a future Joint Chiefs chairman, realized that the program was almost certainly doomed. He was right – Danny was canceled at the end of July. In addition to political infighting in Washington, D.C., it is uncertain how far the project would have proceeded. Danny was overtaken by events on the Continent, as Anglo-American armies had liberated most of northern France by the end of September. The squadrons resumed ordinary predeployment training for the Pacific instead.'*_





Booooo~~~



drgondog said:


> Below 20,000 feet? F4U-1A moderately superior maneuverability but slower.



Below 20,000 feet, P-47C/D was slower than F4U-1A.

If it's P-47B vs early birdcage F4U-1, I would have agreed. According to the test flight documents, P-47B was faster than P-47C/D. Perhaps it seems to be due to lighter gross weight and shorter fuselage, different propeller blades. On the other hand, the early Birdcage F4U-1 had less altitude performance than the F4U-1A. with same power - military rating, it's only 2 mph slow at sea level, but 12 mph at 10,000 feet and 13 mph at 20,000 ft. so F4U's speed advantage was only for neutral blower.

but P-47D vs F4U-1A, it's different case.

due to improved altitude performance, F4U-1A was faster than P-47D up to it's critical altitude - 20,000ft. and even without water injection, the F4U-1A was almost as fast as the P-47D with water injection. and 2600 bhp, overboosted 65"hg P-47D also slower than F4U-1A with water injection at below 20,000 ft.






Considering the difference in sea level speed between early Birdcage F4U-1 and F4U-1A, the difference in drag was not large(without SC - in pure output but only 2 mph Vmax difference). Idk exact reason, but the supercharger of the F4U-1A was much better perform than the early Birdcage F4U-1. Therefore, F4U-1A was able to bring its speed advantage up to 20k against P-47D. and the new 6501A-0 propeller blade also helped raise altitude performance.

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## drgondog (Jun 25, 2018)

"Dawncaster, post: 1413363, 

but P-47D vs F4U-1A, it's different case.

due to improved altitude performance, F4U-1A was faster than P-47D up to it's critical altitude - 20,000ft. and even without water injection, the F4U-1A was almost as fast as the P-47D with water injection. and 2600 bhp, overboosted 65"hg P-47D also slower than F4U-1A with water injection at below 20,000 ft.

View attachment 499381


Considering the difference in sea level speed between early Birdcage F4U-1 and F4U-1A, the difference in drag was not large(without SC - in pure output but only 2 mph Vmax difference). Idk exact reason, but the supercharger of the F4U-1A was much better perform than the early Birdcage F4U-1. Therefore, F4U-1A was able to bring its speed advantage up to 20k against P-47D. and the new 6501A-0 propeller blade also helped raise altitude performance.[/QUOTE]
I agree most of your points, but your data for the P-47D-10 data you showed was for std 130/100 octane and 56" at WEP. To look at P-47D operational data with 44-1 fuel in mid 1944 and 65/70" MP shows the speed advantage at 439mph at 65"MP with WI (and 444 mph at 23K with 70" and WI. 417 mph at 14,000 and 70"MP. The performance for the R-2800-63 with WI and 44-1 fuel was in ops in mid 1944. A little after F4U-1A deployed to the Fleet/USMC in SWP.

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/p-47/p47d-44-1-level.jpg

That said, I was in error when I stated that the P-47C/D was faster than -1A, I meant F4U-1. To follow your thread, the next block of comparisons should be F4U-4 vs P-47M or even early delivery P-51H-1

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> P-47C, G and early D have had a belly tank that was able to hold 200 gals, workable between SL and ~15000 ft due not being pressurized (fuel will be boiling above that altitude). People at England were filling it half full, sent them towards German-held Europe, combat radius was ~350 miles. People in Australia were faster on the ball, and produced metalic tanks in Brisbane, that IIRC were able to be pressurized, and held 200 gals. Flat-ish shaped.
> Americans were flying a quantitiy of P-47s via Iceland, using two wing drop tanks, August 1943. Per 'America's hundred thousand'.
> F4U should not have problems flying well above 30000 ft.
> Vought data states combat radius of the F4U at, IIRC, 325 miles with 1 drop tank, and 350 miles with two; stated is that internal fuel is the limiting factor.


Resp:
When the commander of 5th AF Gen Kenney was told that he would no longer be getting P-38s, but instead P-47D-5 and -6, and that they were not drop tank capable . . . he reluctantly accepted. He immediately called his engineers and told them to construct a drop tank. The he took the diagram/figures to Ford Motor Co of Australia to have them produce a 200 gal drop tank. In just less than 60 days, his P-47s were flying long range mission. What did 8th AF, complained and waited. 
I question the date of P-47s with two wing drop tanks. A ferry tank of 200 gallons? Yes in August 1943.
Internal fuel for F4U is the crucial issue to ETO long range escort.

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## Dawncaster (Jun 25, 2018)

drgondog said:


> "Dawncaster, post: 1413363,
> 
> I agree most of your points, but your data for the P-47D-10 data you showed was for std 130/100 octane and 56" at WEP. To look at P-47D operational data with 44-1 fuel in mid 1944 and 65/70" MP shows the speed advantage at 439mph at 65"MP with WI (and 444 mph at 23K with 70" and WI. 417 mph at 14,000 and 70"MP. The performance for the R-2800-63 with WI and 44-1 fuel was in ops in mid 1944. A little after F4U-1A deployed to the Fleet/USMC in SWP.
> 
> ...



Then time for colourful image!




(rev 2)

with 150 grade fuel - 70"Hg overboost, P-47D's monstrous 2800 bhp nearly eroded the advantage of the F4U-1A.

at 10,000 feet, both fighters already have almost the same speed and stay it up to 15,000 feet.

above 15,000 feet, the Jug begins to reveal its superiority. and it's increasing as the altitude increases.

well, it's overboost with 150 grade fuel vs standard boost with 130 grade fuel.

So for more 'colourful' comparison, I also draw experimental overboosted curve for the F4U-1.

However, since PTO has never been supplied with 150 grade fuel, an enhanced water jet was used instead. the horsepower was not improved as using high octane fuel, so there was no dramatic speed increase like the Jug. Therefore, even with overboosting, the F4U-1 did not recover it's advantage when P-47D using standard rating. and it's experimental only, there is no information that is used for actual service.

F4U-1 also had B-series R-2800 like P-47D, so it's expected that using 150-octane fuel would improve performance. but Corsair was PTO fighter, so it's just another 'what if....' case.

By the way, was the P-47D's 2800 bhp with 70"Hg was actually serviced? I thought 2600 bhp with 65~67"hg were actually used for military service. well, it's clear that 70"hg has been tested, but the Eighth Air Force document states that 67"hg was used. in addition, the army document comparing the current P-47 models shows that the D-30 had 2600 bhp(M/N had 2800 bhp), So I used it for the first comparison in previous post.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 25, 2018)

P-47C and early Ds of the 4th, 56th and 78th FG were using the flush-fitting 200 gallon tank operationally from mid-summer '43 onward. The only problem was that the tank needed to be pressurized above 10,000, so they only carried 100 gallons.
However, by August of '43, they had devised a way to pressurize the tanks which also allowed them to use other tanks, including the British made paper tank.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

Dawncaster said:


> I think the Corsair had a good 'range'.
> 
> View attachment 499305
> 
> ...


Resp:
I have about a dozen b/w photos of Royal NZAF F4U (mostly -1A variants) that show them returning to the airfields with drop tanks attached. Several carrying 3 drop tanks. Were they just ferrying them to another airfield (island hopping?). Might have been the easiest way to transport drop tanks. So they could have been empty, which would keep them from being hazardous.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 25, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> P-47C and early Ds of the 4th, 56th and 78th FG were using the flush-fitting 200 gallon tank operationally from mid-summer '43 onward. The only problem was that the tank needed to be pressurized above 10,000, so they only carried 100 gallons.
> However, by August of '43, they had devised a way to pressurize the tanks which also allowed them to use other tanks, including the British made paper tank.


Resp:
I have read about both the 78th and 56th FG . . . that they used the flush fitting 200 gal belly tanks (called ferry tanks) only once or twice in 1943 as they often refused to 'release' once they entered combat with the Luftwaffe, they lost performance and manuverability. The 78th was able to surprise enemy fighters as the German pilots knew the distance and turnaround area/line, so thought they were safe from Allied fighters. so they failed to see the P-47s until they were fired upon. What impresses me is that these pilots knew that these large tanks would negatively affect their flying ability . . . yet insisted that they fly with them in order to engage. I take my hat off to them! If you read anything about 8th AF leadership, you will see much 'inaction.' The decision to use the ferry tanks came from the pilots after approaching the ground crews in trying to find ways to increase the range of their P-47s. I take my hat off to them!

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## wuzak (Jun 25, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> The F4U-1A still had the two 62 gallon wing tanks. From the 863rd aircraft, the P&W R-2800-8W had a water injected engine, giving it 2250 HP. Would the water injection help at altitude?



Short answer is no.

The long answer is it depends on the engine's critical altitude and what you would consider to "at altitude".

Water injection or Anti Detonation Injection (ADI) allows more boost without causing detonation. More boost gives more power, but a lower critical altitude.

What will happen, therefore, is the higher boost level with ADI will be held to the critical altitude for that boost level. Above the critical altitude the boost will fall off until it reaches the non-ADI maximum boost level and the critical altitude for that boost level. Between the two critical altitudes the boost will be above the non-ADI boost, so ADI is required.

It seems to be 1-2,000ft difference between normal and military power critical altitudes for the F4U-1, and 4-5,000ft difference from normal to combat power.

Combat power critical altitude ~18,000ft.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 26, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Short answer is no.
> 
> The long answer is it depends on the engine's critical altitude and what you would consider to "at altitude".
> 
> ...


Resp:
Would a higher actane fuel improve performance in an F4u-1A?


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 26, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> P-47C and early Ds of the 4th, 56th and 78th FG were using the flush-fitting 200 gallon tank operationally from mid-summer '43 onward. The only problem was that the tank needed to be pressurized above 10,000, so they only carried 100 gallons.
> However, by August of '43, they had devised a way to pressurize the tanks which also allowed them to use other tanks, including the British made paper tank.


Resp:
Yes, you are correct. However, it was September 1943 when each FS took its turn in having belly tank fittings (kits from the states) installed on their C and D models. Seeing photos of P-47Cs models with a belly tank, gave the false impression that C models came drop tank capable. However, we know it was due to re-fit long after they flew months of combat.


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## wuzak (Jun 26, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Would a higher actane fuel improve performance in an F4u-1A?



Same problem.

If the supercharger is changed to give higher critical altitude then ADI and higher octane fuels would improve altitude performance, but otherwise teh gains are at altitudes below critical altitude.

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## tomo pauk (Jun 26, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> It seems to me that in 1939/40 no air forces had drop tanks, so was there a problem with the fuel transfer technology that prevented their use?



Germans used drop tanks on their fighter biplanes in 1930s, US used external taks (both 'slipper' and drop-shaped) on their fighter biplanes in 1930s. Plus the Japanese on A5M Claude, at least.



Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> When the commander of 5th AF Gen Kenney was told that he would no longer be getting P-38s, but instead P-47D-5 and -6, and that they were not drop tank capable . . . he reluctantly accepted. He immediately called his engineers and told them to construct a drop tank. The he took the diagram/figures to Ford Motor Co of Australia to have them produce a 200 gal drop tank. In just less than 60 days, his P-47s were flying long range mission. What did 8th AF, complained and waited.
> I question the date of P-47s with two wing drop tanks. A ferry tank of 200 gallons? Yes in August 1943.
> Internal fuel for F4U is the crucial issue to ETO long range escort.



The 8th AF did not waited, though they probably compained, and rightly so, since the value of escort fighter was known well before ww2 started, and at least the Battle of Britain proved that once again, on large scale. Had the brass at USAAF listened, the P-47 would've been outfitted with suitable drop-tank capability from day one, with easy 450-500 mile radius of action.
People at 8th were 1st filling the 200 gal ferry tank half full, then used 75 gal DT, then the 108/110 one. Just like they replaced the US-produced radio with British set so pilots can communicate, just like they were modifying engines to work reliably - all in Spring/Summer of 1943.
The entry for the P-47, pg.288, in the 'America's hundred thousand' book, states that in August 1943, ten P-47D-5 were outfitted with 2x165 gal drop tanks, and were air-ferried to the UK.

This is taken from the manual for the P-47B, C, G, and early D, dated January 20th 1943. Manual plainly states that P-47B is not outfitted with drop tank facility, while later models (C, G, D) have it.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 26, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Germans used drop tanks on their fighter biplanes in 1930s, US used external taks (both 'slipper' and drop-shaped) on their fighter biplanes in 1930s. Plus the Japanese on A5M Claude, at least.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 26, 2018)

Resp: 
Recommend you read the history of the


tomo pauk said:


> Germans used drop tanks on their fighter biplanes in 1930s, US used external taks (both 'slipper' and drop-shaped) on their fighter biplanes in 1930s. Plus the Japanese on A5M Claude, at least.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Resp:
P-47 Drop Tanks in ETO:
- July/Aug 1943: used 200 gal ferry tanks (particularly filled). Not a drop tank but could be released in flight, but more often than not, it failed to jettison.
- 31 Aug 1943: 75 gallon tear drop shape, initially designed for P-39. In 1944, used as underwing tank.
- Sept 1943: 108 gal British designed/ manufactured paper tank. Used as wing tanks Apr 1944
- Feb 1944: 150 gal drop tank. Used as under wing tank 22 May 1944
- Feb 1945: 215 gal belly tank
Note that most of the P-47s in England had to have kits installed in order to carry one belly tank. The three fighter groups rotated through 'retro fit' centers using kits sent from the US. This was done/completed @ Sept 1943.
I have a photo of a P-47D-1 at Meeks Field, Iceland with cowl flaps and two 150 gal tanks fitted, one under each wing. However, initially, the wing hard points were for bombs only. The first production P-47 that had 'wet' wing hard points was the P-47D-15. The photo states that the tanks are Lockheed underwing fuel tanks. I suspect these were 'tubed' for the ferry flight to England. It looks like Apr/May 1944 before P-47D-15 became operational in the ETO.
PS. Able to carry a ferry tank is not the same as drop tanks, as ferry tanks work at lower altitudes and in level flight. Drop tanks are designed to be released from the aircraft when empty or just prior to combat. They must also work at all altitudes.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 26, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> ...Note that most of the P-47s in England had to have kits installed in order to carry one belly tank. The three fighter groups rotated through 'retro fit' centers using kits sent from the US. This was done/completed @ Sept 1943.


These P-47 groups had devised a way to pressurize their tanks using air pressure from the airpump that typically bled off into the exhaust, a certain type of thermostat that was scrounged locally and a glass elbow tube all before August '43.

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## tomo pauk (Jun 26, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Recommend you read the history of the
> 
> Resp:
> ...



Thank you for the effort to type out the 'hard' data. I happen to read histories, though I don't know what kind of history you mean specifically. The time-line for those drop tanks can be also read at the 'AHT' book. 
Granted, usage of the 'cow udder' slipper tank was not an ideal thing, since those couldn't be pressurized, and sometimes were har to jettison. Again - it was a mistake of the AAF brass not to take into account the experiences of the BoB at least, and thus not specifying actual & workable 'combat' drop tanks for the P-47s.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 26, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> These P-47 groups had devised a way to pressurize their tanks using air pressure from the airpump that typically bled off into the exhaust, a certain type of thermostat that was scrounged locally and a glass elbow tube all before August '43.


Resp:
Agreed. That they perfected it . . . before August 1943, I can agree to. LOL! Somewhere my mind says Sept 43 was when they completed retro fit of their P-47 in Theater.
I have a book that covers 8th AF. Gen Arnold was very disappointed wth Eaker. Both bomber and fighter commanders were relieved, 30 days w/in one another. Eaker did not understand the importance of escort fighters for bombing. His air mission planner, a LTC, came to Eaker to ask his advice . . . was told to do whatever he thought best. He never offered any assistance in regard to mission priorities. When Eaker gave the first Mustangs (P-51Bs) to arrive in the ETO away to the 9th AF, Arnold was furious! To get use of the Mustangs for escort, 9th AF was tasked with providing escort for 8th AF. Doolittle soon relieved Eaker. When Eaker asked the planning officer to accompany him to the Med, the officer declined.


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## drgondog (Jun 26, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Agreed. That they perfected it . . . before August 1943, I can agree to. LOL! Somewhere my mind says Sept 43 was when they completed retro fit of their P-47 in Theater.
> I have a book that covers 8th AF. Gen Arnold was very disappointed wth Eaker. Both bomber and fighter commanders were relieved, 30 days w/in one another. Eaker did not understand the importance of escort fighters for bombing. His air mission planner, a LTC, came to Eaker to ask his advice . . . was told to do whatever he thought best. He never offered any assistance in regard to mission priorities. When Eaker gave the first Mustangs (P-51Bs) to arrive in the ETO away to the 9th AF, Arnold was furious! To get use of the Mustangs for escort, 9th AF was tasked with providing escort for 8th AF. Doolittle soon relieved Eaker. When Eaker asked the planning officer to accompany him to the Med, the officer declined.


That is a little too simplistic.

The Army Directorate of Ground Support (Schlatter) was perhaps the earliest single most important driver to remove the Mustang from the clutches of Material Command. The Director- Military Requirements (Fairchild) also joined to move the AAF to the Mustang for Dive Bomber/attack fighter role leading to the A-36 and securing the P-51-1 from the RAF Mustang I order to fulfill both training and Observation/Recon 'hole' in Tactical Army Aviation. The impetus not only pulled the Allison Mustang into AAF but also escalated priority of Merlin based P-51B before the XP-51B was completed.

9th AF was the designated repository for all initial P-51Bs. Eaker didn't 'assign them' because they were not deployed to 8th AF. His sin was to not appeal to Arnold to get them. The first arrived in UK a month before Black Thursday - and Eaker was still convinced that the 8th could survive the impending attrition if he could just get the 600 heavy bomber inventory that he had fought for.

Pulling 354FG, then allowing trade for 357FG for P-47D equipped 358th FG, then pulling the 363rd FG was a decision by Spaatz and Doolittle in concert with Arnold approval. The 354th and 363rd went back under 9th/TAC in late May 1944

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 26, 2018)

drgondog said:


> That is a little too simplistic.
> 
> The Army Directorate of Ground Support (Schlatter) was perhaps the earliest single most important driver to remove the Mustang from the clutches of Material Command. The Director- Military Requirements (Fairchild) also joined to move the AAF to the Mustang for Dive Bomber/attack fighter role leading to the A-36 and securing the P-51-1 from the RAF Mustang I order to fulfill both training and Observation/Recon 'hole' in Tactical Army Aviation. The impetus not only pulled the Allison Mustang into AAF but also escalated priority of Merlin based P-51B before the XP-51B was completed.
> 
> ...


Resp:
Thanks for the correction on Merlin Mustang arrival in the ETO. I was under the impression that Gen Eaker placed his faith in the YB-40, a super-gunned B-17 in mid 1943 . . . rather than fighter escort. The commander of Bombers made a formal request in 'writing' to Fighter Command for more escorts.


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## drgondog (Jun 26, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Thanks for the correction on Merlin Mustang arrival in the ETO. I was under the impression that Gen Eaker placed his faith in the YB-40, a super-gunned B-17 in mid 1943 . . . rather than fighter escort. The commander of Bombers made a formal request in 'writing' to Fighter Command for more escorts.


The YB-40 was introduced and died in Blitz Week due to the myriad issues. The emergency re-deployment of the 55th FG occurred after August 17, 1943 Schweinfurt mission.. He drove th

The failure to have Long Range Escort in mid 1943 had many, many mothers - least of all Eaker. His attitude was "I need them - but don't see them'. If you want the single most important driver in 1943, look to Barney Giles Asst Chief of Staff AAF when Arnold told him - solve the problem by December (1943).

Immediately after being tasked by Arnold in early July 1943, he tasked Material Command and NAA, Lockheed and Republic to increase internal fuel. The result was the 85 gallon fuse tank for P-51B, the 55 gal LE fuel tank and intercooler re-design for P-38J, and the increase from 305 to 370 gal for P-47 plus wing pylons and fuel feed which arrived in P-47D-25 and P-47D-15 respectively.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 26, 2018)

drgondog said:


> The YB-40 was introduced and died in Blitz Week due to the myriad issues. The emergency re-deployment of the 55th FG occurred after August 17, 1943 Schweinfurt mission.. He drove th
> 
> The failure to have Long Range Escort in mid 1943 had many, many mothers - least of all Eaker. His attitude was "I need them - but don't see them'. If you want the single most important driver in 1943, look to Barney Giles Asst Chief of Staff AAF when Arnold told him - solve the problem by December (1943).
> 
> Immediately after being tasked by Arnold in early July 1943, he tasked Material Command and NAA, Lockheed and Republic to increase internal fuel. The result was the 85 gallon fuse tank for P-51B, the 55 gal LE fuel tank and intercooler re-design for P-38J, and the increase from 305 to 370 gal for P-47 plus wing pylons and fuel feed which arrived in P-47D-25 and P-47D-15 respectively.


Resp:
I am aware of Armold's letter to Giles, and his contribution to fighter production. He made things move! I also have read Arnold's ltr to Giles in mid 1943. But I must digress to Eaker; he met with English leaders for drop tank (forget the date, but it was fairly early 1943) production, but failed to confirm the order. In the mean time he cancelled a request for drop tanks from the US, as he thought a local source would take care of it. Before Eaker realized his error, much time had expired. Result? Fighters without drop tanks. I could go on.

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## fubar57 (Jun 26, 2018)

Resp: Oh please do..........

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 26, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> I am aware of Armold's letter to Giles, and his contribution to fighter production. He made things move! I also have read Arnold's ltr to Giles in mid 1943. But I must digress to Eaker; he met with English leaders for drop tank (forget the date, but it was fairly early 1943) production, but failed to confirm the order. In the mean time he cancelled a request for drop tanks from the US, as he thought a local source would take care of it. Before Eaker realized his error, much time had expired. Result? Fighters without drop tanks. I could go on.





fubar57 said:


> Resp: Oh please do..........


Resp:
Eaker rarely met with RAF leadership. As a result, there was little coordination between the two Allied Air Forces. He and Hunter (fighter commander) were like two peas in a pod. Both were not very creative or entergetic. Arnold kept prodding Eaker for information on operations and specifics in mission results. Eaker gave vague and routine language that was difficult to understand. Replies were never timely (per Arnold). So Arnold made up forms that required listed spaces for specifies, what we today would call 'metrics.' It is unclear if Eaker understood what was being asked of him, as the forms rarely arrived with worthwhile information. (Just thinking aloud, did Eaker think if he was honest, the info would come back to haunt him?). Arnold left Eaker in command, but replaced Hunter and the Bomber Commander within 30 days of each other (was Arnold thinking Eaker was letting his subordinates slide? Not sure). If there was a lack of communication w Arnold, was there a lack of communication within Eaker's command? Oversight? It may have looked to Arnold that there was no oversight!


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## GrauGeist (Jun 26, 2018)

Interestingly enough, Arnold was aware that the P-38E/F, starting with the late "E" (and the unarmed F-4-1-LO), had plumbing for droptanks in 1941.


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 27, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Interestingly enough, Arnold was aware that the P-38E/F, starting with the late "E" (and the unarmed F-4-1-LO), had plumbing for droptanks in 1941.


Resp:
Actually, the F model, which was on the production line at the time of Pearl Harbor, was the only P-38 to be drop tank capable. The P-38Es were retro fitted. I have no knowledge of the F-4-1-LO either way. However, even though the P-38Fs were the first USAAF fighter to reach England, these same P-38s were sent to North Africa. Why, because with drop tanks they could quickly get there by flying them there. No need to put them on a ship.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 27, 2018)

The E and F both were retro-fitted OR installed while being manufactured, as the plumbing design was in the works while they were being manufactured.
The F-4-1-LO is an unarmed E variant.
The G was the first to have the plumbing as production standard.


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## Juha2 (Jun 27, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Germans used drop tanks on their fighter biplanes in 1930s, US used external taks (both 'slipper' and drop-shaped) on their fighter biplanes in 1930s. Plus the Japanese on A5M Claude, at least....



Yes, and the VVS (Soviet AF) began use droptanks during the Winter War against Finland (30 Nov 1939 - 13 Mar 1940) to extend the combat radius of its fighters after sometimes heavy losses of its unescorted bombers.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 27, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The E and F both were retro-fitted OR installed while being manufactured, as the plumbing design was in the works while they were being manufactured.
> The F-4-1-LO is an unarmed E variant.
> The G was the first to have the plumbing as production standard.


Resp:
Inre to E & F; yes and yes. What is important is that it was ahead of other US fighters at the time, in having the capability of flying extremely long distances due to being drop tank capable. If it hadn't, there likely would have been no Yamamoto shoot down. History would have been very different.

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## fubar57 (Jun 27, 2018)

The P-38s on the Yamamoto raid carried a one off fuel load. Instead of the usual two 165 US gallon drop tanks, they used one 330 US gallon fuel tank and one 165 US gallon tanl

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 27, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> The P-38s on the Yamamoto raid carried a one off fuel load. Instead of the usual two 165 US gallon drop tanks, they used one 330 US gallon fuel tank and one 165 US gallon tanl


I have been trying to find out who and where these large tanks were made. They had to have been immediately available (read that they were flown in 'quick time'). So what was the logistics trail?


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## Peter Gunn (Jun 27, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> I have been trying to find out who and where these large tanks were made. They had to have been immediately available (read that they were flown in 'quick time'). So what was the logistics trail?



Seems to me I read they flew them in (330g tanks) from Australia but now I cannot find the reference for it and am now not sure who made them and why. If they were fabricated for this mission or not.

I agree though, without them there's probably no Yamamoto mission, although if he had lived I doubt there's much he could have done different, it wasn't like he was going to turn the tide by any stretch.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 27, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Seems to me I read they flew them in (330g tanks) from Australia but now I cannot find the reference for it and am now not sure who made them and why. If they were fabricated for this mission or not.
> 
> I agree though, without them there's probably no Yamamoto mission, although if he had lived I doubt there's much he could have done different, it wasn't like he was going to turn the tide by any stretch.


Resp:
If I recall correctly, the plan/execution had a short turnaround time frame, so I want to say the 330 gal tanks already existed/physically available. Likely built for another aircraft.

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## drgondog (Jun 27, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Interestingly enough, Arnold was aware that the P-38E/F, starting with the late "E" (and the unarmed F-4-1-LO), had plumbing for droptanks in 1941.


Dave - Several sources including Bodie and DeWitt Coop point to the Lockheed-Kelsey collaboration to provide pylon, plumbing and pylons was not known to Arnold until deployment of 1st and 14th FG was being planned for 8th AF in March/April 1942.

General Bob Olds was the father of the initiative to hang drop tanks on fighters despite entrenched AAC attitudes. Kelsey first proposed to the Fighter Board that drop tanks be designed and provided for the P-36. Arnold rejected the notion for combat tanks but Olds didn't hear a NO for Ferry capability.

Olds provided the command authority for Kelsey to approach Lockheed in mid 1941. The result was a pylon, sway brace capability for first, the 165 gal, then 330 gallon tanks. Kits were produced and released in Feb 1942. About that time during a Fighter Conference hosted by Arnold - the highest priority was the development of combat tanks for high altitude operations - self sealing etc.

Arnold directed Kelsey when he (kesley) returned from UK tour with Spaatz to proceed with a program for development and test - to support Ferry ops to UK for 8th AF.

That is when Kelsey sprung the 'news' that he had already begun at Lockheed. That said, the 165 gallon tank was the last to pass Combat tests ~ August 1943. But the Ferry tanks were used in June-July 1942 Atlantic crossing for P-38.

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## Navalwarrior (Jun 27, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Dave - Several sources including Bodie and DeWitt Coop point to the Lockheed-Kelsey collaboration to provide pylon, plumbing and pylons was not known to Arnold until deployment of 1st and 14th FG was being planned for 8th AF in March/April 1942.
> 
> General Bob Olds was the father of the initiative to hang drop tanks on fighters despite entrenched AAC attitudes. Kelsey first proposed to the Fighter Board that drop tanks be designed and provided for the P-36. Arnold rejected the notion for combat tanks but Olds didn't hear a NO for Ferry capability.
> 
> ...


Resp:
Thanks drgondog. Sometimes it is better if the boss isn't presented with a decision. It often works against you. "Sir, I was just thinking we might need to 'ferry' some aircraft quickly to a destination." Well son, you did the right thing by add extra tanks for fuel!"


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## Navalwarrior (Jun 27, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Thanks drgondog. Sometimes it is better if the boss isn't presented with a decision. It often works against you. "Sir, I was just thinking we might need to 'ferry' some aircraft quickly to a destination." Well son, you did the right thing by add extra tanks for fuel!"


Resp:
Even though Arnold was old school, he did pay attention to aircraft development, even aircraft that was used by the other services, such as when the prototype F4U clocked 400 mph with the P&W R-2800 radial engine level fight, circa 1940. Thinking about the coming conflict with Japan & Germany, it would be hard not to understand that this war would involve extreme distances. I am sure Arnold was aware of the 1939 restriction against incorporating 'drop tanks' on fighters. Gen Olds and Kelsey likely cemented Arnold thinking that he must ignore 'the ruling against drop tanks.' However, I think Arnold recognized the importance/significance that he must act, rule or no rule. Since Arnold may have been swayed by the phrase 'ferry tanks' when they were indeed 'drop tanks' (at some point), he probably thought that he could reply 'they are needed for ferrying aircraft to their destination' if ever challenged.
Strategic Bombing of Germany, whether it solely targeted military instillations, war production, communication centers or cities and agriculture areas . . . brought the war into Germany. However, during WWI Germany was largely untouched as the ground war was almost entirely fought in France. Yes, there were battles fought elsewhere, but either east or further south of France. And yes, the Germans lost sons & fathers, but the citizens got a free ride outside of the war zone. So I believe it was important that the Allies to gave them something to remember. Strategic Bombing brought the war home to Germany. The air war in the ETO was considered the most hazardous, by most historians.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the hundreds of thousands that made it happen!!


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

The p51 wins this hands down. Not that it wasn't an excellent aircraft but the post war legend that sprang up around it is, well, a legend. A few frequently printed examples; " the p51 was the only fighter that go make it to Berlin and back". Truth is by the time p51s were there in any significant numbers(early 44) the range of the p47d had been expanded to almost 700 miles(boxted airfield to Berlin is 589 miles) and of course the p38 had an even longer range with drop tanks. Another one of my favorites" the p51 turned things around durring big week" the truth: p51s acounted for about 80 kills durring big week, p47s and p38s almost 300.

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## drgondog (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> The p51 wins this hands down. Not that it wasn't an excellent aircraft but the post war legend that sprang up around it is, well, a legend. A few frequently printed examples; " the p51 was the only fighter that go make it to Berlin and back". Truth is by the time p51s were there in any significant numbers(early 44) the range of the p47d had been expanded to almost 700 miles(boxted airfield to Berlin is 589 miles) and of course the p38 had an even longer range with drop tanks. Another one of my favorites" the p51 turned things around durring big week" the truth: p51s acounted for about 80 kills durring big week, p47s and p38s almost 300.



No, actually Two P-51 Fighter Groups (354/357) accounted for 64.5 VC's destroyed, 11 P-47D Fighter Groups accounted for 78.0 and two P-38 FG's accounted for 10. Source USAF 85. Period February 20-25. What the P-51B did was basically kill LW ability to deploy T/E fighters with extremely heavy firepower out of range of Escorts - and be able to out perform the 109/190 escorts at 25-30K. Faster cruise, longer range, superior high altitude performance over the P-38 AND very difficult to identify.

As another illustration, five P-51FG (318.5), 9 P-47 Groups (316.) and 3 P-38 FGs (35) accounted for the 8th AF VCs (with 354/363 assigned from 9th, along with 4/355 and 357 FG) between 2-20 and 3-18-1944 and by June 1944 the Mustang FGs accounted for more victory credits than all the P-47 VCs from start of 8th AF combat ops in April 1943.

Next - P-51B/C with 85 gallon internal fuse tank and 110 gallon externals had greater combat radius than P-38K with 55 gal LE tanks plus 165 gallon external tanks and cruise about 40mph faster TAS at 25K. The P-38J was relegated mostly to either sweeps or intermediate escort in April-July timeframe.

Last - the P47D-25 with not only wing pylons/fuel feed of the -15, but also 370 gallons internal fuel, arrived in squadron numbers in July-August 1944, too late and too few to step up to LR escort as the P-51B/D groups were firmly entrenched.

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## pbehn (Jul 8, 2018)

Not my area of expertise but when P-51s started arriving, there was not only a requirement for bomber escort but also a requirement to attack France on the ground as a build up to D-Day. Replacing P-47s with P-51s made perfect sense.

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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

Well I certainly don't fancy myself an expert but I have read those same numbers 277 and 88 respectively I believe,from several sources so I accepted them. Perhaps its the month of big week, Febuary they are refering to? Even using your numbers however the p51s claimed a minority of kills be it a substantial minority which still makes my point which was not that the 51 was not a great airplane, it was. The point and the subject of this thread is the most overrated aircraft. As far as the range I am looking at as I type a coppy of Americas 100,000 probably the definitive book on the subject as far as I know and the figures given are for the p47 d-23 l(still the earlier razor back version I believe) and given with 5 minutes fuel for warm up and take off, climb to 25,000 feet, cruise at 25,000 feet, 5 minutes air combat power,15 minutes at military power, cruise back at 25,000 feet, and 30 minutes reserve at minimum cruise power with 300 external gal capacity. The combat radius given is 670 miles making Berlin well within range at 589 miles from boxted and thats with 30 min reserve! So my comment was on the topic of the thread" the most over rated aircraft" not that the p51 wasn't good. By the end of febuary 44 I think everyone would agree that the Luftwaffe was past the bend in the attrition curve(every historian I have ever read on the subject says we achieved air suppirriority by march so they were certainly on the downward slope by February) and the p51s had only accounted for a small minority of kills up to that time so by definition the often quoted" the p51 turned things around" is not true and an example ot the topic" most overrated aircraft", "the only fighter that could take the bombers to Berlin and back "being another sterling example.

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## Milosh (Jul 8, 2018)

Micheal, how much fuel was allotted for forming up? Also more fuel is consumed flying in formation. The more a/c in a formation the more fuel consumed.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

Well since p47s did on more than one occasion fly missions over 600 miles including Berlin, obviously not enough to change anything.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

I went back and double checked and the numbers i quoted ie 270 kills for p38s, p47s and 88 for p51s was for the whole week of February not just big week but it still proves the point of p51 overratedness just the same.

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## Milosh (Jul 8, 2018)

What was the ratio of a/c involved to kills?


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## Shortround6 (Jul 8, 2018)

Milosh said:


> What was the ratio of a/c involved to kills?


See Drgondog's post #1279 
While not broken out into aircraft (or kills per hundred aircraft) he did give kills/claims with the number of fighter groups involved. Mustangs seem to have been about 5 times more effective Feb 20-25 than P-47s. Some other things may skew results a bit but that kind of difference is hard to ignore.

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## pbehn (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I went back and double checked and the numbers i quoted ie 270 kills for p38s, p47s and 88 for p51s was for the whole week of February not just big week but it still proves the point of p51 overratedness just the same.


No it doesn't, once targets are attacked and destroyed within range of the P-38 and P-47 then it is game over without a new longer range weapon.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

I have recently read that from spring 44 on the p47 was 6.9 to 1. I have read different figures pn the p51 everything from 7 to1 all the way up to 10 to 1. The 474th, the only group oparating the p38 to ve day in Europe was about 5 to 1.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

pbehn said:


> No it doesn't, once targets are attacked and destroyed within range of the P-38 and P-47 then it is game over without a new longer range weapon.


With proper fuel management taught by linberg the p38 had about 200 miles range or 100 mile combat radius than the 51. I read several cases of p38 s flying 9 hr missions.

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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> With proper fuel management taught by linberg the p38 had about 200 miles range or 100 mile combat radius than the 51. I read several cases of p38 s flying 9 hr missions.


Also not to be to argumentative but by that logic once all the targets within the p51s range are destroyed its also" game over" without a longer range aircraft. Not to point out the obvious but thats one of the reasons ground troops need to advance at some point.


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## wuzak (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> With proper fuel management taught by linberg the p38 had about 200 miles range or 100 mile combat radius than the 51. I read several cases of p38 s flying 9 hr missions.



Because flying at 180mph was the best way to fly over Germany in WW2.

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## fubar57 (Jul 8, 2018)



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## davparlr (Jul 8, 2018)

All of this has been gone over before. I did a pretty detailed post which I will repost here:


Battle over Germany, January, 1944


P-51B, P-47PreD-25, F4U-1, P-38J, Escort Ability vs. Me-109G and Fw-190A-8


This is a topic that should activate all the white knights out there.


I wanted to try to come grasp how these four aircraft would perform in the escort role over Germany against their German opponent. The F4U was thrown in because it was brought up as an aircraft that should have been built instead of the P-47 (and I think the P-51, too). First I wanted to define the requirements of an escort fighter for supporting daylight bombing of Berlin by B-17s and B-24s. This is what I determined was needed.

1. Range to fly to Berlin and back

2. Endurance to allow a meaningful combat time under enemy attack.

3. Equal-to or better capability of engaging enemy aircraft in combat at or above 20,000 ft.


The methodology I used to compare these planes were, 1) determine total internal and external fuel available each aircraft, 2) calculate fuel required to transit to target (approx. 600 miles) at 25,000 ft, 3) calculate fuel required to return to base (I used ingress fuel since I am lazy and probably didn’t have this data. Still should be okay for comparisons), 4) calculate fuel available for combat, 5) calculate combat time at Normal Rated Power (NRP), 6) compare performance at 20,000, 25,000, and 30,000 ft. Since the data available was not all compatible between aircraft (it never is), some alchemy was required to generate fuel consumption at 25,000 ft. It all seems to pass the smell test.


Assumptions.


1) Flight profile goes directly to Germany, optimum cruise, engage defenders, fly directly home. Weaving over slower bombers is not calculated but obviously would reduce time in combat. Comparisons are still valid.

2) Combat is engaged over target area and external fuel tanks jettisoned at commencement of combat. Again, if engaged inbound to target, combat time would be affected, but comparisons are still valid. Combat time would also be affected if a pilot hangs onto his tanks (which I don’t think would be wise).

3) Normal Rated Power for combat is used for comparison purposes (another one of my simplifying decisions). Mil and max power will affect the higher HP aircraft to a greater extent (for example, a P-51 at max will be using less fuel than a P-47 because of the HP difference).

4) External fuel is a variable for most aircraft. In most cases, external fuel was enough to make it to the target area. The only exception was the F4U, which had to use some internal fuel to make the target.


References here are:

1) Flight Operations Instructions Chart, P-51D and K,

2) Tactical Planning Characteristics & Performance Chart, P-47

3) What appears to be a P-38 Pilot Handbook showing fuel consumption,

4) America’s Hundred-Thousand

5) Other sources


Information Key:

Internal fuel – Useable Fuel stored internally in the aircraft

External fuel – Fuel stored in jettisonable tanks

Transit Fuel – Fuel required to fly from home base to target area not including takeoff and climb

Return to base – Fuel required to return to home base

Fuel available at combat start – Fuel remaining after jettison of external fuel

Fuel available for combat – fuel remaining after jettison minus return to base

Combat time – Time to consume fuel available for combat at normal rated power


P-38J

Internal Fuel, 410 gal

External Fuel, 600 gal

Transit Fuel, 600 miles, 277 gal

Return to base, 600 miles, 277 gal

Fuel available at combat start, 410 gal

Fuel available for combat, 123 gal

Combat time at NRP, 35 min.


P-47D Pre -25

Internal Fuel 305 gal

External Fuel 410 gal

Transit Fuel, 600 miles, 261 gal

Return to Base, 600 miles, 261 gal

Fuel available at combat start, 305 gal.

Fuel available for combat 44 gal

Combat time at NRP, 16 min.


F4U-1

Internal Fuel, 351 gal

External Fuel, 175 gal

Transit Fuel, 600 miles, 186 gal

Return to Base, 600 miles, 186 gal

Fuel available at combat start, 340 gal (Note: internal fuel was required to be used for ingress after drop tank was empty.)

Fuel available for combat, 154 gal.

Combat time at NRP, 1 hour, 6 min.


P-51B

Internal Fuel 269 gal

External Fuel 216 gal

Transit Fuel, 600 miles 108 gal

Return to Base, 600 miles 108 gal

Fuel available at combat start 229 gal. Note: 85 gal fuselage tank used down to 65 gal for combat stability.

Fuel available for combat 121 gal

Combat time at NRP, 1 hr 14 min.


*Performance at 20k ft. (B-24 Altitude)*



P-38J

Airspeed, 410 mph

Climb, 3000 ft/min

Ceiling, 44,000 ft.


P-47D Pre -25

Airspeed, 402 mph

Climb, 1565 ft/min

Ceiling, 42,000 ft.


F4U-1

Airspeed, 430 mph

Climb, 2800 ft/min

Ceiling, 36,900 ft.


P-51B

Airspeed, 424 mph

Climb, 2915 ft/min

Ceiling, 42,000


Luftwaffe Opposition 



Bf-109G

Airspeed, 399 mph

Climb, 3094 ft/min

Ceiling, 39,000


Fw-190A-8

Airspeed, 405 mph

Climb, 2400 ft/min

Ceiling 35,000 ft.



*Performance at 25k ft. (B-17 Altitude)*



P-38J

Airspeed, 415 mph

Climb, 2600 ft/min

Ceiling, 44,000 ft.



P-47D Pre -25

Airspeed, 435 mph

Climb, 2300 ft/min

Ceiling, 42,000 ft.


F4U-1

Airspeed, 424 mph

Climb, 1650 ft/min

Ceiling, 36,900 ft.


P-51B

Airspeed, 427 mph

Climb, 2600 ft/min

Ceiling, 42,000 ft.



Luftwaffe Opposition



Bf-109G

Airspeed, 420 mph

Climb, 2200 ft/min

Ceiling, 39,000 ft.


Fw-190A-8

Airspeed, 392 mph

Climb, 2,200

Ceiling, 35,000 ft.



*Performance at 30k ft. (Top Cover)*


P-38J

Airspeed, 415 mph

Climb, 1900 ft/min

Ceiling, 44,000 ft.


P-47D-20

Airspeed, 430 mph

Climb, 1300 ft/min

Ceiling, 42,000


F4U-1

Airspeed, 390 mph

Climb, 1,000 ft/min

Ceiling, 36,900 ft/min


P-51B

Airspeed, 441 mph

Climb, 2250 ft/min

Ceiling, 42,000 ft.


Luftwaffe Opposition



Bf-109G

Airspeed, 400 mph

Climb, 1625 ft/min

Ceiling, 39,000 ft.


Fw-190 A-8

Airspeed, 386 mph

Climb, 1080 ft/sec

Ceiling, 35,000 ft.


*Observations:*


P-38J

Very good range with average time in combat.

Competitive performance with opposition. Generally superior climb rate.

Good high altitude performance, excellent ceiling.

P-38 would probably be an effective escort with capable pilots


P-47D-20

Limited range, poor time in combat

Performance limited at 20k, much better as altitude increases

Very good high altitude performance.

P-47 effectiveness limited by range. Later P-47 versions solved this problem, especially the P-47N, with larger internal fuel capacity.


F4U-1

Excellent range, excellent time in combat

Capable performance at lower altitudes, suffers at high altitude, low ceiling.

F4U would suffer in escort duty due to lack of high altitude performance. The aircraft would have needed the -18W engine to adequately perform at the higher altitudes, this engine was not available until mid to late ‘44. Turbocharging was probably not an option. The F4U-4, available in May, ’44, alleviates the high altitude performance problem, but reduced internal fuel would hamper escort ability.


P-51B

Excellent range, excellent time in combat

Comparable performance to opposition at 20k, outperforms Bf-109 and easily outperforms Fw-190 at 25k. Easily outperforms both at 30k.

The P-51B was most likely the most efficient propeller aircraft in WWII. Its speed/hp at SL is .246 mph/hp. Comparison to other aircraft, P-51D is .23, Fw-190D-9 is .217, Ta-152H is .18, F4U-1 is .162, and the P-47B is .15 (note that the F4U-1 is slightly more efficient than the P-47, which is reflected in the range numbers even though they have roughly the same engine). The efficiency of the P-51, combined with a moderate internal fuel load, and very good high altitude performance is the secret to its supremacy in the escort fighter role.


Bf-109G 

The Bf-109 has some good climb characteristics but suffers in airspeed. In general, it is somewhat competitive up to 25k. It is outperformed by the AF escort fighters above 25k.


Fw-190A-8

Except for the P-47 at 20k ft. and the F4U, the Fw-190 has significant performance shortcomings to the escort fighters at these altitudes.


At the altitudes where the bombers flew, except maybe the B-24, the Luftwaffe fighters had performance shortcomings, especially with the P-51. January to June, ’44 was a critical time for Germany, being pressured by the Russians on the East and D-Day being prepared on the West and with ever increasing bomber formations over the homeland. The Germans were not able to adequately contend the airspace above 20k ft. until the advent of the Bf-109K and the Fw-190D-9 in late ’44.


So, gird your loins and do battle with what I have presented and point out errors, which is possible, in my logic and/or data.

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## pbehn (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> With proper fuel management taught by linberg the p38 had about 200 miles range or 100 mile combat radius than the 51. I read several cases of p38 s flying 9 hr missions.


The F4F-7 had a range of 3,700 miles. Combat range is how far you can fly home after fighting for a given period of time not how far an aircraft can be made to fly.


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## pbehn (Jul 8, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> View attachment 501064​


How green was my valley, look you.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The F4F-7 had a range of 3,700 miles. Combat range is how far you can fly home after fighting for a given period of time not how far an aircraft can be made to fly.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

F4f 7? 3700 mies?


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## pbehn (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> F4f 7? 3700 mies?


The *F4F-7* was a photoreconnaissance variant, with armor and armament removed. It had non-folding "wet" wings that carried an additional 555 gal (2,101 L) of fuel for a total of about 700 gal (2,650 L), increasing its range to 3,700 mi (5,955 km). A total of 21 were built.[8]

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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

pbehn said:


> How green was my valley, look you.


In January to March44 when the Luftwaffe went over the top of the atrition curve and we won air suppirriority it looks pretty grey to me. Maybe you should have another look at you own valley.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

pbehn said:


> How green was my valley, look you.


In January to March of 44 when most historians say we won air suppirriority that valley looks pretty grey to me.


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## pbehn (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> In January to March44 when the Luftwaffe went over the top of the atrition curve and we won air suppirriority it looks pretty grey to me. Maybe you should have another look at you own valley.


Operations in Jan -Mar 1944 were not deep into Germany, they were not even solely US forces. To continue the attrition required hitting deep into Germany and also preparing for D-Day. You are far too partisan, if the P-47 and P-51 were identical in all respects for bomber escort the P-51 would be chosen because the P-47 was better at CAS.


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## Peter Gunn (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> *SNIP*
> 
> and the p51s had only accounted for a small minority of kills up to that time so by definition the often quoted" the p51 turned things around" is not true and an example ot the topic" most overrated aircraft", "the only fighter that could take the bombers to Berlin and back "being another sterling example.





Seriously?


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The *F4F-7* was a photoreconnaissance variant, with armor and armament removed. It had non-folding "wet" wings that carried an additional 555 gal (2,101 L) of fuel for a total of about 700 gal (2,650 L), increasing its range to 3,700 mi (5,955 km). A total of 21 were built.[8]


Cool, i had never read about that.

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## pbehn (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Cool, i had never read about that.


Allow me to introduce myself, I am an interested layman with an interest in WW2 aviation. I have learned a huge amount from the posters here some of whom are historians and also pilots, aero engineers and all sorts of other relevant occupations covering a huge range of "stuff". In most cases its best to ask a question than make an assertion, then see what results and make up your own mind.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

I think all you p51 defenders( god bless you souls) are missing the piont here. The thread is not which is the better aircraft. The thread, and my comment are, is which is the most overrated aircraft of which I gave two solid examples( which are both just facts. 1: by 44 the p47 could and did fly mission as far as berlin and back and so sid the p38 so the often quoted" the only fighter that could go all the way to Berlin and back" is an example of overrating. 2: " the p51 turned things around" most historians, at least the ones i have read agree we had won air ssuperiority by March( although i am certainly open to reading other historians with different views. I know there are a few). The p51 only accounted for a small minority off kills up to that point so it is factually accurate to say that that is an example of overrated by the verry definition of the words. This is not to say the p51 was not the best choice to make from that point on, especially when cost is factored in but what it does mean is that it is indeed overrated.


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## pbehn (Jul 8, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I think all you p51 defenders( god bless you souls) are missing the piont here. The thread is not which is the better aircraft. The thread, and my comment are, is which is the most overrated aircraft of which I gave two solid examples( which are both just facts. 1: by 44 the p47 could and did fly mission as far as berlin and back and so sid the p38 so the often quoted" the only fighter that could go all the way to Berlin and back" is an example of overrating. 2: " the p51 turned things around" most historians, at least the ones i have read agree we had won air ssuperiority by March( although i am certainly open to reading other historians with different views. I know there are a few). The p51 only accounted for a small minority off kills up to that point so it is factually accurate to say that that is an example of overrated by the verry definition of the words. This is not to say the p51 was not the best choice to make from that point on, especially when cost is factored in but what it does mean is that it is indeed overrated.


In a way I agree with you, you just over egged the pudding.


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## fubar57 (Jul 8, 2018)

The 356th FG: The group flew bomber escort missions for next few months, but from 23 January 1944 it became a ground attack unit, strafing and bombing a range of targets across occupied Europe. That cancels one out


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## Navalwarrior (Jul 8, 2018)

drgondog said:


> No, actually Two P-51 Fighter Groups (354/357) accounted for 64.5 VC's destroyed, 11 P-47D Fighter Groups accounted for 78.0 and two P-38 FG's accounted for 10. Source USAF 85. Period February 20-25. What the P-51B did was basically kill LW ability to deploy T/E fighters with extremely heavy firepower out of range of Escorts - and be able to out perform the 109/190 escorts at 25-30K. Faster cruise, longer range, superior high altitude performance over the P-38 AND very difficult to identify.
> 
> As another illustration, five P-51FG (318.5), 9 P-47 Groups (316.) and 3 P-38 FGs (35) accounted for the 8th AF VCs (with 354/363 assigned from 9th, along with 4/355 and 357 FG) between 2-20 and 3-18-1944 and by June 1944 the Mustang FGs accounted for more victory credits than all the P-47 VCs from start of 8th AF combat ops in April 1943.
> 
> ...


Resp:
I think we can argue the details. Even though P-51s flew escort beginning in Dec 1943, the P-47, and to a lesser extent the P-38 bore the back of the escorts for the first several months of 1944. Also, a large number of the Mustang aces flew the P-47 beforehand, which gave them knowledge of Luftwaffe tactics and aircraft. Majority of the P-38 pilots received little or no training in the type prior to reaching England. Did any of the existing FG in the ETO fly with or instruct them in tactics of the Luftwaffe? Not that I have read. Did they assign a couple of P-47s from the 56th, 78th or 4th FGs to fly with the P-38s to assist them with current operating procedures in Theater? Not that I read. So it appears that the P-38 pilots had to learn from trial and error, coupled w a less than easy fighter to fly. The Mustang was not perfect, but more than any other fighter, it had no serious fault that wasn't quickly overcome. I believe some of our early 'aces' owe their lives to the ruggedness of the P-47, which got them home after some 'rough time' with the Luftwaffe . . . which if flying a Mustang instead . . . would not have gotten a second chance. My take only.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Allow me to introduce myself, I am an interested layman with an interest in WW2 aviation. I have learned a huge amount from the posters here some of whom are historians and also pilots, aero engineers and all sorts of other relevant occupations covering a huge range of "stuff". In most cases its best to ask a question than make an assertion, then see what results and make up your own mind.


I wasn't trying to make assertions. the thread is which aircraft is the most overrated. I gave my opinion and the reasons why. An opinion isnt worth much without reasons. Others obviously have other opinions and that's what makes this interesting. If you go back and read the conversation, several times i deferred to others statistics just to be polite.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Operations in Jan -Mar 1944 were not deep into Germany, they were not even solely US forces. To continue the attrition required hitting deep into Germany and also preparing for D-Day. You are far too partisan, if the P-47 and P-51 were identical in all respects for bomber escort the P-51 would be chosen because the P-47 was better at CAS.


I am not in the slightest bit partisan against the p51. As a matter of fact if i were running things in 1944 i would have chosen to equip mostly although not entirely with the mustang myself. It was obviously the best choice for many ( but not all) fighter missions but thats not what this thread or my comments were about. The thread and my comments are which aircraft is most overrated. The p51 was in my estamation 10 or 20 percent better for most fighter missions but certainly not all than the alternatives and at half the cost just to try and put a number on it( yes others may differ) but the post war reputation that has sprang up around it is that it was 100 % better and i gave two what im pretty sure are facts that show some of the things most frequently atributed to the 51 to justify this are simply not true and thereby indicate, at least in my mind, a solid case of overrating.


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## michael rauls (Jul 8, 2018)

pbehn said:


> In a way I agree with you, you just over egged the pudding.


I apologize if I came off as to edgy so to speak. That certainly wasn't my intention. I just wanted to give the reasons behind my pick. Sometimes its hard to differ with something that has to many become almost theology without being perceived as confrontational. Again, that certainly wasn't my intention.

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## Peter Gunn (Jul 9, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I apologize if I came off as to edgy so to speak. That certainly wasn't my intention. I just wanted to give the reasons behind my pick. Sometimes its hard to differ with something that has to many become almost theology without being perceived as confrontational. Again, that certainly wasn't my intention.



Theology?

[email protected] it, was going to respond but not worth it.

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## drgondog (Jul 9, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I think all you p51 defenders( god bless you souls) are missing the piont here. The thread is not which is the better aircraft. The thread, and my comment are, is which is the most overrated aircraft of which I gave two solid examples( which are both just facts. 1: by 44 the p47 could and did fly mission as far as berlin and back and so sid the p38 so the often quoted" the only fighter that could go all the way to Berlin and back" is an example of overrating. 2: " the p51 turned things around" most historians, at least the ones i have read agree we had won air ssuperiority by March( although i am certainly open to reading other historians with different views. I know there are a few). The p51 only accounted for a small minority off kills up to that point so it is factually accurate to say that that is an example of overrated by the verry definition of the words. This is not to say the p51 was not the best choice to make from that point on, especially when cost is factored in but what it does mean is that it is indeed overrated.


Not to belabor the point you are trying to make, namely "51 overrated", but the P-47D was not tasked for Berlin in 1944, nor was any P-47 Fighter Group so tasked for 500 mile radius strikes in ETO until the P-47D-25 began arriving in numbers after D-Day. 

That burden/opportunity fell to P-38J with LE tanks and P-51B/C with 85 gallon internal fuselage tank. The P-38J took a back seat to the P-51 by the time May Oil Offensive was in full bloom and 8th AF had already began transition of 20th, 55th and 364th FG to Mustangs by mid July 1944. I would argue that 'air superiority' as a state, occurred in Q2/1944 which is in agreement with Galland. His perspective was that LW air superiority could not be Regained during Q1, but all hope for parity was lost in Q2.

Air Superiority in March, 1944 is an interesting question and begs for definition, but one fact is clear. In March 1944 there were no safe bases for Me 110/410 Day Fighters and no 'safe places' for them to form up for an attack on 8th AF. It took a little longer for 15th because the P-38H in-theatre were not replaced in quantity until May/June 1944 with P-38J-15 with LE tanks and the P-51Bs did the heavy lifting in S. and E. Germany and Austria.

Second fact, is that the operational issues of the P-38H and early J-5 had reached tipping point. Even though the P-38J-10 with LE kits were operational for Berlin range, the dive flaps and final intercooler mods were too late for the P-38 to remain as high priority compared to P-51B/C for LR escort. By the time the 479th arrived for ops in late May, six P-47 groups had transitioned and the 339th entered ops to support the 357th. There were enough to commit releasing P-38s to 9th and make final commitment to convert 78, 353 and 356FG to Mustang in fall, 1944.

Third fact - The P-47D, pre D-25 could well perform medium Penetration/Withdrawal escort and that coverage was still required to blunt LW ops from LF 3 and LuftReich forces still based in west/central Germany. By May/June the last P-38 FG in 8th were still flying some target escort but the P-51B had taken over for Berlin, Munich, Posnan, Brux, Ruhland range targets.

Fourth Fact - The P-38J, as they existed in Feb through late May, 1944 were a.) insufficient in strength to perform escort for three 8th AF Bomb Divisions in the execution of Argument, or b.) the destruction of the LW in air and ground prior to D-Day. They were not only incapable of achieving air superiority over the LW FW 190 and Bf 109G at bomber altitudes, but also incapable of preventing Berlin/Schwienfurt type bomber/crew losses - which were a major political lightning (pardon the pun) rod that almost cost the USSAFE the initiative to continue strategic daylight operations. 

So, if your argument that the P-51B Didn't Save the Day for 8th AF, I'm fine with that but remain unclear what your objective criteria might be? I'm also fine with a statement that the P-51 was over rated. It all "depends'.

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## drgondog (Jul 9, 2018)

I just perused the P-38 air victory credits from February 10 through April 30, 1944. One victory at Oldenburg (March 6) and one at Schweinfurt - the rest essentially inside the Brunswick, Magdeburg, Ulm radius. Ditto losses, pointing to intermediate combat radius escort - beyond most P-47D missions but well short of most P-51B escorts.

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## michael rauls (Jul 9, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Theology?
> 
> [email protected] it, was going to respond but not worth it.


By theology I simply meant an deeply held belief. Sorry if that choice of words offended you.


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## michael rauls (Jul 9, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Not to belabor the point you are trying to make, namely "51 overrated", but the P-47D was not tasked for Berlin in 1944, nor was any P-47 Fighter Group so tasked for 500 mile radius strikes in ETO until the P-47D-25 began arriving in numbers after D-Day.
> 
> That burden/opportunity fell to P-38J with LE tanks and P-51B/C with 85 gallon internal fuselage tank. The P-38J took a back seat to the P-51 by the time May Oil Offensive was in full bloom and 8th AF had already began transition of 20th, 55th and 364th FG to Mustangs by mid July 1944. I would argue that 'air superiority' as a state, occurred in Q2/1944 which is in agreement with Galland. His perspective was that LW air superiority could not be Regained during Q1, but all hope for parity was lost in Q2.
> 
> ...


Your first two paragraphs are basically my point so to speak. 1 the p47 could and eventually did fly missions to Berlin and back thus making the frequently stated" the only fighter that could go to Berlin and back" untrue and, at least in my mind, solid, factual case of overrating. Admittedly the second is a little harder to pin down but most of the historians I have read seam to think we had achieved air suppirriority by March. The pinning down of the exact date air suppirriority was achieved is a difficult if not impossible task but for my point to be valid we don't need to. If the p51 only achieved a minority of kills regardless of superior kill ratios up to the point that the Luftwaffe went over the edge of the attrition curve(which of course would be substantially before the date of air suppirriority) then the p51 didn't turn anything around. I.e. by that time the Luftwaffe was going down p51 or no p51 a point which i think we can all agree on which is entirely independent of the p51s merits or lack thereof and makes the often steted "the p51 turned things around durring the month of big week" factually inaccurate and if words mean anything a case of overrating.


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## michael rauls (Jul 9, 2018)

I should have added the p38 also flew 600 mile plus missions much earlier than the47 even more so making the " the only fighter that could go to Berlin and back" inaccurate and a case of overrating. Not trying to be argumentative, just explaining the reasons behind my pick.


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## michael rauls (Jul 9, 2018)

drgondog said:


> I just perused the P-38 air victory credits from February 10 through April 30, 1944. One victory at Oldenburg (March 6) and one at Schweinfurt - the rest essentially inside the Brunswick, Magdeburg, Ulm radius. Ditto losses, pointing to intermediate combat radius escort - beyond most P-47D missions but well short of most P-51B escorts.


I'm sure your stats are vallid but the kill ratios or number or missions and on what dates they occurred have no berring on the question were the p38/p47 capable of, and at some point did they fly 600 plus missions and is the distance between boxted and Berlin 589 miles. If the answer to both these guestions is yes and they are, then the frequently given tribute to the p51 in popular post war articles that it was the" the only fighter that could make it to Berlin and back" is factually inaccurate and thereby a case of overrating.


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## drgondog (Jul 9, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I'm sure your stats are vallid but the kill ratios or number or missions and on what dates they occurred have no berring on the question were the p38/p47 capable of, and at some point did they fly 600 plus missions and is the distance between boxted and Berlin 589 miles. If the answer to both these guestions is yes and they are, then the frequently given tribute to the p51 in popular post war articles that it was the" the only fighter that could make it to Berlin and back" is factually inaccurate and thereby a case of overrating.



Michael - articles that said that the Mustang was the only fighter to make it to Berlin and back are simply 'under-researched'. It is a known fact that for example, The P-38J escorted the 8th AF to Berlin on March 6, 1944. It is also a fact that 9th AF 354th FG and 4th FG ranged to Berlin, north of Berlin and returned on Mar 4, and March 6. It is also a fact that the P-47D-25 COULD have done so had Republic been able to make the changes REQUIRED to increase internal fuel to match timetable of P-38J and P-51B.

But it did not. The P-82 could have flown nearly to Moscow and back but it was too late. The P-47N could have flown the Berlin missions, the Poland and Czechoslovakia missions, Ploesti and 20th AF missions from Iwo - bit it was too late to make a difference in Argument, Ditto P-47D-25.

You are an intelligent guy - why are you droning on about what each of the fighters you mentioned when they simply didn't have the ability to a.) Perform Deep Target escort, and b.) achieve air superiority over deep targets and c.) achieve by far the most damage to airfield parked aircraft beyond Berlin to compliment the fight in the air. The P-51B achieved all those objectives in the most important Period for USSAFE, when it was URGENT and Required to destroy LW capability of seriously affecting D-Day operations. Neither the P-47D, and to lesser extent, P-38J, were effective in the destruction (contrast annoy) of the LW over the oilfields and aircraft center of gravity in east Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

What if the question was - What was the most important fighter in the air war OVER Germany? Over Japan? Over Ploesti?

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## michael rauls (Jul 9, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Michael - articles that said that the Mustang was the only fighter to make it to Berlin and back are simply 'under-researched'. It is a known fact that for example, The P-38J escorted the 8th AF to Berlin on March 6, 1944. It is also a fact that 9th AF 354th FG and 4th FG ranged to Berlin, north of Berlin and returned on Mar 4, and March 6. It is also a fact that the P-47D-25 COULD have done so had Republic been able to make the changes REQUIRED to increase internal fuel to match timetable of P-38J and P-51B.
> 
> But it did not. The P-82 could have flown nearly to Moscow and back but it was too late. The P-47N could have flown the Berlin missions, the Poland and Czechoslovakia missions, Ploesti and 20th AF missions from Iwo - bit it was too late to make a difference in Argument, Ditto P-47D-25.
> 
> ...


 Yes those articals are under reserched and they are legeon. That is my point. As far as the p38/p47d in 44 there is no could have if the manufacturers made changes about it unless everything I have read is wrong( always a posibiity) p47d23 combat range with 300 gallon external 670 miles and thats allows for warm up, take off ,15 minutes or so at military power etc.etc and the distance in question is 589. And certainly there is no issue the p38 can and did fly these distances. That in the case of the 47 they were not tasked to till later does not negate the point that there were other planes that could and did. Some earlier, some later which brings us back to the topic of this thread, overrated aircraft. That the p51 was a better choice for most escort missions is not the topic or point of my comments. That the two most commonly asserted things about the p51 that give it in the eyes of many an almost mythical status are untrue and thereby constitute by definition a case of overrating. That the p51 was quite an aicraft I do not in any way contest. That it ran up quite an impressive record is obvious( an looks great to). That however is niether the topic of this thread nor the focus of my comments. That topic and focus are on overratedness and if two of the main things most often quoted about an aircraft that give it its status in the eyes of many( certainly almost 100% of the average joe on the street) are not true then this is by definition a case of overrating.


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## michael rauls (Jul 9, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Michael - articles that said that the Mustang was the only fighter to make it to Berlin and back are simply 'under-researched'. It is a known fact that for example, The P-38J escorted the 8th AF to Berlin on March 6, 1944. It is also a fact that 9th AF 354th FG and 4th FG ranged to Berlin, north of Berlin and returned on Mar 4, and March 6. It is also a fact that the P-47D-25 COULD have done so had Republic been able to make the changes REQUIRED to increase internal fuel to match timetable of P-38J and P-51B.
> 
> But it did not. The P-82 could have flown nearly to Moscow and back but it was too late. The P-47N could have flown the Berlin missions, the Poland and Czechoslovakia missions, Ploesti and 20th AF missions from Iwo - bit it was too late to make a difference in Argument, Ditto P-47D-25.
> 
> ...


Not that this has anything to do with the topic of overrating but I would respectfully disagree with all three of the things you claim the p38/p47 combination could not have achieved. The first is easiest, the p38 could and did perform deep escort that it was there only in limited numbers is not the fault of the aircraft. So did the 47 but yes not as early as the 51 or 38. The second , achieve suppirriority over deep escort objectives is more complex but certainly if the p38 j25/L had been delivered in the same numbers as p51s they could have gained air suppirriority over deep targets evidence the almost 5 to 1 kill loss ratio of the 474th the only unit flying p38s to the end. Not as good as the p51s record but certainly capable of winning air suppirriority over distant targets if they had been there in great numbers but the 8th wisely chose to go with the p51, better performance at half the cost but that doesn't mean that had they gone with the p38 in huge numbers that they could not have done the same. I think the 5 to 1 kill losss record of the 474th proves that.Third point rebuttal same as second. And if I can again refer back to some of my points in earlier posts most historians I have read seam to agree that we had achieved air suppirriority by March 44. So if we had achieved air suppirriority by March then the Luftwaffe was obviously over top of the attrition curve well before that which would be at latest Feb. Well from mid 43 to feb44 or late43( when i think p51 deployment began?) Whenever you want to start the count, from then until the top of the attrition curve in Feb at the latest( probably well before that actually) but just to err on the side of the p51 just for the sake of argument well say feb the p51 had up to that point only a small percentage of kills the point being the Luftwaffe was going down p51 or no p51. So yes the p38/p47 combination was capable of gaining overal air suppirriority because they did.

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## michael rauls (Jul 9, 2018)

To be fair i should point out that had the p51 been available in numbers earlier it almost certainly could have won air suppirriority sooner than the p38/p47 combination did but to say that the 38 and47 were not capable of winning air superiority, in my opinion, is wrong because , well, they did.


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## drgondog (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Not that this has anything to do with the topic of overrating but I would respectfully disagree with all three of the things you claim the p38/p47 combination could not have achieved. The first is easiest, the p38 could and did perform deep escort that it was there only in limited numbers is not the fault of the aircraft. So did the 47 but yes not as early as the 51 or 38. The second , achieve suppirriority over deep escort objectives is more complex but certainly if the p38 j25/L had been delivered in the same numbers as p51s they could have gained air suppirriority over deep targets evidence the almost 5 to 1 kill loss ratio of the 474th the only unit flying p38s to the end. Not as good as the p51s record but certainly capable of winning air suppirriority over distant targets if they had been there in great numbers but the 8th wisely chose to go with the p51, better performance at half the cost but that doesn't mean that had they gone with the p38 in huge numbers that they could not have done the same. I think the 5 to 1 kill losss record of the 474th proves that.Third point rebuttal same as second. And if I can again refer back to some of my points in earlier posts most historians I have read seam to agree that we had achieved air suppirriority by March 44. So if we had achieved air suppirriority by March then the Luftwaffe was obviously over top of the attrition curve well before that which would be at latest Feb. Well from mid 43 to feb44 or late43( when i think p51 deployment began?) Whenever you want to start the count, from then until the top of the attrition curve in Feb at the latest( probably well before that actually) but just to err on the side of the p51 just for the sake of argument well say feb the p51 had up to that point only a small percentage of kills the point being the Luftwaffe was going down p51 or no p51. So yes the p38/p47 combination was capable of gaining overal air suppirriority because they did.



Mighta, Coulda, Shoulda - but Didn't. 

The P-38J was in ETO with same strength as P-51B before and during Big Week. Both the 20th and 55th had more combat experience than the 354th and 357th but both the 354th and 357th achieved 6:1 victory credits over the Lightning groups during Big Week when both types were performing target escort (15th AF P-38s couldn't engage over Germany during Big Week and for some time afterwards until the P-38J started arriving in MTO). Both the 9th AF and 8th AF P-38 FGs were flying escort for 8th AF until the end of May. 

The high altitude mechanical issues were not 'solved' until the Intercooler/turbo re-design, electrical cockpit heating provided by adding a generator. The instant compressibility was never truly solved when starting dives at 25000 feet, although the dive flaps (finally) introduced into ops after D-Day mitigated controllability. The terrible Roll characteristics until Boosted ailerons (post D-Day), combined with dive issues gave both the 109 and 190 pretty easy 'out moves' but as much as any other characteristic, the P-38 was so big that it was spotted long before the 38 pilot could pick up the 109/190 - giving them an opportunity to a.) attain positive tactical position, or b.) leave.

To try to make your point about P-47D and P-38J/L Potential, you keep wandering away from the Critical period - namely October, 1943 through June 5, 1944 - when the highest priority for SHAEF was the destruction of the LW. The P-47 made major contributions, but did not have the range to force the LW from strategy of waiting (with both S/E and T/E)until the Jugs ran out of range. The P-38 did but didn't get the job done and were dismissed in favor of the P-51B/D for target escort. 

Even in MTO where the P-38 did well, the P-51B/D took over target support. It is ironic that an inexperienced FG like the 332nd in 15th AF scored more air victory credits than any of the very experienced 1st, 14th and 82nd FG for the period that 332nd was in combat (June 1944 through VE Day). In comparison, the 332nd was far behind the 31st, 52nd and 325th FG Mustang units

By the time D-Day commenced, the Mustang record of aircraft destruction exceeded the Total (8th and 9th AF) P-47D in air to air credits despite nearly 5X sorties of P-47 over P-51B during ETO combat ops. The P-51B had nearly 3:1 over the combined P-38/P-47 totals for Ground credits.The P-47C/D started in late April 1943 and the P-38 in mid October, 1943 with P-51B beginning in December, 1943

History isn't history when you postulate 'alternate reality'.

You might spend some more time in deep research to understand what Schmid and Galland will tell you from their Informed perspective about the Luftwaffe struggles. What you are also missing is the realization by Schmid and Galland that the Defense of the Reich required great re-enforcement from East and South, bringing day fighters and experienced pilots to try to stem the bleeding after it was clear that P-47s were getting the upper hand on LuftFlotte 3 defending the West in the late Fall/early Winter 1943.

We are talking past each other, so I will retreat from this particular debate with you.

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## Milosh (Jul 10, 2018)

drgondog said:


> We are talking past each other, so *I will retreat from this particular debate* with you.



Please don't as you do a very good job at debunking revisionism.

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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Mighta, Coulda, Shoulda - but Didn't.
> 
> The P-38J was in ETO with same strength as P-51B before and during Big Week. Both the 20th and 55th had more combat experience than the 354th and 357th but both the 354th and 357th achieved 6:1 victory credits over the Lightning groups during Big Week when both types were performing target escort (15th AF P-38s couldn't engage over Germany during Big Week and for some time afterwards until the P-38J started arriving in MTO). Both the 9th AF and 8th AF P-38 FGs were flying escort for 8th AF until the end of May.
> 
> ...


A couple thoughts, my original posts and this thread are about p51 overratedness. Not that the 51 wasn't a better plane overall . Both the examples I gave are still valid in spite of superior kill ratios. That wasnt the point. I know you are correct when you say that the p51 dramatically outscored the p38 during big week or so I have read but I have also read that part but I am sure not all of the reason for this is that the p38s were tasked to stick close to the bombers like they had been from the start where as the p51s and 47s were using the new tactic( cocieved and lobbied for by Hub Zemke) of fanning out in front of then bomber formations and intercepting the Luftwaffe fighters on much better terms. This is obviously going to create a huge disparity in kill ratios regardless of the merits of the aircraft involved. Add to the the p51s I better high speed maneuver ability(yes I believe the p51 was the better aircraft for air to air just not be as much as many give it credit for) and tou are going to have what you see in the numbers you posted ie a wipe out in scoring. The fact however remains that certainly by February the Luftwaffe was over the top of bend in the attrition curve and up th that point the p51 had a minority of kills and that was and is my point that the Luftwaffe was going down p51 or no p51.I don't think that's arguable. And that the p38/p47 could in fact win air superiority because in fact they did. My point was not that the p51 was not a better aircraft as one would expect from a latter design. It was. It was that a. The p51 was great but over rated and d. That the p38/p47 won air superiority if we are to believe what most historians, at least the ones I have read and I have seen others quote , that we achieved air superiority in March.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Please don't as you do a very good job at debunking revisionism.


There is nothing revisionist, at least as far as I know, in any of the facts I have cited unless you want to push the date of achievement of air superiority out to say perhaps June or August but that would fly in the face of what most historians and i believe even Luftwaffe members like Galland say. I have read thet Galland thought that by the end of q1 44, that would be march, the Luftwaffes fate was pretty much sealed. I am certainly open to arguments that air superiority was achieved until a latter data and I have read a few. It's just that they are vastly outnumbered by those that certainly know more than I that itwas achieved in March.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Mighta, Coulda, Shoulda - but Didn't.
> 
> The P-38J was in ETO with same strength as P-51B before and during Big Week. Both the 20th and 55th had more combat experience than the 354th and 357th but both the 354th and 357th achieved 6:1 victory credits over the Lightning groups during Big Week when both types were performing target escort (15th AF P-38s couldn't engage over Germany during Big Week and for some time afterwards until the P-38J started arriving in MTO). Both the 9th AF and 8th AF P-38 FGs were flying escort for 8th AF until the end of May.
> 
> ...


And yes we are talking past each other because you you are studiously and I believe intentionally missing my points and trying to turn this into a which is better debate which of course is niether my point nor the topic of this thread.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

And just one more thought. You posted mighta, coulda, shoulda, but didn't. Ah contraire, if we did in fact achieve air superiority by March as seems to by the consensus then there is no mighta, coulda etc about it. The p38/47 did win air superiority. Like I said I am certainly open to consider alternative views on the timeframe how about you promelgate some instead of responding with coulda woulda shouda and then listing kill ratios to try and turn it into a which is better debate which of course is niether my point nor the topic.


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## Peter Gunn (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> And just one more thought. You posted mighta, coulda, shoulda, but didn't. Ah contraire, if we did in fact achieve air superiority by March as seems to by the consensus then there is no mighta, coulda etc about it. The p38/47 did win air superiority. Like I said I am certainly open to consider alternative views on the timeframe how about you promelgate some instead of responding with coulda woulda shouda and then listing kill ratios to try and turn it into a which is better debate which of course is niether my point nor the topic.



Michael,

drgondog posts kill ratios and dates to point out what the Mustang was achieving and _when. 
_
One thing I learned after I got here was how much I didn't know, too many 'historians' are good for nothing more than what can be called "coffee table history books". When I first started here, I admitted I was a Mustang affectionado, but that didn't stop me from appreciating not only other aircraft but also the limitations of the P-51. I'm not an apologist or fanboy, it's my favorite WWII fighter, period.

After a few months, and reading many drgondog posts (among others) I gained a whole new perspective on:

A). Learning a ton of info I thought I already knew but did not.

B). That far from being a nifty fighter that came in after the fracas was over and just batted cleanup, the Mustang wholeheartedly opened up what in the old days we'd call a large can of whoop ass on the Luftwaffe, plain and simple. Guys flying P-38's or P-47's went from 0 or 1 kills to ace, double ace or more in the P-51. That's not coincidence. And they were not facing the second string players of the LW either. At the time period we're talking about, leading up to Overlord, it's doubtful any other fighter in the world was truly capable of doing the Mustangs job in beating the LW to the ground, literally.

I'm kind of a grouchy old guy and it took a lot for me to realize but if you want the real dope on aviation history, especially WWII, you won't find more knowledgeable guys on the 'net than here (me excluded). You seem a well read and intelligent guy Michael, I hope you'll stick around, you just have to make sure you have documented data to back up any claims made here as this crowd is pretty savvy at ferreting out misleading or incorrect data.

Cheers,
Pete

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## BiffF15 (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> And just one more thought. You posted mighta, coulda, shoulda, but didn't. Ah contraire, if we did in fact achieve air superiority by March as seems to by the consensus then there is no mighta, coulda etc about it. The p38/47 did win air superiority. Like I said I am certainly open to consider alternative views on the timeframe how about you promelgate some instead of responding with coulda woulda shouda and then listing kill ratios to try and turn it into a which is better debate which of course is niether my point nor the topic.



Michael,

You make your points without any backup or validation. Drgondog puts quotes, statistics and sound, informative reasoning behind his rationale. If you would post other than, “most historians agree”, and instead post book & page where your information comes from you might find a more engaged group here. You might also gain a different point of view. I know I have.

Cheers,
Biff

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## BiffF15 (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> And just one more thought. You posted mighta, coulda, shoulda, but didn't. Ah contraire, if we did in fact achieve air superiority by March as seems to by the consensus then there is no mighta, coulda etc about it. The p38/47 did win air superiority. Like I said I am certainly open to consider alternative views on the timeframe how about you promelgate some instead of responding with coulda woulda shouda and then listing kill ratios to try and turn it into a which is better debate which of course is niether my point nor the topic.



Michael,

You make your points without any backup or validation. Drgondog puts quotes, statistics and sound, informative reasoning behind his rationale. If you would post other than, “most historians agree”, and instead post book & page where your information comes from you might find a more engaged group here. You might also gain a different point of view. I know I have.

Cheers,
Biff

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## drgondog (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> And yes we are talking past each other because you you are studiously and I believe intentionally missing my points and trying to turn this into a which is better debate which of course is niether my point nor the topic of this thread.


I couldn't quite let this one slide by....

I carefully took your points and claims, parsed the content and sources (usually zero) to try to address your points with fact based rebuttals citing sources and inviting you to do the same. Your points in summary were:

1.) P-47D was performing LR escort to Berlin. 
2.) The P-38 and P-47 combined had wrested air superiority from the LW before the Mustang made a contribution.
3.) The P-38 and P-47 could have achieved the critical objective of 'destruction of LW' prior to D-Day as mandated (not your words, correct in context) by SHAEF and operation ARGUMENT as a subset of Combined Bomber Offensive (again, not your words, but historically correct)

I pointed out the facts surrounding your three points, said facts rebutting your unsourced claims, and sourced my facts. 

To repeat; The VERY FIRST long range mission to Berlin by P-47D was February 3, 1945 - approximately 12 MONTHS after Big Week.

To repeat; The 8th AF began the serious task of TRYING to regain air superiority with deep penetration targets in January, 1944 when ONE P-51B Mustang Group and TWO P-38H/J Groups were operational. The January strikes into Germany included Oschersleben/Halberstadt, Brunswick, Hannover - the rest were within range of the P-47D groups. There was no token or actual air superiority by 8th FC beyond Frankfurt/Hannover line.

JANUARY 1944
The long range strike bomber losses were 42 for for 1-11 to Oschersleben/Halberstadt. The fighter claims were 14 for all the P-47D FG's (that turned back 100 miles short), 15 for the Only P-51B FG, and Zero for the P-38 FG's that actually performed target escort. 

In January the single Mustang FG (354FG) destroyed 46 in the air. The two P-38 FG's combined scored 32. The Combined Twelve 8th and 9th AF P47D total was 142. What this should tell you is that a.) the only target escort FG's (3) got more than 50% of 12 P-47D FG's, and b.) that P-47D was effective out to Hannover/Frankfurt, but the primary action was out of their range. Only the P-51B and P-38H offered any protection past P-47D range (90% of critical targets). 

I will leave you to work out on your own how defeated the LW was on 4-11, -13, -15, -24, -29, 5-8, -12, -28, -29. 

Sources: USAF Study 85, Tables extracted for comparison between P-38/P-47/P51 in ETO in Our Might Always, Kent Millers Fighter Units and Pilots of 8th AF; Caldwell's "Day Fighters Defense of the Reich"; Freeman's "Mighty 8th War Diary", Grabmann "German Air Defense 1933-1945", General Schmid "GAF against Allies in the West 143-1945"; USAFHRA K113.

The above sources are rich in details from Historians and folks that were "There"

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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Michael,
> 
> You make your points without any backup or validation. Drgondog puts quotes, statistics and sound, informative reasoning behind his rationale. If you would post other than, “most historians agree”, and instead post book & page where your information comes from you might find a more engaged group here. You might also gain a different point of view. I know I have.
> 
> ...


 Again not clamming to be an expert but the most historians thinking that we won air superiority in march is something that i have gleaned largely from, although not completely from seemingly knowledgeable posters on this site as well as articals i have read through the years. It seams to me to be the cocencus. Yes I do realize that just because something seams that way does not nescesarily make it true. That is why I said im certainly open to reading other historians with different views. To say that I cited no sources for my positions is inaccurate. The two I can rremember citing off the top of my head without going back through all the posts are Americas 100,000( I have been told this is one of the best reasurched books out there) and General Galland himself.


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## pbehn (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Again not clamming to be an expert but the most historians thinking that we won air superiority in march is something that i have gleaned largely from, although not completely from seemingly knowledgeable posters on this site as well as articals i have read through the years. It seams to me to be the cocencus. Yes I do realize that just because something seams that way does not nescesarily make it true. That is why I said im certainly open to reading other historians with different views. To say that I cited no sources for my positions is inaccurate. The two I can rremember citing off the top of my head without going back through all the posts are Americas 100,000( I have been told this is one of the best reasurched books out there) and General Galland himself.


Just one small point. You repeatedly talk about achieving air superiority. In fact for D-Day to work complete air supremacy over all north Europe was required, the P-47 and P-38 achieved local air superiority, the P-51 with all others achieved the air supremacy that was vital. The only date that was important was D-Day.

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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

drgondog said:


> I couldn't quite let this one slide by....
> 
> I carefully took your points and claims, parsed the content and sources (usually zero) to try to address your points with fact based rebuttals citing sources and inviting you to do the same. Your points in summary were:
> 
> ...


1 I never made the point that p47s were performing long range missions to Berlin in earlier44. I said there were other planes capable and in fact did fly missions of that distance including Berlin, some earlier p38, some later p47 thus making the often printed claim that the p51 was the only fighter able to make it to Berlin and back false and a case of overrating. Thats what this thread and my comments are about. Not that the p51 didn't open a can of whopass as you say on the Luftwaffe. It certainly did but that isnt my point. 2 I never said the p51 had made no contribution by the wresting of air superiority in March(again I am certainly open to reading opposing views and I have they just seem to be vastly outnumbered be the march view)what I did say was that If we did indeed have air superiority by March and unless the numbers for Feb 270 for p47/p38s and 88 for p51s are wrong( certainly open to those numbers being challenged also just nobody has) then the second most frequently quip about the p51 that it turned things around durring rhe month of big week is not true and thereby a case of overrating which is my point and the topic of this thread: overrated aircraft. If the two things thet the average guy reads about a particular aircraft and thus gleans his impressions from are not true then it is by definition at least as it pertains to those most frequently quoted " facts" a case of overrating. Rhis also bleeds over to your point 3 there you do have my position correc( at least as it stands now again I am open to callanges those numbers and air superiority date) but if those are accurate then yes I do stand by my claim that the 38/47 combination was capable of wresting air superiority from the Luftwaffe as is air superiority was achieved in March then over the top of the attrition curve was Feb at the latest and if the p38/p47 combination accounted for whats 270 ÷88? I dunno my brain is starting to hurt lets say about70%? then yes not only were the p47/p38 capable ow winning air superiority they did win air suppirriority. This does not in any way take away from the sterling qualities of the mustang it is just the reasoning behind my pick for a case of overrating.


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## BiffF15 (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Again not clamming to be an expert but the most historians thinking that we won air superiority in march is something that i have gleaned largely from, although not completely from seemingly knowledgeable posters on this site as well as articals i have read through the years. It seams to me to be the cocencus. Yes I do realize that just because something seams that way does not nescesarily make it true. That is why I said im certainly open to reading other historians with different views. To say that I cited no sources for my positions is inaccurate. The two I can rremember citing off the top of my head without going back through all the posts are Americas 100,000( I have been told this is one of the best reasurched books out there) and General Galland himself.



Michael,

Chapter or page from America’s 100k, source you use to pass along Gallands perspectives?

Also you mentioned that the Mustang was not the only plane that could go the distance, you are correct and Drgondog concurred. However he gave solid data of why it wasn’t optimal (roll authority, limited max Mach) which the Germans could easily use against it in combat.

The “P38/P47 could have done the job” is not a known fact, and therefore not a fact to be used to forward your opinion. It is an opinion. I agree there is potential the Allies could have got the job done without the Mustang. However they didn’t, which lends more credence to the quality of one airframe over another. 

Do I think the Mustang is overrated, it can be depending on who is saying what. I used to think it was, but then I came in here and got some serious tutoring and have since changed my mind. 

Cheers,
Biff


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Michael,
> 
> Chapter or page from America’s 100k, source you use to pass along Gallands perspectives?
> 
> ...


Americas 100, 000 chapter 4 page 283. Galland posters on this site largely although I have read this quoted in several articles through the years. Is it your contention that this was not his view? If you can point me to a quote or better quotes by him that it was later I am certainly not resistant to reading them.


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## fubar57 (Jul 10, 2018)

I don't own the book, what does it say exactly.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> I don't own the book, what does it say exactly.


It's a table of combat range with different amounts of fuel and gives it with as best i can remember 5min warm up and take off, climb to 25000 feet, 15 minutes at military power, 5 minutes at war emergency power, cruise back at 25000 feet and 30 min reserve on minimum cruise. It has ranges for all us fighter types under the same conditions. ( obviously fuel capacity is one condition that will varry) . If you are really interested i will go dig it out again an make sure i quoted it exactly but im pretty sure i have.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

I'm sorry i guess i left out the most critical piece of data. The range it gives for the p47 d23 qith 300 gal external fuel stores is 670 under these conditions.


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## Milosh (Jul 10, 2018)

Range is not combat radius. Ballpark for combat radius is 1/3 range.

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## pbehn (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I'm sorry i guess i left out the most critical piece of data. The range it gives for the p47 d23 qith 300 gal external fuel stores is 670 under these conditions.


What is the range under the same conditions of a P51 B with max fuel as of Mar 1944?


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Range is not combat radius. Ballpark for combat radius is 1/3 range.


Well it gives the p51s under the same conditions. With lesser external fuel( which i think is lagit as couldn't or at least didn't cary as much external stores) as 750 miles which would fit with the p51 max one way range often quoted of 2000 miles and what they eventually got the p47 s max one way range up to which was just shy of 1800 miles percentage wise and yes i guess thats about a third so perhaps i used the term range incorrectly. So at least according to rhis source which seems to have quite the reputation as far as i can tell whatever is the correct descriptive word itr 5 min warm up take of , climb to 25000 cruise at 25000 there 10 min military power, 5 min war emergency power, cruise back at 25000 feet, and 30 min reserve on minimum cruise. 670 miles dor the p47d23 and 750 miles for the p51d.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

Even if i used the term range incorrectly( verry posible) as long as the crteria for both are the same the comparison is lagit.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> What is the range under the same conditions of a P51 B with max fuel as of Mar 1944?


I would have to go dig out the book again to get the b but the d was 750 under the same conditions.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Range is not combat radius. Ballpark for combat radius is 1/3 range.


I went and got the book again and yes in both case p51d and p47d23 the term used is combat radius. You are right about that, my bad. The combat radius given for the p51d with 150 gal external fuel is 750 miles. For the p47d23 with 300 gal of external fuel its 670 miles making Berlin a stretch but as was the case later certainly doable.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I would have to go dig out the book again to get the b but the d was 750 under the same conditions.


I felt bad about kinda brushing off your request for the info on the p51d combat radiusso i went and got the book again but alas the only p51 figures on combat radius it gives is for the d model. I would suspect given the b models lesser drag and given equivalent fuel it would have a slightly greater combat radius. Maybe 780 miles? But thats just a reasoned guess on my part.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I went and got the book again and yes in both case p51d and p47d23 the term used is combat radius. You are right about that, my bad. The combat radius given for the p51d with 150 gal external fuel is 750 miles. For the p47d23 with 300 gal of external fuel its 670 miles making Berlin a stretch but as was the case later certainly doable.


I meant p51b sorry


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## fubar57 (Jul 10, 2018)

Thanks, not a problem. I'm sure I'll get the book eventually and the info would have come in


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Michael,
> 
> Chapter or page from America’s 100k, source you use to pass along Gallands perspectives?
> 
> ...


First paragraph: other planes could go the distance but were not optimal: I myself stated this several times in my posts if you read them. That is kinda one of my points. To say that the p38 was less than optimal compared to the p51 is acurate however to say that its shortcomings were easily exploited by the germans is one of those stetements that is technically corect but doesn't tell the whole story. Example yes dive speed limits are exploitable by german aircraft but climbing right hand turns( propeler torque and climb rate) are exploitable by the p38. Admitadly I think the dive speed and higher mach limitations are more important but the 38 also had an easy out if it was awear the german ane was there so its not as simple as saying the germans had this particular advantage so its game over. And I think all 3 planes ultimately did the job in total. The p51 certainly has the best record of three. Is some of that because of more pilot training, a lesser oposition from the time the p51 became the dominant fighter in Europe( certanly from mid 44 on), clober college(only p51 pilots got this training so I read) , the k14 gunsight, and new tactics ie freed up from the bombers that just happened to coincide with the p51 arival in numbers. Ya some but certainly not all. It was a be2 design overall( although certainly not for all fighter missions) but that is what you would expect from alatter model. And in closing that if there is one specific thing that constitutes " doing the job" i would contend that winning air superiority is that thing( yes other aspects were very important) but if you have to pick just one air superiority has to be it, at least in my mind( yes others may differ, your millage may vary, and coupon expires in March) . So at least by that criteria the p38/p47 combination did get the job done. There is no conjecture about it.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> Thanks, not a problem. I'm sure I'll get the book eventually and the info would have come in


Your welcome. I am certainly no expert but I am always eager to help with i at least believe to be accurate information


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## GrauGeist (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Your welcome. I am certainly no expert but I am always eager to help with i at least believe to be accurate information


But you've been provided extremely accurate information from several credible sources and yet balked at that, prefering instead to argue your position, which mainly appears to be opinion-based.

As a matter of fact, you've been arguing with a published historian, who's specialty happens to be not only the P-51, but it's operations in the ETO from introduction to the war's end; spanning losses, wins, ratios, attrition, modifications, etc.

Think about that for a moment...


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## Clayton Magnet (Jul 10, 2018)

I think a factor that plays into the P-51 potentially being overrated, it the misconception that because it was arguably the best fighter of the war, it was therefore superior in ALL perimeters. The concept that a Bf 109 might out-climb one, or a Spitfire could out-run one, ect.., is sometimes laughed off as inconceivable. 
For a frustrating experience, try following the Facebook page, "I Love WWII Planes".

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## GrauGeist (Jul 10, 2018)

Clayton Magnet said:


> ...For a frustrating experience, try following the Facebook page, "I Love WWII Planes".


There's several WWII groups/pages on facebook that generate some interesting "facts".

I had a thread going here several years ago that was titles "history according to random people" that provided some of those "interesting" facts...


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> But you've been provided extremely accurate information from several credible sources and yet balked at that, prefering instead to argue your position, which mainly appears to be opinion-based.
> 
> As a matter of fact, you've been arguing with a published historian, who's specialty happens to be not only the P-51, but it's operations in the ETO from introduction to the war's end; spanning losses, wins, ratios, attrition, modifications, etc.
> 
> Think about that for a moment...


I think this is where the phrase talking past each other is appropriate. I don't thin I argued any one of his points. And i don't think he or anyone rebutted mine. I am simply giving the reasons for my pick of overrating. No one has rebutted those reasons. The first the berlin and back thing several of my critics here i guess we could say, agreed this is true making the statement. " the only fighter Berlin" etc untrue and a case of overrating at least as it pertains to that. The other the whe when was air superiority achieved is not so cut and dried but thats why I said I am certainly open to differing views on this but nobody quoted anyone or even just asserted themselves that this was not the case and if so is another case of overrating. If you go back through my posts you will see that yes in one post i got dragged into the wich is better debate in which i largely concurred with others by the way.but for the most part i am simply giving the reason behind my overrating pick. Nobody has challenged either of those two reasons and i have not challenged your or anyone elses contentions about the sterling qualities of the p51. I have in fact largly concurred. Let me say it one more time since some seem not to ba able to read these words, at least not when I type them: The p51 was the better of the three major types in the European theater. It is however still overrated beyond even how good it was and I simply gave examples of my reasoning( yes others may dissaree) and I would certainly be open to discussing something like someone saying i believe your wrong about the date of air superiority and herres why..... That however didnt happen just lists of the p51s accomplishments(whew thank god for spell check) which i do not and did not in any way disparage. I'm not sure why a few of you feel compelled to try and put me an anti p51 camp as I said several times if it were up to me i would have mostly chosen to go wth the p51 myself. You know it is possible for a plane to be great and still be overrated and that's all any of my posts have been about.

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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> But you've been provided extremely accurate information from several credible sources and yet balked at that, prefering instead to argue your position, which mainly appears to be opinion-based.
> 
> As a matter of fact, you've been arguing with a published historian, who's specialty happens to be not only the P-51, but it's operations in the ETO from introduction to the war's end; spanning losses, wins, ratios, attrition, modifications, etc.
> 
> Think about that for a moment...


As to my comments being opinion based. I think thats unfair. I did give several what i believe at least to be credible sources for my thoughts and also said i am certainly open evidence to the contrary about air superiority date for example but no one wanted to debate that. Just lists of the p51s accomplishments which are factual and i am not arguing and have nothing to do with the reasons i picked the p51 for overrating. Was the p51 great and was the p51 overrated as it pertains to the to examples I gave. Those are two different subjects. I cant recal an single example of an p51 kill ratio or statstic that I have argued with. I hope that makes clear my position but somehow I am not hopefull.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> There's several WWII groups/pages on facebook that generate some interesting "facts".
> 
> I had a thread going here several years ago that was titles "history according to random people" that provided some of those "interesting" facts...


One more attempt at explaining my pick/ comments. You are poking fun at " i love ww2 aircraft" with made up facts and rightfully so. If you head on over there I'll bet you can find " the p51 the only fighter that ever took the bombers to Berlin and back" right now. Maybe that will help you see things fom my angle a bit. I have certainly made an effort to see things from yours ie concurring with most if not all the p51s listed accomplishments.


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## pbehn (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I went and got the book again and yes in both case p51d and p47d23 the term used is combat radius. You are right about that, my bad. The combat radius given for the p51d with 150 gal external fuel is 750 miles. For the p47d23 with 300 gal of external fuel its 670 miles making Berlin a stretch but as was the case later certainly doable.


That means the P-51 can cruise for 160 miles once it has reached the maximum range of the P-47, that is the difference.

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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> There's several WWII groups/pages on facebook that generate some interesting "facts".
> 
> I had a thread going here several years ago that was titles "history according to random people" that provided some of those "interesting" facts...


You know what just struck me as funny about this " argument" i accept pretty much every fact you p51 defenders are quoting and i think all of you accept at least one of mine( the Berlin and back thing ) and at least some of you accept the other(the approximate air superiority date thing?) ( no one has really challenged it so i assume at least some agree yet somehow we still have an argument i guess thats whats meant by talking past each other.


pbehn said:


> That means the P-51 can cruise for 160 miles once it has reached the maximum range of the P-47, that is the difference.


Yes thats an 80 mile longer reach. Certainly significant. But my point wasn't absolute range or combat radius. I think everyone knows the p51 had it over the p47 in this department. My point was that both the p38 and p47 could and did also reach Berlin thereby making the ofter used " fact" about the p51 that it was the only fighter to take the bombers to Berlin and back" untrue and thereby a case of overrating. Disclaimer: overrateness does not in any way reflect on the actual abilities, assets, accomplishments of the aircraft in question. Individual millage may vary. See your doctor if overratedness lasts more than 4 hrs. One to a customer.


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## YF12A (Jul 10, 2018)

I can only repeat what I was told in many enjoyable and enlightening conversations with my neighbor who flew, as far as we can tell, 72 missions from 1942 in the 306th B/G until he became the C/O of the 303rd B/G in Oct. 1944 until the end of the War, then Col William Raper. It was his belief that the P-51 was the game changer. Was it the best at everything? Of course not, no plane was, but it could and did do what needed to be done. When it needed to be done. This coming from a pilot who flew everything he could get his hands on, including all the fighters, and he even had a personal, lightened Razorback P-47 when he was the 303rd C/O that he flew Ramrods with when he wasn't leading his group. Some interesting stories there! Somewhere in storage I have a picture of it and you can clearly see the Group triangle on the aft fuselage.

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## pbehn (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Yes thats an 80 mile longer reach. Certainly significant. But my point wasn't absolute range or combat radius. I think everyone knows the p51 had it over the p47 in this department. My point was that both the p38 and p47 could and did also reach Berlin thereby making the ofter used " fact" about the p51 that it was the only fighter to take the bombers to Berlin and back" untrue and thereby a case of overrating. Disclaimer: overrateness does not in any way reflect on the actual abilities, assets, accomplishments of the aircraft in question. Individual millage may vary. See your doctor if overratedness lasts more than 4 hrs. One to a customer.


But again you are using planes from much later. Staying with a bomber formation flying at 150MPH considerably reduces the range. The maps with maximum radius of action ignore the fact that the escorts had to fly out to meet the bombers and then escort them. Compare the place that P-47s turned back on the Schweinfur-Revensburg raid with the actual maximum range of the planes and Spitfires were used in the first phase.


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## DarrenW (Jul 10, 2018)

I'm definitely not the brightest bulb on the tree when it comes to the ETO, but I'm learning much from everyone here who is far more knowledgeable on the subject than myself so please forgive my ignorance. I was always under the assumption that while the P-38 and later model P-47 could and did make it to Berlin and back, these were primarily fighter sweeps or missions involving bomber rendezvous over the target. The only fighter with the range to stay with the bombers the entire trip was the P-51. It could continuously weave and provide top cover for the bomber stream all the way in and all the way out, while the other fighters would run out of gas doing so. At least this was the case for most of 1944. Can someone please clarify this for me?


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> But again you are using planes from much later. Staying with a bomber formation flying at 150MPH considerably reduces the range. The maps with maximum radius of action ignore the fact that the escorts had to fly out to meet the bombers and then escort them. Compare the place that P-47s turned back on the Schweinfur-Revensburg raid with the actual maximum range of the planes and Spitfires were used in the first phase.


Yes all true but factors would seem to apply equally to all aircraft no? So as long as the comparison is made using the same cryteria they should be valid. And regardless both other types did fly those distances. One earlier and one a little later on so the often used quip about the p51 being the only plane the escort the bombers to Berlin and back is not true and a case of overrating at least as far as it pertains to that particular"fact" disclaimer: please see previous post


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## DarrenW (Jul 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> But again you are using planes from much later. Staying with a bomber formation flying at 150MPH considerably reduces the range. The maps with maximum radius of action ignore the fact that the escorts had to fly out to meet the bombers and then escort them. Compare the place that P-47s turned back on the Schweinfur-Revensburg raid with the actual maximum range of the planes and Spitfires were used in the first phase.



Sorry pbehn but it looks like we were thinking the exact same thing at the practically the same moment. I didn't mean to seem like a copy cat....


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## pbehn (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Yes all true but factors would seem to apply equally to all aircraft no? So as long as the comparison is made using the same cryteria they should be valid. And regardless both other types did fly those distances. One earlier and one a little later on so the often used quip about the p51 being the only plane the escort the bombers to Berlin and back is not true and a case of overrating at least as far as it pertains to that particular"fact" disclaimer: please see previous post


No aeroplane escorted a bomber formation to Berlin and back, a raid to Berlin involved at least four and usually more waves of fighters. Bill Runnels posted here his longest mission was 11 hrs almost twice as long as a long mission for a p-51. Simply flying to Berlin and back wasn't the issue. Once in contact with the bombers the fighters had to maintain a speed that was economical but also fast enough to get into a fight and win, the speed of the aircraft was the ground speed of the bomber formation.


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## DarrenW (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Yes all true but factors would seem to apply equally to all aircraft no? So as long as the comparison is made using the same cryteria they should be valid. And regardless both other types did fly those distances. One earlier and one a little later on so the often used quip about the p51 being the only plane the escort the bombers to Berlin and back is not true and a case of overrating at least as far as it pertains to that particular"fact" disclaimer: please see previous post



But Michael the Mustang's radius of action reached far beyond Berlin - it could stay with the bombers to the target, fight the Luftwaffe, and have enough gas to provide cover for the returning bombers back to England. The other two "options" couldn't and didn't.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> I'm definitely not the brightest bulb on the tree when it comes to the ETO, but I'm learning much from everyone here who is far more knowledgeable on the subject than myself so please forgive my ignorance. I was always under the assumption that while the P-38 and later model P-47 could and did make it to Berlin and back, these were primarily fighter sweeps or missions involving bomber rendezvous over the target. The only fighter with the range to stay with the bombers the entire trip was the P-51. It could continuously weave and provide top cover for the bomber stream all the way in and all the way out, while the other fighters would run out of gas doing so. At least this was the case for most of 1944. Can someone please clarify this for me?


I believe you are correct when it comes to the p47 but not the p38 as once proper fuel management techniques were implemented ala Linberg, the p38 actually had a slightly longer range than the p51 so I have read. In my main source for statistics, Americas 100,000 it lists the p38s range as being slightly shorter. Not sure if this is pre or post fuel management technique change but in either case the p38 should have been able to and to the best of my knowledge did fly escort with the bombers all the way there and back to. The p47 may have had to do it in waves which would mean it would take more plans for the same effect but doesn't mean they could and later did provide cover all the way there and back.


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## BiffF15 (Jul 10, 2018)

Michael,

People might think you are in the Anti P51 camp as you have posted 12 out of the last 18 posts. You keep repeating your arguments without really adding a different perspective or offering compelling evidence why others are wrong or incorrect in their conclusion. 

Think about agreeing to disagree and letting it go.

Cheers,
Biff

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## DarrenW (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I believe you are correct when it comes to the p47 but not the p38 as once proper fuel management techniques were implemented ala Linberg, the p38 actually had a slightly longer range than the p51 so I have read. In my main source for statistics, Americas 100,000 it lists the p38s range as being slightly shorter. Not sure if this is pre or post fuel management technique change but in either case the p38 should have been able to and to the best of my knowledge did fly escort with the bombers all the way there and back to. The p47 may have had to do it in waves which would mean it would take more plans for the same effect but doesn't mean they could and later did provide cover all the way there and back.



Thanks Michael for the feedback. What was the speed and altitude that Lindbergh was specifying when he was able to extend the range of the P-38 beyond that of the P-51? I ask this because as pbehn stated earlier, to be an effective escort one must keep one's airspeed up in order to engage the enemy before they reach the bomber formations.


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## fubar57 (Jul 10, 2018)

It was more to do with RPMs and running in "Auto-lean"

"Lindbergh talked with MacDonald. The colonel then asked the group's pilots to assemble at the recreation hall that evening. The hall was that in name only, packed dirt floors staring up at a palm thatched roof, one ping pong table and some decks of cards completing the decor. Under the glare of unshaded bulbs, MacDonald got down to business. "Mr. Lindbergh" wanted to explain how to gain more range from the P-38s. In a pleasant manner Lindbergh explained cruise control techniques he had worked out for the Lightnings: reduce the standard 2,200 rpm to 1,600, set fuel mixtures to "auto-lean," and slightly increase manifold pressures. This, Lindbergh predicted, would stretch the Lightning's radius by 400 hundred miles, a nine-hour flight. When he concluded his talk half an hour later, the room was silent."
Charles Lindbergh and the 475th Fighter Group

I can't find the other website but I believe they were also told down to 160Kts from 180(?). Lindbergh said that the Pilot's Notes were wrong

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## pbehn (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> The p47 may have had to do it in waves which would mean it would take more plans for the same effect but doesn't mean they could and later did provide cover all the way there and back.


They all had to do it in waves, I doubt that one group of P51s could escort a bomber group much further than the German Border and back.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Michael,
> 
> People might think you are in the Anti P51 camp as you have posted 12 out of the last 18 posts. You keep repeating your arguments without really adding a different perspective or offering compelling evidence why others are wrong or incorrect in their conclusion.
> 
> ...


The reason i keep repeating is that im trying to point out that the arguments on the other side so to speak I actually agree with at least for the most part but have nothing to do with my position. They are two different subjects. Perhaps you are right , i should just forget it . I guess i thought that by comming back to my p reasons for picking the p51 as most overrated while at the same time explaining i think it was a great plane( yes both are possible simultainiously)(thank god for that spell check again) i would make at least a few say" hay wait a minute, he also thinks the p51 is the best of the 3 majors " and " maybe he does have a point on the overrating thing" at least as it pertains to maybe one of those particular issues or if not at least a recognition that we are talking about 2 seperate issues that may seem in conflict on the surface but in fact can exist simultaneously. But alas, people are if nothing else tribal. That is they join groups and defend that groups position at all costs. I made every effort to see thngs from others point of view conceding and agreeing with there sats for rhe most part but pointing out thats different subject. At one point one person said well maybe you have a point when it comes to the range thing with the p38 out of all those posts. I thought people were starting to understand my position. Not that they necessarily agreed with it but at least were understading it was a completely separate issue from whether the p51 was overall the best of the 3 aircraft but of course that hope faded quickly. Last but not least I don't know why things need to be hostile. Acussing me of not using sources when I did and also said repeatedly i am all ears on opposing vews on my two reasons. Its all good, just seems lime this would be a bit more fun without that. And how about a sense of humor ? Anyone? My poor spelling alones gotta make you s lagh right? Away i tried. And yes as I have repeated countless times by now the p51 was a great plane. But thats not the subject of this thread is it ?


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

I should say i didn't mean everyone with oposing views. Just a few. Some have been quite cordial


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> They all had to do it in waves, I doubt that one group of P51s could escort a bomber group much further than the German Border and back.


Now theres something i didn't know. I thought only the p47 would have to do it in waves.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Thanks Michael for the feedback. What was the speed and altitude that Lindbergh was specifying when he was able to extend the range of the P-38 beyond that of the P-51? I ask this because as pbehn stated earlier, to be an effective escort one must keep one's airspeed up in order to engage the enemy before they reach the bomber formations.


That really is beyond my memory at the moment but i believe it was quite slow. Somebody else quoted 180 earlier and that sounds right to me but i cant sweer to it. Later I'll dig through Americas 100,000 and see if i can find the answer. Right now i have to go trim a tree before my wife comes home and realizes I've been on this website allday and haven't got anything done.


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## pbehn (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Now theres something i didn't know. I thought only the p47 would have to do it in waves.


As I said on the Regensburg Schweinfurt mission Spitfires handed over to P47s which turned back over Eupen in Belgium. from wiki 
The Schweinfurt task forces followed the same route as the Regensburg force. Because of the delayed start of the mission, eight squadrons of RAF Spitfire fighters (96 aircraft) from 11 Group and 83 Group had been added to escort the Schweinfurt force as far as Antwerp, where P-47s would take over and escort it to Eupen.[_citation needed_] The field order for the mission specified that the B-17s would fly at altitudes between 23,000 and 26,500 feet (7,000-8,000 m), but approaching the coast of the Netherlands at 13:30, it was confronted with developing cloud masses not present earlier in the day.[_citation needed_] The commander of the first task force estimated that the bombers would not be able to climb over the clouds and elected to fly under them at 17,000 feet (5,000 m), increasing the vulnerability of the bombers to fighter attacks.[_citation needed_]


. drgondog posted a typical mission profile years ago. Berlin required at least 4 possibly 5 waves from memory plus others to escort individual stragglers that had dropped out of formation. It wasn't a question of p-47s or p-38s or P51s they needed all of them and pilots too. This is why even when the P-51 was arriving they were still pushing to extend the range of others with internal and external fuel. There had to be massive safety margins built in. Sometimes the rendezvous was missed, sometimes the pilots were in combat longer than 15 minutes, sometimes the ground speed of the bombers going into a head wind was as low as 120MPH. The escorts had to stay with the bombers no matter what and that meant huge "contingency", despite this, reports of pilots landing exhausted with little more than fumes in the tank are common. I believe everyone here has been extremely cordial, but if you hadn't considered that the escorts operated in waves then maybe you could consider that it is a more complex issue than you thought. It is certainly not an issue of whether a plane could reach Berlin or not.

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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> As I said on the Regensburg Schweinfurt mission Spitfires handed over to P47s which turned back over Eupen in Belgium. from wiki
> The Schweinfurt task forces followed the same route as the Regensburg force. Because of the delayed start of the mission, eight squadrons of RAF Spitfire fighters (96 aircraft) from 11 Group and 83 Group had been added to escort the Schweinfurt force as far as Antwerp, where P-47s would take over and escort it to Eupen.[_citation needed_] The field order for the mission specified that the B-17s would fly at altitudes between 23,000 and 26,500 feet (7,000-8,000 m), but approaching the coast of the Netherlands at 13:30, it was confronted with developing cloud masses not present earlier in the day.[_citation needed_] The commander of the first task force estimated that the bombers would not be able to climb over the clouds and elected to fly under them at 17,000 feet (5,000 m), increasing the vulnerability of the bombers to fighter attacks.[_citation needed_]
> 
> 
> . drgondog posted a typical mission profile years ago. Berlin required at least 4 possibly 5 waves from memory plus others to escort individual stragglers that had dropped out of formation. It wasn't a question of p-47s or p-38s or P51s they needed all of them and pilots too. This is why even when the P-51 was arriving they were still pushing to extend the range of others with internal and external fuel. There had to be massive safety margins built in. Sometimes the rendezvous was missed, sometimes the pilots were in combat longer than 15 minutes, sometimes the ground speed of the bombers going into a head wind was as low as 120MPH. The escorts had to stay with the bombers no matter what and that meant huge "contingency", despite this, reports of pilots landing exhausted with little more than fumes in the tank are common. I believe everyone here has been extremely cordial, but if you hadn't considered that the escorts operated in waves then maybe you could consider that it is a more complex issue than you thought. It is certainly not an issue of whether a plane could reach Berlin or not.


Thats all fascinating and i mean that. Some of that i knew and some I did not. But if the p38 had a slightly greater or slightly lesser range iether way then the statement the only plane that could...... Would still be......... an example of........ oh never mind. Anyone know where I can find a thread on the topic of most overrated aircraft?

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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

And i really do have to go trim that tree now.


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## DarrenW (Jul 10, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Now theres something i didn't know. I thought only the p47 would have to do it in waves.



You're not alone Michael, I've learned something new today as well....


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## pbehn (Jul 10, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> You're not alone Michael, I've learned something new today as well....


Another thing to consider with Berlin is a straight line from East Anglia to Berlin takes you nicely over many major cities and industrial areas in Netherlands and Germany all ringed by flak, as the ground forces advanced these gradually fell silent.

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## fubar57 (Jul 10, 2018)



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## DarrenW (Jul 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Another thing to consider with Berlin is a straight line from East Anglia to Berlin takes you nicely over many major cities and industrial areas in Netherlands and Germany all ringed by flak, as the ground forces advanced these gradually fell silent.



Interesting.....


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## pbehn (Jul 10, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> View attachment 501347


Yup a bit longer than the straight line would suggest.


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## wuzak (Jul 10, 2018)

drgondog said:


> I will leave you to work out on your own how defeated the LW was on 4-11, -13, -15, -24, -29, 5-8, -12, -28, -29.



Has anybody looked into these mission dates?

Just to be clear, they are:
April 11, 1944
April 13, 1944
April 15, 1944
April 24, 1944
April 29, 1944
May 8, 1944
May 12, 1944
May 28, 1944
May 29, 1944

Just had a look at April 11, 1944.
64 bombers lost (52 B-17, 12 B-24), 16 fighters lost (7 P-47, 9 P-51), 406 bombers damaged (343 B-17, 63 B-24) and 29 fighters damaged (16 P-47, 13 P-51).

A total of 643 bombers were sent. 819 fighter escorts (124 P-38, 454 P-47, 241 P-51) were used.

So, the bombers had a 10% loss rate, which I do not believe was sustainable. 
More than that, 73% were lost or damaged. Some of that damage would have been from flak, but it still is quite heavy losses.

And it shows that the main difference in loss rates between the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission (16% of 376), the second Schweingfurt mission (22% of 351) in the latter half of 1943 and the escorted missions in early 1944 was primarily the number of bombers sent on the raid.


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## Milosh (Jul 10, 2018)

*April 11 1944

Mission 700*: 1,160 bombers and 890 fighters are dispatched in 6 forces to make PFF attacks on the oil industry in W Germany; 5 bombers and 2 fighters are lost:

1. 228 B-17s are dispatched to hit the oil plant at Neunkirchen (151); secondary targets hit are the marshaling yards at Saarbrucken (35) and Neunkirchen (13); 5 B-17s are damaged. Escort is provided by 76 of 77 P-47s and 50 Ninth AF P-51s without loss.

2. 210 of 222 B-24s hit the Misburg oil plant at Hannover; 3 B-24s are lost and 93 damaged; 28 airmen are MIA. Escort is provided by 371 P-47s and P-51s; they claim 0-0-1 aircraft on the ground; 1 P-51 is lost (pilot MIA).

3. 257 B-17s are dispatched to hit the Harburg oil plant at Hamburg (238); targets of opportunity are the aviation industry at Nordholz (9) and other (2); 9 B-17s are damaged. Escort is provided by 124 of 139 P-51s; they claim 0-0-1 aircraft on the ground; 1 P-51 is lost (pilot MIA) and 1 damaged beyond repair.

4. 186 of 193 B-17s hit the Rhenania oil plant at Hamburg; 2 others hit targets of opportunity; 2 B-17s are lost and 61 damaged; 1 airman is WIA and 18 MIA. Escort is provided by 110 P-51s without loss.

5. 91 of 119 B-17s hit the Welhun oil plant at Bottrop; 26 others hit the secondary, the marshaling yard at Hamm; 24 B-17s are damaged. Escort is provided by 37 of 40 P-51s; they claim 0-0-1 aircraft; 1 P-51 is lost.

6. 133 of 141 B-24s hit Gelsenkirchen/Nordstern without loss. Escort is provided by 50 of 54 P-47s

Missions


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## wuzak (Jul 10, 2018)

Milosh said:


> *April 11 1944
> 
> Mission 700*: 1,160 bombers and 890 fighters are dispatched in 6 forces to make PFF attacks on the oil industry in W Germany; 5 bombers and 2 fighters are lost:
> 
> ...



That is the mission for November 4 1944.

Narrative - Official Air Force Mission Description

*Mission 298*: *917 bombers* and *819 fighters* are dispatched in 3 separate forces to bomb production centers (primarily fighter aircraft factories) and targets of opportunity in N Germany; *64 bombers are lost*, one of the heaviest single-day losses of World War II. The bombers also drop 2.4 million leaflets. Details are:
1. *341 B-17s* are dispatched to hit aviation industry targets at Sorau (108 bomb) and Cottbus (17 bomb); 127 hit Stettin, 20 hit Trechel, 16 hit Dobberphel and 23 hit targets of opportunity; they claim 12-2-3 Luftwaffe aircraft; *19 B-17s are lost*, 3 damaged beyond repair and *190 damaged*; casualties are 12 KIA, 13 WIA and 200 MIA.

2. Of 302 B-17s dispatched, 172 hit Rostock, 52 hit Politz, 35 hit the industrial area at Arnimswalde and 15 hit targets of opportunity; they claim 34-20-19 Luftwaffe aircraft; 33 B-17s are lost, 1 damaged beyond repair and 153 damaged; casualties are 2 KIA, 9 WIA and 330 MIA.

3. 274 B-24s are dispatched to hit aviation industry targets at Oschersleben (121 bomb) and Berenburg (99 bomb); 9 bomb aviation industry targets at Halberstadt, 9 bomb Eisleben and 5 hit targets of opportunity; they claim 27-2-1 Luftwaffe aircraft; 12 B-24s are lost, 1 damaged beyond repair and 63 damaged; casualties are 5 KIA, 9 WIA and 122 MIA.

Escort is provided by 124 P-38s, 454 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-47s and 241 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-51s; the fighters claim 51-5-25 Luftwaffe aircraft in the air and 65-0-67 on the grounds: no P-38s are lost; *7 P-47s are los*t and 16 damaged, 7 pilots are MIA; 9* P-51s are lost* and 13 damaged, 9 pilots are MIA.

Mission 299: 5 of 5 B-17s drop 2 million leaflets on Paris, Rouen, Le Mans, Rennes, Vichy, Lyon, Limoges and Toulouse between 2301 and 0055 hours local without loss.

12 B-24s are dispatched on CARPETBAGGER operations.


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## wuzak (Jul 10, 2018)

*Mission 303*: 616 fighters are dispatched on strafing sweeps of C and W Germany, airfields being the primary objectives; *33 fighters are lost*: 132 P-38s claim 7-0-2 Luftwaffe aircraft, 11 P-38s are lost and 16 damaged, 11 pilots are MIA; 262 P-47s claim 20-1-23 aircraft, 7 P-47s are lost, 1 damaged beyond repair and 13 damaged, 7 pilots are MIA; 222 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-51s claim 30-0-10 aircraft, 15 P-51s are lost, 1 damaged beyond repair and 5 damaged; 12 pilots are MIA.


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## michael rauls (Jul 10, 2018)

pbehn said:


> As I said on the Regensburg Schweinfurt mission Spitfires handed over to P47s which turned back over Eupen in Belgium. from wiki
> The Schweinfurt task forces followed the same route as the Regensburg force. Because of the delayed start of the mission, eight squadrons of RAF Spitfire fighters (96 aircraft) from 11 Group and 83 Group had been added to escort the Schweinfurt force as far as Antwerp, where P-47s would take over and escort it to Eupen.[_citation needed_] The field order for the mission specified that the B-17s would fly at altitudes between 23,000 and 26,500 feet (7,000-8,000 m), but approaching the coast of the Netherlands at 13:30, it was confronted with developing cloud masses not present earlier in the day.[_citation needed_] The commander of the first task force estimated that the bombers would not be able to climb over the clouds and elected to fly under them at 17,000 feet (5,000 m), increasing the vulnerability of the bombers to fighter attacks.[_citation needed_]
> 
> 
> . drgondog posted a typical mission profile years ago. Berlin required at least 4 possibly 5 waves from memory plus others to escort individual stragglers that had dropped out of formation. It wasn't a question of p-47s or p-38s or P51s they needed all of them and pilots too. This is why even when the P-51 was arriving they were still pushing to extend the range of others with internal and external fuel. There had to be massive safety margins built in. Sometimes the rendezvous was missed, sometimes the pilots were in combat longer than 15 minutes, sometimes the ground speed of the bombers going into a head wind was as low as 120MPH. The escorts had to stay with the bombers no matter what and that meant huge "contingency", despite this, reports of pilots landing exhausted with little more than fumes in the tank are common. I believe everyone here has been extremely cordial, but if you hadn't considered that the escorts operated in waves then maybe you could consider that it is a more complex issue than you thought. It is certainly not an issue of whether a plane could reach Berlin or not.


As someone once said, I just can't let that one go. The everyone has been extremely cordial part that is. ( thhe rest is fascinating and informative). Cordial? Really? One person used the f word when responding to me. Several more basically acused me of basically just pulling stuff out of my @ on the verry same page where I had just given what are, at least as far as I know, verry good sources. And that's when I was agreeing with there basic premise i.e. p51 great. I can only imagine if I had said " Ah maybe the p51 aint so hot" When I did not have a specific source but it was something I read for years and just understood to be true I always qualified it as such and often asked if others had differing info I would want to hear it. I don't know how one can be any less pulling stuff out of ones @ than that. Please don't misunderstand me, although considering the nature of the previous decision I am reasonably confident you will( forgive me that one just wrote its self) , it is not that I can't take someone flipping the f word at me. God knows I hear it at work all day and I have even used it myself once or twice( although in what should be friendly discussion) or that I can't take someone accusing me of basically pulling stuff out of my @ when I did not. It's that a: seems like things would be more fun without that sort of thing and b: if someone trys to call that cordial, ya I'm not lettin that slide by.


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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2018)

Disclaimer: as i said before Most have been cordial. Certainly don't want that to sound as if its aimed at all


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## GrauGeist (Jul 11, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> But Michael the Mustang's radius of action reached far beyond Berlin - it could stay with the bombers to the target, fight the Luftwaffe, and have enough gas to provide cover for the returning bombers back to England. The other two "options" couldn't and didn't.


The problem is, that the B-17s (and B-24s) had the long range fuel advantage. For the Fighter escort, it would have been possible to fly with the bombers *IF* they were leaned out at cruise, loaded down with drop tanks.
But, this was not going to happen - the mission planners anticipate Luftwaffe interceptions so they assigned rotations.
In otherwords, one fighter group would accompany the bombers' ingress to a "point of no return" and at that point, another fighter group would meet the bombers and take the handoff to escort the bomber' egress.

The mission planners would take into consideration the fuel needed for the fighter's assembly and attaching to the bomber group and then a calculated additional burn time fending off Luftwaffe interceptors, plus the fuel needed to return safely return.

So in essence, they worked in a rotation much like a relay marathon.

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## BiffF15 (Jul 11, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> The reason i keep repeating is that im trying to point out that the arguments on the other side so to speak I actually agree with at least for the most part but have nothing to do with my position. They are two different subjects. Perhaps you are right , i should just forget it . I guess i thought that by comming back to my p reasons for picking the p51 as most overrated while at the same time explaining i think it was a great plane( yes both are possible simultainiously)(thank god for that spell check again) i would make at least a few say" hay wait a minute, he also thinks the p51 is the best of the 3 majors " and " maybe he does have a point on the overrating thing" at least as it pertains to maybe one of those particular issues or if not at least a recognition that we are talking about 2 seperate issues that may seem in conflict on the surface but in fact can exist simultaneously. But alas, people are if nothing else tribal. That is they join groups and defend that groups position at all costs. I made every effort to see thngs from others point of view conceding and agreeing with there sats for rhe most part but pointing out thats different subject. At one point one person said well maybe you have a point when it comes to the range thing with the p38 out of all those posts. I thought people were starting to understand my position. Not that they necessarily agreed with it but at least were understading it was a completely separate issue from whether the p51 was overall the best of the 3 aircraft but of course that hope faded quickly. Last but not least I don't know why things need to be hostile. Acussing me of not using sources when I did and also said repeatedly i am all ears on opposing vews on my two reasons. Its all good, just seems lime this would be a bit more fun without that. And how about a sense of humor ? Anyone? My poor spelling alones gotta make you s lagh right? Away i tried. And yes as I have repeated countless times by now the p51 was a great plane. But thats not the subject of this thread is it ?




Michael,

I will anchor for one last round then I will let it go.

First, regarding your comments quoting “others” who said the Mustang was the only plane who could do the distance. It wasn’t the only airplane that could do the round trip so your basing at least part of your argument on info from the uninformed. I was not under the impression it was the only plane that could do the trip, and assumed the Mustang did it best which is why it was phased in while other aircraft were pushed out. There was a reason the USAAF kept improving the range during the late war on the P47 / P51 and not the P38. Think P47M or N, P51BCD /H.

Second my background is retired USAF fighter pilot with 17 years in the Eagle. As such I have fought F16s (Dutch, Belgium, US, Taiwanese, Sings plus more I’m sure), F4 (US and German), F5, F18 (USMC, Canadian, Super and regular flavors), F15 (US, Saudi), Mirages of various flavors, Mig29s, Tomcats, A6s, Harriers, Tornados and probably a few others. I was also operational in OV10s and the RC26. I’ve had 9 backseat rides in F16s and 1 in a CF18. I did the takeoff in the Hornet, rejoined and flew both close a wide formations, ran the radar, and killed my Operations Officer in my first pass in it. We then did some acro and felt VERY comfy in it right away. 

While the P38 and P47 could both do the round trip to Berlin and back that is not the whole picture. The P38 in particular had several vices that could be used to neutralize it, those being maneuverability (particularly in roll) and limiting Mach. I lived strength and weaknesses in the air battle arena for the majority of my adult life (my wife would argue the adult part of that statement). Trust me when I say the German fighter pilots were aware of it and used their strengths against its weaknesses. The P47 would in my opine be more difficult an opponent than the Lightning due to it being easier to fly than Lockheed’s big twin. I flew the Eagle for a long time and watched new and experienced guys in various types of aircraft. The F16 being the best for a new guy, the Hornet next and the Eagle a distant third in that trio for one reason. Experience in type required to be lethal. The Viper and Hornet are fly by wire, so the new guy can pull for all he is worth and not hurt the plane or worry about over G’ing it. Not so on the Eagle. My point is some aircraft are much easier to use as a tool than others and there in lies one of the true strengths of the P51. Read Robin Olds book and he speaks to this as a guy who flew P38s and Mustangs in that order in combat. Overrated, I honestly don’t think so. The right tool, at the right time, in the right place, flown by the right guys. 

Also just because the P38/P47 might have been able to close the door on the Luftwaffe doesn’t mean the Mustang was overrated. Also why did the powers that be keep bringing Mustangs into the ETO while pushing the other two out.

Lastly I hope you don’t think I was being rude. While I can be unbelievably sarcastic/ obnoxious (reference the previously mentioned time in fighter squadrons) it was not in the least my intent.

Cheers,
Biff

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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Michael,
> 
> I will anchor for one last round then I will let it go.
> 
> ...


No i didn't think you were being rude at all. And as i have said i certainly think it was the superior of the three planes. I don't think anyone really doubt s that. I do think however when it comes at least to the two often used quips about it in popular press( no need to rehash those now) it is overrated. At least when it comes to those two specific things. That is completely different than saying it wasn't a great plane. It was. That was why I picked it for the topoc of the thread. I'm learning that it's verry hard for people to hear the word overrated without making that synonymous with bad in there minds. Even Mohamed Ahli could be overrated beyond how good he really was. That was my only point. On this next one I will of course defer to your expertise but werent the L series p38s fairly competitive? With the hydrolic assist i have read the had verry good high speed roll rates and with the dive flaps well let me try and quote a p38 pilot as close as I can from memory" it was good to see a p38 chase a 109 straight down to the deck" and the 474th racked up an almost 5 to 1 kill ratio from mid 44(cant remember the exact month right now) on. And that last one is research I did do myself. Considering the most common mission profile of the p38 during this time it seems to me thats nothing to sneez at so to speek. Just seems from what limited knowledge i have that p38 f to j and j25 to L are two different animals. You certainly have more expertise than i but just my thoughts from what i have read and the limited research i have done.


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## wuzak (Jul 11, 2018)

The P-38L with hydraulic assisted ailerons had high roll rates, but slow responsiveness.

Inertia is a bitch.


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## swampyankee (Jul 11, 2018)

I think one could make a case for many aircraft being over-rated, whether made by any of the belligerents. The OP’s poll isn’t whether Aircraft X is overrated, but which is *most* overrated. The P-51 may be overrated, but I think it’s a far stretch to claim that is the most overrated.

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## drgondog (Jul 11, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Americas 100, 000 chapter 4 page 283. Galland posters on this site largely although I have read this quoted in several articles through the years. Is it your contention that this was not his view? If you can point me to a quote or better quotes by him that it was later I am certainly not resistant to reading them.



I believe that I gave you a pretty good reading list above. 

That said page 283 in Dean's 100K is entirely devoted to the latest P-47D Combat Radius compared to P-47N. Further, Dean made a mistake in listing the 'square' plot starting with the P-47D-23 and citing it as having 370 gallons of fuel, which it did Not have. The -23 range was the same as the -15 with 305 gallons internal and 375 gallons external. It was first delivered to AAF in late March 1944 and only 89 were made, which is irrelevant to the discussion as it couldn't escort to Berlin either. 

Dean's table for internal fuel lists only "P-47D" w/o Model number in comparison with P-47N. He didn't make many mistakes but you picked one for reference. Another comment worth noting is that the Yardstick Range and Combat Radius cited is for 10,000 feet, not 25K which is 15-20% less range.

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## Peter Gunn (Jul 11, 2018)

Speaking of letting things slide, perhaps, as an example, posting things like, and I quote:



michael rauls said:


> "and the p51s had only accounted for a small minority of kills up to that time so by definition the often quoted" the p51 turned things around" is not true and an example ot the topic" most overrated aircraft", "the only fighter that could take the bombers to Berlin and back "being another sterling example."



as if this were etched in stone and the issue settled with no further debate necessary elicited a rather persnickety response on my part. If this ruffled your feathers I'd grow a thicker skin. Although I will refrain from being a d!ck from now on.

Much of what you've been posting has been refuted (even before you got here actually) but such pronouncements keep coming. I must confess, I've tried to keep up with your myriad posts but I've stopped because:

A). Much of what you're arguing I've already seen debunked here.
B). There's a key on the right side of your keyboard, it is marked "*Enter*", try using that a few times between sentences to make your points a bit more readable please.

There may actually be valid arguments/info in your posts but solid walls of text are headache inducing and I will not slog through them.

Also if you're honestly willing to set aside preconceived notions and LISTEN to what some are saying here I'll help in any way possible. My suggestion is to start with reading whatever drgondog suggests if you want the scoop on these issues. Between him and Parsifal's (among others) suggested readings, you can find out what you really "know" and don't know.

That's about as cordial as _*I*_ can get.

Bowing out now to let cooler and more knowledgeable heads prevail.

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## drgondog (Jul 11, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> View attachment 501347
> 
> 
> View attachment 501348


This is a great opportunity to use the map as an illustration of a P-51B LR escort to Berlin. On the 29th April, 1944, the 355th made R/V at Cuxhaven to perform target escort from there to Berlin and back. Cuxhaven is on coast north of Bremerhaven. From there to Uelzen/Wittenburg and thence to Brelin, around the target and back to west of Brunswick where P-47D's were picked up for Withdrawal Support. P-47Ds made the Penetration escort from UK to Cuxhaven.

Total escort time was 2:40 minutes before B/E near Brunswick. Load out 269 gallons internal fuel plus 2x75 gallon combat tanks. Total mission time 6:05 hours. 

Note that the Penetration Escort radius from center East Anglia to Cuxhaven (short of Denmark) is about 60% of the way to Berlin, and same for Withdrawal support. Three escort legs only - which was common. 

A comparable P-51B mission before 110 gallon tanks to Ruhland, se of Berlin, and Posnan, Poland - both 6:20+ missions. Dad's mission to Piryatin, Ukraine for Shuttle Mission was 7:55. Of his 72 total P-51B/D missions, 20 ranged from 5 hours to nearly 8 hours.

Where Rauls fails so many times in making his points is a.) lack of timeline awareness when quoting performance characteristics of P-47D/38J, b.) interpretation of published tables based on (presumably) lack of both engineering knowledge regarding analysis and testing for Maximum Range versus Combat Radius, and/or context to understand them. He is further handicapped by lack of awareness to the tactical disposition of 8th AF assets during the planning and execution process for escorted bomber missions.

I think we are all quite comfortable in his opinion that the Mustang is over rated but his ability to extract facts from sources that we all agree with has been non-existent.

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## Milosh (Jul 11, 2018)

Notice the dramatic increase in Lw losses with the introduction of the P-51 escorts.






Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933-1945

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## drgondog (Jul 11, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Has anybody looked into these mission dates?
> 
> Just to be clear, they are:
> April 11, 1944
> ...



Wuzak - I agree your salient point about change in %. That context however, is largely an investment/loss discussion relative to a war of attrition. My view is that the LW was nearly able to carve out the same magnitude of losses in different missions as they achieved July 1943 through October 1943 - which is still a morale issue and certainly doesn't point to Lost Effectiveness of lethality of LW when they hit unescorted boxes before continued attrition made them less and less effective into the summer/fall of 1944.

For specific examples I would point to March 6, 8 and April 29 as very gloomy days for the relatives of some 1800 flight crews that were not consoled by a reduction in % loss rate.

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## drgondog (Jul 11, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Notice the dramatic increase in Lw losses with the introduction of the P-51 escorts.
> 
> View attachment 501404
> 
> ...


Very good illustration example. Conversely look at the relatively Small increase in LW losses between Period Jan-June 1943, and Jul-Dec 1943, when the P-47C/D force dramatically increased and the P-38 was re-introduced to ETO


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## Milosh (Jul 11, 2018)

Another graphic showing the dramatic Lw losses with the introduction of the P-51.







http://don-caldwell.we.bs/jg26/thtrlosses.htm

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## BiffF15 (Jul 11, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Another graphic showing the dramatic Lw losses with the introduction of the P-51.
> 
> View attachment 501405
> 
> ...



The German ability to produce while under almost constant bombing is impressive!

Cheers,
Biff


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## Milosh (Jul 11, 2018)

Yes Biff. The Me262 is a good example with ~2000 built but ~1400 delivered. The 600 difference were destroyed before delivery.

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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Very good illustration example. Conversely look at the relatively Small increase in LW losses between Period Jan-June 1943, and Jul-Dec 1943, when the P-47C/D force dramatically increased and the P-38 was re-introduced to ETO


Just a thought. What portion of that sudden increase do you think was due to the intoduction of the Zemke fan tactic iin dec 43. This was basically allowing the fighters to fan out ahead of the bombers instead of having to stick close by the bomber formations where they were vulnerable to being bounced as well. The tactic was conceived by and lobied for by Hub Zemke of the 56th hence the name. I once read a quote by a p38 pilot from the Pacific theater comenting on the 8th air forces previous tactic of teathering the escorts to the bombers " if we had used tactics like that the Japanese would have mopped the floor with us" if its true that 80% of planes shot down in ww2 were shot down in a bounce or never saw there assailant, ive seen it frased both ways, and not in a dog fight ,then it would seem that once you have aircraft capable of the speed and altitude requirements ie at least as fast as the opponents and at least as high of ceiling then 80% of the outcome would be determined, outside of luck of course, and assuming equal pilot skill for this exercise, by tactics. There may by holes in my thought process here( wouldn't be the first time) but thats how it looks to me. Thoughts anyone?


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## Clayton Magnet (Jul 11, 2018)

impossible. The movie "Red Tails" showed us that sticking to the slow bombers was the brave and effective method

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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2018)

Clayton Magnet said:


> impossible. The movie "Red Tails" showed us that sticking to the slow bombers was the brave and effective method.
> [/QUOTE
> Loved that movie. Just for a chance to see the p51s and p40s in flight. Oh cant forget the b17s. But as far as realism? Maybee not so much.


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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2018)

I would like to add to my previous post on the Zemke fan and posible impact thereof, this postulation of mine, the 80% result being determined by tactics once basic speed and altitude requirements are met(for more detail please see previous post) would fit perfectly with the disparity in kill ratios between the p51 and p47 from spring44 on ie about 7 to 1 p47, 9 to1 p51( I have read everything from 7 to1 all the way up to 11 to 1 for the p51 so im just taking the median here). That is to say in the p47 we have a plane much less capable of high speed maneuver than the p51 but capable of the speed and altitude requirements achieving approx 80% of the results once effective tactics were implemented. Again may be holes in my thinking here but it seems to make sense. I will now head into my bunker and prepare for the incoming rounds.


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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2018)

I don't mean to m dimiss a 20% difference in kill ratios as un important. In a war of attrition thats huge. Just an, at least to me, interesting way of looking at these numbers which may or may not be the correct way.


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## drgondog (Jul 11, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Just a thought. What portion of that sudden increase do you think was due to the intoduction of the Zemke fan tactic iin dec 43. This was basically allowing the fighters to fan out ahead of the bombers instead of having to stick close by the bomber formations where they were vulnerable to being bounced as well. The tactic was conceived by and lobied for by Hub Zemke of the 56th hence the name. I once read a quote by a p38 pilot from the Pacific theater comenting on the 8th air forces previous tactic of teathering the escorts to the bombers " if we had used tactics like that the Japanese would have mopped the floor with us" if its true that 80% of planes shot down in ww2 were shot down in a bounce or never saw there assailant, ive seen it frased both ways, and not in a dog fight ,then it would seem that once you have aircraft capable of the speed and altitude requirements ie at least as fast as the opponents and at least as high of ceiling then 80% of the outcome would be determined, outside of luck of course, and assuming equal pilot skill for this exercise, by tactics. There may by holes in my thought process here( wouldn't be the first time) but thats how it looks to me. Thoughts anyone?



Michael - Zemke planned and executed the Fan after May 8, 1944 and its first success was while performing a sweep in Frankfurt to Marburg area May 12. Note that Marburg to Brunswick was nearly to 56FG limit of endurance pre D-Day. So, simple answer is 'the Zemke Fan had zero to do with the 'increase'.

As to P-38 Comment of tethering escort to bombers, yes Monk hunter, CO of 8th FC, did promote that tactic but his replacement Kepner and Eaker's replacement Doolittle killed that in late January 1944. That period is approximately the beginning of the end of the LW ability to inflict unacceptable losses by forming up out of range of US fighter escort.

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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Michael - Zemke planned and executed the Fan after May 8, 1944 and its first success was while performing a sweep in Frankfurt to Marburg area May 12. Note that Marburg to Brunswick was nearly to 56FG limit of endurance pre D-Day. So, simple answer is 'the Zemke Fan had zero to do with the 'increase'.
> 
> As to P-38 Comment of tethering escort to bombers, yes Monk hunter, CO of 8th FC, did promote that tactic but his replacement Kepner and Eaker's replacement Doolittle killed that in late January 1944. That period is approximately the beginning of the end of the LW ability to inflict unacceptable losses by forming up out of range of US fighter escort.


Interesting, I thought I had read the Zemke fan was a dec/ jan thing but I was just recalling from memory so I'm sure you right. Or perhaps I confused the dates with the un teathering of fighters from thee bombers by Dollittle in January. So asside from the fact i used the wrong term for the unteathering in January, the rest of my thoesis remains unchanged. My bad for not knowing the proper name to go with the date of the change in tactics but other than that the reasoning still seams sound. Although I'm certainly prepared for it to be shown to be not so sound if that is the case.


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## wuzak (Jul 11, 2018)

drgondog said:


> As to P-38 Comment of tethering escort to bombers, yes Monk hunter, CO of 8th FC, did promote that tactic but his replacement Kepner and Eaker's replacement Doolittle killed that in late January 1944. That period is approximately the beginning of the end of the LW ability to inflict unacceptable losses by forming up out of range of US fighter escort.



Didn't Doolittle change the role of the escort fighters from the defensive (ie protect the bombers) to offensive (ie to destroy the Luftwaffe), in effect making the bombers the bait?

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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Didn't Doolittle change the role of the escort fighters from the defensive (ie protect the bombers) to offensive (ie to destroy the Luftwaffe), in effect making the bombers the bait?


I have read that was the thinking but regardless of the motivation it seems the net result of that tactic would be the same.


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## drgondog (Jul 11, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Didn't Doolittle change the role of the escort fighters from the defensive (ie protect the bombers) to offensive (ie to destroy the Luftwaffe), in effect making the bombers the bait?



Not in so many words, but yes. Go Deep, incite reaction - kill 'em in the air and pursue all
the way to the deck.

What Doolittle reacted to was one of his commanders stating that the role of the fighter was to 'protect' whereas Doolittle believed the role of fighter aviation was to destroy - and he had just received intelligence reports that LW was building strength in alarming numbers (January, 1944) and posed a serious threat to OVERLORD.

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## wuzak (Jul 11, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Wuzak - I agree your salient point about change in %. That context however, is largely an investment/loss discussion relative to a war of attrition. My view is that the LW was nearly able to carve out the same magnitude of losses in different missions as they achieved July 1943 through October 1943 - which is still a morale issue and certainly doesn't point to Lost Effectiveness of lethality of LW when they hit unescorted boxes before continued attrition made them less and less effective into the summer/fall of 1944.
> 
> For specific examples I would point to March 6, 8 and April 29 as very gloomy days for the relatives of some 1800 flight crews that were not consoled by a reduction in % loss rate.



April 29, 1944
*Mission 327*: *679 bombers* and *814 fighters* are dispatched to bomb Berlin, concentrating on railway facilities; they claim 95-33-48 Luftwaffe aircraft; *63 bombers and 13 fighters are lost*:

1. 210 of 228 B-17s bomb Berlin; 10 B-17s are lost and 150 damaged; 1 airman is KIA, 7 WIA and 100 MIA.

2. 218 B-17s are dispatched to Berlin; 158 hit the primary, 24 hit Magdeburg, 10 hit Brandenburg and 4 hit targets of opportunity; 28 B-17s are lost and 161 damaged; 4 airmen are KIA, 20 WIA and 260 MIA.

3. 212 of 233 B-24s bomb Berlin; 25 B-24s are lost, 2 damaged beyond repair and 121 damaged; 13 airmen are KIA, 11 WIA and 246 MIA. Escort is provided by 117 P-38s, 463 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-47s and 234 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-51s; 3 P-38s and 10 P-51s are lost; 1 P-47 is damaged beyond repair; 7 P-38s, 16 P-47s and 7 P-51s are damaged; 1 pilot is WIA and 12 MIA.


March 6, 1944
*Mission 250*: 504 B-17s and 226 B-24s are dispatched to hit industrial areas in the suburbs of Berlin; *fierce fighter opposition claims 69 bombers* (the highest number lost by the Eighth Air Force in a single day) and 11 fighters; the bombers claim 97-28-60 Luftwaffe fighters; details are:

1. 248 B-17s hit secondary targets in the Berlin area; 18 B-17s are lost, 2 damaged beyond repair and 172 damaged; casualties are 2 KIA, 8 WIA and 184 MIA.

2. 226 B-17s hit targets of opportunity at Templin, Verden, Kalkeberge, Potsdam, Oranienburg and Wittenberg; 35 B-17s are lost, 3 damaged beyond repair and 121 damaged; casualties are 15 WIA and 354 MIA.

3. 198 B-24s hit the primary target (Genshagen industrial area), secondary targets in the Berlin area and targets of opportunity at Potsdam; 16 B-24s are lost, 1 damaged beyond repair and 54 damaged; casualties are 15 KIA, 8 WIA and 148 MIA.

Escort is provided by 86 P-38s, 615 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-47s and 100 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-51s; results are:

1. P-38s claim 3-0-1 Luftwaffe aircraft; 1 P-38 is lost, the pilot is MIA.

2. P-47s claim 36-7-12 Luftwaffe aircraft; 5 P-47s are lost, 3 damaged beyond repair and 4 damaged; casualties are 2 WIA and 5 MIA.

3. P-51s claim 43-1-20 Luftwaffe aircraft; 5 P-51s are lost and 2 damaged; casualties are 5 MIA. The fighters also claim 1-0-12 Luftwaffe aircraft on the ground. Mission 251: 5 of 5 B-17s drop 250 bundles of leaflets on Nantes, Cambrai, Lille, Chateauroux and Lorient, France at 2029-2130 hours without loss.

CARPETBAGGER missions are also flown.

A detachment of 22d Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Photographic Group (Reconnaissance), ceases operating from Attlebridge and returns to base at Mount Farm, England with F-5s.

March 8, 1944
*Mission 252*: The primary target is the ball bearing plant at Erkner, a suburb of Berlin; enemy opposition is fierce and *37 bombers and 16 fighters are lost*; 320 of 414 B-17s and 150 of 209 B-24s dispatched hit the primary; 36 B-17s hit Wildau and targets of opportunity; 33 B-24s hit Berlin and targets of opportunity; the bombers claim 63-17-19 Luftwaffe aircraft; 28 B-17s and 9 B-24s are lost, 1 B-17 and 2 B-24s are damaged beyond repair; casualties are 4 KIA, 14 WIA and 364 MIA. Escort is provided by 104 P-38s, 613 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-47s and 174 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-51s; claims/losses are:
1. P-38s claim 9-2-5 Luftwaffe aircraft; 3 P-38s are lost, 1 is damaged beyond repair and 2 damaged; casualties are 1 KIA and 4 MIA.

2. P-47s claim 49-6-18 Luftwaffe aircraft; 10 P-47s are lost, 13 damaged beyond repair and 4 damaged; casualties are 2 KIA, 2 WIA and 10 MIA.

3. P-51s claim 29-4-9 Luftwaffe aircraft; 5 P-51s are lost, 2 damaged beyond repair and 1 damaged; casualties are 4 MIA. An additional 8-4-7 Luftwaffe aircraft are claimed on the ground.

786th Bombardment Squadron (Heavy), 466th Bombardment Group (Heavy), arrives at Attlebridge, England from the US with B-24s; first mission is 22 Mar.


I think March 6 and 8 were inside the period that it was claimed the Luftwaffe was destroyed, so that is why you didn't include them in your list of dates.


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## pbehn (Jul 11, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> As someone once said, I just can't let that one go. The everyone has been extremely cordial part that is. ( thhe rest is fascinating and informative). Cordial? Really? One person used the f word when responding to me. Several more basically acused me of basically just pulling stuff out of my @ on the verry same page where I had just given what are, at least as far as I know, verry good sources. And that's when I was agreeing with there basic premise i.e. p51 great. I can only imagine if I had said " Ah maybe the p51 aint so hot" When I did not have a specific source but it was something I read for years and just understood to be true I always qualified it as such and often asked if others had differing info I would want to hear it. I don't know how one can be any less pulling stuff out of ones @ than that. Please don't misunderstand me, although considering the nature of the previous decision I am reasonably confident you will( forgive me that one just wrote its self) , it is not that I can't take someone flipping the f word at me. God knows I hear it at work all day and I have even used it myself once or twice( although in what should be friendly discussion) or that I can't take someone accusing me of basically pulling stuff out of my @ when I did not. It's that a: seems like things would be more fun without that sort of thing and b: if someone trys to call that cordial, ya I'm not lettin that slide by.


Everyone has their own angle and point of view. I think you made a mistake initially in presenting the common view of the P-51 as being the common view here on the forum. I didn't see any "f" words and you are entitled to complain to moderation about it. My interest is not in the detail of any particular aircraft, 

I am not the advocate of any particular aircraft, I enjoy reading about what was done. What was done by the allies as far as the combined offensive was close to a miracle of engineering and logistics. When the P-51 first arrived in UK it was not fitted with the rear fuselage tank, it was not even initially assigned for bomber escort. The plane itself had various mods like the rear tank and increasingly large external fuel tanks, fillets on the tail plane and other "stuff".

At the same time the P-47 and P-38 also had everything done that could be done. While the US forces were building strength in UK, there were airfields built, pilots trained and bombers and fighters modified as quickly as reasonable and safely possible. This is a huge undertaking when the factories are thousands of miles from the place of use. It is easy to discuss a new larger fuel tank, it takes much time to get into production and 800 escort fighters need 1,600 of them.

On this, time is of the essence, it is and was vital. A B-52 or a thousand B-52s would not affect the war if they appeared in December 1945. Over time the various types of the US escort forces had their range and effectiveness increased, along with the effectiveness of its pilots, it bombers and its aerial recon and met recon. To me it is of no interest what the last versions of a P-47 or P-38 could do in the dog days of the war if they could get to Berlin or not is of no importance. The only things of importance were to wipe out the Luftwaffe as an effective force prior to D-Day and to then wipe out the Nazi systems means to produce fuel This was achieved, an all concerned should be proud that it was achieved, it was a team effort the prize doesn't go to one "winner".

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## Milosh (Jul 11, 2018)

drgondog said:


> Not in so many words, but yes. Go Deep, incite reaction - kill 'em in the air and pursue all
> the way to the deck.
> 
> What Doolittle reacted to was one of his commanders stating that the role of the fighter was to 'protect' whereas Doolittle believed the role of fighter aviation was to destroy - and he had just received intelligence reports that LW was building strength in alarming numbers (January, 1945) and posed a serious threat to OVERLORD.



Bill, shouldn't that be 1944?

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## wuzak (Jul 11, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Bill, shouldn't that be 1944?



Yes it should. Just a typo, I guess.

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## michael rauls (Jul 12, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Everyone has their own angle and point of view. I think you made a mistake initially in presenting the common view of the P-51 as being the common view here on the forum. I didn't see any "f" words and you are entitled to complain to moderation about it. My interest is not in the detail of any particular aircraft,
> 
> I am not the advocate of any particular aircraft, I enjoy reading about what was done. What was done by the allies as far as the combined offensive was close to a miracle of engineering and logistics. When the P-51 first arrived in UK it was not fitted with the rear fuselage tank, it was not even initially assigned for bomber escort. The plane itself had various mods like the rear tank and increasingly large external fuel tanks, fillets on the tail plane and other "stuff".
> 
> ...


It's all good brother. I went back and looked not because i want to complain but just to make sure i wasnt imagining it and the " word" is still there. Hey no big deal. Im not gonna complain to the moderator. Thats not how I roll as they say. I respect your view. Mine may be a little different( but really not that much ) and lets just leave it at that. Peace.

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## drgondog (Jul 12, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Bill, shouldn't that be 1944?


of course - I corrected it. Actually, Bodenplatte is as good a date as any to declare LW 'Dead'


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## Milosh (Jul 12, 2018)

Yes that put the last nail in the coffin.


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## michael rauls (Jul 12, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Speaking of letting things slide, perhaps, as an example, posting things like, and I quote:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Ok brother, and I mean that, im not being sarcastic. Wanted to just moove on but don't like to be made out to a jerk when i dont think i was. At least that was not my intention to come off that way. You say of my contention that th p51 had only accounted for a minority of kills up to that point( that point being February44) as if it were written in stone but you left out the part, i think 1 or 2 posts later after someone challenged this is that i said I was more than receptive to seeing info that showed this to be inacurate. Then you say my comment produced a persnickery response( love that word by the way) and I should grow a thicker skin. Well it wasn't you persnickety response or the one choice word contained therin, or the basically" you pullin stuff outa your @" accusations made by a few others that ruffled my feathers. I can let that kinda stuff roll off my back. It was having that happen and then having someone call it cordial. I must admit that did kinda rub me the wron way. Kinda like when someone cuts me off when I'm driving I just shrug it off but when someone cuts me off, almost crashes into me, and then stars waving there arms at as if I had done something wrong, ok now I'm not so happy. Not a perfect analagy but you get the point. You say that much of what i was arguing has been debunked. Well i was only arguing 2 things although i repeatedly asked for evidence to the contrary and said I would recosider both of my points if someone provided it so i don't know if you can even call that arguing. There were a couple people who seemed to be hearing me saying things i wasnt saying at all and yes that was frustrating I must addmit. No one ever gave stats showing either of my two points was wrong by the way 1: that the p51 had only accounted for a minority of kills by February44 and 2: that it was not the only fighter to have the capability to make it to Berlin and back i spring44. If someone did i missed it and if you can point me back to that now or if someone wants to provide that evidence now I will eagerly admit I was mistaken and change my mind. As for my writing style, yes you have a point. I just now figured our how to make paragraphs here( I'm new here and not exactly a technology genius) and I know I have a tendency towards run on sentences. Just how my brain works. I think of alot of ancillary things as i write. I'll try to be better about that. Finally you say you won't read my posts anymore. I really hope thats not the case but thats up to you. And last but not least i must admit to becoming a little frustrated because, it seamed to me at least, that some kept getting the impression I was arguing thing that i wasn't while at the same time not giving the info to refute the 2 points i was making that i repeatedly said I was not resistant to seeing. Again maybe someone did and I just missed that post and if that's the case i apologize for that. In closing i hope you do read this post and i hope there are no hard feelings. There certainly are not on my part. I love this site and certainly didn't come here to make enemies. I respect others views but that particular situation was frustrating and if I came off as that I don't I certainly apologize for that. That was not my intention. Looking forward to learning alot here and maybe theres even a few little tidbits I can share. As Biff would say......... Cheers

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## Milosh (Jul 12, 2018)

The Spitfire flew the round trip to Berlin many times.


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## michael rauls (Jul 12, 2018)

Haven't ben able to conjure up a smiley face on this site but consider one here....____


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## Milosh (Jul 12, 2018)

You have not seen the smiley icon? It is to the left of the image icon.


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## michael rauls (Jul 12, 2018)

Milosh said:


> You have not seen the smiley icon? It is to the left of the image icon.


 Ya i see it but when i touch it nothing happens. Maybe because im doing this from a smartphone and not a computer. Oh wait i think i just figured it out. Touch it at the top and the possible selections appear below. Ya they were hidden by the numbers and letters part of the touchscreen that pops up pn my smartphone so i didn't ever see them till now when i went to scroll down and a little sliver of them popped up over the touchscreen.


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## michael rauls (Jul 12, 2018)

I'll get the hang of this yet.


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## Clayton Magnet (Jul 12, 2018)

Milosh said:


> The Spitfire flew the round trip to Berlin many times


With cannons removed, and camera's installed. 
I had heard a story of a PR Spitfire being intercepted by a group of P-51's, and when the recce pilot saw what was happening, he firewalled it and left them behind. The American pilots filed reports afterward, describing their disbelief. 
Can anyone elaborate on that or provide a link?


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## Peter Gunn (Jul 13, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Ok brother, and I mean that, im not being sarcastic. Wanted to just moove on but don't like to be made out to a jerk when i dont think i was. At least that was not my intention to come off that way.
> 
> *SNIP Lots of words*
> 
> As Biff would say......... Cheers



Michael,

For the record, I don't think you were being a jerk, far from it, I think you're a smart fellow that has a lot to say, just your initial presentation may have been a bit dodgy. Around here it's best to be able to cite source documents or at the very least, a well researched tome to support any points you're trying to make.

Also, dat wall of text yo...

I did read this long post, I will continue to read what you write here as I do with all who post on this forum, just understand that a massive wall of text like that is literally headache inducing for me. Seriously, after a sentence hit the <ENTER> key twice, it will make your posts much easier to read. I'm (for a change) not being sarcastic with that, a readable presentation goes a long way, I too tend to type "Stream of conscious" style many times myself. I usually have to go back and add space before I hit the "POST" button.

One last point, proper English is my second language, my first language is Modern American Snark. I tend to shoot from the hip because I have little patience/tolerance for fools and those who are too set in their ways to be open to any new ideas/data. *Understand I DO NOT consider you either a fool or a close minded person*, far from it in fact. It's just that at my office, some days I think I could hire trained monkeys and get the same results, perhaps not even _trained_ monkeys now that I think of it...

I do try to watch my manners here because I have too much respect for the knowledge that the regulars here possess. The eye opening issue for me is their willingness to share literally anything they can to help one in understanding the topics at hand.

All that being said, all I can do now is to cordially welcome you to the forum...

Welcome to the forum.

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## michael rauls (Jul 13, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Michael,
> 
> For the record, I don't think you were being a jerk, far from it, I think you're a smart fellow that has a lot to say, just your initial presentation may have been a bit dodgy. Around here it's best to be able to cite source documents or at the very least, a well researched tome to support any points you're trying to make.
> 
> ...


 


Peter Gunn said:


> Michael,
> 
> For the record, I don't think you were being a jerk, far from it, I think you're a smart fellow that has a lot to say, just your initial presentation may have been a bit dodgy. Around here it's best to be able to cite source documents or at the very least, a well researched tome to support any points you're trying to make.
> 
> ...


 Peter just read your post and above all I am relieved there are no hard feelings. I must admit I thought there might be( on the part of some others not myself). Perhaps i was to harsh in my judgement of others judgement so to speak. Thanks for the welcome. I really appreciate that. On the presentation front I swear the concept of paragraphs is not new to me. Since this is the first website that i have ever considered worth my time and I have never used my smartphone for anything more than one or two line texts so on a couple of fronts this all new to me. I promise i will figure it out but be prepared for some possibly less than optimal structure till then. Just to let you know how my quest for the aforementioned enter button is going.....This is my second time writing this whole post because. I got about 2/3 through the first draft, thought this would be as good a time as any, hit what I thought might be said enter button and the whole thing vanished ,necessitating this second draft.I promise however to figure it out at some point just not gonna try that again right now. Be prepared however for some possibly humorous structure as i randomly push buttons from time to time to see what will happen.

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## michael rauls (Jul 13, 2018)

BiffF15 said:


> Michael,
> 
> I will anchor for one last round then I will let it go.
> 
> ...


 Biff, don't know why i didn't think to mention this earlier but my grandfather worked for Douglas his entire adult life.He had a a small part to do with at least 20 planes from the C47 to the F15 and alot more in between including the Dauntless(my favorite) but he always seemed the most fond of the c47 and the Eagle I think because they were his first and last. I still have a plack, given to him at retirement that lists all the planes he worked on. Probably my most prized possessions except perhaps my house but I'm not even sure of that. Just something I thought might be of small interest to you considering you actually flew The F15.

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## michael rauls (Jul 13, 2018)

I forgot to add this at the end.


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## michael rauls (Jul 14, 2018)

drgondog said:


> I believe that I gave you a pretty good reading list above.
> 
> That said page 283 in Dean's 100K is entirely devoted to the latest P-47D Combat Radius compared to P-47N. Further, Dean made a mistake in listing the 'square' plot starting with the P-47D-23 and citing it as having 370 gallons of fuel, which it did Not have. The -23 range was the same as the -15 with 305 gallons internal and 375 gallons external. It was first delivered to AAF in late March 1944 and only 89 were made, which is irrelevant to the discussion as it couldn't escort to Berlin either.
> 
> Dean's table for internal fuel lists only "P-47D" w/o Model number in comparison with P-47N. He didn't make many mistakes but you picked one for reference. Another comment worth noting is that the Yardstick Range and Combat Radius cited is for 10,000 feet, not 25K which is 15-20% less range.


 After taking the time to read and digest all of the information that you and others presented here( and there was plenty) like the change in percentage in relative kill/ loss ratios I must say I have a new appreciation for just how much of a game changer the p51 was. Do I still think that when I hear things like a guy at my work saying of the p51" it won the war for us" ( if I had a dime for every time I've heard something like this I'd be typing this from a beach in the Bahamas)(maybe a bit of an exaggeration) that is still a case of overrating. Ya but certainly not by nearly as much as I did before. Do I think we could have won the war without it. Yes but its obvious alot more guys would have had to die to accomplish the same end. So I can definitely meet you half way on this one( maybe a little more than half way). I'd also like to say when i first got here I thought I was pretty well read on ww2 aviation, not in an arrogant way but just that I thought I had a pretty good handle on things but now im realizing maybe not so much. Anyway there it is for whatever it's worth as they say.

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## pbehn (Jul 14, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> After taking the time to read and digest all of the information that you and others presented here( and there was plenty) like the change in percentage in relative kill/ loss ratios I must say I have a new appreciation for just how much of a game changer the p51 was. Do I still think that when I hear things like a guy at my work saying of the p51" it won the war for us" ( if I had a dime for every time I've heard something like this I'd be typing this from a beach in the Bahamas)(maybe a bit of an exaggeration) that is still a case of overrating. Ya but certainly not by nearly as much as I did before. Do I think we could have won the war without it. Yes but its obvious alot more guys would have had to die to accomplish the same end. So I can definitely meet you half way on this one( maybe a little more than half way). I'd also like to say when i first got here I thought I was pretty well read on ww2 aviation, not in an arrogant way but just that I thought I had a pretty good handle on things but now im realizing maybe not so much. Anyway there it is for whatever it's worth as they say.


 I made a post on the subject, this site is in a way a small community, when you post "people say" there is a big difference between what people say in ordinary life and what is said here. Brave of you to make such a post, respect.

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## michael rauls (Jul 14, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I made a post on the subject, this site is in a way a small community, when you post "people say" there is a big difference between what people say in ordinary life and what is said here. Brave of you to make such a post, respect.


 The respect is mutual. That's for sure.

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## davparlr (Jul 15, 2018)

[QUOTE="michael rauls, post: 1417086, member: 69991 2: that it was not the only fighter to have the capability to make it to Berlin and back i spring44. [/QUOTE]

I agree that both the P-47D and the P-38J, along with the F4U-1, did indeed have the ability to make Berlin and back. However, there was a significant difference in time on station over Germany as compared to the P-51. You calculated approximately 20 minutes in combat for the P-47 using 5 minutes Combat power and 15 min Normal power. In my calculations, at 600 miles, in order to normalize all data across the board, I got 15 minutes at Normal power for the P-47. Using the same normalize data, the combat time at Normal power for the P-51B, at 600 miles was 1 hour and 14 minutes, the P-38J had a combat time of 35 minutes. These numbers are not precise but are applicable. As such, in order to maintain combat time over downtown Germany, the AAF would have had to field three to four P-47s to maintain the time of one P-51. It would have also had to field two P-38s to maintain flight time over Germany as one P-51. I would imagine this plus it overall performance capability from SL to ceiling, and possibility operating cost, would have encouraged rapid replacement of the P-47 and P-38.

You might notice in an above post by Wuzak (?) that the two P-51 combat reports show ground attacks whereas none are shown for the P-47 and P-38, because of low gas??


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## michael rauls (Jul 15, 2018)

davparlr said:


> [QUOTE="michael rauls, post: 1417086, member: 69991 2: that it was not the only fighter to have the capability to make it to Berlin and back i spring44.



I agree that both the P-47D and the P-38J, along with the F4U-1, did indeed have the ability to make Berlin and back. However, there was a significant difference in time on station over Germany as compared to the P-51. You calculated approximately 20 minutes in combat for the P-47 using 5 minutes Combat power and 15 min Normal power. In my calculations, at 600 miles, in order to normalize all data across the board, I got 15 minutes at Normal power for the P-47. Using the same normalize data, the combat time at Normal power for the P-51B, at 600 miles was 1 hour and 14 minutes, the P-38J had a combat time of 35 minutes. These numbers are not precise but are applicable. As such, in order to maintain combat time over downtown Germany, the AAF would have had to field three to four P-47s to maintain the time of one P-51. It would have also had to field two P-38s to maintain flight time over Germany as one P-51. I would imagine this plus it overall performance capability from SL to ceiling, and possibility operating cost, would have encouraged rapid replacement of the P-47 and P-38.

You might notice in an above post by Wuzak (?) that the two P-51 combat reports show ground attacks whereas none are shown for the P-47 and P-38, because of low gas??[/QUOTE]
Yes that all makes perfect sense to me know that I read the info everyone posted. Yes I understand and agree that while yes the other p47/p38 could do it the surplus time pf the p51 plus the superior high speed maneuver caracteristics of the p51 made it much more effective in the long range escort role. The only part I might quibble with a bit is the performance to celing part. I believe the p47 in particular had verry good high altitude performance because of its turbo supercharger. At least as far as I know.


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## davparlr (Jul 16, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> I agree that both the P-47D and the P-38J, along with the F4U-1, did indeed have the ability to make Berlin and back. However, there was a significant difference in time on station over Germany as compared to the P-51. You calculated approximately 20 minutes in combat for the P-47 using 5 minutes Combat power and 15 min Normal power. In my calculations, at 600 miles, in order to normalize all data across the board, I got 15 minutes at Normal power for the P-47. Using the same normalize data, the combat time at Normal power for the P-51B, at 600 miles was 1 hour and 14 minutes, the P-38J had a combat time of 35 minutes. These numbers are not precise but are applicable. As such, in order to maintain combat time over downtown Germany, the AAF would have had to field three to four P-47s to maintain the time of one P-51. It would have also had to field two P-38s to maintain flight time over Germany as one P-51. I would imagine this plus it overall performance capability from SL to ceiling, and possibility operating cost, would have encouraged rapid replacement of the P-47 and P-38.
> 
> You might notice in an above post by Wuzak (?) that the two P-51 combat reports show ground attacks whereas none are shown for the P-47 and P-38, because of low gas??





michael rauls said:


> Yes that all makes perfect sense to me know that I read the info everyone posted. Yes I understand and agree that while yes the other p47/p38 could do it the surplus time pf the p51 plus the superior high speed maneuver caracteristics of the p51 made it much more effective in the long range escort role. The only part I might quibble with a bit is the performance to celing part. I believe the p47 in particular had verry good high altitude performance because of its turbo supercharger. At least as far as I know.


I think I must have been thinking of some other comparison, maybe to Axis aircraft. At high altitude, above 25-30k , the mighty P-47 was hard to beat. At high altitude even the very potent P-51H was a weakling compared to the P-47M/N and their flat rated 2800 hp to 33k!

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## michael rauls (Jul 16, 2018)

Just a question for any of you with more knowledge of aerodynamics than myself. Is it true that as G force increases the speed of compesability goes down? I have been studying the phenomenon, trying to get a handle on it and from my limited understanding it seams like it would.


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 16, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Just a question for any of you with more knowledge of aerodynamics than myself. Is it true that as G force increases the speed of compesability goes down? I have been studying the phenomenon, trying to get a handle on it and from my limited understanding it seams like it would.


I don't know what level of aerodynamic knowledge you're at, but have you read "Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators"? It can be had online as a PDF. There's also a PDF of an old 1948 NACA report, "Technical Note 1697" that has a pretty good discussion of your question, although it mostly defines it in terms of AOA, Coefficient of lift and Mach #, without much reference to the resulting G loads. An interesting voice from early days of the jet age.
Cheers,
Wes

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## michael rauls (Jul 16, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> I don't know what level of aerodynamic knowledge you're at, but have you read "Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators"? It can be had online as a PDF. There's also a PDF of an old 1948 NACA report, "Technical Note 1697" that has a pretty good discussion of your question, although it mostly defines it in terms of AOA, Coefficient of lift and Mach #, without much reference to the resulting G loads. An interesting voice from early days of the jet age.
> Cheers,
> Wes


 I would qualify my knowledge on aerodynamics specifily as minimal, although not non existent. I have only recently started digging into it more deeply which I know is odd given my interest in aviation. My bad I guess. Thanks for the suggested reading material.


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## davparlr (Jul 18, 2018)

I'm not an aerodynamicist and it has been way too many years since I have had any aerodynamics but I may be able to make an educated guess. I do not think gs in itself has any impact to the mach number but its affect on the aircraft may have an effect of lowering the speed at which transonic airflow may occur. Since pulling g's almost always require an increase in angle of attack, this would induce an increase in airflow velocity over the top of the wing and fuselage at any constant aircraft velocity thus making that airflow closer to mach. If an aircraft was flying close to its compressability limits and tried to pull more gs, and the plane had the power or dive speed to maintain the airspeed, it is reasonable to think the aircraft could enter the transonic realm. even though the aircraft did not exceed its original compressibility limits. I hope that is not confusing.

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## michael rauls (Jul 18, 2018)

davparlr said:


> I think I must have been thinking of some other comparison, maybe to Axis aircraft. At high altitude, above 25-30k , the mighty P-47 was hard to beat. At high altitude even the very potent P-51H was a weakling compared to the P-47M/N and their flat rated 2800 hp to 33k!





davparlr said:


> I'm not an aerodynamicist and it has been way too many years since I have had any aerodynamics but I may be able to make an educated guess. I do not think gs in itself has any impact to the mach number but its affect on the aircraft may have an effect of lowering the speed at which transonic airflow may occur. Since pulling g's almost always require an increase in angle of attack, this would induce an increase in airflow velocity over the top of the wing and fuselage at any constant aircraft velocity thus making that airflow closer to mach. If an aircraft was flying close to its compressability limits and tried to pull more gs, and the plane had the power or dive speed to maintain the airspeed, it is reasonable to think the aircraft could enter the transonic realm. even though the aircraft did not exceed its original compressibility limits. I hope that is not confusing.


 Yes you put my thoughts more clearly than I could explain them myself most specificly transsonic airflow over control surfaces and if aircraft with a higher critical mach number( p51 for example)would necessarily have more " headroom" if you will to perform high speed maneuver i.e. could remain im better control at high speeds than an aicraft with a lower critical mach number because said transsonic air flow over control surfaces would not occur until a higher speed. Thank you sir!


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 18, 2018)

davparlr said:


> I'm not an aerodynamicist and it has been way too many years since I have had any aerodynamics but I may be able to make an educated guess. I do not think gs in itself has any impact to the mach number but its affect on the aircraft may have an effect of lowering the speed at which transonic airflow may occur. Since pulling g's almost always require an increase in angle of attack, this would induce an increase in airflow velocity over the top of the wing and fuselage at any constant aircraft velocity thus making that airflow closer to mach. If an aircraft was flying close to its compressability limits and tried to pull more gs, and the plane had the power or dive speed to maintain the airspeed, it is reasonable to think the aircraft could enter the transonic realm. even though the aircraft did not exceed its original compressibility limits. I hope that is not confusing.


Thanks for translating NACA Technical Note 1697 into everyday language! I read it and (I think) understood it, but despaired of explaining it in understandable language.
Cheers,
Wes


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## michael rauls (Jul 18, 2018)

If I can try to simplify my theory now. As more Gs are pulled at high speed airflow over control surfaces may become transsonic even though the aircraft itself has not reached its mach limitations and if this is the case the more the Gs the lower the speed said transsonic airflow would occur affecting the ability to manuver in a progressive fashion with the number of Gs pulled. That is to say more Gs =transsonic airflow over control surfaces at a lower speed= less ability ro manuver in a linear progression in accordance with the number of Gs pulled. There, I think I finally got it out.


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## michael rauls (Jul 19, 2018)

And if this is the case it would explain(i think) why aircraft like the p51 seemed to have better handling at higher speeds than those with a lower critical mach. Such is my theory anyway. Whether it's correct or not is a entirely different matter.


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## fubar57 (Jul 19, 2018)

Getting pretty warm and squishy here during the last few pages(and smilified).....kudos

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## pbehn (Jul 19, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> And if this is the case it would explain(i think) why aircraft like the p51 seemed to have better handling at higher speeds than those with a lower critical mach. Such is my theory anyway. Whether it's correct or not is a entirely different matter.


The critical Mach number is the speed at which airflow goes supersonic at the lower critical mach number all airflow is sub sonic, at the upper then all is supersonic. the difference between is the transonic range.

The controllability of an aircraft depends on many things, one is aileron reversal, this is a calculated speed, based on things like size of ailerons and the wing rigidity. from wiki

Due to the unusually high speeds at which the Supermarine Spitfire could dive, this problem of aileron reversal became apparent when it was wished to increase the lateral maneuverability (rate of roll) by increasing the aileron area. The aircraft had a wing designed originally for an aileron reversal airspeed of 580 mph, and any attempt to increase the aileron area would have resulted in the wing twisting when the larger ailerons were applied at high speed, the aircraft then rolling in the opposite direction to that intended by the pilot. The problem of increasing the rate of roll was temporarily alleviated with the introduction of "clipped" wing tips (to reduce the aerodynamic load on the tip area, allowing larger ailerons to be used) until a new, stiffer wing could be incorporated. This new wing was introduced in the Mk 21 and had a theoretical aileron reversal speed of 825 mph (1,328 km/h).[2]

There are many other things which can affect high speed handling, for example the mosquito prototype experienced tail buffeting at speed, this was rectified by extending the engine nacelles backwards to smooth airflow. However in combat "high speed handling" is a relative term, if you can pull out of a dive by using trim tabs or other "dodge" and your enemy cant then you have better handling than he does. In WW2 in some cases this depended on such things as the actual build and strength of the pilot.

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## michael rauls (Jul 19, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The critical Mach number is the speed at which airflow goes supersonic at the lower critical mach number all airflow is sub sonic, at the upper then all is supersonic. the difference between is the transonic range.
> 
> The controllability of an aircraft depends on many things, one is aileron reversal, this is a calculated speed, based on things like size of ailerons and the wing rigidity. from wiki
> 
> ...


 Ok sounds like my theory was one of those things that sounds like it might hold water( at least to me) but in reality is all wet. I was aware that there are many factors that contribute to higher speed maneuverability/ handling but thought this could have been a major contributing factor of which I was previously unaware.Guess I should have been more clear on that. Anyway thanks for explaining some of thpse things and at least my desire to know if this theory was correct or not( sounds like not) is satisfied.


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## pbehn (Jul 19, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Ok sounds like my theory was one of those things that sounds like it might hold water( at least to me) but in reality is all wet. I was aware that there are many factors that contribute to higher speed maneuverability/ handling but thought this could have been a major contributing factor of which I was previously unaware.Guess I should have been more clear on that. Anyway thanks for explaining some of thpse things and at least my desire to know if this theory was correct or not( sounds like not) is satisfied.


The critical mach number can be calculated on an airframe made of lead or wood like a wind tunnel model. It is theoretical. There is no guarantee that the aircraft can reach that speed, let alone pull out of a dive at that speed. The Spitfire famously lost its propeller testing out the limits of dive speed. The P-51 and Spitfire had different wings both designed for speed, the Spitfires is thin, the P-51s is a "laminar flow" type. The P-51 has less drag most of the time because turbulent flow over the wing sets in further back. This means at almost all operating speeds the P-51 has less drag than the Spitfire it is only when approaching the critical mach number that the Spitfire has an advantage, The Spitfire would have a higher critical mach number if it had a different cockpit canopy, the front panel produces a shock first. As I said these are theoretical but useful numbers, the Spitfire may have had an "aileron reversal" speed of 580MPH, it experience handling problems like roll rate at much slower speeds.

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## michael rauls (Jul 19, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The critical mach number can be calculated on an airframe made of lead or wood like a wind tunnel model. It is theoretical. There is no guarantee that the aircraft can reach that speed, let alone pull out of a dive at that speed. The Spitfire famously lost its propeller testing out the limits of dive speed. The P-51 and Spitfire had different wings both designed for speed, the Spitfires is thin, the P-51s is a "laminar flow" type. The P-51 has less drag most of the time because turbulent flow over the wing sets in further back. This means at almost all operating speeds the P-51 has less drag than the Spitfire it is only when approaching the critical mach number that the Spitfire has an advantage, The Spitfire would have a higher critical mach number if it had a different cockpit canopy, the front panel produces a shock first. As I said these are theoretical but useful numbers, the Spitfire may have had an "aileron reversal" speed of 580MPH, it experience handling problems like roll rate at much slower speeds.


 Sounds like a drag to lift ratio ( thats probably way simplistic but the limit of my understanding at the moment) had alot to do with it. Also it's quite impressive that the Spitfire would have had an even higher critical mach if not for the canopy design. As it was I think it had one of if not the highest of any prop job at .83 I think( just going from memory here). Especially when one considers the timeframe of its development that is quite impressive.


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## pbehn (Jul 19, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Sounds like a drag to lift ratio ( thats probably way simplistic but the limit of my understanding at the moment) had alot to do with it. Also it's quite impressive that the Spitfire would have had an even higher critical mach if not for the canopy design. As it was I think it had one of if not the highest of any prop job at .83 I think( just going from memory here). Especially when one considers the timeframe of its development that is quite impressive.


It may have had a higher critical mach number but the view for the pilot probably wouldn't be as good, so it would possibly be a worse plane in service. A Spitfire achieved achieved mach 0.891 in a 45 degree dive with a fully feathered prop, but this aircraft had been modified to do so and the question of how accurate the instruments are will always linger (0.001 of mach1 is?). I believe it is around 0.83 for a service aircraft, in another dive the plane lost its prop the pilot blacked out and came to at 40,000ft, these are very dangerous things to do, in a bog standard service aircraft the pilot has a good chance of killing himself.

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## michael rauls (Jul 19, 2018)

pbehn said:


> It may have had a higher critical mach number but the view for the pilot probably wouldn't be as good, so it would possibly be a worse plane in service. A Spitfire achieved achieved mach 0.891 in a 45 degree dive with a fully feathered prop, but this aircraft had been modified to do so and the question of how accurate the instruments are will always linger (0.001 of mach1 is?). I believe it is around 0.83 for a service aircraft, in another dive the plane lost its prop the pilot blacked out and came to at 40,000ft, these are very dangerous things to do, in a bog standard service aircraft the pilot has a good chance of killing himself.


 Yes certainly pushing an aicraft right up to it's critical mach speed intentionally was not the safest thing to do but I was more using the .83 number as a yardstick for comparison to other types.


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## pbehn (Jul 19, 2018)

michael rauls said:


> Yes certainly pushing an aicraft right up to it's critical mach speed intentionally was not the safest thing to do but I was more using the .83 number as a yardstick for comparison to other types.


The planes that were stated as 0,83 didn't have fully feathering props (and some other mods), they were more likely to get into trouble. Since conventional instruments don't work, the pilot hasn't a clue how fast he is going. Setting the record the plane was in a 45 degree dive doing 600mph, that is going down to earth at circa 400 MPH.....not a time to evaluate "control issues".

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## swampyankee (Jul 19, 2018)

Post-war, as transonic wind tunnels were still new tech, a P-51 was modified for high-Mach number research.

The NACA engineers and technicians carefully cleaned up the aircraft, including removing the propeller, packed it with instrumentation, and towed as high as possible behind a lightly-loaded B-29 or B-50. See http://naca.central.cranfield.ac.uk/reports/1948/naca-report-916.pdf

Mr Nissen then dived towards the ground.

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## pbehn (Jul 19, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Post-war, as transonic wind tunnels were still new tech, a P-51 was modified for high-Mach number research.
> 
> The NACA engineers and technicians carefully cleaned up the aircraft, including removing the propeller, packed it with instrumentation, and towed as high as possible behind a lightly-loaded B-29 or B-50. See http://naca.central.cranfield.ac.uk/reports/1948/naca-report-916.pdf
> 
> Mr Nissen then dived towards the ground.


As did many brave test pilots.


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## Reluctant Poster (Sep 9, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> It was more to do with RPMs and running in "Auto-lean"
> 
> "Lindbergh talked with MacDonald. The colonel then asked the group's pilots to assemble at the recreation hall that evening. The hall was that in name only, packed dirt floors staring up at a palm thatched roof, one ping pong table and some decks of cards completing the decor. Under the glare of unshaded bulbs, MacDonald got down to business. "Mr. Lindbergh" wanted to explain how to gain more range from the P-38s. In a pleasant manner Lindbergh explained cruise control techniques he had worked out for the Lightnings: reduce the standard 2,200 rpm to 1,600, set fuel mixtures to "auto-lean," and slightly increase manifold pressures. This, Lindbergh predicted, would stretch the Lightning's radius by 400 hundred miles, a nine-hour flight. When he concluded his talk half an hour later, the room was silent."
> Charles Lindbergh and the 475th Fighter Group
> ...


Low revs, higher boost and auto lean is the recipe for maximum range for any engine and was in the pilot notes for the P-38D, well before Lindbergh shows up in the pacific. The attached file is an excerpt from the Lancaster Pilots and Flight Engineers Notes showing similar advice.

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## fastmongrel (Sep 9, 2018)

Reluctant Poster said:


> Low revs, higher boost and auto lean is the recipe for maximum range for any engine and was in the pilot notes for the P-38D, well before Lindbergh shows up in the pacific. The attached file is an excerpt from the Lancaster Pilots and Flight Engineers Notes showing similar advice.



Low revs, low speed, low altitude is a good way to increase range over water. It's also a good way to die if you do it over defended territory.


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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 9, 2018)

Reluctant Poster said:


> Low revs, higher boost and auto lean is the recipe for maximum range for any engine and was in the pilot notes for the P-38D, well before Lindbergh shows up in the pacific.


And pilots disregarded that aspect of the pilot notes reflecting their instructor's ingrained prejudice against oversquare engine operation, which was in itself a throwback to less robust engines of the twenties and thirties. 
Adding to this was the caution against operating in a condition that impeded rapid acceleration to combat speed in case of a surprise bounce.
In addition to stretching the Lightnings' legs, I believe Lindberg surreptitiously shot down a couple of Japanese planes in one.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 12, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> And pilots disregarded that aspect of the pilot notes reflecting their instructor's ingrained prejudice against oversquare engine operation, which was in itself a throwback to less robust engines of the twenties and thirties.
> Adding to this was the caution against operating in a condition that impeded rapid acceleration to combat speed in case of a surprise bounce.
> In addition to stretching the Lightnings' legs, I believe Lindberg surreptitiously shot down a couple of Japanese planes in one.
> Cheers,
> Wes


Resp:
Don't forget that Lindbergh also helped the US Marines in getting the most performance from the F4U Corsair. 
PS. Lindbergh also sent a very detailed letter to Maj McGuire's wife after his death, outlining their close relationship, his leadership ability and how much he contributed to the war effort.

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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 12, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Don't forget that Lindbergh also helped the US Marines in getting the most performance from the F4U Corsair.


Doubled the bombload they could get off "your basic fighter strip" with, didn't he, in addition to preaching his signature fuel economy mantra?


Navalwarrior said:


> PS. Lindbergh also sent a very detailed letter to Maj McGuire's wife after his death, outlining their close relationship, his leadership ability and how much he contributed to the war effort.


Never cease to marvel at the tidbits you pick up around here! I think "Major Tom" was an undersung hero, not so much for those he shot, as for those he taught, and the kills he gave away. An "ace multiplier". Thanks, shipmate.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 13, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Post-war, as transonic wind tunnels were still new tech, a P-51 was modified for high-Mach number research.
> 
> The NACA engineers and technicians carefully cleaned up the aircraft, including removing the propeller, packed it with instrumentation, and towed as high as possible behind a lightly-loaded B-29 or B-50. See http://naca.central.cranfield.ac.uk/reports/1948/naca-report-916.pdf
> 
> Mr Nissen then dived towards the ground.


Resp: 
My father went to work for NACA shortly after WWII, where he evaluated 'wind tunnel' (the Govt just recently dismantled their wooden wind tunnel [that was in use prior?/during WWII]@ 2016) tests on various aircraft. I remember that NACA had several Bell Airacobras (or Kingcobras) that they installed swept wings (likely removed the propeller, but he didn't mention that) on them to do high speed evaluations, al la F-86, etc.. He also worked on the X-15. He transferred to NASA (a division of NACA at the time) in 1961, where he headed Structural Testing for every part/assembly prior to space flight, retiring in 1981.

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## wuzak (Sep 13, 2018)

Well, it flew with a propeller







Bell P-63 Kingcobra - Wikipedia

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 14, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Well, it flew with a propeller
> 
> View attachment 509515
> 
> ...


Resp:
Thanks!
Any idea what the minimum speed would be to maintain lift with the swept wing? Certainly would have to be greater than the conventional wing. I wonder what the maximum speed would have been.


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## wuzak (Sep 14, 2018)

You can see the leading edge slats, which I believe were for low speed handling.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 14, 2018)

Wiki says the main landing gear was fixed, only the nose gear retracted so max speed is kind of a moot question. The experiments were to explore low speed stall and handling so max speed was not of interest.

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 14, 2018)

wuzak said:


> You can see the leading edge slats, which I believe were for low speed handling.


Resp:
I just read that an NACA employee named Robert Gilruth found and fixed some flaws in early Mark Spitfire's. And from that point the British assigned a team to him for the rest of the war. Each time Gilruth made a discovery or developed an innovation, it was forwarded back to Briain where it was incorporated into aircraft built there.


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## tomo pauk (Sep 15, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> I just read that an NACA employee named Robert Gilruth found and fixed some flaws in early Mark Spitfire's. And from that point the British assigned a team to him for the rest of the war. Each time Gilruth made a discovery or developed an innovation, it was forwarded back to Briain where it was incorporated into aircraft built there.



Interesting. Do you have some link to the source of the information?


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 15, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Interesting. Do you have some link to the source of the information?


Redo:
Book: Flight, My Life in Mission Control, by Chris Kraft, ISBN 0-525-9457-7, pub 2001

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## wuzak (Sep 16, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> I just read that an NACA employee named Robert Gilruth found and fixed some flaws in early Mark Spitfire's. And from that point the British assigned a team to him for the rest of the war. Each time Gilruth made a discovery or developed an innovation, it was forwarded back to Briain where it was incorporated into aircraft built there.



And what flaws did he fix?


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## fubar57 (Sep 16, 2018)

wuzak said:


> And what flaws did he fix?



Probably not much as it isn't mentioned in his NASA bio...
https://history.nasa.gov/naca/bio.html
A large bio
https://www.aem.umn.edu/info/history/gilruth-robert.pdf
Or the all important Wiki
Robert R. Gilruth - Wikipedia


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## wuzak (Sep 16, 2018)

Doesn't appear to be any mention of the Spitfire or Supermarine in any of those.

It appears that the thing which the British were interested in was a reprot he wrote: NACA Report R755, _Requirements for Satisfactory Flying Qualities of an Airplane_

Which was not specific to the Spitfire.


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 17, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Doesn't appear to be any mention of the Spitfire or Supermarine in any of those.
> 
> It appears that the thing which the British were interested in was a reprot he wrote: NACA Report R755, _Requirements for Satisfactory Flying Qualities of an Airplane_
> 
> Which was not specific to the Spitfire.





wuzak said:


> And what flaws did he fix?


Resp:
The book didn't say, but I suspect they were related to aerodynamics . . .since they had access to a wind tunnel.
Cont:
The British were interested enough to send/assign a team to work with NACA during WWII.


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## fastmongrel (Sep 17, 2018)

As he didn't start work at NACA till 1937 and didn't start working with wind tunnels till 1939 what influence could he have had on early Spits. What is the earliest date he could conceivably have even seen let alone tested a Spit.


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## fubar57 (Sep 17, 2018)

https://www.aerosociety.com/media/4953/the-aerodynamics-of-the-spitfire.pdf

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## Zipper730 (Sep 17, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Well I voted the P-51D as well. It was a great aircraft dont take me wrong but she was not all she was cracked up to be. One on one there were many aircraft that were just as good or better but she gets all the attention.


What other designs would be comparable? I'd guess the P-38 with dive-recovery flaps and P-47N?

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 17, 2018)

fastmongrel said:


> As he didn't start work at NACA till 1937 and didn't start working with wind tunnels till 1939 what influence could he have had on early Spits. What is the earliest date he could conceivably have even seen let alone tested a Spit.


Resp:
Taken from an obituary of 'Robert R Gilruth' by Christopher C Kraft, Jr, 2000, nap.edu
In late 1937, Gilruth replaced Hartley Goule (after having been at NACA for 6 mos) as the engineer who flew w/ the test pilots. The purpose of the project was to determine quantities criteria for flying and handling qualities of airplanes. Gilruth became the flying quality expert at Langley.
As a result of the project Gilruth wrote a report titled "Requirements for Satisfactory Flying Qualities of Airplanes," which abstained from pilot jargon and put numbers to the qualities that made an airplane's characteristics good or bad. For the first time Gilruth used his concept of "stick force per g", which compares the pilot's actions to the airplane's reactions. Later when WWII was raging, the British were so enamored with Gilruth's findings they sent a team of people to consult with him in 1943. (Note that this source did not specifically mention 'Spitfire' while the other one did.


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## wuzak (Sep 17, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Taken from an obituary of 'Robert R Gilruth' by Christopher C Kraft, Jr, 2000, nap.edu
> In late 1937, Gilruth replaced Hartley Goule (after having been at NACA for 6 mos) as the engineer who flew w/ the test pilots. The purpose of the project was to determine quantities criteria for flying and handling qualities of airplanes. Gilruth became the flying quality expert at Langley.
> As a result of the project Gilruth wrote a report titled "Requirements for Satisfactory Flying Qualities of Airplanes," which abstained from pilot jargon and put numbers to the qualities that made an airplane's characteristics good or bad. For the first time Gilruth used his concept of "stick force per g", which compares the pilot's actions to the airplane's reactions. Later when WWII was raging, the British were so enamored with Gilruth's findings they sent a team of people to consult with him in 1943. (Note that this source did not specifically mention 'Spitfire' while the other one did.



The British started working with Gilruth in 1943. Which is 7 years after the Spitfire first flew. The V, VIII, IX, XI and XII were in production (maybe the X as well), the XIV was under development (VIIIG).

All these used the original wing section, though improved structurally, variations on the cooling systems introduced with the I in 1938, and largely unchanged rear fuselage, cockpit, etc.

The Spitfire 21 was under development since early in the war - 1940 or 1941 - but kept getting pushed back because of priorities for improving existing models. I believe the 21 wing had the same section as before, but had a much stronger structure and slightly different plan form.

How exactly did he fix anything on the Spitfire?

And the report he wrote was about the quantitative evaluation of the handling of aircraft, rather than qualitative evaluation.

Applying these techniques (presumably to all British aircraft) did not mean anything needed to be, or was, changed.


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## wuzak (Sep 17, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> https://www.aerosociety.com/media/4953/the-aerodynamics-of-the-spitfire.pdf



Funnily enough, Gilruth doesn't appear in that document.


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## fubar57 (Sep 17, 2018)

Zactly


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## GrauGeist (Sep 17, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> What other designs would be comparable? I'd guess the P-38 with dive-recovery flaps and P-47N?


The IJN's N1K was a deadly adversary against the P-51D and USN types.

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## KiwiBiggles (Sep 17, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Funnily enough, Gilruth doesn't appear in that document.


It's all part of the ongoing plan to prove that the Spitfire and Merlin were really American, so all becomes right with the world again.

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 17, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> It's all part of the ongoing plan to prove that the Spitfire and Merlin were really American, so all becomes right with the world again.


Resp:
The Spitfire was a British development. Period! If there is a culprit, it is not Robert R. Gilruth. I could find no other source, other than what Kraft wrote in 2000, and later 2001. I could understand descrepencies if his two stories were decades apart, but Kraft seems to have mis-spoke (exaggerated) about Gilruth's contributions, in stating 'Spitifre' in lieu of general aircraft. 
I do remember reading of Joint Fighter Meets held during WWII (two at Elgin Field, Florida) where British aircraft were also present; the first in mid 1943. Pilots from all services could fly each other's planes, once they were given instruction on its idiosyncrasies. Representatives and aircraft from the RCAF were present.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Sep 17, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> What other designs would be comparable? I'd guess the P-38 with dive-recovery flaps and P-47N?



I probably should have phrased that better...

My beef with the 51, has nothing to do with it’s ability. It was an amazing aircraft. I consider it overrated because so many people forget there were so many other aircraft that contributed to winning the war. It’s P-51 this, P-51 that.

You won’t see that so much here, or on other forums with knowledgable people though.

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 17, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I probably should have phrased that better...
> 
> My beef with the 51, has nothing to do with it’s ability. It was an amazing aircraft. I consider it overrated because so many people forget there were so many other aircraft that contributed to winning the war. It’s P-51 this, P-51 that.
> 
> You won’t see that so much here, or on other forums with knowledgable people though.


Resp:
I agree. The P-51 (Merlin) didn't really play much of a role until around the Feb/Mar 1944 timeframe. Other fighters (1939-1943) bore the brunt of the air war. From what I read, the Hurricane shot down more enemy aircraft during the Battle of Brittan. However, most cite the Spitfire as the aircraft that won the battle.


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 17, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> Probably not much as it isn't mentioned in his NASA bio...
> https://history.nasa.gov/naca/bio.html
> A large bio
> https://www.aem.umn.edu/info/history/gilruth-robert.pdf
> ...


Resp:
Spitfire reported dated Dec 1942, Characteristics Exhaust Stacks of Spitfire, Langley Field, VA, dtic.mil


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## fubar57 (Sep 17, 2018)

Resp: 




​Oops...forgot the quote....



Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Spitfire reported dated Dec 1942, Flying Characteristics of Spitfire, Langley Field, VA, www.dtic.mil


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 17, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> Zactly


Guess you need book number 83! Just kidding.


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## wuzak (Sep 17, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> Resp:
> View attachment 509938
> ​Oops...forgot the quote....



Upd:
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a800911.pdf

by L. Richard Turner and Maurice D. White.

Tests done on a Mk V airframe in late 1942, published December 1942.

6mph gain at +psi boost, ~21,000ft - 22,000ft.

Hard to tell from the picture, but it doesn't look like the Spitfire ever used those ejector exhausts.

The 2 stage Merlin Spitfires also did not use the same ejector exhausts as the V.

So to say they "fixed" anything is a stretch. If Supermarine/Rolls-Royce adopted the exhaust stacks it would be a performance improvement, not a fix.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 18, 2018)

MK IX shouldn't use the same stacks as a MK V in any case.
You have a different mass flow on the two stage engine.

Even on P-40s with Allison the exhaust stacks had to be modified when WEP was approved as the original stacks were optimised for a mass flow for a an 1150hp (net) engine and not a 1500hp engine. 
Exhaust stacks work best at _one_ altitude and _one_ speed. anything other than that altitude or speed is a compromise.


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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 18, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Upd:
> http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a800911.pdf
> 
> by L. Richard Turner and Maurice D. White.
> ...


I think there's a little confusion here. There are TWO NACA reports on Spit Vs in Dec 1942, one a quantification of handling qualities, and the other an investigation of thrust enhancement through exhaust ejector design. They seem to be getting confused here.
Search: Flying Characteristics of Spitfire, Langley Field, VA
This one is right up Gilruth's alley, although he doesn't seem to be named. It relies heavily on Gilruth's pet concept of stick force gradient in its analysis of the Spit's maneuvering performance. It describes, among other things, making a high G turn with the wing partially stalled while retaining full control through sensitive handling of the stick. Sounds like one of those tricks that could keep you alive....if you could live long enough to learn it.
Also it appears that stick force gradient with elevator mass balances installed (for high speed flutter protection) was so light as to encourage overstressing the airframe. I can't imagine trying to make stick pressure modulations measured in ounces while under 5 or 6 Gs loading. (Glad I'm not an F-16 or F-18 pilot!)
The concept of stick force gradient as a quantitative parameter was apparently a new thing in the US with Gilruth, but I'd be surprised if Mitchell, Camm, and company didn't already have some concept of it.
Cheers,
Wes


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## GrauGeist (Sep 18, 2018)

I was actually trying to find an image of the Spitfire being tested at Langley and ran across this document.
Fascinating read for those who are into the technical aspect of the aerodynamics of the Spitfire (and Mustang).

http://naca.central.cranfield.ac.uk/reports/arc/rm/2535.pdf


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## wuzak (Sep 18, 2018)

Certainly tests between the Spitfire I, Hurricane and Bf 109E noted stick forces to achieve roll and turn performance.

As for the report, is there any evidence that anything on the Spitfire was changed as a result?


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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 18, 2018)

wuzak said:


> As for the report, is there any evidence that anything on the Spitfire was changed as a result?


I didn't read all 53 pages down to the finest detail, but it seems to be an investigative report, not an experimental one.
Cheers,
Wes


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 18, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Upd:
> http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a800911.pdf
> 
> by L. Richard Turner and Maurice D. White.
> ...


Resp:
Kraft likely sinned when he didn't furnish his sources via footnotes. I suspect that Gilruth simply put aircraft assessments/evaluations/recommendations in a folder, likely with a 'form' cover sheet . . . for the purpose of sharing what his engineers learned with the RAF. I also suspect he did it with all aircraft if he thought it could help in other aircraft refinement. It is how engineers think.
I try to look at things with an open mind. My dad was an engineer, so every time I 'listed' the pros to why I wanted something, he would automatically make me list the 'cons.' It took me years as a kid to understand how he thought. 
The document does show:
1. That an early Mk Spitifre did make it 'across the pond' early in the war,
2. That NACA did evaluate it,
3. That the report likely was furnished to the RAF (via Canada or directly ? ?)
So I will accepted 3 out ot 4 correct is not bad, but I suspect you hardliners will continue to disagree. I didn't post on this subject to elevate America's involvement with the Spitfire. It was merely interesting to see something I had not heard before. Shame on me!


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## Kevin J (Sep 18, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Kraft likely sinned when he didn't furnish his sources via footnotes. I suspect that Gilruth simply put aircraft assessments/evaluations/recommendations in a folder, likely with a 'form' cover sheet . . . for the purpose of sharing what his engineers learned with the RAF. I also suspect he did it with all aircraft if he thought it could help in other aircraft refinement. It is how engineers think.
> I try to look at things with an open mind. My dad was an engineer, so every time I 'listed' the pros to why I wanted something, he would automatically make me list the 'cons.' It took me years as a kid to understand how he thought.
> The document does show:
> ...


The Seafire III series certainly introduced individual exhausts and a host of other mods that recovered the speed lost because of the addition of wing folding, catapult spools and an arrestor hook. This was about a 20 mph loss in total. The Seafire III was produced in 1943/44 and was as fast as the Spitfire Vc which it was based on. Produced by Westland and Cunliffe-Owen, the latter a smaller company that also introduced flush riveting. Production was about 1300. So its possible that the changes identified were applied to them, but again by small companies with 'more skilled' workers? The main production Spitfires VII, VIII, IX and XVI totalling about 8400 machines probably didn't have these mods as their speed would have been adequate to combat the FW 190A and Bf 109G and they were mass produced. Also perhaps the Spitfire IX floatplane fighter that only lost 30 mph in top speed as opposed to the earlier Spitfire Vb variant that lost 50 mph in speed.

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## wuzak (Sep 18, 2018)

The Spitfire IX was using individual ejector exhausts 6 months before that report.

Rolls-Royce were evolving them over time.

Edit:
The Seafire III's exhausts look a lot like the Spitfire IX's

Flying Legends aircraft

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...re_Mk_IX_-Indianapolis_Air_Show-24Aug2008.jpg

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## wuzak (Sep 18, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Kraft likely sinned when he didn't furnish his sources via footnotes.



Who is Kraft, and what report did he write?




Navalwarrior said:


> I suspect that Gilruth simply put aircraft assessments/evaluations/recommendations in a folder, likely with a 'form' cover sheet . . . for the purpose of sharing what his engineers learned with the RAF.



That's some sort of assumption.

This report by Phillips and Vensel issued in September 1942 referenced Gilruth, _Requirements for Satisfactory Flying Qualities of Airplanes_ and Gilruth and Turner, Lateral Control Required for _Satisfactory Flying Qualities Based on Flight Tests of Numerous Airpanes_. Bot these reports predate testing of the Spitfire by NACA (which occurred between December 29, 1941 and January 31, 1942).

Conclusions were drawn on the Spitfire's flying qualities based on desired properties set forth in those documents, and others.

Is there any evidence that Gilruth was involved directly with Spitfire testing? 




Navalwarrior said:


> I also suspect he did it with all aircraft if he thought it could help in other aircraft refinement. It is how engineers think.



That is a complete guess.

If he was involved in the testing process and providing notes it is likely he would have been listed as an author.




Navalwarrior said:


> The document does show:
> 1. That an early Mk Spitifre did make it 'across the pond' early in the war,
> 2. That NACA did evaluate it,



It is not surprising that a Spitfire was sent to the US for evaluation.

It is likely this was part of the process of evolving requirements for new fighter type aircraft.




Navalwarrior said:


> 3. That the report likely was furnished to the RAF (via Canada or directly ? ?)



The report would have been sent to the Air Ministry directly, or to the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE). Not to the RAF or Canada.

The A&AEE did much the same stuff as NACA did in the US. 

The A&AEE also tested captured aircraft, such as the Bf 109E.




Navalwarrior said:


> I didn't post on this subject to elevate America's involvement with the Spitfire.



It seems to me that you did precisely that:



Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> I just read that an NACA employee named Robert Gilruth found and fixed some flaws in early Mark Spitfire's. And from that point the British assigned a team to him for the rest of the war. Each time Gilruth made a discovery or developed an innovation, it was forwarded back to Briain where it was incorporated into aircraft built there.

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 18, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Who is Kraft, and what report did he write?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Resp:
The info was taken from book: Flight, My Life in Mission Control, by Chris Kraft. My three listed statements were challenged earlier by a blogger. I produced a document that pretty much confirms 1 - 3. An assumption was in the 4th only.


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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 18, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Who is Kraft, and what report did he write?


Most everybody in my generation remembers "Chris Kraft, the voice of Mission Control", the narrator of dozens of televised NASA rocket launches in the 60s and 70s.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 18, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Most everybody in my generation remembers "Chris Kraft, the voice of Mission Control", the narrator of dozens of televised NASA rocket launches in the 60s and 70s.
> Cheers,
> Wes


Resp:
Wes, it is a good read. There are many interesting points.


XBe02Drvr said:


> Most everybody in my generation remembers "Chris Kraft, the voice of Mission Control", the narrator of dozens of televised NASA rocket launches in the 60s and 70s.
> Cheers,
> Wes





XBe02Drvr said:


> Most everybody in my generation remembers "Chris Kraft, the voice of Mission Control", the narrator of dozens of televised NASA rocket launches in the 60s and 70s.
> Cheers,
> Resp:
> Wes, the book 'Flight, My Life In Mission Control' is a very good read. Kraft had a lot 'on his plate.' NASA had a very diverse group of engineers. As an example, around 1959-1960 the Canadian company A.V. Roe got the contract to produce the 'Arrow' but the government dropped the project. This left English engineers w/o employment. NASA sent invitations to them for a job interview. Teewyn Roberts, James Chamberlin and John Hodge, to name a few. This chapter reminded me of the different flags on my street in late 1960s; a Union Jack on the left end of the street, a Maple Leaf in the middle on the right side, and finally a unknown S. American flag. If you read it, I just wouldn't mention Kraft's statement on the Spitifre . . .some on this blog think the War is still on-going. LOL!


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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 19, 2018)

Looks like your computer has an echo problem, Nw!


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 19, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Looks like your computer has an echo problem, Nw!


Resp: More likely Operator error.


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 19, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp: More likely Operator error.


Con't:
I would like to thank all those who pushed me to research/document NACA's involvement inre to the Spitfire. In so doing, I was able to also find documents on my father's years at NACA (soon moved to NASA), beginning in 1944 at the old age of 29. So far I have found documents he wrote (1st one was shared authorship) from 1944, 1945 and 1947 (all in less than 30 min). My father was your typical engineer; never talked about his work unless asked a direct question, and possessed little humor . . . a serious guy.
I would also like to leave you something to think about, as I have over the years since it occurred. Sometime around 2008-2009, a USAF Major at a FOB (forward operating base) in the Middle East received a 'Classified' message about enemy activity in a certain geographical area. It just so happens that a British ground forces were about to depart for this same area. The message at that was not releasable to outside US forces. However, the Major left the secured classified building, where he approached the Commander of the British forces about to deploy. Handing the message to the Commander, he said: 'Sir, I think you need to read this!" As a result, the British suffered very few casualties that day. As for the USAF Major, he was immediately 'Court Marshalled,'.
I have always wondered, if the positions of the countrymen had been reversed, would the actions of those involved have been the same? 
Navalwarrior, GWOT fr 2001 - 1212.


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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 19, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Con't:
> I would also like to leave you something to think about, as I have over the years since it occurred. Sometime around 2008-2009, a USAF Major at a FOB (forward operating base) in the Middle East received a 'Classified' message about enemy activity in a certain geographical area. It just so happens that a British ground forces were about to depart for this same area. The message at that was not releasable to outside US forces. However, the Major left the secured classified building, where he approached the Commander of the British forces about to deploy. Handing the message to the Commander, he said: 'Sir, I think you need to read this!" As a result, the British suffered very few casualties that day. As for the USAF Major, he was immediately 'Court Marshalled,'.
> I have always wondered, if the positions of the countrymen had been reversed, would the actions of those involved have been the same?
> Navalwarrior, GWOT fr 2001 - 1212.


NOFORN means what it says. And we all thought PIC meant "Pilot in Command" ZZZZTT! Wrong! Means "Pricks In Charge".
Somehow I think the Brits, despite the stiff upper lip, can be better than we are at showing a sense of humor when it matters.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Zipper730 (Sep 19, 2018)

The Spitfire might have been in it's own way: While a remarkable airplane, more German bombers were blipped out by Hurricanes than Spits

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## Shortround6 (Sep 19, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> The Spitfire might have been in it's own way: While a remarkable airplane, more German bombers were blipped out by Hurricanes than Spits




During this time when more German bombers were "_blipped out_" were the numbers of Hurricanes and Spitfires doing the "blipping" equal?????

Or were there a lot more Hurricanes than Spitfires? 

Be careful of simple statistics. 
By the time the Spitfire became the dominant fighter in Europe (equipped the majority of RAF squadrons) the majority of the German bombers had flown off to Russia.

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## pbehn (Sep 19, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Con't:
> I would like to thank all those who pushed me to research/document NACA's involvement inre to the Spitfire. In so doing, I was able to also find documents on my father's years at NACA (soon moved to NASA), beginning in 1944 at the old age of 29. So far I have found documents he wrote (1st one was shared authorship) from 1944, 1945 and 1947 (all in less than 30 min). My father was your typical engineer; never talked about his work unless asked a direct question, and possessed little humor . . . a serious guy.
> I would also like to leave you something to think about, as I have over the years since it occurred. Sometime around 2008-2009, a USAF Major at a FOB (forward operating base) in the Middle East received a 'Classified' message about enemy activity in a certain geographical area. It just so happens that a British ground forces were about to depart for this same area. The message at that was not releasable to outside US forces. However, the Major left the secured classified building, where he approached the Commander of the British forces about to deploy. Handing the message to the Commander, he said: 'Sir, I think you need to read this!" As a result, the British suffered very few casualties that day. As for the USAF Major, he was immediately 'Court Marshalled,'.
> I have always wondered, if the positions of the countrymen had been reversed, would the actions of those involved have been the same?
> Navalwarrior, GWOT fr 2001 - 1212.


I remember reading about Captain Harry Kane, he was serving in the catering corps of the British cowards division, seconded to provide holistic and emotional support to USA forces in the Middle East. However when the station came under attack from Russian backed forces Capt. Harry proved he was no shrinking violet. In a jiffy he strapped an ironing board to each arm and flapped his way up to 20,000ft (being an ex cub scout he only ironed on NACA profiles). By dropping the grenades he was carrying under his arm pits he wiped out the attacking force of SU-57s and saved the whole USA infrastructure in the middle east. Harry was court martialled when he flapped down due to his misplaced ladle but is celebrated every year by weather systems being named after him. On a much heavier note here is a complete list of men who lost their lives in military service in Afghanistan, which ones played a part in your anecdote? UK military deaths in Afghanistan

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## Milosh (Sep 19, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> During this time when more German bombers were "_blipped out_" were the numbers of Hurricanes and Spitfires doing the "blipping" equal?????
> 
> Or were there a lot more Hurricanes than Spitfires?
> 
> ...



To add, the Spits were taking care 109s that would have given the Hurricanes a hard time trying to attack bombers.

The ratio of Hurricanes to Spitfires was ~2:1.

Spitfires had a better kill ratio than the Hurricane.


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## Kevin J (Sep 20, 2018)

Milosh said:


> To add, the Spits were taking care 109s that would have given the Hurricanes a hard time trying to attack bombers.
> 
> The ratio of Hurricanes to Spitfires was ~2:1.
> 
> Spitfires had a better kill ratio than the Hurricane.


I wouldn't be too sure about the best kill ratio, maybe the best over claim ratio if their 'successes' in 1941/42 are anything to go by. The Hurricane had a much better concentration of fire and scored 55% of the RAF's victories in the ETO during WW2.


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## Stig1207 (Sep 20, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I wouldn't be too sure about the best kill ratio, maybe the best over claim ratio if their 'successes' in 1941/42 are anything to go by. The Hurricane had a much better concentration of fire and scored 55% of the RAF's victories in the ETO during WW2.



I will hazard a guess that the 55% of RAF victories that you attribute to the Hurricane actually relates to the BoB; someone has then extrapolated this percentage over all Fighter Command victory credits for the entire war in the ETO and arrived at the figure of 6000 victories for the Hurricane.

I really don't think that there is any historical basis for your claim that Hurricanes shot down more enemy aircraft than the Spitfire in the ETO.

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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 20, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The Hurricane had a much better concentration of fire


Until cannons came along both fighters had 8 .303s in the wings. What gave the Hurricane the concentration advantage?
Cheers,
Wes


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## Kevin J (Sep 20, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Until cannons came along both fighters had 8 .303s in the wings. What gave the Hurricane the concentration advantage?
> Cheers,
> Wes


The Hurricanes guns were in two banks of four, whereas the Spitfires guns were spread out across their wings giving a shotgun effect that scared the shit out of the Germans. If a Hurricane hit you it would be all over quickly. Their fire could shear off the tail of a Stuka.
Concise Guide To Spitfire Wing Types — Variants & Technology | Reference


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## Kevin J (Sep 20, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> I will hazard a guess that the 55% of RAF victories that you attribute to the Hurricane actually relates to the BoB; someone has then extrapolated this percentage over all Fighter Command victory credits for the entire war in the ETO and arrived at the figure of 6000 victories for the Hurricane.
> 
> I really don't think that there is any historical basis for your claim that Hurricanes shot down more enemy aircraft than the Spitfire in the ETO.


I percentage of kills scored by Hurricanes in the BoB was higher. Just use the search facility on the aviation forums to find the figures and look on wikipedia at the Czech squadrons. The overall victories don't include V-1's shot down which may be a bit unfair. Also look on wikipedia at the Battle of Britain and air offensive over France sections for 1941 to 1942 under the Fighter Command section.You'll see that the Spitfires in that period shot down relatively few Luftwaffe fighters and according to German post-war records even less than they claimed.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 20, 2018)

You can put 4 guns in a wing all next to each other. You can put them spread out in a wing.

Gun mounts are adjustable, You can get all eight guns to hit one point (or at least a few foot circle at 250yds or other distance) with proper adjustment with either arrangement. You can also point each gun to hit a different spot no matter where in the wing they are located. This is on the ground when firing on a test stand. 





The British used several different impact patterns at times but during the BoB they were _supposed _to be using a concentrated pattern. 

In flight wings may bend or twist a bit, but not to the extent often claimed for Spitfires or the plane would not have been able to fly as it did (high dive speed). 

Hurricanes were noted as being steader gun platforms. This means they flew a steadier course/flight path with little yawing or porpoising or snaking. 
Some fighters were rather notorious as bad gun platforms (Russian I-16). 

A He 111 fuselage (not the only target) was around 6 feet high and wide and the fat part was over 40 feet long. It also had wing about 50% bigger than a B-25 wing. Minor differences in gun placement should not have affected gunnery that much. 

The placement of the guns in the Spitfire may not have been ideal but it seems to get a bad rap for reasons that had nothing to do with gun placement/location.

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## Kevin J (Sep 20, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> You can put 4 guns in a wing all next to each other. You can put them spread out in a wing.
> 
> Gun mounts are adjustable, You can get all eight guns to hit one point (or at least a few foot circle at 250yds or other distance) with proper adjustment with either arrangement. You can also point each gun to hit a different spot no matter where in the wing they are located. This is on the ground when firing on a test stand.
> View attachment 510123
> ...


From what I've read about the BoB, there were a lot of twisted wings of Spitfires laying around on airfield. The Hurricane you could patch up, the Spitfire got returned to a maintenance unit. The Spitfire needed the E wing not the C wing produced from October 1941, I'm sure that it would have scored better.


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## aurelien wolff (Sep 20, 2018)

For me it's the me 262,particulary in some documentarie(EUGNEUGNEUGNEU da fighter dat could change da war!! "


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 20, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I wouldn't be too sure about the best kill ratio, maybe the best over claim ratio if their 'successes' in 1941/42 are anything to go by. The Hurricane had a much better concentration of fire and scored 55% of the RAF's victories in the ETO during WW2.


Resp:
Thanks Kevin. Often, it is what constitutes the definition of a kill, how it is verified, etc. It may have just been many writers relying on one source. I found this to be true when researching Allison engine Mustangs. The two most accurate publications on these Mustangs I have came from the UK. Even today, if you search US WWII fighter web sites that flew P-51B/Cs you may see b/w photos of Allison engined Mustangs instead.

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 20, 2018)

KiwiBiggles said:


> It's all part of the ongoing plan to prove that the Spitfire and Merlin were really American, so all becomes right with the world again.


Resp:
Interesting statement. I have never heard that. Ever since 1969 when I saw my first photo of a P-51 (color photo of yellow nosed, 3 'D' and one 'B'), every publication (& I have read a lot) said something very close to: "The Mustang was a good clean airplane when introduced by North American, but it was the British designed Merlin that made it into what a great fighter it was!"

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 20, 2018)

pbehn said:


> I remember reading about Captain Harry Kane, he was serving in the catering corps of the British cowards division, seconded to provide holistic and emotional support to USA forces in the Middle East. However when the station came under attack from Russian backed forces Capt. Harry proved he was no shrinking violet. In a jiffy he strapped an ironing board to each arm and flapped his way up to 20,000ft (being an ex cub scout he only ironed on NACA profiles). By dropping the grenades he was carrying under his arm pits he wiped out the attacking force of SU-57s and saved the whole USA infrastructure in the middle east. Harry was court martialled when he flapped down due to his misplaced ladle but is celebrated every year by weather systems being named after him. On a much heavier note here is a complete list of men who lost their lives in military service in Afghanistan, which ones played a part in your anecdote? UK military deaths in Afghanistan


Resp:
Interesting comment. That American Major saved British lives that day. He is my idol. It is easy to do what you are told, but it took courage to do what was right. I don't see any humor in it, but I guess you knew that.


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 20, 2018)

Milosh said:


> To add, the Spits were taking care 109s that would have given the Hurricanes a hard time trying to attack bombers.
> 
> The ratio of Hurricanes to Spitfires was ~2:1.
> 
> Spitfires had a better kill ratio than the Hurricane.


Resp: 
I do understand that when both types were available, their assigned targets were often separate. It probably is a moot point as the RAF turned the tide, bringing the prospect of an invasion to a halt.


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## Kevin J (Sep 20, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> I do understand that when both types were available, their assigned targets were often separate. It probably is a moot point as the RAF turned the tide, bringing the prospect of an invasion to a halt.


In the battle zone it was one to one. Priority for the Hurricanes was the bombers, but they mixed it with the Messers and could come out on top. At bomber interception height there was very little performance difference between a Messer and a Hurricane. The Hurricanes had 100 octane fuel and boost, the Messers didn't.

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 20, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The Hurricanes guns were in two banks of four, whereas the Spitfires guns were spread out across their wings giving a shotgun effect that scared the shit out of the Germans. If a Hurricane hit you it would be all over quickly. Their fire could shear off the tail of a Stuka.
> Concise Guide To Spitfire Wing Types — Variants & Technology | Reference


Resp:
Yes, and what does one do with a shotgun? One must lead the target . . . and shoot where he will be!


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## Shortround6 (Sep 20, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> In the battle zone it was one to one. Priority for the Hurricanes was the bombers, but they mixed it with the Messers and could come out on top. At bomber interception height there was very little performance difference between a Messer and a Hurricane. The Hurricanes had 100 octane fuel and boost, the Messers didn't.


The extra boost only worked at low altitudes. It made absolutely no difference over 16-17,000ft. The closer you got to 10-11,000ft the more difference it made and from there down to sea level the difference between 100 octane and 87 (or the difference between 6lbs and 12lbs ) was pretty much constant.


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## Kevin J (Sep 20, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The extra boost only worked at low altitudes. It made absolutely no difference over 16-17,000ft. The closer you got to 10-11,000ft the more difference it made and from there down to sea level the difference between 100 octane and 87 (or the difference between 6lbs and 12lbs ) was pretty much constant.


I think you're find that the Hurricane I could do 285 mph at sea level for 5 minutes, the Bf 109E the same for one minute but with the radiator closed. Up to about 15000 feet there was little to choose between them in speed which surprised the Germans. The Hurricane had a better roll rate and turning circle, the Bf 109E, a better dive speed, but the Bf 109E can't run away if its going to defend its bombers. So its game, set and match to the Hurricane. Otherwise, I'd agree.

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## Shortround6 (Sep 20, 2018)

I would note that at the time (summer & fall of 1940) the Hurricane got the Merlin XX while the Spitfire got the Merlin XII. This was an attempt to keep the Hurricane competitive until Spitfire production could be increased. 
This is for new/planned production. Not aircraft in service or in depot. it would take months for new versions to take over in large numbers.
If the Hurricane was actually better at the time the air staff should have known it and made decisions accordingly.


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## tomo pauk (Sep 20, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I think you're find that the Hurricane I could do 285 mph at sea level for 5 minutes, the Bf 109E the same for one minute but with the radiator closed. Up to about 15000 feet there was little to choose between them in speed which surprised the Germans. The Hurricane had a better roll rate and turning circle, the Bf 109E, a better dive speed, but the Bf 109E can't run away if its going to defend its bombers. So its game, set and match to the Hurricane. Otherwise, I'd agree.



Why would the 109 run away?
You will find out that people at UK were of firm opinon that Bf 109E posessed a speed advantage of 30-40 mp/h, while also climbing better: link
As noted above, there was a reason why the Hurricane II got Merlin XX, while the Spitfire III did not. That being the noted performance gap, and not enough of the Mk.XXs around for the both.


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 20, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Why would the 109 run away?
> You will find out that people at UK were of firm opinon that Bf 109E posessed a speed advantage of 30-40 mp/h, while also climbing better: link
> As noted above, there was a reason why the Hurricane II got Merlin XX, while the Spitfire III did not. That being the noted performance gap, and not enough of the Mk.XXs around for the both.[/QUO
> 
> ...


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## tomo pauk (Sep 20, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Why would it run away? If it was during the BoB, I would think that fuel, or lack of would force them to turn away for home. Yes?



My English language is probably not that good as I think it is, but I'm still of an opinion that 'run away' and 'turn away for home' are two different things.

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## Milosh (Sep 20, 2018)

Basically means the same tomo. English can be lazy > 'run away' as in 'run away home'.


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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 20, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Basically means the same tomo. English can be lazy > 'run away' as in 'run away home'.


You can run away from a fight you're not going to win or you can break off an engagement because you're at bingo fuel.
Cheers,
Wes

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## GrauGeist (Sep 20, 2018)

Tomo was responding to Kevin's post:


Kevin J said:


> The Hurricane had a better roll rate and turning circle, the Bf 109E, a better dive speed, but the Bf 109E can't *run away* if its going to defend its bombers.


Typically, the term "run away" means flee or retreat - Monty Python's classic "run away" might be a good example.
It's perhaps not the best description for units turning for home.


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 20, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Basically means the same tomo. English can be lazy > 'run away' as in 'run away home'.





XBe02Drvr said:


> You can run away from a fight you're not going to win or you can break off an engagement because you're at bingo fuel.
> Cheers,
> Wes


Resp:
Just thinking out loud. If the enemy used up enough fuel that it forced them to make a straight line for home, any engagement that required the use of additional fuel, as in evasive maneuver, could force them down (Channel for example). True, the pilot might survive, but it would be a loss of aircraft.
Does anyone know if the RAF plotted egress routes in addition to ingress? 
Let's say that they did and found that there were 3 egress routes that the enemy used the most during the BoB. Someone in the Air Ministry would know what distance radar first picked up enemy ingress, figure known estimated time over target, notify fighters (let you choose numbers/which aircraft, as I don't want to start that debate again) and direct them to the most likely egress point. Forcing them into turns, etc would raise fuel consumption.


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## Kevin J (Sep 20, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Just thinking out loud. If the enemy used up enough fuel that it forced them to make a straight line for home, any engagement that required the use of additional fuel, as in evasive maneuver, could force them down (Channel for example). True, the pilot might survive, but it would be a loss of aircraft.
> Does anyone know if the RAF plotted egress routes in addition to ingress?
> Let's say that they did and found that there were 3 egress routes that the enemy used the most during the BoB. Someone in the Air Ministry would know what distance radar first picked up enemy ingress, figure known estimated time over target, notify fighters (let you choose numbers/which aircraft, as I don't want to start that debate again) and direct them to the most likely egress point. Forcing them into turns, etc would raise fuel consumption.


I think you'll find that one out of six Bf 109E's lost was due to running out of fuel. Our fighters were sent in to destroy the bombers and were ordered not to follow fleeing Messers as we couldn't afford to lose our fighters and definitely not our pilots.


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## Kevin J (Sep 20, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> I would note that at the time (summer & fall of 1940) the Hurricane got the Merlin XX while the Spitfire got the Merlin XII. This was an attempt to keep the Hurricane competitive until Spitfire production could be increased.
> This is for new/planned production. Not aircraft in service or in depot. it would take months for new versions to take over in large numbers.
> If the Hurricane was actually better at the time the air staff should have known it and made decisions accordingly.


The Spitfire was the fighter with the best long term development potentential and could dive with a Messer which the Hurricane could not. The Hurricane was hard pressed to catch the Ju 88, which with bombs dropped could reach 326 mph in level flight, likewise the Do 215 recce bomber. Anything else the Hurricane could handle. The Merlin XX gets the Hurricane II almost up to the top speed of the Spitfire II, 342 as opposed to 355 mph which I sure you'll agree is a marginal speed difference so neither plane would be at a speed disadvantage against the Bf 109E equipped with the DB 601N which did about 307 mph on the deck and 357 mph at altitude. Once the Bf 109F arrives in numbers then the Hurricane II has a problem, but few were available in the Winter of 1940/41 and those they had did have a habit of shedding their wings in dives and violent manoeuvres. Once the Spitfire Vb comes along in Summer 1941 then clearly the Hurricane II can be withdrawn from front line fighter duties. There's only so much that you can do to improve its performance. In 1942, 16 lbs boost was introduced for the Merlin XX, so in the Western Desert and up against the Macchi 202 Folgore it performance is comparable at 2000 to 3000 metres as an escort fighter.


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 20, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I think you'll find that one out of six Bf 109E's lost was due to running out of fuel. Our fighters were sent in to destroy the bombers and were ordered not to follow fleeing Messers as we couldn't afford to lose our fighters and definitely not our pilots.


Resp:
That is not a bad statistic; one in six. Our Air Planning Unit couldn't tabulate enemy aircraft because we had little air threat. We also moved around and when possible and had/used different air assets.


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## Kevin J (Sep 20, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> That is not a bad statistic; one in six. Our Air Planning Unit couldn't tabulate enemy aircraft because we had little air threat. We also moved around and when possible and had/used different air assets.


Really? That's a good statistic?


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 20, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Really? That's a good statistic?


For running out of gas, yes!

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## Stig1207 (Sep 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> I percentage of kills scored by Hurricanes in the BoB was higher. Just use the search facility on the aviation forums to find the figures and look on wikipedia at the Czech squadrons. The overall victories don't include V-1's shot down which may be a bit unfair. Also look on wikipedia at the Battle of Britain and air offensive over France sections for 1941 to 1942 under the Fighter Command section.You'll see that the Spitfires in that period shot down relatively few Luftwaffe fighters and according to German post-war records even less than they claimed.



Hurricane's achieved just a couple of hundred victories in the ETO from 1941 and on. To get 6000 victories *95% *of those had to have been achieved in 1939-40. I don't know how many victory credits were awarded to RAF fighter pilots in that early period of the war, but that it was over 6000 (assuming Spitfires and other types also scored a few) seems doubtful.

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## GrauGeist (Sep 21, 2018)

The overall losses during the Battle of Britain were:
Britain: 1,744 (+/-) aircraft
Germany (and Italy) : 1,977 (+/-) aircraft
All losses combined = 3,721...

I'm having trouble trying to see where the Hurricane was able to get 95% of their 6,000 claimed out of the BoB.

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## Kevin J (Sep 21, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The overall losses during the Battle of Britain were:
> Britain: 1,744 (+/-) aircraft
> Germany (and Italy) : 1,977 (+/-) aircraft
> All losses combined = 3,721...
> ...


Okay lets take this from another angle, from 1939 to 1945, Fighter command lost 3690 killed, 1215 wounded and 601 POW, 4790 were aircraft were lost. We know that RAF claims in the BoB were 1.7 kills per Spitfire and 1.1 per Hurricane. Overall claims were over twice the number of aircraft shot down than in reality. In the Air Offensive over France in 1941/42, Spitfire claims were three times reality. According to the 10500 overall claims for the RAF in the ETO of which a third were by Spitfires, then the Spitfires downed 3500 or about 700 p.a. from 1940 to 1945, which is a plausible figure for claims, they claimed 711 in 1941 in the France air offensive, 236 from all causes in reality, so an over claimed kill ratio of 3 to 1. So the Spitfire figure seems reasonable. I've got to log in for work, so I'll come back to this one later and edit this post.

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## Stig1207 (Sep 21, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> I'm having trouble trying to see where the Hurricane was able to get 95% of their 6,000 claimed out of the BoB.



Well, there is also the BoF , but you are right; it's not plausible that Hurricanes got that many claims/ credits in this period of the war. In fact, seeing as the main action was in the period May-October 1940, RAF pilots would have to have claimed on average more than a 1000 enemy aircraft per month!
Hurricanes being credited with 6000 victories in the ETO simply defies credibility.

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## Kevin J (Sep 21, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Well, there is also the BoF , but you are right; it's not plausible that Hurricanes got that many claims/ credits in this period of the war. In fact, seeing as the main action was in the period May-October 1940, RAF pilots would have to have claimed on average more than a 1000 enemy aircraft per month!
> Hurricanes being credited with 6000 victories in the ETO simply defies credibility.


There are 58 months of war for the UK, so about 200 victories per month are required, say 11600 claimed victories.


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## Kevin J (Sep 21, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Well, there is also the BoF , but you are right; it's not plausible that Hurricanes got that many claims/ credits in this period of the war. In fact, seeing as the main action was in the period May-October 1940, RAF pilots would have to have claimed on average more than a 1000 enemy aircraft per month!
> Hurricanes being credited with 6000 victories in the ETO simply defies credibility.


In 1940, there was the Battle of France, Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain so about 2500 confirmed victories in this period of 5 months, but the over claim rate for this period was 2 or 3 to one. Maybe we're looking at 5000 claims for this period.


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## Kevin J (Sep 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Okay lets take this from another angle, from 1939 to 1945, Fighter command lost 3690 killed, 1215 wounded and 601 POW, 4790 were aircraft were lost. We know that RAF claims in the BoB were 1.7 kills per Spitfire and 1.1 per Hurricane. Overall claims were over twice the number of aircraft shot down than in reality. In the Air Offensive over France in 1941/42, Spitfire claims were three times reality. According to the 10500 overall claims for the RAF in the ETO of which a third were by Spitfires, then the Spitfires downed 3500 or about 700 p.a. from 1940 to 1945, which is a plausible figure for claims, they claimed 711 in 1941 in the France air offensive, 236 from all causes in reality, so an over claimed kill ratio of 3 to 1. So the Spitfire figure seems reasonable. I've got to log in for work, so I'll come back to this one later and edit this post.


The Hurricane was our sole fighter operating in the Phoney War in France, our sole fighter in the Battle of France, and was only joined by Spitfires at Dunkirk. In the BoB, there were equal numbers of Hurricanes operating in the main area of battle which was South East England. During the air offensive over France in 1941, the Hurricane was still employed for rear area air defence, as an escort for Blenheim light bombers, and as a fighter bomber escorted by Spitfires. From 1942, the Hurricane operated as a day and night intruder successfully attacking German bombers taking off or landing at their airfields. The Typhoon began to replace it in the fighter bomber role in September 1942 and as a rocket armed fighter from September 1943.

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## Kevin J (Sep 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> In 1940, there was the Battle of France, Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain so about 2500 confirmed victories in this period of 5 months, but the over claim rate for this period was 2 or 3 to one. Maybe we're looking at 5000 claims for this period.


What was the German production in this period to make up its losses.


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Okay lets take this from another angle, from 1939 to 1945, Fighter command lost 3690 killed, 1215 wounded and 601 POW, 4790 were aircraft were lost. We know that RAF claims in the BoB were 1.7 kills per Spitfire and 1.1 per Hurricane. Overall claims were over twice the number of aircraft shot down than in reality. In the Air Offensive over France in 1941/42, Spitfire claims were three times reality. According to the 10500 overall claims for the RAF in the ETO of which a third were by Spitfires, then the Spitfires downed 3500 or about 700 p.a. from 1940 to 1945, which is a plausible figure for claims, they claimed 711 in 1941 in the France air offensive, 236 from all causes in reality, so an over claimed kill ratio of 3 to 1. So the Spitfire figure seems reasonable. I've got to log in for work, so I'll come back to this one later and edit this post.





Kevin J said:


> Okay lets take this from another angle, from 1939 to 1945, Fighter command lost 3690 killed, 1215 wounded and 601 POW, 4790 were aircraft were lost. We know that RAF claims in the BoB were 1.7 kills per Spitfire and 1.1 per Hurricane. Overall claims were over twice the number of aircraft shot down than in reality. In the Air Offensive over France in 1941/42, Spitfire claims were three times reality. According to the 10500 overall claims for the RAF in the ETO of which a third were by Spitfires, then the Spitfires downed 3500 or about 700 p.a. from 1940 to 1945, which is a plausible figure for claims, they claimed 711 in 1941 in the France air offensive, 236 from all causes in reality, so an over claimed kill ratio of 3 to 1. So the Spitfire figure seems reasonable. I've got to log in for work, so I'll come back to this one later and edit this post.


Resp: 
Earlier the statement was made that enemy lost 1 out of 6 Bf109s due to running out of fuel. While these loses cannot be claimed as 'kills' they are still losses. Every time 12 entered RAF airspace, two were taken out of the equation. How were these loses reported/calculated?


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## Kevin J (Sep 21, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Earlier the statement was made that enemy lost 1 out of 6 Bf109s due to running out of fuel. While these loses cannot be claimed as 'kills' they are still losses. Every time 12 entered RAF airspace, two were taken out of the equation. How were these loses reported/calculated?


I assume that the RAF thought they were confirmed kills. Maybe the Germans reported them as ditched as out of fuel. It makes your stats look better for the public. Propaganda.

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## tomo pauk (Sep 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> ...
> *During the air offensive over France in 1941, the Hurricane was still employed for rear area air defence,* as an escort for Blenheim light bombers, and as a fighter bomber escorted by Spitfires.



The bolded part says it all - by the time RAF's best was slugging it over France in 1942, Hurricanes were not used to help out there, but instead they waited for Luftwaffe to appear from, say, Western Aproaches?



> From 1942, the Hurricane operated as a day and night intruder successfully attacking German bombers taking off or landing at their airfields. The Typhoon began to replace it in the fighter bomber role in September 1942 and as a rocket armed fighter from September 1943.



Pray tell, where the Hurricanes were employed as night intruders to succesfully attack German bomber bases in 1942?

Probably I need to be reminded that faith is not to be discussed.


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 21, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> The bolded part says it all - by the time RAF's best was slugging it over France in 1942, Hurricanes were not used to help out there, but instead they waited for Luftwaffe to appear from, say, Western Aproaches?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Resp:
Were Hurricanes sent/relocated to other Theaters, such as the MTO?


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## tomo pauk (Sep 21, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> Were Hurricanes sent/relocated to other Theaters, such as the MTO?



Then it needs to be said so. We're left with a big hint that somehow Hurricanes were making mess of LW bomber bases anywhere, even in the areas where Spitfires have hard time to survive. 
Or, in another words, I'm getting too old to agree with people wearing rose glasses that are painting their pet pony in shiny colors.

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 21, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Then it needs to be said so. We're left with a big hint that somehow Hurricanes were making mess of LW bomber bases anywhere, even in the areas where Spitfires have hard time to survive.
> Or, in another words, I'm getting too old to agree with people wearing rose glasses that are painting their pet pony in shiny colors.


Resp:
Agree fully. The enemy needs to be continuely pushed, leaving them little time to re-group.

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## Kevin J (Sep 21, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> The bolded part says it all - by the time RAF's best was slugging it over France in 1942, Hurricanes were not used to help out there, but instead they waited for Luftwaffe to appear from, say, Western Aproaches?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


One of our Czech fighter pilots killed about 15/20 bombers over Luftwaffe bomber bases in France during 1942, so there must have been others doing the same thing. His mount was a Hurricane IIc. Karel Kuttelwascher - Wikipedia


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## tomo pauk (Sep 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> One of our Czech fighter pilots killed about 15/20 bombers over Luftwaffe bomber bases in France during 1942, so there must have been others doing the same thing. His mount was a Hurricane IIc. Karel Kuttelwascher - Wikipedia



He probably did.
On the other hand, there is a difference between "a day and night intruder", that you claimed Hurricane was succesful, and "night intruder", where Kuttelwascher's unit excelled. Down with the rosy glasses.


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## Kevin J (Sep 21, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> He probably did.
> On the other hand, there is a difference between "a day and night intruder", that you claimed Hurricane was succesful, and "night intruder", where Kuttelwascher's unit excelled. Down with the rosy glasses.


It was meant to be used as both day and night intruder, although the Whirlwind was clearly the better plane for the daytime, as it was much much faster. The wartime record of the RAF aircraft known as the Hawker Hurricane IIC


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## Navalwarrior (Sep 21, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> One of our Czech fighter pilots killed about 15/20 bombers over Luftwaffe bomber bases in France during 1942, so there must have been others doing the same thing. His mount was a Hurricane IIc. Karel Kuttelwascher - Wikipedia


Resp:
Interesting. Thanks for clearing up the definition of 'Night Intruder' as I was thinking 'Nightfigher.' Also a good use of drop tanks, as it afforded additional time over target.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 21, 2018)

Much as I like the Whirlwind it was used as a fighter/bomber day intruder pretty much to bulk up numbers as there were only TWO Hurricane squadrons doing such work in 1942. And if a Hurricane is carrying drop tanks it isn't carrying much of anything else.

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## Navalwarrior (Sep 21, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Much as I like the Whirlwind it was used as a fighter/bomber day intruder pretty much to bulk up numbers as there were only TWO Hurricane squadrons doing such work in 1942. And if a Hurricane is carrying drop tanks it isn't carrying much of anything else.


Resp:
The drop tanks allowed them to fly around until they found a target, giving them plenty of fuel to attack and get home. The Czech pilot would not have been as successful otherwise.


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## Stig1207 (Sep 22, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> In 1940, there was the Battle of France, Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain so about 2500 confirmed victories in this period of 5 months, but the over claim rate for this period was 2 or 3 to one. Maybe we're looking at 5000 claims for this period



There were some 2700 claims during the BoB alone, so there may well be 5000 claims for the whole period ; how many were credited/ confirmed, who knows?
Hurricanes, I suspect, may have been credited with a couple of thousand up to the end of 1940; but after that only a couple of hundred credits, including Kuttelwaschers.


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## Reluctant Poster (Sep 22, 2018)

I recently posted Gilruth's report No 755 in another thread but apparently no one read it. Here's the link if any one wants to read it
The P-38J and L in the European theater.


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## Kevin J (Sep 22, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> There were some 2700 claims during the BoB alone, so there may well be 5000 claims for the whole period ; how many were credited/ confirmed, who knows?
> Hurricanes, I suspect, may have been credited with a couple of thousand up to the end of 1940; but after that only a couple of hundred credits, including Kuttelwaschers.


Go and look at the 'air war over Britain' page on facebook and you'll see Hurricanes were shooting down Luftwaffe planes over Britain from the end of the BoB all the way through 1941, then there are the night intruder claims over France from 1942 thought to 1943, 50/60 just in the first three months of ops by two squadrons. So you should have about 200 at least. If there were 2700 claims in the BoB then 1620 of them would be by Hurricanes plus the 500 in the Battle of France and perhaps 150 at Dunkirk. That gives you 2470 without taking account of the other actions that Hurricanes took part in such as ADGB from November 1940 to December 1941 plus of course the Phoney War, any victories claimed when escorting Blenheim bombers, any victories claimed as fighter bombers after releasing their bombs which went on until 1942/43 when the Typhoon took over as a fighter bomber. Would doubling the figures sound unreasonable? That would get you to 5000, although there's probably dramatic over claiming as escorts. Remember the Messers in the BoB, they thought they'd destroyed RAF Fighter Command so they switched their attacks to London, big mistake. By the end of the BoB the Luftwaffe had not only shot down every Spitfire produced to that time but also ones that weren't completed until Spring 1941. Their Hurricane victories were a bit more accurate only being out by a 33% over claim.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 22, 2018)

You might want to argue with this site. Hawker Hurricane in Combat

". Four Hurricane squadrons were sent to France soon after the start of the war, and another three were rushed across after the German attack in 1940. The Hurricane squadrons suffered huge losses during the fighting in France and the Low Countries. Seven Hurricane squadrons took part in the battle of France. They lost nearly 200 aircraft (72 destroyed, 120 damaged and abandoned during the final retreat from France), from a total force that had numbered 500 aircraft at the outbreak of the war. However, the Luftwaffe also suffered heavily during the fighting in France, and had not entirely recovered by the time of the battle of Britain. The Germans recorded losing 299 aircraft to RAF fighters (this will include some lost to Spitfires over Dunkirk and some to Gloster Gladiators, but most will have been lost to the Hurricane)."

I would note that for 7 squadrons to shoot down even 400 aircraft would be a kill rate of fantastic proportions in the time involved. This reckoning also does not count kills by the Defiant or Blenheim fighters during this period. 

" More than half of all German aircraft lost during the battle were shot down by Hurricane pilots. The Hurricane was the most numerous British fighter during the battle."
The Spitfire is generally credited with shooting down a higher percentage of German aircraft per number of planes deployed (like per 100 in active squadrons) and even more importantly, lasting longer. New pilots, on average, lasted days longer in Spitfires than in Hurricanes before being shot down.
Because the Hurricane outnumbered the Spitfire by a fair margin during this time the total number of German aircraft shot down by the Hurricane does exceed that of the Spitfire. 

Granted this is just one website but attempts to rehabilitate the Hurricane (or at least claim it was better than most accounts say) are going to need much more than vague estimates.

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## Shortround6 (Sep 22, 2018)

I have read that the Hurricane shot down 55% of all aircraft claimed by British fighters during WW II. 
This seems a bit counter intuitive due to the numbers of enemy aircraft produced and when they produced them. 
Not due to the performance of the Hurricane it self. 

The Hurricane did do the majority of the fighting in the early years, especially overseas where the Spitfire was late in showing up. But the Italians never built more than about 3500 planes in any one year and their total production (1939-43) was less than even the Japanese managed in 1943_ or_ 1944. 
Germans built more planes in 1944 than they did in in 1940, 41 and 42. Granted a large number went to the Russian front. 
Japanese production in 1944 was about 20% higher than the total production of 1939, 40, 41 and 42. A lot were destroyed on the ground, a lot were held back in th the homeland. 
But the Numbers deployed in 1942 to areas contested by the British and the Commonwealth may have to be looked at to substantiate the Hurricane claims. 

The book that says the Hurricane shot down 55% says 33% by Spitfires and 12% for all other British fighters combined. 

Targets for the Later Spitfires, Typhoon/Tempests and so on must have been scarce.


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## Kevin J (Sep 23, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Go and look at the 'air war over Britain' page on facebook and you'll see Hurricanes were shooting down Luftwaffe planes over Britain from the end of the BoB all the way through 1941, then there are the night intruder claims over France from 1942 thought to 1943, 50/60 just in the first three months of ops by two squadrons. So you should have about 200 at least. If there were 2700 claims in the BoB then 1620 of them would be by Hurricanes plus the 500 in the Battle of France and perhaps 150 at Dunkirk. That gives you 2470 without taking account of the other actions that Hurricanes took part in such as ADGB from November 1940 to December 1941 plus of course the Phoney War, any victories claimed when escorting Blenheim bombers, any victories claimed as fighter bombers after releasing their bombs which went on until 1942/43 when the Typhoon took over as a fighter bomber. Would doubling the figures sound unreasonable? That would get you to 5000, although there's probably dramatic over claiming as escorts. Remember the Messers in the BoB, they thought they'd destroyed RAF Fighter Command so they switched their attacks to London, big mistake. By the end of the BoB the Luftwaffe had not only shot down every Spitfire produced to that time but also ones that weren't completed until Spring 1941. Their Hurricane victories were a bit more accurate only being out by a 33% over claim.


If we include Malta as being in the ETO then that would add about another 500 victories to the Hurricane's total victories bringing us to around 3000 plus for the ETO. Add in the Western Desert claims and Greece? Italy: losses, 5272; in combat, 3269. We might be able squeeze another 3000 Hurricane claims out of here although this is stretching the definition of the ETO quite a bit.
If you equate RAF fighter production (40 thou) with that of the USN/USMC or about 30 thou fighters and 8500 to 9000 fighter claims then 10500 overall claims sounds reasonable. The Corsair only made about 25% of the claims, the Wildcat and the Hellcat made up the bulk of them. It wasn't their fastest fighter that claimed the most victories.


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## Stig1207 (Sep 23, 2018)

Malta is very much the MTO; any Italian losses you want to attribute to the Hurricanes' victories in the ETO would have to be ones that occurred during the BoF or BoB. Anyway, we're not doing a claims versus losses, that's a whole other kettle of fish. If's 6000 victory claims/ credits to Hurricanes in the ETO as reported from the British perspective we're discussing.

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## Kevin J (Sep 23, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> Malta is very much the MTO; any Italian losses you want to attribute to the Hurricanes' victories in the ETO would have to be ones that occurred during the BoF or BoB. Anyway, we're not doing a claims versus losses, that's a whole other kettle of fish. If's 6000 victory claims/ credits to Hurricanes in the ETO as reported from the British perspective we're discussing.


Certainly the claim of 6000 Hurricane victories in the ETO seems to be about double what I could come up with from the figures available, but given the number of British fighters produced and operated then 10500 World wide does seem to far off compared with the USN/USMC experience. There would have to be about 3000 in the Med and 3000 in Europe for the 6000 figure to be plausible. The Italians lost over 5000 aircraft of which over 3000 were from combat. Since over claiming is common and the Americans only fought Italian units for about 6 months rather than the British 36 months then most of the credit must go to the British which means the Hurricane. 3000 Hurricane victories in the Med for the Hurricane seems plausible to me.


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## Stig1207 (Sep 23, 2018)

I thought the 10500 were for FC alone, thus ETO? I am sure that the Hurricane is not going to get any where near the 6000 claims/ credits in the ETO; but from 1941 and on the Hurricane probably got more victories in other theatres than the ETO; whether that is going to bring it near the 6000 mark, I don't know, but I would tend to think it doubtful.


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## Kevin J (Sep 23, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> I thought the 10500 were for FC alone, thus ETO? I am sure that the Hurricane is not going to get any where near the 6000 claims/ credits in the ETO; but from 1941 and on the Hurricane probably got more victories in other theatres than the ETO; whether that is going to bring it near the 6000 mark, I don't know, but I would tend to think it doubtful.


The Hellcat reached close to that figure in two years of war and it certainly didn't have the performance of either the Lightning, Thunderbolt or Mustang. They were opposed by generally inferior Japanese equipment just as the Hurricane was opposed by generally inferior Italian equipment.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 23, 2018)

Around 14, 580 Hurricanes were built, however around 6000 of them were built from early/mid 1942 and Spitfires began to show up in Malta in March of 1942, although in small numbers.
Attributing large numbers of Italian losses to the Hurricanes gets tricky, perhaps the Hurricanes did shoot down large number of Italian aircraft but that rather ignores AA and the fact that by Nov 18th 1941 (start of operation Crusader) there are 5 squadrons flying Tomahawks with the Desert Air Force and Kittyhawks start to become operational in Jan 1942. 

From wiki" In October 1941, the Western Desert Air Forces had 16 squadrons of aircraft (nine fighter, six medium bomber and one tactical reconnaissance" so Tomahawks made up around 50% of the fighters at this time. Only 4 squadrons in in early Oct? Please note that eventually 7 squadrons would use Tomahawks but they would include one RAAF squadron and 3 SAAF squadrons in addition to 3 RAF squadrons.

about 7 months earlier
"
On 19 April 1941, RAF No. 204 Group was created under the command of Air Commodore Raymond Collishaw and consisted of the following units:


No. 73 Squadron (Hurricanes) at Tobruk
No. 274 Squadron (Hurricanes) at Gerawla
No. 14 Squadron (Blenheim IVs and Marauders) at Burg el Arab
Detachment of No. 39 Squadron (Marylands) at Maaten Baggash
Detachment of No. 24 Squadron (Marylands) at Fuka
No. 45 Squadron (Blenheim IVs) at Fuka
No. 55 Squadron (Blenheim IVs) at Zimla
No. 6 Squadron (Hurricanes and Lysanders) at Tobruk"
I am not trying to discount the bravery and sacrifice of the men who fought in that theater but something seems to be off between the numbers of planes available for combat and the number of enemy planes being attributed to the Hurricane during this time period.

Please note there seems to an error in the aircraft for no 14 squadron as while the the squadron did operate Marauders they didn't get them until Aug of 1942.


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## Kevin J (Sep 23, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Around 14, 580 Hurricanes were built, however around 6000 of them were built from early/mid 1942 and Spitfires began to show up in Malta in March of 1942, although in small numbers.
> Attributing large numbers of Italian losses to the Hurricanes gets tricky, perhaps the Hurricanes did shoot down large number of Italian aircraft but that rather ignores AA and the fact that by Nov 18th 1941 (start of operation Crusader) there are 5 squadrons flying Tomahawks with the Desert Air Force and Kittyhawks start to become operational in Jan 1942.
> 
> From wiki" In October 1941, the Western Desert Air Forces had 16 squadrons of aircraft (nine fighter, six medium bomber and one tactical reconnaissance" so Tomahawks made up around 50% of the fighters at this time. Only 4 squadrons in in early Oct? Please note that eventually 7 squadrons would use Tomahawks but they would include one RAAF squadron and 3 SAAF squadrons in addition to 3 RAF squadrons.
> ...



So as late as October 1942 there are still significant numbers of Hurricanes being operated. Remember the the Hurricane II in 1942 had 16 lbs boost so it has a comparable performance to the Italian Mc 202 Folgore between 7000 and 10000 feet. According to Eric Brown it could beat a Folgore in a dogfight, if the Italian pilot was stupid enough to engage. The Hurricane would certainly have been suitable as an escort for our tactical bombers even in 1942, but who knows how many over claims occurred? So Kittyhawks for air superiority and fighter bombing, Spitfires for air defence and top cover, Hurricanes for escort, ground attack and intruder duties, at least that's what I'm assuming. In 1941, eventually Tomahawks for air superiority and Hurricanes for every thing else. In the Med, about 500 victories over Malta, 129 FAA victories for Sea Hurricanes and then there was the action over Greece before it was overrun. If we assume the same level of victories over the Western Desert as over Malta then using your squadron breakdown then we should be looking at about another 750 Hurricane victories in the same time period as there were three not two (Malta) squadrons of Hurricanes in the Western desert. All we need to do is to figure out how to double the numbers. Certainly not Greece, the conflict there did not last very long. In the Far East, I've seen no overall figures for Hurricanes at all. 

On 27 October 1942, the Western Desert Air Force (WDAF) was organised as shown below:[8]
Subordinated to General Headquarters RAF Middle East (GHQ RAF Middle East)

No. 3 South African Air Force (SAAF) Bomber Wing
12 Squadron SAAF (24 × Martin Marylands)
21 Squadron SAAF (24 × Martin Baltimores I,II & III)
24 Squadron SAAF (24 × Douglas Boston III)

No. 232 Bomber Wing
No. 55 Squadron RAF (24 × Baltimores I,II & III)
No. 223 Squadron RAF (24 × Baltimores I,II & III)
82nd Bombardment Squadron USAAF (12 × Mitchell B-25C)
83rd Bombardment Squadron USAAF (12 × Mitchell B-25C)
434th Bombardment Squadron USAAF (12 × Mitchell B-25C)

No. 285 Reconnaissance Wing
No. 2 PRU Squadron RAF (Photo Reconnaissance) (Spitfire VB)
40 Squadron SAAF (Tactical Reconnaissance) (18 × Hurricane I/II/A/B)
60 Squadron SAAF (Photo Reconnaissance) (12 × Marylands)
No. 208 Squadron RAF (Tactical Reconnaissance) (18 × Hurricane IIA/B)
No. 1437 Flight RAF (Strategic Reconnaissance) (8 × Baltimores I/II/III)







Kittyhawks of No. 112 Squadron RAF prepare to take off in Tunisia.

No. 211 Group
7 Squadron SAAF (anti-tank) (16 × Hurricane IID)
No. 6 Squadron RAF (anti-tank) (16 × Hurricane IID)
64th Fighter Squadron USAAF (25 × P-40F Warhawks)
65th Fighter Squadron USAAF (25 × P-40F Warhawks)
No. 233 Wing
2 Squadron SAAF (16 × Kittyhawks I, II & III)
4 Squadron SAAF (16 × Kittyhawks I, II & III)
5 Squadron SAAF (16 × Tomahawks)
No. 260 Squadron RAF (16 × Kittyhawks I & IIb)

No. 239 Wing
No. 3 Squadron RAAF (16 × Kittyhawk I/II/III)
No. 112 Squadron RAF (16 × Kittyhawk IA)
No. 250 Squadron RAF (16 × Kittyhawk IIA)
No. 450 Squadron RAAF (16 × Kittyhawk)
66th Fighter Squadron USAAF (25 × P-40F Warhawks)

No. 244 Wing
No. 145 Squadron RAF (16 × Spitfires Vb)
No. 601 Squadron RAF (16 × Spitfires Vb)
No. 73 Squadron RAF (16 × Hurricane IIc)
No. 92 Squadron RAF (16 × Spitfires Vb/c)


No. 212 Group
No. 243 Wing
1 Squadron SAAF (16 × Hurricane IIc)
No. 33 Squadron RAF (16 × Hurricane IIc)
No. 213 Squadron RAF (16 × Hurricane IIc)
No. 238 Squadron RAF (16 × Hurricane IIc)

No. 7 Wing
No. 80 Squadron RAF (16 × Hurricane IIc)
No. 127 Squadron RAF (16 × Hurricane IIb)
No. 335 (Greek) Squadron RAF (16 × Hurricane IIb)
No. 274 Squadron RAF (16 × Hurricane IIb

Early in 1943 that squadron was renamed RAAF 462 (note Australian squadron) despite mainly British personnel.
The squadron was disbanded in June 1943 but a new Australian 462 squadron was formed late in 1943 with mainly Australian personnel.

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## Stig1207 (Sep 24, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The Hellcat reached close to that figure in two years of war and it certainly didn't have the performance of either the Lightning, Thunderbolt or Mustang. They were opposed by generally inferior Japanese equipment just as the Hurricane was opposed by generally inferior Italian equipment.



That's not a viable comparison,imo, there are other circumstances that also play a role.

I haven't seen any figures for total RAF and CW claims/ credits in the MTO or Far East on the net, so trying to deduce how many victories the Hurricane has, is, as SR says, 'tricky'.


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## Kevin J (Sep 24, 2018)

Stig1207 said:


> That's not a viable comparison,imo, there are other circumstances that also play a role.
> 
> I haven't seen any figures for total RAF and CW claims/ credits in the MTO or Far East on the net, so trying to deduce how many victories the Hurricane has, is, as SR says, 'tricky'.


Agreed, its tricky, but in the Med we know how many Italian aircraft were lost overall (5272) and in combat (3269), so someone or something must have caused their loss and there's only a 1 in 7 chance that it was due to American action; a 6 to 1 chance that it was the Brits. Simply because it was the Brits who were fighting against the Italians in the Med 6 times longer than the Yanks. So using the wicked assumption that the Yanks played no part in this private Anglo-Italian war and fought only with the French and Germans, and that the Spitfire and P-40 were only ever destroying Luftwaffe planes, then we have 3269 victories for our Hurricanes and handful of Gladiators, and the 2000 others due to AAA or over claiming, maybe even Martin Maryland reconnaissance bombers. That would get us up to that 6000 Hurricane victories fighting our European enemies and probably why our RAF has never issued any overall figures because it would destroy the Spitfire myth.


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## rochie (Sep 24, 2018)

[QUOTE="Kevin J, post: 1432218, That would get us up to that 6000 Hurricane victories fighting our European enemies and probably why our RAF has never issued any overall figures because it would destroy the Spitfire myth.[/QUOTE]
Wow, tin foil hat time

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## fastmongrel (Sep 24, 2018)

Shhhh rochie he might find out that Snoopy never shot down the Red Baron and then the ghost of Trenchard will rise from the tomb.

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## Kevin J (Sep 24, 2018)

fastmongrel said:


> Shhhh rochie he might find out that Snoopy never shot down the Red Baron and then the ghost of Trenchard will rise from the tomb.


Lets take the Australian experience of their air war in the Pacific, but just take September 1943 to July 1945. Spitfire victories, 16; Beaufort and Beaufighter victories, 21; Kitttyhawk victories, 24. Clearly, the Beaufort and Beaufighters are better fighters than the Spitfire and as for the obsolescent Kittyhawk, wow. Clearly, its the Spitfire that needs to go and the Aussies need more Beauforts and Beaufighters. LOL. Against the Spitfire VIII was its lack of range. In the ETO and MTO, the Hurricane IIb / IIc could carry two 45 gallon drop tanks, the Spitfire Vb / Vc, a 30 gallon combat slipper tank, or a 45 gallon slipper tank for patrol work. The Spitfires' 90 and 170 gallon tanks were for ferrying. There was a nasty little incident in 1941 when a Spitfire squadron was fitted with 90 gallon tanks for a patrol off the Dutch coast covering the rescue of down allied aircrew and a bunch of Me 110's made mincemeat out of them. So, you could do a lot more with the Hurricane II than you could with a Spitfire in 1941/42.

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## rochie (Sep 24, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Lets take the Australian experience of their air war in the Pacific, but just take September 1943 to July 1945. Spitfire victories, 16; Beaufort and Beaufighter victories, 21; Kitttyhawk victories, 24. Clearly, the Beaufort and Beaufighters are better fighters than the Spitfire and as for the obsolescent Kittyhawk, wow. Clearly, its the Spitfire that needs to go and the Aussies need more Beauforts and Beaufighters. LOL. Against the Spitfire VIII was its lack of range. In the ETO and MTO, the Hurricane IIb / IIc could carry two 45 gallon drop tanks, the Spitfire Vb / Vc, a 30 gallon combat slipper tank, or a 45 gallon slipper tank for patrol work. The Spitfires' 90 and 170 gallon tanks were for ferrying. There was a nasty little incident in 1941 when a Spitfire squadron was fitted with 90 gallon tanks for a patrol off the Dutch coast covering the rescue of down allied aircrew and a bunch of Me 110's made mincemeat out of them. So, you could do a lot more with the Hurricane II than you could with a Spitfire in 1941/42.


Dude, i love the Hurricane as much as anyone and i too am sad that it is too often overlooked in history because of our nations love for the Spitfire but my post was aimed at your belief that the RAF is hiding the true records of the Spitfire and Hurricane so as not to dispel a myth about their combat records in a conflict that ended almost 75 years ago

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## grampi (Sep 24, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I probably should have phrased that better...
> 
> My beef with the 51, has nothing to do with it’s ability. It was an amazing aircraft. I consider it overrated because so many people forget there were so many other aircraft that contributed to winning the war. It’s P-51 this, P-51 that.
> 
> You won’t see that so much here, or on other forums with knowledgable people though.


A lot of fighters were over rated much in the same way as the P-51. To listen to some people talk about the 109, you'd think Germany won the war, and it was because of the 109...

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## Kevin J (Sep 24, 2018)

rochie said:


> Dude, i love the Hurricane as much as anyone and i too am sad that it is too often overlooked in history because of our nations love for the Spitfire but my post was aimed at your belief that the RAF is hiding the true records of the Spitfire and Hurricane so as not to dispel a myth about their combat records in a conflict that ended almost 75 years ago


The first casualty of war is the truth. What do you mean "the war ended 75 years ago", its still going on, every time we play football, its like a replay of events.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Sep 24, 2018)

grampi said:


> A lot of fighters were over rated much in the same way as the P-51. To listen to some people talk about the 109, you'd think Germany won the war, and it was because of the 109...



I don’t disagree with you. I think those that do that with other aircraft are few and far between though.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Sep 24, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The first casualty of war is the truth. What do you mean "the war ended 75 years ago", its still going on, every time we play football, its like a replay of events.



Only for the English...

Thats another topic for a different thread though.


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## GrauGeist (Sep 24, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Lets take the Australian experience of their air war in the Pacific, but just take September 1943 to July 1945. Spitfire victories, 16; Beaufort and Beaufighter victories, 21; Kitttyhawk victories, 24...


What were the circumstances of the victories?
Were the Spitfire, Beaufort, Beaufighter and P-40 all operating in the same area?
What was the profile of the victories - all fighters, all bombers, all flying boats or a balanced blend of each?
What was the strength of each RAAF type at the time of interception (full squadron of each type versus proportionate Japanese elements)?

In otherwords, to just say the Beaufort was a better fighter than the Spitfire based on a number of victories gained in a general area during a particular time period is not really presenting accurate figures.

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## Kevin J (Sep 24, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> What were the circumstances of the victories?
> Were the Spitfire, Beaufort, Beaufighter and P-40 all operating in the same area?
> What was the profile of the victories - all fighters, all bombers, all flying boats or a balanced blend of each?
> What was the strength of each RAAF type at the time of interception (full squadron of each type versus proportionate Japanese elements)?
> ...


I think you're taking this too seriously, but here's the link, there are both Aussie and Kiwi victory claims for WW2 in the Asia-Pacific. Pacific Victory Roll - Sep 43 - Jul 45


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## GrauGeist (Sep 24, 2018)

Why not be serious about statistics?

If we look at that victory list, we see that the claims are not balanced out, they were accrued in different areas, meaning that the enemy may not have been operating at strength, unescorted bombers may have been operating in one area while obsolete fighters were in others and in some sectors, fewer enemy types were encountered overall.

So if we want to just casually toss out numbers to support a point of view, one could say that the PB4Y was a better fighter than the ones listed (Spitfire, Beaufort, Beaufighter and P-40) because it downed over 300 enemy aircraft between late 1943 and 1945...

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## wuzak (Sep 24, 2018)

Following this thread, and the underrated thread as well, my idea of what is overrated has changed.

My original thoughts I cannot recall (they'd be here somewhere), but in recent times it has clearly been the P-39, which was then usurped by the P-40 and now, I am afraid, it has to be the Hurricane!


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## bowfin (Sep 27, 2018)

amrit said:


> Ahh, Glider beat me to it. Yep the A6M Zero. No armour or self-sealing tanks!! Range and agility weren't everything - just sneeze on it and it fell down


No armor or self sealing tanks, but that weight savings meant it had a fantastic range for a single engine fighter at that time. If the Germans had the Zero, it could have flown escort during the Battle of Britain, chased around Spitfires until THEY were out of fuel, and then head back to bases in Europe...easily. It's hard to fight if one can't make it to where the fight is.


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## Schweik (Sep 27, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Agreed, its tricky, but in the Med we know how many Italian aircraft were lost overall (5272) and in combat (3269), so someone or something must have caused their loss and there's only a 1 in 7 chance that it was due to American action; a 6 to 1 chance that it was the Brits. Simply because it was the Brits who were fighting against the Italians in the Med 6 times longer than the Yanks. So using the wicked assumption that the Yanks played no part in this private Anglo-Italian war and fought only with the French and Germans, and that the Spitfire and P-40 were only ever destroying Luftwaffe planes, then we have 3269 victories for our Hurricanes and handful of Gladiators, and the 2000 others due to AAA or over claiming, maybe even Martin Maryland reconnaissance bombers. That would get us up to that 6000 Hurricane victories fighting our European enemies and probably why our RAF has never issued any overall figures because it would destroy the Spitfire myth.



Actually the main RAF fighter from late 1941 to the fall of 1942 was the Tomahawk and the Kittyhawk I, Ia, II and III (i.e. P-40). Hurricanes were generally diverted to fighter bomber role by 1942, Spitfires came in the middle of 1942 but initially in very low numbers.

S

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## Schweik (Sep 27, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> So as late as October 1942 there are still significant numbers of Hurricanes being operated. Remember the the Hurricane II in 1942 had 16 lbs boost so it has a comparable performance to the Italian Mc 202 Folgore between 7000 and 10000 feet. According to Eric Brown it could beat a Folgore in a dogfight, if the Italian pilot was stupid enough to engage. The Hurricane would certainly have been suitable as an escort for our tactical bombers even in 1942, but who knows how many over claims occurred? So Kittyhawks for air superiority and fighter bombing, Spitfires for air defence and top cover, Hurricanes for escort, ground attack and intruder duties, at least that's what I'm assuming. In 1941, eventually Tomahawks for air superiority and Hurricanes for every thing else. In the Med, about 500 victories over Malta, 129 FAA victories for Sea Hurricanes and then there was the action over Greece before it was overrun. If we assume the same level of victories over the Western Desert as over Malta then using your squadron breakdown then we should be looking at about another 750 Hurricane victories in the same time period as there were three not two (Malta) squadrons of Hurricanes in the Western desert. All we need to do is to figure out how to double the numbers. Certainly not Greece, the conflict there did not last very long. In the Far East, I've seen no overall figures for Hurricanes at all.
> 
> On 27 October 1942, the Western Desert Air Force (WDAF) was organised as shown below:[8]
> Subordinated to General Headquarters RAF Middle East (GHQ RAF Middle East)
> ...



Quite accurate, but here is the nuance - almost all the Hurricanes and most of the Kittyhawk I and IA were being used as fighter bombers / CAS almost all the time. The only time they were used to attack enemy aircraft offensively was when big Axis bomber missions were sent in (which was not typical).

The Kitthyawk II and III, and the US Warhawks (P-40 F/L) and the Spit V. were doing almost all of the CAP, fighter sweep and fighter escort missions, then joined by the P-38s when they arrived. Specifically the Spit V's were the ideal CAP / interceptors and given priority on those missions, as well as short range fighter sweeps. Kittyhawk II and III and Warhawks for medium range escort of medium bombers and fighter sweeps, and when the P-38's arrived they were used to escort the higher-flying / long range B-24s.

If you look at Shores Mediterranean Air War the rates of Hurricane victory claims are very low by that time.

For example, in the Month of October 1942, counting only confirmed victories, the breakdown was as follows:

*Claims*
RAF Spitfire Mk V --- 35.5 (31 x Bf 109, 3 x MC 202, and 1 x Ju 52)
RAF P-40* --- 57 (35.5 x Bf 109, 11 x MC 202, 9 x Ju 87, 1 x Ju 88)
US P-40 --- 29 (18 x Bf 109, 7 x MC 202, 4 x Cr 42)
RAF Hurricane** --- 12 (3 x Bf 109, 1 x CR 42, 7 x Ju 87, 1 X Ju 88)
Bf 109 --- 75 (20 x Spit, 43.5 x P40s, 12 x Hurricanes)

* includes Tomahawk, & Kittyhawk I, II and III
** includes both Hurricane Mk I and II

Total allied claims were Bf 109 x 85 victories, MC 202 x 21, Total 134

*Actual Losses were: *
34 x Bf 109 shot down plus x 7 crash landed
10 x MC 202 shot down plus x 8 crash landed
6 x Cr 42 shot down
11 x Ju 87 shot down
1 x Ju 88 shot down
1 x Ju 52 shot down
1 x He 111 shot down
10 x Spitfire Vs shot down plus x 1 crash-landed
1 x Spit IV (recon) shot down
3 x US P-40 F/L* shot down plus x 3 crash-landed
3 x RAF Tomahawk shot down plus 1 crash-landed
13 Kittyhawk Mk I shot down plus 5 crash-landed
13 Kittyhawk Mk III shot down plus 2 crash-landed
7 Kitthawk Mk II* shot down plus 1 crash-landed
17 Hurricanes shot down plus 2 crash-landed

* those are the Packard / Merlin XX engined P-40s

Total Allied losses were 57 Fighters shot down, 15 Crash landed (10 /1 x Spitfire Vs, 1 x Spit IV, 29 / 12 x P-40s, and 17/2 x Hurricanes)
Total Axis losses were 65 - 50 Fighters shot down, 15 crash landed, plus 14 Bombers shot down (I didn't count the damaged or crash landed bombers)

*Worth noting* that almost all of the German bombers lost were shot down by either Hurricanes, Tomahawks or Kittyhawk Mk I
Kittyahwk III also is a confusing mix of the relatively high performing P-40K with the relatively low performing (export only) P-40M
All the CR 42 losses were from one mission when they sent ~ 50 of them equipped with bombs as fighter bombers on a strike that was intercepted and mauled by P-40s and Hurricanes. Same thing happened in one of the Stuka missions.
Most missions (all but two) by the Tomahawks, Kittyhawk I and Hurricanes were fighter-bomber sorties.

*My conclusions*
Results were about even, if slightly in favor of the Allies
Most allied losses were among the older aircraft (33 out of 57)
Spitfires had the best record, followed by the American P-40s (which were late model)
In general P40 units took the heaviest losses but also inflicted the most casualties.
The Italians didn't take (or inflict) that many combat losses in spite of having more planes in action than the Luftwaffe. This seems to be a common pattern in Shores records.
Hurricane pilots only claimed 1 Italian aircraft in Oct 1942, and 4 fighters

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## Kevin J (Sep 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> Actually the main RAF fighter from late 1941 to the fall of 1942 was the Tomahawk and the Kittyhawk I, Ia, II and III (i.e. P-40). Hurricanes were generally diverted to fighter bomber role by 1942, Spitfires came in the middle of 1942 but initially in very low numbers.
> 
> S


Agreed, but just because you're the main offensive fighter from 1941 to 1942 doesn't mean you're scoring the most victories, there were just as many Hurricane as P-40 squadrons in the RAF in the Western Desert. If the Tomahawk, 77 from three out of five squadrons, and the Kittyhawk (420), scored this many victories in the Western desert then how many did the Hurricane score? In the BoB, the Hurricane scored twice as many victories as the Spitfire. The Hurricane scored about 500 victories over Malta before the Spitfire arrived and shot down 800. I'm not disputing that the P-40 was better than the Hurricane, let alone the Spitfire, I'm just curious as to how many victories the Hurricane scored (claimed) in the rear or as bomber escorts.The Italians lost an awful lot of aircraft, so who shot them down and when?


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## fubar57 (Sep 27, 2018)

Jesus H. "Tap Dancing" Christ, Google.....*WTF!!!!
*
*




*​

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## Schweik (Sep 27, 2018)

I think I already gave you your answer above, per Christopher Shores only 1 Italian fighter (a Cr 42) was claimed by Hurricanes in Oct 1942

But here is a further breakdown which should make it clearer:

Available Fighters for the DAF Oct 1942 - 411
Total Claims - 134
Total Losses - 57 / 15

*128 x RAF P-40 *(32 Kitty II [3 RAAF and 260 RAF], 16 Tomahawk, 80 x mosty Kitty I with a few Mk III)
31% of the force / Claims 57.5 (44%) / losses 26 (45%)

*128 x Hurricane* *I and II* (96 Hurri IIC, 48 x IIB or Mk I)
31% of the force / Claims 12 (8%) / Losses 17 (29%)
*
32 x Hurricane IID *(tank busters not really used in fighter to fighter combat)
7% of the force (no claims or losses as far as I know)

*75 x USAAF P-40 F/L *(I think all these were 57th FG but I haven't double-checked yet)
18% of the force / Claims 29 (21%) / Losses 3 (5%)

*48 x Spitfire Mk V* (Vb and VC, not counting the recon planes which I think were Mk IV)
11.5% of the force / Claims 35.5 (26%) / Losses 10 (17%)

P-40 combined (RAF and USAAF) are 65% of the claims vs. 50% of the losses

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## Kevin J (Sep 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I think I already gave you your answer above, per Christopher Shores only 1 Italian fighter (a Cr 42) was claimed by Hurricanes in Oct 1942
> 
> But here is a further breakdown which should make it clearer:
> 
> ...


Do you have victory scores for Hurricanes, P-40's and Spitfires for the entire North African campaign?


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## Schweik (Sep 27, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Do you have victory scores for Hurricanes, P-40's and Spitfires for the entire North African campaign?



No not yet.... I would like to but that would be a BIG job adding those all up. I happened to have the stats for Oct 1942 already written down as the result of a discussion in another thread in here a few months ago.

but I can tell you that:

October 1942 is fairly typical as far as the ratios go, though later on you also get P-38s and American Spitfires, then eventually Spit IXs
Spit IXs were the dominant fighter type once they arrived in Theater

And I'm pretty sure there weren't any months where the Hurricanes got the majority of victories or more victories than losses after 1941, in fact that would be rare even in the second half of 1941. 

The Italians also pretty consistently took and dished out fairly low losses. Less claims and less losses than the Germans.
In my opinion, the Hurricane pilots were consistently scoring less than 10% of the victories, probably more like 5% in most of 1942 and early 1943. In other words, it wasn't the Battle of Britain. The Italians also consistently took pretty low losses after 1941, occasionally they came out in force with the MC 202s & MC 200s.

I think a lot of their losses were due to flak and accidents. Flak is probably the cause of somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 of casualties, the ratio being much higher in bombing missions. USAAF P-40 pilots for example lost much more to Flak than enemy fighters. German AAA was very good. Similarly most of the Bf 110 and Bf 109 "Jabo" losses were to Flak. Accident rates were also always very high, almost every day there were losses to accidents even when there was no enemy contact. Rough airfields, maintenance problems, desert conditions (dust) and relatively high landing speeds are mostly to blame.

I also suspect a lot of the Italian combat losses were early in the Desert Air War when they were bearing the brunt of it, before the Bf 109s and MC 202s showed up (IIRC toward the end of 1941). Before that it was Cr 42s, MC 200s and Bf 110s fighting the Tomahawks and Hurricanes and not doing so well.

I should add a few comments per the stats above -

I did not count claims for "probables" or "damaged" enemy aircraft since those are almost always bogus (maybe 2% of the time they mean a loss)
I did not count losses attributed (by the side losing the plane) to flak - I would say 95% of the time those were indeed caused by flak as reported.

In distinguishing between "shot down" and "crash landed", the former included planes with 70% damage or more, bailed out, MIA / "Failed to Return" or pilot KIA, the latter meant the plane was set down on their own field or at least within friendly lines with a chance of recovery.
A lot of P-40s and Hurricanes crash landed and even more were damaged cat 1 or damaged cat II but still landed at a friendly base.
Same for Italian planes in general and Bf 109s.
If you can think of another day, week or month for me to check where you believe the Hurricane pilots got a lot of victories I can check it - With the three Christopher Shores books on the Med I have the DAF victories and losses for all of 1941 and 1942, and up to April 1943. You'll have to give me a few days to add up another whole month though as much as I like forum discussions I have limited time for that kind of thing.

S


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## Schweik (Sep 27, 2018)

I'll skim through Vols I and II tonight though and see if I can find anything interesting, I do believe the Hurricane pilots did have some "good days" particularly earlier on.

S


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## Kevin J (Sep 27, 2018)

Schweik said:


> I'll skim through Vols I and II tonight though and see if I can find anything interesting, I do believe the Hurricane pilots did have some "good days" particularly earlier on.
> 
> S


Thanks, I don't find the idea of the Hurricane scoring 55% of the RAF fighter Command's victories against their European enemies impossible, versus 33% for the Spitfire. The question would be, where did they occur? I can't come up with a figure greater than 3000 for the ETO, so maybe the MTO. It certainly won't be in the CBI, they did appallingly there.Also, we kept on building them so they couldn't have been that bad.


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## Schweik (Sep 27, 2018)

They definitely were still getting kills in the Med for a long time, and probably had a few hundred claims at least in 1941.

I think by the middle of 1942 though the role for the Hurricane was basically as a bomber, it was the Allied Stuka if you will. To a slightly lesser extent so was the P-40 of course.

In many sectors of the war in North Africa Axis aircraft were rare at any given moment, the Germans in particular tended to concentrate their forces so they could achieve local numerical superiority and rack up kills, often neglecting other whole sectors of the front and leaving Rommels Afrika Korps to defend itself with AAA. So the DAF fighters were dropping bombs, and trying to fight off Luftwaffe and Regia interceptors that jumped them.

The Allies didn't have a great Tactical bomber in the Med. Beaufighters were good in the Maritime role, but in the land war it was basically Blenheims, Marylands, and Baltimores, which were all pretty vulnerable (especially Blenheims) and not that great at hitting targets. Bostons (A-20's) were a bit better on both fronts, and when they got there in late 1942 and 1943 the American B-25s and B-24s proved to be pretty effective, but from 1941 the most important Allied Tactical bombers were _fighters_, and that continued to the end of the War with P-47s, P-51s and Typhoons.

That is what the Hurricane mainly did I think in the later years of it's career - that was (I think) why they kept building them.

S

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## Vincenzo (Sep 28, 2018)

Just for memory
the aircrafr are not loss only in air but also to ground

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## fastmongrel (Sep 28, 2018)

What have all these MTO statistics got to do with Fighter Command claims. Fighter Command didn't operate outside of Britain.


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## tjohanne (Sep 28, 2018)

I voted Spitfire - simply because that in British and Scandinavian literature one ALWAYS gets the impression that the Spitfire won the war alone.
Seems to me that many writers, journalists and laymen simply don't know the names of any other fighters - or they are just unaware that other airplanes existed.

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## fubar57 (Sep 28, 2018)

You voted Spitfire because of peer pressure?


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## Kevin J (Sep 28, 2018)

Schweik said:


> They definitely were still getting kills in the Med for a long time, and probably had a few hundred claims at least in 1941.
> 
> I think by the middle of 1942 though the role for the Hurricane was basically as a bomber, it was the Allied Stuka if you will. To a slightly lesser extent so was the P-40 of course.
> 
> ...


They were using FAA Fairey Albacores as they had skilled personnel able to navigate at night by the stars.


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## Kevin J (Sep 28, 2018)

fastmongrel said:


> What have all these MTO statistics got to do with Fighter Command claims. Fighter Command didn't operate outside of Britain.


Someone has posted in the internet on one of the forums that 55% of Fighter Command's victories were by Hurricanes, 33% by Spitfires. I can only get to 3000 in Fighter Command so I am looking else where for the remaining victories.


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## Kevin J (Sep 28, 2018)

tjohanne said:


> I voted Spitfire - simply because that in British and Scandinavian literature one ALWAYS gets the impression that the Spitfire won the war alone.
> Seems to me that many writers, journalists and laymen simply don't know the names of any other fighters - or they are just unaware that other airplanes existed.


In the BoB the Germans more often than not claimed it was Spitfires that they had shot down. Unfortunately, their total claims by the end of the BoB exceeded total production to date.


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## fubar57 (Sep 28, 2018)

This is from the book "Fighter Command 1936-1968: An Operational and Historical Record" by Ken Delve 2007....

1939-1945

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## Kevin J (Sep 28, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> This is from the book "Fighter Command 1936-1968: An Operational and Historical Record" by Ken Delve 2007....
> 
> 1939-1945
> 
> View attachment 511272​


That looks a lot more plausible. I assume it excludes 2nd Tactical Air Force and ADGB figures. That would give 2250 Spitfire victories although we would still have 3713 Hurricane victories. I could certainly get to that figure as follows: 2500, UK & France; 500, Malta; 750, mainly Italian in the Western Desert on the assumption that with 50% more Hurricanes there, they scored 50% more victories. Also would be the assumption that those Fighter Command victories include the victories of FC units posted to the Med.


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## fubar57 (Sep 28, 2018)

In the Mediterranean it was called the Middle East Command from 1941-43 so its doubtful.

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## Kevin J (Sep 28, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> In the Mediterranean it was called the Middle East Command from 1941-43 so its doubtful.


When in 1941 did it become Middle East Command, is that after the Tomahawk and Spitfire replaced the Hurricane as the war out there started in June 1940.


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## fubar57 (Sep 28, 2018)

Dec. '41-Dec. '43. Prior to that it was called RAF Middle East

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## fubar57 (Sep 28, 2018)

Commands - Med/Mid East_P


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## fastmongrel (Sep 28, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> Commands - Med/Mid East_P



And never part of Fighter Command

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## Kevin J (Sep 28, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> Dec. '41-Dec. '43. Prior to that it was called RAF Middle East


That may well explain everything as its the point at which the Tomahawk has taken over as the main air superiority fighter, followed by the Kittyhawk then Spitfire. So those 12000 Fighter Command claims probably include the Med, Greece and Western Desert where most of the claims would have been by Hurricanes.


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## Kevin J (Sep 28, 2018)

fastmongrel said:


> And never part of Fighter Command


Agreed, but the first casualty of war is the truth.


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## fubar57 (Sep 28, 2018)

This article is called "What did Fighter Command do After the Battle of Britain? What Did Fighter Command Do After The Battle Of Britain?

In the lengthy article, this small paragraph is the only time that Africa, the Mediterranean and the Far East are mentioned...

"In the autumn of 1942 a dozen Fighter Command squadrons were despatched to support Operation 'Torch', the Allied landings in North Africa. Another six followed in early 1943. These deployments were the latest to a theatre which had long been crying out for fighter reinforcements, especially Spitfires. The war in the Mediterranean, and indeed further afield in the Far East, continued to pose a drain on the RAF's domestic strength for much of the war."

Click on the blue "North Africa" which takes you to that theater and no mention of Fighter Command. It is called "Western Desert Air Force (WDAF)"

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## Stig1207 (Sep 29, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> Someone has posted in the internet on one of the forums



This might why you are having trouble finding the Hurricane victories.

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## tjohanne (Sep 29, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> You voted Spitfire because of peer pressure?



haha, maybe that 
I know it was a fantastic plane all the way. But I don't like the 'symbol' it has become in Europe. Nobody in my country even knows about the Hurricane, Hellcat, P-47, P-51, FW190, Bf109 etc - and IF they saw one, they would probably think it was a Spitfire anyway!

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## swampyankee (Sep 29, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> In the BoB the Germans more often than not claimed it was Spitfires that they had shot down. Unfortunately, their total claims by the end of the BoB exceeded total production to date.




Wait? The Germans _over-claimed_? Can't be. The British must have lied about Spitfire production.

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## fastmongrel (Sep 29, 2018)

swampyankee said:


> Wait? The Germans _over-claimed_? Can't be. The British must have lied about Spitfire production.



Same thing happened in the desert the Germans regularly shot down more aircraft than the allies had. Obviously the main reason Rommel won.

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## Kevin J (Sep 29, 2018)

fastmongrel said:


> Same thing happened in the desert the Germans regularly shot down more aircraft than the allies had. Obviously the main reason Rommel won.


No, it wasn't that at all, the Americans were telling the Germans what our battle plans were.


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## Milosh (Sep 29, 2018)

tjohanne said:


> haha, maybe that
> I know it was a fantastic plane all the way. But I don't like the 'symbol' it has become in Europe. Nobody in my country even knows about the Hurricane, Hellcat, P-47, P-51, FW190, Bf109 etc - and IF they saw one, they would probably think it was a Spitfire anyway!



Even during WW2 the Germans would shout Actung Spifure even if the a/c wasn't a Spitfire. They even claimed they shot down/were shot down by a Spitfire even if they weren't.

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## pbehn (Sep 29, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> In the BoB the Germans more often than not claimed it was Spitfires that they had shot down. Unfortunately, their total claims by the end of the BoB exceeded total production to date.


In many cases it was impossible to tell the difference. It was in no way significant that German claims exceeded UK production, what was significant was that UK production after May 1940 was in excess of German production and by a large margin. The crux of the battle was what the commanders believed, close to the end Goering believed the RAF was down to its last 50 S/E fighters, in fact over the course of the battle RAF front line strength increased from about 500 to about 700, the quality of the pilots had been greatly reduced however.

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## Kevin J (Sep 30, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Even during WW2 the Germans would shout Actung Spifure even if the a/c wasn't a Spitfire. They even claimed they shot down/were shot down by a Spitfire even if they weren't.


The lucky ones were shot down by Spitfires, their guns had a shotgun effect, so you might survive the encounter. Hurricanes simply made mincemeat of them.

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## Kevin J (Sep 30, 2018)

pbehn said:


> In many cases it was impossible to tell the difference. It was in no way significant that German claims exceeded UK production, what was significant was that UK production after May 1940 was in excess of German production and by a large margin. The crux of the battle was what the commanders believed, close to the end Goering believed the RAF was down to its last 50 S/E fighters, in fact over the course of the battle RAF front line strength increased from about 500 to about 700, the quality of the pilots had been greatly reduced however.


We won because we had more 'bloody foreigners' than they did, even Phil the Greek was really a Kraut. Our insidious plan to 'make the World English' had been going on for centuries, the approved methods being the 'boy on girl' one, or 'she stoops to conquer' one.


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## GrauGeist (Sep 30, 2018)

Then there were the Allied pilots who swore up and down that they encountered and/or shot down Heinkel He113s...

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## swampyankee (Sep 30, 2018)

Milosh said:


> Even during WW2 the Germans would shout Actung Spifure even if the a/c wasn't a Spitfire. They even claimed they shot down/were shot down by a Spitfire even if they weren't.



Well, being shot down by a _Hurricane _would be so embarrassing, let alone those planes built by those mongrelized Americans.

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## pbehn (Sep 30, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> We won because we had more 'bloody foreigners' than they did, even Phil the Greek was really a Kraut. Our insidious plan to 'make the World English' had been going on for centuries, the approved methods being the 'boy on girl' one, or 'she stoops to conquer' one.


Phil the Greek as you call him was the nephew of my fathers commanding officer Louis Mountbatten, he wasn't "really a kraut" he was a member of the European royal families. He is actually the closest living relative to the Romanovs of the Russian Royal family and his DNA was used to verify the corpses of the executed Russian Royals were really what was claimed.

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## Kevin J (Sep 30, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Phil the Greek as you call him was the nephew of my fathers commanding officer Louis Mountbatten, he wasn't "really a kraut" he was a member of the European royal families. He is actually the closest living relative to the Romanovs of the Russian Royal family and his DNA was used to verify the corpses of the executed Russian Royals were really what was claimed.


My family is from Europe too. Another bloody foreigner. My sarcastic wit, I hope, underlies the fact, that the British Empire was inclusive, whereas the Nazi's were exclusive, and so they failed.

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## DarrenW (Nov 19, 2018)

Kevin J said:


> The Hellcat reached close to that figure in two years of war and it certainly didn't have the performance of either the Lightning, Thunderbolt or Mustang



Hi Kevin,

While there is definite truth to this statement and I understand the logic behind it, I think that it's important to discuss the tactical situation and environment in which the fighting was taking place. All of the army fighters discussed were engineered to operate at higher altitudes (above 20K feet) so that's were they excelled. The Hellcat (and likewise the Corsair) were designed to operate at much lower altitudes, and as such were very competitive below 20K feet. Not to say that the naval aircraft could beat the army fighters in all performance parameters at lower altitudes, but they at least could come close at various altitudes and even match or exceed them under the right circumstances (each army and navy type having certain strengths and weaknesses). This is saying a lot because due to the added weight and drag of equipment necessary for carrier operations, naval aircraft are inherently at a disadvantage when compared to their land-based counterparts. So for them to be competitive in certain flight regimes is no small engineering feat in itself.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 19, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> The Hellcat (and likewise the Corsair) were designed to operate at much lower altitudes, and as such were very competitive below 20K feet.



This is not quite right. The P-38 and P-47 were _designed_ to operate at high altitudes but the execution of the early models, especially the P-38, left something to be desired. 
The Mustang was definitely NOT _designed_ as a high altitude fighter. It was turned into one in late summer and fall of 1942, and went into service as such at the end of 1943 but it had been designed in 1940 as a better P-40 using the same engine as a P-40 ( which was as good as the US could do for a high altitude engine in 1940/early 1941.

The Corsair came off the drawing board in 1939/40 with a high altitude engine. A two stage mechanical supercharged engine with intercoolers. It did take quite a while to get it into service. The Hellcat was nearly a year later in timing and was intended to use a Wright R-2600 engine (Wright was NEVER able to deliver a production high altitude R-2600)
and the Hellcat essentially used the same engine as the Corsair but with the carb flipped upside down. (a bit more complicated than that but the functional differences are minor) 

events (such as better fuel) allowed the liquid cooled V-12s to use higher boost than the R-2800s (remember that the P-47M & N used an entirely new engine).
In 1940 the US had 100/100 fuel. It went to 100/125 at some point in 1941 but the Majority of US fighters in 1943 were using 100/130 fuel. 
British had 100/115-120 in 1940 and skipped 100/125, going right to 100/130. 

What or how planes were designed to work often changed by the time they got into service. The Navy/Pratt & Whitney two stage supercharged engines were the best high altitude engines being offered in 1940/41 with a good chance of actually working. See P-43 and F4F.

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## tomo pauk (Nov 20, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> ...
> (Wright was NEVER able to deliver a production high altitude R-2600)
> ...



Good post. 
However, Wright delivered nine two-stage R-2600-10s and two R-2600-16s in 1941 and 42. That is 3 years before anyone in Germany delivered a workable 2-stage supercharged military engine, a year before Allison managed it, and no worse timing vs. initial batch of 2-stage Merlins delivered.

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## P-39 Expert (Nov 20, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> Good post.
> However, Wright delivered nine two-stage R-2600-10s and two R-2600-16s in 1941 and 42. That is 3 years before anyone in Germany delivered a workable 2-stage supercharged military engine, a year before Allison managed it, and no worse timing vs. initial batch of 2-stage Merlins delivered.


What were the performance numbers on the two-stage R2600?


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## tomo pauk (Nov 20, 2018)

P-39 Expert said:


> What were the performance numbers on the two-stage R2600?



Apart from take-off power of 1700 HP, I don't know. 
useful link

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## fastmongrel (Nov 20, 2018)

11 two stage R2600s isn't production though, it sounds more like hand built prototypes.


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## Peter Gunn (Nov 20, 2018)

DarrenW said:


> Hi Kevin,
> 
> While there is definite truth to this statement and I understand the logic behind it, I think that it's important to discuss the tactical situation and environment in which the fighting was taking place. All of the army fighters discussed were engineered to operate at higher altitudes (above 20K feet) so that's were they excelled. The Hellcat (and likewise the Corsair) were designed to operate at much lower altitudes, and as such were very competitive below 20K feet. Not to say that the naval aircraft could beat the army fighters in all performance parameters at lower altitudes, but they at least could come close at various altitudes and even match or exceed them under the right circumstances (each army and navy type having certain strengths and weaknesses). This is saying a lot because due to the added weight and drag of equipment necessary for carrier operations, naval aircraft are inherently at a disadvantage when compared to their land-based counterparts. So for them to be competitive in certain flight regimes is no small engineering feat in itself.



Is this a Darren sighting! Long time my friend, how are you holding up? I hope all is well.

Pete

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## tomo pauk (Nov 20, 2018)

fastmongrel said:


> 11 two stage R2600s isn't production though, it sounds more like hand built prototypes.



We probably could say it that way. On the other hand, these engines were actual, 'flying' hardware. Too bad the 2-stage R-2800 was a better engine (so the Hellcat got it), though, while USAAC/AAF was not interested in it (so it was not installed in their A/C, say B-25s or B-26s, or some fighter).

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## Shortround6 (Nov 20, 2018)

Wright had also tried to turbocharge the R-2600 in the A-20 (maybe others?) but that worked so well (sarcasm) that only one aircraft out of 63 ordered was completed with the turbo installation. Most of the 63 were completed as P-70 night fighters and none of the succeeding P-70s (210 after the first batch) had the turbo replaced. 

While the USAAC/AAF may have rightly (?) concluded that high altitude light/medium bombers were not needed (in their doctrine) one would think that a higher altitude engine in the P-70s would have been useful as they waited for the P-61 night fighter with two stage engines.


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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 20, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> Wright had also tried to turbocharge the R-2600 in the A-20 (maybe others?) but that worked so well (sarcasm) that only one aircraft out of 63 ordered was completed with the turbo installation.


So what was the problem? Turbos of the time couldn't handle the mass flow of a 2000+ cube engine? I notice there didn't seem to be any turbo 2800s around that time either.
Cheers,
Wes


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## DarrenW (Nov 20, 2018)

Peter Gunn said:


> Is this a Darren sighting! Long time my friend, how are you holding up? I hope all is well.
> 
> Pete


Hi Pete great to hear from you too! I'm doing as well as can be expected, everyday is a challenge but I'm finding my way. I mostly worry about my children's welfare and how they're dealing with the huge loss. That's the one thing that keeps me going some days. I hope to continue coming back here in the days and weeks to come. Besides, I always enjoy reading your posts so I knew that I couldn't stay away too long.....

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## DarrenW (Nov 20, 2018)

Shortround6 said:


> The Mustang was definitely NOT _designed_ as a high altitude fighter.



I guess it depends if you are talking originally or in it's later adaptations. My comment was in regards to it's most prolific role as an escort fighter, where it commonly operated at altitudes that were considered "high" for the day. But if we are allowed to compare the F4U and F6F to the P-51A with the Allison then it just makes the navy birds look all that much more competitive....


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## Zipper730 (Nov 20, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> We probably could say it that way. On the other hand, these engines were actual, 'flying' hardware. Too bad the 2-stage R-2800 was a better engine (so the Hellcat got it), though, while USAAC/AAF was not interested in it (so it was not installed in their A/C, say B-25s or B-26s, or some fighter).


Yeah, I could imagine the B-26 would have been far more formidable if it had a twin-stage supercharged R-2800 engine...


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## Greg Boeser (Nov 20, 2018)

Martin certainly had plans for two stage R-2800s. XB-27
Martin actually offered 15 different configurations for their proposal that culminated in the contract award for the B-26. The Army chose the single stage R-2800 version with short wings, because that was the configuration that promised the best performance with the engines available at the time. Other configurations had projected speeds in excess of 400 MPH, but required technology that was not yet available in 1939.


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## Shortround6 (Nov 20, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> So what was the problem? Turbos of the time couldn't handle the mass flow of a 2000+ cube engine? I notice there didn't seem to be any turbo 2800s around that time either.
> Cheers,
> Wes


The turbo R-2600 was plagued with overheating. A variety of scoops, vents and plain old holes (in large numbers) were tried in the cowling to get more cooling air into/out of the cowling. 
The colder air at 20,000ft doesn't make up for the lack of mass for cooling a high power engine. The Turbo R-2600 was supposed to make 1700hp at 20,000ft according to one source. 
a two speed R-2600 B engine was making about 1100hp to the prop at 20,000 ft with another few hundred going into the supercharger. Maybe there just wasn't enough cooling fin area on the engine itself?

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## David O'Reilly (Nov 22, 2018)

163. More dangerous to pilot than prey


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## Zipper730 (Nov 22, 2018)

Greg Boeser said:


> Martin certainly had plans for two stage R-2800s.


That's cool


> The Army chose the single stage R-2800 version with short wings, because that was the configuration that promised the best performance with the engines available at the time.


I'd have figured they could have designed it for twin-stage supercharging, but built the first variants with single stage-supercharging and just leave some empty space in the plane where the intercoolers would occupy.


> Other configurations had projected speeds in excess of 400 MPH, but required technology that was not yet available in 1939.


How much speed would the short-winged version do with a twin-supercharger? I ask because the XB-27 has bigger wings and that would throw off performance guesses.


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## Navalwarrior (Nov 22, 2018)

tomo pauk said:


> We probably could say it that way. On the other hand, these engines were actual, 'flying' hardware. Too bad the 2-stage R-2800 was a better engine (so the Hellcat got it), though, while USAAC/AAF was not interested in it (so it was not installed in their A/C, say B-25s or B-26s, or some fighter).


Resp:
The P-47 used the R-2800, which was USAAF.


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## Greg Boeser (Nov 22, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> That's cool
> I'd have figured they could have designed it for twin-stage supercharging, but built the first variants with single stage-supercharging and just leave some empty space in the plane where the intercoolers would occupy.
> How much speed would the short-winged version do with a twin-supercharger? I ask because the XB-27 has bigger wings and that would throw off performance guesses.


Tomo posted the Martin design proposals here:
B25 or B26, which was the better bomber?

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## wuzak (Nov 22, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> The P-47 used the R-2800, which was USAAF.



But not a 2 stage engine.


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## Greg Boeser (Nov 22, 2018)

Correct. It had a turbocharger.


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## Big Jake (Nov 24, 2018)

Lucky13 said:


> Which, in your honest opinion, aircraft achieved a popular reputation that far exceeded their actual performance or capability in combat?
> I think that this might be interesting..... 8)



A6M Zero. The aircraft had a lot of shortcomings (fragile structure, no self sealing tanks, engine would quit in a nose over maneuver and more.) Once the US airmen figured out how to fight it, it was done.

I'd also like to add the Spitfire. Was a good airplane during the beginning of the war but was overtaken by a lot of other types and was left only with its glorious reputation and nothing more.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 24, 2018)

Big Jake said:


> A6M Zero. The aircraft had a lot of shortcomings (fragile structure, no self sealing tanks, engine would quit in a nose over maneuver and more.) Once the US airmen figured out how to fight it, it was done.


You might want to dig a little deeper on the nose over maneuver part. IIRC, that's a myth that arose out of the restoration crew misrigging the carburetor on the Koga Zero which then got repeated til it became part of the accepted wisdom. GregP, you out there? Does your museum's Sakae Zero have that problem?
Somewhere in the depths of past reading, I recall that the Sakae engine had an "improved" version of a license built Bendix pressure carb, which would by definition be immune to negative G fuel feed problems.
Cheers,
Wes


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## wuzak (Nov 24, 2018)

Big Jake said:


> I'd also like to add the Spitfire. Was a good airplane during the beginning of the war but was overtaken by a lot of other types and was left only with its glorious reputation and nothing more.



Tell that to the Spitfire XIV, arguably the best pure fighter of the war, The IX, which could handle anything the enemy threw up against it, the PR.X, XI and XIX, the best photo reconnaissance planes of teh war.

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## Milosh (Nov 24, 2018)

Big Jake said:


> A6M Zero. The aircraft had a lot of shortcomings (fragile structure, no self sealing tanks, engine would quit in a nose over maneuver and more.) Once the US airmen figured out how to fight it, it was done.



It did get exhaust gases fed to the fuel tank. Skin on the wings got thicker.


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## rochie (Nov 24, 2018)

Big Jake said:


> A6M Zero. The aircraft had a lot of shortcomings (fragile structure, no self sealing tanks, engine would quit in a nose over maneuver and more.) Once the US airmen figured out how to fight it, it was done.
> 
> I'd also like to add the Spitfire. Was a good airplane during the beginning of the war but was overtaken by a lot of other types and was left only with its glorious reputation and nothing more.


you really must read more than Dr zeus's big print version of my first book about areo-planes !

you might just learn a thing or two.

unless you posted that just to get a reaction, which i think is the real reason


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## Greg Boeser (Nov 24, 2018)

Isn't that the point to a thread dedicated to the most overrated aircraft of WW2?


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## Gwaredd Thomas (Nov 24, 2018)

Jank said:


> P-51 Mustang.



Understood. But the P-51 was the early version. The P51-D, however, was quite a different animal. With it's Rolls-Royce Merlin engine it could out fly and outmanoeuvre just about anything the Germans had, except, as you wrote, the ME 262 and the P51-D even shot-down a few of those as well. In the Pacific theatre, it wasn't even close.


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## fastmongrel (Nov 24, 2018)

Gwaredd Thomas said:


> Understood. But the P-51 was the early version. The P51-D, however, was quite a different animal. *With it's Rolls-Royce Merlin engine* it could out fly and outmanoeuvre just about anything the Germans had, except, as you wrote, the ME 262 and the P51-D even shot-down a few of those as well. In the Pacific theatre, it wasn't even close.



P51Ds didnt use Rolls Royce Merlins they had Packard V-1650s


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## Big Jake (Nov 24, 2018)

rochie said:


> you really must read more than Dr zeus's big print version of my first book about areo-planes !
> 
> you might just learn a thing or two.
> 
> unless you posted that just to get a reaction, which i think is the real reason



Cute, very cute.
And yes, the A6M was the most over-rated aircraft in WW2. It was a formidable adversary when the allied pilots couldn't figure out how to fight it. Once they did - it was a goner. But its reputation stayed - when mentioning Japanese fighters, it was always "Zeros" regardless of the fact that the actual aircraft might have been Ki-43s or others. The Flying Tigers never encountered "Zeros" yet it was always "Zeros" that they shot down.
And for all you "serious" people considering the P-51D as the most over-rated aircraft of WW2 - are you kidding me?

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 24, 2018)

Big Jake said:


> It was a formidable adversary when the allied pilots couldn't figure out how to fight it. Once they did - it was a goner. But its reputation stayed - when mentioning Japanese fighters, it was always "Zeros"


The allies figuring it out just about exactly coincided with the cumulative effects of attrition of high caliber pilots to destroy the dominance of the Zero.
You might say the mythology of the Zero outran the reality. But you could also say that happened to the Spitfire, the Mustang, the Messerschmitt, the Focke Wulf and others. (Fortress? Stuka? Lightning? Stormavik? Corsair? - you name it, it's got a fan club out there.) It's all partisanship to me.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Gwaredd Thomas (Nov 24, 2018)

fastmongrel said:


> P51Ds didnt use Rolls Royce Merlins they had Packard V-1650s



Well, maybe you're right. But the P51-D's I know about did.


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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 24, 2018)

Gwaredd Thomas said:


> Well, maybe you're right. But the P51-D's I know about did.
> 
> View attachment 519184


Hey guys, how nitpicky can we get? A Merlin is a Merlin is a Merlin, whether it's built in Rolls Royce's legacy craftsman UK shops or Packard's spanking new state-of-the-art plants stateside or in Canada. They all look to England as the mother country.
And Gwaredd, North American-built Mustangs just about exclusively used Packard-built Merlins.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Gwaredd Thomas (Nov 24, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Hey guys, how nitpicky can we get? A Merlin is a Merlin is a Merlin, whether it's built in Rolls Royce's legacy craftsman UK shops or Packard's spanking new state-of-the-art plants stateside or in Canada. They all look to England as the mother country.
> Cheers,
> Wes



Heh, your comment is funny!  Well, for a bit more nitpicking. The P-51C [flowen by the "Red Tails"] and the later P-51D both had the RR Merlin and, yes, many were built by Packard.


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## rochie (Nov 24, 2018)

Big Jake said:


> Cute, very cute.
> And yes, the A6M was the most over-rated aircraft in WW2. It was a formidable adversary when the allied pilots couldn't figure out how to fight it. Once they did - it was a goner. But its reputation stayed - when mentioning Japanese fighters, it was always "Zeros" regardless of the fact that the actual aircraft might have been Ki-43s or others. The Flying Tigers never encountered "Zeros" yet it was always "Zeros" that they shot down.
> And for all you "serious" people considering the P-51D as the most over-rated aircraft of WW2 - are you kidding me?


I agree it is impossible to overstate the impact of the P-51, taking the fight to the Luftwaffe was the real game changer

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 24, 2018)

Gwaredd Thomas said:


> Heh, your comment is funny!  Well, for a bit more nitpicking. The P-51C [flowen by the "Red Tail"] and the later P-51D both had the RR Merlin and, yes, many were built by Packard.


Well if you want to get REALLY picky, here's a tidbit for you. My engines instructor in A&P school was a crusty old dude who was a Mustang wrench in the 8th AF over across the pond. His (depot level) outfit looked after a wing of B, C, and D Mustangs as well as a few genuine RR-powered photorecon Spitfires that flew in US colors. He said parts support was a nightmare, as the US supply system didn't understand the subtle differences between Packard Merlins and RR Merlins, and the slight differences in machining tolerances that made "equivalent" parts not necessarily "interchangeable" parts.
He said Packard parts were generally "drop-in" replacements in Packard engines, whereas RR parts usually needed a little custom fitting for a RR engine, and serious machine work if they had to be made to fit a Packard. He said you could, in a pinch, put a RR engine in a Mustang, but it required some rework, and you had to tag the plane as an "oddball" to give the squadron mechs a heads up.
Cheers,
Wes

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## pbehn (Nov 24, 2018)

rochie said:


> you really must read more than Dr zeus's big print version of my first book about areo-planes !
> 
> you might just learn a thing or two.
> 
> unless you posted that just to get a reaction, which i think is the real reason


The Spitfire MkI was not bad but could barely hold its own really, thankfully some geezer in the USA completely re designed engine and airframe and it managed to stumble along to the end of the war.

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## Milosh (Nov 24, 2018)

From the B onwards the P-51 was powered by a RR* Packard* engine. 

P-51 Home - MustangsMustangs.com


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## pbehn (Nov 24, 2018)

Milosh said:


> From the B onwards the P-51 was powered by a RR* Packard* engine.
> 
> P-51 Home - MustangsMustangs.com


The fact is it was a Rolls Royce engine manufactured under license.


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## Greg Boeser (Nov 24, 2018)

Gwaredd Thomas said:


> Well, maybe you're right. But the P51-D's I know about did.
> 
> View attachment 519184


The caption in this photo is describing the recognition features of a Merlin powered P-51 (B, C, D, K), vs an Allison V-1710 as used on the P-51, P-51A and A-36.


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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 24, 2018)

pbehn said:


> The fact is it was a Rolls Royce engine manufactured under license.


The fact is it was a Rolls Royce engine modified and re-dimensioned to accommodate US mass production tooling and techniques and manufactured under license.
Cheers,
Wes

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## pbehn (Nov 24, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> The fact is it was a Rolls Royce engine modified and re-dimensioned to accommodate US mass production tooling and techniques and manufactured under license.
> Cheers,
> Wes


With Rolls Royce approval because Rolls Royce were doing similar things in UK. The Twin boom Mustang did not have Rolls Royce engines because by that time the war had finished and the USA didn't want to pay the license fee. It is perfectly normal for a license built product to have changes made to allow for differences, the sub contractor may even suggest improvements but that doesn't change the fact that it is license built. The USA built some fantastic engines and aircraft, but didn't have a monopoly, just live with it.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 24, 2018)

pbehn said:


> With Rolls Royce approval because Rolls Royce were doing similar things in UK. The Twin boom Mustang did not have Rolls Royce engines because by that time the war had finished and the USA didn't want to pay the license fee. It is perfectly normal for a license built product to have changes made to allow for differences, the sub contractor may even suggest improvements but that doesn't change the fact that it is license built. The USA built some fantastic engines and aircraft, but didn't have a monopoly, just live with it.


I agree. I was just making the (somewhat nitpicking) point that, from a user standpoint, the engines were equivalent but not identical. Not trying to lay claim to the essential genius of them!
Cheers,
Wes


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## wuzak (Nov 24, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> The fact is it was a Rolls Royce engine modified and re-dimensioned to accommodate US mass production tooling and techniques and manufactured under license.
> Cheers,
> Wes



Bollocks.

One of the biggest myths out there.

The fact is that Packard redrew the drawings because they had to change them....

....from 1st angle projection















to 3rd angle projection












Multiview projection - Wikipedia



XBe02Drvr said:


> Hey guys, how nitpicky can we get? A Merlin is a Merlin is a Merlin, whether it's built in Rolls Royce's legacy craftsman UK shops or Packard's spanking new state-of-the-art plants stateside or in Canada. They all look to England as the mother country.
> And Gwaredd, North American-built Mustangs just about exclusively used Packard-built Merlins.
> Cheers,
> Wes



As far as this statement, basically only prototype engines were built "in Rolls Royce's legacy craftsman UK shops". As production of the Merlin was ramped up and production was starting in other facilities (such as Ford UK), it could no longer be built by craftsmen. It was built in modern production facilities, properly toleranced so that parts need not be custom fitted.

Ford UK may have had their hand in setting the tolerances, but that was before Packard entered the frame.

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## wuzak (Nov 24, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Well if you want to get REALLY picky, here's a tidbit for you. My engines instructor in A&P school was a crusty old dude who was a Mustang wrench in the 8th AF over across the pond. His (depot level) outfit looked after a wing of B, C, and D Mustangs as well as a few genuine RR-powered photorecon Spitfires that flew in US colors. He said parts support was a nightmare, as the US supply system didn't understand the subtle differences between Packard Merlins and RR Merlins, and the slight differences in machining tolerances that made "equivalent" parts not necessarily "interchangeable" parts.
> He said Packard parts were generally "drop-in" replacements in Packard engines, whereas RR parts usually needed a little custom fitting for a RR engine, and serious machine work if they had to be made to fit a Packard. He said you could, in a pinch, put a RR engine in a Mustang, but it required some rework, and you had to tag the plane as an "oddball" to give the squadron mechs a heads up.
> Cheers,
> Wes



Considering that the P-51 used the SAE spline output shaft and the ones for the RAF used SBAC splines, it is not surprising that mods were required.

But note that Packard made many more Merlins with SBAC output shafts than they did with SAE shafts (ie for the USAAF).

Rolls-Royce Merlin
View attachment 515784

Rolls-Royce Merlin - Wikipedia

Packard V-1650
View attachment 515785

Packard V-1650 Merlin - Wikipedia

Spitfire XVIs were built on the same production line as the Spitfire IX for a while. The difference between them was essentially the factory from which the Merlin originated - the IX had a UK built Merlin, the XVI had a Packard built Merlin. There was no structural difference.

The Lancaster III was the Lancaster I with Packard Merlins. It had some extra switches in the cockpit, something to with the different carburetors. That said, Lancasters were known to have flown with a mix of engines from different sources - from Rolls-Royce, Ford UK and Packard.

British parts were interchangeable enough that they were used for spares for P-40Fs in North Africa. That they were built to different tolerances/custom fitted is another of the die-hard myths surrounding the Merlin.

There were differences. The carburetor was different. Two stage engines used a different supercharger drive system (epicyclic system designed by Wright). But not much else.

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## Gwaredd Thomas (Nov 24, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Well if you want to get REALLY picky, here's a tidbit for you. My engines instructor in A&P school was a crusty old dude who was a Mustang wrench in the 8th AF over across the pond. His (depot level) outfit looked after a wing of B, C, and D Mustangs as well as a few genuine RR-powered photorecon Spitfires that flew in US colors. He said parts support was a nightmare, as the US supply system didn't understand the subtle differences between Packard Merlins and RR Merlins, and the slight differences in machining tolerances that made "equivalent" parts not necessarily "interchangeable" parts.
> He said Packard parts were generally "drop-in" replacements in Packard engines, whereas RR parts usually needed a little custom fitting for a RR engine, and serious machine work if they had to be made to fit a Packard. He said you could, in a pinch, put a RR engine in a Mustang, but it required some rework, and you had to tag the plane as an "oddball" to give the squadron mechs a heads up.
> Cheers,
> Wes



Agree!


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## Gwaredd Thomas (Nov 24, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Bollocks.
> 
> One of the biggest myths out there.
> 
> ...



While many of the Merlins' that were built for US the mechs had to do a bit of retrofitting. The best and first were built by the British. Correct?


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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 24, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Bollocks.
> 
> One of the biggest myths out there.
> 
> The fact is that Packard redrew the drawings because they had to change them....


At last - a definitive answer.
Old John Hamm was quite a guy, but it's possible his memory could have wandered a bit in the thirty five years since he was in England when I met him, or mine in the forty years since then.
Cheers,
Wes


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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 24, 2018)

Gwaredd Thomas said:


> While many of the Merlins' that were built for US the mechs had to do a bit of retrofitting. The best and first were built by the British. Correct?


I've read that UK-built Merlins generally outperformed US-built Merlins when installed identically in identical aircraft, but then I've read other sources saying that's hogwash. Wuzak, what's your take on this?
Cheers,
Wes


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## wuzak (Nov 24, 2018)

Gwaredd Thomas said:


> While many of the Merlins' that were built for US the mechs had to do a bit of retrofitting. The best and first were built by the British. Correct?





XBe02Drvr said:


> I've read that UK-built Merlins generally outperformed US-built Merlins when installed identically in identical aircraft, but then I've read other sources saying that's hogwash. Wuzak, what's your take on this?
> Cheers,
> Wes



I could not say whether the Packard built Merlins were better or worse than ones built at the several UK factories.

The performance was the same, however, give or take the differences between individual engines within acceptable tolerances.

Packard Merlins were built to the same ratings, which were developed by Rolls-Royce and type tested in the UK.

The Packard V-1650-1 was rated RM.3SM, same as all the 20-series Merlins.
The V-1650-3 was rated RM.8SM, same as the Merlin 63.
The V-1650-7 was rated RM.10SM, same as the Merlin 66.
The V-1650-9 was rated RM.16SM, same as Merlin 113 and 114 (used Mosquito PR.34).

There were slight variations, as the supercharger gearing was slightly different on the 2 stage engines.


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## nuuumannn (Nov 24, 2018)

Just a wee bit of an addition, it was Rolls-Royce who placed a Merlin in the Mustang first; the Mustang X trials machines were Mustang I airframes modified: Rolls-Royce Mustang Mk.X - Wikipedia

I was told a funny story by a member of the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust who, when I mentioned that Packard always sent a wee tool kit over with every Merlin it supplied to the UK, said that R-R didn't supply tool kits with their Merlins because they didn't need them!



> It was a formidable adversary when the allied pilots couldn't figure out how to fight it. Once they did - it was a goner.



That's not strictly true. Right until the end of the war, pilots were advised never to dogfight a Zero, even though they were flying superior aircraft. In good hands, which admittedly weren't that prevalent in the IJN toward the end of the war, but there were still some, the Zero was a formidable adversary. People have regarded this simplistic view as fact from the comfort of their lounge chairs since the war, but at the time it most certainly wasn't the case.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 24, 2018)

nuuumannn said:


> Packard always sent a wee tool kit over with every Merlin it supplied to the UK, said that R-R didn't supply tool kits with their Merlins because they didn't need them!


Well, the Packard Merlin may have been assembled stateside, but it was still a "foreign" engine, as it suffered from "NDH"(Not Designed Here), so of course it needed a tool kit!
Cheers,
Wes


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## Milosh (Nov 24, 2018)

An interview with a Lanc pilot had him say he preferred the Packard engine over the RR engine. It was a long time ago so can't remember why he said that.


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## pbehn (Nov 24, 2018)

Frankly my dears I do not give a damn, the simple fact is that no engine went out of a Packard factory in any way shape or form as an engine based on the Merlin without Rolls Royce approval, unless it was a completely different engine. I cannot understand how 75 years after the event we have so much flag waving nonsense. The P-51B/C and D series should be celebrated for what they were, a fine example of two nations doing their best to make the best. That is me being magnanimous, any discussion that veers towards the Packard Merlin being anything other than a license built Merlin may provoke a different attitude. The discussion always centers around the engine block when what was special about the Merlin was the supercharger.

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## pbehn (Nov 24, 2018)

Well the question has got to be asked. Why did Packard bother with Rolls Royce when they obviously knew much more to start with? I seriously would like to know? I am a patient man, and I feel I will need to be, please explain why Packard had to figure out how to produce a Merlin engine?


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## GrauGeist (Nov 24, 2018)

Big Jake said:


> A6M Zero. The aircraft had a lot of shortcomings (fragile structure, no self sealing tanks, engine would quit in a nose over maneuver and more.) Once the US airmen figured out how to fight it, it was done...


The A6M was still a serious threat right up to war's end, partiularly in the hands of pilots like Iwamoto, Nishizawa, Sugita, and so on.

The structure of the Zero was not "fragile", but rather a brilliant design that kept the airframe light, making the A6M's operational range unmatched.

In regards to the Merlin debate, the P-51B/C/K, P-40F/L, Spitfire XVI, Lancaster B.III and Mosquito B.VII all used the *Packard Merlin* and not the *Merlin 28.* But they were ALL the Merlin.
The only reason why there should be attention to the point, is that it does make a difference in the details just like when researching a Bf109E-4 that either had the DB601A or DB601N - it's simply a matter of detail.

The Packard was *no better or worse* than the Rolls Royce, but the U.S. at the time were masters of mass production, so it made sense to take advantage of that.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 25, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Frankly my dears I do not give a damn, the simple fact is that no engine went out of a Packard factory in any way shape or form as an engine based on the Merlin without Rolls Royce approval, unless it was a completely different engine.


Well here's a (ignorance based) question. What about marine applications? What little I've read about PT boats has referred to their powerplants as Packard V1650s with no mention of Merlin or Rolls Royce. Does this reflect unlicensed ripoffs, or just sloppy jingoistic authorship?
Cheers,
Wes


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## Milosh (Nov 25, 2018)

They were Packards but not Merlins.

Packard 1A-2500 - Wikipedia

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## Shortround6 (Nov 25, 2018)

I would also note that the majority of British built MTB/MGBs also used the big Packards. So yes, sloppy journalism seems to be the order of the day.
British also made extensive use of American Hall-Scott engines in coastal craft.

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## GrauGeist (Nov 25, 2018)

Packard got it's start in aircraft engine manufacturing during WWI, with the Liberty L-12 engine.

By the 1920's, Packard had developed their V-12s from that Liberty and one was designated the V-1650, which was close in form to the later licensed V-1650 Merlin but they were not related in anyway. Plus the native Packard V-1650 was an inverted-V engine, as was several other Parckard types.

Here's a photo of a Packard V-1650 (12-A) on display at the USAF museum.

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## DarrenW (Nov 25, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> The A6M was still a serious threat right up to war's end, partiularly in the hands of pilots like Iwamoto, Nishizawa, Sugita, and so on.



I totally agree. And those who continue to think that fighting the Japanese in the air was a cake walk after the big carrier battles of '42 are sorely mistaken....

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## pbehn (Nov 25, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Well here's a (ignorance based) question. What about marine applications? What little I've read about PT boats has referred to their powerplants as Packard V1650s with no mention of Merlin or Rolls Royce. Does this reflect unlicensed ripoffs, or just sloppy jingoistic authorship?
> Cheers,
> Wes


Probably a bit of both. The V-1650 Merlin must have "merlin" in the name because there already was a V-1650. Some don't see the significance, others want the V-1650 Merlin to be seen as a US engine with only a passing resemblance to the Rolls Royce built version.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 25, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Probably a bit of both. The V-1650 Merlin must have "merlin" in the name because there already was a V-1650. Some don't see the significance, others want the V-1650 Merlin to be seen as a US engine with only a passing resemblance to the Rolls Royce built version.


It seems Milosh, SR6, and Grey Ghost have cleared away the fog. I'm guessing some journalist or writer confused the 2500 cu. in. PT boat engine with the (much earlier) Packard v1650 descended from the old WWI Liberty engine and then others copied said culprit and it became a persistent myth. BTW, it seems that earlier 1650 put out barely over half the horsepower of a Merlin.
Cheers,
Wes


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## pbehn (Nov 25, 2018)

XBe02Drvr said:


> It seems Milosh, SR6, and Grey Ghost have cleared away the fog. I'm guessing some journalist or writer confused the 2500 cu. in. PT boat engine with the (much earlier) Packard v1650 descended from the old WWI Liberty engine and then others copied said culprit and it became a persistent myth. BTW, it seems that earlier 1650 put out barely over half the horsepower of a Merlin.
> Cheers,
> Wes


From what I read the output of the early V-1650 was about the same as the maximum power consumption of the V-1650 Merlin. On this forum it is perfectly normal for people to post "Packard V-1650". It is technically incorrect but everyone knows what it means, unfortunately some get the idea that the "V-1650" and the Merlin were different engines. There were differences but all the differences were agreed by RR, they had to be. This is how license production works, not only would the UK authorities expect it, so would the USAs.


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## fastmongrel (Nov 25, 2018)

When people spout the old myth that Packard redesigned the RRMerlin I like to ask them what thread standards were used in the Packard built engines. It usually shuts them up 😂

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## pbehn (Nov 25, 2018)

fastmongrel said:


> When people spout the old myth that Packard redesigned the RRMerlin I like to ask them what thread standards were used in the Packard built engines. It usually shuts them up 😂


It would have been possible to use threads to suit Packard, but the more concessions you make in this direction the more they become different and the less useful the joint project is. I used a USA made ultrasonic system in Saudi Arabia, it was a nightmare, finding Allen keys and bolts, nuts etc


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## wuzak (Nov 25, 2018)

fastmongrel said:


> When people spout the old myth that Packard redesigned the RRMerlin I like to ask them what thread standards were used in the Packard built engines. It usually shuts them up 😂



I have seen in claimed that Packard did redesign the Merlin to use US standard fasteners. Which would have been nonsensical, considering that in the initial contract was for 9,000 engines - 6,000 for the RAF and 3,000 for the USAAF.

One thing often claimed is that Packard designed the 2 piece block. They didn't, but they were the first to put it into production, the UK factories changing over later because they couldn't afford a break in production at the time. Packard did design a system for connecting the head and block water passages, but later reverted to the definitive RR system.


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## GrauGeist (Nov 25, 2018)

Another interesting footnote regarding the Merlin - Continental manufactured just under 900 V-1650 engines at their Muskegeon, Michigan plant.

The Merlin on display at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo is a Continental V-1650-7

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 25, 2018)

pbehn said:


> From what I read the output of the early V-1650 was about the same as the maximum power consumption of the V-1650 Merlin.





pbehn said:


> unfortunately some get the idea that the "V-1650" and the Merlin were different engines.


The Packard V1650 (L-12) and the Packard V1650 Merlin WERE different engines, separated by 20 years and several generations of evolving technology, and not related to each other at all, except by nomenclature.
The L-12 was an inverted version of the infamous Liberty engine uprated to 450 HP and manufactured by Packard. It owed nothing to Rolls Royce, whereas the Merlin owed everything. This original V1650 was manufactured in the late teens and early 20s of the 20th century, but some of its descendants were still powering tanks in the early days of WWII.
No wonder there's so much confusion!
Cheers,
Wes


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## GrauGeist (Nov 26, 2018)

The V-1650 designation has caused a great deal of confusion and sadly, a few sites seem to have fallen into this trap.
For the record, there was only one V-1650 designation ever used: pay attention guys, this is where details count!

The Packard Liberty 12-A engine was designated V-1650 - *NO* suffix.

The licensed Rolls Royce Merlin (Packard and Continental) started with *V-1650-1* and all subsequent versions followed with the appropriate numerical sequence. That is the difference that many miss.

As we know, Rolls Royce, following British convention, used names and "marks/numbers" for their designations.

So the first American made Merlin, based on the Merlin XX, was the V-1650-1 (because there was already a V-1650) and the British referred to the Packard V-1650-1 as the Merlin 28.

The Merlin 63 was the Packard V-1650-3, the Merlin 66 was the Packard V-1650-7, the Merlin 1xx series was the Packard V-1650-9 and so on.

In the end, there was about 22 Rolls Royce Merlin variants and 8 Packard variants...of course, not all variants (from either RR or Packard were production).

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 26, 2018)

Thanks, GG!

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## swampyankee (Nov 26, 2018)

Packard was a fairly major player in the aero-engine business for a few years after WW1, but was out of the aircraft engine business by 1940. I suspect that its management felt that the market for aircraft engines didn’t promise sufficient ROI. 

The US engine designation system is based on two very broad parameters: displacement and general configuration. It’s not designed to cause confusion, but the Navy and Army’s aviation services were not really concerned with the engines’ internal details. Engines with the same configuration, displacement, and technology level will be similar in weight, installed volume, and performance, the parameters that matter to customers. 

The Merlin was two generations after the Packard V-1650; the displacement was a coincidence.

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## Navalwarrior (Dec 2, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Tell that to the Spitfire XIV, arguably the best pure fighter of the war, The IX, which could handle anything the enemy threw up against it, the PR.X, XI and XIX, the best photo reconnaissance planes of teh war.


Resp:
For you Spitfire experts. I have a color photo (several years old) of a MkVc with clipped wings, that was restored to flying condition (Englind?) with the 'call letters' AEA, and aircraft number PU 20. It has 9 swatikas just under the cockpit on the L side. Can anyone tell me who the pilot was, and did he actually get 9 kills in the MkV? Thanks.


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## rochie (Dec 2, 2018)

Navalwarrior said:


> Resp:
> For you Spitfire experts. I have a color photo (several years old) of a MkVc with clipped wings, that was restored to flying condition (Englind?) with the 'call letters' AEA, and aircraft number PU 20. It has 9 swatikas just under the cockpit on the L side. Can anyone tell me who the pilot was, and did he actually get 9 kills in the MkV? Thanks.


You mean this one ?

Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk Vb - G-LFVB - Flying Legends


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## Navalwarrior (Dec 2, 2018)

rochie said:


> You mean this one ?
> 
> Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk Vb - G-LFVB - Flying Legends


Resp:
Yessir! Interesting his. Thanks


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## Zipper730 (Mar 6, 2020)

XBe02Drvr said:


> He was an unconventional, loudmouth, insubordinate, PITA who couldn't keep his mouth shut, even when ordered to, as people who have truer vision than their superiors so often are.


I'm curious what he wanted for fighter planes? Did he support the idea of escort fighters, what was his vision of how such a fighter should be?


> I remember reading somewhere that the final straw was that he was discovered surreptitiously teaching pilots in his squadron "boom and zoom" tactics to keep them alive in combat


I figured it had to do with the YFM-1.



Dawncaster said:


> Then time for colourful image!


This is kind of what I was looking for when it came to performance graphs. The idea was to graph all fighters and bombers of WWII (and for the sake of this argument, attack planes will be classified as bombers), in large graphs, though I was actually planning on going even larger in size (it'd be a zip file). The idea I had in mind was to either use Excel (and there were enough delays in class, that we didn't really master all the features of the program, so graphing curves and stuff, we didn't get to), or another program to make graphs that were highly accurate down to very small tolerances.

I was thinking of making sure all the graphs were in imperial and metric measurements because of the fact that: I'm more proficient with imperial (so it'd be nice to have graphs for axis aircraft performance that are in units I can easily use); the bulk of the world use metric (so it'd be cool to convert UK/US designs into metric charts).



drgondog said:


> Dave - Several sources including Bodie and DeWitt Coop point to the Lockheed-Kelsey collaboration to provide pylon, plumbing and pylons was not known to Arnold until deployment of 1st and 14th FG was being planned for 8th AF in March/April 1942.
> 
> General Bob Olds was the father of the initiative to hang drop tanks on fighters despite entrenched AAC attitudes. Kelsey first proposed to the Fighter Board that drop tanks be designed and provided for the P-36. Arnold rejected the notion for combat tanks but Olds didn't hear a NO for Ferry capability.


And if they don't say no, the answer is yes.



michael rauls said:


> Just a question for any of you with more knowledge of aerodynamics than myself. Is it true that as G force increases the speed of compesability goes down?


The key here to think of is not g-load but lift. Higher g-loads require more lift, more lift results in a higher AoA, all things being equal. This results in a higher velocity over the top of the wings.

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 6, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> The key here to think of is not g-load but lift. Higher g-loads require more lift, more lift results in a higher AoA, all things being equal. This results in a higher velocity over the top of the wing


Nailed it, Zipper! Nice explanation.


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## drgondog (Mar 6, 2020)

Big Jake said:


> A6M Zero. The aircraft had a lot of shortcomings (fragile structure, no self sealing tanks, engine would quit in a nose over maneuver and more.) Once the US airmen figured out how to fight it, it was done.
> *Nope, except for lack of self sealing tanks. *
> 
> I'd also like to add the Spitfire. Was a good airplane during the beginning of the war but was overtaken by a lot of other types and was left only with its glorious reputation and nothing more.



*Nope. Refresh my memory - how many 'types' outperformed the Spit XIV? Certainly not any in AAF/USN inventory except in range. The P-51H could trade attribute advantages, ditto F8F and Ta 152 and Fw 190D-13 and P-47M.*

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## drgondog (Mar 6, 2020)

Greg Boeser said:


> Martin certainly had plans for two stage R-2800s. XB-27
> Martin actually offered 15 different configurations for their proposal that culminated in the contract award for the B-26. The Army chose the single stage R-2800 version with short wings, because that was the configuration that promised the best performance with the engines available at the time. Other configurations had projected speeds in excess of 400 MPH, but required technology that was not yet available in 1939.


The NAA XB-28 with turbosupercharger was contracted in Feb 1940 for the R-2800-27. Pressurized and aerodynamically sound it was as fast as the Mustang I at 25K. It died eventually because there was no mission other than fast recon (p-38 fine), with medium range and 4K bomb load.


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## drgondog (Mar 6, 2020)

Zipper730 said: 


_The key here to think of is not g-load but lift. Higher g-loads require more lift, more lift results in a higher AoA, all things being equal. This results in a higher velocity over the top of the wing_ 

Higher AoA results in higher CL. The two conditions are not necessarily analogous to higher G loads - only in fast turns, zoom climb or dive pullout. But cruise at high altitude require high AoA with no attendant G increase, near stall on final approach aren't a high G 'thingy'. Transonic dive at 1G result in higher velocity over the wing and a shock wave - but no increase in G until pullout.

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## Peter Gunn (Mar 6, 2020)

drgondog said:


> Zipper730 said:
> 
> 
> _The key here to think of is not g-load but lift. Higher g-loads require more lift, more lift results in a higher AoA, all things being equal. This results in a higher velocity over the top of the wing_
> ...


Good Lord, I actually understood that!

Oh man, there's either hope for me yet or it's only a brief moment where my two brain cells are actually rubbing together (in which case I shouldn't get used to that).

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## Zipper730 (Mar 7, 2020)

pbehn said:


> Due to the unusually high speeds at which the Supermarine Spitfire could dive, this problem of aileron reversal became apparent when it was wished to increase the lateral maneuverability (rate of roll) by increasing the aileron area. The aircraft had a wing designed originally for an aileron reversal airspeed of 580 mph, and any attempt to increase the aileron area would have resulted in the wing twisting when the larger ailerons were applied at high speed, the aircraft then rolling in the opposite direction to that intended by the pilot. The problem of increasing the rate of roll was temporarily alleviated with the introduction of "clipped" wing tips (to reduce the aerodynamic load on the tip area, allowing larger ailerons to be used) until a new, stiffer wing could be incorporated. This new wing was introduced in the Mk 21 and had a theoretical aileron reversal speed of 825 mph (1,328 km/h).[2]


Wait, I thought the stiffer wing started on the Mark VII, and that was when the plane theoretically could take a speed of 825 mph (if the prop didn't exist, the fuselage was different, and the tail was redesigned). This was aileron reversal only?



wuzak said:


> Bollocks.
> 
> One of the biggest myths out there.
> 
> The fact is that Packard redrew the drawings because they had to change them . . . from 1st angle projection . . . to 3rd angle projection


W-w-w-wait... The drawings were reworked simply to mirror and flip them? I thought there was a problem with the British and US inch being like a tiny fraction of an inch off and that's why there were problems with British aircraft using American V-1650's?



drgondog said:


> Higher AoA results in higher CL.


Higher coefficient of lift sees a greater pressure differential along the top/bottom of the wings, and a higher velocity over the top?


> Transonic dive at 1G result in higher velocity over the wing and a shock wave - but no increase in G until pullout.


That adds up.


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## Zipper730 (Mar 7, 2020)

Navalwarrior said:


> P-47 Drop Tanks in ETO:
> - July/Aug 1943: used 200 gal ferry tanks (particularly filled). Not a drop tank but could be released in flight, but more often than not, it failed to jettison.
> - 31 Aug 1943: 75 gallon tear drop shape, initially designed for P-39. In 1944, used as underwing tank.
> - Sept 1943: 108 gal British designed/ manufactured paper tank. Used as wing tanks Apr 1944
> ...


Honestly, I thought that they carried a small center-tank at first, then a pair of wing-tanks, then a pair of wing-tanks, and a paper-tank in the middle.



GrauGeist said:


> These P-47 groups had devised a way to pressurize their tanks using air pressure from the airpump that typically bled off into the exhaust, a certain type of thermostat that was scrounged locally and a glass elbow tube all before August '43.


So, they had a kluge available that effectively pressurized them? 

Though I remember the tanks could produce a ferry range of 1800 miles, it was also only at 10000-14000 feet at a relatively low-speeds: How far could those tanks carry the plane if they were doing around at tactical speeds at 25000-30000?



davparlr said:


> Battle over Germany, January, 1944
> 
> P-51B, P-47PreD-25, F4U-1, P-38J, Escort Ability vs. Me-109G and Fw-190A-8
> . . . .
> I wanted to try to come grasp how these four aircraft would perform in the escort role over Germany against their German opponent. The F4U was thrown in because it was brought up as an aircraft that should have been built instead of the P-47 (and I think the P-51, too).


I never knew that about the F4U-1


> First I wanted to define the requirements of an escort fighter for supporting daylight bombing of Berlin by B-17s and B-24s. This is what I determined was needed.
> 
> 1. Range to fly to Berlin and back
> 2. Endurance to allow a meaningful combat time under enemy attack.
> 3. Equal-to or better capability of engaging enemy aircraft in combat at or above 20,000 ft.


That all adds up


> The methodology I used to compare these planes were, 1) determine total internal and external fuel available each aircraft, 2) calculate fuel required to transit to target (approx. 600 miles) at 25,000 ft


I'd say that might be on the bottom end of the effective altitude: It'd cover the B-24's without much difficulty, but the B-17's typically flew around 22500'-28000' and, it was generally best for escorts to fly 2000'-3000' to 5000' above that.


> 3) calculate fuel required to return to base (I used ingress fuel since I am lazy and probably didn’t have this data. Still should be okay for comparisons)


I assume fuel burn would be somewhat lower on the way out. You have less airplane to move through the sky, and that's gotta do something. That said, I don't know how to calculate for that either, so...


> 4) calculate fuel available for combat, 5) calculate combat time at Normal Rated Power (NRP), 6) compare performance at 20,000, 25,000, and 30,000 ft. Since the data available was not all compatible between aircraft (it never is), some alchemy was required to generate fuel consumption at 25,000 ft. It all seems to pass the smell test.


That works out.


> Flight profile goes directly to Germany, optimum cruise, engage defenders, fly directly home. Weaving over slower bombers is not calculated but obviously would reduce time in combat.


S-weaving wouldn't be too hard to calculate: Just divide the fighter's tactical speed by the bomber's speed.

That said: The full range you'd compute would largely be unnecessary, as they generally used a relay system whereby multiple sets of fighters would head out, rendezvous with the bombers; then return home once relieved by the next set of fighters.

Looking at the figures you've computed

P-38J: I'd almost swear that you'd have to burn down a small amount of fuel in the wings before switching to drop-tanks (I'm not sure if it was based on C/G or g-load limits)
F4U-1: with the need to expend drop-tanks at the start of combat means you'd have to hold onto them with the German coast only 90 miles or so off the coast of the UK (that, or you'd land in occupied territory).
P-47: It had a lot more range than I'd have expected, even with drop-tanks: That said, the P-38 and P-51 were better candidates for escort.
Additionally: I'd almost swear aircraft in those days had requirements for loitering/diverting, as well as some fuel burned during run-up and taxi (however little).


> *Performance at 20k ft. (B-24 Altitude)*


The F4U-1's climb rate isn't that good at 20000', from what I was reading, 1940-2300 fpm seemed to be the maximum you'd get at that altitude. The speeds seem close enough.



drgondog said:


> The high altitude mechanical issues were not 'solved' until the Intercooler/turbo re-design, electrical cockpit heating provided by adding a generator.


From my understanding, however little that might be: The P-38J did have a redesigned intercooler over the earlier designs, right? I also didn't know that the powered ailerons and dive-recovery flaps weren't routinely in operation until after D-Day. From what I remember, the P-38J-20/25 were in possession of both by March of 1944...


> Not in so many words, but yes. Go Deep, incite reaction - kill 'em in the air and pursue all the way to the deck.
> 
> What Doolittle reacted to was one of his commanders stating that the role of the fighter was to 'protect' whereas Doolittle believed the role of fighter aviation was to destroy - and he had just received intelligence reports that LW was building strength in alarming numbers (January, 1944) and posed a serious threat to OVERLORD.


So this is when policy went from defense to offense?


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## pbehn (Mar 7, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> Wait, I thought the stiffer wing started on the Mark VII, and that was when the plane theoretically could take a speed of 825 mph (if the prop didn't exist, the fuselage was different, and the tail was redesigned). This was aileron reversal only?
> 
> .


It is a wiki article, there were quite a few mods to strengthen the Spitfires wing, but as far as aileron reversal is concerned the speed is theoretical, problems occur long before that speed is reached.


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## Zipper730 (Mar 7, 2020)

pbehn said:


> It is a wiki article, there were quite a few mods to strengthen the Spitfires wing, but as far as aileron reversal is concerned the speed is theoretical, problems occur long before that speed is reached.


That I'm aware of, as I said: I was under the impression that the wings could maintain adequate airflow over them up to 800, as absurd as that sounded. That said, I know the fuselage and tail couldn't withstand it.


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## pbehn (Mar 7, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> That I'm aware of, as I said: I was under the impression that the wings could maintain adequate airflow over them up to 800, as absurd as that sounded. That said, I know the fuselage and tail couldn't withstand it.


It isn't a question of airflow but forces and rigidity. If you have an aileron reversal speed of 850 MPH then you don't have any problems at 500.


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 7, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> I was under the impression that the wings could maintain adequate airflow over them up to 800


If you're doing 800, you've got a lot more to worry about than aileron reversal. How about shock waves, center of pressure shift, and mach tuck for starters? Maybe some control surface flutter as well?


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## pbehn (Mar 7, 2020)

XBe02Drvr said:


> If you're doing 800, you've got a lot more to worry about than aileron reversal. How about shock waves, center of pressure shift, and mach tuck for starters? Maybe some control surface flutter as well?


 I think that if you are doing 800MPH in a Spitfire you have lost most control surfaces a while ago.


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 8, 2020)

pbehn said:


> I think that if you are doing 800MPH in a Spitfire you have lost most control surfaces a while ago.


Roger that! ("Roger" in the R/T sense, not the piratical or Shakespearean)

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## Reluctant Poster (Mar 8, 2020)

swampyankee said:


> Packard was a fairly major player in the aero-engine business for a few years after WW1, but was out of the aircraft engine business by 1940. I suspect that its management felt that the market for aircraft engines didn’t promise sufficient ROI.
> 
> The US engine designation system is based on two very broad parameters: displacement and general configuration. It’s not designed to cause confusion, but the Navy and Army’s aviation services were not really concerned with the engines’ internal details. Engines with the same configuration, displacement, and technology level will be similar in weight, installed volume, and performance, the parameters that matter to customers.
> 
> The Merlin was two generations after the Packard V-1650; the displacement was a coincidence.




According to Development of Aircraft Engines by Schlaifer, Packard dropped out of the gasoline aircraft engine business when the US Army cut their funding in 1928.
Schlaifer also notes "Besides the two Curtiss engines there were the 1500- and 2500-cu. in. 12 cylinder engines designed and built by the Packard Motor . Although they were by no means the equal of the Curtiss engines in general excellence, and showed some very serious faults in operation, still these two engines were very light for their power, and both the Army and Navy had great hopes for their ultimate success."
Packard did continue to attempt to develop a diesel aircraft engine.

Strangely enough the British thought the the ancient Liberty would make an excellent tank engine (probably because Walter Christie used it in his radical tank designs). Nuffield obtained a licence and put it back into production. Fortunately for the Allied cause Rolls Royce developed the Meteor to place it. The Soviets also used a Liberty copy in their early BT tanks

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## Admiral Beez (Mar 8, 2020)

Glider said:


> Zero


Agreed, the glass jaw of fighter planes. Can duck and punch better than most, but hit it once and it’s done.


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## Admiral Beez (Mar 8, 2020)

GregP said:


> To me the most overrated plane. far and away, is the Me 262.
> 
> Sure it was the first jet into regular squadron operations, but the effect it had was nothing comarped with the resources expended to develop and deploy it.
> 
> The B-17 bomber stream was the SAME whether or not the Me 262 was there, and Me 109s produced in lieu of the 262s would have done more damage to the bombers, if only because so many more Me 109s could have been built using the resources dedicated to Me 262 development and deployment.


It’s the same with much of Germany’s obsession with Wunderwaffe. Why build Bismarck and Tirpitz to face an enemy with a clear superiority in battleships when those 82,000 tons and 4,000 men could have gone towards 3,200 Panzer IV tanks or 800 U-Boats to attack from Germany’s position of advantage? 

Skip the Me 262 program, focus on what you can build quickly. But really, if you can’t knock the USSR out of thr war before the end of 1942 the war is lost regardless.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 8, 2020)

Admiral Beez said:


> Why build Bismarck and Tirpitz to face an enemy with a clear superiority in battleships when those 82,000 tons and 4,000 men could have gone towards 3,200 Panzer IV tanks or 800 U-Boats to attack from Germany’s position of advantage?




In part to tie up an equal amount (at worst) of British ships and men and several times the Germans investment at best. 

No Bismarck and Tirpitz?
British don't build 1-2 KGVs, don't plan the Lion class and/or don't build the Vanguard, instead they build 70-100,000 tons of escorts (Hunts/Black Swans, etc) and since the British could out build the Germans and Subs are harder to build than surface ships this doesn't look good for the U-boat strategy. 

Similar arguments could be made about the tank production. Tirpitz especially sucked up an inordinate amount of effort from the allies (mostly Britain) with not only the long history of attacks but even such simple stuff as a battleship escort for many Russia bound convoys sucking up thousands of tons of fuel oil per trip. 

see: Fleet in being - Wikipedia 
for the general concept.

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## pbehn (Mar 8, 2020)

Shortround6 said:


> In part to tie up an equal amount (at worst) of British ships and men and several times the Germans investment at best.
> 
> No Bismarck and Tirpitz?
> British don't build 1-2 KGVs, don't plan the Lion class and/or don't build the Vanguard, instead they build 70-100,000 tons of escorts (Hunts/Black Swans, etc) and since the British could out build the Germans and Subs are harder to build than surface ships this doesn't look good for the U-boat strategy.
> ...


The Bismarck putting to sea was a headache for the RN, the Tirpitz not putting to sea was an even bigger one.


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## Zipper730 (Mar 9, 2020)

pbehn said:


> It isn't a question of airflow but forces and rigidity. If you have an aileron reversal speed of 850 MPH then you don't have any problems at 500.


That theoretical speed was like 800 TAS right?



XBe02Drvr said:


> If you're doing 800, you've got a lot more to worry about than aileron reversal. How about shock waves, center of pressure shift, and mach tuck for starters?


Mach tuck effects were the thing that had me puzzled too. I figured "good to 800" meant airflow would be good enough to avoid excessive flow separation (some degree is invariable).

I remember talking to a person online awhile back (first we talked on Yahoo IM, then through e-mail and FB, now just e-mail) who sort of toyed with an art-project of a plane with the latest Spitfire Wings (Mk.21), with a redesigned fuselage, an early axial-flow jet-engine (F.2/4 if I recall right), and an all-moving tail. It was half concept and half gag from two people with a warped sense of humor.

While it didn't get very far (in terms of drawings, or art-work),it turns out there's a lot of variables that contribute to the high dive-speed of the Spitfire

The thin wing: It was one of the thinnest wings used in an operational piston driven aircraft. If I recall the wing was around 13.9% at the root, around 9.4% at the tip.
The thin fuselage: As I understand it, by being very skinny, it would part the air less abruptly to either side, and that would contribute to less energy drained out of the flow (generally resulting in some degree, however small, of turbulence). This would make the airflow more effective over the tail.
The large fillets: Helped blend the airflow over the wing/fuselage junction, and reduced interference effects. Might have contributed superior airflow over the tail surfaces.
Oversized tail-surfaces: The original proposal, as I understand it, had smaller vertical and horizontal surfaces. This is because the airflow over the fuselage would have resulted in good effectiveness. The air-ministry wanted them to enlarge them, but seemed open to haggle a bit, and an arrangement was made somewhere between Supermarine's initial proposal and what the air-ministry initially wanted.
The elliptical wing might have made some contribution, this was a common made by Leidnicer, though I'm not sure about that. The spitfire had some variables that worked against it, admittedly, such as...

The canopy angle was quite steep
The bullet proof glass pane was outside the canopy contours (simple adaptation, but a drag producer).
It had a mirror located outside the canopy that, while it provided superior situational awareness to the rear, it did contribute some drag (interestingly, some P-51's would adopt this later in the war).



pbehn said:


> I think that if you are doing 800MPH in a Spitfire you have lost most control surfaces a while ago.


Yeah, you'd need an entire reworking of the internal structure.


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## wuzak (Mar 9, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> That theoretical speed was like 800 TAS right?



Supersonic? Really?


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## Zipper730 (Mar 9, 2020)

wuzak said:


> Supersonic? Really?


It sounded ridiculous to me too!


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## wuzak (Mar 9, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> W-w-w-wait... The drawings were reworked simply to mirror and flip them? I thought there was a problem with the British and US inch being like a tiny fraction of an inch off and that's why there were problems with British aircraft using American V-1650's?



There was no mirroring. The views were rearranged.

In first angle the left view was on the left and the right view was on the right. 

They also had to fit US sourced equipment, such as the carburetor, and come up with a way for joining the cooling passages between the head and block (which was later changed to the Rolls-Royce design), because Rolls-Royce changed the design to a two piece design (separate head) but had yet to implement it in British production..

In third angle the views were on opposite sides.

Packard Merlins were predominately used in British aircraft, particularly the single stage engines.


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## Zipper730 (Mar 9, 2020)

wuzak said:


> There was no mirroring.


I've never been spectacular with visual puzzles, but it looked like it was sort of flipped/mirrored. I stand corrected.


> They also had to fit US sourced equipment, such as the carburetor, and come up with a way for joining the cooling passages between the head and block (which was later changed to the Rolls-Royce design), because Rolls-Royce changed the design to a two piece design (separate head) but had yet to implement it in British production.


So, we were a little bit ahead in that one case.


> Packard Merlins were predominately used in British aircraft, particularly the single stage engines.


I just remembered that certain British aircraft had special variants for the Packard Merlin (i.e. Lancaster Mk.III, and Spitfire Mk.XIV).


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## wuzak (Mar 9, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> So, we were a little bit ahead in that one case.



If you count having the designs and sample engines sent to you then, yes, you were ahead.




Zipper730 said:


> I just remembered that certain British aircraft had special variants for the Packard Merlin (i.e. Lancaster Mk.III, and Spitfire Mk.XIV).



The Spitfire Mk XIV had a rolls-Royce engine. The Griffon 65, or similar.

I think you mean the XVI.

There was small differences that required changes, notably the injection carburetor on the Packard Merlin 28 requiring different controls for the Lancaster III. Or the slight airframe changes required due to the slightly different height of a Merlin 266 vs a Merlin 66, due to the intercooler, as we were informed recently in this forum.


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## Zipper730 (Mar 9, 2020)

wuzak said:


> The Spitfire Mk XIV had a rolls-Royce engine. The Griffon 65, or similar. . . . I think you mean the XVI.


I'm not good with Roman Numerals...


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## pbehn (Mar 9, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> That theoretical speed was like 800 TAS right?
> 
> Yeah, you'd need an entire reworking of the internal structure.


I now have no idea what you are discussing, aileron reversal, transonic aerodynamics or the speed of a drawing?

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## Peter Gunn (Mar 9, 2020)

pbehn said:


> I now have no idea what you are discussing, aileron reversal, transonic aerodynamics *or the speed of a drawing?*



Ah, Pepsi through the nose, no feeling like it.

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## pbehn (Mar 9, 2020)

Peter Gunn said:


> Ah, Pepsi through the nose, no feeling like it.


I have been asked to estimate the dive performance of a sketch in the past.

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## Zipper730 (Mar 9, 2020)

pbehn said:


> I now have no idea what you are discussing, aileron reversal, transonic aerodynamics or the speed of a drawing?


Okay, let's start this from the top.

I remember it being said that the Spitfire Mk.VII/VIII/IX had strengthened spars that were good to 800 mph: I assumed it implied the wings as a whole could reach that speed (assuming the fuselage it was attached to could).
This was first told to me from a person I know online
It then came up again on this forum some time back.
Then it came up on this post, but talked about the Mk.21 wing, and regarded aileron reversal only

A person I talked to online sort of came up with a "What-If" gag-design regarding a fighter called the Jetfire that would...
Use Spitfire Mk.21 wings as a baseline.
All moving tailplane
F.2/4 Beryl engine

Drawings usually don't have speeds with the exception of
You factor in the velocity of the Earth around the Sun, the Sun around the Galaxy, etc
The drawing is on something that's moving (such as an aircraft)
A guesstimate as to the speed of an aircraft, spacecraft, both, on a drawing

Okay, so we both up to speed?


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## pbehn (Mar 9, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> Okay, let's start this from the top.
> 
> I remember it being said that the Spitfire Mk.VII/VIII/IX had strengthened spars that were good to 800 mph: I assumed it implied the wings as a whole could reach that speed (assuming the fuselage it was attached to could).
> This was first told to me from a person I know online
> ...


What does "good for" mean? Just because a calculation says you have aileron reversal at 850MPH doesn't mean anything other than that. Between the speed where trying to roll left rolls left and trying to roll left actually rolls right you have a range of speed where it doesn't roll at all, that is why you want the reversal speed well in excess of any actual speed you want to go.


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## Zipper730 (Mar 9, 2020)

pbehn said:


> What does "good for" mean?


If a person generally was to say: "The plane's good to 800 mph" it means it would be able to either fly at that speed, fly at that speed if enough power was present, or the component would hold together at that speed.


> Just because a calculation says you have aileron reversal at 850MPH doesn't mean anything other than that.


So it was more a hypothetical figure based only on force and torsional loads on the wing.


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## Zipper730 (Mar 9, 2020)

Peter Gunn said:


> Ah, Pepsi through the nose, no feeling like it.


Actually I've had coke, pepsi, and probably sprite up the nose, they all feel about equally unpleasant.

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## pbehn (Mar 9, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> If a person generally was to say: "The plane's good to 800 mph" it means it would be able to either fly at that speed, fly at that speed if enough power was present, or the component would hold together at that speed.
> So it was more a hypothetical figure based only on force and torsional loads on the wing.


The discussion is based on what you assumed from what you thought you read implied.

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## pbehn (Mar 9, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> Okay, let's start this from the top.
> 
> I remember it being said that the Spitfire Mk.VII/VIII/IX had strengthened spars that were good to 800 mph: I assumed it implied the wings as a whole could reach that speed (assuming the fuselage it was attached to could).
> This was first told to me from a person I know online
> ...


I wouldn't say wiki is a cast iro source but the attached discusses the development of the Spitfire wing to the Supermarine Spiteful. Seafang and Attacker. None of these were 800MPH aircraft and neither was the next generation like the Hawker Hunter.
Supermarine Spiteful - Wikipedia
Supermarine Seafang - Wikipedia
Supermarine Attacker - Wikipedia


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## Zipper730 (Mar 10, 2020)

Look, I'm not saying that the Spitfire could do 800 miles an hour. Nobody is saying that. I remember it being said that the spars of the wing were good enough for it, though that would be based on the presupposition that...

The airplane had no propeller
The fuselage was different
The tailplane was different, and likely all moving
In other words, the plane would be different except for the wings, if those figures were even right. If it's just based on torsional load tolerance, then it's possible that the wings would have produced enough turbulent flow over them that it would've interfered with the airflow over the tail producing a tuck-under well before then. Even if not, the ailerons would have probably fluttered and broke up before then, and you would have entirely new problems on your hands.


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## pbehn (Mar 10, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> Look, I'm not saying that the Spitfire could do 800 miles an hour. Nobody is saying that. I remember it being said that the spars of the wing were good enough for it, though that would be based on the presupposition that...
> 
> The airplane had no propeller
> The fuselage was different
> ...


So you didn't read the link then?


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 10, 2020)

pbehn said:


> So you didn't read the link then?


Does he ever?

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## Zipper730 (Mar 10, 2020)

pbehn said:


> So you didn't read the link then?


Actually, I read these articles before, so I didn't see a need. That said, I decided to re-read them. Interestingly, since no data was listed for change in mach limits, I did a search for it. Ironically, when I did, I stumbled upon this post.

In this post the following was stated by you, tomo pauk, and Koopernic

*You*


> Don't get hung up on the high mach number of the Spitfire, at those speeds the plane is at the edge of control and the propeller likely to fall off, it was drag at lower speeds that was important.



*tomo pauk*


> Designers expected that drag would've been lowered, and the critical Mach number would've been increased by 55 mph.



*Koopernick*


> The theoretical speed at which the wing would reverse was theoretical only and didn’t happen in real life. It reduced aileron effectiveness to about 65% at 400 mph. The torsional stiffness of the wings on the mark 21, 22 & 24 was increased by 47% over previous marks, raising the theoretical aileron reversal limit from 580 to 825 mph IAS. These marks really were post war aircraft though a few did see service in 1945 but not air to air combat. The Mk XVIII didn’t get a new wing but it used better materials such as a stainless steel main spar.


Well, all that said: It appears the 825 mph figure seems based only on airspeed (it's not clear mach number is factored in at all), and regards aileron reversal only; they expected an increase in critical mach number of about 55 mph (unsure what the Spitfire's critical mach number is -- you don't see problems with performance until you're at the drag divergence point), unless they meant placard limit (in which, they appeared to have miscalculated).

I think we can solidly agree, this subject has been beaten to death, and actually resolved.

BTW: Considering the older post, I guess I wasn't experiencing deja-vu after all. That only occurs when you _think_ you've done something before, and you haven't.


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## pbehn (Mar 10, 2020)

Zipper730 said:


> Actually, I read these articles before, so I didn't see a need. That said, I decided to re-read them. Interestingly, since no data was listed for change in mach limits, I did a search for it. Ironically, when I did, I stumbled upon this post.
> 
> In this post the following was stated by you, tomo pauk, and Koopernic
> 
> ...


Try reading the links again.


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## thom regit (Mar 12, 2020)

Peter Gunn said:


> Ah, Pepsi through the nose, no feeling like it.


Black coffee through the nose has a real kick and adds a sour bouquet with prolonged, bitter aftertaste. 
It's an acquired taste....recommended for experienced snorters only.

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## drgondog (Mar 13, 2020)

What a load of manure. Two things come to mind re: '800 mph Spitfire wing'
First - the drag rise on a zero lift wing of ANY conventional designed wing of the WWII variety would require the power of perhaps an SR71 - IF the wing and airframe were built for the Q loads of simple Parasite drag. The consequence for any well designed fighter would be simply destroying the wing and fuselage altogether near Mach 1. Add the component of asymmetric lift - the subject of control reversal due to ailerons - and the airframe/wing carry through structure becomes confetti long before Mach 1. Recall that conducted dive tests were executed in a 1G dive with the barest possible rudder input to maintain a straight line near symmetric path to minimize applied dynamic pressure loads.

ANY discussion of supersonic capability of aileron/wing stiffness threshold of '800 mph' or even at '580mph TAS' has to be based on *incompressible flow dynamic loads *imposed on the 'deflected flat plates' and subsequent load transmission in both torsion and bending and shear.

Looks like Marketing headed by a Mo Ron grabbed hallway conversations and proceeded to print.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Mar 13, 2020)

May I sugest the A-20 as the most overrated? I

It didn't have the heaviest bomb payload of the light or medium bombers, neither was the fastest or have the longest legs or was the more agile. 

Many others developed in the same timeframe were better and evolved more during the war, been better multirole aircraft.


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## Kevin J (Mar 13, 2020)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> May I sugest the A-20 as the most overrated? I
> 
> It didn't have the heaviest bomb payload of the light or medium bombers, neither was the fastest or have the longest legs or was the more agile.
> 
> Many others developed in the same timeframe were better and evolved more during the war, been better multirole aircraft.


The USSR thought it was pretty good and took half those produced.

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## pbehn (Mar 13, 2020)

drgondog said:


> What a load of manure. Two things come to mind re: '800 mph Spitfire wing'
> First - the drag rise on a zero lift wing of ANY conventional designed wing of the WWII variety would require the power of perhaps an SR71 - IF the wing and airframe were built for the Q loads of simple Parasite drag. The consequence for any well designed fighter would be simply destroying the wing and fuselage altogether near Mach 1. Add the component of asymmetric lift - the subject of control reversal due to ailerons - and the airframe/wing carry through structure becomes confetti long before Mach 1. Recall that conducted dive tests were executed in a 1G dive with the barest possible rudder input to maintain a straight line near symmetric path to minimize applied dynamic pressure loads.
> 
> ANY discussion of supersonic capability of aileron/wing stiffness threshold of '800 mph' or even at '580mph TAS' has to be based on *incompressible flow dynamic loads *imposed on the 'deflected flat plates' and subsequent load transmission in both torsion and bending and shear.
> ...


I cant find the quote but I believe Chuck Yaeger said something like "any pilot who believes he broke the sound barrier in WW2 is simply mistaken" I presume because of what you just posted. I didn't know Mitchell designed the SR-71 wings That will be an internet fact next year.

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## Denniss (Mar 13, 2020)

The A-20 was not good as level bomber due to restricted payload and as attacker/strafer only successful against the japanese who lacked sufficient/performant light AA. In Europe the strafer version was just a big target for 20mm quads


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## drgondog (Mar 13, 2020)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> May I sugest the A-20 as the most overrated? I
> 
> It didn't have the heaviest bomb payload of the light or medium bombers, neither was the fastest or have the longest legs or was the more agile.
> 
> Many others developed in the same timeframe were better and evolved more during the war, been better multirole aircraft.


So what are the many light attack bombers you have in mind that were developed in 1939?


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## Escuadrilla Azul (Mar 13, 2020)

Kevin J said:


> The USSR thought it was pretty good and took half those produced.


Well, USSR needed every aircraft they can have their hands on (as late as 1943 they used I-16 as first line fighters in some parts) and if they were free, much better. 

Just because one aircraft was heavily used, that doesn't make it the best in the clases.


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## pbehn (Mar 13, 2020)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> Well, USSR needed every aircraft they can have their hands on (as late as 1943 they used I-16 as first line fighters in some parts) and if they were free, much better.
> 
> Just because one aircraft was heavily used, that doesn't make it the best in the clases.


True but the Russian theatre was different anyway. They didn't have a stretch of water between them and the opposition.


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## Escuadrilla Azul (Mar 13, 2020)

drgondog said:


> So what are the many light attack bombers you have in mind that were developed in 1939?


Maybe not many of them were developed around 1939 (Ju 88, Pe 2, B 25) but plenty of aircraft were capable of doing the same work in a better way at the same time that the A 20 was in widespread service, such as the Mosquito, the Beaufighter, the fighterbombers (P 38, P 47, P 40, Typhoon, Fw 190, Bf 110), all capable of doing pinpoint bombing and straffing with a sizable bomb load, faster and better air capability.

My point is that the light bomber was largely a compromise in WW2 that wasn't as capable as a medium bomber in payload and range and wasn't able enough to survive unescorted so better the resources were directed in others ways and since the A 20 can be regarded as the epitome of the light bomber, therefore can be judged as overrated.

It wasn't as versatile as other twins, neither exceptionaly good at its main role.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 13, 2020)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> Just because one aircraft was heavily used, that doesn't make it the best in the clases.




I think there is a fair amount of distance between "best in the class" and being most overrated. 
As in if a plane _isn't_ the best in it's class then it is most overrated aircraft of the war? 

I would like to know just how many German, Japanese or Russian light bombers were being built in late 1943 with exactly the same engines they were using in 1941. 
Or how many British light bombers were being built in late 1943 with the same engines they were using in 1941 (trick sentence, the Mosquito didn't see service until 1942 as a bomber so it doesn't count, it also got better engines) 

The A-20s may not have been the best at any one thing but they were often pretty good at a number of things although range tended to be a sore spot. 

For a plane that was intended to fight at low altitude and short range it didn't do to bad in some of the roles it took on.

Being American it also didn't have to be forced into roles it wasn't really designed for as the Americans had enough production capacity to build special purpose aircraft.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Mar 13, 2020)

pbehn said:


> True but the Russian theatre was different anyway. They didn't have a stretch of water between them and the opposition.



Sure, but they had a huge need of close suport and interdiction aircraft and A 20s were at hand.

DB 7 weren't much better at french service than Blenheims were in british and Commonwealth service at the begining of WW2, pointing that the light bomber concept was a flawed one at the start of the war, a single role plane that needed as much escort as a heavier bomber to get to the objetive solely to delivery a lesser bomb load.

As the A 20 can be regarded has the template of WW2 light bombers, IMO can be regarded as the most overrated.


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## TheMadPenguin (Mar 13, 2020)

Me: B-29. 
Reality: it was a fussy temperamental plane more likely to kill you than the Japanese fighters scrambling against you.
Legend: it dropped the 2 Atomic bombs that ended WWII.
Never mind that the IJN government, military, and people were going to fight us tooth and nail for every yard of rice paddy, with sharpened bamboo and sharpened teeth.
Never mind the Soviet destruction of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria in almost no time at all, and never mind that the REAL fear and realization of the Japanese was that the Soviets were poised to absorb and erase the Japanese people and nation.

Refrain: It was the B-29 and the A-Bomb! (repeat until believed).


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## pbehn (Mar 13, 2020)

drgondog said:


> What a load of manure. Two things come to mind re: '800 mph Spitfire wing'
> First - the drag rise on a zero lift wing of ANY conventional designed wing of the WWII variety would require the power of perhaps an SR71 - IF the wing and airframe were built for the Q loads of simple Parasite drag. The consequence for any well designed fighter would be simply destroying the wing and fuselage altogether near Mach 1. print.


I can follow your arguments on aerodynamics even if I couldn't advocate them, because I don't have the depth of knowledge. What happens to the Spitfire wing's 2% washout at supersonic speed? In my lay-mans mind it becomes two wings. If the tip is going in the direction of the fuselage then the wing root is trying to execute a 2% turn in level flight, is that what is the basis of the problem? In addition to that "shock wave" stuff.


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## Escuadrilla Azul (Mar 13, 2020)

Shortround6 said:


> I think there is a fair amount of distance between "best in the class" and being most overrated.
> As in if a plane _isn't_ the best in it's class then it is most overrated aircraft of the war?
> 
> I would like to know just how many German, Japanese or Russian light bombers were being built in late 1943 with exactly the same engines they were using in 1941.
> ...



Perhaps that is the point, other nations bypassed the need for light bombers and have multirole aircraft to do the same (and more) things than the A 20 can do, so there was no real need for them but american production capacity was so big that they can afford to make a single puorpose aircraft that can be delivered to allied nations without the output capacity.

Aprox half production of A 20 go to USSR. Add those that were to see service with RAF, RAAF, SAAF and Armée de la Air, those used in the States as trainera and diverted to fill gaps in roles with USAAF that were unfullfiled (reco, night fight) and A 20 can be seen as overrated, used mainly because it some were desperate to got their hands in something flight capable, not because the machine own capacities.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 13, 2020)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> Maybe not many of them were developed around 1939 (Ju 88, Pe 2, B 25) but plenty of aircraft were capable of doing the same work in a better way at the same time that the A 20 was in widespread service, such as the Mosquito, the Beaufighter, the fighterbombers (P 38, P 47, P 40, Typhoon, Fw 190, Bf 110), all capable of doing pinpoint bombing and straffing with a sizable bomb load, faster and better air capability.



We can get in a lot of trouble lumping too many years together. Granted not too many DB-7s fought in France in 1940 but NO Pe 2s, or B-25s were in squadron service at the time. In fact the only other plane in your list in service in the Spring of 1940 was the Bf 110. You might argue that the DB-7 was not an A-20 and depending on point of view or details you might be right. However the R-2600 powered versions were going into combat in the spring of 1941 which also puts them earlier than many of the plane in your post, even if not technically A-20s. 
The Bostons and Havocs did do some rather good work at this time. I am also not sure you can blame the aircraft for poor tactical deployment (the turbine light scheme). 

It is also rather easy to make a plane look bad by only comparing a few numbers. Poor as the A-20s range may have been, it could deliver more bombs a further distance than the fighter bombers even if not the equal of some medium bombers. Of course comparing a 24-27,000lb airplane to airplanes weighing 33-40,000lbs is not going to look good for the smaller plane when it comes to weight of bombs and range. I would also note that the A-20 went out of production around 6-7 months after the Mosquito really started carrying much heavier bomb loads (and one can play games here. Late Mosquito might carry 5000lbs-4000lb cookie and single 500lb under each wing, how often this was done I don't know. Without the cookie the max load was 3000lbs. A late A-20 could carry four 500lb bombs inside and four 500lb under the wings (4000lb total) but range was much, much shorter than the Mosquito. 



Escuadrilla Azul said:


> My point is that the light bomber was largely a compromise in WW2 that wasn't as capable as a medium bomber in payload and range and wasn't able enough to survive unescorted so better the resources were directed in others ways and since the A 20 can be regarded as the epitome of the light bomber, therefore can be judged as overrated.



Every plane was a compromise. That is also a rather long chain of logic to reach your conclusion. Light bombers, on occasion, were much faster than medium bombers and did have better survivability, this varied as to time and theater. I am not sure if the A-20 was the epitome of light bomber (that might go to the Mosquito) but it was a good one. 




Escuadrilla Azul said:


> It wasn't as versatile as other twins, neither exceptionaly good at its main role.



It didn't have to be as "versatile" as with the US you had B-25s and B-26s to handle the longer range stuff. The P-61 was in the works to handle the night fighter duties. Granted the P-61 ran a bit late and the Japanese and Germans never managed to mount large scale night attacks against the US (even US bases) that required hundreds of night fighters to be built on an adapted airframe. The US didn't need it as a photo recon plane as the US had the converted Lightings and P-51s, Russians did use some of the early A-20s they got for reconnaissance (usually the ones with no self sealing tanks) and they did rather well with them, Germans didn't deploy as much radar to the eastern front and an A-20 running light and alone is not that easy to catch (faster than the Beaufighter or the Pe 2 or most Ju 88s and some Bf 110s.) Russians did use A-20s as torpedo bombers, The US planes had the shackles/mounts for a torpedo but rarely(never?) trained with them or used them in combat. Russians kept their torpedo A-20s for several years after the war. 

Light bombers, at least in the US, were not expected to be strategic bombers. and the US had a rather different view of of "close support" pre war and early war. Including laying smoke screens. 

The A-20 was found to be somewhat lacking in range in the South Pacific but that is due to the geography, many other light bombers would also be clananged to operate at those distances.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 13, 2020)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> Perhaps that is the point, other nations bypassed the need for light bombers and have multirole aircraft to do the same (and more) things than the A 20 can do, so there was no real need for them but american production capacity was so big that they can afford to make a single puorpose aircraft that can be delivered to allied nations without the output capacity.
> 
> Aprox half production of A 20 go to USSR. Add those that were to see service with RAF, RAAF, SAAF and Armée de la Air, those used in the States as trainera and diverted to fill gaps in roles with USAAF that were unfullfiled (reco, night fight) and A 20 can be seen as overrated, used mainly because it some were desperate to got their hands in something flight capable, not because the machine own capacities.



The machine actually had some rather good capabilities. Please show how it did not? 
The US could hang torpedoes under the B-25 and B-26 also, but they were rarely used as torpedo bombers, in large part because of problems with the MK XIII torpedo itself and partly due to the nature of the targets. Most Japanese shipping (transports and escorts)) in the South Pacific was small and 500-1000lb bombs could sink them very well. 

The early A-20s could outrun an A6M2 Zero at low to medium altitude. 

Strangely enough, the Bulk of the A-20s that saw combat service in the USAAF did so starting in late 1943 and 1944. 

Of the 2804 A-20s used by the USSAF, 2088 were the G model (with the twin .50 turret) or later aircraft. This doesn't seem to line up with the theory that it was used mainly in desperation by crews trying to get something flight capable.


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## Greg Boeser (Mar 14, 2020)

Well, delivery contracts were written long before they were delivered.


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## GrauGeist (Mar 14, 2020)

Well, let's see:
A-20 introduced 1940
B-26 introduced 1941
B-25 introduced 1941
Pe-2 introduced 1941
YeR-2 introduced 1941
Tu-2 introduced 1942
A-26 introduced 1943

Since the A-20 was already being produced in numbers when the Soviet Union was invaded, it stands to reason that it was an important and much needed tool until newer types became available.

(The types listed above reflect comparable light bomber/attack progression - the B-26 and A-26 were never lend-leased to Russia).


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## Kevin J (Mar 14, 2020)

GrauGeist said:


> Well, let's see:
> A-20 introduced 1940
> B-26 introduced 1941
> B-25 introduced 1941
> ...


Just adding the British contribution:
Beaufort, 1939; Beaufighter, 1940;
Maryland, 1940; Baltimore, 1941;
Mosquito, 1941.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 14, 2020)

Squadron or combat use of many of these types is even later. 

and we are comparing some rather diverse types of aircraft. 
The Early Douglas DB-7 with R-1830 engines were were around 15,000lbs. Wiki, which could be wrong, claims 40,000lbs for the Yer-2 or darn close to a B-17B.


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## drgondog (Mar 14, 2020)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> Maybe not many of them were developed around 1939 (Ju 88, Pe 2, B 25) but plenty of aircraft were capable of doing the same work in a better way at the same time that the A 20 was in widespread service, such as the Mosquito, the Beaufighter, the fighterbombers (P 38, P 47, P 40, Typhoon, Fw 190, Bf 110), all capable of doing pinpoint bombing and straffing with a sizable bomb load, faster and better air capability.
> 
> My point is that the light bomber was largely a compromise in WW2 that wasn't as capable as a medium bomber in payload and range and wasn't able enough to survive unescorted so better the resources were directed in others ways and since the A 20 can be regarded as the epitome of the light bomber, therefore can be judged as overrated.
> 
> It wasn't as versatile as other twins, neither exceptionally good at its main role.



The A-20 was spawned when the USAAC became aware that they still were part of the US Army and the Air Ground Support role was evolving to include fast but light and well armed attack bombers to provide tactical air support beyond enemy lines. They AAC evolved their thinking based on observations of the Spanish conflict and the early successes of the LW/Wermacht in Europe.

For that role it was vey successful indeed, and was also a fairly good low to medium altitude light bomber with greater range and load than any US fighter or Allied/Axis fighter (I'm talking air superiority fighter until late 1943) until the Douglas A-26 replaced it. The P-39 and P-40 were substitutes for the Attack fighter role to balance against extremely slow and vulnerable A-24 etc until the AAF decided on the A-36 Mustang, modified for max performance under 5500 feet. By the time the A-36 was operational to team with the A-20, AAF doctrine had matured to point the fighter as a battlefield air superiority role combined with CAS. The Merlin Mustang was originally selected to replace P-39/P-40 but the air war in ETO/MTO took them away from TAC. But remember ONLY the NAA Mustang derivatives and the P-38 were equipped with bomb racks capable of 500/1000 pound GP until the P-47D-15/-16 were produced and delivered ~ March 1944.

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## drgondog (Mar 14, 2020)

pbehn said:


> I can follow your arguments on aerodynamics even if I couldn't advocate them, because I don't have the depth of knowledge. What happens to the Spitfire wing's 2% washout at supersonic speed? In my lay-mans mind it becomes two wings. If the tip is going in the direction of the fuselage then the wing root is trying to execute a 2% turn in level flight, is that what is the basis of the problem? In addition to that "shock wave" stuff.


The washout/Twist on the Spit/Mustang, etc had no influence per se on the development or response to onset transonic mach or subsequent shock wave phoenomena. Strictly a design approach to compensate for the upwash at the wingtip due to the trailing vortices - all for improved high CL aileron authority at moderate to low speeds. That said, most fighter development in the future, particularly swept wing designs incorporated slats but maintained 'zero washout leading edge, and well into supersonic designs also incorporated wing fences to compensate for nasty issues associated with swept wings.

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## wuzak (Mar 14, 2020)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> Maybe not many of them were developed around 1939 (Ju 88, Pe 2, B 25) but plenty of aircraft were capable of doing the same work in a better way at the same time that the A 20 was in widespread service, such as the Mosquito, the Beaufighter, the fighterbombers (P 38, P 47, P 40, Typhoon, Fw 190, Bf 110), all capable of doing pinpoint bombing and straffing with a sizable bomb load, faster and better air capability.



The Mosquito started life as a light bomber (maximum bomb load 1,000lb, upgraded to 2,000lb before service introduction), and its air-to-air and strafing capabilities (the bomber version) was non-existent.

However, it was harder to catch when carrying bombs than most of those others mentioned. Also could carry the bombs farther.




Escuadrilla Azul said:


> My point is that the light bomber was largely a compromise in WW2 that wasn't as capable as a medium bomber in payload and range and wasn't able enough to survive unescorted so better the resources were directed in others ways and since the A 20 can be regarded as the epitome of the light bomber, therefore can be judged as overrated.



I do believe the RAF did use the Boston in the bomber role without escort.

In fact, in December 1942 47 Venturas, 36 Bostons and 10 Mosquitoes flew unescorted to Eindhoven to raid the Philips factory.

Operation Oyster - Wikipedia


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## MikeMeech (Mar 14, 2020)

wuzak said:


> The Mosquito started life as a light bomber (maximum bomb load 1,000lb, upgraded to 2,000lb before service introduction), and its air-to-air and strafing capabilities (the bomber version) was non-existent.
> 
> However, it was harder to catch when carrying bombs than most of those others mentioned. Also could carry the bombs farther.
> 
> ...



Hi

Yes it was too far for escorts, however, 9 Venturas, 4 Bostons and 1 Mosquito were lost over Holland or the sea. Others suffered damage from Flak, hitting trees or bird strikes.
One damaged Ventura was met by long-range Spitfires on the way back and escorted. Spitfires had also escorted a diversionary raid by 84 B-17s of the 8th Air Force on Lille, RAF Mustangs also carried out missions along the Dutch Coast giving indirect support. Mitchells of the RAF were also due to take part in this operation but they had only recently be received and more training of the crews was required plus a few small modifications to the aircraft so they were taken off the mission.

Mike

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## wuzak (Mar 14, 2020)

Shortround6 said:


> Late Mosquito might carry 5000lbs-4000lb cookie and single 500lb under each wing, how often this was done I don't know. Without the cookie the max load was 3000lbs. A late A-20 could carry four 500lb bombs inside and four 500lb under the wings (4000lb total) but range was much, much shorter than the Mosquito.



The 5,000lb bomb load was only for B. Mk XVI and later (maybe the IX as well, but relatively few of them were made). The Mk.IV/XX could not.

Generally the B.XVI would had the 4,000lb bomb and extra fuel tanks on the wing for extra range.

Certainly the Mosquito used the 4,000lb MC against oil targets such as Homburg.







As well as the 4,000lb HC





Sometimes Target Indicators (T.I.)/Markers were carried by one aircraft, as this entry shows. It doesn't mention what the bombs were, but likely to be 500lb MC, as in the entry of 15-6-44.










I do recall seeing entries for a raid in which the Mosquitoes carried 6 x 500lb bombs. But I can't recall seeing the 1 x 4,000lb + 2 x 500lb load being mentioned.

It is possible, if unlikely, that a 4,000lb bomb carrying Mosquito could also be carrying 250lb TIs (the target marker most often used, with the 1,000lb TI being rarely used), but unlikely.

The entries above are from 109 Squadron's ORB from June 1944. 

The problem with ORBs is that they sometimes simply say "bombed" or "marked" without specifying the bomb load used.

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## wuzak (Mar 14, 2020)

Ah found it.






109 squadron ORB, July 1944.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 14, 2020)

Thank you, I will leave actual usage to people like yourself with large resources of information, I was merely listing _possible_ bomb loads. 
The Mosquito was a great aircraft but too many people assume that the majority of Mosquitoes could carry the 4000lb cookie and it is assumed they carried it earlier than they did.

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## wuzak (Mar 14, 2020)

627 Squadron used their aircraft to drop 2 x 1,000lb TIs as well as, on occasion, 2 x 1,000lb MC bombs.






This required the bulged bomb bay.


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## wuzak (Mar 14, 2020)

Shortround6 said:


> Thank you, I will leave actual usage to people like yourself with large resources of information, I was merely listing _possible_ bomb loads.
> The Mosquito was a great aircraft but too many people assume that the majority of Mosquitoes could carry the 4000lb cookie and it is assumed they carried it earlier than they did.



You're welcome.

We have discussed previously (years ago) a request to increase the stowage of 250lb target indicators (TIs).

One system discussed would have had 6 TIs in teh bomb bay:



wuzak said:


> Maybe this is where the idea of the Avro 6 store carrier originated.
> 
> View attachment 362852



The highlighted item 4 could be the genesis of the Avro 6 bomb carrier, that has been mentioned in literature and the internet for years, without much, if any, evidence of its existence or use.

Item 3 is more interesting, proposing the use a modified Wellington bomb beam to carry as much as 8 250lb TIs internally in the Mosquito.

Note the date of April 1944. Not too many B.XVIs were available at that time, so these were being proposed for the B.IV with bulged bomb bay.

Such a bomb beam was even trial fitted to a Mosquito.

Inevitably, the discussion moved towards possibly carrying 8 x 500lb MC bombs, but de Havilland were not keen.



wuzak said:


> In early-mid 1944 there were moves made to better utilise the bulged bomb bay in aircraft performing target marking. It was deemed poor economics to send a Mosquito with the larger bomb bay to target carrying a load of 4 x 250lb TIs. A solution that was tried was the adaptation of a bomb beam from a Vickers Wellington. The description is of a double beam (presumably that means it could hang bombs on both sides) which was shortened, with additional stiffeners.
> 
> The Wellington bomb bay
> View attachment 446556
> ...



The 8 x 500lb bombs may have been too much for a B.IV, but what about a B.XVI?


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## wuzak (Mar 16, 2020)

wuzak said:


> Item 3 is more interesting, proposing the use a modified Wellington bomb beam to carry as much as 8 250lb TIs internally in the Mosquito.
> 
> Note the date of April 1944. Not too many B.XVIs were available at that time, so these were being proposed for the B.IV with bulged bomb bay.
> 
> ...



I apologize. The Wellington bomb beam was being proposed for the B.XVI, de Havilland had concerns about AUW and CoG carrying 8 x 500lb bombs.

Which is interesting, in terms of AUW, as the XVI was rated for a 5,000lb bomb load.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 16, 2020)

Bomb bay goes to almost the rear of the wing/flaps.
CG is about 30% of cord? Just forward of the tail fins of the forward bombs?

4000lb cookie




hollow tail section is to the left, joint is under the crewman's head.

I believe the Mosquito required modifications to the horizontal stabilizers to carry the 4000lb bomb?
The Mosquito may have been flirting with CG problems carrying the cookie (before modification), adding more weight to the rear of the bomb bay with more than 4 500lb bombs might not have worked well???


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 16, 2020)

Shortround6 said:


> The Mosquito may have been flirting with CG problems carrying the cookie (before modification), adding more weight to the rear of the bomb bay with more than 4 500lb bombs might not have worked well???


I can say from sorry experience a plane loaded out of limits aft is a flying squirrel. Can't imagine going into combat like that.

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## wuzak (Mar 16, 2020)

Shortround6 said:


> View attachment 573674
> 
> 
> Bomb bay goes to almost the rear of the wing/flaps.
> ...



I would have to look into that.

The Mosquito B.IV was the first to carry the 4,000lb bomb and taht certainly had marginal stability due to CoG.

The IX and XVI (one of which is pictured) had the longer, heavier 2 stage Merlins ahead of the wing, so that would have been less of a problem.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 16, 2020)

I seem to remember something about the horizontal stabilizers being modified (or elevators?) which may have helped? 

The Mosquito certianly did some amazing things with the cookies but it's payloads were a bit restricted in flexibility.


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## wuzak (Mar 17, 2020)

Shortround6 said:


> I seem to remember something about the horizontal stabilizers being modified (or elevators?) which may have helped?
> 
> The Mosquito certianly did some amazing things with the cookies but it's payloads were a bit restricted in flexibility.



The prototype, W4050, had problems with buffeting of the tailplane due to the wake from the short nacelles. Th eultimate solution was the long nacelles and the No.2 Tailplane, which had a longer span and greater elevator area. Some early Mosquitoes had the No.1 Tailplane.

The tailplane was even given dihedral on some tests, but the standard No.2 tailplane was found to be better.


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## DerGiLLster (Mar 19, 2020)

Why is the P-51 the most voted on overrated aircraft? It had its fair share of kills and played a role in winning the war in the skies.

You wanna talk overrated? How about the ME 262? German fanboys will constantly bark about how it could have won the war, when it engines flamed out at 10-20 hours, it was vulnerable in turns where the P-51 could shoot it down(Chuck Yeager shot two of them down) and even then, the Allies would have just introduced the P-80 Shooting Star, a much more reliable, much faster plane and of course it pilots would be trained on how to use it. Don't tell me how ME 262 pilots had nothing more than a dozen hours of training flying that thing.

Don't know who said it, but the Me 262 didn't come late in the war, but too soon.

I shudder when I used to take those WW2 docus seriously for how they would boast about the ME 262 being a "war winning weapon."

Besides maybe the atom bomb, there is no weapon that could have "won" World War Two. The war itself was won through the scientific application of logistics, careful illustration for how to manufacture its goods to the utmost quality and quantity, and leaders who all managed to make strategic goals which most could agree on.

But everyone here knows this, sadly most outside don't know, and treat Nazi UFOs hiding in Antarctica as something legitimate.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 19, 2020)

DerGiLLster said:


> Why is the P-51 the most voted on overrated aircraft? It had its fair share of kills and played a role in winning the war in the skies.
> 
> You wanna talk overrated? How about the ME 262? German fanboys will constantly bark about how it could have won the war, when it engines flamed out at 10-20 hours, it was vulnerable in turns where the P-51 could shoot it down(Chuck Yeager shot two of them down) and even then, the Allies would have just introduced the P-80 Shooting Star, a much more reliable, much faster plane and of course it pilots would be trained on how to use it. Don't tell me how ME 262 pilots had nothing more than a dozen hours of training flying that thing.
> 
> ...



I voted for the P-51 as the most overrated. Not because it was not great or anything. It was probably the best fighter to see large scale service during the war.

I voted for the P-51 because all your Mustang “Fan Boys” just to steal your words place it on such a high pedestal that everyone forgets there were other aircraft in the war fighting the Germans.

Who needs the Spitfire? P-51! But what about the B-24? Who cares, P-51! Transport aircraft? P-51!

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## DerGiLLster (Mar 19, 2020)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I voted for the P-51 as the most overrated. Not because it was not great or anything. It was probably the best fighter to see large scale service during the war.
> 
> I voted for the P-51 because all your Mustang “Fan Boys” just to steal your words place it on such a high pedestal that everyone forgets there were other aircraft in the war fighting the Germans.
> 
> Who needs the Spitfire? P-51! But what about the B-24? Who cares, P-51! Transport aircraft? P-51!



Eh, German fanboys are much more cringey than American fanboys. Constantly harping about how the war could have been won.

Unless they discover large deposits of oil Libya many years pre-war and have future knowledge of tech up to the 50s, I don't see how it could have been different. And you had idiots like Goering and Canris ruining things on the strategic scale. They weren't the only ones, but they surely were one of the worst.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 19, 2020)

DerGiLLster said:


> Eh, German fanboys are much more cringey than American fanboys. Constantly harping about how the war could have been won.



Yeah, ok...


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## DerGiLLster (Mar 19, 2020)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Yeah, ok...



Well is there some way Germany could have won that maybe I am not aware of? I always like to believe that I could be wrong and can earn from it.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 19, 2020)

DerGiLLster said:


> Well is there some way Germany could have won that maybe I am not aware of? I always like to believe that I could be wrong and can earn from it.



Thats not the part I am talking about, although I do think you are exaggerating that as well.

Although we probably are both exaggerating...


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## Peter Gunn (Mar 19, 2020)

TheMadPenguin said:


> Me: B-29.
> Reality: it was a fussy temperamental plane more likely to kill you than the Japanese fighters scrambling against you.
> Legend: it dropped the 2 Atomic bombs that ended WWII.
> Never mind that the IJN government, military, and people were going to fight us tooth and nail for every yard of rice paddy, with sharpened bamboo and sharpened teeth.
> ...


Like everyone else in the thread, you're entitled to _your opinion_.

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## GrauGeist (Mar 19, 2020)

DerGiLLster said:


> How about the ME 262? German fanboys will constantly bark about how it could have won the war, when it engines flamed out at 10-20 hours, it was vulnerable in turns where the P-51 could shoot it down(Chuck Yeager shot two of them down) and even then, the Allies would have just introduced the P-80 Shooting Star, *a much more reliable, much faster plane* and of course it pilots would be trained on how to use it.


Wrong. According to the USAF, P-80A (44-85642) unpainted was the fastest of the WARTIME era P-80s...not POSTWAR P-80s, like the P-80C.
Data from TSFTE-2053 (14 Feb 47)
5,000 feet: 525mph
20,000 feet: 522mph
35,000 feet: 502mph

The Me262A (standard production with Jumo004B engines) was faster
10,000 feet: 530mph
20,000 feet: 540mph
32,000 feet: 506mph



DerGiLLster said:


> Don't tell me how ME 262 pilots had nothing more than a dozen hours of training flying that thing.


If you'd take a little time to read about the late war situation in Germany, you'd then know it was dire. No fuel, no rubber and other essentials so that pilot training was limited mostly to short ground school. Pilot attrition also meant that the Luftwaffe was desperate to get pilots into action in a short amount of time.
They also relaxed the pilot rank, which ultimately saw ranks as low as Gefreiter and Fleiger piloting fighters. An Me262 ace held the rank of Gefreiter (Joseph Heim) and several others were Feldwebels or Oberfeldwebels.

And Yeager shot down ONE Me262...as it was landing...


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## pbehn (Mar 19, 2020)

Wasn't the war time P-80 grounded during the war after a few pilots died flying it?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 19, 2020)

Peter Gunn said:


> Like everyone else in the thread, you're entitled to _your opinion_.



What is there to dislike about this post? Isn’t everyone entitled to an opinion. And the B-29 being overrated or not is a matter of opinion is it not?


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## TheMadPenguin (Mar 19, 2020)

pbehn said:


> Wasn't the war time P-80 grounded during the war after a few pilots died flying it?


<wiki> [T]est pilot Major Frederic Borsodi was killed in a crash caused by an engine fire demonstrating a YP-80A (44-83026) at RAF Burtonwood, Lancashire, England, on 28 January 1945, the YP-80A was temporarily grounded </wiki>
Pilots killed (Burchman & Bong) before P-80's were deployed). <wiki> "Both Burcham and Bong crashed as a result of main fuel pump failure. Burcham's death was the result of a failure to brief him on a newly installed emergency fuel pump backup system, but the investigation of Bong's crash found that he had apparently forgotten to switch on this pump, which could have prevented the accident. " </wiki>


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## swampyankee (Mar 19, 2020)

DerGiLLster said:


> Eh, German fanboys are much more cringey than American fanboys. Constantly harping about how the war could have been won.



Possibly because many of them seem to yearn for a world when the nazis won. They're even worse than the lost cause nut jobs.

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## pbehn (Mar 19, 2020)

TheMadPenguin said:


> <wiki> [T]est pilot Major Frederic Borsodi was killed in a crash caused by an engine fire demonstrating a YP-80A (44-83026) at RAF Burtonwood, Lancashire, England, on 28 January 1945, the YP-80A was temporarily grounded </wiki>
> Pilots killed (Burchman & Bong) before P-80's were deployed). <wiki> "Both Burcham and Bong crashed as a result of main fuel pump failure. Burcham's death was the result of a failure to brief him on a newly installed emergency fuel pump backup system, but the investigation of Bong's crash found that he had apparently forgotten to switch on this pump, which could have prevented the accident. " </wiki>


Is that a yes?

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 19, 2020)

swampyankee said:


> Possibly because many of them seem to yearn for a world when the nazis won. They're even worse than the lost cause nut jobs.



I don’t think there are many of those around...

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## GrauGeist (Mar 19, 2020)

I don't think it's a yearning for a world where Nazis won, it's more of an obsession of the fantastic - the odd and almost sci-fi quality of many of the German what-ifs.

The U.S. had quite a few of those, but oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be as much fascination.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Mar 19, 2020)

Sorry in the delay in getting in the debate. Here in Spain we get in alarm state in the weekend and have a rough time the days before and after that.

To many messages to reply one by one ( and some got replied already).

To recall my position:

If the polling is about aircraft that got to much credit in regard to the merits it have (thence "overrated"), IMO the A20 deserves its share, more than the other aircraft in the poll.

In no way I meant (or said) that wasn't a good plane, neither that it was incapable, but was as vulnerable as other aircraft in the same role if unescorted (Operation Oyster is a good example).

As someone said, the bulk of USAAF use of the A20 was in 43-44, when other aircrafts were in service in the same role, as least as capable and more versalite.

I'm in no way trying to convince anyone or argue endlessly, just have a nice time and sure you all make it happen. Hat off people, very interesting.


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## pbehn (Mar 19, 2020)

GrauGeist said:


> I don't think it's a yearning for a world where Nazis won, it's more of an obsession of the fantastic - the odd and almost sci-fi quality of many of the German what-ifs.
> 
> The U.S. had quite a few of those, but oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be as much fascination.


That's because they became what they were or didn't at all nothing stopped their development. You can fantasise about what music Buddy Holly would have produced but not Paul McCartney.

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## GrauGeist (Mar 19, 2020)

Same applies to the Confederacy (of the U.S. Civil War) where plenty of "what-ifs" have been written. There's a large following (mostly Steam Punk fans) for "what-ifs" regarding the German Empire (with interesting airships, steam powered tanks, etc.) and so on.

So yes, fully agree about the Buddy Holly comparison.

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## swampyankee (Mar 19, 2020)

A lot of German WWII hardware has both elements of the fantastic* (Focke-Wulf Triebflügel) and bizarre (Bv141). Some seemed more advanced than anything the Allies fielded (Me163, which may actually have been more advanced, and Do335, which wasn't). There also, alas, seems to be some amount of teutonophilia involved, in that there seems to be an almost worshipful assignment of advancements to the Germans _even when they weren't deserved_. 

One rather odd case is the meme that the _Bismarck_'s AAA fire control couldn't gain solutions on the Swordfish as the Swordfish was so slow, with the implication that the _Kriegsmarine _and OKW would _never_ deploy a biplane at that late date. First, I don't think the Germans were stupid, as that would be necessary for a military procurement system to accept a system that wouldn't work on aircraft that were in service at the time it was specified, and, second, the Germans had designed and constructed biplane for exactly the same main role as the Swordfish.


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 19, 2020)

DerGiLLster said:


> Well is there some way Germany could have won that maybe I am not aware of?


Well, just for giggles, imagine this.
On the eve of Barbarossa somebody plants a bomb at a 3rd Reich strategy meeting, and Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Goebbels, Raeder and Heydrich are killed. Milch, Doenitz, Galland, Rommel, and the general staffs of Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine survive and are now running the show. The mobilization to the east is written off as a "theoretical logistics exercise" while Ribbentrop makes nice-nice to Stalin and the non aggression pact is extended, freeing Stalin to chastise the Japanese for their activities in Manchuria. All the manpower and weaponry collected for Barbarossa is now available for reinforcing the Atlantic Wall, consolidating a secure supply of Libyan oil and eliminating Malta and Alexandria as threats to the Med as an Axis Lake.
With only one (well equipped) front in active combat, resources can now be freed up to pursue some of the tech developments that were backbunered by "blitzkrieg fever", such as jet fighter, submarine schnorkel, V weapons, Walther propulsion, airborne radar, remotely guided missiles, the "Skipjack style" streamlined high speed submarine, acoustic torpedoes, and nuclear research. With the Allies eliminated from the Med, and Suez in German hands, Britain is effectively at a standstill, and another "sitzkrieg" ensues on land, while the German surface navy is starved into a "force in being" which rattles its sword occasionally to keep the RN in Scapa Flow, but consumes minimal resources, while the Uboat Navy goes all-out, introducing ominous new technologies.
Pearl Harbor doesn't happen on schedule, as the festivities in Manchuria have taken the wind out of the sails of the "Southern Option" faction in the Supreme Council, and the conflict being a land war, puts the IJA in the driver's seat over the IJN, with resulting domination of the available resources.
Meanwhile, the US slumbers peaceably on, with isolationism and The German-American Bund gaining in popularity, the song "Ruben James" becoming ever more popular, and Roosevelt's "Anglophile" tendencies becoming more and more under attack.
So there's the world as it exists on December 31, 1941. I've laid out the blueprint; y'all have fun now, hear?
Cheers,
Wes

PS: Mods, feel free to delete this as off topic, or kick it into a different thread.


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## Peter Gunn (Mar 19, 2020)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> What is there to dislike about this post? Isn’t everyone entitled to an opinion. And the B-29 being overrated or not is a matter of opinion is it not?


Meh, merely me expressing _my opinion_ about _his opinion_. I happen to disagree with him, I don't think the B-29 was prone to killing it's crews etc. which is my opinion.


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 19, 2020)

Peter Gunn said:


> I don't think the B-29 was prone to killing it's crews


Depends on your timeframe of reference. The B29 was a bunch of newfangled ideas, stretched to (or beyond) the limits of their current technologies and expected to perform en masse at the limits of their ability, while still getting sorted out. Naturally there were casualties. Early on, the casualties were rather heavy. By VJ day, the B29 was closing in on "well oiled machine" status. Postwar, it became a workhorse, forming the backbone of the strategic bombing fleet until the jets took over, way outnumbering the B36 force.
Cheers,
Wes

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## glennasher (Mar 19, 2020)

GrauGeist said:


> I don't think it's a yearning for a world where Nazis won, it's more of an obsession of the fantastic - the odd and almost sci-fi quality of many of the German what-ifs.
> 
> The U.S. had quite a few of those, but oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be as much fascination.





No one can deny that the Germans had a heckuva lot of rather fantastic ideas, and the technological know-how to do most of them. They didn't have the resources to fulfill their obviously talented brains, nor the time to do it. The US DID have the time, resources and brains to do it, which is why, in part, the Allies won. The Soviets had massive manpower, and the will to let them die to win. There's just no way the Germans could have won, regardless of their technological expertise. It always seemed to me that if there two ways of doing things, the Germans would take the "busy" road, making things a lot more complicated than necessary to get things done.
The Allied side more or less took the Stalin way of thinking, "Quantity has a quality of it's own".


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## pbehn (Mar 19, 2020)

glennasher said:


> No one can deny that the Germans had a heckuva lot of rather fantastic ideas, and the technological know-how to do most of them. They didn't have the resources to fulfill their obviously talented brains, nor the time to do it. The US DID have the time, resources and brains to do it, which is why, in part, the Allies won. The Soviets had massive manpower, and the will to let them die to win. There's just no way the Germans could have won, regardless of their technological expertise. It always seemed to me that if there two ways of doing things, the Germans would take the "busy" road, making things a lot more complicated than necessary to get things done.
> The Allied side more or less took the Stalin way of thinking, "Quantity has a quality of it's own".


This is typical of post war views of the war. What actually was done is less impressive than fantasy scenarios of what could have been done in a different war. Did the Nazi regime have a weapon that would disable their submarine pens and sink their best battleship with a single or few hits? Making a submarine so unsafe below water that the commanders were instructed to "duke it out" with aircraft rather than dive. Shooting down German night fighters close to their home airfield purely for psychological effect. De coding what was considered the most complex military code at the time "in real time". These are just a few of the fantasies that were done. When Germany invaded Poland a single engine fighter that could fly to Berlin, fight for 20 minutes and then return to UK was fantasy, when that fantasy became reality Goering knew the gig was over.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 19, 2020)

Peter Gunn said:


> Meh, merely me expressing _my opinion_ about _his opinion_. I happen to disagree with him, I don't think the B-29 was prone to killing it's crews etc. which is my opinion.



The B-29 did have its fair share of issues as any new advanced technology does (then and now). The kinks were worked out and overall it was a fine design more capable than any bomber to see service in the war.

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## TheMadPenguin (Mar 19, 2020)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> The B-29 did have its fair share of issues as any new advanced technology does (then and now). The kinks were worked out and overall it was a fine design more capable than any bomber to see service in the war.


I didn't diss the plane, I dissed the HYPE. That's what this thread is about, yes? The folks who said the P-51 was over-hyped didn't say it wasn't a marvelous plane. Neither have I said that the B-29 wasn't the best of it's time.
I said it killed more of it's crew than the enemy did. I'm waiting on more knowledgeable folk to educate me.
I said it (and it's A-bombs) didn't convince Japan to surrender, the Soviets who'd destroyed the Japanese army in Machuria in very short order and stood poised to invade and absorb Japan convinced the Japanese government to surrender while they still had a nation. Evidences to the contrary are welcome.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 19, 2020)

TheMadPenguin said:


> I didn't diss the plane,



Care to show me where I said you did? I was addressing his post, not yours.

As for the rest of your post, that is your opinion, and you are entitled to it. My opinion is different than yours regardless of the stats you post. Is that ok? Am I entitled to have a different opinion? You are taking this far too fricken personal.

Have you considered that it lost more crews to accidents than enemy action because of the environment it flew in? Probably not. B-17s, B-24’s and Lancasters faced a far more formidable German air defense including FLAK and enemy fighters for most of their flight to the target and back. B-29’s in the Pacific flew large portions of their missions over the vast ocean, not making enemy contact.

I suspect had the 29 served in Europe what “killed its crews, the plane or the enemy” would be reversed.

As I said you have your opinion, and your opinion is not wrong, because that is all it is. Everything about this thread is an opinion. Mine included. You can dislike this post too if you like...

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## GrauGeist (Mar 19, 2020)

TheMadPenguin said:


> I said it killed more of it's crew than the enemy did. I'm waiting on more knowledgeable folk to educate me.


B-29s flew 20,000 sorties during the war - out of all those sorties, 79 were lost.
Of those 79 B-29s that were lost, 21 were operational losses of various causes (mechanical, navigational, weather, etc.) and 58 were downed by enemy action.
Keep in mind that not all downings resulted in total loss of life.

So NO, the B-29 did not kill more crews than the enemy.

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## wuzak (Mar 19, 2020)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Care to show me where I said you did? I was addressing his post, not yours.
> 
> As for the rest of your post, that is your opinion, and you are entitled to it. My opinion is different than yours regardless of the stats you post. Is that ok? Am I entitled to have a different opinion? You are taking this far to fricken personal.
> 
> ...



I wonder if a B-29 devoid of defensive armament, save for the tail guns, woudl have been able to fly high enough and fast enough to survive the ETO as well as the B-17 and B-24 could with all their defences.

Alternatively, how effective would the B-29 as a night bomber, using Oboe/Gee-H/H2s or visual bombing on target indicators laid by the Pathfinder force, have been? Also without the remote gun installations.


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## GrauGeist (Mar 20, 2020)

The B-29 was surprisingly fast with a moderate load, even faster clean, especially at altitude.

If it operated in the ETO, just about the only Luftwaffe aircraft that would have a chance at intercepting it, would be the Me262 unless 190/109 Jabos were already vectored and loitering.


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## TheMadPenguin (Mar 20, 2020)

GrauGeist said:


> B-29s flew 20,000 sorties during the war - out of all those sorties, 79 were lost.
> Of those 79 B-29s that were lost, 21 were operational losses of various causes (mechanical, navigational, weather, etc.) and 58 were downed by enemy action.
> Keep in mind that not all downings resulted in total loss of life.
> 
> So NO, the B-29 did not kill more crews than the enemy.



Excuse my confusion please, I see in another thread by another poster



syscom3 said:


> I found some info on the losses.
> 
> http://www.au.af.mil/au/afhra/aafsd/aafsd_pdf/t165.pdf
> 
> ...



The link to the source is broken, so I can't verify immediately.
What I read in the first quote is that about 3/4 of losses were to enemy action, in the second quote, about 2/3 were "the plane quit flying" (414 losses (not 79) and 267 "other").

I don't mean to molest anybody's sacred cows or sacred opinions, but things don't add up here (and the 2/3 to "other" is the kind of data I've seen the most).

The Mad Penguin (as in "what sane penguin would retire to FLORIDA?")


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## GrauGeist (Mar 20, 2020)

No sacred cows, my numbers may be off because I am going from memory, but I DO know that the B-29 was an advanced design - far ahead of it's time - that was rushed into service because at the time of it's inception, the American military seriously thought that Britain would not be able to refuse Germany's offensive.
So it was conceived to to fly across the Atlantic and back in order to bomb German-held targets.
As it turns out, it became a valuable asset in the Pacific against Japan.

Yes, it had bugs because it was rushed into service, but it was not the widow-maker that your making it out to be.

My Uncle's sub, the SS Cavalla, was often given picket duties off the coast of Japan to rescue downed B-29 crews that had to ditch on their egress because of flack or interception, not because of mechanical issues.


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## WARSPITER (Mar 20, 2020)

The B-29 was similar to jumping from 3G to 4G on phones. A sound design which was a long way ahead of it's contemporaries. 
The number of derivates shows the versatility and the subsequent designs of later aircraft which were modelled on the original design
are it's legacy.


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## Peter Gunn (Mar 20, 2020)

The issue for me is this:

_"Me: B-29._
_Reality: it was a fussy temperamental plane more likely to kill you than the Japanese fighters scrambling against you. _
_etc."_

Stating your opinion as a fact tends to grind my gears. I have no problem with you having a different take on certain things, we're humans, we all see things differently. The above statement is not factual, although yes, the B-29 had a troublesome start, but name another country that came up with a similar design, produced it and not only made it operational, but used it to devastate a major opponents' cities and infrastructure. To me, I think that's a fairly awesome achievement, and not to diss any of our allied friends, I don't see another country with the possible exception of Great Britain with the ability to do that.

Perhaps you might read up on what the B-29 force did to Japans cities BEFORE the A-Bomb. And if you don't think the Japanese were worried about nuclear warfare, how long do you think they would be able to watch entire cities disappear in a flash one by one? That was going to start happening looong before the Russians ever got anywhere near mainland Japan.

Now, I have neither a sacred cow or sacred opinion on this matter, that your opinion differs from mine is fine, as I said, we're all human and two of us can look at the same thing and draw different conclusions, it's our nature. It was not my intent to ruffle any feathers or make the mod's job any harder.

I suppose I might have a small soft spot for the Superfortress as my uncle, one of dads 5 younger brothers was B-29 pilot out of Guam. But that really doesn't enter into the discussion here.

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## pbehn (Mar 20, 2020)

Until a plane enters service it is always more dangerous to its crew than the enemy.

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## Reluctant Poster (Mar 20, 2020)

GrauGeist said:


> No sacred cows, my numbers may be off because I am going from memory, but I DO know that the B-29 was an advanced design - far ahead of it's time - that was rushed into service because at the time of it's inception, the American military seriously thought that Britain would not be able to refuse Germany's offensive.
> So it was conceived to to fly across the Atlantic and back in order to bomb German-held targets.
> As it turns out, it became a valuable asset in the Pacific against Japan.
> 
> ...


The B29 wasn’t capable of flying over the Atlantic and back. That was the genesis of the B36.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 20, 2020)

Reluctant Poster said:


> The B29 wasn’t capable of flying over the Atlantic and back. That was the genesis of the B36.



Hense why we secured Greenland and Iceland...


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## GrauGeist (Mar 20, 2020)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Hense why we secured Greenland and Iceland...


Exactly.


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## Reluctant Poster (Mar 20, 2020)

GrauGeist said:


> Exactly.


You stated that it was conceived to fly back and forth across the Atlantic which isn’t the same.as iceland to Europe


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## pbehn (Mar 20, 2020)

Reading a lot of accident statistics it seems that the trainers were the most dangerous, why didn't they just put pilots in P-51s straight away because they were statistically much safer?

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 20, 2020)

pbehn said:


> why didn't they just put pilots in P-51s straight away because they were statistically much safer?


Sure, just give 'em 50 hours of Flight Sim X and turn 'em loose to go bank and yank!

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## pbehn (Mar 20, 2020)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Sure, just give 'em 50 hours of Flight Sim X and turn 'em loose to go bank and yank!


I do like insane use of statistics to "prove" something utterly stupid, did you know life expectancy in UK has increased by 25 years since tobacco was introduced?


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## GrauGeist (Mar 20, 2020)

Reluctant Poster said:


> You stated that it was conceived to fly back and forth across the Atlantic which isn’t the same.as iceland to Europe


Help me out here:
What's the body of water along that route called again?

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## drgondog (Mar 20, 2020)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Sure, just give 'em 50 hours of Flight Sim X and turn 'em loose to go bank and yank!



Lol - my father flew P-40K at Saratsota before ETO in May. Flew P-51B first time May 29 - 1 1/2 hours touch and go. Assigned the 355th June 3rd. 2 more hours familiarization with take off and formation assembly. First day of Combat - D-Day. First kill D-Day Ju 87.

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## pbehn (Mar 20, 2020)

drgondog said:


> Lol - my father flew P-40K at Saratsota before ETO in May. Flew P-51B first time May 29 - 1 1/2 hours touch and go. Assigned the 355th June 3rd. 2 more hours familiarization with take off and formation assembly. First day of Combat - D-Day. First kill D-Day Ju 87.


Great stuff and proves my statistical theory is correct.


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## Milosh (Mar 20, 2020)

pbehn said:


> Reading a lot of accident statistics it seems that the trainers were the most dangerous, why didn't they just put pilots in P-51s straight away because they were statistically much safer?



Only because they survived the training.


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## pbehn (Mar 20, 2020)

Milosh said:


> Only because they survived the training.


Dang, I knew there was something I hadn't taken into account.


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 20, 2020)

GrauGeist said:


> Help me out here:
> What's the body of water along that route called again?


Straits of Denmark? Irish Sea? North Sea? Certainly not the broad Atlantic!
On a 2003 Lufthansa flight, Boston to Munich, we passed just south of Greenland and Iceland, were in sight of the Faroe Islands, went just north of Ulster, crossed over Hadrian's Wall, and hit mainland Europe with the Netherlands under our right wing. (According to our bilingual tour guide pilot.) From FL410, with scattered to broken under cast, it was kind of hard to visually verify.
Cheers,
Wes 😀


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## swampyankee (Mar 20, 2020)

glennasher said:


> No one can deny that the Germans had a heckuva lot of rather fantastic ideas, and the technological know-how to do most of them. They didn't have the resources to fulfill their obviously talented brains, nor the time to do it. The US DID have the time, resources and brains to do it, which is why, in part, the Allies won. The Soviets had massive manpower, and the will to let them die to win. There's just no way the Germans could have won, regardless of their technological expertise. It always seemed to me that if there two ways of doing things, the Germans would take the "busy" road, making things a lot more complicated than necessary to get things done.
> The Allied side more or less took the Stalin way of thinking, "Quantity has a quality of it's own".



To put some of these myths in perspective:

The snorkel was first used on Dutch submarines; the Germans adopted it after they invaded that country.
Messerschmidt used NACA airfoils on many, if not most, of its aircraft. 
The jet engine was developed roughly simultaneously in the UK and Germany.
Centrimetric radar was developed by the Allies
Germany used Italian aerial torpedoes, as they were significantly better than the domestic ones.

In reality, the technological levels of the more highly industrialized of the belligerent countries were, overall, quite similar.

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## pbehn (Mar 20, 2020)

swampyankee said:


> To put some of these myths in perspective:
> 
> The snorkel was first used on Dutch submarines; the Germans adopted it after they invaded that country.
> Messerschmidt used NACA airfoils on many, if not most, of its aircraft.
> ...


You can also add to that the technological advance in B ull Sh it, which was used against the V1 and V2 attacks on London and "stuff" like proximity fused artillery which brought down a lot of V1s and changed the battlefield after D Day.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 20, 2020)

Reluctant Poster said:


> You stated that it was conceived to fly back and forth across the Atlantic which isn’t the same.as iceland to Europe



A lot of planes were "conceived" with totally unrealistic goals. for example the specification for the B-26 was issued in 1939 and said, in part:

"According to the requirements listed in the specification, a bombload of 3000 pounds was to be carried over a range of 2000 miles at a top speed of over 300 mph and at a service ceiling exceeding 20,000 feet."

Now please note that specification didn't say what the cruising speed was  just the top speed. And the B-26 didn't come close to meeting this specification as far as bomb load over a set distance. 

Also please note that the B-29 "concept" went through a number of different stages/designs before the final one showed up. 

" With its own funds, Boeing built a mockup of its bomber design in December of 1939. It envisaged wing loadings as high as 64 pounds per square foot, a twelve-man crew and the ability to carry 2000 pounds of bombs over distances in excess of 5000 miles."

and 
"In January of 1940, the Army issued the formal requirements for the VLR "superbomber". The requirements called for a speed of 400 mph, a range of 5333 miles, and a bomb load of 2000 pounds delivered at the halfway-point at that range.This became the basis for Request for Data R-40B and Specification XC-218. On January 29, 1940, the War Department formally issued Data R-40B and circulated it to Boeing, Consolidated, Douglas, and Lockheed. The official specification was revised in April to incorporate the lessons learned in early European wartime experience, and now included more defensive armament, armor, and self-sealing tanks. "

and
". In August of 1939, Boeing had started work on the Model 341 project, which featured a new high-lift aerofoil for a high aspect-ratio wing of 124 feet 7 inches in span. The Model 341 offered a maximum speed of 405 mph at 25,000 feet. It was to have been powered by four 2000 hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800 radials. Weighing 85,672 pounds, the range was to have been 7000 miles with one ton of bombs. A maximum load of 10,000 pounds could be carried over shorter distances. "

The 341 project was reworked into the 345 project which was the actual basis for the B-29. Reality had reared it's never pretty head and armor, self sealing tanks and defensive armament all cut into speed and range. 
It was figured out fairly soon that the actual performance was NOT going to reach the levels in the "concept" and operational experience made the 2000lb bomb load a bad joke. 

Alternate bases were going to be needed to get any sort of worthwhile bomb load onto european soil. 
And the B-36 (and B-35) were the fall back position in case the forward bases were lost.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Mar 21, 2020)

Reluctant Poster said:


> You stated that it was conceived to fly back and forth across the Atlantic which isn’t the same.as iceland to Europe



How so? That is still across the Atlantic. It’s just not non-stop.

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## GrauGeist (Mar 21, 2020)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> How so? That is still across the Atlantic. It’s just not non-stop.


It seemed to me that saying "flying across the Atlantic" was a simplified statement - I didn't realize that a 1,000 word dissertation on the logistics, routing and specific route detailing was necessary.
It appears that I was wrong

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## Peter Gunn (Mar 22, 2020)

GrauGeist said:


> *SNIP*
> 
> I didn't realize that a 1,000 word dissertation on the logistics, routing and specific route detailing was necessary.
> 
> ...


Due by next Wednesday or suffer letter grade reduction for every day late.

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## swampyankee (Mar 22, 2020)

Peter Gunn said:


> Due by next Wednesday or suffer letter grade reduction for every day late.



Don't forget: use Chicago format and citations. Encyclopedias don't count as valid sources.

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## GrauGeist (Mar 22, 2020)

Aww damn - there goes the trip to the beach with the gang
*facepalm*

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 22, 2020)

GrauGeist said:


> Aww damn - there goes the trip to the beach with the gang
> *facepalm*


And you sit home alone and don't get infected.


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## Dimlee (Mar 24, 2020)

TheMadPenguin said:


> I didn't diss the plane, I dissed the HYPE. That's what this thread is about, yes? The folks who said the P-51 was over-hyped didn't say it wasn't a marvelous plane. Neither have I said that the B-29 wasn't the best of it's time.
> I said it killed more of it's crew than the enemy did. I'm waiting on more knowledgeable folk to educate me.
> I said it (and it's A-bombs) didn't convince Japan to surrender, the Soviets who'd destroyed the Japanese army in Machuria in very short order and stood poised to invade and absorb Japan convinced the Japanese government to surrender while they still had a nation. Evidences to the contrary are welcome.



All factors were important: A-bombs, the threat of Allied invasion, the crisis in Manchuria (no, not the "destruction" yet - Japan's decision to accept Potsdam terms was made just hours after the USSR has broken the pact), the potential threat of the Soviet landing in Hokkaido. Really, there is no need to set one factor against another.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 25, 2021)

I'm about halfway through this slog ... where's the bathroom and the bar?

I've got my own ideas about which plane was most overrated in the war, but will read another 46 pages before offering it, because so many, ahem, _great_ points have been made ... so it'll be a couple of days, lol.



pbehn said:


> It all hinges on the term greatness I suppose. The Yak-3 appeared in 1944 same as the Tempest, whatever their performance was they didn't influence the direction of the war. In that respect, in my view the Hurricane was a far more significant and "great" aircraft that the plane two generations later from Hawkers the Tempest. There were many aircraft and some were for a time the best in one or two niches and from that changed the course of the whole conflict, it is to these few aircraft the term "greatness" applies.



Replying to a post almost three years old, I know -- but I agree with your assessment of "greatness", because it is in the context of the times that greatness is assigned, unless we're talking GOAT. And in WWII technology advanced so rapidly that what was great in 1941 was outmoded in 1944, generally. Impact matters.

I think greatness is also in the context of usage, which gives the Yak an entree into the conversation. It had an impact, and did what it did well.


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## GrauGeist (Mar 25, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I'm about halfway through this slog


The recent P-39 discussions kept reminding me of this extensive "P-40" thread...

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 25, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> The P-40, born from the P-36, was a design embedded in the 1930's. It truly had the aerodynamics of a brick when compared to later aircraft designs of the war. The fact that it soldiered on, across all fronts from the start of the war, to the end, is a testament to Curtiss' design.



... and to the pilots who flew it, I'd think. Not directed at you, but never undersell the human factor in any realm of combat. Using strengths against weaknesses in something that happens in air, land, and sea combat all the same.


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## 33k in the air (Mar 25, 2021)

Well, now that this thread has been resurrected . . . 



GrauGeist said:


> The P-40, born from the P-36, was a design embedded in the 1930's. It truly had the aerodynamics of a brick when compared to later aircraft designs of the war. The fact that it soldiered on, across all fronts from the start of the war, to the end, is a testament to Curtiss' design.



Curiously though, if one calculates the air miles per gallon in the most economical cruise condition, the P-40N has a very similar AMPG figure as the P-51D. At least, that's according to the cruise tables in the Pilot's Flight Operating Instruction manuals. Figures for the P-38L and P47D-25 provided for comparison.

*P-40N, 8,400 to 6,660 lbs, no external load, maximum range cruise condition*
At 15000 feet: 232 TAS, 39 GPH = 5.95 air miles per gallon
At 20,000 feet: 249 TAS, 42 GPH = 5.93 air miles per gallon
At 25,000 feet: 256 TAS, 43 GPH = 5.95 air miles per gallon

*P-51D-5, 9,600 to 8,000 lbs, wing bomb racks only, maximum range cruise condition*
At 15000 feet: 260 TAS, 44 GPH = 5.91 air miles per gallon
At 20,000 feet: 280 TAS, 48 GPH = 5.83 air miles per gallon
At 25,000 feet: 305 TAS, 52 GPH = 5.87 air miles per gallon

*P-38L, 17,400 to 13,500 lbs, tank supports only, maximum range cruise condition*
At 15000 feet: 229 TAS, 61 GPH = 3.75 air miles per gallon
At 20,000 feet: 248 TAS, 66 GPH = 3.76 air miles per gallon
At 25,000 feet: 267 TAS, 71 GPH = 3.76 air miles per gallon

*P-47D-25, 14,200 to 12,000 lbs, no external load, maximum range cruise condition *(preliminary data)
At 15000 feet: 266 TAS, 88 GPH = 3.02 air miles per gallon
At 20,000 feet: 288 TAS, 95 GPH = 3.03 air miles per gallon
At 25,000 feet: — no figures given —

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## wuzak (Mar 26, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> Well, now that this thread has been resurrected . . .
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Note that the P-51D is going 12-19% faster, depending on height, than the P-40N, which would be vital in enemy air space.

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## 33k in the air (Mar 26, 2021)

wuzak said:


> Note that the P-51D is going 12-19% faster, depending on height, than the P-40N, which would be vital in enemy air space.



Oh, no doubt there are other factors which are important and which push the P-40 down in any comparative ranking. But in terms of straight fuel efficiency, the P-40N performed very well. Much better than I expected, in fact. I had assumed the P-51 was likely the best in terms of air miles per gallon, given its demonstrated record of long-range flight, so I was quite surprised to see the P-40's figures.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 26, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> Oh, no doubt there are other factors which are important and which push the P-40 down in any comparative ranking. But in terms of straight fuel efficiency, the P-40N performed very well. Much better than I expected, in fact. I had assumed the P-51 was likely the best in terms of air miles per gallon, given its demonstrated record of long-range flight, so I was quite surprised to see the P-40's figures.



You might be quite surprised at a number of aircraft if you fly them slow enough or at the right speed and Altitude. Which is a rather unfair way to compare them. 
For example the Spitfire V could do 6.08mpg (US gallon) while doing 263mph true at 20,000ft. It could also get 6.45mpg (US gallon) while doing 225mph at 10,000ft but flying at the speed over enemy territory means you are providing target practice for the enemy with little hope of retaliating. Upping the speed at 20,000ft to even 300mph lowered the fuel mileage to 5.42mpg.

What was the fuel mileage at the speed and altitude needed to do the mission?


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## GrauGeist (Mar 26, 2021)

In that comparison, it might be interesting to note that the fuel consumption also coincides with the aircraft's weight, the P-40 being the lightest of the four, the P-47 being heaviest with full loadout.
Which also asks the question:
In the comparison of the four, what was their loadout, were the aircraft tested in factory fresh condition, were they all tested at the same time (under the same atmospheric conditions) or is this a compilation put together from seperate trials?


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## 33k in the air (Mar 27, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> You might be quite surprised at a number of aircraft if you fly them slow enough or at the right speed and Altitude.



At 20,000 feet the P-40N and P-38L were flying almost the same true airspeed for maximum range (249 mph vs. 248 mph).




Shortround6 said:


> Which is a rather unfair way to compare them.



I'm not claiming the P-40 was the superior aircraft.

I posted the figures in response to GrauGeist's comment that the P-40 "had the aerodynamics of a brick when compared to later aircraft designs of the war." It seems the aerodynamics of the P-40 are perhaps a little better than that. This would seem to be borne out also by the drag comparison tables appearing on pages 113 and 592 of Dean's _America's Hundred Thousand_, which showed the P-40 having a better drag coefficient than the F4U-1D, P-38J, and F6F-3. (Of course, the P-40 lacked in performance in ways others that impacted on its ability as a fighter.)

Perhaps it's a matter of how one defines "aerodynamics of a brick".

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## GregP (Mar 27, 2021)

Nobody built a military airplane that did not pass an acceptance test. So, at SOME point in a production fighter's early life, it was deemed to meet the requirement that was issued for its development OR it was the best likely to be available when they absolutely foresaw needing a fighter airplane. Even in the Soviet Union, they didn't just build a fighter aircraft because Stalin wanted it that way. They either passed or didn't pass state acceptance tests ... OR it was the best they thought they'd get in the time seen as when they needed it.

And that's true of ALL production fighter aircraft, P-40 included. When the war started for the U.S.A., it was almost the only game in town for us that was available in sufficient numbers to mean anything. The P-40Q proves it wasn't a basically flawed airframe since the P-40Q was essentially about as good as a P-51. It was a small bit slower, but also rolled a LOT better. It wasn't adopted primarilly because the P-51 was already available and in production, didn't have the range and thus, while the P-40Q was good, it also wasn't a leap above the already in-service P-51. It would likely have been adopted for certain has it been available in 1942. But the first one didn't fly until June 1943 and the second one didn't fly until January 1944. By the time the third one was delivered in April 1944, the P-51 was hitting its stride in Europe and making quite a name for itself.

There were quite a few fighters other than the P-40 that were good enough when the production decision was made, but were perhaps less than that 2 years later. The people at Boulton Paul probably initially thought the Defiant was pretty good, too, and the powers that be agreed with them. The Zero was pretty darned good in 1939 - 1942 but was less than top tier in 1944 - 1945. All that really shows is the speed of development during wartime when technology was at a point where significant improvements were possible every few months. It doesn't show that any particular airplane was "bad" when it was selected for production ... with the possible exception of the PZL Zubr, widely accepted as the worst WWII combat aircraft ever produced, even in small numbers. Someone in Poland was very drunk when the Zubr production decision was made ...

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## Shortround6 (Mar 27, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> Perhaps it's a matter of how one defines "aerodynamics of a brick".


Your definition and mine might be rather close. The early P-40s had rather good aerodynamics. Just compare speed to installed horsepower for the P-40, Bf 109, Hurricane and Spitfire. 
The P-40 was the heaviest by far and yet it was almost tied with the Spit MK I for first place in speed. What they did with the weight is subject to question but the plane was aerodynamic. 

as for comparing to late war aircraft, one would hope that they learned something in 5 years, P-40 aerodynamics started in 1935 and finished in 1940. P-51 was designed in 1940 and perhaps improved in 1942 with the Merlin (referring to the radiator installation).

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## tomo pauk (Mar 27, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> I'm not claiming the P-40 was the superior aircraft.
> 
> I posted the figures in response to GrauGeist's comment that the P-40 "had the aerodynamics of a brick when compared to later aircraft designs of the war." It seems the aerodynamics of the P-40 are perhaps a little better than that. This would seem to be borne out also by the drag comparison tables appearing on pages 113 and 592 of Dean's _America's Hundred Thousand_, which showed the P-40 having a better drag coefficient than the F4U-1D, P-38J, and F6F-3. (Of course, the P-40 lacked in performance in ways others that impacted on its ability as a fighter.)
> 
> Perhaps it's a matter of how one defines "aerodynamics of a brick".



P-40 was certainly not with the one with "aerodynamics of a brick". While it certainly was not as streamlined as P-39, it was about as good as Fw 190D or the Spitfires, and far better than Wildcat or Hurricane. The Bf 109E was the one with "aerodynamics of a brick", it's saving grace being it's small size and early availability.
The main failing of P-40 was that it never received engine upgrade to the tune the Spitfire or P-51 gotten by mid-war. Or an engine as good as what Fw 190 or Bf 109 received.


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## Shortround6 (Mar 27, 2021)

tomo pauk said:


> The main failing of P-40 was that it never received engine upgrade


And spent most of it's life overloaded for the engine it did have.

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## P-39 Expert (Mar 27, 2021)

The mechanical two stage Allison -93 was in production by April 1943, about the same time that the first two stage Merlin started production at Packard for the P-51. P-40 (and P-39) would have greatly benefitted from this engine with critical altitude of 21000'. Move the carb from the second stage up to the normal position on the first stage and critical altitude goes up to about 25000'. Makes the P-40 a very competitive plane but the P-51 carried a lot more internal fuel and range was all important at this stage of the war. P-40 (and P-39) had been relegated to export and training by 1943 and the AAF certainly didn't want to gift the Russians with a high altitude plane at that stage of the war.


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## tomo pauk (Mar 27, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> ...
> P-40 (and P-39) had been relegated to export and training by 1943 and the AAF certainly didn't want to gift the Russians with a high altitude plane at that stage of the war.



Russians will not get the 1st pick on P-40s powered by 2-stage V-1710s.


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## P-39 Expert (Mar 27, 2021)

tomo pauk said:


> Russians will not get the 1st pick on P-40s powered by 2-stage V-1710s.


Maybe not, but if they did want them (who wouldn't) they would be demanding them, like P-39s and P-63s. Just more friction between our allies. Just another reason not to build them.

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## tomo pauk (Mar 27, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> Maybe not, but if they did want them (who wouldn't) they would be demanding them, like P-39s and P-63s. Just more friction between our allies. Just another reason not to build them.



They can have P-39s - they like them, they keep asking for more, and no other air force does the same. Or they can say - okay, we don't want your free stuff.

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## P-39 Expert (Mar 27, 2021)

I don't understand you last sentence? Russians are going to turn down lend lease supplies?


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## tomo pauk (Mar 27, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> I don't understand you last sentence? Russians are going to turn down lend lease supplies?



Last sentence was my point. They will not turn down LL supplies, the P-39 being part of them.

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## P-39 Expert (Mar 27, 2021)

Thanks for the clarification.


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## Ovod (Mar 27, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> The mechanical two stage Allison -93 was in production by April 1943, about the same time that the first two stage Merlin started production at Packard for the P-51. P-40 (and P-39) would have greatly benefitted from this engine with critical altitude of 21000'. Move the carb from the second stage up to the normal position on the first stage and critical altitude goes up to about 25000'. Makes the P-40 a very competitive plane but the P-51 carried a lot more internal fuel and range was all important at this stage of the war. P-40 (and P-39) had been relegated to export and training by 1943 and the AAF certainly didn't want to gift the Russians with a high altitude plane at that stage of the war.



By the beginning of the Sicilian campaign the P-40 was being mainly used as a ground attacker - no need to be flying at 25,000 feet or worry about its air-to-air capability.

Regarding the poll my first choice for overrated aircraft is the Spitfire. My second choice would have been the Il-2.


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## buffnut453 (Mar 27, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Regarding the poll my first choice for overrated aircraft is the Spitfire. My second choice would have been the Il-2.



Because?


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## davparlr (Mar 27, 2021)

The Spitfire was limited in use in the first part of the was due to small internal fuel. As a point defense fighter it seemed to be excellent. Later in the war, when closer airfields were available, limited range was less important.

I agree with the IL 2 being overrated. It was available and was valuable but poor precision and vulnerability was devastating with 15,000+ shot down? Even the light brigade was able to penetrate the Russian cannon line but at what cost.

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## tomo pauk (Mar 27, 2021)

davparlr said:


> The Spitfire was limited in use in the first part of the was due to small internal fuel. As a point defense fighter it seemed to be excellent. Later in the war, when closer airfields were available, limited range was less important.



In the 1st part of the war, Spitfire was excellent. For the British, 1st part of war ended by Autumn of 1941?

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## fastmongrel (Mar 27, 2021)

davparlr said:


> The Spitfire was limited in use in the first part of the was due to small internal fuel. As a point defense fighter it seemed to be excellent.



The Spitfire didnt have small internal fuel, it had exactly the amount of fuel required for its job of defending Britain's airspace.


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 27, 2021)

davparlr said:
The Spitfire was limited in use in the first part of the was due to small internal fuel. As a point defense fighter it seemed to be excellent.



fastmongrel said:


> The Spitfire didnt have small internal fuel, it had exactly the amount of fuel required for its job of defending Britain's airspace.


IE, a point defense fighter. (And with the help of an extensive radar and GCI network.) Later, in Australia, without those tools to aid it, it didn't fare so well.

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## pbehn (Mar 27, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Your definition and mine might be rather close. The early P-40s had rather good aerodynamics. Just compare speed to installed horsepower for the P-40, Bf 109, Hurricane and Spitfire.
> The P-40 was the heaviest by far and yet it was almost tied with the Spit MK I for first place in speed. What they did with the weight is subject to question but the plane was aerodynamic.
> 
> as for comparing to late war aircraft, one would hope that they learned something in 5 years, P-40 aerodynamics started in 1935 and finished in 1940. P-51 was designed in 1940 and perhaps improved in 1942 with the Merlin (referring to the radiator installation).


Aerodynamics has many facets, one of which is speed. Weight does have an effect on speed but not a huge effect. The Spitfire had to intercept at all altitudes. It may have been almost tied with the Spitfire at most altitudes but not at the highest, with the same engine. There would be little point in stripping the guns and radios out of Spitfires to get up to 40+ thousand feet if it weighed half a ton more to start with. The spitfires small frame and lightweight construction are often criticised but that was part and parcel of what it was and what it was designed to do, which others weren't.


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## nuuumannn (Mar 27, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> And spent most of it's life overloaded for the engine it did have.



I spoke to a guy who has spent time restoring P-40s and is working on a P-40N. He summarised that somewhere along the way, Curtiss lost their way with the P-40 and he could tell this in the standard of manufacture between the early P-40s compared to the later ones. The 'E model was beautifully made with attention to engineering norms, such as edge distance etc. The P-40N was not well made. Rivetting was not standard and was all over the place, the finish of parts was roughshod and the aircraft was unsophisticated compared to the previous aircraft.

When coming up with the 'N model, Curtiss was told to make it cheaper, faster, better, lighter, carry more fuel and be made of more non-strategic parts and make it faster to build. They achieved the first one and the last two. Production time was reduced and the use of plastics for things like map cases etc instead of aluminum was incorporated, and it cost less. However, the rest of the requirement it couldn't achieve. It was slower than previous models and didn't have an appreciable increase in performance. What's more, the vacuum pump that drove the blind flying instruments was removed, thus the aircraft couldn't fly in IMC, which resulted in an incident where a bunch of P-40Ns escorting B-24s got lost in cloud and flew into a mountain in PNG.

A P-40E awaiting its turn for restoration. It'll be returned to flying condition and then put up for sale.





NZ3043 ii

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## buffnut453 (Mar 27, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> davparlr said:
> The Spitfire was limited in use in the first part of the was due to small internal fuel. As a point defense fighter it seemed to be excellent.
> 
> 
> IE, a point defense fighter. (And with the help of an extensive radar and GCI network.) Later, in Australia, without those tools to aid it, it didn't fare so well.



And yet it also excelled as a high altitude photo recce aircraft, and one that wasn't short on range.

This whole "point defence" thing is overblown. The Spitfire range certainly wasn't up to that of the P-51 but it was far from just being point defence. 

As to the latter point, any defending fighter that isn't aided by radar and GCI will likely have a tough time. The very nature of defensive ops mean that the enemy has the advantage of attacking wherever and whenever he chooses, which makes it really hard to respond for the defending fighters.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 27, 2021)

A lot of the judgments about the Spitfires short range come from changing conditions. 

In 1939 there were very few fighters that could perform like the Spitfire (or even the Hurricane) that could fly much further at similar speeds. 
Things changed by 1941 and changed even more by 1943. 
How many "long range" P-40s were there in 1939? how about none. 
Anybody fancy trying to fight Spitfires with P-35s? 
When does the long range Ki-43 show up? By the end of May 1941 the Japanese have built 12 production planes.


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## GregP (Mar 27, 2021)

Referencing post #1847, I bet the guys still flying P-40s in late 1944 would be very surprised to hear it was relegated to training and export in 1943. The last P-40 kill against a Japanese aircraft was 29 Jan 1945. They were in active U.S. service until the end of the war.

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## davparlr (Mar 27, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> This whole "point defence" thing is overblown. The Spitfire range certainly wasn't up to that of the P-51 but it was far from just being point defence.


And range is not only important for escort but also allows for deep interdiction, extended combat air patrol over the battlefield, and extended time in combat, things the Spitfire would come up short due to limited internal fuel. I don't necessarily thiink the Spit was overrated. It did fight valiantly over England, Africa, Western Europe, etc., confronting the best Germany and Italy had to offer, a beautiful, well designed aircraft.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 27, 2021)

Zipper730 said:


> Actually I've had coke, pepsi, and probably sprite up the nose, they all feel about equally unpleasant.



Whatever you do, do not try this with brandy.

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## nuuumannn (Mar 27, 2021)

The problem with debating the Spitfire's range is, like so many things here, context. As has been pointed out, no fighter designed in 1935/1936 had what we have come to understand as excellent range. It's worth remembering that Spitfires escorted the first 8th Air Force missions into France in 1942.

Also, look at the size of the UK and compare it with the size of the United States and then think about how far away from Britain its nearest enemy is and think about how far away from the United States those enemy countries that it found itself going to war with were. US fighters need a long-range, just to go from production facility to home air bases, let alone fly combat operations abroad.

Before WW2 the fear was that the Germans would fly their bombers all the way from Germany to Britain unescorted (hence the rationale behind the Defiant, but that's another story), so did the British expect the Spitfire to _need_ what we consider a long-range? No, and as for fighter escort, it didn't exist in the RAF's vocab prior to the war; everyone, that is _all_ armed forces equipped with bombers believed they could operate unescorted before the outbreak of WW2, including the USAAC.

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## Shortround6 (Mar 27, 2021)

GregP said:


> Referencing post #1847, I bet the guys still flying P-40s in late 1944 would be very surprised to hear it was relegated to training and export in 1943. The last P-40 kill against a Japanese aircraft was 29 Jan 1945. They were in active U.S. service until the end of the war.



If they were surprised it is because they didn't read the P-40 training manual. It was on page 5. 
Now the wording may be a bit misleading. It says no more P-40s are being sent to the war theaters, but replacement aircraft were sent to the units still using them.
However no new units equipped with P-40s were sent and many units in the field with P-40s were re-equipped with later fighters as supplies permitted. 
The manual goes on to say how due to the characteristics of the P-40 a good P-40 pilot was a good fighter pilot.

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 27, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> The P-40N was not well made. Rivetting was not standard and was all over the place, the finish of parts was roughshod and the aircraft was unsophisticated compared to the previous aircraft.


My dad, who worked at the Bell plant, 22 miles up the road from Curtis, and many others I've spoken with who worked in defense industries said that towards the end of the war the draft was taking many of the experienced prewar workers who had been deferred earlier due to age and critical skills. With the expansion phase over and the end in sight, but many bloody battles yet to come, the insatiable demand of the infantry meatgrinder was running into a manpower crisis. The "arsenal of democracy" new hires were ramping up their skills and some were moving into low level supervisory positions, so the draft started re-evaluating the critical skills and age deferments of many of the old hands who looked like they might be fit enough to march and carry a rifle. My dad, who had lost an eye and suffered leg and foot deformities from a childhood accident had to go to the induction center in Buffalo to get his 4F deferment reevaluated.
The loss of a lot of this talent was said to have had a detrimental effect on the workmanship of late war production.

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## drgondog (Mar 28, 2021)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> Sorry in the delay in getting in the debate. Here in Spain we get in alarm state in the weekend and have a rough time the days before and after that.
> 
> To many messages to reply one by one ( and some got replied already).
> 
> ...



I assume that you know that the A-20/DB-7 intended role was a battlefield attack light bomber - tasked for interdiction. When proposed the AAC 'remembered' that they were part of the US Army and they (AAF) had nothing specified for battlefield tasking other than Observation (O-47A, etc.). Perhaps you could name other similar role aircraft operationally available in 1941-1942?

Recall that the A-20 was tasked for medium level bombardment as required - simply because it was available in quantity when the B-25 and B-26 (and Successor A-26) were not. So it was tasked to perform fighter bomber/attack roles in Pacific/CBI and Africa and Italy. It was tasked for recon and night fighting because it could be modified to fit those roles until newer attack/recon/NF aircraft replaced it. It was well liked by the pilots that flew them, it was reliable, cheap and an excellent performer from SL through middle altitudes. 

To your point of 'most over-rated'. Versus what? What 'rating' do you take exception to? AFAIK it was never rated as Best of anything, merely good at a lot of things.

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## Zipper730 (Mar 28, 2021)

drgondog said:


> When proposed the AAC 'remembered' that they were part of the US Army and they (AAF) had nothing specified for battlefield tasking other than Observation (O-47A, etc.). Perhaps you could name other similar role aircraft operationally available in 1941-1942?


What g-loads was the O-47 stressed for?


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## FLYBOYJ (Mar 28, 2021)

Zipper730 said:


> What g-loads was the O-47 stressed for?



I would guess, not as much as an A-20.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 28, 2021)

I'm leaning towards the F6F or the P-61. The former because while it racked up an amazing tally, it made its reputation in 1944 against largely second-rate pilots in second-rate airplanes; the latter because for all the ballyhoo and chilling moniker, it tallied humdrum numbers.

I think most WWII aircraft are fairly rated.

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## pbehn (Mar 28, 2021)

drgondog said:


> I assume that you know that the A-20/DB-7 intended role was a battlefield attack light bomber - tasked for interdiction. When proposed the AAC 'remembered' that they were part of the US Army and they (AAF) had nothing specified for battlefield tasking other than Observation (O-47A, etc.). Perhaps you could name other similar role aircraft operationally available in 1941-1942?
> 
> Recall that the A-20 was tasked for medium level bombardment as required - simply because it was available in quantity when the B-25 and B-26 (and Successor A-26) were not. So it was tasked to perform fighter bomber/attack roles in Pacific/CBI and Africa and Italy. It was tasked for recon and night fighting because it could be modified to fit those roles until newer attack/recon/NF aircraft replaced it. It was well liked by the pilots that flew them, it was reliable, cheap and an excellent performer from SL through middle altitudes.
> 
> To your point of 'most over-rated'. Versus what? What 'rating' do you take exception to? AFAIK it was never rated as Best of anything, merely good at a lot of things.


Such machines are normally very highly rated, at least by the people involved at the time. When things kick off, something that can do lots of things allows you the time to build experience, infrastructure and learn what it is that you need so better things can be developed.

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## GregP (Mar 28, 2021)

I have 10,000 O-47 drawings, have worked for more than 6 years on one of them, completing the starboard stub wing and some mainspar work, and do not kow to what G-level it was stressed. Go figure.

Below, we have the leading edge clecoed in place. We reused the stub ribs and made new top skin and leading edge.





We also had just finished riveting in the landing gear attach points, on the main spar, right above the front support. We made the middle rib vertical supports from scracth and also made the new trailing edge. About the only thing we reused were the ribs, and we made a few of those, too. It hasn't progressed all that far since here because my partner in restoration quit for medical reasons and I can't find anyone else who is interested enough in the O-47 to work on it.

What makes it a great museum airplane is that fact that you can put three people under the greenhouse and 2 or 3 in the belly and have some help at an airshow. It will cruise around 200 mph or so, so it can easily fly in with the fighters whenever they go to an event.

Below is the O-47 before we fitted the leading edge. You can see the observation port under the wing where the observer(s) could look out and down. A really good plane for observing the countryside.






Perhaps an ugly airplane, but faster than it looks and quite useful. It performed yeoman service in WWII flying along the Atlantic and Carribbean coasts looking for U-boats.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 28, 2021)

GregP said:


> I have 10,000 O-47 drawings, have worked for more than 6 years on one of them, completing the starboard stub wing and some mainspar work, and do not kow to what G-level it was stressed. Go figure.
> 
> Below, we have the leading edge clecoed in place. We reused the stub ribs and made new top skin and leading edge.
> 
> ...



It looks pregnant.

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 28, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> It looks pregnant.


Uh-oh, shotgun wedding!

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## Shortround6 (Mar 28, 2021)

Sort of an American Lysander, except it couldn't bomb

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 28, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Uh-oh, shotgun wedding!



Is that 12-ga operated by the observer, or in the wing? Inquiring minds want to know!


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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 28, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Is that 12-ga operated by the observer, or in the wing? Inquiring minds want to know!


Four 12 ga Remington 1100s with drum mags full of 3" Magnum rifled slugs in the wings, two more each on swivel mounts top and bottom aft. Gefahr! Stackelschwein!

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 28, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Four 12 ga Remington 1100s with drum mags full of 3" Magnum rifled slugs in the wings, two more each on swivel mounts top and bottom aft. Gefahr! Stackelschwein!



That's gonna be one pretty married groom, sounds like.

Getting ready to buy an 870 here m'self.

ETA: not for marryin' the chilluns, just have some critters running around.


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## wlewisiii (Mar 28, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> That's gonna be one pretty married groom, sounds like.
> 
> Getting ready to buy an 870 here m'self.
> 
> ETA: not for marryin' the chilluns, just have some critters running around.



Just recently picked up a Franchi Affinity semiauto in 20 gauge. Sweet bird and varmint shotty.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 28, 2021)

wlewisiii said:


> Just recently picked up a Franchi Affinity semiauto in 20 gauge. Sweet bird and varmint shotty.



Never heard of that make before, but it reads pretty usable.

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 29, 2021)

wlewisiii said:


> Just recently picked up a Franchi Affinity semiauto in 20 gauge. Sweet bird and varmint shotty.


Got one of those cheap Hatfield semi autos that everybody loves to hate. Cleaned and lubed it before shooting, and have had no trouble with it at all. Wonder if the folks who are fussing about them are the sort that don't take care of their stuff.

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## GrauGeist (Mar 29, 2021)

Love my 12 ga. Remington Model 11-48 (former military issue)

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## glennasher (Mar 29, 2021)

wlewisiii said:


> Just recently picked up a Franchi Affinity semiauto in 20 gauge. Sweet bird and varmint shotty.




Franchi has been around a long time, they usually feature an aluminum alloy receiver for lighter weight compared to other brands. I think they're owned by the Beretta Corporation now. A cousin of mine has a couple of their 1960s vintage guns, a 20 gauge shotgun and a .22 autoloading rifle, both somewhat based upon old Browning designs. The 20gauge is just plain sweet, but it kicks some because of the 5 1/2 lb weight.


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## drgondog (Mar 29, 2021)

Zipper730 said:


> What g-loads was the O-47 stressed for?


IIRC - 4+, 1.5-, 1G lateral

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 29, 2021)

drgondog said:


> IIRC - 4+, 1.5-, 1G lateral


Hell, that's not even Utility Category!


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## davparlr (Mar 29, 2021)

drgondog said:


> To your point of 'most over-rated'. Versus what? What 'rating' do you take exception to? AFAIK it was never rated as Best of anything, merely good at a lot of things.


I agree. Considering that, in early in 1941, the A-20B has a top speed of 350 mph at 12k, much faster than the Zero, about as fast as a Bf 109E, and only 10 mph slower than an Fw 190A, at this altitude. In addition, it's cruise speed of 278 mph in the area where the maneuverability of Zero is starting to degrade due to control forces. Throw in its noted ease of flying makes it ideal for newbie pilots, which were coming out in groves. I think it is an under-rated aircraft.

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## fastmongrel (Mar 29, 2021)

davparlr said:


> I agree. Considering that, in early in 1941, the A-20B has a top speed of 350 mph at 12k, much faster than the Zero, about as fast as a Bf 109E, and only 10 mph slower than an Fw 190A, at this altitude. In addition, it's cruise speed of 278 mph in the area where the maneuverability of Zero is starting to degrade due to control forces. Throw in its noted ease of flying makes it ideal for newbie pilots, which were coming out in groves. I think it is an under-rated aircraft.



Are you sure about the top speed every source on Google seems to give a top speed of around 320mph and cruise at 280mph. Still very fast for 1941 about the same speed as a Beaufighter.


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## Mike Williams (Mar 29, 2021)

fastmongrel said:


> Are you sure about the top speed every source on Google seems to give a top speed of around 320mph and cruise at 280mph. Still very fast for 1941 about the same speed as a Beaufighter.



Douglas A-20B Airplane, A.C. No.41-2671. Acceptance Performance Tests

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## wlewisiii (Mar 29, 2021)

davparlr said:


> I agree. Considering that, in early in 1941, the A-20B has a top speed of 350 mph at 12k, much faster than the Zero, about as fast as a Bf 109E, and only 10 mph slower than an Fw 190A, at this altitude. In addition, it's cruise speed of 278 mph in the area where the maneuverability of Zero is starting to degrade due to control forces. Throw in its noted ease of flying makes it ideal for newbie pilots, which were coming out in groves. I think it is an under-rated aircraft.



These and other reasons are why I have the Havok number one on my list of under rated aircraft of WWII. If I had been a pilot in that war, it's the only twin I'd have wanted to go into combat in, especially in the pacific.

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## fastmongrel (Mar 29, 2021)

Mike Williams said:


> Douglas A-20B Airplane, A.C. No.41-2671. Acceptance Performance Tests



The link won't open for me it starts to open then disappears, probably my dodgy broadband. What's the top speed shown.


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## pinsog (Mar 29, 2021)

fastmongrel said:


> The link won't open for me it starts to open then disappears, probably my dodgy broadband. What's the top speed shown.








there you go

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## fastmongrel (Mar 29, 2021)

349mph if I am reading the document right. That's Spitfire MkV with Vokes filter speed I didn't realise they were such hot rods.


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## drgondog (Mar 29, 2021)

wlewisiii said:


> These and other reasons are why I have the Havok number one on my list of under rated aircraft of WWII. If I had been a pilot in that war, it's the only twin I'd have wanted to go into combat in, especially in the pacific.


My father flew A20, A-26 and B-26 in various stage of his career as a fighter pilot - liked all of them, but stated that A-20 flew like a fighter

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 29, 2021)

I've definitely been guilty of underrating the A-20. I didn't realize it had such good performance.

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## fastmongrel (Mar 30, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I've definitely been guilty of underrating the A-20. I didn't realize it had such good performance.



Me too I always thought of it as a sort of Blenheim on steroids. I am looking at it with new eyes.

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 30, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I've definitely been guilty of underrating the A-20. I didn't realize it had such good performance.


Another Heinemann hotrod. Just think if they'd put a machine gun battery nose on it like they did on B25s later, what an unholy terror it would have been in the Port Moresby - Lae feud early on. Zeros would get one pass at it, MAYBE, then be over the hump of the Owen Stanleys before they could catch up to it again. That is, IF they survived the initial head-on pass against a battery of boresighted .50s. What do you think, could you fit six in there without resorting to cheek blisters? Anybody for eight? Any takers?

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## fastmongrel (Mar 30, 2021)

Don't see why they couldn't fit lots of M2s in there. The Lightning had 4 plus a Hispano and the A20 nose is similar width and deeper


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## fastmongrel (Mar 30, 2021)

I have a vague memory of a photo of an RAF Boston with 12 X .303s in the nose. Can't find it again as is usual when you remember something.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Mar 30, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Another Heinemann hotrod. Just think if they'd put a machine gun battery nose on it like they did on B25s later, what an unholy terror it would have been in the Port Moresby - Lae feud early on. Zeros would get one pass at it, MAYBE, then be over the hump of the Owen Stanleys before they could catch up to it again. That is, IF they survived the initial head-on pass against a battery of boresighted .50s. What do you think, could you fit six in there without resorting to cheek blisters? Anybody for eight? Any takers?



They did have a solid-nose version with six fifties iirc.


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## GrauGeist (Mar 30, 2021)

The B-25 and A-26 gunships could easily have 12 or more .50 MGs facing foreward.
An 8-gun nose, two "cheek packs" (two .50s each) and the upper turret (two .50s) locked foreward would rain down a great deal of hurt.
Add wing blisters and the numbers increase from there...


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## 33k in the air (Mar 30, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> They did have a solid-nose version with six fifties iirc.



The early A-20G attack version had a solid nose containing 4 x 20mm cannons, each with 60 rounds, and 2 x .50-cal machine guns, each with 350 rounds. This was later replaced with a nose containing 6 x .50-cal machine guns, each with 350 rounds. The bomber version had a glazed nose with 2 x .50-cal machine guns, each with 350 rounds.




GrauGeist said:


> The B-25 and A-26 gunships could easily have 12 or more .50 MGs facing foreward.
> An 8-gun nose, two "cheek packs" (two .50s each) and the upper turret (two .50s) locked foreward would rain down a great deal of hurt.
> Add wing blisters and the numbers increase from there...



The A-26 could be fitted with a variety of nose armaments according to the aircraft's manual:

6 x .50-cal MGs
1 x 37mm cannon and 4 x .50-cal MGs
1 x 37mm cannon and 2 x .50-cal MGs
2 x 37mm cannons
1 x 75mm cannon and 2 x .50-cal MGs
1 x 75mm cannon and 1 x 37mm cannon

I don't know how often these other loadouts were used, but they apparently existed as options. The forward nose armament could also be supplemented with up to 8 x .50-cal MGs in underwing pods (two pods under each wing, each pod containing two MGs). Later A-26s had a solid nose with 8 x .50-cal MGs with 6 x .50-cal MGs in the wings (three inside each).

The A-26C bomber version had a glazed nose with two fixed .50-cal MGs.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Mar 30, 2021)

Nice to have this thread alive again.



drgondog said:


> I assume that you know that the A-20/DB-7 intended role was a battlefield attack light bomber - tasked for interdiction.





drgondog said:


> Perhaps you could name other similar role aircraft operationally available in 1941-1942?



The Bf 110 and the Ju 88 in the S.U. in such way, the Pe-2 by the S.U., the Baltimore and the Maryland in N.A.



drgondog said:


> Recall that the A-20 was tasked for medium level bombardment as required - simply because it was available in quantity when the B-25 and B-26 (and Successor A-26) were not. So it was tasked to perform fighter bomber/attack roles in Pacific/CBI and Africa and Italy. It was tasked for recon and night fighting because it could be modified to fit those roles until newer attack/recon/NF aircraft replaced it.


It wasn't very successful as recon or nightfighter and others were in service such as the Mosquito and the Beaufighter (deployed by USAAF in the MTO).



drgondog said:


> To your point of 'most over-rated'. Versus what?


Against the idea that it was THE light bomber/interdictor. Could be my fault that I had gone to put the A-20 in the highest regard at first and came after to see that wasn't so unique. There were others as capable at first and others more versatile after midwar.

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## SaparotRob (Mar 30, 2021)

I’m surprised that the Mustang got so many “overrated” votes.

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## pbehn (Mar 30, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I’m surprised that the Mustang got so many “overrated” votes.


Basically because it didn't win the whole war from start to finish in every theatre on its own, some have the impression that it did.

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## SaparotRob (Mar 30, 2021)

It didn’t?

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## Shortround6 (Mar 30, 2021)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> It wasn't very successful as recon



This was rather dependent on theater. It didn't have enough range for many recon missions in the Pacific.

The Russians used a number of the early ones (without armor or self sealing tanks) for Recon and were fairly successful. But most of eastern Europe didn't have anywhere near the flak density or fighter coverage of either western Europe or the Med. 

See: The Douglas A-20 Havoc/Boston in Soviet Service

although some of the claims may be a bit overstated

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## GrauGeist (Mar 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> It didn’t?


There's only a select few types that soldiered on from the war's start to finish AND served in all theaters, the Mustang was not one of them.


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## Stig1207 (Mar 31, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> This was rather dependent on theater. It didn't have enough range for many recon missions in the Pacific.
> 
> The Russians used a number of the early ones (without armor or self sealing tanks) for Recon and were fairly successful. But most of eastern Europe didn't have anywhere near the flak density or fighter coverage of either western Europe or the Med.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the link, nice find.


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## Peter Gunn (Mar 31, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> There's only a select few types that soldiered on from the war's start to finish AND served in all theaters, the Mustang was not one of them.


Then how do you explain it escorting the Doolittle raid, torpedoing three carriers at Midway, knocking Rommel for six and dropping the Atomic bomb?

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## fastmongrel (Mar 31, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Then how do you explain it escorting the Doolittle raid, torpedoing three carriers at Midway, knocking Rommel for six and dropping the Atomic bomb?



It was only two carriers at Midway the third was scuttled by the crew.

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## pbehn (Mar 31, 2021)

fastmongrel said:


> It was only two carriers at Midway the third was scuttled by the crew.


Scuttled when they saw the einsel schwantz flieger Cadillac, commonly called "grumbling backfiring laminar death"

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## SaparotRob (Mar 31, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> There's only a select few types that soldiered on from the war's start to finish AND served in all theaters, the Mustang was not one of them.


I know, I know. Aw c’mon GrauGeist, I was joking. I think that’s the third confirmed joke to crash and burn.


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## SaparotRob (Mar 31, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Then how do you explain it escorting the Doolittle raid, torpedoing three carriers at Midway, knocking Rommel for six and dropping the Atomic bomb?


You forgot leading the air search for Amelia Earhart.

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## SaparotRob (Mar 31, 2021)

Although it may have the P.509.


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## pbehn (Mar 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I know, I know. Aw c’mon GrauGeist, I was joking. I think that’s the third confirmed joke to crash and burn.


Hey, stick around a while, we havnt agreed when it started and finished yet.

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## GrauGeist (Mar 31, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> ...and dropping the Atomic bomb?


That was the P-39 (without nose-armor)



SaparotRob said:


> I know, I know. Aw c’mon GrauGeist, I was joking. I think that’s the third confirmed joke to crash and burn.


Try putting black crosses on your jokes, then.
They'll fly higher, faster and be invincible...

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## SaparotRob (Mar 31, 2021)

As an aside, I know I’ve been posting too much when balkenkreuz is the first choice to pop up on the “predictive spelling” app on my iPhone.

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## SaparotRob (Mar 31, 2021)

IJN is number two.


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## SaparotRob (Mar 31, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> That was the P-39 (without nose-armor)
> 
> 
> Try putting black crosses on your jokes, then.
> They'll fly higher, faster and be invincible...


Now you tell me.


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## special ed (Mar 31, 2021)

Right. Three crash and burn, you're out. Go Stand in the corner.


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## SaparotRob (Mar 31, 2021)

special ed said:


> Right. Three crash and burn, you're out. Go Stand in the corner.


Okay but I’ll be back.

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 31, 2021)

special ed said:


> Right. Three crash and burn, you're out. Go Stand in the corner.





SaparotRob said:


> Okay but I’ll be back.


Wait! He's not an axis ace yet. He gets two more before mandatory dismissal from the war effort!

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## SaparotRob (Mar 31, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Wait! He's not an axis ace yet. He gets two more before mandatory dismissal from the war effort!


A challenge?

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## XBe02Drvr (Mar 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> A challenge?


No, a legal opinion from JAG.

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## SaparotRob (Mar 31, 2021)

So I went back to the beginning of this thread. C-47 overrated? WHAT!!!!??!!! If an Air Force didn’t have them, they’d steal them.

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## Dash119 (Mar 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> So I went back to the beginning of this thread. C-47 overrated? WHAT!!!!??!!! If an Air Force didn’t have them, they’d steal them.


I don't get it, that's not funny...


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## SaparotRob (Apr 1, 2021)

Really wasn’t trying to be. I just can’t see the C-47 as being overrated. What other air force had anything better? I don’t know if the ME -323 and the C-47 are considered in the same category. The JU-52 certainly wasn’t as good. My basis? How many airlines purchased Ju-52s compared to the DC-2/3? Money talks, bullsh*t walks. I don’t know the answer but I’d feel real comfortable betting on the Gooney Bird. The DC -3 is still in service in some places. I have seen one flying Ju -52 (by chance) around 1992 as I was walking to my car. I have seen a lot more Dakotas than that. No sh*t but at Suvarniphum(?) Airport, Thailand in 2016 I watched a DC-3 push back from a gate. 
I don’t chime in on aircraft comparisons. I’m not knowledgeable enough. I actually surprised myself by reacting as I did to seeing this airplane on the list. I tried (unsuccessfully) to phrase it humorously. Unless it turns out that he owned Douglas Aircraft stock, I’m going with with General Eisenhower’s assessment.

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## FLYBOYJ (Apr 1, 2021)

The C-47/ DC-3 was one of the best if not the best all round aircraft of WW2. I would also go on to say one of the best all round aircraft ever built!!!

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## Thumpalumpacus (Apr 1, 2021)

Given its utility in every theater of the war, performing both logistics runs and combat jumps, I think it's pretty much impossible to overrate the Gooney Bird. I'm with Rob on this.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 1, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> The C-47/ DC-3 was one of the best if not the best all round aircraft of WW2. I would also go on to say one of the best all round aircraft ever built!!!



I think it is the greatest aircraft ever built.

Fun fact: back in 2010 when Haiti had that major earthquake that decimated the island, the first relief flight to the island was flown by a DC-3.

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## fastmongrel (Apr 1, 2021)

My Dad always said that the Dakota was the best aircraft ever built. In 22 years he worked on pretty much everything the RAF owned from 44 to 66 starting on the Tiger Moth and finishing on the V bombers.

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## Dimlee (Apr 1, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> The C-47/ DC-3 was one of the best if not the best all round aircraft of WW2. I would also go on to say one of the best all round aircraft ever built!!!



But only the second after
_p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 _

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## Dimlee (Apr 1, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> This was rather dependent on theater. It didn't have enough range for many recon missions in the Pacific.
> 
> The Russians used a number of the early ones (without armor or self sealing tanks) for Recon and were fairly successful. But most of eastern Europe didn't have anywhere near the flak density or fighter coverage of either western Europe or the Med.
> 
> ...



Naval bombers' claims were overstated significantly, indeed. By rule of thumb, they can be divided by 5, numbers, or tonnage.


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## XBe02Drvr (Apr 1, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Fun fact: back in 2010 when Haiti had that major earthquake that decimated the island, the first relief flight to the island was flown by a DC-3.


More stuff into a smaller hole in the hills than anything else in the world. (Except MAYBE a flight of AN2s!)
Out-buffalos a Buffalo.

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## Shortround6 (Apr 1, 2021)

Dimlee said:


> Naval bombers' claims were overstated significantly, indeed. By rule of thumb, they can be divided by 5, numbers, or tonnage.


 I rather like the Soviet totals. 

"claimed the destruction of *171* tanks and *617* trucks and automobiles."

Not rounded to the nearest ten or even five, but precise/to exact number of ground targets destroyed. 
The tanks and trucks/automobiles ALL burst into flames and went over cliffs or off bridges? 
Witnessed by at least one other pilot or observer?

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## tomo pauk (Apr 1, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> I rather like the Soviet totals.
> 
> "claimed the destruction of *171* tanks and *617* trucks and automobiles."
> 
> ...



Next thing you'd say is that Rudel didn't destroyed 500+ tanks, or that Hs 129 haven't decimated the Soviet armored formations? I'm shocked.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 1, 2021)

Dimlee said:


> But only the second after
> _p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 p-39 _



Come on now, the P-39 was only a quick field modification from making the C-47 obsolete and taking over its roles.

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## XBe02Drvr (Apr 1, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I don’t know the answer but I’d feel real comfortable betting on the Gooney Bird.


I've always felt real comfortable getting on the Gbird, too, except once. Rode a demo flight in a converted "Three-3", a PT6 trimotor Gbird, and it was a downright sacrilege inhaling kerosene and the piercing scream inside that monument to a different time. A structure designed to withstand the comfortable rumble of a pair of radials resonated painfully with the high frequencies of the turbines. Impressive performer, though, with the beta on landing.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 1, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> I've always felt real comfortable getting on the Gbird, too. Rode a demo flight in a converted "Three-3", a PT6 trimotor Gbird, and it was a downright sacrilege inhaling kerosene and the piercing scream inside that monument to a different time. A structure designed to withstand the comfortable rumble of a pair of radials resonated painfully with the high frequencies of the turbines. Impressive performer, though, with the beta on landing.



When I worked down in Louisiana we had a few C-47s based across the runway from us. One was a PT-6 convert. I hated seeing it. It’s just not right. Now it was a pure joy to see and hear the radial powered ones start up.

They also had a DC-4, but it suffered a hard landing and sat parked the entire time I lived and worked there.

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## Dash119 (Apr 1, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Really wasn’t trying to be. I just can’t see the C-47 as being overrated. What other air force had anything better? I don’t know if the ME -323 and the C-47 are considered in the same category. The JU-52 certainly wasn’t as good. My basis? How many airlines purchased Ju-52s compared to the DC-2/3? Money talks, bullsh*t walks. I don’t know the answer but I’d feel real comfortable betting on the Gooney Bird. The DC -3 is still in service in some places. I have seen one flying Ju -52 (by chance) around 1992 as I was walking to my car. I have seen a lot more Dakotas than that. No sh*t but at Suvarniphum(?) Airport, Thailand in 2016 I watched a DC-3 push back from a gate.
> I don’t chime in on aircraft comparisons. I’m not knowledgeable enough. I actually surprised myself by reacting as I did to seeing this airplane on the list. I tried (unsuccessfully) to phrase it humorously. Unless it turns out that he owned Douglas Aircraft stock, I’m going with with General Eisenhower’s assessment.


Now it is my turn for one of my attempts at humor to crash and burn... I guess four more and I'm an ace.

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## XBe02Drvr (Apr 1, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> They also had a DC-4, but it suffered a hard landing and sat parked the entire time I lived and worked there.


Want a fun read involving a DC4? Try _Flying Finish _ by British aviator and famed horse race jockey, Dick Francis. A classic "small timer in over his head" story in aviation, horse racing, and crime fighting. Buy it used, cheap, online.

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## SaparotRob (Apr 1, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Want a fun read involving a DC4? Try _Flying Finish _ by British aviator and famed horse race jockey, Dick Francis. A classic "small timer in over his head" story in aviation, horse racing, and crime fighting. Buy it used, cheap, online.


WILCO


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## XBe02Drvr (Apr 1, 2021)

Dash119 said:


> I don't get it, that's not funny...


Humor, like a bad martini, can be too dry to register as real. I should know, I'm a repeat offender, according to most acquaintances. 


Dash119 said:


> Now it is my turn for one of my attempts at humor to crash and burn... I guess four more and I'm an ace.


I don't think so. Failed the martini test. You're still safe with five crash and burns to go before achieving ignominy.

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## BlackSheep (Apr 1, 2021)

GregP said:


> Actually, I am a lifelong fan of WWII aviation, have a VERY detailed database of WWII aircraft to include over 1500 different aircraft types, and have read and written extensively on WWII aviation (as well as Naval history).
> 
> I am 56 years old and volunteer at an active WWII aviation museum where were fly WWII warbirds every weekend inluding Mustangs, Spitfires, a Zero with a still-running Sakae engine, Bearcat, B-25, P-40, P-38, P-47, F4F, SBD, Hurricane, T-6s, and Hellcat.
> 
> ...


Tbh, I am no where near the expert as you, but before you pass it off as some sort of Wikipedia nonsense, I remember reading the references in multiple books. Of course, I don’t own most of them, I just read them.


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## pbehn (Apr 1, 2021)

BlackSheep said:


> Tbh, I am no where near the expert as you, but before you pass it off as some sort of Wikipedia nonsense, I remember reading the references in multiple books. Of course, I don’t own most of them, I just read them.


 The post is 14 years old and discussed later on, it is Operation Argument lasting six days, which is little week to most peoples reckoning.


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## emu27 (Apr 1, 2021)

> All of the comparative tests I have read were done by the British and they weren't too keen on touting the Mustang


The Air Ministry were most impressed with the P-51 when it came to fruition, some 30mph faster than a Spitfire when fitted with the same mark Merlin. Remember the P-51 was designed and developed to fulfill a British order, without the British there would have been no P-51, all paid for with British coin, the USA initially had absolutely no interest in the aircraft. The British Air Ministry even considered building the aircraft in the UK when they were confronted with the FW 190 and development of the Spitfire version able to counter the 190 was lagging.

Get a copy of the book "Rolls Royce and the Mustang" by David Birch, available from the the Rolls Royce Heritage Trust, it includes relevant Air Ministry letters and comparative test data.

As an observation, unless you have flown the particular aircraft type in combat yourself against a specific type in a specific theater at a specific time we are in no real position to opine about its capabilities or weaknesses.

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## drgondog (Apr 3, 2021)

emu27 said:


> The Air Ministry were most impressed with the P-51 when it came to fruition, some 30mph faster than a Spitfire when fitted with the same mark Merlin. Remember the P-51 was designed and developed to fulfill a British order, without the British there would have been no P-51, all paid for with British coin, the USA initially had absolutely no interest in the aircraft. The British Air Ministry even considered building the aircraft in the UK when they were confronted with the FW 190 and development of the Spitfire version able to counter the 190 was lagging.
> 
> Get a copy of the book "Rolls Royce and the Mustang" by David Birch, available from the the Rolls Royce Heritage Trust, it includes relevant Air Ministry letters and comparative test data.
> 
> As an observation, unless you have flown the particular aircraft type in combat yourself against a specific type in a specific theater at a specific time we are in no real position to opine about its capabilities or weaknesses.



I shouldn't quibble over your comment as it is mostly correct. Putting the British order in context, the AFPC led by Sir Harry Self bought the NAA proposal of March 15 in which the core airframe was a NAA Prototype P-509. The basic conceptual propositions of Allison V-1710, Meredith cooling system, laminal flow airfoil, advanced manufacturing techniques, wing fuel storage were embodied in the Proposed airframe. The BAM/RAF contribution was primarily focused on adding features to make NA-73 combat ready upon completion - not make dramatic changes to airframe design, armament layout, location of coolant system, etc. 

As to building the airframe in Britain, yes but not because of the issues of the Fw 190 as the Spit IX was as capable or better than Mustang III for British operational doctrine. Part of the reason was a.) delight in Mustang X performance promise, and b.) uncertainty regarding Packard ability to deliver reliable V-1650-3 which had undergone a couple of bench failures at Wright Field. Ironically NAA lost the 'first to fly' bet with R-R because Rolls easily supplied better Merlin 61 reliability in summer 1942. The XP-51B first flight test configration, save the engine, was ready early October 1942.

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## swampyankee (Apr 3, 2021)

emu27 said:


> T
> 
> As an observation, unless you have flown the particular aircraft type in combat yourself against a specific type in a specific theater at a specific time we are in no real position to opine about its capabilities or weaknesses.



That is a statement I'd disagree with, although not with its intent: a test pilot with experience in combat aircraft and tactics could certainly give a solid and objective comparison of strengths and weaknesses between combat aircraft after appropriate testing, perhaps better than could a regular pilot with combat experience in either type. Of course, success in combat depends on much more than aircraft performance; if it did, no MiG-17 pilots would ever have been shot down by AD Skyraider pilots.

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## SaparotRob (Apr 3, 2021)

swampyankee said:


> That is a statement I'd disagree with, although not with its intent: a test pilot with experience in combat aircraft and tactics could certainly give a solid and objective comparison of strengths and weaknesses between combat aircraft after appropriate testing, perhaps better than could a regular pilot with combat experience in either type. Of course, success in combat depends on much more than aircraft performance; if it did, no MiG-17 pilots would ever have been shot down by AD Skyraider pilots.


I saw that special!


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## FLYBOYJ (Apr 3, 2021)

emu27 said:


> As an observation, unless you have flown the particular aircraft type in combat yourself against a specific type in a specific theater at a specific time we are in no real position to opine about its capabilities or weaknesses.



While there is some truth in this statement, there are many on here who have spent countless hours with WW2 combat veterans from both sides, collecting interviews and data. Several on here have actually maintained WW2 aircraft, mind you not in a combat situation, but have gained enough knowledge to know technical aspects. One member's father was a WW2 ace and has an extensive knowledge of WW2 aircraft performance (has flown P-51s himself) so please understand you're not dealing with a bunch of armchair generals.

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## Greg Boeser (Apr 3, 2021)

Yes, I am an armchair corporal.

Getting back to the A-20, it had the worst accident rate of all twin-engined bombers in US service.

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## FLYBOYJ (Apr 3, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> Yes, I am an armchair corporal.



I think the paperwork is in to make you an armchair sergeant!

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## Greg Boeser (Apr 3, 2021)

Can't make weight.

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## pararaftanr2 (Apr 28, 2021)

GregP said:


> Actually, I am a lifelong fan of WWII aviation, have a VERY detailed database of WWII aircraft to include over 1500 different aircraft types, and have read and written extensively on WWII aviation (as well as Naval history).
> 
> I am 56 years old and volunteer at an active WWII aviation museum where were fly WWII warbirds every weekend inluding Mustangs, Spitfires, a Zero with a still-running Sakae engine, Bearcat, B-25, P-40, P-38, P-47, F4F, SBD, Hurricane, T-6s, and Hellcat.
> 
> ...



As per the Maxwell Air Force Base website, in the article on "Operation Argument", the following can be found about "Big Week":

"During the week of Feb. 20-25, 1944, what became known as “Big Week” in Air Force history, Eighth Air Force and the Royal Air Force from England and Fifteenth Air Force from southern Italy conducted strategic bombing raids against German aircraft factories and other industrial targets.
These raids, Operation Argument, marked the restart of the strategic bombing of Germany, halted in October 1943, and the beginning of the end of the German air force (Luftwaffe).
By the end of Big Week, Allied air forces flew some 6,000 sorties, lost 357 bombers, 28 escort fighters and more than 2,000 airmen killed or captured. The Luftwaffe lost 262 fighters and 250 airmen killed or wounded, including 100 pilots. The operation set back German aircraft production by two months. More importantly, Big Week marked the beginning of the end of the Luftwaffe."
You will find the complete article linked here: Operation Argument (‘Big Week’): The beginning of the end of the German Luftwaffe > Maxwell Air Force Base > Display

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## Peter Gunn (Apr 29, 2021)

emu27 said:


> The Air Ministry were most impressed with the P-51 when it came to fruition, some 30mph faster than a Spitfire when fitted with the same mark Merlin. Remember the P-51 was designed and developed to fulfill a British order, without the British there would have been no P-51, all paid for with British coin, the USA initially had absolutely no interest in the aircraft. The British Air Ministry even considered building the aircraft in the UK when they were confronted with the FW 190 and development of the Spitfire version able to counter the 190 was lagging.
> 
> Get a copy of the book "Rolls Royce and the Mustang" by David Birch, available from the the Rolls Royce Heritage Trust, it includes relevant Air Ministry letters and comparative test data.
> 
> As an observation, unless you have flown the particular aircraft type in combat yourself against a specific type in a specific theater at a specific time we are in no real position to opine about its capabilities or weaknesses.


Or you could get one of these, rumor has it the author is a little absent minded but a pretty good tome nonetheless:

Amazon product

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## XBe02Drvr (Apr 29, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Or you could get one of these, rumor has it the author is a little absent minded but a pretty good tome nonetheless:
> 
> Amazon product



Who is this Mustang guy? Never heard of him.

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## SaparotRob (Apr 29, 2021)

Post something else Gunn. I need to add a .

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## Peter Gunn (Apr 29, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Post something else Gunn. I need to add a .


Because I like you so much Rob here ya go:


Stop me if you've heard this one, A fella walks into a bar...

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## SaparotRob (Apr 29, 2021)

Thanks!


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## Shortround6 (Apr 29, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> Yes, I am an armchair corporal.
> 
> Getting back to the A-20, it had the worst accident rate of all twin-engined bombers in US service.



Well, let's take a student out of an AT-6 with 600hp, let him fly an AT-9 with under 600hp (for both engines) and/or an AT-10 (two 295hp) or AT-17 (two 245hp engines?) 
for a couple of dozen hours, then plunk him in the seat of an A-20 with two 1600hp engines. Instructor sits outside the cockpit, quizzes the student on location of switches and then says "off you go! good luck and what's the name of your next of kin?" 

No way to give check rides or duel instruction in an A-20.

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## nuuumannn (Apr 29, 2021)

Not really an uncommon problem. Not every single-seat fighter had a dual instruction version. There was a huge performance gap between a Spitfire Mk. I and a Miles Master, or a Bf 109E and an Ar 96. Even transitioning between the venerable AT-6 Texan and say a P-51 or a P-47 was a huge step up in performance, and most notably pilot reaction time.

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## wlewisiii (Apr 29, 2021)

Of course that's why they shifted to using the P-39 and later P-40 in between the AT-6 and the P-47/P-51. They were no longer top of the line but still far closer to the P-51 than to the AT-6. 

I'd wonder if, as IIRC, the A-20 was one of the earliest tricycle gear aircraft, if that handling difference didn't contribute to the problems as much as the fact that it had only one seat. Training for engine out shouldn't have been as bad as some aircraft (the manual states on page 36 that adequate climb is possible on one engine at 36" ). 

I'd be interested to find out what the problems were and if it was greater early on when the aircraft was coming into service or later when large numbers of neophyte pilots were being shoved into a high power multi-engine aircraft.


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## Greg Boeser (Apr 29, 2021)

1942 was the A-20's worst year for accidents, '43 and '44 saw steadily declining rates, but there was an uptick in '45
The accident rate was higher than for P-47s and P-51s, but, as you mention, P-39s and P-40s were being used to transition fighter trainees before putting them in the seats of the top late war fighters.


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## Shortround6 (Apr 29, 2021)

Accident rates weren't too god with some fighters in training. 

Single engine control speed on the A-20G was from 128mph (minimum power) to 135mph (Military power) under optimum conditions. 
If conditions are less than Optimum?


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## GrauGeist (Apr 29, 2021)

I was under the impression that the B-26 had a fairly high accident rate.


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## Greg Boeser (Apr 29, 2021)

55 per 100,000 flying hours in the continental US. In 1942 it was 162 per 100,000 hours. The B-26 accident rate was 50-60% higher than the B-25 throughout the war.
This was less than the A-26 at 57 per 100,000 hours, but as the A-26 was introduced later in the war, this probably reflects the A-26's immature learning curve. I bet if the accident rate were extended for the A-26 we would see a decline.

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## drgondog (Apr 30, 2021)

wlewisiii said:


> Of course that's why they shifted to using the P-39 and later P-40 in between the AT-6 and the P-47/P-51. They were no longer top of the line but still far closer to the P-51 than to the AT-6.
> 
> I'd wonder if, as IIRC, the A-20 was one of the earliest tricycle gear aircraft, if that handling difference didn't contribute to the problems as much as the fact that it had only one seat. Training for engine out shouldn't have been as bad as some aircraft (the manual states on page 36 that adequate climb is possible on one engine at 36" ).
> 
> I'd be interested to find out what the problems were and if it was greater early on when the aircraft was coming into service or later when large numbers of neophyte pilots were being shoved into a high power multi-engine aircraft.


The primary reason for transition from AT-6 to P-40 (or P-39) was simply because the demand on Mustangs was so high in 1944 and the available P-39s and P-40s in CONUS increased as P-47s and P-38s and P-51s replaced them in combat zones. There is zero material difference in handling qualities or horsepower between the Allison driven P-39/40/51 and the Merlin P-51.

My father had zero twin engine trainer time before flying the B-26, then only five hours in a 51B before first combat after Advanced Fighter Training in P-40N. That said, flying right seat was easy transition to flying the B-26. The issues with B-26 were related primarily to high wing loading and required significantly more airspeed in the pattern and over the fence - in contrast to the B-25.

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## Peter Gunn (Apr 30, 2021)

I'm sure we've probably all seen this one, but always a good view.

A couple of things:

That landing at 42:30 YIKES!!

And in the right hand seat, 14 years before he became my namesake I give you Craig Stevens

Also Craig Stevens checking out the '40's hot chick at the end, what's not to like?

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## Peter Gunn (Apr 30, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Thanks!


No problem, that's why I'm here...

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## XBe02Drvr (Apr 30, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> I'm sure we've probably all seen this one, but always a good view.
> 
> A couple of things:
> 
> ...



"It's not a runaway prop, it's an overspeeding engine due to a 'fixed pitch' prop."
The Curtiss curse!

1943 Officer Training Program text:
"The enlisted man is sly and calculating, and can be counted on to contrive ways to thwart and embarrass the officers appointed over him. Your duty is eternal vigilance and the strict enforcement of discipline."

No smoking on the flight line or in the vicinity of aircraft.

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## SaparotRob (Apr 30, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> "It's not a runaway prop, it's an overspeeding engine due to a 'fixed pitch' prop."
> The Curtiss curse!
> 
> 1943 Officer Training Program text:
> ...


Guess they had you in mind.


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## XBe02Drvr (Apr 30, 2021)

Touche! 

Shall I regale you with a retelling of the "Fish Cheer" story?

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## special ed (Apr 30, 2021)

As long as we are off topic, I'll relate an account that has had me curious since the mid 1970s. I stopped at gas station near my office that I had not used before as it was on the opposite side of the interstate from our office. When I went in, the station office had many aircraft pictures and of course a conversation began. The man who managed the station loved airplanes but was not a flyer. He could request company calendars which were for airport services. This led to him telling of working at Harlingen Army Air Field in the early war years. He told me his job was cleaning P-40s to get them ready for repairs as trainers. I asked which models, and he said P-40 no letter. I mentioned how hot that work would be and he commented the only thing that bothered him was cleaning blood from the seats. As the memory of this bothered him, I didn't discuss it further. What I have always wondered is how many P-40s (no letter) could have been in combat. The records of Baugher and Fahey show 200 made with most to Panama and Puerto Rico and some staying in the U.S. The 15th and 18th Pursuit at Wheeler field were the only place I can see where P-40s could have come from with bloody seats. Not many took off and most of those on the ground burned. By the way, I still have the calendars because he gave me many he saved from other years, great photos and artwork.

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## drgondog (Apr 30, 2021)

special ed said:


> As long as we are off topic, I'll relate an account that has had me curious since the mid 1970s. I stopped at gas station near my office that I had not used before as it was on the opposite side of the interstate from our office. When I went in, the station office had many aircraft pictures and of course a conversation began. The man who managed the station loved airplanes but was not a flyer. He could request company calendars which were for airport services. This led to him telling of working at Harlingen Army Air Field in the early war years. He told me his job was cleaning P-40s to get them ready for repairs as trainers. I asked which models, and he said P-40 no letter. I mentioned how hot that work would be and he commented the only thing that bothered him was cleaning blood from the seats. As the memory of this bothered him, I didn't discuss it further. What I have always wondered is how many P-40s (no letter) could have been in combat. The records of Baugher and Fahey show 200 made with most to Panama and Puerto Rico and some staying in the U.S. The 15th and 18th Pursuit at Wheeler field were the only place I can see where P-40s could have come from with bloody seats. Not many took off and most of those on the ground burned. By the way, I still have the calendars because he gave me many he saved from other years, great photos and artwork.


P-40s also towed sleeves for gunnery practice.-without benefit of armor.

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## dsmerritt (May 3, 2021)

syscom3 said:


> The P47 didnt have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets, therefore it cant be under appreciated.
> 
> The P51 was in on most of the destruction of the LW, so it cant be over rated.
> 
> ...



But with drop tanks, also needed by the P-51, the P-47 could and did have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets. So not "underapprecited", but incorrectly assessed. A typical fan boy response.

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## dsmerritt (May 3, 2021)

amrit said:


> Ahh, Glider beat me to it. Yep the A6M Zero. No armour or self-sealing tanks!! Range and agility weren't everything - just sneeze on it and it fell down



Later versions of the Zero and Oscar too got armor and self sealing tanks, but lost performnce, which had already become sub standard.

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## dsmerritt (May 3, 2021)

davparlr said:


> I think the Mustang is the BEST long range escort fighter and the BEST long range interdiction fighter.
> 
> While I think the P-51 is generally overrated by public perception, I think it is the most underrated aircraft on this, otherwise, very knowledgable site.
> 
> As I have said before, the P-51 is like the T-34, when the P-51B appeared, it outclassed the opposition (like the Fw-190 did when it appeared), and sent the Germans to drawing boards to come up with an answer, and, by the time they did, they were overwhelmed by the vast quantities facing them.



At altitude the P-47 was every bit the equal of the P-51, or even better. And that's where they flew to protect the bombers. Huge wing for fabulous handling at high altitude, and plenty of horsepower at altitude to overcome the drag from the wing when maneuvering at altitude..

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## XBe02Drvr (May 3, 2021)

dsmerritt said:


> At altitude the P-47 was every bit the equal of the P-51, or even better. And that's where they flew to protect the bombers. Huge wing for fabulous handling at high altitude, and plenty of horsepower at altitude to overcome the drag from the wing when maneuvering at altitude.


NOW, who's the fanboy?

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## SaparotRob (May 3, 2021)

This is one of the many things this forum enlightened me on. The P-47 was quite a performer and is under appreciated by most novice aviation buffs, like myself.

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## tomo pauk (May 3, 2021)

dsmerritt said:


> But with drop tanks, also needed by the P-51, the P-47 could and did have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets. So not "underapprecited", but incorrectly assessed. A typical fan boy response.



I'm not sure that name-calling is a required thing to do on a 1st post on any forum.

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## GrauGeist (May 3, 2021)

dsmerritt said:


> But with drop tanks, also needed by the P-51, the P-47 could and did have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets. So not "underapprecited", but incorrectly assessed. A typical fan boy response.


Blindly stating that "the P-47 could and did have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets." can also be considered a "fan boy" response.
The P-47 transitioned through several mechanical and physical iterations before it was capable of escorting bombers to Berlin and back...

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## drgondog (May 3, 2021)

dsmerritt said:


> But with drop tanks, also needed by the P-51, the P-47 could and did have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets. So not "underapprecited", but incorrectly assessed. A typical fan boy response.


Not quite - The P-47 prior to D-Day did NOT have the range to perform escort duties past Brunswick and Stuttgart. Only the introduction of the D-25 in group quantity numbers (July 1944) could any P-47D go to Leipzig. By that time only the 56th, 78th 353rd and 356th were still equipped with P-47D. 

Not 'incorrectly assessed'. Appropriately matched to Penetration and Withdrawal escort

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## Shortround6 (May 3, 2021)

The increase in internal fuel from 305 gal to 370 gallon allowed a significant increase in operational radius. But, as noted by Drgondog, that came with the D-25. 
Even with a pair of 150 gallon drop tanks that extra 65 gallons of internal fuel was good for around 175 miles of operational radius.

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## pbehn (May 3, 2021)

In rounded figures the P-47 had an engine of twice the displacement of the P-51 and used twice as much fuel on cruise and full power but although it had a lot of internal and external fuel, it didnt have twice as much.

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## Peter Gunn (May 4, 2021)

tomo pauk said:


> I'm not sure that name-calling is a required thing to do on a 1st post on any forum.


MeThinks we won't be seeing this guy again, sounds like he wandered over here from a gaming forum to impress us with his knowledge.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 4, 2021)

dsmerritt said:


> But with drop tanks, also needed by the P-51, the P-47 could and did have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets. So not "underapprecited", but incorrectly assessed. A typical fan boy response.



Being an ass won’t be tolerated...

Maybe this is better suited for you?
War Thunder - Official Forum

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## Snautzer01 (May 4, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> NOW, who's the fanboy?


He is. Look.

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## syscom3 (May 5, 2021)

dsmerritt said:


> But with drop tanks, also needed by the P-51, the P-47 could and did have the range necessary to escort the bombers to their targets. So not "underapprecited", but incorrectly assessed. A typical fan boy response.


What do you mean by "fan boy"?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 5, 2021)

syscom3 said:


> What do you mean by "fan boy"?



He sounds like a gamer. I doubt he knows himself.

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## Greg Boeser (May 5, 2021)



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## XBe02Drvr (May 5, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> View attachment 622104


Made it to 100! Hallelujah!


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## GrauGeist (May 6, 2021)

syscom3 said:


> What do you mean by "fan boy"?


"Fan boy" has come to be known (especially in gaming circles) as a type of person who promotes and defends their favorite type of aircraft (or tank) beyond reason or logic.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 6, 2021)

Boy, those were the 3 dumbest posts I've seen on here in a very long time - and all in a row!

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## GrauGeist (May 6, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Boy, those were the 3 dumbest posts I've seen on here in a very long time - and all in a row!


And in gaming parlance, was immediately "owned"...

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## Milosh (May 6, 2021)

_Fan boy_ is spelt wrong, it should be _fan boi_.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 6, 2021)

I love that his title was changed to Fanboy. 😂

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 6, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> And in gaming parlance, was immediately "owned"...



Don't you mean "pwned"?

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## FLYBOYJ (May 6, 2021)

Milosh said:


> _Fan boy_ is spelt wrong, it should be _fan boi_.



Used his spelling...


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## special ed (May 6, 2021)

It is simply mystifying code speak to non-gamers.


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## GrauGeist (May 6, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Don't you mean "pwned"?


Depends on the game genre and generation, but yes, they were "owned/pwned/rekt".

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 6, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Depends on the game genre and generation, but yes, they were "owned/pwned/rekt".



It just cracks me up how some folks can't see nuance. It's everywhere. No matter what field you're talking about, airplanes, weaponry -- good lord, even guitar-building --you're making tradeoffs to accomplish design aims. I suspect some folks are susceptible to "magic-bullet" thinking. It's like the old adage: "You can have quality, affordability, or versatility. Choose two."

Tanks, battleships, artillery, and small-arms all fall under that rubric. Oh, and fighter planes, too. All designs have trade-offs.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 7, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> It just cracks me up how some folks can't see nuance.


C'mon, man! That's analog dinosaurthink in a world that has long since become 0/1, yes/no, black/white digital. How archaic of you. You sound like grandpa.

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## Snautzer01 (May 7, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I love that his title was changed to Fanboy. 😂


Hilarious. And also true.

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## Peter Gunn (May 7, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Don't you mean "pwned"?


Geezer.

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## special ed (May 7, 2021)

What's wrong with a Grandpa? I are one. The sign over the door to my shop says "You are now entering the nineteen fifties" complete with 50s music. It insures privacy.

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## SaparotRob (May 7, 2021)

Okay, I'm a geezer. What is "pwned"?

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 7, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> C'mon, man! That's analog dinosaurthink in a world that has long since become 0/1, yes/no, black/white digital. How archaic of you. You sound like grandpa.



Don't make me smack you with my cane, chillun, now go play in the traffic!

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 7, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Okay, I'm a geezer. What is "pwned"?



It's a typo on "owned" that was memified a couple of decades ago as part of social-media English:



> pwned
> A corruption of the word "Owned." This originated in an online game called Warcraft, where a map designer misspelled "owned." When the computer beat a player, it was supposed to say, so-and-so "has been owned."
> 
> Instead, it said, so-and-so "has been pwned."
> ...



Urban Dictionary: pwned

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## XBe02Drvr (May 7, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Don't make me smack you with my cane, chillun, now go play in the traffic!


Been playin in traffic nigh on 75 years already. T'ain't got me yet. Getting purty good at dodgin'.

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## Peter Gunn (May 7, 2021)

You guys aren't going to believe this but I looked in the dictionary under "Geezer" and found:

*Definition of geezer*

1US, informal, humorous or mildly disparaging *: *an odd, eccentric, or unreasonable person (usually a man)especially *: *an old man
See examples

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## pbehn (May 7, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> You guys aren't going to believe this but I looked in the dictionary under "Geezer" and found:
> 
> *Definition of geezer*
> 
> ...


Funny how things change. From Jonny Reggae by the Piglets
What's he like
Mavis ?
He's a real
tasty geezer.

He's grown his hair a bit
but it's smooth not too long
an' he wears a besball shirt
with a number seventeen on

he looks great in his big white
basketball boots.
He's stupid over football

an' he looks me in the eye
when he shoots.

Reggae
Reggae
Reggae

here comes Johnny Reggae

Johnny Reggae
Reggae
lay it on me.

Reggae
Reggae
Reggae...

always start a fight for me
he's always on the phone
at the dance-hall in the evening
he'll always take me home

in his fringe and buckle stompers
and his two-tone tomic strides

he's a real tasty geezer
an' I'm his - here - inside.


source: Jonny Reggae Lyrics by Prglets - Lyrics On Demand

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 7, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> You guys aren't going to believe this but I looked in the dictionary under "Geezer" and found:
> 
> *Definition of geezer*
> 
> ...



You'll notice I'm only an SrA and not a Chief!

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## Peter Gunn (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> You'll notice I'm only an SrA and not a Chief!


Drop and give me twenty...

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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> You'll notice I'm only an SrA and not a Chief!


Only 'cause I stumbled in here ahead of ya!

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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Geezer.


Hey, quit wi' dem negative waves, man!

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## SaparotRob (May 8, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Hey, quit wi' dem negative waves, man!


I just ride 'em. I don't know what makes 'em go. 
Those words have been my mantra for decades.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I just ride 'em. I don't know what makes 'em go.
> Those words have been my mantra for decades.


Yer soundin' dainjrously like a surfer dude!

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## gruad (May 8, 2021)

Thorlifter said:


> ????HUH????
> 
> The FW-190 is often in arguments as one of the finest piston planes ever produced.
> 
> ...


3P51 s could be built for 2P47s.

The P47 was most likely to come home when hit, but the P51 was a better escort.

Pilots cried when they had to switch to the Mustang, as the P47 offered so much pilot protection.

The P51 is still a great plane though, the P47 is underrated.

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## SaparotRob (May 8, 2021)

I don't know if underrated is the right word regarding the P-47. I think undervalued or under appreciated might be closer to the mark. It has never been described as fragile and I can't recall reading the Thunderbolt as being under gunned. Again, without the drop tanks for whatever reason, it couldn't do what the USAAF needed most in a fighter.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

gruad said:


> Pilots cried when they had to switch to the Mustang, as the P47 offered so much pilot protection.



I've read that sentiment going both directions. I think it was Blakeslee who accepted his P-51s the day before a mission, and told his pilots "You can learn to fly them on the way to the target." They'd transitioned from Spits to Jugs, which they hated, and then to -51s, which at least suited the commander's favor in flying. I don't know how many holdover Spit pilots they had at that time, but I imagine those still flying would be happy with the change to the -51 as well.

So I don't think it was all one-sided. That's natural, it seems to me; pilots with time in an airframe often come to appreciate its strong points even as they understand it has weak points too. And changing steeds in the middle of a war brings on difficulties of its own.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I don't know if underrated is the right word regarding the P-47. I think undervalued or under appreciated might be closer to the mark. It has never been described as fragile and I can't recall reading the Thunderbolt as being under gunned. Again, without the drop tanks for whatever reason, it couldn't do what the USAAF needed most in a fighter.



Keep in mind that until 1943 the USAAF didn't realize that they needed a fighter with range. They kept thinking those -17s and -24s were going to elbow their way in and out of Reich airspace without long escort.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> They'd transitioned from Spits to Jugs, which they hated, and then to -51s,


If you'd got used to bouncing nimbly around the battlefield in your twin .50 equipped scout jeep, you might find an M4 Sherman a bit of a lug if it was forced on you without warning, consent, or any training, don't you think?

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## pbehn (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Keep in mind that until 1943 the USAAF didn't realize that they needed a fighter with range. They kept thinking those -17s and -24s were going to elbow their way in and out of Reich airspace without long escort.


By 1943 the people who believed a fighter escort were not needed were in a very small minority. The P-51B/C started to arrive in mid 1943 as proof of that. The Schweinfurt Regensburg raid was escorted as far as was possible at the time and the strategy used was to try to minimise losses. IMHO the raid was made because commitments to a strategy had been made before the materials and men needed were in place.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

pbehn said:


> By 1943 the people who believed a fighter escort were not needed were in a very small minority. The P-51B/C started to arrive in mid 1943 as proof of that. The Schweinfurt Regensburg raid was escorted as far as was possible at the time and the strategy used was to try to minimise losses. IMHO the raid was made because commitments to a strategy had been made before the materials and men needed were in place.



Not with the USAAF. Mustangs didn't pull bomber escort for the 8th until Dec 1943, after a few months of shouting in the halls of the Pentagon.

Of course -38s and -47s escorted bombers so far as range went, but until summer of 43, there was no real hue-and-cry to escort bombers all the way to target. It took a couple of disastrous raids for that to happen.

Of course the Americans committed to long-range bomber penetrations, but they did so understanding that they didn't have any fighter that could go there and back. Only after first and second Schweinfurt did us Amis really push for full-mission escort.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> If you'd got used to bouncing nimbly around the battlefield in your twin .50 equipped scout jeep, you might find an M4 Sherman a bit of a lug if it was forced on you without warning, consent, or any training, don't you think?



Absolutely. Hell, I hate going from my small truck to my mom's granny-Toyota. We all develop comfort-zones, and only get outside them for exigencies or requirements, I think. 

And who in Hell wants to learn the ins and outs of a new plane while some jackass is trying to put you under? 

I think one reason why we all seem to agree that the pilot matters as much as the equipment is because a good pilot who knows his crate -- inferior though it might be to the enemy's -- can get more out of it than an enemy who is transitioning into a new bird and doesn't know its ins and outs. Obviously not a 100% solution.

I'm no pilot, so my opinion is worth every penny you paid for it.

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## GrauGeist (May 8, 2021)

Let's not forget that RAF Spitfires escorted US bombers on missions into France and other targets in early 1943 (where range permitted) until they were replaced by the P-38.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Let's not forget that RAF Spitfires escorted US bombers on missions into France and other targets in early 1943 (where range permitted) until they were replaced by the P-38.



Indeed. But long-range penetration missions were still done _sans_ escort past Holland or Belgium. The awareness was slow in the building, as history shows.


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## pbehn (May 8, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Let's not forget that RAF Spitfires escorted US bombers on missions into France and other targets in early 1943 (where range permitted) until they were replaced by the P-38.


RAF Spitfires escorted the Schweinfurt raid until P-47s took over to escort to Eupen which is on the border between Belgium and Germany

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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> And who in Hell wants to learn the ins and outs of a new plane while some jackass is trying to put you under?
> 
> I think one reason why we all seem to agree that the pilot matters as much as the equipment is because a good pilot who knows his crate -- inferior though it might be to the enemy's -- can get more out of it than an enemy who is transitioning into a new bird and doesn't know its ins and outs. Obviously not a 100% solution.
> 
> I'm no pilot, so my opinion is worth every penny you paid for it.


Well your opinion seems to be very much IAW history, so it's at least worth the two bits that opinions seem to rate around here.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Indeed. But long-range penetration missions were still done _sans_ escort past Holland or Belgium. The awareness was slow in the building, as history shows.


The Reich's awareness wasn't slow in building, was it? LW waiting at the border to take the handoff from the escorts.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> The Reich's awareness wasn't slow in building, was it? LW waiting at the border to take the handoff from the escorts.



Yeah, lol, I was writing about awareness inside the Army Air Forces. The Germans wasted no time in meting out lessons ... but USAAF generals too often leaned on doctrine.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> but USAAF generals too often leaned on doctrine.


What was that about "comfort zones"?

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## pbehn (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Absolutely. Hell, I hate going from my small truck to my mom's granny-Toyota. We all develop comfort-zones, and only get outside them for exigencies or requirements, I think.
> 
> And who in Hell wants to learn the ins and outs of a new plane while some jackass is trying to put you under?
> 
> ...


The pilot only matters when other factors are almost equal, that is why aircraft improved by about 200HP per year as the war progressed, no amount of pilot skill will get a Hurricane to escort a B-17 to Berlin.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> What was that about "comfort zones"?



Something I was going to put on my last post, but deleted for brevity's sake, seems a little more appropriate here:

One of my favorite USAAF generals is George Kenney, because he didn't care too much about doctrine or other fancy stuff. He just wanted the job done. _So you want to put a B-25 at 100' ASL and skip the bombs into ships? Okay -- does it work? Yes? Well, get after it, Ranchhand._

He wanted bold sonsabitches who'd press home low and fast, and used whatever airplanes at hand. No mewling about how the book said it should be done, no attachment to his favorite schemes. Parafrags? No problem, we'll figure it out. I've got P-40s for half my fighter force? Okay, we'll figure out coverage with -38s flying high.

He had an enlisted man's sense of improvisation and gave it a general's stamp of approval, doctrine be damned. That's a guy I'd happily serve under. None of this bomber-mafia bullshit or fighter-pilot elitism.

It's almost like he didn't trust his comfort-zone. ... unlike so many other general officers from all the branches.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

pbehn said:


> The pilot only matters when other factors are almost equal, that is why aircraft improved by about 200HP per year as the war progressed, no amount of pilot skill will get a Hurricane to escort a B-17 to Berlin.



I understand technical advances and limitations. That wasn't my point. Do you not agree that a pilot who knew his Hurricane intimately would have some advantage over a pilot just learning his Me-109E, technical aspects of the airframe aside?

Knowing what you're doing with the machine you're operating is nothing to sneeze at.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> That's a guy I'd happily serve under. None of this bomber-mafia bullshit or fighter-pilot elitism.
> 
> It's almost like he didn't trust his comfort-zone. ... unlike so many other general officers from all the branches.


Exact opposite of his counterparts in IJN and IJA.
"Win *this* war; forget about the last one!"

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Exact opposite of his counterparts in IJN and IJA.
> "Win *this* war; forget about the last one!"



Exactly. And he'd flown in the last war, had a few kills as a back-seater and then SPAD pilot, so it wasn't like he didn't have his own memories and experiences. He just didn't languish in them. He understood it was a different war with different gear and needed a different approach. That flexibility marks him as a really smart guy, in my book.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> He understood it was a different war with different gear and needed a different approach. That flexibility marks him as a really smart guy, in my book.


Just the kind of guy to get the most out of the likes of "Flip" Corchran.

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## GrauGeist (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Something I was going to put on my last post, but deleted for brevity's sake, seems a little more appropriate here:
> 
> One of my favorite USAAF generals is George Kenney, because he didn't care too much about doctrine or other fancy stuff. He just wanted the job done. _So you want to put a B-25 at 100' ASL and skip the bombs into ships? Okay -- does it work? Yes? Well, get after it, Ranchhand._
> 
> ...


When Kenny took over in the Southwest PTO, he discovered Pappy Gunn had been stuffing scrounged .50MGs into the noses of his 3rd BG's A-20s and strafing the hell out of the Japanese.
He was so impressed that he gave Gunn some B-25s to "field upgrade" into strafers, which was an instant success. (both types made a large impact on the Battle of Bismark Sea, btw)

Kenny like Gunn's innovations and go-to attitude so much, he made Gunn a member of his staff. For what it's worth, Pappy was an old Naval aviator (served with VF-1B before retiring) who was commisioned into the AAF during the Philippine evacuation.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Just the kind of guy to get the most out of the likes of "Flip" Corchran.



I hadn't heard of him before this post of yours, reading up right now. Definitely same ballpark, and thanks for the lead.

Edit: for those unfamiliar, here's the Wiki on Col Cochran. Buyer beware, YMMV, etc, but it sure sounds like he was a pretty raucous guy.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> When Kenny took over in the Southwest PTO, he discovered Pappy Gunn had been stuffing scrounged .50MGs into the noses of his 3rd BG's A-20s and strafing the hell out of the Japanese.
> He was so impressed that he gave Gunn some B-25s to "field upgrade" into strafers, which was an instant success. (both types made a large impact on the Battle of Bismark Sea, btw)
> 
> Kenny like Gunn's innovations and go-to attitude so much, he made Gunn a member of his staff. For what it's worth, Pappy was an old Naval aviator (served with VF-1B before retiring) who was commisioned into the AAF during the Philippine evacuation.



Well aware of that. Those field mods made it to factory floors, which says a lot about _adapt-improvise-overcome_, long before it was a motto in my Air Force (89-93). These were the guys who laid that down.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 8, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I hadn't heard of him before this post of yours, reading up right now. Definitely same ballpark, and thanks for the lead.


Flip and Pappy were birds of a feather, kind of like Chenault, but their timing was better, so they flourished in a more appreciative environment.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 8, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Flip and Pappy were birds of a feather, kind of like Chenault, but their timing was better, so they flourished in a more appreciative environment.



The 30s and 40s were a time when rogues were still entertained, and bureaucracy hadn't become such a swamp, it seems to me. That goes for USMC as well as USAAF (Chesty Puller comes to mind), not so much for Army and Navy.

Chennault is another guy who worked for results rather than test-scores, good call on him there. He did have his own doctrine, in a sense, but it was adaptable and adapted to the circumstances under which his men flew. He trained them well, and they did him right.

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## wuzak (May 8, 2021)

pbehn said:


> By 1943 the people who believed a fighter escort were not needed were in a very small minority.



Unfortunately some of them were still in positions of power - such as Eaker, commander of the 8th Air Force until early 1944.

A common narrative is that the 8th Air Force stopped bombing raids after the the second Schweinfurt mission until escort fighters arrived. 

The only problem with that is that Eaker wanted to continue. He didn't have the aircraft and crews directly after, and when he did the weather had closed in and made bombing raids with visual sighting very difficult.


The massacre at the second Schweinfurt raid (and possibly the Schweinfurt-Regensberg raid) convinced some that a long range fighter was required. So an emergency fighter program was started - the XP-75.

The XP-75 program produced nothing useful, while delaying the first flight of the XB-39, the B-29 with Allison V-3420s. Fisher was responsible for the XP-75 and the quick change engine modules for the XB-39.

When the XB-39 did fly, it was determined to not have a sufficient performance increase to warrant production. What if it flew a year earlier, when the R-3350s were still having significant issues?

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## wuzak (May 8, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Let's not forget that RAF Spitfires escorted US bombers on missions into France and other targets in early 1943 (where range permitted) until they were replaced by the P-38.



They often participated as the first leg of the escort relay on the outbound journey, and the last leg for the inbound journey.

Not sure when, or if, that stopped.


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## GrauGeist (May 9, 2021)

wuzak said:


> They often participated as the first leg of the escort relay on the outbound journey, and the last leg for the inbound journey.
> 
> Not sure when, or if, that stopped.


As the sole escort platform for USAAF bombers, they escorted through mid '43 or so. The P-38 took up the task from there.

There were occasions after '43 where the RAF assisted in providing escort.

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## GregP (May 9, 2021)

Considering the P-51 almost single-handedly made escorted daytime precision (?) bombing a viable tactic, I'm hard-pressed to see how it has been overrated by 25% of the folks in here.

With that tactic, Germany could no longer could continue the fight after April 1945. The P-51 managed to do in about 2 years what had not been done for the preceding 4 years of the war ... it virtually created that tactic that, to a large part, helped bomb Germany into submission. To make it clear, the P-51 alone didn't create the tactic of precision daylight bombing. But it certainly made it a sustainable option by lowering the loss rates for daylight bombing enough to make it possible and sustainable once the Merlin-powered version got into the fight. 

None of which takes anything away from the efforts of the USSR and the British military services of all types. The RAF dropped as many bombs in the ETO as the USAAF did, but mostly at night after they decided precision daylight bombing was not really sustainable. That achievement, escorted precision daylight bombing, is tough to classify as overrated, at least in my book.

But, hey, could be ... I suppose.

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## special ed (May 9, 2021)

You people are going to make me re-read my books to find the sources I remember. There was a North African Fighter commander who knew the current crop of newly equipped P-51D pilots arrived at his base believed they had the best aircraft and couldn't be touched. He scheduled appointments over the base with a new hot shot and the CO in his long nose P-40 was on the tail of the P-51 just after the merge. The idea was to get the new boys to understand some lifesaving techniques.

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## P-39 Expert (May 9, 2021)

I vote P-47 as most overrated. Fast, tough and heavily armed. But if you need escort in 1943 and early 1944 the Thunderbolt was not the answer.


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## Milosh (May 9, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> I vote P-47 as most overrated. Fast, tough and heavily armed. But if you need escort in 1943 and early 1944 the Thunderbolt was not the answer.



It was miles ahead of the P-39.

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## SaparotRob (May 9, 2021)

That was cold.

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## SaparotRob (May 9, 2021)

I can't see the P-47 being overrated. It didn't get the press its prettier stable mate got. It didn't escort the bombers like the P-51 but that wasn't its mission. Bombers didn't need escorts .


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 9, 2021)



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## Marcel (May 9, 2021)

What in the world does ‘overrated’ mean in this sense? By whom? For what?

what I mean is that it’s quite subjective and hardly debatable. One could argue that the Spitfire was overrated, being the symbol of the BoB while the Hurricane was actually the fighter to take the brunt of the fighting there. But can you really say it’s overrated looking at the whole war? You can do the same mind game on any of the aircraft in WW2.

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## P-39 Expert (May 9, 2021)

Milosh said:


> It was miles ahead of the P-39.


Not in 1943.


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## GrauGeist (May 9, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> Not in 1943.


I beleive the OP was looking for "over rated" in an overall sense, not on a yearly basis.

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## Snautzer01 (May 9, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Flip and Pappy were birds of a feather, kind of like Chenault, but their timing was better, so they flourished in a more appreciative environment.


Just read the Flip wiki page. What a guy. Is there a book about him?


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## buffnut453 (May 9, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> Not in 1943.



But the P-39 was the answer?


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## pbehn (May 9, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I understand technical advances and limitations. That wasn't my point. Do you not agree that a pilot who knew his Hurricane intimately would have some advantage over a pilot just learning his Me-109E, technical aspects aside?
> 
> Knowing what you're doing with the machine you're operating is nothing to sneeze at.


Well yes, that is why the USA had pilots with a minimum of 200 hours on type advanced training, and also gave them a P-51 or a P-47 to fight in.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 9, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> Just read the Flip wiki page. What a guy. Is there a book about him?



Doesn't he sound like a great cat?


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## Snautzer01 (May 9, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> But the P-39 was the answer?


Depends on the role it had to play. We have been painfully and sometime realley funny over this. Usaaf: what a ffing brick, Ussr: gimme some more please.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 9, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> But the P-39 was the answer?



It dropped the third A-bomb, over Ulan Bator (BTW pioneering the HUD arrangement currently standard in fighters on that mission), and if I remember correctly they also laid the groundwork -- pardon the pun -- for air-to-air rearming (though the .30cal rearm chutes had a tendency to jam, so they, and the .30s, were omitted).

They were also instrumental in developing an ejectable airplane; that is, when the plane was damaged, instead of using dangerous ejection seats, the pilot simply ejected the aircraft itself. Problem solved.

I ask you, and all serious posters: how is that _not_ the answer?!

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## Snautzer01 (May 9, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> It dropped the third A-bomb, over Ulan Bator (BTW pioneering the HUD arrangement currently standard in fighters on that mission), and if I remember correctly they also laid the groundwork -- pardon the pun -- for air-to-air rearming (though the .30cal rearm chutes had a tendency to jam, so they, and the .30s, were omitted).
> 
> They were also instrumental in developing an ejectable airplane; that is, when the plane was damaged, instead of using dangerous ejection seats, the pilot simply ejected the aircraft itself. Problem solved.
> 
> I ask you, and all serious posters: how is that _not_ the answer?!


That if you want serious this is a bit silly. I know it is easy to make fun of the gritty p-39 supporters but it was there. It did a job, killed a lot of baddies in the east of europe. No love from the west allies though. No super plane but what frame is, as it is throne into combat with newbies and mostly with back dated strategy. We love the b-17 ,but for all its good parts still got its ass handed to it by the luftwaffe untill........ it was even used as a decoy to get the luftwaffe up and fight but mostly die. In my e bay searches i have seen many, many wrecked b-29 that failed take off or landing or went into another row of waiting planes for no apperant reason. Now , i think if there ever was a superplane in the ww2 it has to be the b-29. And it even did not do what it was designed to do. Bombing with big explosives. Not with puny fire bombs. At low level. So. There it is. The p-39 was not silly. Not super. But there. Better then shaking your pale little fist onto the sky filled with what ever enemy planes from what empire, holding a piece of dirt in stead of a stick. On the ground. 
A little bit of respect for the thing. It in my opinion has rightfully deserved it.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 9, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> That if you want serious this is a bit silly. I know it is easy to make fun of the gritty p-39 supporters but it was there. It did a job, killed a lot of baddies in the east of europe. No love from the west allies though. No super plane but what frame is, as it is throne into combat with newbies and mostly with back dated strategy. We love the b-17 ,but for all its good parts still got its ass handed to it by the luftwaffe untill........ it was even used as a decoy to get the luftwaffe up and fight but mostly die. In my e bay searches i have seen many, many wrecked b-29 that failed take off or landing or went into another row of waiting planes for no apperant reason. Now , i think if there ever was a superplane in the ww2 it has to be the b-29. And it even did not do what it was designed to do. Bombing with big explosives. Not with puny fire bombs. At low level. So. There it is. The p-39 was not silly. Not super. But there. Better then shaking your pale little fist onto the sky filled with what ever enemy planes from what empire, holding a piece of dirt in stead of a stick. On the ground.
> A little bit of respect for the thing. It in my opinion has rightfully deserved it.



The joke is just a joke. It references how the Groundhog shows up in so many threads.

I have nothing but respect for the guys who flew and maintained it.

I don't really care for the airplane itself, nor the accolades it seems to get. I'm aware of its service record and not denigrating that. I just think it is, ahem, _overrated_ -- by some folks.

Sorry my satire rubbed you the wrong way, but in the end, it's only a joke, so don't trip.

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## pbehn (May 9, 2021)

wuzak said:


> Unfortunately some of them were still in positions of power - such as Eaker, commander of the 8th Air Force until early 1944.
> 
> A common narrative is that the 8th Air Force stopped bombing raids after the the second Schweinfurt mission until escort fighters arrived.
> 
> ...


There are many facets to the discussion, both those raids were escorted as far as escorts could go in and out, so the notion that escorts werent needed at all was long gone. The question was were the raids and risks worth it? If you believe that wiping out German ball bearing production will end the war or shorten it by a long time the risks and losses can be justified. If you think that production of bearings will be affected for six weeks and there will be no real effect on German industry and war effort the losses just arent worth it. In fact those responsible were lucky not to preside over a total loss of all aircraft.

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## Snautzer01 (May 9, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> The joke is just a joke. It references how the Groundhog shows up in so many threads.
> 
> I have nothing but respect for the guys who flew and maintained it.
> 
> ...


I do not care about your satire or rubbing me the wrong way. I am not 12. Nor do i take your post serious off course. Planely an efford to make a joke as others have including me, made about the gritty supporter of this airframe. And that was called for. I read the thread, head to tow.
But all said and read, i do think the plane should get some credits.Certainly here.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 9, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> I do not care about your satire or rubbing me the wrong way. I am not 12. Nor do i take your post serious off course. Planely an efford to make a joke as others have including me, made about the gritty supporter of this airframe. And that was called for. I read the thread, head to tow.
> But all said and read, i do think the plane should get some credits.Certainly here.



Oh, I give it credit, even for its notorious instability at certain spots in the envelope. Instability makes for maneuverability.

And the -39 held the line in PNG when we had nothing else available, really.

Thanks for taking the joke in the spirit offered.

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## pbehn (May 9, 2021)

wuzak said:


> They often participated as the first leg of the escort relay on the outbound journey, and the last leg for the inbound journey.
> 
> Not sure when, or if, that stopped.


There were two aspects to withdrawal escort, one is the main bomber force and the other is those that have dropped or dropping out of the formation. I read abot two RAF Spitfires escorting a B-17 across France which must have been before or just after D-Day because they were shot at by German Flak on the Channel coast. Most discussions focus on operations from UK. According to The Spitfire site the USA themselves were using Spitfires until early 1944 in Italy. Uncle Sam’s Spitfires — Articles | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | history | Spitfire Mk. V | Spitfire Mk. VIII

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## drgondog (May 9, 2021)

wuzak said:


> Unfortunately some of them were still in positions of power - such as Eaker, commander of the 8th Air Force until early 1944.
> 
> A common narrative is that the 8th Air Force stopped bombing raids after the the second Schweinfurt mission until escort fighters arrived.
> 
> ...



Eaker frantically requested P-51B and P-38H in July 1943 during Blitz Week. Arnold dispatched Gen Barney Giles to kick start 'extra range' projects for the new P-51B, the newP-38J and the P-47D while prodding Echols to issue go/no g on XP-75 with mandate that t had to be operational y December (impossible).

Eaker and Spaatz and Arnold, along with Gen Muir Fairchild were responsible for A-36 and P-51-1 holding the NAA production while progress was being made on both sides of the ocean to convert P-51/Mustang I to Merlin.

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## buffnut453 (May 9, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> Depends on the role it had to play. We have been painfully and sometime realley funny over this. Usaaf: what a ffing brick, Ussr: gimme some more please.



To summarize the points made by previous posters:

P-39 Expert: I vote P-47 as most overrated. Fast, tough and heavily armed. But if you need escort in 1943 and early 1944 the Thunderbolt was not the answer.

Milosh: It was miles ahead of the P-39.

P-39 Expert: Not in 1943.

My point is that if the P-39 was better than the P-47 in 1943, why did we not see squadrons of P-39s operating as part of 8th AF on escort missions (which was clearly the context within which the prior comments were made)?

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## pbehn (May 9, 2021)

It is impossible to read this Luftwaffe versus USAAF 8th Air Force. Vol. 1 and have the idea that anyone thought that B-17 and B-24s didnt need an escort, from the earliest days in 1942 they had them and when the escort didnt work losses were suffered, the issue was how to do it over long distances.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 9, 2021)

pbehn said:


> It is impossible to read this Luftwaffe versus USAAF 8th Air Force. Vol. 1 and have the idea that anyone thought that B-17 and B-24s didnt need an escort, from the earliest days in 1942 they had them and when the escort didnt work losses were suffered, the issue was how to do it over long distances.



!) They did not have escorts for deep penetration missions. The 1942 missions over France and Belgium were planned with escort in mind; but Eaker and others reckoned that deeper, unescorted missions attacking Germany proper were viable. This is a fact, as borne out by many dumb missions carried out in 1943.

2) You're not paying attention to the power of dogma. The USAAF bomber generals wanted to show the supremacy of the bombers, in order to justify an independent Air Force post-war. Whether or not escort was available, they tried ... and failed.


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## GrauGeist (May 9, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> To summarize the points made by previous posters:
> 
> P-39 Expert: I vote P-47 as most overrated. Fast, tough and heavily armed. But if you need escort in 1943 and early 1944 the Thunderbolt was not the answer.
> 
> ...


And the P-39 was there (in Europe) as the Airacobra in RAF service, but the British only operated it a short time with 601 Sqdrn late in 1941.
They loved it so much that by spring of '42, they dumped all of them on the Soviets.


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## buffnut453 (May 9, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> And the P-39 was there (in Europe) as the Airacobra in RAF service, but the British only operated it a short time with 601 Sqdrn late in 1941.
> They loved it so much that by spring of '42, they dumped all of them on the Soviets.



Yes...and 601 Sqn flew precisely one operational mission with the P-39, a 4-ship strafe of barges near Dunkirk. 

Perhaps there was a reason why the USAAF didn't use the P-39 as an escort fighter in Europe?

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## GrauGeist (May 9, 2021)

The USAAF did fly their P-39s from England to the MTO - so for for a brief moment in time, it can be said that the AAF operated P-39s in the ETO 

But in all seriousness, USN F6F Hellcats saw more combat in Europe than all non-Soviet P-39s combined.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 9, 2021)

Oh please don’t turn this into another P-39 circle-jerk. lol

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## GrauGeist (May 9, 2021)




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## Peter Gunn (May 9, 2021)

gruad said:


> 3P51 s could be built for 2P47s.
> 
> *SNIP*
> 
> ...


Where do you guys get some of this stuff? From a cracker jack box.

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## GrauGeist (May 9, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Where do you guys get some of this stuff? From a cracker jack box.


Right?

My Uncle lamented having his P-36 replaced by a P-39, but never "cried" about it. He then was assigned a P-38, which he held in high regard...but we have to look at how a pilot views his ride: familiarity invokes confidence.
Take that familiar ride away and stick him in a new type, he'll hate it...until he becomes familiar with it (assuming that the aircraft is not a Bell product) and the contempt will eventually give way.

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## drgondog (May 10, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> !) They did not have escorts for deep penetration missions. The 1942 missions over France and Belgium were planned with escort in mind; but Eaker and others reckoned that deeper, unescorted missions attacking Germany proper were viable. This is a fact, as borne out by many dumb missions carried out in 1943.
> 
> 2) You're not paying attention to the power of dogma. The USAAF bomber generals wanted to show the supremacy of the bombers, in order to justify an independent Air Force post-war. Whether or not escort was available, they tried ... and failed.



'Eaker reckoned'?? 

Eaker made the case to Churchill at Casablanca that 8th AF could combine with RAF to destroy German Industry (Operation Pointblank). With reluctant agreement from Churchill, that objective became his marching orders. Eaker was under constant pressure from Arnold to step up the pace and move from bombing coastal targets to German Border - and extend to serious industrial targets in deep Germany, which became Blitz Week during which RAF and 8th bombed same targets 'by day and night'. Eaker's serious error in judgment was that with the '600' operational bombers he told Arnold and Churchill that was required to achieve Operation Pointlank (and USAAF AWPD-2) was based on belief that heavily armed bombers could achieve those objectives by seriously hurting the LW and win the battle of attrition. That belief was reinforced by faulty US intelligence and wildly optimistic post mission debriefings in which the claims for German aircraft shot down approached 10:1 over claiming. 

Arnold and several senior AAC/AAF officers were seriously concerned in 1939/1940, based on war in Spain and ETO, that defending fighters would have the upper hand over unescorted bombers. The issue was that neither the technology nor the procurement practices of Materiel Command up to the task of giving US designers the challenge - and instead issued RFP for 'twin engine' escort. The P-61 was the only survivor and AAF-HQ understood that the P-38 was the only viable medium/long range escort.

Recall that Eaker demanded and received all four P-38 equipped FG be assigned to the AF. That the P-39 31st and 52nd FG's were assigned was strictly as a placeholder to gain combat experience and be equipped with either P-47 or P-38 as they became available. North Africa priorities raped Eaker's plans and capabilities by stripping ALL assigned FG save aircraft less 78th and the transferred Eagle squadons - Spitfire equipped - as 4t FG. It wasn't until one year later that VIII FC built back to 5 Operational FGs - all flying P-47C/D.

Last but perhaps as important as no long range fighters was serious under-training in bad weather flying training stateside- a serious and lingering issue for UK based operations.

IMO, Eaker had to go as the sacrificial lamb, but he did turn over a far more capable 8th AF to Jimmy Doolittle than he gets credit for. The fact that he transferred to take over US MTO operations including 12th and 15th AF was recognition that Arnold and Spaatz recognized that pointing fingers at Eaker for joint AAC/AAF inadequacies (procurement, training and allocation of critical assets like the P-38) in giving him the tools, was simply foolish.

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## drgondog (May 10, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Eaker frantically requested P-51B and P-38H in July 1943 during Blitz Week. Arnold dispatched Gen Barney Giles to kick start 'extra range' projects for the new P-51B, the newP-38J and the P-47D while prodding Echols to issue go/no g on XP-75 with mandate that t had to be operational y December (impossible).
> 
> Eaker and Spaatz and Arnold, along with Gen Muir Fairchild were responsible for A-36 and P-51-1 holding the NAA production while progress was being made on both sides of the ocean to convert P-51/Mustang I to Merlin.



EDIT: Recall that the P-51A contract was written as a transition vehicle for the NA-104 P-51B-5 contract should the B attain the hoped for capability. That said, the P-51A was an excellent escort fighter for medium and low level bombardment in the CBI - and had the same range as the B (and P-38G/H) without internal fuselage tank.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 10, 2021)

drgondog said:


> 'Eaker reckoned'??
> 
> Eaker made the case to Churchill at Casablanca that 8th AF could combine with RAF to destroy German Industry (Operation Pointblank). With reluctant agreement from Churchill, that objective became his marching orders. Eaker was under constant pressure from Arnold to step up the pace and move from bombing coastal targets to German Border - and extend to serious industrial targets in deep Germany, which became Blitz Week during which RAF and 8th bombed same targets 'by day and night'. Eaker's serious error in judgment was that with the '600' operational bombers he told Arnold and Churchill that was required to achieve Operation Pointlank (and USAAF AWPD-2) was based on belief that heavily armed bombers could achieve those objectives by seriously hurting the LW and win the battle of attrition. That belief was reinforced by faulty US intelligence and wildly optimistic post mission debriefings in which the claims for German aircraft shot down approached 10:1 over claiming.
> 
> ...



So, Eaker "made the case" to Churchill that Americans could bomb Germany in the daylight, even as he knew there were not the fighters to escort those missions. I'm not sure how that's different than "Eaker reckoned".

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## drgondog (May 10, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> So, Eaker "made the case" to Churchill that Americans could bomb Germany in the daylight, even as he knew there were not the fighters to escort those missions. I'm not sure how that's different than "Eaker reckoned".



Eaker was the *spokesperson* to make the case for the US Army/Army Air Force to perform daylight bombing - The 'US Army in this case was Marshall, Arnold, Spaatz". The US Army, Army Air Corps, Army Air Force was committed to execute according to the Air War Plan. Per AWPD-1 and -2, the Air Force was organized to support strategic bombardment on enemy manufacturing and production, as well as battlefield tactical airpower. In January 1943 the Only potential long range escort was the P-38 and Eaker got all of the 'ready for operations Fighter Groups'. 

When they were pulled from his control two months into the 8th AF Heavy Bombardment operations - he 'reckoned' that he still had the job to execute the plan. Does that help explain the context of 'pout' versus 'salute and carry on'?

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## pbehn (May 10, 2021)

Dates are important. The Casablanca conference and directive was from 14 - 24 January 1943, the Casablanca directive was issued on 4 February 1943. How many unescorted B-17 missions had been performed up to the end of 1942?

The pointblank directive was issued on 14 June 1943 Blitz week was July 24-30 1943. Between January and July a lot was learned about unescorted missions and very little was good news.

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## dsmerritt (May 10, 2021)

Hunter368 said:


> He would of been scared of any enemy fighter flying over Berlin in numbers that surpased his own total of fighters defending Berlin. Who wouldn't be, so it was not so much the fact it was the "P-51" he feared so much as the fact that some enemy fighter could actually reach Berlin and surpased in numbers his own defending fighter protection.
> 
> He then knew that USA production of bombers and fighters were going to destroy his beloved LW. Not to mention it made him eat crow and look like an azz.



No, it exposed him as the ass he was. And that's being very nice.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 10, 2021)

Oh, Hi. Come back to talk to us merely mortal fanboys?


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## pbehn (May 10, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Oh, Hi. Come back to talk to us merely mortal fanboys?


It is important to sort these 2007 issues out in the hope that a poster returns after 11 years..

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## drgondog (May 10, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Dates are important. The Casablanca conference and directive was from 14 - 24 January 1943, the Casablanca directive was issued on 4 February 1943. How many unescorted B-17 missions had been performed up to the end of 1942?
> 
> The pointblank directive was issued on 14 June 1943 Blitz week was July 24-30 1943. Between January and July a lot was learned about unescorted missions and very little was good news.



Very true, although the losses on the whole were deemed 'acceptable'. Strictly speaking POINTBLANK codified the Combined Bomber Offensive to go after the targets agreed at Casablanca. 

ARGUEMENT further narrowed he list to German aircraft industry from England and Italy.

Actually nearly All were escorted, though not to any target as far as Paris. The first 8th AF mission to Germany was January 27, 1943. Most escorts were barely inland from Channel - by RAF and 4th FG. Between December and January 27 more missions were extended deeper into France and Holland, farther and farther away from escort combat radius. Most 1942 attacks were sub pens, marshaling yards and airfields.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 10, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Eaker was the *spokesperson* to make the case for the US Army/Army Air Force to perform daylight bombing - The 'US Army in this case was Marshall, Arnold, Spaatz". The US Army, Army Air Corps, Army Air Force was committed to execute according to the Air War Plan. Per AWPD-1 and -2, the Air Force was organized to support strategic bombardment on enemy manufacturing and production, as well as battlefield tactical airpower. In January 1943 the Only potential long range escort was the P-38 and Eaker got all of the 'ready for operations Fighter Groups'.



Understood.



drgondog said:


> When they were pulled from his control two months into the 8th AF Heavy Bombardment operations - he 'reckoned' that he still had the job to execute the plan. Does that help explain the context of 'pout' versus 'salute and carry on'?



I'm not sure what issue you have with the word "reckoned", but I see you scare-quoting it again. Just so we're clear, "reckon" is perfectly good English, meaning "judge".

Nor did I at any point suggest any sort of pouting, so I don't see any need to address that "point" of yours. I've done my share of saluting and carrying out orders I didn't agree with. I don't know the level of Eaker's disagreement with his orders to carry out penetrations without fighter cover, but judging from his actions, it doesn't strike me as terribly high.

If you've got some reading to suggest I'll be happy to dig in.

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## drgondog (May 11, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Understood.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
I didn't take issue with 'reckoned' - just used it to start the rebuttal - and didn't mean to imply that you suggested that Eaker was pouting because he was carrying out orders he didn't agree with. Simply stated, he laid out the issues to Arnold - then saluted and soldiered on.

That said I do suggest that you read at least the following: Air Force Spoken Here by Parton, Global Conflict by Arnold, Forged in Fire by DeWitt Coop and Carl A Spaatz by Richard Davis. Another 'must read' is USAF Study 136 Development of the Long Range Escort Fighter by Boylon. In fact I suggest you read it first because it has the most complete set of references and correspondence surrounding the subject.

What I did take issue with is the characterization that Eaker didn't give a damn about the VIII BC crews and was stupidly misusing them for some personal megalomaniacal purpose - indifferent to the losses associated with ordering deep unescorted strikes against German industrial targets.

My opinions are based on a long history of the study of American airpower and the politics that placed Eaker at the point of the spear to achieve strategic results with an inadequately supplied tool kit. They are opinions, nevertheless.

When I wrote "P-51B Mustang: The NAA Bastard Stepchild that Saved the 8th AF", I devoted a great deal of effort to draw AAC/AAF deliberations and formation of Bomber Mafia ideology - that was crushed in Europe - and the EARLY awareness by Arnold that the 'bomber might not always get through'.

Eaker was charged with execution of a Plan that was never properly populated with planned assets and always the bastard stepchild to higher priorities issued by Eisenhower/Arnold and Marshall. The most severe drawdowns included sending the most experienced Bomb Groups to N.Africa, followed by ALL his long-range escort when the P-38 FG's followed - but replaced operationally (five months later) with P-47C/D that had half the combat radius. His B-24s , originally requested for nine weeks for Ploesti, stayed five months, further draining the VIII BC operational inventory well below the 800 level he was promised to execute POINTBLANK. The more subtle failures by AAF-HQ were Materiel Command deficiencies in operational testing - unleashing production aircraft to ETO that were unprepared for ETO combat conditions; Training command sending poorly trained aircrews which required significant and expensive 'on the job training' - after spending weeks at Base Depots for necessary mods; failure by Services Command (sub to Materiel Command) for not supplying tooling and equipment required for operational support at Airfield level. The list was long, discussed with Arnold about the same time Arnold was benched by his second heart attack in summer 1943.

If you wish to debate further on this, I will listen - but suggest that you read Study 136 first.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 11, 2021)

drgondog said:


> That said I do suggest that you read at least the following: Air Force Spoken Here by Parton, Global Conflict by Arnold, Forged in Fire by DeWitt Coop and Carl A Spaatz by Richard Davis. Another 'must read' is USAF Study 136 Development of the Long Range Escort Fighter by Boylon. In fact I suggest you read it first because it has the most complete set of references and correspondence surrounding the subject.


This is an awesome study course, Professor. Deserves more than the three credit hours listed in the catalog.

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## Peter Gunn (May 11, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> This is an awesome study course, Professor. Deserves more than the three credit hours listed in the catalog.


True except I find the text book for this course a bit lacking...

I mean, when the prof teaching the class is also the author of the text book, let's just say I smell "Money Grab".

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## drgondog (May 11, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> This is an awesome study course, Professor. Deserves more than the three credit hours listed in the catalog.


To be more complete, the view of American role in ETO/MTO operations should strongly consider the thoughts of Portal and Leigh-Mallory and Harris as they viewed the American 'doctrine'.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 11, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> True except I find the text book for this course a bit lacking...
> 
> I mean, when the prof teaching the class is also the author of the text book, let's just say I smell "Money Grab".


Oh ye of suspicious minds! In that case, Chem 1 + 2, Soc 21, and Poli Sci 42 were "money grabs" where I went to school. In fact you felt you were learning straight from the "guy who wrote the book" on the subject.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 11, 2021)

drgondog said:


> What I did take issue with is the characterization that Eaker didn't give a damn about the VIII BC crews and was stupidly misusing them for some personal megalomaniacal purpose - indifferent to the losses associated with ordering deep unescorted strikes against German industrial targets.
> 
> [...]
> 
> If you wish to debate further on this, I will listen - but suggest that you read Study 136 first.



Thanks for the reading suggestions.

1) I don't know whose posts you're reading, but I don't really appreciate you characterizing my posts this way; you'll struggle in vain to find a single reference I make to Eaker's personal feelings one way or the other.

2) I was approaching this as a discussion, not a "debate."

3) Quite frankly I'm uninterested in "debates", or discussions for that matter, with folks who'd mischaracterize my points so. Carry on.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2021)

Let’s go to the pub, have a few pints, and relax...


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## Peter Gunn (May 11, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Let’s go to the pub, have a few pints, and relax...


I'm in!

I'm not in the middle of the discussion but as my tag line suggests... BEER.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 11, 2021)

I think we need another tag up on zoom.

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## Peter Gunn (May 11, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Oh ye of suspicious minds! In that case, Chem 1 + 2, Soc 21, and Poli Sci 42 were "money grabs" where I went to school. In fact you felt you were learning straight from the "guy who wrote the book" on the subject.


Can't fault your logic there Wes, I think the only college text that I had that wasn't written by the prof was my Art Appreciation class. Yup, that course has stood me in good stead all these years.


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## drgondog (May 11, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Thanks for the reading suggestions.
> 
> 1) I don't know whose posts you're reading, but I don't really appreciate you characterizing my posts this way; you'll struggle in vain to find a single reference I make to Eaker's personal feelings one way or the other.
> 
> ...



*Thumpalumpacus said:*
*!) They did not have escorts for deep penetration missions. The 1942 missions over France and Belgium were planned with escort in mind; but Eaker and others reckoned that deeper, unescorted missions attacking Germany proper were viable. This is a fact, as borne out by many dumb missions carried out in 1943.*

*2) You're not paying attention to the power of dogma. The USAAF bomber generals wanted to show the supremacy of the bombers, in order to justify an independent Air Force post-war. Whether or not escort was available, they tried ... and failed.*

You are correct that I took exception to your characterization of Eaker's views and intelligence. He took the responsibility seriously, made constructive comments and criticism regarding the issues posed by Arnold's dissatisfaction - and recommended the solution approaches required to achieve his objectives. He begged for his long range escort to be returned in May, 1943 and specifically begged for both the P-51B and P-38H in July via Robert Lovett Sec'y War - who a.) conveyed the detailed discussions and requests to Arnold from Eaker, and b.) agreed with/supported Eaker in his conversations with Arnold.

The seriousness of escort requirements to carry out Pointblank were communicated in July but it wasn't until September 29th that Arnold finally issued the order that all near term deployments of P-38 and P51B be made to ETO. The 'dumb missions' carried out in 1943 were the only alternative to a.) standing down on Operation POINTBLANK (UNACCEPTABLE to Churchill, Portal, Roosevelt, Marshall, Eisenhower, Arnold, Spaatz) or b.) 'soldiering on as ordered'.

You may note from the Allied leadership references cited that far MORE leadership was invested in the success of both night attacks and daylight strategic bombing and the Combined Bomber Offensive than 'USAAF bomber generals'. The belief was held and maintained that the destruction of the Luftwaffe was essential to the success of OVERLORD. That wasn't going to happen by continuing to bomb coastal Europe... so 'dumb' unescorted missions to attack LW infrastructure continued until ETO weather prevailed in Fall/Winter of 1943.

If your curiosity extends to fact finding, you may note that the first operational escort mission of the 'new wave' of long range escort FG's (55th) was October 15th - a date that may or may not be of interest to you. It wasn't until December that both the 20th FG (P-38H) and 354th (P-51B went operational. How many months after Eaker begged for them?



EDIT - life is too short to get our panties in a wad over this.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 11, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> I'm in!
> 
> I'm not in the middle of the discussion but as my tag line suggests... BEER.


Beyond
Excessive
Eloquent 
Rhetoric!

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## Peter Gunn (May 11, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Beyond
> Excessive
> Eloquent
> Rhetoric!


Yeah, that's me...

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## XBe02Drvr (May 11, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Yeah, that's me...


Spruce buds are out! It's time to brew up a batch of Spruce Flavored Lager. Next month will be just about right for Light Gingered Ale.

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## Peter Gunn (May 11, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Spruce buds are out! It's time to brew up a batch of Spruce Flavored Lager. Next month will be just about right for Light Gingered Ale.


Yowza and Hubba Hubba... Count me in!

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## drgondog (May 11, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Yowza and Hubba Hubba... Count me in!


Only Geezers remember Yowsa and hubba Hubba. Can there be a Zoot Suit Sighting far behind?

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## wlewisiii (May 11, 2021)

Eh, I'd rather have some Hubba Bubble.

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## dsmerritt (May 11, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> The joke is just a joke. It references how the Groundhog shows up in so many threads.
> 
> I have nothing but respect for the guys who flew and maintained it.
> 
> ...



The P-39 was an excellent airplane within the altitude range it's single stage Allison allowed, so low to medium. The turbocharger it was supposed to have would have transformed it. The P-38 with the Allison with the turbo was a fully capable sirplane. A bad decision by the AAF. It's that simple.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 11, 2021)

dsmerritt said:


> The P-39 was an excellent airplane within the altitude range it's single stage Allison allowed, so low to medium. The turbocharger it was supposed to have would have transformed it. The P-38 with the Allison with the turbo was a fully capable sirplane. A bad decision by the AAF. It's that simple.



Depends on what you're fighting against, and how much ammo you've expended, I think.

I still think its limited range, and limited climb, made for a limited airplane. Within its limits, and in the hands of a good pilot, of course it was dangerous.

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## Shortround6 (May 11, 2021)

dsmerritt said:


> The P-38 with the Allison with the turbo was a fully capable sirplane. A bad decision by the AAF. It's that simple.



Not so simple. 

The early turbo charged airplanes had a lot of operational problems, the turbo controllers didn't work well. 

The P-38 used a low/no drag intercooler in the early versions, From about the F on it was too small for the engines. 

Bell had made a total hash of
1. the liquid cooling system for the engine, 
2. the oil cooling system for the engine. 
3. the intercooler system for the turbo. 

Getting rid of the turbo solved #3 right of the bat..
Moving the coolant radiators and ducts to the position the turbo used to be in solved #1 
The oil coolers were moved into flanking positions to the coolant radiator which would not have been possible had the turbo stayed. 

They built about 207 P-38s in 1941 and over 900 P-39s. Very few of the P-38s were considered combat capable at the time and none were considered combat capable after they started building the P-38F. 
Choice was hundreds of not so good P-39s in late 1941/early 1942 or a lot fewer P-39s with turbos that performed good on paper but would have maintenance issues and be significantly slower under 20,000ft than the P-39s they did get. 

The AAF had 13 P-37s and a few other experimental turbo powered aircraft that convinced them that the turbo was about a year further out than the single/two speed mechanical supercharged engines for service squadron use.

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## wuzak (May 11, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> The AAF had 13 P-37s and a few other experimental turbo powered aircraft that convinced them that the turbo was about a year further out than the single/two speed mechanical supercharged engines for service squadron use.



The YP-37s, and the XP-37 before them, convinced Curtiss and the USAAF that the way forward was the P-40.

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## Shortround6 (May 11, 2021)

At least in the short term. The USAAC still wanted turbo aircraft, they just understood that they needed something in meantime to make up numbers. 
The P-39 and P-40 were those interim aircraft.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 12, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Only Geezers remember Yowsa and hubba Hubba. Can there be a Zoot Suit Sighting far behind?


What,...isn't this the Ancient Geezers' Retirement Home?? Am I in the wrong place? Did I come in the wrong door? That sweet young thing said it was third door on the right! Or was it fourth?? Hmmm...Must have been. Sorry for the bother, chaps. Ta ta! Been real.

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## Peter Gunn (May 12, 2021)

drgondog said:


> *Only Geezers remember Yowsa and hubba Hubba*. Can there be a Zoot Suit Sighting far behind?


BANG! You got me.

Headed for the closet to look for my old Zoot.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 12, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> BANG! You got me.
> 
> Headed for the closet to look for my old Zoot.


At least you (think you) know where it is! Been looking all over for mine. I'm sure I've seen it in the last decade somewhere. But where?


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## drgondog (May 12, 2021)

dsmerritt said:


> The P-39 was an excellent airplane within the altitude range it's single stage Allison allowed, so low to medium. The turbocharger it was supposed to have would have transformed it. The P-38 with the Allison with the turbo was a fully capable sirplane. A bad decision by the AAF. It's that simple.


Excellent relative to ? A6M, Bf 109F/G, Fw 190A, P-40, P-51, Spitfire V, VIII, IX or I-16 and Buffalo? As noted earlier the XP-39 was AWFUL and program nearly cancelled until NACA made bout a dozen critical cooling and aerodynamic changes to bring it to 'functional'.

It was specified to be the 'small solution' according to Ben Kelsey - in comparison to the XP-38. It was REQUIRED as a high altitude interceptor - which was the reason for a flawed M-4 37mm auto cannon. The Brits flew one operational sortie and quietly shipped them off. Both the 31st and 52nd FG's, originally equipped with P-39, quickly replaced them with Spitfires in the MTO. The poor bastards that were stuck with P-39 in MTO were relegated to convoy escort and CAS.

Exactly one US pilot scored 5 victory credits in the P-39 in a target rich environment in SWP.

The only 'bad' decision made by AAF relative to the P-39 was to Not immediately buy the XP-51 in 1941 to replace the P-39 for all 1943 usage in AAF.

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## Denniss (May 12, 2021)

P-39 is somewhat strange, most western allied nations disliked them but the soviets loved them.


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## Peter Gunn (May 12, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> At least you (think you) know where it is! Been looking all over for mine. I'm sure I've seen it in the last decade somewhere. But where?


Of course I know where it is, what a silly thing to say, it's right in the ah... in the ah... over by the...

Hmm...

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## pbehn (May 12, 2021)

Denniss said:


> P-39 is somewhat strange, most western allied nations disliked them but the soviets loved them.


That 21 miles of water makes a bigger difference than most would think.

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## SaparotRob (May 12, 2021)

The Soviets operated their P-39's close to the front and mostly for ground support.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 13, 2021)

IGNORE: Delleted. Hoof in mouth disease.


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## Conslaw (May 13, 2021)

I would say the N1K2 Shiden Kai or "George". It's fans play it up as equal to or superior to the F6F or the F4U. Even assuming the plane was equal to the F6F or the F4U, and I think that is debatable, the fact is that Japan couldn't manufacture it in enough quantity for it to be a significant factor in the war. The F6F in particular made sacrifices in performance to enable higher production rates. Therefore the design of the aircraft itself is partially responsible for the fact that the F6F was almost always available in overwhelming numbers wherever it was committed.

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## Big Jake (May 13, 2021)

My vote - the Zero. Once the Americans figured out how to fight it, it was gone, an easy prey even to an F4F. But its legacy and myth lived on, so much so that throughout the war, all Japanese fighters were referred to as Zeros.


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## Marcel (May 13, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> My vote - the Zero. Once the Americans figured out how to fight it, it was gone, an easy prey even to an F4F. But its legacy and myth lived on, so much so that throughout the war, all Japanese fighters were referred to as Zeros.


Still, they were victorious over about any opposition they encountered in the first year. But I guess at one point they were obsolete.

(ignoring the P39 banter here)

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## Schweik (May 14, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> My vote - the Zero. Once the Americans figured out how to fight it, it was gone, an easy prey even to an F4F. But its legacy and myth lived on, so much so that throughout the war, all Japanese fighters were referred to as Zeros.



That's a big exaggeration IMO. The Zero as never 'easy prey' to an F4F, it wasn't even easy prey to an F4U or F6F - when conditions were ideal, and well trained pilots were rare, the US pilots racked up some victories, but it didn't happen over night. We were still taking losses to A6M (and Ki 43) pilots fairly routinely all through 1943 and even in 1944. 

Personally I think the Zero is underrated. It just didn't get the upgrades it needed, particularly to the engine, in time. But just because the Japanese ultimately lost the war doesn't mean they were a pushover in 1942, 1943 etc.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 14, 2021)

Schweik said:


> That's a big exaggeration IMO. The Zero as never 'easy prey' to an F4F, it wasn't even easy prey to an F4U or F6F - when conditions were ideal, and well trained pilots were rare, the US pilots racked up some victories, but it didn't happen over night. We were still taking losses to A6M (and Ki 43) pilots fairly routinely all through 1943 and even in 1944.
> 
> Personally I think the Zero is underrated. It just didn't get the upgrades it needed, particularly to the engine, in time. But just because the Japanese ultimately lost the war doesn't mean they were a pushover in 1942, 1943 etc.



According to "the numbers" the Zero did not do well against those fighters and for all this superiority it should have done way better against the Wildcat, as we know tactics played a lot into this. This piece was written earlier in the year. I haven't vetted the numbers referenced and you also have to consider overclaims on both sides.

_"Consider the Battle of the Coral Sea. During the May 4 to 8, 1942 clash off the Solomons, U.S. Navy Wildcats shot down 14 A6Ms for a loss of just 10 aircraft._

_Later that year – between Aug. 7 and Nov. 15 – Wildcats shot down 72 Zeros while losing 70. And, in the carrier vs. carrier battles during the same period, 43 Zeros were bagged at a cost of 31 Wildcats._

_The numbers kept improving in the Grumman fighter’s favor. By the end of the Battle for Guadalcanal – Feb. 3, 1943 – records show that Navy and Marine Corps aviators flying F4Fs shot down 5.9 Zeros for every one Wildcat lost. That ratio would eventually grow to 6.9:1."_

Wildcat vs. Zero – How America’s Grumman F4F Outfought the 'Superior' Mitsubishi A6M - MilitaryHistoryNow.com

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## Schweik (May 14, 2021)

Well the stats continue to be debated, certainly Thach Weave etc. helped, and the Wildcat had it's own advantages (I think it's a bit underrated).

But I'd like a closer look at those numbers at Guadalcanal especially. Are those numbers checked against Japanese loss records? It's hard to get a realistic sense of it because you have these 'Tinian Air Group' etc. fans who seem to say that the actual combat losses for the Japanese units were far lower than claimed. I read new books coming out by guys like Michael Claringbould where he's supposed to be checking all the numbers, and it looks like the A6M is coming out on top. It has been a while but IIRC 'First Team' kind of tells a similar story. I know sometimes the numbers get squeezed one way or another, but I think the jury is still out on some of that.

Clearly the A6M was inferior in terms of attrition war, which is what a lot of the Pacific War really turned out to be aside from the drama of Midway etc., but early on as a Strategic weapon it was very powerful, and on a Tactical level it was still quite a threat through the mid-war, IMO.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 14, 2021)

I'd think that 1942 figures (and 1944, for that matter) should be considered in part by factoring in the experience levels of the contestant naval air forces, which edge I think would belong to the Japanese at least until Santa Cruz.

After 1943, that differential would swing the other way, towards the Americans, as the (non-rotated) Japanese fighter pilots continued being whittled away.

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## buffnut453 (May 14, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> According to "the numbers" the Zero did not do well against those fighters and for all this superiority it should have done way better against the Wildcat, as we know tactics played a lot into this. This piece was written earlier in the year. I haven't vetted the numbers referenced and you also have to consider overclaims on both sides.
> 
> _"Consider the Battle of the Coral Sea. During the May 4 to 8, 1942 clash off the Solomons, U.S. Navy Wildcats shot down 14 A6Ms for a loss of just 10 aircraft._
> 
> ...



Are those numbers comparing actual losses on both sides or are we looking at a mix of actual losses and claims? Just wanting to ensure we're comparing apples to apples.


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## FLYBOYJ (May 14, 2021)

Schweik said:


> Well the stats continue to be debated, certainly Thach Weave etc. helped, and the Wildcat had it's own advantages (I think it's a bit underrated).
> 
> But I'd like a closer look at those numbers at Guadalcanal especially. Are those numbers checked against Japanese loss records? It's hard to get a realistic sense of it because you have these 'Tinian Air Group' etc. fans who seem to say that the actual combat losses for the Japanese units were far lower than claimed. I read new books coming out by guys like Michael Claringbould where he's supposed to be checking all the numbers, and it looks like the A6M is coming out on top. It has been a while but IIRC 'First Team' kind of tells a similar story. I know sometimes the numbers get squeezed one way or another, but I think the jury is still out on some of that.
> 
> Clearly the A6M was inferior in terms of attrition war, which is what a lot of the Pacific War really turned out to be aside from the drama of Midway etc., but early on as a Strategic weapon it was very powerful, and on a Tactical level it was still quite a threat through the mid-war, IMO.



Again I haven't vetted these numbers, I think they will slide only slightly in either direction but the point is even if we take the 6.9:1 and cut it in half, the Zero still should have fared way better IMO. 

The Zero was a great platform at the beginning of the war but as it's been said countless times, tactics and better aircraft eclipsed it's supremacy.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 14, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> Are those numbers comparing actual losses on both sides or are we looking at a mix of actual losses and claims? Just wanting to ensure we're comparing apples to apples.


As mentioned, I haven't had a chance to vet those numbers

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## drgondog (May 14, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> My vote - the Zero. Once the Americans figured out how to fight it, it was gone, an easy prey even to an F4F. But its legacy and myth lived on, so much so that throughout the war, all Japanese fighters were referred to as Zeros.


Given a good pilot, the A6M was simply much better than F4F. The Achilles heels of IJN were a.) too few highly skilled pilots, and b.) and, IMO, the Bushido/Samurai philosophy that shunned teamwork and flight element/finger four type flight integrity. 

The Thatch Weave defensive strategy serious saved F4F lives vs the A6M through 1943.

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## Schweik (May 14, 2021)

That and the lack of a well coordinated rescue program to pick up downed pilots... along with lack of armor etc., and some pilots not wearing parachutes.

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## P-39 Expert (May 14, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> According to "the numbers" the Zero did not do well against those fighters and for all this superiority it should have done way better against the Wildcat, as we know tactics played a lot into this. This piece was written earlier in the year. I haven't vetted the numbers referenced and you also have to consider overclaims on both sides.
> 
> _"Consider the Battle of the Coral Sea. During the May 4 to 8, 1942 clash off the Solomons, U.S. Navy Wildcats shot down 14 A6Ms for a loss of just 10 aircraft._
> 
> ...


Agree. And once the captured Zero was tested it's faults became known.


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## Milosh (May 14, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> The Soviets operated their P-39's close to the front and mostly for ground support.


No. They operated in support of the ground support.

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## Vincenzo (May 14, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> According to "the numbers" the Zero did not do well against those fighters and for all this superiority it should have done way better against the Wildcat, as we know tactics played a lot into this. This piece was written earlier in the year. I haven't vetted the numbers referenced and you also have to consider overclaims on both sides.
> 
> _"Consider the Battle of the Coral Sea. During the May 4 to 8, 1942 clash off the Solomons, U.S. Navy Wildcats shot down 14 A6Ms for a loss of just 10 aircraft._
> 
> ...



the first two data look reliable but the third..
so i did a search
JoeB wrote time ago:
".. but the point remains that the all-1942 average of Zero v F4F, which consisted of 100+ losses on each side, was pretty even (apparently a bit in the F4F's favor)."
"It may 'jumping in with ten league boots' again, but somebody quoted 6.9 ratio for F4F which is just not remotely realistic for real fighter-fighter kill ratio, that's the claimed ratio (approx anyway) v all types; the real ratio v Zero was around 1:1 in 1942, and doesn't seem to have dramatically risen in '43 Solomons combats before the F4F was phased out (not counting the FM-2's career in 1944-45). F4F's also met Type 1's over the Solomons in a few combats in early 1943 before the Japanese settled on using Army air units in NG and Navy ones in the Solomons. The outcomes were not vastly different than against Zeroes in those few cases, nor did the F4F pilots recognize immediately that they were facing a different opponent."

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## FLYBOYJ (May 14, 2021)

Vincenzo said:


> the first two data look reliable but the third..
> so i did a search
> JoeB wrote time ago:
> ".. but the point remains that the all-1942 average of Zero v F4F, which consisted of 100+ losses on each side, was pretty even (apparently a bit in the F4F's favor)."
> "It may 'jumping in with ten league boots' again, but somebody quoted 6.9 ratio for F4F which is just not remotely realistic for real fighter-fighter kill ratio, that's the claimed ratio (approx anyway) v all types; the real ratio v Zero was around 1:1 in 1942, and doesn't seem to have dramatically risen in '43 Solomons combats before the F4F was phased out (not counting the FM-2's career in 1944-45). F4F's also met Type 1's over the Solomons in a few combats in early 1943 before the Japanese settled on using Army air units in NG and Navy ones in the Solomons. The outcomes were not vastly different than against Zeroes in those few cases, nor did the F4F pilots recognize immediately that they were facing a different opponent."



Thanks for posting that Vincenzo - JoeB was a great participant, wish he was still around.

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## SaparotRob (May 14, 2021)

Milosh said:


> No. They operated in support of the ground support.


I'm still every bit as factual as Caidin.

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## gruad (May 14, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Where do you guys get some of this stuff? From a cracker jack box.




The size of the JUG and a radial will keep you safer if you get hit.


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## Shortround6 (May 14, 2021)

gruad said:


> The size of the JUG and a radial will keep you safer if you get hit.


well, at least some of the hits will be further away from the cockpit 

On another plane they would be called misses.

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## GrauGeist (May 14, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> well, at least some of the hits will be further away from the cockpit
> 
> On another plane they would be called misses.


My favorite anecdote of the P-47's size:
_"...the British pilots joked that a Thunderbolt pilot could defend himself from a Luftwaffe fighter by running around and hiding in the fuselage..."
_

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## Schweik (May 14, 2021)

Vincenzo said:


> the first two data look reliable but the third..
> so i did a search
> JoeB wrote time ago:
> ".. but the point remains that the all-1942 average of Zero v F4F, which consisted of 100+ losses on each side, was pretty even (apparently a bit in the F4F's favor)."
> "It may 'jumping in with ten league boots' again, but somebody quoted 6.9 ratio for F4F which is just not remotely realistic for real fighter-fighter kill ratio, that's the claimed ratio (approx anyway) v all types; the real ratio v Zero was around 1:1 in 1942, and doesn't seem to have dramatically risen in '43 Solomons combats before the F4F was phased out (not counting the FM-2's career in 1944-45). F4F's also met Type 1's over the Solomons in a few combats in early 1943 before the Japanese settled on using Army air units in NG and Navy ones in the Solomons. The outcomes were not vastly different than against Zeroes in those few cases, nor did the F4F pilots recognize immediately that they were facing a different opponent."



Those US Navy pilots were quite well trained by the standards of the period. Maybe not as much as IJN pilots, but they got gunnery training, combat training - far more than a lot of USAAF or RAAF pilots did before they went into action. Having radios in the planes and flying in pairs / finger four flights also helped a lot. Thach weave kind of put those pieces together, but I've read that if they hadn't had good training in deflection shooting Thach weave wouldn't have worked.

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## Clayton Magnet (May 15, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> The Zero was a great platform at the beginning of the war


The A6M didn't show up until the summer of 1940, when the war was almost a year old, and not in any significant numbers until later 1941, when the war was two years old.


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## Schweik (May 15, 2021)

Thank God the Japanese didn't have Zeros in 1939. That would have been rough.


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## FLYBOYJ (May 15, 2021)

Clayton Magnet said:


> The A6M didn't show up until the summer of 1940, when the war was almost a year old, and not in any significant numbers until later 1941, when the war was two years old.



The beginning of the war in the Pacific was December 7, 1941. The Zero didn't fight in Europe (obviously) and I don't think we were discussing the war in Europe so what's your point???

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## Ovod (May 15, 2021)

Clayton Magnet said:


> The A6M didn't show up until the summer of 1940, when the war was almost a year old, and not in any significant numbers until later 1941, when the war was two years old.



Spitfire didn't show up "in any significant numbers" in the war until the summer of 1940 in the Battler of Britain - which is one reason why I selected the the aircraft as "most overrated".

The only fighter aircraft to be operated from the very beginning to the very end of the European theatre was the Bf 109 (by 2 days).

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## GrauGeist (May 15, 2021)

Japan had been at war in Asia since 1937, actually going as far back as 1931 - the US became involved in 1941, several years after the fact (both in the Pacific and Europe).

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## SaparotRob (May 15, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Spitfire didn't show up "in any significant numbers" in the war until the summer of 1940 in the Battler of Britain - which is one reason why I selected the the aircraft as "most overrated".
> 
> The only fighter aircraft to be operated from the very beginning to the very end of the European theatre was the Bf 109 (by 2 days).


Out of curiosity, How would the P-40 fit in this timeline?


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## pbehn (May 15, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Out of curiosity, How would the P-40 fit in this timeline?


P-40s ordered by France were diverted to UK along with those ordered by UK, started arriving in UK in 1940 started in service in 1941.

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## wuzak (May 15, 2021)

Ovod said:


> The only fighter aircraft to be operated from the very beginning to the very end of the European theatre was the Bf 109 (by 2 days).



The 2 days between Germany invading Poland and Britain and France declaring war?


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## GrauGeist (May 15, 2021)

Ovod said:


> The only fighter aircraft to be operated from the very beginning to the very end of the European theatre was the Bf 109 (by 2 days).


Just for the record, there were a few types that soldiered on to the end of the war, operated by smaller air forces.
One such example is the Moraine-Saulnier MS.406, which entered Frence service in 1938 (one year before the European war) and several were still in service with the Finnish Air Force at war's end (1945).

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## buffnut453 (May 15, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Spitfire didn't show up "in any significant numbers" in the war until the summer of 1940 in the Battler of Britain - which is one reason why I selected the the aircraft as "most overrated".
> 
> The only fighter aircraft to be operated from the very beginning to the very end of the European theatre was the Bf 109 (by 2 days).



Doesn't matter how many Spitfires were operational. Bottom line is that it entered front line service in August 1938 and hence it did operate from the very beginning to the very end of the war. By the summer of 1939 there were several Spitfire squadrons operational.

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## Ovod (May 15, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Out of curiosity, How would the P-40 fit in this timeline?



P-40 didn't really enter service until sometime in 1941. Believe it or not the Grumman F4F was already in service earlier towards the end of 1940 with the FAA, the Martlet could be the third longest serving fighter aircraft in British and commonwealth service, certainly one of the longest serving combat aircraft throughout the war.



> The 2 days between Germany invading Poland and Britain and France declaring war?



That's right.



GrauGeist said:


> Just for the record, there were a few types that soldiered on to the end of the war, operated by smaller air forces.
> One such example is the Moraine-Saulnier MS.406, which entered Frence service in 1938 (one year before the European war) and several were still in service with the Finnish Air Force at war's end (1945).



There were also the Polish PZL P.11 taken over by the Romanian air force (as well as the locally built versions). where they still carrying out combat sorties in May 1945?

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## RCAFson (May 15, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> According to "the numbers" the Zero did not do well against those fighters and for all this superiority it should have done way better against the Wildcat, as we know tactics played a lot into this. This piece was written earlier in the year. I haven't vetted the numbers referenced and you also have to consider overclaims on both sides.
> 
> _"Consider the Battle of the Coral Sea. During the May 4 to 8, 1942 clash off the Solomons, U.S. Navy Wildcats shot down 14 A6Ms for a loss of just 10 aircraft._
> 
> ...



Lundstrom, in _First Team_, states that only 4 Zeros were destroyed by F4Fs at Coral Sea (I had to count these as he provided no explicit summary), with the other losses being due to aircraft ditching due to a lack of flight decks, or were jettisoned to free up deck space, after one IJN light carrier was sunk and a fleet carrier lost the use of her flight deck, leaving only one carrier operational.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 15, 2021)

RCAFson said:


> Lundstrom, in _First Team_, states that only 4 Zeros were destroyed by F4Fs at Coral Sea (I had to count these as he provided no explicit summary), with the other losses being due to aircraft ditching due to a lack of flight decks, or were jettisoned to free up deck space, after one IJN light carrier was sunk and a fleet carrier lost the use of her flight deck, leaving only one carrier operational.


As stated, that reference I posted wasn't vetted. With that said, the other Japanese losses that were due to ditching, were they all because of lack of flight deck or did any of them run out of fuel or were damaged?

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## RCAFson (May 15, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> As stated, that reference I posted wasn't vetted. With that said, the other Japanese losses that were due to ditching, were they all because of lack of flight deck or did any of them run out of fuel or were damaged?



Some of the jettisoned A6Ms were damaged, and possibly some of those that ditched, however these were only aircraft that ditched in the vicinity of an IJN carrier after landing on was delayed. Of course some of the damage may have been caused by strike aircraft defensive fire, as the Zeros shot down a number of SBDs. OTOH, F4F losses were due to a variety of reasons as well. This is Lundstrom's summary of the IJNAF strike against Lexington and Yorktown:


> A total of twenty Grumman F4F fighters and twenty-three Douglas SBD dive bombers participated in the defense of Task Force 17. Their losses totaled three F4Fs (two from VF-2, one from VF-42) and five SBDs shot down, while another SBD was lost in a landing accident on board the _Lexington_. Other fighters and dive bombers damaged beyond repair managed to land on board the carriers. American aerial victory claims amounted to ten fighters, four dive bombers, and one torpedo plane for Fighting Two and Fighting Forty-two, while the three dive bombing squadrons reported the destruction of six fighters, one dive bomber, and ten torpedo planes, for a grand total of thirty-two enemy planes. From a correlation of Japanese and American sources, it appears reasonable that the F4Fs actually shot down no Zeros, but perhaps splashed three dive bombers and one torpedo plane, while the SBD crews accounted for no Zeros, but downed one dive bomber and five torpedo planes—total ten Japanese aircraft destroyed by aerial engagement. American antiaircraft fire from the ships likely destroyed one dive bomber and two torpedo planes. Many other Japanese planes sustained heavy damage from all causes, as out of the strike group seven ditched and twelve were later jettisoned.

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## Conslaw (May 17, 2021)

RCAFson said:


> Some of the jettisoned A6Ms were damaged, and possibly some of those that ditched, however these were only aircraft that ditched in the vicinity of an IJN carrier after landing on was delayed. Of course some of the damage may have been caused by strike aircraft defensive fire, as the Zeros shot down a number of SBDs. OTOH, F4F losses were due to a variety of reasons as well. This is Lundstrom's summary of the IJNAF strike against Lexington and Yorktown:



Lundstrom also examined Japanese and American records from the Guadalcanal campaign and determined that once you eliminated the overclaiming by both sides and looked just at the loss records, the A6M and F4F fought to a statistical dead heat in that campaign. (SInce the A6M was a lighter, cheaper aircraft attacking consistently 600 miles from its home base, that's actually a damn good record for the A6M. 

In his Osprey book, P-47D Thunderbolt vs Ki-43-II Oscar, Michael John Claringbould attempted a similar analysis from the American and Japanese records during the New Guinea campaign, (I'm going from memory here too) and he determined that the P-47 shot down 2 Ki-43s on average. That's actually a good result for the Ki-43 in that that plane uses up less than half the resources of one P-47.

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## Snautzer01 (May 17, 2021)

Conslaw said:


> Lundstrom also examined Japanese and American records from the Guadalcanal campaign and determined that once you eliminated the overclaiming by both sides and looked just at the loss records, the A6M and F4F fought to a statistical dead heat in that campaign. (SInce the A6M was a lighter, cheaper aircraft attacking consistently 600 miles from its home base, that's actually a damn good record for the A6M.
> 
> In his Osprey book, P-47D Thunderbolt vs Ki-43-II Oscar, Michael John Claringbould attempted a similar analysis from the American and Japanese records during the New Guinea campaign, (I'm going from memory here too) and he determined that the P-47 shot down 2 Ki-43s on average. That's actually a good result for the Ki-43 in that that plane uses up less than half the resources of one P-47.


A fighter pilot training take years. Planes are in comperision very cheap. So 2:1 is very much a lethal blow. It is not about how fast you can replace planes or the kill ratio against plane against plane.

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## SaparotRob (May 17, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> A fighter pilot training take years. Planes are in comperision very cheap. So 2:1 is very much a lethal blow. It is not about how fast you can replace planes or the kill ratio against plane against plane.


We need an insightful award.

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## pbehn (May 17, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> A fighter pilot training take years. Planes are in comperision very cheap. So 2:1 is very much a lethal blow. It is not about how fast you can replace planes or the kill ratio against plane against plane.


True, and resources taken to make something is only an important measure if the ability to make something is equal in both nations.


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## swampyankee (May 17, 2021)

Conslaw said:


> Lundstrom also examined Japanese and American records from the Guadalcanal campaign and determined that once you eliminated the overclaiming by both sides and looked just at the loss records, the A6M and F4F fought to a statistical dead heat in that campaign. (SInce the A6M was a lighter, cheaper aircraft attacking consistently 600 miles from its home base, that's actually a damn good record for the A6M.
> 
> In his Osprey book, P-47D Thunderbolt vs Ki-43-II Oscar, Michael John Claringbould attempted a similar analysis from the American and Japanese records during the New Guinea campaign, (I'm going from memory here too) and he determined that the P-47 shot down 2 Ki-43s on average. That's actually a good result for the Ki-43 in that that plane uses up less than half the resources of one P-47.


In addition to Snautzer01's comments, it should be noted that the US economy was much larger.

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## Shortround6 (May 17, 2021)

Analyzing fighter to fighter combat may (or may not) tell you which fighter was "better" or a better "buy" against that one type of fighter.

What else were the P-47s or Oscars shooting down (bombers/recon planes, etc) and/or what else were they doing? 4 P-47s strafing an air field (or freighter or ????) is going to put 4 times as many bullets per second into the target area as four Oscars. Where either one used as fighter bombers? Did either one accompany bombers and if so did one protect their bombers better than the other?

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## FLYBOYJ (May 17, 2021)

Conslaw said:


> Lundstrom also examined Japanese and American records from the Guadalcanal campaign and determined that once you eliminated the overclaiming by both sides and looked just at the loss records, the A6M and F4F fought to a statistical dead heat in that campaign. (Since the A6M was a lighter, cheaper aircraft *attacking consistently 600 miles from its home base, that's actually a damn good record for the A6M*.


 100%, BUT also consider the stress on the pilot, flying for hours then having to engage miles from home, and then having the trip back (providing there were no issues during combat). I can see how this limited the Zero's effectiveness in these situations.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 17, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Analyzing fighter to fighter combat may (or may not) tell you which fighter was "better" or a better "buy" against that one type of fighter.


Yes and no - on paper the Zero should had decimated the F4F, but then again look at some of the opponents the Fins faced with the Buffalo. As mentioned a gazillion times before, the Buffalos operated by the Finns were very different than those operated by VMF-221. 

30% aircraft, 50% pilot skill, 20% tactics...

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## Conslaw (May 17, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> 100%, BUT also consider the stress on the pilot, flying for hours then having to engage miles from home, and then having the trip back (providing there were no issues during combat). I can see how this limited the Zero's effectiveness in these situations.



Flyboy, I agree with you. I think the Japanese Navy, comfortable that the A6M-21 COULD fly 600 mile missions, maybe should have spent some time thinking whether they SHOULD fly those missions. I think it was late 1942 (November or December?), that they opened an airfield on Munda between Rabaul and Guadalcanal. By that time, the battle on the ground at Guadalcanal was lost even though the troops wouldn't evacuate until Feb. 1943. Japan should have been building forward airfields starting in August 1942.

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## Conslaw (May 18, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> A fighter pilot training take years. Planes are in comperision very cheap. So 2:1 is very much a lethal blow. It is not about how fast you can replace planes or the kill ratio against plane against plane.



Snautzer01, I agree with you; but what choice did Japan have? The IJA essentially had 3 single-engine fighter types in 1943, the Ki-43-II, the Ki-61 ("Tony"), and the Ki-44. The Ki-44 on paper seems to match up the best against the P-47, but I can't find anything that says the Ki-44 ever operated out of New Guinea. The Ki-61 and Ki-44 both had maintenance issues, and monthly production of either of these planes did not exceed 42/month through the middle of 1943. In contrast, P-47 production averaged 360/month over the course of its production run.


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## SaparotRob (May 18, 2021)

Conslaw said:


> Flyboy, I agree with you. I think the Japanese Navy, comfortable that the A6M-21 COULD fly 600 mile missions, maybe should have spent some time thinking whether they SHOULD fly those missions. I think it was late 1942 (November or December?), that they opened an airfield on Munda between Rabaul and Guadalcanal. By that time, the battle on the ground at Guadalcanal was lost even though the troops wouldn't evacuate until Feb. 1943. Japan should have been building forward airfields starting in August 1942.


The Japanese did start building a forward airfield around August 1942. It was at Guadalcanal but quickly changed ownership.

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## GrauGeist (May 18, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> The Japanese did start building a forward airfield around August 1942. It was at Guadalcanal but quickly changed ownership.


The distance from Rabaul to Guadalcanal is 661 miles. The IJN/IJA had plenty of other islands in the Solomon's to build airfields.
If they had focused on saturating the islands with airbase (and not just seaplane bases) they would have had both a better search/combat radius as well as overlapping defenses.

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## Snautzer01 (May 18, 2021)

Conslaw said:


> Snautzer01, I agree with you; but what choice did Japan have?


Not attaking and pissing off the largest economy and well funded country would be a novel idea. Should have stuck with china dutch indies. Or any other nation that was already in conflict in the West.

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## pbehn (May 18, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Yes and no - on paper the Zero should had decimated the F4F, but then again look at some of the opponents the Fins faced with the Buffalo. As mentioned a gazillion times before, the Buffalos operated by the Finns were very different than those operated by VMF-221.
> 
> 30% aircraft, 50% pilot skill, 20% tactics...


There is also an X factor. If you conduct combat missions in single engined aircraft 600 miles away, not only do you need great navigation skills but a huge amount of luck that eventually you run out of. Joachim Marseille was shot down and bailed out in the Channel a month after his first combat and rescued after 3 hours in the water with exposure. That could easily have been his last mission across a stretch of water only 21 to 40 miles in that area.

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## cherry blossom (May 18, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Yes and no - on paper the Zero should had decimated the F4F, but then again look at some of the opponents the Fins faced with the Buffalo. As mentioned a gazillion times before, the Buffalos operated by the Finns were very different than those operated by VMF-221.
> 
> 30% aircraft, 50% pilot skill, 20% tactics...


Were the A6M2s having to fight with their drop tanks still attached?


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## P-39 Expert (May 18, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> A fighter pilot training take years. Planes are in comperision very cheap. So 2:1 is very much a lethal blow. It is not about how fast you can replace planes or the kill ratio against plane against plane.


I read that in WW2 the AAF took 9 months to train a fighter pilot and he graduated with 200 flying hours in the various trainers. The Navy pilots graduated with 600 flying hours, but I don't know how many months.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (May 18, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> Should have stuck with china dutch indies. Or any other nation that was already in conflict in the West.



Well, Japan just did that. 

They invaded french Indochina in two steps (1940 and 1941) and prompted the US embargoes that led to the decision to strike Pearl, The Philipines et all.


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## SaparotRob (May 18, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> The distance from Rabaul to Guadalcanal is 661 miles. The IJN/IJA had plenty of other islands in the Solomon's to build airfields.
> If they had focused on saturating the islands with airbase (and not just seaplane bases) they would have had both a better search/combat radius as well as overlapping defenses.


 They didn't because they couldn't. Interservice rivalry was only part of the problem. Saburo Sakai marveled at the huge American invasion fleet at Guadalcanal. The US hadn't even got its act together yet.


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## Snautzer01 (May 18, 2021)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> Well, Japan just did that.
> 
> They invaded french Indochina in two steps (1940 and 1941) and prompted the US embargoes that led to the decision to strike Pearl, The Philipines et all.


I said should not have attacked the us. So they did not do what i advised.

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## pbehn (May 18, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> I read that in WW2 the AAF took 9 months to train a fighter pilot and he graduated with 200 flying hours in the various trainers. The Navy pilots graduated with 600 flying hours, but I don't know how many months.


That 200 hrs is advanced training. BoB pilots were being sent to squadrons with 50 hrs and that was no where near enough. The P-51B/Cs first "job" was as advanced trainer for the guys who would use it.

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## P-39 Expert (May 18, 2021)

pbehn said:


> That 200 hrs is advanced training. BoB pilots were being sent to squadrons with 50 hrs and that was no where near enough. The P-51B/Cs first "job" was as advanced trainer for the guys who would use it.


I believe the 200 hours for AAF pilots included the last 40 hours in a combat plane, likely a P-39 or P-40. The rest of the hours were in basic and advanced trainers.


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## Milosh (May 18, 2021)

*Army Air Corps Flight Training in WWII*

AAF (scharch.org)

Each cadet was given *60 hours* of flight training in nine weeks before moving on the basic flight school. 
During basic flight training, a cadet received approximately *70 hours* in the air during a nine week period. 
Those who went to single-engine school flew AT-6s for the first *70 hours* during a nine week period, learning aerial gunnery and combat maneuvers and incresing their skills in navigation, formation, and instrument flying.

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## P-39 Expert (May 18, 2021)

Milosh said:


> *Army Air Corps Flight Training in WWII*
> 
> AAF (scharch.org)


So the 200 hours was primary 60, basic 70 and advanced 70 which were all in dedicated training aircraft. Then an extra 40 hours in a combat type plane. Good to know, thanks.


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## pbehn (May 18, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> So the 200 hours was primary 60, basic 70 and advanced 70 which were all in dedicated training aircraft. Then an extra 40 hours in a combat type plane. Good to know, thanks.


Not necessarily, names are important. At the end of the link is the section "transition training" which is said to take two months. I saw a WW2 era graphic about training which definitely included the number 200 hours in USA or UK.


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## Escuadrilla Azul (May 18, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> I said should not have attacked the us. So they did not do what i advised.


For Japan, attacking DEI and british colonies simply leaving behind and in the middle of the sea lanes the USA possesions was not an option, especially given the american reaction to the more or less bloodless invasion of Vichy French Indochina (been both Japan and Vichy France Nazi Germany sympathizers it could had been regarded a kind of internal fascist block affair)

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## pbehn (May 18, 2021)

I found this on the Quora forum
Duc Quyen
, World War II fanatic
Answered 5 years ago · Author has 407 answers and 15.5M answer views.

The book "Dirty little secrets of World War 2" provides us with some statistics about the average number of hours of flight training that new pilots got:





Flying hours before combat
......................1942, 1943, 1944
German, 240,170,110
British, 200,335,340
USA ----,320,360
The key factor determining how much training new pilots got was fuel. Five hours of fighter training requires about a ton of fuel. From 1939 to 1942, Luftwaffe pilots received about 240 hours of flight training. As the war went on, the Germans had fewer tons of fuel for anything. In the desperate closing months of the war, Luftwaffe pilots with as much as 8 hours of flying time were sent into combat.
On the other hand, Western Allied pilots didn't suffer from chronic fuel shortage and their flying time steadily increased over time.
Soviet new pilots' flying time, however, was nowhere near that of other countries. Soviet top fighter ace in World War II - Ivan Kozhedub - once said in an interview that he'd received 100 hours of flight training at his aviation school. Another pilot - Evgeny N. Stepanov said he'd got 80. But both finished training before the German invasion in June 1941. In the dark days of 1941 and 42, well, Soviet pilots often got only 8-10 hours of flight training before combat. But of course, the number would go up in later years.

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## Milosh (May 18, 2021)

Flying time or flying time on type?

During the BoB it was said RAF pilots had very little flying time but this was in the a/c they would fly in combat.

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## GrauGeist (May 18, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> They didn't because they couldn't. Interservice rivalry was only part of the problem. Saburo Sakai marveled at the huge American invasion fleet at Guadalcanal. The US hadn't even got its act together yet.


The inter-service rivalry didn't dictate where airfields were constructed, the availability of existing airfields did.
The Japanese (both Army and Navy) were woefully lacking in the ability to support their advances. So new airfields hacked out of the jungle was a burden on their logistics. On many occasions, it was up to the pilots and scant crew to build their own quarters.
The Japanese logistics and supply chain was deplorable and the rivalry between the two services hobbled their ability to wage war - example, the IJN had a relatively well equipped maintenance center on Rabaul. However, the nearby IJA base at Lae on New Guinea had to send their aircraft all the way to Manila for even routine maintenance - a trip of 1,500 miles one way - instead of the 345 miles to Rabaul.

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## SaparotRob (May 18, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> The inter-service rivalry didn't dictate where airfields were constructed, the availability of existing airfields did.
> The Japanese (both Army and Navy) were woefully lacking in the ability to support their advances. So new airfields hacked out of the jungle was a burden on their logistics. On many occasions, it was up to the pilots and scant crew to build their own quarters.
> The Japanese logistics and supply chain was deplorable and the rivalry between the two services hobbled their ability to wage war - example, the IJN had a relatively well equipped maintenance center on Rabaul. However, the nearby IJA base at Lae on New Guinea had to send their aircraft all the way to Manila for even routine maintenance - a trip of 1,500 miles one way - instead of the 345 miles to Rabaul.


My point exactly.


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## SaparotRob (May 18, 2021)

You just say it better.

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## GrauGeist (May 18, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> My point exactly.


But my point was that the Japanese did not have enough area saturation (regardless of service) for the area under their control.
This led to long duration flights, sparse area coverage, increased wear and tear on the aircraft (aircraft were to be overhauled every 150 hours of accrued time) and excessive fuel consumption. Add to that, pilot fatigue, by the way.

The U.S. had no problem putting airfields anywhere there was enough room (including a 3,000 foot long shoal) because the American military had Navy Construction Batalions and Army Corps of Engineers along with the logistics make it happen.
This was a glaring shortcoming of the Japanese (both services) - their logistics were next to nothing and even when an airfield/base was established, there was never enough infrastructure to support it, both in men and material. When the Japanese were running two or more sorties a day, they had to wait for some poor bastard to hand pump the fuel into each aircraft from a 33 gallon container.
The Americans just had a fuel truck go from plane to plane...


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## Shortround6 (May 18, 2021)

A large part of the problem for the Japanese in building extra airfields was that they built them pretty much by hand. 

The US used Bulldozers. 

Both Eisenhower and Halsey are supposed to have included the Bulldozer in lists of weapons or equipment that won the war.

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## GrauGeist (May 18, 2021)

Agreed.
I recall reading that the condition of Japanese made airfields (rayher than captured, ready made fields) were terrible.
So much so, that it cost them a good percentage of aircraft damaged or destroyed due to collapsed gear, loss of control on poorly maintained (muddy, rutted, etc.) runways.


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## SaparotRob (May 18, 2021)

Wasn't there a movie made about the Seabees on Guadalcanal? Fighting Seabees or something like that? The Americans were the ones with bulldozers.


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## pbehn (May 19, 2021)

Milosh said:


> Flying time or flying time on type?
> 
> During the BoB it was said RAF pilots had very little flying time but this was in the a/c they would fly in combat.


Well that is a movable feast, some people trained by the RAF and other nations could already fly before they joined, while others may have been great in most areas but have problems that needed to be overcome. I remember reading Bob Doe never liked flying inverted and thought he would be "washed out" because of it, he wasnt and became an ace. Choosing a force from those who have the wealth to own a plane isnt really a great idea. From what Ive read, assuming all who progress onto "transition training" in a frontline combat plane it the training in that plane that matters, 50 hours want enough to keep you alive if thrown into areas of high combat activity while over 200 hours you had learned almost all that training can give you.


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## Snautzer01 (May 19, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Wasn't there a movie made about the Seabees on Guadalcanal? Fighting Seabees or something like that? The Americans were the ones with bulldozers.


Japanese dozer. Kikki's Workshop [ The Museum of CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT ]Komatsu Bulldozer G40(1943)

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## Peter Gunn (May 19, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Wasn't there a movie made about the Seabees on Guadalcanal? Fighting Seabees or something like that? The Americans were the ones with bulldozers.


The Fighting Seabees 1944 with John Wayne:

The Fighting Seabees (1944) - IMDb

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## Shortround6 (May 19, 2021)

text says 148 built from 1943 on. 

Caterpillar alone built 9606 bulldozers in 1942, 9063 in 1943 and 18,9193 in 1944. 

Caterpiller was by far the largest builder of crawler tractors in the US. but not the only one.

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## SaparotRob (May 19, 2021)

December, 1942 might have been a little late for the Empire regarding Guadalcanal. Most of them winding up on the sea floor probably contributed little to building forward bases.


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## nuuumannn (May 19, 2021)

Ovod said:


> The only fighter aircraft to be operated from the very beginning to the very end of the European theatre was the Bf 109 (by 2 days).



Huh? The Spitfire Mk.I entered service with 19 Sqn at RAF Duxford in August 1938, a full year before war was declared. Am I missing something in your logic?


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## nuuumannn (May 19, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Both Eisenhower and Halsey are supposed to have included the Bulldozer in lists of weapons or equipment that won the war.



On display on the shoreline at Arromanches-les-Bains, Normandy. The dozer teams used to go out and remove the big rocks from the sand at low tide, which goes out for some distance, making it easier to mount the Mulberry Harbors.




Europe 31



Peter Gunn said:


> The Fighting Seabees 1944 with John Wayne:



There you go, there's your documentary...

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## pbehn (May 20, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> On display on the shoreline at Arromanches-les-Bains, Normandy. The dozer teams used to go out and remove the big rocks from the sand at low tide, which goes out for some distance, making it easier to mount the Mulberry Harbors.
> 
> View attachment 623993
> Europe 31
> ...


And all those miles of runways, taxiways and dispersal points didnt build themselves.

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## pbehn (May 20, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> Huh? The Spitfire Mk.I entered service with 19 Sqn at RAF Duxford in August 1938, a full year before war was declared. Am I missing something in your logic?


It is semantics based on the Spitfire not being used in combat until Dunkerque, it ignores the fact that the Spitfire was still in use when the war actually ended, in the far east.


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## wuzak (May 20, 2021)

pbehn said:


> It is semantics based on the Spitfire not being used in combat until Dunkerque, it ignores the fact that the Spitfire was still in use when the war actually ended, in the far east.



I believe he was referring to the fact that the Bf 109 was involved with Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, but the Spitfire wasn't "at war" until September 3, when France and Britain declared war on Germany.


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## Just Schmidt (May 20, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> Huh? The Spitfire Mk.I entered service with 19 Sqn at RAF Duxford in August 1938, a full year before war was declared. Am I missing something in your logic?



I'd also expect the Bf 110 to be along for the full ride. I'm as dumbfounded as you are.


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## pbehn (May 20, 2021)

Just Schmidt said:


> I'd also expect the Bf 110 to be along for the full ride. I'm as dumbfounded as you are.


The Wellington was in use from 1938-53.

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## pbehn (May 20, 2021)

wuzak said:


> I believe he was referring to the fact that the Bf 109 was involved with Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, but the Spitfire wasn't "at war" until September 3, when France and Britain declared war on Germany.


Like is said its semantics, you dont have to be at war to operate an aircraft, I dont know when the last operation of a Bf 109 in combat was either.


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## cherry blossom (May 20, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Like is said its semantics, you dont have to be at war to operate an aircraft, I dont know when the last operation of a Bf 109 in combat was either.


Probably 1948 Avia S-199 - Wikipedia

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## Peter Gunn (May 20, 2021)

I would have assumed that to be in service for the entire war, my own logic says it was being used from August 1939 to October 1945, i.e. before the outbreak and after the surrender.

To say the Spitfire was not just because of it not being "in action" until a couple of days after the war started is ridiculous at best.

By that logic, the B-17 doesn't even come close to qualifying, I mean, no it wasn't in combat until December 7, 1941 but it was still in service since before September 1, 1939. Or am I missing something?

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## special ed (May 20, 2021)

Likewise the F4U & P-38 were in US service by Dec 7th but not Sept 39. Well, maybe the P-38


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## swampyankee (May 20, 2021)

wuzak said:


> I believe he was referring to the fact that the Bf 109 was involved with Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, but the Spitfire wasn't "at war" until September 3, when France and Britain declared war on Germany.



Of course, the Spitfire was in combat in the Pacific _after_ Germany was beaten.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (May 20, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Like is said its semantics, you dont have to be at war to operate an aircraft, I dont know when the last operation of a Bf 109 in combat was either.


Probably the last combat operations of the Bf.109 were those of the spanish Ala 7 (Wing 7) Hispano Buchón in the colonial war of Sidi Ifni in 1957-1958.

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## Ovod (May 20, 2021)

Where did I say that the fact that the Bf 109 saw 2 days’ more combat than the Spitfire was of any great import or significance? 

If you look back to my post no. 2,148 I was replying to a poster‘s obviously semantic-pedantic-irrelevant point that the Mitsubishi Zero did not serve throughout the entire 6-year war – so it’s pretty clear what I think about the 2-day difference.

Why I selected the Spitfire as most “overrated aircraft” is due to the fact the almost no Spitfires were posted or served outside of the UK until the middle of 1942 – almost halfway through the war – the Spit was a UK based fighter only for the first 3 years.

The Spitfire played little to no role in the invasion of Poland, the invasion of Norway, nor did it play any substantial role in the Battle of France either. It was the Hawker Hurricane which fought and destroyed aircraft of the Luftwaffe in most of these places. Very, very few of the Luftwaffe’s losses in aerial combat were due to the guns of the Spitfire up to the French armistice at the end of June 1940.

Similar story in the Battle of Britain, I think we all know which aircraft shot down the majority of Luftwaffe over the UK in 1940 – just as Hawkers would also lead the kill rate in the the second Battle of Britain in 1944 against thousands of incoming V-1 missiles.


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## eagledad (May 20, 2021)

Actually. the British used the first B-17 in combat was in July of 1941.

FWIW

Eagledad

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## GrauGeist (May 20, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Where did I say that the fact that the Bf 109 saw 2 days’ more combat than the Spitfire was of any great import or significance?
> 
> If you look back to my post no. 2,148 I was replying to a poster‘s obviously semantic-pedantic-irrelevant point that the Mitsubishi Zero did not serve throughout the entire 6-year war – so it’s pretty clear what I think about the 2-day difference.
> 
> ...


Truth be told, the Moraine-Saulnier MS.406 first clashed with the Bf109 in September during the "Phoney War" on the Western Front (France's half-hearted attempt to rescue Poland) and was still in service with the Finns by May 1945 - so for the European theater, it would be a dead heat between the Bf109 and MS.406 for longevity.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (May 20, 2021)

pbehn said:


> The Wellington was in use from 1938-53.


BTW, the Heinkel 111 was in combat action from 1937 to 1958 (on this date in the CASA 2111 form), also in the Sidi Ifni war, with Ala de Bombardeo Ligero 27 (27th Light Bombing Wing) in CAS/COIN role, along with the T-6 Texan.

Edited for clarity: The Sidi Ifni war spaned from 1957 to 1958 and the Heinkel 111 first combats were in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

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## cherry blossom (May 20, 2021)

The P51 Mustant first saw combat in May 1942 with the RAF and last fought in the Football War of 1969. The Salvadorian Mustangs actually fought against Honduran F4U Corsairs, which had entered combat a little later in February 1943.

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## BiffF15 (May 20, 2021)

The P-39 first saw combat in WW1, most notably downing Manfred Von Richthofen. It’s still at war today.

Yes, I will put myself in timeout.

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## buffnut453 (May 20, 2021)

BiffF15 said:


> Yes, I will put myself in timeout.



Many of us have been hoping and praying for years to see that eventuality. It's FINALLY happened!!!! HALLELUJAH!!!!!!

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## buffnut453 (May 20, 2021)

BiffF15 said:


> The P-39 first saw combat in WW1, most notably downing Manfred Von Richthofen. It’s still at war today.
> 
> Yes, I will put myself in timeout.



BTW...only kidding, Biff. You know I love ya!!!

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## nuuumannn (May 20, 2021)

BiffF15 said:


> he P-39 first saw combat in WW1, most notably downing Manfred Von Richthofen. It’s still at war today.



Let's not forget it was an _Australian_ P-39 on the ground, not an RFC one being flown by A. Roy Brown (who had piles at the time - ouch) that shot the Baron down...

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## nuuumannn (May 20, 2021)

In terms of longevity in service well past its sell-by date of a WW2 aircraft, the A-26/B-26 Invader is up there, first deployed in late WW2, the last combat worthy example was retired from the Honduran Air Force in 1980. In that time the type has seen action in a large number of conflicts by a wide variety of operators all over the world.

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## BiffF15 (May 20, 2021)

How about the DC-3 / C-47. First production 1936, 1941 military use starts, still in use today by African and South American militaries.

Back to time out.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 20, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> Let's not forget it was an _Australian_ P-39 on the ground, not an RFC one being flown by A. Roy Brown (who had piles at the time - ouch) that shot the Baron down...



Thankfully, it was tail-heavy, meaning the guns pointed up even on the ground.

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## MikeMeech (May 21, 2021)

swampyankee said:


> Of course, the Spitfire was in combat in the Pacific _after_ Germany was beaten.



Hi

Although the Spitfire fighters were in action in India and Australia before the end of 1943. Also in Malta by March 1942 and North Africa by May 1942, PR Spitfires arrived in all theatres earlier than the fighter variant. In the UK the Spitfires of 602 and 603 Squadrons claimed German bombers shot down on 16th October 1939 over Firth of Forth (Scotland), two JU 88 crashed into the sea, 4 German aircrew being rescued and made POW. The same RAF squadrons were also involved in the shooting down of first Luftwaffe aircraft over British soil, the HE111 crashing near Kidlaw on 28th October, 1939.

Mike


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## wuzak (May 21, 2021)

Ovod said:


> The Spitfire played little to no role in the invasion of Poland,



Did the Hurricane?




Ovod said:


> the invasion of Norway



Did the Hurricane?




Ovod said:


> nor did it play any substantial role in the Battle of France either.



The Spitfire was deliberately held back from the Battle of France.




Ovod said:


> It was the Hawker Hurricane which fought and destroyed aircraft of the Luftwaffe in most of these places. Very, very few of the Luftwaffe’s losses in aerial combat were due to the guns of the Spitfire up to the French armistice at the end of June 1940.



Since the Spitfires were being held back for the defence of Britain, that is no surprise.

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## Conslaw (May 21, 2021)

Snautzer01 said:


> Not attaking and pissing off the largest economy and well funded country would be a novel idea. Should have stuck with china dutch indies. Or any other nation that was already in conflict in the West.



The problem is that the Philippines were in the way, and that meant taking on the US Navy. And then there are those pesky treaties . . .


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## Conslaw (May 21, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Wasn't there a movie made about the Seabees on Guadalcanal? Fighting Seabees or something like that? The Americans were the ones with bulldozers.



I know the Americans captured and used at least one Japanese bulldozer. Who knows how well it compared to an American dozer, but I'm sure it was better than nothing. They also captured a state-of-the-art Japanese radar set and an ice-making factory.

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## Ovod (May 21, 2021)

wuzak said:


> Did the Hurricane?



The Hurricane didn't fight over Poland in 1939 - I never said it did.



> Did the Hurricane?



RAF Hurricanes were operating out of Norway in 1940.



> The Spitfire was deliberately held back from the Battle of France.



Which is exactly my point. The Spitfire was deliberately held back to the confines of the UK for the first 2.5-3 years - which kind of reduced its effectiveness, wouldn't you say?

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## wuzak (May 21, 2021)

Ovod said:


> The Hurricane didn't fight over Poland in 1939 - I never said it did.



So why meantion Poland as a campaign that the Spitfire didn't participate in?




Ovod said:


> RAF Hurricanes were operating out of Norway in 1940.



Didn't know that.

In what sort of numbers?




Ovod said:


> Which is exactly my point. The Spitfire was deliberately held back to the confines of the UK for the first 2.5-3 years - which kind of reduced its effectiveness, wouldn't you say?



How does that make the Spitfire overrated?


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## Shortround6 (May 21, 2021)

wuzak said:


> Didn't know that.
> 
> In what sort of numbers?



Small, one squadron for certain, perhaps two?

They were evacuated onto the Glorious in a grand feat of airmanship, they had no arresting gear but by careful placement of sandbag ballast they were able to land without prop strikes. 

Wasted when the Glorious's captain got his ship sunk due to stupidity/ineptitude.

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## SaparotRob (May 21, 2021)

Conslaw said:


> I know the Americans captured and used at least one Japanese bulldozer. Who knows how well it compared to an American dozer, but I'm sure it was better than nothing. They also captured a state-of-the-art Japanese radar set and an ice-making factory.


I wasn't saying that was the case. The "Fighting Seabees" was a Hollywood production and might not be quite as factual as Mr. Caidin. Didn't know about the radar. That must have been really annoying. "You lost the airstrip AND our radar?"


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## Shortround6 (May 21, 2021)

Hollywood production and might not be quite as factual as Mr. Caidin>

Hmm, Hollywood vs Mr. Caidin for being factual???

tough call, might need my lucky penny

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## GrauGeist (May 22, 2021)

If you sort through photos of USN/USMC/USAAF air ops in the PTO, you'll find groomed and well laid out airstrips in the most ungodly locations - conversely, the Japanese airfields were typically captured facilities. They rarely built their own and when they did, it was by hand, by impressed laborers. And those airstrip were atrocious - the Tinian Kokutai lost 23% of their aircraft to ground errors due to the airfield's poor condition.

The Japanese did have caterpillars, but they were rare in the Pacific due to their terrible logistics. The further out they went, the worse it got.

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## Milosh (May 22, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Small, one squadron for certain, perhaps two?


46 Sqd anyways


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## Ovod (May 22, 2021)

wuzak said:


> So why meantion Poland as a campaign that the Spitfire didn't participate in?



Because it was a campaign, among many, were the Spitfire was absent. The fact that some other combat aircraft types were not there either doesn't alter the fact, does it?



> How does that make the Spitfire overrated?



The air defence of one's own homeland is an important role for an fighter aircraft sure, but you are not going to win any war unless you take the fight to the enemy. Do you think the P-51 would have been rated at all if it had only served in the mainland USA?


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## wuzak (May 22, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Because it was a campaign, among many, were the Spitfire was absent. The fact that some other combat aircraft types were not there either doesn't alter the fact, does it?



Rather a pointless observation don't you think?




Ovod said:


> The air defence of one's own homeland is an important role for an fighter aircraft sure, but you are not going to win any war unless you take the fight to the enemy.



The Spitfire was designed as a defensive fighter. At that it excelled.

The war as it developed was, most likely, what was envisioned when Spitfire.




Ovod said:


> Do you think the P-51 would have been rated at all if it had only served in the mainland USA?



Since it was originally ordered by the British, it was unlikely to ever serve only in the USA.

And if it did, how it was rated would depend on how it performed in the roles it was given.


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## pbehn (May 22, 2021)

Ovod said:


> The air defence of one's own homeland is an important role for an fighter aircraft sure, but you are not going to win any war unless you take the fight to the enemy. Do you think the P-51 would have been rated at all if it had only served in the mainland USA?


Your criteria for rating things seems to be based on what the P-51 did. Most Russian aircraft never went more than fifty miles over enemy lines and for most of the war that was still in the Soviet Union.

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## Peter Gunn (May 22, 2021)

BiffF15 said:


> The P-39 first saw combat in WW1, most notably downing Manfred Von Richthofen. It’s still at war today.
> 
> Yes, I will put myself in timeout.


Sorry, timeout ain't gonna cut it.

Major penalty, four minutes in the sin bin and sit out the rest of the period.

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## Marcel (May 22, 2021)

I actually agree with 
O
 Ovod
, the spitfire is overrated. And before any spitfire fan starts shouting, in the mean time I also believe the spitfire was one of the greatest fighters of the war. The only reason I think the spitfire is overrated is the fact that it gets the credits for winning the BoB by the uninformed public, while we know better. So in that sense it was overrated. Was it the *most* overrated? Nah, not really.

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## Marcel (May 22, 2021)

BiffF15 said:


> How about the DC-3 / C-47. First production 1936, 1941 military use starts, still in use today by African and South American militaries.
> 
> Back to time out.


Okay that’s it, you’ll go to the “total perspective vortex”.

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## SaparotRob (May 22, 2021)

I have cast my vote. A plane that has received more press than the war it fought in. The Groundhog.

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## SaparotRob (May 22, 2021)

And I had sworn to myself I wouldn't be dragged into that mess.


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## Just Schmidt (May 22, 2021)

I'd like to chime in, though it will consist mostly of a reservation. I've usually kept away from both 'underrated' and 'overrated' threads, as quite apart from the difficulties in assessing an aircrafts 'true' worth, it entirely depends on who is doing the rating. The wartime user or their enemies? At what point in the war? The military establishment or the press? The ground troops being pounded by stukas or sturmoviks? Then there is the immediate post war period, the revisionisms and re-revisionisms, rehabilitating aircraft whose reputation has been dragged through the mud, or shooting down a national icon. Finally they end up in this forum, and again I have a hard time of thinking of one aircraft whose denigration has not spurred its champions on in indignated protest, or conversely a defense of a loved old warhorse in face of iconoclast attempts of assasination of reputation.

To take I think you all know what aircraft, I have a long time ago expresseed my opinion ( I don't remember in which of the myriad threads) that the groundhog mostly get handed the short end of the stick. It was in no way perfect, but had some qualities that in some environments stood its pilots in good steed. Now, when somebody truly infatuated with that aircraft tries to make it out to be one of the greatest, naturally enough some others points out the failings. It only take at least one on each side to up the stakes, and increasingly fantastic claims about potential leads to ever increasing focus on the drawbacks and faults until one wonders that the aircraft actually ever left the ground. I guess that one can just stop reading the posts, though incredibly enough there still surfaces hitherto unnoticed facts, though they are indeed few and far between. In the process it continues to get (I think on balance) both over and underrated,which is naturally as each side emphazises its own points. Nobody can be expected to repeat all the pros and cons in each of the sometimes hundreds of posts written on the same aircraft.

To return to the abstract, a final problem is (also when 'best' and so on aircraft are discussed), that numbers and results enters the discussion in a way that is not always straight-forward to judge about. If one is discussing an aircraft as a design, it hardly matters how many were build, but how compare serviceability, never realized teething troubles and potential for improvement? How rate a propeller design at the ewe of the age of jets? How judge the abstract soundness of a design that entered service in a logistic breakdown, either at the beginning of hostilities or at the end? How blame an aircraft entering service in 44 for not matching the spitfire in years in service? If one takes the results as the guideline (and sometimes it's done), all axis aircraft becomes crap because they didn't win the war.

I think i have learned a lot from these threads, but I've also had my share of frustration of those that bogs down in trench warfare. Even then I'd like to extend my thanks to those who bother to spend so much time trying to share their special expertise and interests, even if sometimes clearly they are pressing their aircraft further than any sane pilot would do.

I have sometimes thought about starting an 'most difficult to rate aircraft' thread, but I seem not to be able to relocate the 'create poll' button I'm quite sure I once saw.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 22, 2021)

I'm willing to bet that we each overrate aircraft others underrate, and underrate aircraft others overrate.

I think the only ratings that matter are from the pilots who either flew the plane, or flew against it.

I know what airplanes I like, but I'm not even a pilot, so my opinion is worth every penny you've paid for it.

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## SaparotRob (May 22, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I'm willing to bet that we each overrate aircraft others underrate, and underrate aircraft others overrate.
> 
> I think the only ratings that matter are from the pilots who either flew the plane, or flew against it.
> 
> I know what airplanes I like, but I'm not even a pilot, so my opinion is worth every penny you've paid for it.


I'd give you an "agree" too.

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## wuzak (May 22, 2021)

Marcel said:


> I actually agree with @Ovod , the spitfire is overrated. And before any spitfire fan starts shouting, in the mean time I also believe the spitfire was one of the greatest fighters of the war. The only reason I think the spitfire is overrated is the fact that it gets the credits for winning the BoB by the uninformed public, while we know better. So in that sense it was overrated. Was it the *most* overrated? Nah, not really.



You have a perfectly logical reason for having the opinion that the Spitfire was overrated.

I'm not sure that Ovod pointing out campaigns at which the Spitfire was not present, like Poland, is a reasonable assessment.

Regarding the Spitfire's reputation for winning the BoB. a lot of that probably can be traced back to propaganda at the time.


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## GrauGeist (May 22, 2021)

Still not sure of the logic behind the statement that the Spitfire wasn't present during the invasion of Poland. No British (or French) aircraft were - Poland was on her own.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 23, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Still not sure of the logic behind the statement that the Spitfire wasn't present during the invasion of Poland. No British (or French) aircraft were - Poland was on her own.



It's a silly proposition.

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## soulezoo (May 24, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> Let's not forget it was an _Australian_ P-39 on the ground, not an RFC one being flown by A. Roy Brown (who had piles at the time - ouch) that shot the Baron down...



Yes, but was it with or without turbo? Did it have armor? Where was the radio located? Did it have a drop tank? Were the guns sighted for MOA or MIL?

If only we had a thread where we could learn about the heretofore unknown P-39.... 

Joining Biff in that timeout now.

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## GrauGeist (May 24, 2021)

Never in my life would I ever have thought any Allied aircraft would be inducted into the ranks of the "Wunderwaffe", where mythical machines sporting black crosses could perform amazing feats beyond the realm of known physics.

But here we are...

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## soulezoo (May 24, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Never in my life would I ever have thought any Allied aircraft would be inducted into the ranks of the "Wunderwaffe", where mythical machines sporting black crosses could perform amazing feats beyond the realm of known physics.
> 
> But here we are...



It's that black cross. As soon as it was applied, the aircraft was good for at least an additional 30 knots of airspeed.

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## fastmongrel (May 25, 2021)

soulezoo said:


> It's that black cross. As soon as it was applied, the aircraft was good for at least an additional 30 knots of airspeed.



Painting roundels on an aircraft had the opposite effect. They must have been using 100% lead paint

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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

A6Ms are so overrated omg just because they are maneuverable does not mean they are fast. A corsair would rip right by an a6m and then gain some altitude and zoom again on it with 50 cals


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## Marcel (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> A6Ms are so overrated omg just because they are maneuverable does not mean they are fast. A corsair would rip right by an a6m and then gain some altitude and zoom again on it with 50 cals


Then again, they ripped through the allied airforces in 1941/early 1942 like a knife through butter.

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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

Marcel said:


> Then again, they ripped through the allied airforces in 1941/early 1942 like a knife through butter.


Oh my goodness it's not like they attacked the British empire who was on the other side of the world and dealing with the blitz and the Italians in Africa like. Look at the coral sea after that they were done and the Japanese airforce only existed for less than a year

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## SaparotRob (May 25, 2021)

Sometimes quantity has a quality all of its own.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 25, 2021)

Brace yourselves...

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## GrauGeist (May 25, 2021)




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## Marcel (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> Oh my goodness it's not like they attacked the British empire who was on the other side of the world and dealing with the blitz and the Italians in Africa like. Look at the coral sea after that they were done and the Japanese airforce only existed for less than a year


Blimey no, they were just taking it on against the British far-east airforce, the Chinese airforce, the Ducht East Indish airforce, the Australian airforce, the US Navy and US Airforce at that time.

Bit silly to compare a late war Corsair to an early war design isn't it? The Zero got it's reputation early on in the war and well deserved in my opinion. They were not just fighting obsolete designs, but par example also did well against the British Hurricanes in Malaya. True, they soldiered on way to long, later US designs were quite a bit better, but in the well trained hands of the early Japanese pilots, in 1942, it was a lethal opponent.

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## GrauGeist (May 25, 2021)

And here I always understood the British Empire to be global (meaning both sides of the world), but aparently, I was mistaken.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 25, 2021)

Marcel said:


> Blimey no, they were just taking it on against the British far-east airforce, the Chinese airforce, the Ducht East Indish airforce, the Australian airforce, the US Navy and US Airforce at that time.
> 
> Bit silly to compare a late war Corsair to an early war design isn't it? The Zero got it's reputation early on in the war and well deserved in my opinion. They were not just fighting obsolete designs, but par example also did well against the British Hurricanes in Malaya. True, they soldiered on way to long, later US designs were quite a bit better, but in the well trained hands of the early Japanese pilots, in 1942, it was a lethal opponent.



Well we all know the war did not begin until 1941 right?

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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

Marcel said:


> Blimey no, they were just taking it on against the British far-east airforce, the Chinese airforce, the Ducht East Indish airforce, the Australian airforce, the US Navy and US Airforce at that time.
> 
> Bit silly to compare a late war Corsair to an early war design isn't it? The Zero got it's reputation early on in the war and well deserved in my opinion. They were not just fighting obsolete designs, but par example also did well against the British Hurricanes in Malaya. True, they soldiered on way to long, later US designs were quite a bit better, but in the well trained hands of the early Japanese pilots, in 1942, it was a lethal opponent.


You are right the corsair was a bit late to the party but all of those airforces you listed like the British far-east airforce, the Chinese airforce, the Dutch East indian airforce, and the Australian airforce were rather small and not really a major threat to japan like America. But the plane fell off rather quickly in my opinion


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## fastmongrel (May 25, 2021)

Also helps when your pilots are the best of the best. The Japanese pilots were superbly trained and often very experienced if they had been flying biplanes they would still have swept the skies.

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## GrauGeist (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> You are right the corsair was a bit late to the party but all of those airforces you listed like the British far-east airforce, the Chinese airforce, the Dutch East indian airforce, and the Australian airforce were rather small and not really a major threat to japan like America. But the plane fell off rather quickly in my opinion


America wasn't a threat to Imperial Japan's air services until 1942.
Prior to that Japan had been fighting Chinese air elements for roughly seven years.


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## SaparotRob (May 25, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> And here I always understood the British Empire to be global (meaning both sides of the world), but aparently, I was mistaken.


Well, now you know.

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## Marcel (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> You are right the corsair was a bit late to the party but all of those airforces you listed like the British far-east airforce, the Chinese airforce, the Dutch East indian airforce, and the Australian airforce were rather small and not really a major threat to japan like America. But the plane fell off rather quickly in my opinion


The Japanese airforce was not so big either. And combined, the mentioned airforces were quite a bit bigger than that of the Japanese. That they fell off rather quickly was more due to Japan’s low resources and industrial capacity than the quality of the aircraft itself. They were not capable to replace experienced lost pilots, nor did they have the capability to develop their aircraft as well as the US or produce them in the same numbers. Combine that with some doubtful defensive strategies and you have a better explanation for that.

I do see your point. By 1944, the allies had stepped up their game, while the Japanese basically were stuck with a beefed up (armoured) version of the 1940 Zero with inexperienced crew. But don’t forget, by the time of the Coral sea, they already had conquered most of the pacific and it took many years to wrestle that out of their hands again. That’s not all due to the Zero of course, but at that time, the Zero was a more decent than fighter that could bring the fight to the enemy over a 1000 km away. That’s not a feat that many contemporary fighters could do. Remember, the P51D was still a distant promise at that time.

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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

Marcel said:


> The Japanese airforce was not so big either. And combined, the mentioned airforces were quite a bit bigger than that of the Japanese. That they fell off rather quickly was more due to Japan’s low resources and industrial capacity than the quality of the aircraft itself. They were not capable to replace experienced lost pilots, nor did they have the capability to develop their aircraft as well as the US or produce them in the same numbers. Combine that with some doubtful defensive strategies and you have a better explanation for that.
> 
> I do see your point. By 1944, the allies had stepped up their game, while the Japanese basically were stuck with a beefed up (armoured) version of the 1940 Zero with inexperienced crew. But don’t forget, by the time of the Coral sea, they already had conquered most of the pacific and it took many years to wrestle that out of their hands again. That’s not all due to the Zero of course, but at that time, the Zero was a more decent than fighter that could bring the fight to the enemy over a 1000 km away. That’s not a feat that many contemporary fighters could do. Remember, the P51D was still a distant promise at that time.


Bro holy shit I never realized how small they were 1,500 aircraft????
also n 1943 the allies had better planes not 1944


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## tomo pauk (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> also n 1943 the allies had better planes not 1944



Cheers and welcome to the forum.
If an old fart might say a word or two: adding real, well-sourced numbers to reinforce stuff in the posts will see these posts' credibility skyrocket. And that of the author of these posts.

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## special ed (May 25, 2021)

Both sides of the world? It really is flat?

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## fastmongrel (May 25, 2021)

Whatever you say about the Japanese Navies Zero don't forget the Japanese Army Air Forces equivalent to the Zero the Ki43 Hayabusa actually shot down more aircraft.


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## fastmongrel (May 25, 2021)

special ed said:


> Both sides of the world? It really is flat?



Don't be stupid it's not flat the water would run off the edges when the Elephants moved.
https://www.epl.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2019/09/Discworld_BlogPost_1024x768.png

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## Clayton Magnet (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> also n 1943 the allies had better planes not 1944



So did the Japanese. Ki-44 was operational in 1942, and the Ki-61 in 1943.
The IJNAS had the N1K and J2M, granted, they didn't see combat until early 1944.

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## GrauGeist (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> also n 1943 the allies had better planes not 1944


By 1943, the Allies were reaching parity.
The F6F was entering the Pacific war in limited numbers by late 1943, the F4U would start appearing in 1944.
The P-38 started trickling into the South Pacific in 1942, butnit would be a while before they were in any significant numbers.
Also bear in mind that Japanese Aces, like Nichizawa were taking on and downing the best of the USN as late as 1944 with an A6M5.


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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

tomo pauk said:


> Cheers and welcome to the forum.
> If an old fart might say a word or two: adding real, well-sourced numbers to reinforce stuff in the posts will see these posts' credibility skyrocket. And that of the author of these posts.


what


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## Marcel (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> Bro holy shit I never realized how small they were 1,500 aircraft????


All A6M's, capable of flying long distances??? Ever looked at the map and distances of the Pacific?


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## Clayton Magnet (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> A6Ms are so overrated omg just because they are maneuverable does not mean they are fast. A corsair would rip right by an a6m and then gain some altitude and zoom again on it with 50 cals


If only Pappy Boyington had learned that trick in time, maybe that Zero wouldn't have shot him down, in 1944

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## pbehn (May 25, 2021)

special ed said:


> Both sides of the world? It really is flat?


Yes, left or right of the Greenwich meridian, look at the map, there are clearly two sides, mine has a dotted line so I can fold it to be like the real thing.

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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> By 1943, the Allies were reaching parity.
> The F6F was entering the Pacific war in limited numbers by late 1943, the F4U would start appearing in 1944.
> The P-38 started trickling into the South Pacific in 1942, butnit would be a while before they were in any significant numbers.
> Also bear in mind that Japanese Aces, like Nichizawa were taking on and downing the best of the USN as late as 1944 with an A6M5.


the f4u and f6f were in 1943



Marcel said:


> All A6M's, capable of flying long distances??? Ever looked at the map and distances of the Pacific?


i know that about the a6m like I'm not that dumb


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## special ed (May 25, 2021)

I thought those dotted lines were perforations. Too late now!

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## tomo pauk (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> what



I'm trying to politely say that you (and me, and everyone else) needs to have facts & figures to back up the opinions posted.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 25, 2021)

tomo pauk said:


> I'm trying to politely say that you (and me, and everyone else) needs to have facts & figures to back up the opinions posted.



Without facts, opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink. I’m seeing more opinion than fact.

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## Marcel (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> i know that about the a6m like I'm not that dumb


Apart from the fact you didn't understand what I was asking. You're counting 1500 japanese aircraft, so I ask how many of these could fight overseas?


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## SaparotRob (May 25, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Without facts, opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink. I’m seeing more opinion than fact.


We need a "Profound" award.

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## pbehn (May 25, 2021)

Marcel said:


> All A6M's, capable of flying long distances??? Ever looked at the map and distances of the Pacific?


I had looked at a map, may father even served in the Pacific, it was still a surprise when I took a flight from Tokyo to Singapore and the nice lady at the front said the flight would take 6hrs 20 minutes, even bigger surprise in Singapore when I got on a ferry to Malaysia and I could see it before we set off.

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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

tomo pauk said:


> I'm trying to politely say that you (and me, and everyone else) needs to have facts & figures to back up the opinions posted.


didn't the f4u and f6f make their combat debut in 1943


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## tomo pauk (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> didn't the f4u and f6f make their combat debut in 1943



They certainly did.
I was refering to you comment 'also n 1943 the allies had better planes not 1944' - that was not the case, due to Allies having better planes than Germany, let alone the Japanese in 1944 (_and_ in 1943).


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## GrauGeist (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> the f4u and f6f were in 1943


F6F first flight: 1942
F6F accepted by USN: 1943
F6F first PTO combat: 1 September 1943 downing an H8K flying boat.
F6F first engagement versus A6M: 23 November 1943.

F4U first flight: 1940
F4U accepted by USN: December 1942
F4U first PTO combat:
February 1943 (12 aircraft, USMC land-based)
November 1943 (VF-17 USN land-based)

The F4U was not in the PTO with any significant numbers until 1944.


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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

Marcel said:


> Apart from the fact you didn't understand what I was asking. You're counting 1500 japanese aircraft, so I ask how many of these could fight overseas?


I might be wrong but couldn't the zeros reach the Philippines from japan? so yes they can fight overseas?



tomo pauk said:


> They certainly did.
> I was refering to you comment 'also n 1943 the allies had better planes not 1944' - that was not the case, due to Allies having better planes than Germany, let alone the Japanese in 1944 (_and_ in 1943).


wasn't this debate about the pacific? what I meant to say as that the Americans had better planes in not just in 1944


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## tomo pauk (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> wasn't this debate about the pacific? what I meant to say as that the Americans had better planes in not just in 1944



Debate is about the most overrated aircraft of the ww2. 
Americans have had better planes both in 1943 and in 1944.

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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

tomo pauk said:


> Debate is about the most overrated aircraft of the ww2.
> Americans have had better planes both in 1943 and in 1944.


um yeah


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## buffnut453 (May 25, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Without facts, opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink.



Not true. Some people have two. They just talk out of one of them.

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## glennasher (May 25, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> I might be wrong but couldn't the zeros reach the Philippines from japan? so yes they can fight overseas?
> 
> 
> wasn't this debate about the pacific? what I meant to say as that the Americans had better planes in not just in 1944



The Japanese aircraft that attacked the Philippines flew from Formosa (Taiwan), not from Japan). they didn't have THAT much range.......

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## pops-paolo (May 25, 2021)

glennasher said:


> The Japanese aircraft that attacked the Philippines flew from Formosa (Taiwan), not from Japan). they didn't have THAT much range.......


yeah


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## Greg Boeser (May 25, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> F6F first flight: 1942
> F6F accepted by USN: 1943
> F6F first PTO combat: 1 September 1943 downing an H8K flying boat.
> F6F first engagement versus A6M: 23 November 1943.


Surely, those were Zeros encountered over Wake Island on 5 Oct, 1943


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## GrauGeist (May 25, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> Surely, those were Zeros encountered over Wake Island on 5 Oct, 1943


I beleive that the attack on Wake saw F4Fs operating from Lexington - as she was outfitted with F6Fs at Pearl following the Wake attack and immediately sailed for the Gilberts in November.
VF-16 records outfitting with F6F-3s in early November.


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## Greg Boeser (May 26, 2021)

https://www.history.navy.mil/conten...ent/mediaitem/image.img.jpg/1553533069026.jpg

Oh. Look what I found. I don't know about Lexington, but every other carrier hitting Wake Island had F6Fs.

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## GrauGeist (May 26, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> https://www.history.navy.mil/conten...ent/mediaitem/image.img.jpg/1553533069026.jpg


As I previously stated, the F6F first engaged Japanese fighters in November 1943.

Japanese-held Wake Island did not have fighters stationed there.

As far as Lexington goes, she had just come out of shake-down and still had F4Fs (soon to be replaced), but double checking, the Cowpens and Enterprise did have F6Fs aboard.
That being said, there was no aerial opposition during the October 1943 Wake assault - it was naval shelling and ground attack operations.

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## Greg Boeser (May 26, 2021)

252 Kokutai launched 23 Zeros to intercept the raid, claiming 14, but losing 16 pilots, a further six Zeros escorting seven G4M to reinforce the atoll were bounced by F6Fs. losing three, but the bombers turned back and escaped.

Source: _Japanese Naval Fighter Aces, _Hata, Izawa, Shores

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## rochie (May 26, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I'm willing to bet that we each overrate aircraft others underrate, and underrate aircraft others overrate.
> 
> I think the only ratings that matter are from the pilots who either flew the plane, or flew against it.
> 
> I know what airplanes I like, but I'm not even a pilot, so my opinion is worth every penny you've paid for it.


totally agree.

i think i have said before that in any most underrated, overrated, best or worst polls of WW2 aircraft the P-51, Spitfire and Bf 109 seem to always be near the top in all !
and usually they end in arguments based on nationalistic chest thumping

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## drgondog (May 26, 2021)

pops-paolo said:


> the f4u and f6f were in 1943
> 
> The P-38 and F4Us were in squadron strength in Mid 43 (June and Aug), F6F in Aug (land based)- limited area of operations. The mainstay for AAF and USN/USMC were P-39/P-40/F4F through 1943. Actual combat in P-38 and F4U was earlier but not in force level to be significant.
> i know that about the a6m like I'm not that dumb



You probably should reflect that it was far better suited as an air superiority fighter for naval operations than the Spitfire, Bf 109, Fw 190, F4F, P-39, P-40, Yak3, Yak9, P47 - had those aircraft been acceptably modified for carrier ops and then introduced into combat. Low to medium altitude escort and sweeps (with range) are where the A6M lived.

That it was gradually outclassed, was a factor of two performance attributes it faced vs US. Speed and zoom climb. To a degree it also suffered from lack of armor and self sealing tanks for survivability - that said they (correctly) designed for maneuverability and agility to gain advantage at 4 to six o'clock rather than be clobbered when flying 'unaware'. Most air combat was decided by the aircraft that got into firing position behind the victim.

The IJN also suffered from tactics deficiency in that to them, combat was an individual obligation - not a team effort - so the concept of two ship and four ship mutual protection in attack was first exploited by Thatch and then all Allied tactics copied from LW as Finger Four formations.

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## Marcel (May 26, 2021)

rochie said:


> totally agree.
> 
> i think i have said before that in any most underrated, overrated, best or worst polls of WW2 aircraft the P-51, Spitfire and Bf 109 seem to always be near the top in all !
> and usually they end in arguments based on nationalistic chest thumping


You know Karl, the Spitfire *is* both the best and the worst aircraft of WW2 and everything in between

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## fastmongrel (May 26, 2021)

Marcel said:


> You know Karl, the Spitfire *is* both the best and the worst aircraft of WW2 and everything in between



If only the RAF had used the P39 the war would have been over before it started in December 1941

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## rochie (May 26, 2021)

fastmongrel said:


> If only the RAF had used the P39 the war would have been over before it started in December 1941


True !


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## nuuumannn (May 28, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


>



He might have had a change of heart... ;D

robert shaw battle of britain - YouTube


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## soulezoo (May 28, 2021)

fastmongrel said:


> If only the RAF had used the P39 the war would have been over before it started in December 1941


And the Germans would start calling it the "Rear Engined Devil" or something like that.

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## Shortround6 (May 28, 2021)

soulezoo said:


> And the Germans would start calling it the "Rear Engined Devil" or something like that.


Flugzeug mit Motor im hinteren Teufel


Now say that twice over the radio in combat

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## BiffF15 (May 28, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Flugzeug mit Motor im hinteren Teufel
> 
> 
> Now say that twice over the radio in combat



Or how do you say, "I got another one because he ran out of gas" in German...

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## Just Schmidt (May 28, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Flugzeug mit Motor im hinteren Teufel
> 
> 
> Now say that twice over the radio in combat


You can just say +Motorschwanzteufel+. Shows how far superior to English the German language is, especially with added balkencreutzen.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 28, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Flugzeug mit Motor im hinteren Teufel
> 
> 
> Now say that twice over the radio in combat



I have a larynx to think about, 'kay?

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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

Currently I would say that the Mitsubishi A6M Zero is the most overrated fighter of world war two. Indeed, in Japan, it's reputation has risen to the level of a cult status. The Zero was a very good airplane for what it was supposed to do. The thinking amongst the Military's of Japan and Italy during the years leading up to world war two was that fighters were meant to be used in 'Dogfighting' meaning horizontal combat. At the same time the rest of the world was designing aircraft more suited for 'Boom and Zoom' or vertical combat. Curiously enough, with the exception of Germany, the rest of the worlds military's didn't get the memo and were still training their pilots in horizontal combat. This is why the Zero did so well during the first part of the war. The best known of the very few people pushing vertical combat was Claire Chennault and he was considered an 'outsider' by the US military at that time. Curiously it was the German Air Service in the final months of world war one that came to the conclusion that vertical combat had clear advantages over dogfighting. There is anecdotal evidence from WWI of individual pilots who discovered the advantage of boom and zoom on their own. Werner Voss thought the Pfalz DIII, that other pilots thought too slow and unwieldy, was a excellent fighter for diving attacks and for trading off the energy generated by the dive into altitude after the firing pass. Erik Shilling of the Flying Tigers speaks of a British pilot he refers to a Squadron Commander Brandt who was able to survive against the Zero while flying the Brewster Buffalo by using vertical combat tactics. Think of it this way; if allied fighter pilots had been given training in the type of tactics they eventually adopted, the Zero would not be considered as good as it is currently thought of.

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## buffnut453 (May 29, 2021)

Akuma said:


> Currently I would say that the Mitsubishi A6M Zero is the most overrated fighter of world war two. Indeed, in Japan, it's reputation has risen to the level of a cult status. The Zero was a very good airplane for what it was supposed to do. The thinking amongst the Military's of Japan and Italy during the years leading up to world war two was that fighters were meant to be used in 'Dogfighting' meaning horizontal combat. At the same time the rest of the world was designing aircraft more suited for 'Boom and Zoom' or vertical combat. Curiously enough, with the exception of Germany, the rest of the worlds military's didn't get the memo and were still training their pilots in horizontal combat. This is why the Zero did so well during the first part of the war. The best known of the very few people pushing vertical combat was Claire Chennault and he was considered an 'outsider' by the US military at that time. Curiously it was the German Air Service in the final months of world war one that came to the conclusion that vertical combat had clear advantages over dogfighting. There is anecdotal evidence from WWI of individual pilots who discovered the advantage of boom and zoom on their own. Werner Voss thought the Pfalz DIII, that other pilots thought to slow and unwieldy, was a excellent fighter for diving attacks and for trading off the energy generated by the dive into altitude after the firing pass. Erik Shilling of the Flying Tigers speaks of a British pilot he refers to a Squadron Commander Brandt who was able to survive against the Zero while flying the Brewster Buffalo by using vertical combat tactics. Think of it this way; if allied fighter pilots had been given training in the type of tactics they eventually adopted, the Zero would not be considered as good as it is currently thought of.



Unfortunately the anecdote about Brandt is incorrect. Firstly he was a flight commander not a squadron CO. Secondly, neither the Brits not the AVG encountered the Zero in Burma - only the Ki-43 and Ki-27 fought in Burma.

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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> Unfortunately the anecdote about Brandt is incorrect. Firstly he was a flight commander not a squadron CO. Secondly, neither the Brits not the AVG encountered the Zero in Burma - only the Ki-43 and Ki-27 fought in Burma.



I re-read the article and Shilling refers to Brandt as 'Squadron leader' so it's probably a mix up of designations. You are correct in that the article does not specify Zero but instead refers to 'the Japanese' when speaking of their airplanes. The point is that Brandt was using tactics that would have been appropriate against the Zero as well as the Oscar and Nate.

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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

I don't think the Zero was overrated. It was given plenty of respect in the first few years of the Pacific war. Once the Akutan Zero was tested and other pilot reports came in, the Zero wasn't given quite the respect it once had even during WW 2. Its mystique was gone. It did, however, give the IJN tactical air projection that the Allies couldn't match over the Pacific for a long time. Most of the stuff I come across about the Zero usually says the Zero would burst into flames or come apart with a few hits. That doesn't sound like overrating.


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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I don't think the Zero was overrated. It was given plenty of respect in the first few years of the Pacific war. Once the Akutan Zero was tested and other pilot reports came in, the Zero wasn't given quite the respect it once had even during WW 2. Its mystique was gone. It did, however, give the IJN tactical air projection that the Allies couldn't match over the Pacific for a long time. Most of the stuff I come across about the Zero usually says the Zero would burst into flames or come apart with a few hits. That doesn't sound like overrating.



In the first months of the war all allied pilots were advised to "Run" when encountering the Zero. Later on, posters appeared in pilots crew quarters basically saying "If you meet a Zero at medium speed and medium altitude, run, you are outnumbered" while other posters said "Don't Dogfight The Zero!" I guess fear can be referred to as a form of respect. The Akutan zero (Koga's Zero) was captured practically intact in July 1942 while the Liuchow Peninsula Zero (Inoue's Zero) was captured on November 26, 1941 in flyable and intact condition. Apparently capturing a Zero was not important enough for some serious 'forget about proper channels, Let's get the thing' attitudes. Inoue's Zero was finally gotten ahold of by Chennault who had Gerhard Neumann put the machine back in flyable condition (it had been damaged in transport). It was this Zero that was first flown and evaluated by US pilots. Also there was a fairly detailed report on the Zero submitted to the war department by a US Naval Attache who was stationed in Japan before the war. To get an idea of how many western historians have written in the past about the Zero as well as what the Japanese currently think of it, take a look at the Japanese film 'The Eternal Zero' or the book on which the film is based. There is another animated film 'The Wind Rises' which is a highly fictionalized, romanticized story that revolves around Jiro Horikoshi and how he came to design 'the worlds best fighter'. Until the the full evaluation of Koga's Zero, after it had been rebuilt and thoroughly tested, the US fighter pilot tactical training emphasized dogfighting as the proper method in meeting engagements. However there were isolated cases where US Army and Navy pilots were 'spreading the word from Chennault' about the best way to take on Japanese fighters including the Zero. It was only towards the end that US fighter pilots were being trained in 'Boom and Zoom' tactics. Saburo Sakai reported that the top speed of the Zero in level flight was right around 310 mph. while it's max diving speed was 350 mph. Above 350 the aluminum skin on the wings and fuselage would deform and ripple. At speeds above 370 there were cases of pilots losing sections of the Airframe including the occasional wing. The most accurate tests performed on the Zero towards the end of and after the war bear out what Sakai reported. Within it's limits the Zero was a good sturdy aircraft capable of handling the flight loads and G forces that all airplanes must withstand. It's light but sturdy construction came at the cost of not being able to sustain even relatively light amounts of damage. As far as self sealing fuel tanks is concerned, at the beginning of the war everybody did not have them. When they came into use it was at the cost of increased weight and decreased fuel capacity. The very word 'Armor' is not correctly applied in reference to aircraft. People think of armor as the armor on a tank or warship or a knight. Those types of armor are more akin to a shield that can be used to advance against the enemy while warding off his blows. The best way to think of armor on an airplane is in the same vein as a parachute; a last chance to keep the pilot alive so that he can get out of the situation in relative safety. Later model Zeros were equipped with armor and self sealing fuel tanks at a slight cost to maneuverability and to a greater cost in range.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 29, 2021)

Akuma said:


> Above 350 the aluminum skin on the wings and fuselage would deform and ripple. At speeds above 370* there were cases of pilots losing sections of the Airframe including the occasional wing.*



Provide your reference for this! Earlier Zeros had dive limitations but this was improved on the A6M3 and A6M5 which was able to dive in excess of 400 mph. Also the Zero's wing was one unit so losing a wing was very unlikely unless there was structural failure elsewhere


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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

I did say I thought the Zero wasn't overrated. Romanticized and fictionalized are something else again. 
The B-17 didn't win the war in the air single handedly despite the movies and TV shows like 12 O'clock High, Memphis Belle (either one). The Spitfire didn't single handedly save Civilization from Darkness. I can only imagine what kind of press the Sturmovik or MiG 15 got behind the Iron Curtain. If an Allied fighter pilot came upon a Zero he probably WAS outnumbered. Slapped-together clapped-out Buffalos, Hurricanes and P-Something Elses piloted by undertrained pilots with their first familiarization flight in type up against Saburo Sakai and his friends. Yeah, one on one, they'd have been outnumbered. At least during the first few years. Then, not so much. 
I found it far easier to list underrated planes but we have a thread for that. 
By the way, that was a great post, Akuma.

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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Provide your reference for this! Earlier Zeros had dive limitations but this was improved on the A6M3 and A6M5 which was able to dive in excess of 400 mph. Also the Zero's wing was one unit so loosing a wing was very unlikely unless there was structural failure elsewhere


 A couple of books come to mind; Samurai an autobiography by Saburo Sakai with Martin Caidin. Zero Fighter published by Ballantine books. There was also an article I read a very long time ago that was part of a study done by US Naval Intelligence on the various aircraft used in Japanese Kamikaze operations which went into the the performance figures and limitations of the machines used for those operations. I too have come across those 400 mph figures and found that they were estimated figures based on extrapolations from the perfomance figures of the late model Zeros. I'm sure with a little digging you can come across that info. The G forces involved in trying to recover from a terminal dive have easily caused structural failure in the wings as well as other structural parts of aircraft that were far more ruggedly built than the Zero. I know of one case where a P 51B Mustang was able to surprise a Messerschmitt 262 and the P51 pilot, knowing he had the German, went into a very steep power dive accelerating well past the never exceed speed (VNE). The German pilot spotted the P 51 just after he had initiated the dive and spooled up as quickly as the Jumo's could at that time. The upshot was that the 262 accelerated away leaving the American pilot with the choice of either auguring into the ground or pulling out of the dive. He succeeded in pulling out at the cost of permanently distorting both wings, which made the plane just barely flyable, and by hearing a very loud sound as if a giant piece of fabric was being torn in two. Upon landing he found that the tearing sound had been caused by a line of rivets, starting just aft of the canopy and extending all the way back to the tail, that had literally been popped out from the bending forces that the fuselage had sustained in the recovery.


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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

So you're saying the P-51 B is overrated?


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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I did say I thought the Zero wasn't overrated. Romanticized and fictionalized are something else again.
> The B-17 didn't win the war in the air single handedly despite the movies and TV shows like 12 O'clock High, Memphis Belle (either one). The Spitfire didn't single handedly save Civilization from Darkness. I can only imagine what kind of press the Sturmovik or MiG 15 got behind the Iron Curtain. If an Allied fighter pilot came upon a Zero he probably WAS outnumbered. Slapped-together clapped-out Buffalos, Hurricanes and P-Something Elses piloted by undertrained pilots with their first familiarization flight in type up against Saburo Sakai and his friends. Yeah, one on one, they'd have been outnumbered. At least during the first few years. Then, not so much.
> I found it far easier to list underrated planes but we have a thread for that.
> By the way, that was a great post, Akuma.



Something you may not have heard of. In 1945 the RAAF (Australian Air Force) were still using the Buffalo along with P 40s, P 51s, Spits and Hurris. The Buffalos were properly maintained but were pretty much the same model as those with which the war began. Those Buffalos were not only scoring well against Japanese Bombers and Reconnaissance but were even managing to shoot down Zeros. True, they didn't get many, but they did get them and did so while suffering much lower and in some cases no losses against their enemies. It can be fairly argued that the Japanese pilots by the end of the war were of much poorer quality than those at the beginning, but it should be remembered that the allied pilots had been learning to use their strengths while denying the Japanese their aircraft's weaknesses.


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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> So you're saying the P-51 B is overrated?



No, no. I'm saying that every man made machine is subject to the laws of God and Nature. Physics does not take a hike just because man figures out how to fly. Gravity is a killer, although when properly used can be an excellent help.


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## buffnut453 (May 29, 2021)

Akuma said:


> Something you may not have heard of. In 1945 the RAAF (Australian Air Force) were still using the Buffalo along with P 40s, P 51s, Spits and Hurris. The Buffalos were properly maintained but were pretty much the same model as those with which the war began. Those Buffalos were not only scoring well against Japanese Bombers and Reconnaissance but were even managing to shoot down Zeros. True, they didn't get many, but they did get them and did so while suffering much lower and in some cases no losses against their enemies. It can be fairly argued that the Japanese pilots by the end of the war were of much poorer quality than those at the beginning, but it should be remembered that the allied pilots had been learning to use their strengths while denying the Japanese their aircraft's weaknesses.



Sorry but, no, the RAAF was NOT using the Buffalo in 1945. They were all pretty much out of service by early 1944 and they did not participate in a single interception of Japanese forces. Only one RAAF fighter squadron was equipped with the Buffalo in Australia and it provided air defence for Perth. Another 6 airframes were used by 1 PRU but they had no guns and never flew outside Aussie airspace.

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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

Akuma said:


> Something you may not have heard of. In 1945 the RAAF (Australian Air Force) were still using the Buffalo along with P 40s, P 51s, Spits and Hurris. The Buffalos were properly maintained but were pretty much the same model as those with which the war began. Those Buffalos were not only scoring well against Japanese Bombers and Reconnaissance but were even managing to shoot down Zeros. True, they didn't get many, but they did get them and did so while suffering much lower and in some cases no losses against their enemies. It can be fairly argued that the Japanese pilots by the end of the war were of much poorer quality than those at the beginning, but it should be remembered that the allied pilots had been learning to use their strengths while denying the Japanese their aircraft's weaknesses.


You're right. That was something I never heard of. However, that was not the point I was trying to make.


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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

Akuma said:


> No, no. I'm saying that every man made machine is subject to the laws of God and Nature. Physics does not take a hike just because man figures out how to fly. Gravity is a killer, although when properly used can be an excellent help.


Just being snarky.


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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> Sorry but, no, the RAAF was NOT using the Buffalo in 1945. They were all pretty much out of service by early 1944 and they did not participate in a single interception of Japanese forces. Only one RAAF fighter squadron was equipped with the Buffalo in Australia and it provided air defence for Perth. Another 6 airframes were used by 1 PRU but they had no guns and never flew outside Aussie airspace.


For the most part, THAT'S what I have heard.


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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

That's a great avatar, Buffnut453. What might that be?


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## buffnut453 (May 29, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> That's a great avatar, Buffnut453. What might that be?



It's a painting I had commissioned to celebrate my retirement from the RAF. The artist was Nick Trudgian and it depicts 453 Sqn's fight over Kuala Lumpur on 22 Dec 1941. It was based on a series of lengthy letters I received from Harry Griffiths, whose aircraft is depicted. He had his wife's name (Shirley) painted on the nose of his Buffalo. It was a treat to discover that his letters were typed by Shirley herself.

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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

The Buffalo is one of my favorites. But we all know that.


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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> Sorry but, no, the RAAF was NOT using the Buffalo in 1945. They were all pretty much out of service by early 1944 and they did not participate in a single interception of Japanese forces. Only one RAAF fighter squadron was equipped with the Buffalo in Australia and it provided air defence for Perth. Another 6 airframes were used by 1 PRU but they had no guns and never flew outside Aussie airspace.



Sorry, the article I read about the Australian pilot who had been credited with a Zero was said to have done so at the beginning of 1945. as I remember the article said something about the Australians having advanced radar warning of the approaching Japanese. It could be that the article was wrong or that the date was 1944 and I was remembering it as 1945 or that it could just have been an odd circumstance that did occur in 1945. Or it could be that the article was completely wrong.


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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

I remember stuff that didn't happen all the time.

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## buffnut453 (May 29, 2021)

Akuma said:


> Sorry, the article I read about the Australian pilot who had been credited with a Zero was said to have done so at the beginning of 1945. as I remember the article said something about the Australians having advanced radar warning of the approaching Japanese. It could be that the article was wrong or that the date was 1944 and I was remembering it as 1945 or that it could just have been an odd circumstance that did occur in 1945. Or it could be that the article was completely wrong.



I've researched the Buffalo for over 20 years and never come across any records describing an engagement while flying in Australia. The RAAF handed it's Buffalos to the USAAF in early 1944.


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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> The Buffalo is one of my favorites. But we all know that.


 
When anyone who has a certain amount of knowledge about the level of construction and design complexity that aircraft had arrived at in the 1930s, it comes as a real surprise that a company that made Train engines and associated equipment was able to come up with a, for that time, successful airplane design. It's not like the Brewster company had a long history in aviation the way Curtiss-Wright and Boeing and Bell, as well as the others had.


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## SaparotRob (May 29, 2021)

Akuma said:


> When anyone who has a certain amount of knowledge about the level of construction and design complexity that aircraft had arrived at in the 1930s, it comes as a real surprise that a company that made Train engines and associated equipment was able to come up with a, for that time, successful airplane design. It's not like the Brewster company had a long history in aviation the way Curtiss-Wright and Boeing and Bell, as well as the others had.


Agreed. Brewster was a really bad manufacturer. I'm sure someone here can expand on just how bad they were. They were a defense contractor that went out of business during the Second World War.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 29, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> The Buffalo is one of my favorites. But we all know that.



My favorite Buffalo:

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## FLYBOYJ (May 29, 2021)

Akuma said:


> A couple of books come to mind; Samurai an autobiography by Saburo Sakai with Martin Caidin. Zero Fighter published by Ballantine books. There was also an article I read a very long time ago that was part of a study done by US Naval Intelligence on the various aircraft used in Japanese Kamikaze operations which went into the the performance figures and limitations of the machines used for those operations. I too have come across those 400 mph figures and found that they were estimated figures based on extrapolations from the perfomance figures of the late model Zeros. I'm sure with a little digging you can come across that info. The G forces involved in trying to recover from a terminal dive have easily caused structural failure in the wings as well as other structural parts of aircraft that were far more ruggedly built than the Zero. I know of one case where a P 51B Mustang was able to surprise a Messerschmitt 262 and the P51 pilot, knowing he had the German, went into a very steep power dive accelerating well past the never exceed speed (VNE). The German pilot spotted the P 51 just after he had initiated the dive and spooled up as quickly as the Jumo's could at that time. The upshot was that the 262 accelerated away leaving the American pilot with the choice of either auguring into the ground or pulling out of the dive. He succeeded in pulling out at the cost of permanently distorting both wings, which made the plane just barely flyable, and by hearing a very loud sound as if a giant piece of fabric was being torn in two. Upon landing he found that the tearing sound had been caused by a line of rivets, starting just aft of the canopy and extending all the way back to the tail, that had literally been popped out from the bending forces that the fuselage had sustained in the recovery.



OK - Caidin is as reliable as a prophylactic in a volcano! Until you read it in a combat report, its hear-say, especially from Caidin. I am well aware of everything you have said, I've been studying this stuff for over 40 years and have worked on and flown "a few" high performance aircraft. The Zero had a double spar single unit wing, the only way you're going to really get a wing to pull off is with a blow-torch.

Here is a good article about the way the Zero (Hamp) is constructed:

Design Analysis of the Zeke 32 (Hamp - Mitsubishi A6M3)

Here's the actual evaluation report.

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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> I've researched the Buffalo for over 20 years and never come across any records describing an engagement while flying in Australia. The RAAF handed it's Buffalos to the USAAF in early 1944.



You could be right and the article I read was wrong or my memory of it was wrong. There was a man, who I never met, but for whom I have great respect. He passed away in 2011. His name was Dan-San Abbott and he was a real authority on German WWI aviation. Extremely knowledgeable he wrote a book with another author by name of Rick Duiven about the German Schlact-Flieger. I very strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the early days of ground attack aircraft. I had come across a book that said Fokker DVII aircraft had during the years 1918 and 1919 been part of the USAAC inventory and mentioned this on another forum. Mr. Abbott said that I was completely mistaken and that while the USAAC might have used the Fokkers for evaluation or as 'hacks', they were never used as official operational equipment. I knew that Mr. Abbott was an expert and the go to guy on WWI German aviation and conceded that the book I read was mistaken. Recently I came across an article about a man who was so interested in history of the US air arm that he tracked down every aircraft that the US Signal Corp, the USAAC, the USAAF and the USAF ever had as an official aircraft. He may have had some connection with the Smithsonian Air Museum. The US military had a system where every aircraft in their inventory was assigned a number designating it as an official operational aircraft of the US. In tracking down these numbers he found that Fokker DVIIs had been given those official inventory numbers and were therefore among the front line aircraft along with the DH4s, SE5s and other aircraft of that era.


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## Thumpalumpacus (May 29, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Until you read it in a combat report, its hear-say, especially from Caidin.



Agreed. It's hard for me to reconcile a hardened vet's descriptions with Caidin's breathless writing, so I suspect he probably stuffed a few words into Sakai's mouth in that book.

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## GrauGeist (May 29, 2021)

Caidin was known for embellishing quite a few events and creating some to fit his stories.
Hence the term "Caidinism" (which roughly translates to "bullshit").



 Akuma
- In regards to the Buffalo, is it possible you might be thinking of the Wirraway?
One was known to have downed an A6M (which was actually a mis-identified KI-43).

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## Akuma (May 29, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Agreed. Brewster was a really bad manufacturer. I'm sure someone here can expand on just how bad they were. They were a defense contractor that went out of business during the Second World War.



The Brewster company was badly mismanaged according to all the historical reports available. But they did create a viable aircraft that for it's time was a decent performer. If this same design had come out of one of the more experienced aircraft companies, lets take Grumman or Seversky/ Republic as examples, it might have had a more successful career.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 29, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> "Caidinism" (which roughly translates to "bullshit")



Adding that to the site dictionary!

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## GrauGeist (May 29, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Adding that to the site dictionary!


If I remember right, you're the one who coined the term...

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## Milosh (May 29, 2021)

Akuma, the serial numbers are online, Joe Baugher's Home Page


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## FLYBOYJ (May 29, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> If I remember right, you're the one who coined the term...


Yeah, but you just defined it!

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## GrauGeist (May 29, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Yeah, but you just defined it!


Ahh...gotcha!
Nothing like teamwork, eh?

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 29, 2021)

Akuma said:


> The Brewster company was badly mismanaged according to all the historical reports available. But they did create a viable aircraft that for it's time was a decent performer. If this same design had come out of one of the more experienced aircraft companies, lets take Grumman or Seversky/ Republic as examples, it might have had a more successful career.



My reading is that their QC was bad enough that the few hundred Corsairs they built were relegated to training due to quality issues. Happy to be corrected if my memory is off.

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## GrauGeist (May 29, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> My reading is that their QC was bad enough that the few hundred Corsairs they built were relegated to training due to quality issues. Happy to be corrected if my memory is off.


Brewster had several things going wrong.
First if all, their factory was antiquated and confined, being originally for carriages and then automobile manufacturing.
They also had considerable problems with their workforce, who were always trying to demand higher wages and threatening strikes. When this didn't work and the USN seized the company the quality control went down the drain, even to the point where several aircraft were found to be sabotaged.
So because of that, the F3A (corsair) suffered fit and finish issues that prevented them from seeing combat, being relegated to training instead.
The SB2A was even worse and many went directly from the assembly line to the scrapper.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 29, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Brewster had several things going wrong.
> First if all, their factory was antiquated and confined, being originally for carriages and then automobile manufacturing.
> They also had considerable problems with their workforce, who were always trying to demand higher wages and threatening strikes. When this didn't work and the USN seized the company the quality control went down the drain, even to the point where several aircraft were found to be sabotaged.
> So because of that, the F3A (corsair) suffered fit and finish issues that prevented them from seeing combat, being relegated to training instead.
> The SB2A was even worse and many went directly from the assembly line to the scrapper.



I suspect the fact that they weren't situated next to a runway had some influence on their QC as well.

At Carswell, General Dynamics was (at the time) on the other side of Runway 35/17, and as each F-16 came off the line -- one about every ten days -- it got put through the motions for about fifteen minutes. Free airshow for us dorm-rats.

I know little about their labor issues, but I bet Brewster's factory not having a runway with immediate access probably played a role in their QC issues. That would aid finding and fixing problems much more quickly, I'd think.


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## FLYBOYJ (May 29, 2021)

My uncle briefly worked for Brewster before he got drafted. IIRC he said the place was a sweatshop and there were always union issues. I think he worked on the Buffalo but not for that long


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## Akuma (May 30, 2021)

Milosh said:


> Akuma, the serial numbers are online, Joe Baugher's Home Page



Great. Thank you for the link. Nice to know the information I had was confirmed by this site.


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## GrauGeist (May 30, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I suspect the fact that they weren't situated next to a runway had some influence on their QC as well.
> 
> At Carswell, General Dynamics was (at the time) on the other side of Runway 35/17, and as each F-16 came off the line -- one about every ten days -- it got put through the motions for about fifteen minutes. Free airshow for us dorm-rats.
> 
> I know little about their labor issues, but I bet Brewster's factory not having a runway with immediate access probably played a role in their QC issues. That would aid finding and fixing problems much more quickly, I'd think.


If you look at Brewster's manufacturing plant (it still stands and is owned by Jet Blue), it's a multi-storey building that was ideal for manufacturing carriages and automobiles, but not aircraft.
It did not have facilities for a complete aircraft to be fully assembled on an assembly line and rolled out.
Various components were assembled on various floors and then brought together and put together like something bought from Ikea, before going out the door.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 30, 2021)



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## GrauGeist (May 30, 2021)

Fantastic post, Joe!

And there's the building I was referring to earlier, too.

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## FLYBOYJ (May 30, 2021)

Facility in Penn

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 30, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> If you look at Brewster's manufacturing plant (it still stands and is owned by Jet Blue), it's a multi-storey building that was ideal for manufacturing carriages and automobiles, but not aircraft.
> It did not have facilities for a complete aircraft to be fully assembled on an assembly line and rolled out.
> Various components were assembled on various floors and then brought together and put together like something bought from Ikea, before going out the door.



I'd gathered that, reading both here and elsewhere. It just doesn't sound like a good setup, but I'm no industrialist.


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## SaparotRob (May 30, 2021)

Neither was Brewster.

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## buffnut453 (May 30, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I'd gathered that, reading both here and elsewhere. It just doesn't sound like a good setup, but I'm no industrialist.



It was probably ok for the low-rate production that was the common practice pre-1940. The USN, in particular, didn't buy large numbers of anything prior to that time and so a small factory operating across multiple floors wasn't a significant detractor (although, clearly, there are more efficient ways to build aeroplanes). 

The lack of an adjacent airfield was a problem as it meant completed aircraft had to be dismantled, shipped, and reassembled, which resulted in entirely unnecessary additional cost. 

One other factor to be considered is that there wasn't an established aviation industry in the area where Brewster set up their factory. Thus, when orders started arriving, they hired all sorts of workers who, frankly, weren't up to the task of producing (relatively) high-tech aircraft. Jim Maas tells a story of one chap who'd had a model aircraft design published in a magazine, and he was hired into the design shop. Hardly inspiring!

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## P-39 Expert (May 30, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> My uncle briefly worked for Brewster before he got drafted. IIRC he said the place was a sweatshop and there were always union issues. I think he worked on the Buffalo but not for that long


My mother (before she married my dad) worked at the Consolidated plant during WW2 in Fort Worth by the Carswell runway. She started in manufacturing and then moved to a secretarial position. Consolidated became Convair then General Dynamics and then Lockheed. They were making the B-24 and B-36. She said the building was a mile long and there were bicycles to get around. 

Mom and her sister were sitting on the front porch of their house in Rayville, La. when a man from Consolidated Aircraft pulled up and asked them if they would like a job in the bomber plant in Fort Worth. They packed their bags and left with him.  Apparently life in Rayville left something to be desired.

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## P-39 Expert (May 30, 2021)

Akuma said:


> In the first months of the war all allied pilots were advised to "Run" when encountering the Zero. Later on, posters appeared in pilots crew quarters basically saying "If you meet a Zero at medium speed and medium altitude, run, you are outnumbered" while other posters said "Don't Dogfight The Zero!" I guess fear can be referred to as a form of respect. The Akutan zero (Koga's Zero) was captured practically intact in July 1942 while the Liuchow Peninsula Zero (Inoue's Zero) was captured on November 26, 1941 in flyable and intact condition. Apparently capturing a Zero was not important enough for some serious 'forget about proper channels, Let's get the thing' attitudes. Inoue's Zero was finally gotten ahold of by Chennault who had Gerhard Neumann put the machine back in flyable condition (it had been damaged in transport). It was this Zero that was first flown and evaluated by US pilots. Also there was a fairly detailed report on the Zero submitted to the war department by a US Naval Attache who was stationed in Japan before the war. To get an idea of how many western historians have written in the past about the Zero as well as what the Japanese currently think of it, take a look at the Japanese film 'The Eternal Zero' or the book on which the film is based. There is another animated film 'The Wind Rises' which is a highly fictionalized, romanticized story that revolves around Jiro Horikoshi and how he came to design 'the worlds best fighter'. Until the the full evaluation of Koga's Zero, after it had been rebuilt and thoroughly tested, the US fighter pilot tactical training emphasized dogfighting as the proper method in meeting engagements. However there were isolated cases where US Army and Navy pilots were 'spreading the word from Chennault' about the best way to take on Japanese fighters including the Zero. It was only towards the end that US fighter pilots were being trained in 'Boom and Zoom' tactics. Saburo Sakai reported that the top speed of the Zero in level flight was right around 310 mph. while it's max diving speed was 350 mph. Above 350 the aluminum skin on the wings and fuselage would deform and ripple. At speeds above 370 there were cases of pilots losing sections of the Airframe including the occasional wing. The most accurate tests performed on the Zero towards the end of and after the war bear out what Sakai reported. Within it's limits the Zero was a good sturdy aircraft capable of handling the flight loads and G forces that all airplanes must withstand. It's light but sturdy construction came at the cost of not being able to sustain even relatively light amounts of damage. As far as self sealing fuel tanks is concerned, at the beginning of the war everybody did not have them. When they came into use it was at the cost of increased weight and decreased fuel capacity. The very word 'Armor' is not correctly applied in reference to aircraft. People think of armor as the armor on a tank or warship or a knight. Those types of armor are more akin to a shield that can be used to advance against the enemy while warding off his blows. The best way to think of armor on an airplane is in the same vein as a parachute; a last chance to keep the pilot alive so that he can get out of the situation in relative safety. Later model Zeros were equipped with armor and self sealing fuel tanks at a slight cost to maneuverability and to a greater cost in range.


A chart if IJN aircraft provided by Tomo (I believe) showed the A6M2 to have a top speed of 316mph (275knots) at 5000 meters which is in line with Sakai's statement. This chart according to Tomo was translated from Japanese indicating the performance figures were from IJN tests. Not really a fast airplane even by early WW2 standards and reportedly the controls got really stiff at diving speeds. Not a boom and zoomer.


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## Akuma (May 30, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> A chart if IJN aircraft provided by Tomo (I believe) showed the A6M2 to have a top speed of 316mph (275knots) at 5000 meters which is in line with Sakai's statement. This chart according to Tomo was translated from Japanese indicating the performance figures were from IJN tests. Not really a fast airplane even by early WW2 standards and reportedly the controls got really stiff at diving speeds. Not a boom and zoomer.


Jiro Horikoshi, the chief designer of the Zero, wrote a book whose title is 'The Eagles of Mitsubishi'. He describes how the IJN specifications insisted on a long range aircraft that was capable of dogfighting at low altitudes. The reason they gave for having cannon in the wings instead of machineguns was that they would additionally have liked to use the aircraft in a ground support role. Their thinking was that the two nose mounted .30 cal. guns were sufficient for air to air combat especially since the similarly armed A5M (Claude) had been so successful in downing the various aircraft used by the Chinese during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was only after the initial victories, when they began encountering US aircraft at high altitudes and high speeds that the Zero's control heaviness and lack of authority at altitude became an issue. Mr. Horikoshi goes on to describe some of the solutions they tried to come up with to cure these issues. Apparently they were never satisfactorily solved. He believed that only the second generation of aircraft designs they were working on could have helped but that the Japanese air industry simply lacked the capacity of research and development to compete against the US. At least after the war he joined those in Japan who had said it was a bad idea go to war with the US. Just an additional thought. The general rule of thumb is the lighter the wing loading the more maneuverable a plane is. The Zero (to the best of my knowledge) had the lightest wing loading of any aircraft of it's type in that era. The opposite of this is generally the heavier the wing loading the faster the airplane can dive. Given the strength of materials available at that time the Zero's control surfaces needed to be strong and light but not so strong that over control by the pilot could cause damage to the structure. The ratio of the control surface to wing area was small for the Zero to prevent such damage which meant that at high speed and altitude control authority would be lost. Note: Thanks for the Tomo reference. Yes he's got a PDF listing all performance figures from the IJN.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 30, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> She said the building was a mile long and there were bicycles to get around.



It is that long. I've only been in it once, because they had and have their own fire department with us providing mutual-aid support if needed. It's freakin' huge, the biggest building I've ever been in, in terms of acreage.

I wonder if they still have the boneyard there. BRB, off to look it up.

ETA: Google Earth shows it has been removed ... bummer. When I was there it had a motley mix of aircraft, including a dilapidated hulk of a B-36 missing a lot of metal.

On the bright side, I see that Forth Worth Air Museum is open again. The next time I visit my cousin in Carrollton, I'll have to hit it up.

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## swampyankee (May 30, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Brewster had several things going wrong.
> First if all, their factory was antiquated and confined, being originally for carriages and then automobile manufacturing.
> They also had considerable problems with their workforce, who were always trying to demand higher wages and threatening strikes. When this didn't work and the USN seized the company the quality control went down the drain, even to the point where several aircraft were found to be sabotaged.
> So because of that, the F3A (corsair) suffered fit and finish issues that prevented them from seeing combat, being relegated to training instead.
> The SB2A was even worse and many went directly from the assembly line to the scrapper.


Companies don't "just have problems" with their work forces; they have problems with their management AND work force.

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## GrauGeist (May 30, 2021)

There's no question that Brewster was doomed from the top to the bottom.

The management was inept across the board, the sales staff was shady as hell and the workforce was unskilled and unmotivated (which leads directly back to management).

If this were all translated to a flow chart, it would look like a map of the Los Angeles area freeway system...

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## swampyankee (May 30, 2021)

As an aside, Brewster's headquarters was about 30 miles from Bethpage. Both Bethpage and Long Island City were on a heavily used passenger rail line. 

Poaching employees is a time-honored method of getting staff, and Brewster's HQ was not off in some far-off wilderness, but a highly industrialized area.

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## SaparotRob (May 30, 2021)

That flow chart would look like the L.A. freeway map after an earthquake.


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## special ed (May 30, 2021)

Regarding P-39 Expert's comment on Rayville, La, ..It still does.

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## yulzari (May 31, 2021)

About half of the Brewster made Corsairs were delivered to the Royal Navy.


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## P-39 Expert (May 31, 2021)

special ed said:


> Regarding P-39 Expert's comment on Rayville, La, ..It still does.


I know, Mom's side of the family still lives there.


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## SwirlGypsobelum (Jun 19, 2021)

Some people believe J7W to be maneuverable, even tho it's clearly an impossible case for the plane. The said vehicle has 240kg/m2 wing loading with only 20.5m2 wingsurface area available, canard itself isn't a bad thing tho. It's just too heavy for the overall profile, and the weight is coming from the decently complex air-cooling system. Empty weight of 3600kg with 5000kg TOW(the added weight is mostly the cooling water) is simply ridiculous for a combatant aircraft. I mean, J7W is a tandem plane(main lift set aft of the CoG) with very small fore-wings.
The canards are overly-loaded to accommodate with the possible wing-first stall, as long as the canards are stalling first it's easier to recover from the nose-up state. So the canards are restricted to the limitation dependents of the rear wing's capability. In this case, high wing-loading with low-aspect ratio wing combination is just... just bad. Can they even perform a stable barrel-roll? It's another question. Only if they can put a wider, yet bigger canards for the plane, it might be a different story but, this isn't a case.
Nevertheless, there is no any other look-alike so. The fans got the idea of [canard aircrafts being maneuverable] 
...is just the jet-era stereotype. It's meant to be a high-altitude interceptor so I really don't see the points in the low-aspect ratio wings, shouldn't they use a wider wing profile much like Ta152 or other reconnaissance military aircrafts(with that wing configuration, the exceptional energy retention is way worse).
I mean. the reduced drag from the frontal-area won't make-up for it really. Only thing good about it is just the reduced stall-limit combined with better climb-rate for the same amount of thrust. Aghhh, J7W is over-rated, It's no match for 1600hp Xp-55(Planned).


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## Conslaw (Jun 23, 2021)

The Buffalo was a decent-performing, fast-climbing, agile aircraft for its day at its inception. The problem was, it didn't take well at all to weight increases. The last version, the F2A-3, was modified to be a long-ranged recon fighter, with 240 gallons of internal fuel. (The F4U only had 237). They didn't engineer the rest of the systems to handle the added weight. Landing gear buckled and climb rate was anemic.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 23, 2021)

Conslaw said:


> The Buffalo was a decent-performing, fast-climbing, agile aircraft for its day at its inception. The problem was, it didn't take well at all to weight increases. *The last version, the F2A-3, was modified to be a long-ranged recon fighter, with 240 gallons of internal fuel.* (The F4U only had 237). They didn't engineer the rest of the systems to handle the added weight. Landing gear buckled and climb rate was anemic.






This is one of the WW II Myths. 
Since the fuel tanks in the spars of the F2A could not be effectively fitted with US type self sealing material the -3 version was fitted with tanks that were self sealing totaling 80 gallons capacity. One of the two existing spar tanks was kept in use because it already had both the main and reserve fuel taps and because the overflow/return line was plumbed to it. The other tank was not used or used only on rare occasions at the squadron commanders (or higher?) express orders. The tank filler was so labeled. 

Some books or documents differ. 

this one; http://www.alternatewars.com/SAC/F2A-3_Buffalo_PD_-_1_D

shows the 240 gallons for ferry use but guns and ammo are not carried and armor and purging system are noted as being removed for ferrying. 

Trying to use a plane as along range recon fighter when only 1/3 of the fuel is in protected doesn't seem like a good idea. Or rather a good idea if the goal is to loose fighters. 

BTW the early F4U-1s held 361 gallons internal between the unprotected wing tanks and the 237 gallon protected fuselage tank. The wing tanks fell from use and the plumbing deleted when the drop tanks came into use.

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## Greg Boeser (Jun 24, 2021)

So those PRU Buffalos didn't have any gas?


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## ssnider (Jun 24, 2021)

sure its been posred before


http://www.alternatewars.com/SAC/F2A-3_Buffalo_PD_-_1_December_1942.pdf


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## Shortround6 (Jun 24, 2021)

I would note that the SBD-3 (_Scout _Bomber Douglas 3rd version) held 260 gallons in protected tanks for scout missions. With unprotected tanks it could hold 310 gallons.

The _need_ for a long range "scout" Buffalo seems a bit lacking.

There was a long range Grumman photo recon plane. The F4F-7 of which 21 were built, all guns and armor taken out. the wing did not fold and it was sealed to become one huge gas tank. About 555 gallons in the wing combined with the fuselage tanks for about 700 gallons total.

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## eagledad (Jun 25, 2021)

Since the F4F-7 was mentioned

Have a wonderful weekend

Eagledad

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## P-39 Expert (Jun 26, 2021)

3790mi. range at 168mph? That's 22.5hrs. Wonder that the meal service is like on that flight? Sleeping quarters?

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## nuuumannn (Jun 26, 2021)

Akuma said:


> while other posters said "Don't Dogfight The Zero!" I guess fear can be referred to as a form of respect.



It's worth noting that Allied pilots were being told this until the very end of the war even though they had superior aircraft. The Zero could still bite in the hands of a good pilot, even in 1945.



Akuma said:


> In 1945 the RAAF (Australian Air Force) were still using the Buffalo along with P 40s, P 51s, Spits and Hurris. The Buffalos were properly maintained but were pretty much the same model as those with which the war began. Those Buffalos were not only scoring well against Japanese Bombers and Reconnaissance but were even managing to shoot down Zeros.



Aside from Mark's (Buffnut's) assertion about the Buffalos, the RAAF only ever had one Hawker Hurricane and its P-51s, CAC Mustangs didn't enter service until the very end of the war, seeing their first service use as part of the Japan occupation forces. Despite the use of Spitfires (Capstans), the P-40 was the RAAF's primary fighter of WW2.



GrauGeist said:


> One was known to have downed an A6M (which was actually a mis-identified KI-43).



Actually, it was the other way round, dude; he shot down an Oscar and claimed it was a Zero. It was reported to unit HQ as "Archer has shot down a Zeke, repeat a Zeke. Send six bottles of beer"! This is the aircraft, on display in the Australian War Memorial.





DSC_5442

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## Juha3 (Jun 26, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> View attachment 625369


One of the photos shows Eino Luukkanen in front of his B-239, his victory markings were beer, or more exactly pilsner, bottle labels, a fairly unique way to mark one's aerial kills on one's a/c.

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## Juha3 (Jun 26, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> There's no question that Brewster was doomed from the top to the bottom.
> 
> The management was inept across the board, the sales staff was shady as hell and the workforce was unskilled and unmotivated (which leads directly back to management).
> 
> If this were all translated to a flow chart, it would look like a map of the Los Angeles area freeway system...


The fanny thing is that of the all fighters which Finland purchased during the WW2 from Western democracies other than UK Brewster B-239s were the only ones which performance figures were as promised. Also Curtiss Hawk 75As we bought from war-booty storages of Germany did not achieve performance promised in Curtiss' brochures. On the other hand B-239 still had some teething troubles left, so it was lucky that Finns had over a year's time to correct those before the great test of the plane came.

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## Greg Boeser (Jun 26, 2021)

I always wondered about that. They got 13 brand new, out of the crate H-75A-6s from Norway, coupled to a Swedish licensed R-1830 rated at 1065 bhp., fitted with four French? 7.5mm FN Brownings. Did they add armor and protected fuel tanks? Why was the performance so bad? Maybe they weren't so new by the time they got them from Germany. But you would think the engines would be new. The Finns weren't slouches when it came to aircraft maintenance. And how did they manage to still rack up the second best score of the non-Messerschmitt types?


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## Darthtabby (Jun 26, 2021)

Does anyone have any idea why the F2A-3 was regarded as such an overweight pig compared to the F2A-2? Going by the copy of America's Hundred Thousand I have out from the library, empty weight grew about 22% between the F2A-1 and F2A-2, but only about 3% between the F2A-2 and F2A-3. Weights in fuel and equipment are nearly identical except that there are a mix of two and four gun loads for the -2 while all the -3 model loads all use four guns.


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## Juha3 (Jun 29, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> I always wondered about that. They got 13 brand new, out of the crate H-75A-6s from Norway, coupled to a Swedish licensed R-1830 rated at 1065 bhp., fitted with four French? 7.5mm FN Brownings. Did they add armor and protected fuel tanks? Why was the performance so bad? Maybe they weren't so new by the time they got them from Germany. But you would think the engines would be new. The Finns weren't slouches when it came to aircraft maintenance. And how did they manage to still rack up the second best score of the non-Messerschmitt types?


Hello
A-6s probably had 7.9 mm Brownings originally, I have not time to check what mgs were initially installed here, maybe Finns standardized the 7.5 mm Brownings initially. Cyclones had at least initially tendency to overheat and already in early August 1941 it was decided to equip all Hawks with Twin Wasps because there were no extra Cyclones available and give all Cyclones to LLv 24 (it was equipped with Brewster B-239s). But Cyclone engined CUc-506 clocked 418 km/h at SL and 476 km/h at 3,500 m, not far off the result at the A&AEE in April 1941 with a Hawk-75A-4, 302 mph at 12900 ft. CUw-572 414 km/h at SL, 436.5 km/h at 2285 m, 433.5 km/h at 3570 m. Pilot's back armour and self-sealing fuel tanks.


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## Greg Boeser (Jun 29, 2021)

The flight test data publicized listed 7.5mms, therefore I assumed that the Germans provided all war booty H-75s with 7.5mm FNs. That's why I was surprised by the low performance numbers of the tested aircraft. the -6s had four guns like the -1s, whereas the -2s, -3s and -4s had six guns. According to Stenmann, the Finns preferred the better handling of the four gun models. An H-75A-6 was the highest scoring Hawk of the LLV 32.

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## Juha3 (Jun 30, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> The flight test data publicized listed 7.5mms, therefore I assumed that the Germans provided all war booty H-75s with 7.5mm FNs. That's why I was surprised by the low performance numbers of the tested aircraft. the -6s had four guns like the -1s, whereas the -2s, -3s and -4s had six guns. According to Stenmann, the Finns preferred the better handling of the four gun models. An H-75A-6 was the highest scoring Hawk of the LLV 32.


Hello, so it seems. Some 10 - 15 years ago I took photos amongst others of aircraft papers of combat a/cs of the FiAF used in 1939 - 45 but even if amongst them were 5 Hawks (3 A-4s, one A-2 and one A-3) none of them was A-6. Yes, I also looked Stenman et al Suomen Ilmavoimien Historia 5 and my notes, and noticed that 3 of the 5 highest scoring Hawks were originally A-6s

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## Greg Boeser (Jun 30, 2021)

You use the word "originally". I suppose that the various models became more standardized as time wore on and things like engines, guns, armor and fuel protection were refitted. The conversion of the -4s to P&W engines being the most obvious.


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## Juha3 (Jul 1, 2021)

Yes, that is my understanding, from a/c papers I have 
CU-575 June 1943 6 7.5 mm Brownings. December 1943 two 12.7 mm Colts and 4 probably 7.7 mm Browning but could also be 7.5 mm, I have only the synchronization protocol on that date.
CU-552 at the end of the war six mgs, no info which, but probably all the same calibre (only info on their construction numbers)
CU-505 June & July 1941 6 7.5 mm Brownings. May 1943 1 12.7 mm Colt and 4 7.7 mm Brownings, same at the end of the war
CU-503 May 1942 7.5 mm Brownings changed to 7.7 mm Brownings. July 1944 two 12.7 mm Colts two 7.7 mm Brownings 
CU-502 August 1943 two 12.7 mm Colts four 7.7 mm Brownings

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## Conslaw (Jul 4, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> I would note that the SBD-3 (_Scout _Bomber Douglas 3rd version) held 260 gallons in protected tanks for scout missions. With unprotected tanks it could hold 310 gallons.
> 
> The _need_ for a long range "scout" Buffalo seems a bit lacking.
> 
> There was a long range Grumman photo recon plane. The F4F-7 of which 21 were built, all guns and armor taken out. the wing did not fold and it was sealed to become one huge gas tank. About 555 gallons in the wing combined with the fuselage tanks for about 700 gallons total.


I know these F4F-7s were sent on recon missions in the South Pacific, but I've never read any recounts of any of those missions. I would find such recounts very interesting - even if "uneventful", just knowing the timing and difficulties of a routine mission.

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## P-39 Expert (Jul 13, 2021)

I still say the most overrated was the P-47. Very average rate of climb, poor maneuverability and certainly not enough range when introduced. In combat by April 1943 with no provision for drop tanks until August and then relegated to ground attack by January '44 when command decided all P-51s should go to the 8th AF and all P-47s should be transferred to the 9th AF (tactical). And yet over 15000 produced.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 13, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> I still say the most overrated was the P-47. Very average rate of climb, poor maneuverability and certainly not enough range when introduced. In combat by April 1943 with no provision for drop tanks until August and then relegated to ground attack by January '44 when command decided all P-51s should go to the 8th AF and all P-47s should be transferred to the 9th AF (tactical). And yet over 15000 produced.


Oh, Jeeez, another ground hog thread. 

In Jan 1944 they _*planned*_ for the P-51s to go to the go to the 8th AF and all P-47s should be transferred to the 9th AF (tactical). It just takes a lot of time. 
Just before Big week at the end of Feb 1944 the 8th air force had two fighter groups of P-51s, two of P-38s and eight fighter groups of P-47s. 
The 78th fighter group in the 8th Air Force using P-47s gets it's last victory (of 400 claims) on Dec 31st 1944 before converting fully to the P-51. And it is the not last fighter group in the 8th to use the P-47. 
But this will make no difference I am sure.

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## pbehn (Jul 13, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> I still say the most overrated was the P-47. Very average rate of climb,


At what altitude? It had a service ceiling of 42,000 ft with its 8 x 0.5mgs and space to practice break dancing in the back.

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## P-39 Expert (Jul 13, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Oh, Jeeez, another ground hog thread.
> 
> In Jan 1944 they _*planned*_ for the P-51s to go to the go to the 8th AF and all P-47s should be transferred to the 9th AF (tactical). It just takes a lot of time.
> Just before Big week at the end of Feb 1944 the 8th air force had two fighter groups of P-51s, two of P-38s and eight fighter groups of P-47s.
> ...


I said that command decided, not that the decision had been implemented.


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## drgondog (Jul 13, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> I still say the most overrated was the P-47. Very average rate of climb, poor maneuverability and certainly not enough range when introduced. In combat by April 1943 with no provision for drop tanks until August and then relegated to ground attack by January '44 when command decided all P-51s should go to the 8th AF and all P-47s should be transferred to the 9th AF (tactical). And yet over 15000 produced.


In the MTO, the P-47 fighter groups in12th AF were tasked for CAS and short range interdiction (Rail and Bridges). P-47D FG in 15th were escort. In ETO ALL P-47s in 9th AF were tasked to provide escort through April 1944, and thence the 9th AF P-47s were diverted for cross channel Interdiction preparing for D-Day. In the 8th AF ALL VIII FC were tasked for both CAS/Interdiction and Escort from D-Day through mid August, thence entirely Escort through the end of its service in VIII FC.

Aside from not having your facts in-line with historical facts regarding the variable missions and service, why would you overlook the Essential role if intermediate Penetration and Withdrawal for 8th AF escort over Germany through VE Day? It took 11 months to convert 'nearly all VIII FC P-47 equipped FGs from P-47D to P-51B/C.

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## Milosh (Jul 13, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Aside from not having your facts in-line with historical facts regarding the variable missions and service,...


Seems to be a recurring theme for a certain person. All that education going to waste.


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## pbehn (Jul 13, 2021)

Milosh said:


> Seems to be a recurring theme for a certain person. All that education going to waste.


Groundhoggery has moved on to possessing its own laws of physics and selectively misquoting himself and his own data to score between the recently moved goalposts.

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## GrauGeist (Jul 13, 2021)

At least our resident expert at alternate history and cut-n-paste hasn't posted in a while.
Thank God for small miracles...

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## pbehn (Jul 13, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> At least our resident expert at alternate history and cut-n-paste hasn't posted in a while.
> Thank God for small miracles...


He knows a lot of stuff, just has a weird way of putting it all together.

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## SaparotRob (Jul 13, 2021)

Kind of like a can of alphabet soup. The letters are all there but they don't spell anything.

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## 33k in the air (Jul 13, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> In combat by April 1943 with no provision for drop tanks until August . . .



The drop tank issue was very much theater-dependent. While drop tank development was slow in the ETO for various reasons, in the Southwest Pacific theater, under Gen. Kenney's command, drop tank development was much more rapid. A locally-made, 200 U.S. gallon belly drop tank for P-47s in the theater became widely available in the fall of 1943.

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## pbehn (Jul 13, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> The drop tank issue was very much theater-dependent. While drop tank development was slow in the ETO for various reasons, in the Southwest Pacific theater, under Gen. Kenney's command, drop tank development was much more rapid. A locally-made, 200 U.S. gallon belly drop tank for P-47s in the theater became widely available in the fall of 1943.


I think there was an issue of pressurising them for use at altitude.


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## 33k in the air (Jul 13, 2021)

pbehn said:


> I think there was an issue of pressurising them for use at altitude.



My references are packed up at the moment, but if I recall correctly, the Southwest Pacific 200-gallon tank was metal and made by Ford in Australia. A prototype was designed, built, and tested in something like a month, and then put into production.

The ETO initially had the paper 200-gallon ferry tanks, which could not be pressurized, but were partially filled and then dropped after climbing. Later came the 75-gallon metal tanks, then the 108-gallon British-made paper tanks, followed by the 150-gallon metal tanks, and ending with 200-gallon metal tanks, which came into service in the ETO about a year after the ones in the Southwest Pacific.

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## drgondog (Jul 13, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> The drop tank issue was very much theater-dependent. While drop tank development was slow in the ETO for various reasons, in the Southwest Pacific theater, under Gen. Kenney's command, drop tank development was much more rapid. A locally-made, 200 U.S. gallon belly drop tank for P-47s in the theater became widely available in the fall of 1943.


Alas - the boundary conditions in the Pacific were largely very different from ETO. The Ferry tanks (not self sealing) were a.) unpressurized and designed for low to middle altitude transport with low threat, and b.) were useless at greater than 18-20000 feet.

In SW Pacific, fighters often flew long distances across large bodies of water and away from land based interception along the route. Combat tank development started late - resulted from Arnold Fighter Conference in late Jan 1942. Materiel Command was fairly incompetent in getting the program started, takng until July-September to test, qualify and approve production of 75 and 108 gal steel combat tanks.

In ETO, Blitz Week losses forced VIII FC to adopt the 200gal Ferry tank in desperation, but it did extend combat radius 30-50 mi which was significant for Penetration escort while the new 75 gal Combat Tank and pressurization modifications, slaved from engine instrumentation vacuum, enabled the VIII FC to extend another 50 miles.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 13, 2021)

For an early "look" at the P-47C-1 see this report. Dec of 1942. 


P-47C Tactical Trials



By the summer of 1944 P-47s had been fitted with wide cord propellers and two different levels of water injection. 
The 370 gal internal fuel set-up was being delivered also which increased the tactical radius by 100-150 miles. 
P-47 may have a had a large turning circle but it could out roll any other American fighter and break contact almost at will.

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## nuuumannn (Jul 13, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> I still say the most overrated was the P-47. Very average rate of climb, poor maneuverability and certainly not enough range when introduced. In combat by April 1943 with no provision for drop tanks until August and then relegated to ground attack by January '44 when command decided all P-51s should go to the 8th AF and all P-47s should be transferred to the 9th AF (tactical). And yet over 15000 produced.



Let's not forget the 56th FG chose to keep their P-47s once the P-51 entered service with the Eighth, which highlights one thing about the P-47, its pilots liked it. A quick look at Wiki (yes, I know...) shows why the P-47 was not overrated.

"Luftwaffe ace Heinz Bär said that the P-47 "could absorb an astounding amount of lead [from shooting at it] and had to be handled very carefully". 

When your enemy says this about you, you have their respect.

"Although the North American P-51 Mustang replaced the P-47 in the long-range escort role in Europe, the Thunderbolt still ended the war with 3,752 air-to-air kills claimed in over 746,000 sorties of all types, at the cost of 3,499 P-47s to all causes in combat."

"The P-47 gradually became the USAAF's primary fighter-bomber, by late 1943, early versions of the P-47D carrying 500 lb (230 kg) bombs underneath their bellies, mid-production versions of the P-47D could carry 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs and M8 4.5 in (115 mm) rockets under their wings or from the last version of the P-47D in 1944, 5 in (130 mm) High-velocity aircraft rockets (HVARs, also known as "Holy Moses"). From D-Day until VE day, Thunderbolt pilots claimed to have destroyed 86,000 railroad cars, 9,000 locomotives, 6,000 armored fighting vehicles, and 68,000 trucks. During Operation Cobra, in the vicinity of Roncey, P-47 Thunderbolts of the 405th Fighter group destroyed a German column of 122 tanks, 259 other vehicles, and 11 artillery pieces."

Impressive stats. Says a lot about the utilization of the aircraft, which shows that it certainly wasn't overrated at the time.

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## Milosh (Jul 13, 2021)

Wasn't there a USAAF ace who tangled with a Fw-190 and the Fw used all its ammo and didn't shoot down the P-47?

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 13, 2021)

Milosh said:


> Wasn't there a USAAF ace who tangled with a Fw-190 and the Fw used all its ammo and didn't shoot down the P-47?



Robert Johnson.

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## GrauGeist (Jul 13, 2021)

Milosh said:


> Wasn't there a USAAF ace who tangled with a Fw-190 and the Fw used all its ammo and didn't shoot down the P-47?


Expended both cannon and MG ammo - shot up the Jug pretty bad, including the engine.
There are pictures of it, showing the damage as well as it being coated from cowl to tail in oil.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 13, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Expended both cannon and MG ammo - shot up the Jug pretty bad, including the engine.
> There are pictures of it, showing the damage as well as it being coated from cowl to tail in oil.



And it was Egon Meyer, an ace who ended up with over a hundred kills, so I think it's safe to say the proportion of hits was probably pretty good.

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## 33k in the air (Jul 14, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> "Although the North American P-51 Mustang replaced the P-47 in the long-range escort role in Europe, the Thunderbolt still ended the war with 3,752 air-to-air kills claimed in over 746,000 sorties of all types, at the cost of 3,499 P-47s to all causes in combat."



The P-47 could do long-range missions, but you had to carry a lot of external fuel. There's one picture of an earlier P-47D loaded up with a 150-gallon 'flat' belly tank and a 108-gallon paper tank under each wing. That's an external load of 366 gallons, and combined with its internal 305 gallons, it was carrying a total of 671 gallons of aviation fuel.


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## SaparotRob (Jul 14, 2021)

Granted, it had to carry a lot of external fuel to get to the fight, but the bomber boys were mighty glad it got there.


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## GrauGeist (Jul 14, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> The P-47 could do long-range missions, but you had to carry a lot of external fuel. There's one picture of an earlier P-47D loaded up with a 150-gallon 'flat' belly tank and a 108-gallon paper tank under each wing. That's an external load of 366 gallons, and combined with its internal 305 gallons, it was carrying a total of 671 gallons of aviation fuel.


That would have been for a ferry mission, they typically carried a single centerline tank when escorting.


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## 33k in the air (Jul 14, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Granted, it had to carry a lot of external fuel to get to the fight, but the bomber boys were mighty glad it got there.



It's an interesting 'what if'. If the need for drop tanks had been understood from the outset, and sufficient numbers and sizes of drop tanks are available for the P-47 in the late summer or early fall of 1943, does the P-51 with a Merlin engine still happen for the USAAF the way it did historically?

(A related question would be if the P-38's troubles in northern Europe could have been sorted out sooner.)

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## Milosh (Jul 14, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> And it was Egon Meyer, an ace who ended up with over a hundred kills, so I think it's safe to say the proportion of hits was probably pretty good.


Other authors have expressed doubt about Mayer's alleged encounter with Johnson. There is no direct evidence Mayer was involved in this battle. No III./JG 2 pilot is present on victory or loss records according to the most complete German sources.






Robert Johnson vs Egon Mayer-Urban myth? [Archive] - Luftwaffe and Allied Air Forces Discussion Forum


[Archive] Robert Johnson vs Egon Mayer-Urban myth? Allied and Soviet Air Forces



forum.12oclockhigh.net

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## pbehn (Jul 14, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Granted, it had to carry a lot of external fuel to get to the fight, but the bomber boys were mighty glad it got there.


You have have to use internal tanks for warm up take off and climb in case something goes wrong and combat uses fuel at circa three time that of cruise so more external than internal fuel means you can get to a place you cant fight back from. Also the weight drag of all those tanks means 300external gallons doesnt do what 300 internal gallons do.

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## pbehn (Jul 14, 2021)

Of the three aircraft the USA had to do long range escort and ground attack in Europe, when it comes to availability at the start, ability to do both jobs and numbers produced the P-47 scores highly, both parts of the USA strategy would have been in trouble without it.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 14, 2021)

The idea that the P-47 was "short ranged" needs a little context. 
It had shorter range than needed for the job it was asked to do in 1943, Both in the ETO and the south Pacific. 
It had roughly double the range of most European fighters in 1941-42 when it was being designed, developed. 

What other fighters in 1941-42 or early 1943 could match the P-47s range? 
What fighters, of any nation, would have been any better at B-17 escort or the South West Pacific missions in early/mid 1943? 
There are a few but there is a difference between not being in first place and being in the middle of the pack (or in the bottom 1/2 of the pack).

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## SaparotRob (Jul 14, 2021)

pbehn said:


> You have have to use internal tanks for warm up take off and climb in case something goes wrong and combat uses fuel at circa three time that of cruise so more external than internal fuel means you can get to a place you cant fight back from. Also the weight drag of all those tanks means 300external gallons doesnt do what 300 internal gallons do.


I'm aware that external tanks add to drag and would have to be jettisoned in a fight. The point I was making was that with drop tanks, the P-47 got further and was able to escort much farther. I can't quantify any numbers but it was from this Forum that I learned that the Thunderbolt was a capable escort fighter. It was a myth busted here that the P-51 was the only Allied fighter able to escort the bomber stream. I'm sure the bomber crews were happy to see the Jugs. I'm always happy when I see Jugs.

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## drgondog (Jul 14, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> For an early "look" at the P-47C-1 see this report. Dec of 1942.
> 
> 
> P-47C Tactical Trials
> ...


Hi Shortround - not sure which P-47D version but based on 13000#GW (and 70"MP) used in the comparisons it probably was a late D-16 to -22 with full internal fuel (305gal) and basic ammo. The P-51B has full internal load (184Gal) w/o Fuselage tank and the P-38J is light internal fuel and ammo at 15000# GW. Full internal combat load of P-38J is 17000 full wing fuel w/o LE fuel tanks and 17600 with full LE tanks. June 26 1944 Report. 



http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/mustang/Performance_Data_on_Fighter_Aircraft.pdf



You can see that for the presented data for MP at 10,000 feet for all ships, the P-51B out rolls both P-47D and P-38J (W/O boosted ailerons) by wide margin. Note also that somebody was putting his thumb on the scales for the P-38J --- allowing 80 pounds stick force for roll (vs 50 pounds for P-47, P-51 and XP-80) and flying the P-38J well under combat load (15,000 vs 17,000).

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## drgondog (Jul 14, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> And it was Egon Meyer, an ace who ended up with over a hundred kills, so I think it's safe to say the proportion of hits was probably pretty good.


Most definitely Not Egon Meyer - who was busy about 100 mi from the Johnson shoot up.

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## drgondog (Jul 14, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> My references are packed up at the moment, but if I recall correctly, the Southwest Pacific 200-gallon tank was metal and made by Ford in Australia. A prototype was designed, built, and tested in something like a month, and then put into production.
> 
> The ETO initially had the paper 200-gallon ferry tanks, which could not be pressurized, but were partially filled and then dropped after climbing. Later came the 75-gallon metal tanks, then the 108-gallon British-made paper tanks, followed by the 150-gallon metal tanks, and ending with 200-gallon metal tanks, which came into service in the ETO about a year after the ones in the Southwest Pacific.


The order and events important to ETO began with Lt.Col Cass Hough who formulated a pressurization system modification to the instrumentation vacuum system in May 1943 timeframe as the lower 'keel' with shackle provisions kits were arriving for installation at Burtonwood BAD1. The Newly arriving D-1 and D-4 dis not have factory equipped keel/shackle. 8th AF contracted local Brit suppliers for the 108gal paper tanks, as deliveries from States of both the 75 and 108gal steel combat tanks were not yet in transit. 

In June and July Hough orchestrated tests on the P-47 steel 205 gal tank. In parallel, the 75 gal steel ferry tanks for P-39 were also bein modified as none of the Brit 108gal paper tanks would arrive until September. The pressurization kits were introduced in August for the 75 gal steel tank in August and the 108 gal tank in September.

The draggy, unpressurized, 205gal ferry tank was discontinued in August.

Notably, plans to modify all VIII FC P-47s for wing pylons, which would be introduced in production P-47D-16, began in November - but the mod was Very labor intensive and deliveries would not begin until February 1944.

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## drgondog (Jul 14, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> The idea that the P-47 was "short ranged" needs a little context.
> It had shorter range than needed for the job it was asked to do in 1943, Both in the ETO and the south Pacific.
> It had roughly double the range of most European fighters in 1941-42 when it was being designed, developed.
> 
> ...


The Mark I Mustang had 40% more range (than all P-47C/D up to -22) with full internal tanks. Add the auxiliary tanks by removing wing armament (retain cowl 50.s) and the range (loaded ammo/220gal) had a tested range of 1700 miles. The kits were designed for RAF and delivered with all Mustang I's. I have not yet uncovered the tactical use for the extended range - but recon use potential is obvious.

Recall that NA-73 Mustang I was in combat ops a full year earlier than any P-47. The RAF did not have the inventory to split delivered NA-73/83 between Army Cooperation Command and also devote squadrons for daylight medium bombers in MTO - but they would have been superior in that role to Spitfire, Hurricane, P-39, P-40

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## SaparotRob (Jul 14, 2021)

Are you sure it was better than the P-39?

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## buffnut453 (Jul 14, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Are you sure it was better than the P-39?



Behave yourself...for once!!!

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## SaparotRob (Jul 14, 2021)

Do I have to?


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## buffnut453 (Jul 14, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Do I have to?



Yes...or we'll make you stand in the naughty corner. And I don't want big tears at bedtime either. Got it?!?!?!!!

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## SaparotRob (Jul 14, 2021)

Okay.


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## SaparotRob (Jul 14, 2021)

I was about to post a snarky comment when I remembered to check which thread this is. I got a zinger for drgndog had he posted this on the Groundhog thread.


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## P-39 Expert (Jul 14, 2021)

drgondog said:


> In the MTO, the P-47 fighter groups in12th AF were tasked for CAS and short range interdiction (Rail and Bridges). P-47D FG in 15th were escort. In ETO ALL P-47s in 9th AF were tasked to provide escort through April 1944, and thence the 9th AF P-47s were diverted for cross channel Interdiction preparing for D-Day. In the 8th AF ALL VIII FC were tasked for both CAS/Interdiction and Escort from D-Day through mid August, thence entirely Escort through the end of its service in VIII FC.
> 
> Aside from not having your facts in-line with historical facts regarding the variable missions and service, why would you overlook the Essential role if intermediate Penetration and Withdrawal for 8th AF escort over Germany through VE Day? It took 11 months to convert 'nearly all VIII FC P-47 equipped FGs from P-47D to P-51B/C.


My facts were absolutely in line. I said "command DECIDED P-51s should go to the 8th and P-47s should be transferred to the 9th." Straight from AHT. Implementation obviously came later. Command couldn't snap their fingers and make it so immediately, but they did know that the P-47's range was inadequate for the job at hand. And it really didn't matter that the P-47s provided escort through April '44, their range was still way too short. P-47s did get more fuel and wider propeller blades, but only after air superiority had been won over Europe. When the AAF needed them most in 1943, P-47s were inadequate.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 14, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Most definitely Not Egon Meyer - who was busy about 100 mi from the Johnson shoot up.





Milosh said:


> Other authors have expressed doubt about Mayer's alleged encounter with Johnson. There is no direct evidence Mayer was involved in this battle. No III./JG 2 pilot is present on victory or loss records according to the most complete German sources.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I appreciate both these corrections. Is there any suggestion who the German pilot might be?

Edit: I used to own Caldwell's book on JG26, maybe that's where I got the idea?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jul 14, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Are you sure it was better than the P-39?



Not according to someone’s “Alternative Facts”.

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## pbehn (Jul 14, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> My facts were absolutely in line. I said "command DECIDED P-51s should go to the 8th and P-47s should be transferred to the 9th." Straight from AHT. Implementation obviously came later. Command couldn't snap their fingers and make it so immediately, but they did know that the P-47's range was inadequate for the job at hand. And it really didn't matter that the P-47s provided escort through April '44, their range was still way too short. P-47s did get more fuel and wider propeller blades, but only after air superiority had been won over Europe. When the AAF needed them most in 1943, P-47s were inadequate.


Something's range only becomes inadequate when you have something with longer range, until that time your plans are on hold. B-17s were escorted by Spitfires until P-47s became available which meant both being used, then P-38s came and then P-51s. Until you have enough P-51s you have to use P-47s to take the bombers in and out with P51s doing the longest legs.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jul 14, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Something's range only becomes inadequate when you have something with longer range, until that time your plans are on hold. B-27s were escorted by Spitfires until P-47s became available which meant both being used, then P-38s came and then P-51s. Until you have enough P-51s you have to use P-47s to take the bombers in and out with P51s doing the longest legs.



Oooh B-27’s. Was that a twin boom, inline engine variant of the B-17?

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## pbehn (Jul 14, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Oooh B-27’s. Was that a twin boom, inline engine variant of the B-17?


That will teach me not to type in the dark


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jul 14, 2021)

Or did they copy stolen Me 210 dachshund technology to shift CG and install it in the B-17 and call it the B-27?

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## GrauGeist (Jul 14, 2021)

Maybe a B-24 with a B-17's nose?

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## Milosh (Jul 14, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I appreciate both these corrections. Is there any suggestion who the German pilot might be?
> 
> Edit: I used to own Caldwell's book on JG26, maybe that's where I got the idea?


From the link, 
It is also possible that *Fw. Wilhelm Mayer* shot up Johnson's Thunderbolt as he filed a claim for a P-47 at 1900 20-30 km NW of Dieppe.

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## 33k in the air (Jul 14, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> That would have been for a ferry mission, they typically carried a single centerline tank when escorting.



Doesn't appear to be a ferry mission according to the caption. Here's a link to the photo in question: 56th FG P-47

I do recall Roger Freeman's _Mighty Eighth War Manual_ makes reference to the P-47 being able to carry a 150-gallon 'flat' tank under each wing if necessary, but that such a set-up made handling difficult and thus was not used often.


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## 33k in the air (Jul 14, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> My facts were absolutely in line. I said "command DECIDED P-51s should go to the 8th and P-47s should be transferred to the 9th." Straight from AHT. Implementation obviously came later. Command couldn't snap their fingers and make it so immediately, but they did know that the P-47's range was inadequate for the job at hand. And it really didn't matter that the P-47s provided escort through April '44, their range was still way too short. P-47s did get more fuel and wider propeller blades, but only after air superiority had been won over Europe. When the AAF needed them most in 1943, P-47s were inadequate.



Fighter escort allocation for the 6 March 1944 mission to Berlin (the 8th Air Force's first full scale daylight raid on the city). Figures are in parentheses are the number of aircraft which penetrated enemy airspace.

*1st Bomb Division

Penetration support*
53 (51) P-47s of the 359th FG (made rendezvous with bombers near Dutch coast)
49 (45) P-47s of the 358th FG (9th AF) (made rendezvous with bombers near Dutch coast)
35 (32) P-47s of the 56th FG (made rendezvous with bombers near Lingen)
36 (36) P-47s of the 78th FG (made rendezvous with bombers near Dummer Lake)

*Target support*
35 (25) P-51s of the 4th FG (made rendezvous with bombers northeast of Brunswick)
47 (31) P-38s of the 55th FG (failed to rendezvous with bombers)

*Withdrawal support*
47 (32) P-47s of the 355th FG (made rendezvous with bombers northwest of Hanover)
39 (37) P-47s of the 361st FG (made rendezvous with bombers near German border)
9 (8) P-51s of the 361st FG (made rendezvous with bombers near German border)

*3rd Bomb Division

Penetration support*
16 (16) P-47s of the 365th FG (9th AF) (made rendezvous with bombers near Dutch coast)
34 (31) P-47s of the 353rd FG (made rendezvous with bombers near Dummer Lake)

*Target support*
45 (34) P-51s of the 354th FG (9th AF) (made rendezvous with bombers near Magdeburg)
30 (23) P-38s of the 20th FG (made rendezvous with bombers northwest of Berlin)

*Withdrawal support*
32 (32) P-47s of the 78th FG (failed to rendezvous with bombers)
48 (47) P-47s of the 352nd FG (made rendezvous with bombers near Dummer Lake)

*2nd Bomb Division

Penetration support*
50 (50) P-47s of the 362nd FG (9th AF) (made rendezvous with bombers over Zuider Zee)
35 (34) P-47s of the 56th FG (made rendezvous with bombers near Meppel)

*Target support*
48 (33) P-51s of the 357th FG (made rendezvous with bombers northeast of Magdeburg)

*Withdrawal support*
39 (32) P-38s of the 364th FG (made rendezvous with bombers northwest of Berlin)
49 (42) P-47s of the 356th FG (made rendezvous with bombers northwest of Hanover)

*General Withdrawal Support*

48 (44) P-47s of the 359th FG (second sortie of day) (made rendezvous with bombers Dummer Lake)
49 (49) P-47s of the 358th FG (9th AF) (second sortie of day) (made rendezvous with bombers east of Zuider Zee)
43 (42) P-47s of the 362nd FG (9th AF) (second sortie of day) (made rendezvous with bombers over Zuider Zee)
27 (26) Mustangs of Nos 19, 65, and 122 Squadrons (RAF) (made rendezvous with bombers north of Hanover)

From _Target Berlin_ by Jeffrey Ethell and Alfred Price, p. 167-170


The number of serviceable aircraft in the 8th Air Force on the evening of March 5, 1944 (p. 10 of same source):

777 B-17s
305 B-24s
130 P-38s
415 P-47s
109 P-51s

Operational radius distances as given on pages 11-12 of same source:

475 miles = P-47 with two 108-gallon drop tanks*
400 miles = P-47 with one 108-gallon drop tank
600 miles = P-38 with two 165-gallon drop tanks
650 miles = P-51 with two 75-gallon drop tanks

* Few P-47s had been modified at this time with the necessary plumbing.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 14, 2021)

Obviously those 109 P-51s had won air superiority over Europe allowing those 415 P-47s to survive.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 14, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> And it really didn't matter that the P-47s provided escort through April '44, their range was still way too short. P-47s did get more fuel and wider propeller blades, but only after air superiority had been won over Europe. When the AAF needed them most in 1943, P-47s were inadequate.


It might help of you actually read a bit more. 
The P-47s were getting the wider prop blades starting in Dec of 1943. Likewise the early water injection kits were being fitted from Nov on, most P-47s having gotten the water injection by the end of 1943, but hey, by end of Dec 1943/early Jan 1944 air superiority had already been won over Europe (by what????? inquiring minds want to know)

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## GrauGeist (Jul 14, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> but hey, by end of Dec 1943/early Jan 1944 air superiority had already been won over Europe (by what????? inquiring minds want to know)


Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn't the P-39

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## Milosh (Jul 14, 2021)

It is not the reading that is the problem, it is the memory retention of what was read.

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## 33k in the air (Jul 14, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> It might help of you actually read a bit more.
> The P-47s were getting the wider prop blades starting in Dec of 1943. Likewise the early water injection kits were being fitted from Nov on, most P-47s having gotten the water injection by the end of 1943, but hey, by end of Dec 1943/early Jan 1944 air superiority had already been won over Europe (by what????? inquiring minds want to know)



Roger Freeman's _The Mighty Eighth_ and _Mighty Eighth War Manual_ would be good starting points. (For a detailed day-by-day accounting of the 8th AF's missions in Europe, see Freeman's _Mighty Eighth War Diary_.) From there one can dig deeper into such things the various USAAF and related reports, documents, and studies.


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## 33k in the air (Jul 14, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Obviously those 109 P-51s had won air superiority over Europe allowing those 415 P-47s to survive.



One of the things _Target Berlin_ does well is depict the sheer scale of effort that went into a 'maximum effort' mission such as the 6 March 1944 raid on Berlin. It covers both sides of the day's conflict in detail.

(Full disclosure: I picked up the book in the early 1990s after Lucasarts' _Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe_ got me interested in the European air campaigns. I still have the game manual, since it also serves as a fairly decent reference book.)


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## GrauGeist (Jul 14, 2021)

Milosh said:


> It is not the reading that is the problem, it is the memory retention of what was read.


Or what appears to be "selective memory retention", perhaps?

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## Milosh (Jul 14, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> Roger Freeman's _The Mighty Eighth_ and _Mighty Eighth War Manual_ would be good starting points. (For a detailed day-by-day accounting of the 8th AF's missions in Europe, see Freeman's _Mighty Eighth War Diary_.) From there one can dig deeper into such things the various USAAF and related reports, documents, and studies.


There is also this online, USAAF Combat Operations 1941 - 1945


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## pbehn (Jul 15, 2021)

I don't see how anything can be criticised for being short ranged when the accepted wisdom was that long range escort wasn't required or couldn't be done. Although B-17s were escorted by Spitfires and then P-47s many were still arguing that they weren't needed well into 1943.


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## P-39 Expert (Jul 15, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> It might help of you actually read a bit more.
> The P-47s were getting the wider prop blades starting in Dec of 1943. Likewise the early water injection kits were being fitted from Nov on, most P-47s having gotten the water injection by the end of 1943, but hey, by end of Dec 1943/early Jan 1944 air superiority had already been won over Europe (by what????? inquiring minds want to know)


Wider prop blades and water injection didn't do anything for the P-47's inadequate range in '43, did they?


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## pbehn (Jul 15, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> Wider prop blades and water injection didn't do anything for the P-47's inadequate range in '43, did they?


In what sense was it inadequate, what was better? Who wanted long range escort in Jan 1943? Didnt the P-51 and Spitfire get wide blade props?


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## SaparotRob (Jul 15, 2021)

I'm too lazy to look it up. What was the range of the 1943 P-47 mentioned in post #2444 and the range of the P-39 at the same time?

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## drgondog (Jul 15, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> From _Target Berlin_ by Jeffrey Ethell and Alfred Price, p. 167-170
> 
> 
> The number of serviceable aircraft in the 8th Air Force on the evening of March 5, 1944 (p. 10 of same source):
> ...



Jeff Ethell and Alfred Price should have cited the 9th AF Escort Strength as the 358FG and 362FG (P-47) and 354FG (P-51) were escorting the 8th AF on 6 March, plus 363rd FG which stood down recovering from 11 weather related losses returning from Berlin on March 4th.


33k in the air said:


> Operational radius distances as given on pages 11-12 of same source:
> 
> 475 miles = P-47 with two 108-gallon drop tanks*
> 400 miles = P-47 with one 108-gallon drop tank
> ...


The Combat Radius for the P-47D's modified for the external pylon plumbing was 425mi w/2x150 gal tanks. As noted, very few P-47D-16s had arrived in squadron strength, nor had the Depot wing mods been installed for earlier blocks of P-47s at BAD1 Burtonwood. 

The combat radius for the P-38J-15 with LE 55 gal tanks and 2x165gal external tanks was 650 miles - and most of the J-10s had been modified by 6 March.

The combat radius of the P-51B-1 and -5 and C-1 modified with 85 gal fuse tank plus 2x75 gal was 700mi.

For Comparison, the 56th and 78th furthest encounter was at Steinhuder Lake, short of Frankfurt ~ 350 mi from Boxted. As a sanity check, the most extreme examples of Penetration victory credits for P-47D in Spring 1944 was Lubeck/Kassel/Stuttgart radii wit 1x108 CL/2x150 pylon tanks in April/May. 

Francis Dean drew from AAF Planning Documents produced at Wright and Eglin Field as validated by flight tests - to present his data for America's One Hundred Thousand -

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## Shortround6 (Jul 15, 2021)

P-39 Expert said:


> Wider prop blades and water injection didn't do anything for the P-47's inadequate range in '43, did they?


Man, talk about changing the goal posts. We aren't even on the same field.

"And it really didn't matter that the P-47s provided escort through April '44, their range was still way too short.* P-47s did get more fuel and wider propeller blades, but only after air superiority had been won over Europe*. When the AAF needed them most in 1943, P-47s were inadequate."

This has been shown to be completely false. The P-47s did a lot to help win air superiority, even with their _short_ range. 

Not the P-47s fault that Air Force planners wanted to hit targets beyond the range of the P-47. 
I would note that the first P-38 Group to operational in Europe with the P-38 does so in Oct of 1943 using the P-38H with 300 gal of internal fuel, range isn't much different than P-47s. 
There are already 7 fighter groups in the 8th Air Force using P-47s. 

Things changed by the month.
In June of 1943 P-47s were good for around 230 miles of radius. 
In August they made about 340 miles 
In Sept/Oct they could make 375/380 miles. 
In Jan 1944 they were fitting under wing drop tanks. 
In April/May of 1944 the late P-39Ds with 370 gallons internal start showing up. 

In 1943 there were no other adequate fighters in Europe for escort or indeed anywhere in the world. 
By the end of 1943 there were two operation P-38 groups and P-51s were just starting to do sweeps over France and the low countries as part of their training.

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## drgondog (Jul 15, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Man, talk about changing the goal posts. We aren't even on the same field.
> 
> "And it really didn't matter that the P-47s provided escort through April '44, their range was still way too short.* P-47s did get more fuel and wider propeller blades, but only after air superiority had been won over Europe*. When the AAF needed them most in 1943, P-47s were inadequate."
> 
> ...


SR - your points were on point, but data and dates are a little off - and important to the narrative regarding crisis of confidence in 8th AF in August 1943.

"Things changed by the month.
In June of 1943 P-47s were good for around 230 miles of radius. *The 4FG, 56, 78 and 353FG performed a longer penetration support on July 28 at end of Blitz Week. Closer to 215mi with unpressurized 205 gal tub tank -*
In August they made about 340 miles* In August the first c/l 75 gal pressurized combat tank combat radius was 230mi*
In Sept/Oct they could make 375/380 miles. *In September the 108 gal tank combat radius for P-47C/D was 275 mi*
In Jan 1944 they were fitting under wing drop tanks. *But delivered P-47D-16 with Pylons in squadron deployment in late March, Depot mods in squadron quantity also in late March and 150gal C/L tank arriving in December 1943. Max combat (operational) combat radius in squadron strength in January w/150 gal C/L tank was ~ 375mi.*
In April/May of 1944 the late P-47Ds with 370 gallons internal start showing up.* First operational individual sorties mid May, but not squadron strength until late June. The new P-47D-25 with 370g internal was ~ 600 mi with 2x150 plus 1x108gal externals. At that time only 4 P-47 Groups remained for escort and zero were assigned to Target Escort until P-47M started for 56th FG in February 1945.*

In 1943 there were no other adequate fighters in Europe for escort or indeed anywhere in the world."

By the end of 1943 there were two operation P-38 groups and P-51s were just starting to do sweeps over France and the low countries as part of their training."

Eaker believed he could win the war of attrition, Arnold wasn't sure that he could win the war of opinion with Churchill and FDR.. The P-38 was re-routed to ETO in August and P-51B routed to ETO (October) for 9th AF Tactical (stupid politics stateside). Recall that the 3 equipped P-38FGs were deployed to 8th AF (plus one w/o aircraft (78th)) - in Summer 1942 but sent to Africa in November 1942. The P-38s were flying 400 mi escort missions in SWP and MTO in 1943 using 300 gal ferry tanks, but that didn't help Eaker in ETO.

The Point you were making is that P-47s were essential to 8th AF gaining control of the air until summer 1944 when the three of last four P-47D FGs stated conversion to P-51,

Important facts about P-47C/D in ETO.
Pushed escort past the Kanal in mid 1943
Pushed escort to east Netherlands in late 1943
Pushed escort to Steinhuder Lake in Feb 1944 for Penetration/Withdrawal Support - essential to pushing T/E Me 210s/410s/Ju 88s deeper and deeper into Germany.
Provided Very effective escort to Kassel/Brunswick line to enable the fewer P-38/P-51 FGs to effectively perform target escort in Feb/Mar 1944 during the transition from P-47 to P-51.

The performance of the WI equipped R-2800 and paddle blade props (late 1943/early 1944) enabled a wider envelope of performance superiority above 22K over Fw 190A-6 and A-7 and Bf 109G-6. Even the ROC and turn favored the P-47D-11 at 8th AF escort altitudes. Residual turbosupercharged R-2800 Hp up to 32K was huge above the FTH of BMW801D-2 and DB605A.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 15, 2021)

Thank you.

I was using AHT as a quick reference and obviously what first use or what one squadron/group could do was not spread across all groups. There is a lot of incorrect information out there. 

Again thanks for the more accurate information. 

I am not arguing that the P-47 was long range (at least not until the summer of 1944  

But harping on it's short range when the allies had few, if any, planes that were much better in 1943 seems a bit of a side show. Better planes were on the way. It took time.

We know the Spitfire was short ranged but the Typhoon wasn't much for range either. 185 US gallons internal wasn't going to do the job for escort work even if the Sabre engine would have worked at 25,000ft.

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## 33k in the air (Jul 15, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Jeff Ethell and Alfred Price should have cited the 9th AF Escort Strength as the 358FG and 362FG (P-47) and 354FG (P-51) were escorting the 8th AF on 6 March, plus 363rd FG which stood down recovering from 11 weather related losses returning from Berlin on March 4th.



They are designated in the section detailing the escort assignments. But the 9th AF fighters were usually only assigned to 8th AF missions when it was a 'maximum effort' and the 8th AF itself couldn't supply the number of escorts needed.


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## 33k in the air (Jul 15, 2021)

pbehn said:


> I don't see how anything can be criticised for being short ranged when the accepted wisdom was that long range escort wasn't required or couldn't be done.



This was the case in the ETO, where it was believed that large, tight formations of heavily armed B-17s and B-24s would be able to adequately defend themselves. It took bitter experience to disabuse the USAAF commanders in Europe of this notion.

Gen. Kenney, in the Southwest Pacific, with limited resources and greater distances to contend with, had found through experience that escorts for daylight bombing would always be needed to keep losses to acceptable levels.

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## 33k in the air (Jul 15, 2021)

drgondog said:


> The Combat Radius for the P-47D's modified for the external pylon plumbing was 425mi w/2x150 gal tanks.



550-600 miles with 300 gallons external, according to some USAAF documents I've come across.



drgondog said:


> The combat radius for the P-38J-15 with LE 55 gal tanks and 2x165gal external tanks was 650 miles - and most of the J-10s had been modified by 6 March.



The question is how many 'J' models were on hand at that time.

The P-38's combat radius in Europe will always be contentious due to the difference between 'ideal' and 'practical' considerations. Freeman's _Mighty Eighth War Manual_ notes the radius actually achieved was, due to engine issues and other matters, often quite shorter than what could be theoretically achieved.

There's also the well-known story of how Charles Lindbergh was able to significantly extend the operational radius of P-38s in the Pacific by changing engine management procedures. The way it had been done was not nearly as fuel efficient as it could be.



drgondog said:


> The combat radius of the P-51B-1 and -5 and C-1 modified with 85 gal fuse tank plus 2x75 gal was 700mi.



The question is how many P-51s had been so modified in March of 1944.



drgondog said:


> Francis Dean drew from AAF Planning Documents produced at Wright and Eglin Field as validated by flight tests - to present his data for America's One Hundred Thousand -



Combat radius figures always vary depending on source. Part of it is how it is defined and measured, and part of it is the exact aircraft model (since they had different internal fuel loads) since that is sometimes not specified.

I did a fair amount of digging through various references and found generally similar, though not identical, figures. I also noted some apparent typographical errors in some sources. Alas, all of this is on my other computer which I cannot access at present.


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## 33k in the air (Jul 15, 2021)

Something else to note is that penetration radius and escort radius were not necessarily the same thing. There's also the matter of the exact nature of the escort procedure impacting combat escort radius.

The implementation of the 'relay' method of escorting bombers (such as was used on 6 March 1944) helped extend the escort radius.




SaparotRob said:


> I'm too lazy to look it up. What was the range of the 1943 P-47 mentioned in post #2444 and the range of the P-39 at the same time?



As I recall, initially the combat radius was about 175 miles or so. But as pilots and maintenance crews became more familiar with operating the aircraft, this was extended to about 230 miles.

To go further than that required drop tanks.

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## drgondog (Jul 15, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> They are designated in the section detailing the escort assignments. But the 9th AF fighters were usually only assigned to 8th AF missions when it was a 'maximum effort' and the 8th AF itself couldn't supply the number of escorts needed.


The 9th AF FC was under operational control of 8th AF deep into May with only certain P-47 groups tasked to tactical air ops in mid May. The crossover was in mid may when pre- D-Day invasion tasking began and the 9th AF Jugs began supporting 9th AF missions. The P-38 equipped 367th and 474th released in last week of May. The 363rd and 354th P-51s finally moved full time to escorting 9th AF Medium bombers on June 1. The 363rd did perform a non-8th AF escort for B-26s on May 29th.

Virtually Every 8th AF mission in from Big Week forward into the end of May was a 'max effort' strike against German airfr4am Industry and Oil targets. One of the advantages of the 9th AF delegating IX FC to 8th AF was to develop experience in planning and executing escorts for Medium bombers post May for all the new FGs inbound pre-invasion.

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## drgondog (Jul 15, 2021)

33k in the air
said

"*Combat radius figures always vary depending on source. Part of it is how it is defined and measured, and part of it is the exact aircraft model (since they had different internal fuel loads) since that is sometimes not specified*."

Combat Radius per AAF Planning Definitions were fairly specific and tabulated for 10,000 and 25,000 feet. Sources with somewhat conflicting tables (but not definition) are contained in USAF Study 136 "Long Range Escort Fighter", "Americas One Hundred Thousand", VIII FC Combat Operations Planning documents sourced from Wright and Eglin type tests for Range, Craven and Cates "Army Air Forces in World War II", to name a few. 

I consolidated all the variations for 25,000 feet in my book.

The definition for combat radius was the Range for table conditions for the Type, Internal Fuel and external fuel.

The assumptions to develop the Combat Radius value for specific cruise altitudes included: Full Internal Combat GW plus external fuel per table, Warm up and Take Off in 5 min, Climb to Altitude - Normal Power, Cruise 210 IAS to extreme combat radius, drop tanks (if still attached), Fight for 15 Min at MP/ 5 min at WEP, cruise home with 30 minutes reserve. Cruise at 210mph IAS for 25000 feet. No calculation made for formation assembly, formation flying variances per throttle settings and/or winds aloft. Single airplane with conditions to differentiate from a ferry flight Range.

*"I did a fair amount of digging through various references and found generally similar, though not identical, figures. I also noted some apparent typographical errors in some sources. Alas, all of this is on my other computer which I cannot access at present. "*

I have a few typos also but the Map and Tables conform in agreement.



> drgondog said:
> The Combat Radius for the P-47D's modified for the external pylon plumbing was 425mi w/2x150 gal tanks.



*33K in the Air said "550-600 miles with 300 gallons external, according to USAAF documents.*

Not true for P-47C-2 through P-47D-22 with only 305 gal internal fuel. True for P-47D-25 and newer at 25,000 feet for USAAF VIII FC Operations documents


> drgondog said:
> The combat radius for the P-38J-15 with LE 55 gal tanks and 2x165gal external tanks was 650 miles - and most of the J-10s had been modified by 6 March.



*33K in the Air said "The question is how many 'J' models were on hand at that time.

The P-38's combat radius in Europe will always be contentious due to the difference between 'ideal' and 'practical' considerations. Freeman's Mighty Eighth War Manual notes the radius actually achieved was, due to engine issues and other matters, often quite shorter than what could be theoretically achieved.*

As noted above Combat Radius has specific values tabulated for the estimated fuel consumptions for each stage of the defined sortie for each type, for each max Gross Weight combat Load out. If you parse 1000's of Encounter Reports you will note that Victory Credits achieved in ETO by VIII and IX FC escort fighters are at a Range LESS than table values for Combat Radius.

The Tables are for planning purposes only - not absolutes

To answer your question: Both the Lockheed 55 gal LE kits and NAA 85 gal fuselage tank kits began arriving in November 1943. The first modifiedP-51B-1/-5 and C-1 were being delivered to squadrons in January and at squadron level deployment in February for Big Week. Ditto P-38J-10 and early J-15s.

Number wise that would amount to three P-51FG so equipped for Big Week and 2 P-38J equipped FGs. I don't have precise quantities other than the five groups mentioned could dispatch 48 at a time.

*There's also the well-known story of how Charles Lindbergh was able to significantly extend the operational radius of P-38s in the Pacific by changing engine management procedures. The way it had been done was not nearly as fuel efficient as it could be.*"

.VIII Air Technical Services finally implemented Lockheed and Allison SOP for major improvement to operations in Northern Europe. aying attention to detail, the AAF Combat Radius assumptions were based on 210mph IAS (faster than escorted B-17 and B-24s) at 25000 feet. Lindbergh's fuel management in ETO would have been disastrous.


> drgondog said:
> The combat radius of the P-51B-1 and -5 and C-1 modified with 85 gal fuse tank plus 2x75 gal was 700mi.



*The question is how many P-51s had been so modified in March of 1944.*

The aforementioned three (354, 357 and 363 in February before Big Week, plus 4th FG in late February prior to March 6 Berlin, plus 355FG prior to March 9 Berlin. plus partial conversion of 352nd FG in late March.

The Crossover date in which the few P-51 equipped FGs outscored all the 8th and 9th AF P-47 (and all 8th and 9th AF P-38FG) combined on a daily basis was March 18 when the 56th FG had a big day. March also marked the month that LW quit using T/e night fighter in Defense of Reich and pushed day fighter Me 110/410 bases past Munich, Leipzig and Berlin to try to stop the bleeding

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## 33k in the air (Jul 15, 2021)

drgondog said:


> The Tables are for planning purposes only - not absolutes



That was my main point. Radius figures are generally guidelines.



drgondog said:


> Lindbergh's fuel management in ETO would have been disastrous.



Oh, undoubtedly. Different situations. Just pointing out how various factors can impact combat radius in a given environment.

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## pbehn (Jul 15, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> I am not arguing that the P-47 was long range (at least not until the summer of 1944
> 
> But harping on it's short range when the allies had few, if any, planes that were much better in 1943 seems a bit of a side show. Better planes were on the way. It took time.
> 
> We know the Spitfire was short ranged but the Typhoon wasn't much for range either. 185 US gallons internal wasn't going to do the job for escort work even if the Sabre engine would have worked at 25,000ft.


The only person moaning about its range moans about the weight of a compass. The P-47 wasnt short ranged it just didnt have huge range, its range improved when it was asked to have improved range. In my opinion how things panned out was probably a blessing in disguise.

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## Snowygrouch (Jul 15, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Obviously those 109 P-51s had won air superiority over Europe allowing those 415 P-47s to survive.



In view of the actual statistics on kill ratios, thats an entirely reasonable viewpoint, yes. By 25th Feb,
1 in 6 escorts were Mustangs, but made nearly HALF the kills. Who, placing themselves in the role
of a top USAAF administrator in 1944, and being presented with these figures, would possibly have in good
faith done anything other than phase out the 38 & 47?

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## drgondog (Jul 15, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> That was my main point. Radius figures are generally guidelines.
> 
> 
> 
> Oh, undoubtedly. Different situations. Just pointing out how various factors can impact combat radius in a given environment.


A little more 'serious' than a 'general guideline'. As a Planning document validated by flight Testing and extensive documentation to sort out loading conditions, it represents 'exceed at your own risk' when planning an Op. If you look at aforementioned Encounter Reports detailing fights nearing the outer Radii - but not beyond - you rarely see periods of extended MP of more than several minutes, but great comments regarding low fuel upon return.. 

Further, the escorts, even target escorts were rarely straight line to RV, Straight Line to target, straight line to Break Escort and straight line back to base in clear weather with no headwinds. A Mission Map with Routes and Waypoints were highlighted with red or shaded 'blotches' to warn/and avoid heavy flak concentration. Even missions to Berlin and Beyond frequently tracked inbound over the Baltic over water - meaning the route was greater than a 'radii'.

My father planned and led the last Shuttle Mission 9-18 thru 9-22 and it serves to illustrate the 'unplanned'. First the Penetration Escort was 4th and 357th FG Mustangs with planned RV at Stettin, thence to Warsaw, thence to Piryatin beyond Kiev. Total airmiles in 1350-1400+ mile range. Instructions were to fly directly toward the R/V at Stettin on SOP Cruise settings. Do not use fuselage fuel tank until the external 110s were drained and released. Squadron leaders instructed o direct a flight for interception, and the flight should not pursue fleeing LW. Planned reserve was 35 minutes as Piryatin was located in wheat field fairly close to B-17 location Poltava - but break escort to look for Piraytin was 5o mi away from Polatava and no navigation (other than my father) was available at high level of expertise within the 355th FG for that mission. IIRC he had 12 mission Route maps to address N. Germany/Sweden, Poland N., Poland S. and Ukraine for inbound leg. Same complexities for Ukraine to Italy with Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Italy. Then Italy, France and Britain S.

S--t happened. The bombers reported being late as 355th was west of Berlin and he ordered a throttle back to 190mph TAS to conserve fuel. Ten minutes later the 13CBW reported thy were 12 minutes early. My father had to immediately plot (yank the correct two maps) an intercept course over heavy flak concentrations at MP to a new R/V south of Stettin and nw of Warsaw - about the time they dropped external tanks - and switched to fuselage tank. They had three fights Warsaw area- small scale - but fuel burning for 12 pilots dispatched (one from Borax, one from 357 and one from 358 FS. 354 FS remained intact in high escort) during the throttle up and intercept.

My point - by luck or skill they were 10 minutes *short of* planned landing time at Piryatin, my father landed last to give the rest of the Borax squadron he was leading a chance to get in fast. He had 8 hours log time and 13 gallons of fuel despite perfect weather for last 200 miles. Nobody had more that 13 gallons after landing. That's good for about 10 minutes of searching remaining before Mustangs started crash landing.

The wild card was the high MP run to execute the new intercept.

The total distance travelled was Less than the Planning Combat Radius.

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## pbehn (Jul 15, 2021)

Snowygrouch said:


> In view of the actual statistics on kill ratios, thats an entirely reasonable viewpoint, yes. By 25th Feb,
> 1 in 6 escorts were Mustangs, but made nearly HALF the kills. Who, placing themselves in the role
> of a top USAAF administrator in 1944, and being presented with these figures, would possibly have in good
> faith done anything other than phase out the 38 & 47?
> ...


That would be perfectly reasonable, as the Spitfire had been phased out, but you wouldnt phase them out until P-51s were there to replace them. 109 P-51s would have made no progress at all without the others, as with animals that hunt in packs, some do the chasing, some do the herding and some do the final kill.

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## Snowygrouch (Jul 15, 2021)

pbehn said:


> That would be perfectly reasonable, as the Spitfire had been phased out, but you wouldnt phase them out until P-51s were there to replace them. 109 P-51s would have made no progress at all without the others, as with animals that hunt in packs, some do the chasing, some do the herding and some do the final kill.









Well yes that is true, you dont just instantly ditch everything else, but virually all units were switched over to 51s as soon as practicably possible.

Another interesting set of stats:

Fuel required top operate each aircraft type per hour (averaged over a mission) - US Gal/hour (sorry I have forgottten the source, but I think it was USSBS report)

B-29 = 600
B-24 = 320
B-17 = 248
PR Mosquito = 130
P-38 = 130
P-47 = 119
P51 = 65

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## pbehn (Jul 15, 2021)

Snowygrouch said:


> View attachment 632357
> 
> 
> Well yes that is true, you dont just instantly ditch everything else, but virually all units were switched over to 51s as soon as practicably possible.
> ...


There is no way I will disparage the P-51 in any way but you pee with the pot you have and the the P-47 was there when others werent. A massive amount of operational knowledge was gained with the P-47. Also when you look at the LW bases in Belgium and Netherlands many were already abandoned because of attacks by P-47s and others before the P-51 became active.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 15, 2021)

Snowygrouch said:


> In view of the actual statistics on kill ratios, thats an entirely reasonable viewpoint, yes. By 25th Feb,
> 1 in 6 escorts were Mustangs, but made nearly HALF the kills. Who, placing themselves in the role
> of a top USAAF administrator in 1944, and being presented with these figures, would possibly have in good
> faith done anything other than phase out the 38 & 47?


A top USAAF administrator in 1944 would have done as you say, No question.

However the argument was made that the P-47s didn't get extra fuel and range until _after_ air superiority had already _been won_ by the allies. 

While not as efficient as the P-51s the P-47s certainly contributed to winning air superiority in the 2nd 1/2 of 1943 and the first 1/2 of 1944. 
They were given more fuel and performance enhancements before air superiority was truly won. 
They still weren't as good as P-51s.

Argument started when the poster claimed the P-47 was over rated because it could NOT do long range escort in 1943. 
No allied fighter available in squadron/group numbers in 1943 (except for a few weeks in Dec?) could do long range escort either. 
So if the P-47 was over rated because it couldn't do long range escort (in an 8th Air Force sense) then every other Allied fighter in service in 1943 is over rated because none of them could do that mission either. 

I do appreciate the tables and charts.

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## 33k in the air (Jul 16, 2021)

drgondog said:


> A little more 'serious' than a 'general guideline'. As a Planning document validated by flight Testing and extensive documentation to sort out loading conditions, it represents 'exceed at your own risk' when planning an Op. If you look at aforementioned Encounter Reports detailing fights nearing the outer Radii - but not beyond - you rarely see periods of extended MP of more than several minutes, but great comments regarding low fuel upon return..
> 
> Further, the escorts, even target escorts were rarely straight line to RV, Straight Line to target, straight line to Break Escort and straight line back to base in clear weather with no headwinds. A Mission Map with Routes and Waypoints were highlighted with red or shaded 'blotches' to warn/and avoid heavy flak concentration. Even missions to Berlin and Beyond frequently tracked inbound over the Baltic over water - meaning the route was greater than a 'radii'.
> 
> ...



Thanks for that post! Very interesting stuff.

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## 33k in the air (Jul 16, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Combat Radius per AAF Planning Definitions were fairly specific and tabulated for 10,000 and 25,000 feet. Sources with somewhat conflicting tables (but not definition) are contained in USAF Study 136 "Long Range Escort Fighter", "Americas One Hundred Thousand", VIII FC Combat Operations Planning documents sourced from Wright and Eglin type tests for Range, Craven and Cates "Army Air Forces in World War II", to name a few.



How many of these documents are available online?



drgondog said:


> If you parse 1000's of Encounter Reports you will note that Victory Credits achieved in ETO by VIII and IX FC escort fighters are at a Range LESS than table values for Combat Radius.



Are such reports available online in any systematic way? Or it is more split up among a multitude of websites?


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## drgondog (Jul 16, 2021)

33k in the air said:


> How many of these documents are available online?
> 
> 
> 
> Are such reports available online in any systematic way? Or it is more split up among a multitude of websites?


A decent sample is on Spitfireperformance but mine were largely found in the microfilm of squadron histories obtained from USAFHRC over the course of 45 years. I think Dr. Frank Olynyk may have included the site of each victory credit in his many volumes on the subject. I have his data by VC by type AC by Theatre by date by Squadron/unit - but not specific location/time.


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## drgondog (Jul 16, 2021)

pbehn said:


> There is no way I will disparage the P-51 in any way but you pee with the pot you have and the the P-47 was there when others werent. A massive amount of operational knowledge was gained with the P-47. Also when you look at the LW bases in Belgium and Netherlands many were already abandoned because of attacks by P-47s and others before the P-51 became active.


First, I agree that an oft overlooked fact of P-47C/D operations in ETO is that all of the P-51 Mustang FGs that converted from P-47 accelerated their results against the LW because a.) they had received significant combat experience in the P-47 against the LW, b.) retained a high % of their experienced fighter pilots because the LW chose to not aggressively engage the Patrols and Sweeps - which gradually increased confidence of the US pilots, and c.) a Major overlooked fact is the skill and experience of forming and flying 'large wing' excursions in really crappy weather.

OTOH, while a strafing attack was executed by the 55th FG prior to Doolittle's order to "Pursue in the air and on the ground" in January 1944, it was a freak occurrence (in November 1943). The 353rd FG had some limited claims Jan 14 and 21 and the 78th FG had first recorded VCs over France based airfield in early February, but the first two Significant airfield attack by 351/353rd FG (Feb 22 at Bonn) and 354FS/355FG on (March 8 was at Hosepe) Germany - both Flight level force, both on way back from Penetration Support. It was the last P-47 equipped mission by the 355th - and first loss to airfield flak for both FGs. Notably the top AAF ace Walter Beckham was lost on that 2/22 strafing attack to airfield flak.

My only point is that if any significant damage was obtained by strafing French/Belgium/Netherlands it was by RAF and to my knowledge neither JG 2 nor JG 26 abandoned any airfields due to AAF strafing by either P-47 or P-38.

My last observation is that dominance over LW, pre-D Day, was not achievable without the combined forces of 8th and 9th AF P-47, P-38 and P-51Bs - augmented by RAF Mustang III as required. The tactic of tasking the P-47 to Penetration and Withdrawal Support was crucial to permit P-38/P-51 to fly straight to deep Germany RV to initiate Target escort with maximum internal fuel for combat.

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## Snowygrouch (Jul 16, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> A top USAAF administrator in 1944 would have done as you say, No question.
> 
> However the argument was made that the P-47s didn't get extra fuel and range until _after_ air superiority had already _been won_ by the allies.
> 
> ...



I am sympathetic to this view and I understand it. However, I "think" that the following example regarding the Spitfire, might partly help explain. This is a letter written
by the head of Rolls Royce (Ernest Hives) on 17th Nov 1942 to Freeman. (so a year before what we were talking about above happened). (see my book pg 247).

It might "look" very odd why planes like the 47 were obviously being de-prioritised slighty before the actual operational results proved the worth of its competition, but, keep in mind
that planes (eg the Mustang in this case) had been evaluated and tested for a very long time before they entered the European theature in operational service.
The point I`m making is, that the planners etc, had formed their view that it was VERY highly probable that it would prove the best option long before it started
proving it in combat. So they would have already started shifting priority to the 51, way in advance. Otherwise, if operational stats came in proving that it WAS
indeed working as expected, there would have been a disastrously long time-lag before whatever new aircraft it was (in this case the 51) could be employed
with full backing, support and training. I think in war you had to make "educated bets" like that all the time, I dont think you could always wait until you had stats to match expectations with operational performance before you put your chips on the table.

Here, for example, you can see the British are already reckoning in 1942 that the Spitfire (unless something really drastic changed) would be totally outclassed
by the two-stage Mustang when it came into full use. I think this is far more likely the explanation for the 47 being edged out even before the 51 had
fully started service, much more likely than a certain series of YouTube videos on a conspiracy to pull the rug out from the 47 by cloak and dagger.

One popular YouTube creator cites the lack of drop tank development, but the fact is (see my last post) that the 47 consumes about double the fuel
per hour of operations that a Mustang does, its not difficult to understand why it was much more difficult to equip such an aircraft with
a realiable system of long-range tanks - I dont think they had the resources to create a long range P47 and P51 airfleet, and had to
make a "bet" in 1942/43 about where to put their money, and the P-51 got the backing. I dont view that as a conspiracy, but just
pragmatism in wartime planning. Anyway, thats my view on it essentially. P-47 a great plane, but I also dont think that the P-51
suceeded without merit, I think it was just a little bit better at what was needed, and thats about it.

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## GrauGeist (Jul 16, 2021)

The P-47 was bound to have a higher rate of fuel consumption not only because it had an 18 cylinder engine and weighed nearly 3,000 pounds more than the P-51 empty, but it had all the aerodynamics of a dump truck...

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## SaparotRob (Jul 16, 2021)

Snowygrouch said:


> I am sympathetic to this view and I understand it. However, I "think" that the following example regarding the Spitfire, might partly help explain. This is a letter written
> by the head of Rolls Royce (Ernest Hives) on 17th Nov 1942 to Freeman. (so a year before what we were talking about above happened). (see my book pg 247).
> 
> It might "look" very odd why planes like the 47 were obviously being de-prioritised slighty before the actual operational results proved it`s worth, but, keep in mind
> ...


I'd like to have an award for "insightful".

I mean we should have an insightful award.

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## drgondog (Jul 16, 2021)

Snowygrouch said:


> I am sympathetic to this view and I understand it. However, I "think" that the following example regarding the Spitfire, might partly help explain. This is a letter written
> by the head of Rolls Royce (Ernest Hives) on 17th Nov 1942 to Freeman. (so a year before what we were talking about above happened). (see my book pg 247).
> 
> It might "look" very odd why planes like the 47 were obviously being de-prioritised slighty before the actual operational results proved it`s worth, but, keep in mind
> ...


Thoughtful insight.. I devoted a lot of ink on this topic also.

Some points regarding the 'other side of the pond' thinking in 1942/mid 1943. The P-38 had very strong sponsorship within GHQ/Combat Command and was supported by Echols/Materiel Cmd CO. AAF-HQ flexed muscles within Requirements & Planning to successfully push the NAA/A-36, then the P-51A contracts as the Merlin experiment unfolded at R-R and NAA in Spring 1942. The AAF had just initiated the Combat Tank program to extend escort range (60, 75, 110 and 150 gal).

In August 1942, Eglin released the Report of "Tactical Employment of Mustang P-51' with summary comment "The subject aircraft is the best low altitude American fighter aircraft yet developed and should be used as the criterion of subsequent types. The P-51 Mustang is the best fighter tested by this command to date." So, in relatively quick order, the RAF received astonishing estimated Performance analysis for the Merlin/Mustang I airframe, The Packard Merlin V-1650-3 was undergoing (and failing) Bench testing at Wright Field, both projects for XP-51B/Mustang X were in high gear, AAF modified the P-51A contract to be able to shift to P-51B-1 - and 8th AF was initiating baby steps over France.

IMO, the most interesting timeframe was spring 1943 through July 1943 when the promise of the P-51B was delivered and the Chief of Air Defense who also had Allocation authority, and an acolyte of the P-38, directed ALL P-51Bs to TAC, NOT Strategic Air Forces. The B was being treated as just an extension of the A and suitable for tactical recon, attack and battlefield air superiority.

In early July - the 8th AF suffers increasing loss rate as deeper incursions past west Germany occurred. Eaker begs for P-51Bs and P-38s, Asst Secy War Lovett appeals to Arnold - and Arnold tasked Gen Barney Giles, his deputy, to solve the problem of long rang escort by end of 1943. Gen Echols studied direction was to kiss GM and hope the XP-75 turned into a Princess, while Giles was demanding more internal fuel for the P-51B, P-38J and P-47D by the end of 1943. At the same time the internal recommendation from Planning and Requirements favored the P-51B with acknowledgement that the P-38 was more ready for combat operations. The first prototype P-51B-1 with a SS 90 gal fuselage fuel tank was tested, along with external 75 gal combat tanks by AAF (after NAA) by flying from Muroc Field to Albuquerque, NM and 'fight for 20min (on MP). Roughly combat radius to Stettin, PL. The P-38J was next with LE fuel/relocation of intercooler - P-47 was deemed impossible to re-design fuselage or wing before end of 1943 and released forecast for production article P-47D-25 in Feb/Mar 1944. There were few structural issues to modify either the P-51B or the P38J and kits were ordered and delivered to ETO in quantity in November 1943.

Herein was the major problem between current P-47C/D airframes through P-47D-22. The center of the fuselage had to be re-designed to install the extra 70 gallons under the cockpit, as no kit modification was deemed feasible. Te modifications to the wings required Depot level assets and many weeks labor per wing mod to install pylon and internal plumbing to route combat tank fuel to the engine.

Eaker, Doolittle and Spaatz were aware of the issues in the September 1943 timeframe as P-47D limitations with belly tanks became fully known and the hoped for solution near term was the inbound P-38H then modified J, followed by operational P-51B in ETO. Arnold complied with Eaker/Spaatz plea and prioritized allocations of both P-38 and P-51B from other theatres.

The pissing contest between Spaatz and Leigh-Mallory over control of the ALLOCATION of P-51B to TAC had to be settled by Eisenhower/Arnold/Portal in December 1943 as the 354th FG became operational. The rest is history well hashed.

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## pbehn (Jul 16, 2021)

drgondog said:


> First, I agree that an oft overlooked fact of P-47C/D operations in ETO is that all of the P-51 Mustang FGs that converted from P-47 accelerated their results against the LW because a.) they had received significant combat experience in the P-47 against the LW, b.) retained a high % of their experienced fighter pilots because the LW chose to not aggressively engage the Patrols and Sweeps - which gradually increased confidence of the US pilots, and c.) a Major overlooked fact is the skill and experience of forming and flying 'large wing' excursions in really crappy weather.


Thanks Bill informative as always. I would add that the experience gained by the planners controllers and everyone else down to the tea lady was also invaluable. This discussion started with the P-47 being called inadequate, the term is purely relative, the P-47 was inadequate for deep penetration escort in Germany but the P-51 was inadequate to escort a raid on Moscow. That doesnt mean useless, without all the lessons learned from mistakes, errors, panics and complete screw ups made with the P-47 all of the same mistakes errors panics and screw ups would have happened later.


drgondog said:


> OTOH, while a strafing attack was executed by the 55th FG prior to Doolittle's order to "Pursue in the air and on the ground" in January 1944, it was a freak occurrence (in November 1943). The 353rd FG had some limited claims Jan 14 and 21 and the 78th FG had first recorded VCs over France based airfield in early February, but the first two Significant airfield attack by 351/353rd FG (Feb 22 at Bonn) and 354FS/355FG on (March 8 was at Hosepe) Germany - both Flight level force, both on way back from Penetration Support. It was the last P-47 equipped mission by the 355th - and first loss to airfield flak for both FGs. Notably the top AAF ace Walter Beckham was lost on that 2/22 strafing attack to airfield flak.
> 
> My only point is that if any significant damage was obtained by strafing French/Belgium/Netherlands it was by RAF and to my knowledge neither JG 2 nor JG 26 abandoned any airfields due to AAF strafing by either P-47 or P-38.


As previously I was making a general point, not specifically about deep penetration raids into Germany. The web site I was referring to is here but it is a PDF format so hard to quote easily but for example 
Chieveres in Belgium was bombed by 9th Marauders on 10 and 29 Nov 1 Dec 1943 23 Feb, 11 Apr and 13 Apr 1944 but also 2 Mar 1944 if they werent escorted by P-47s which is not stated they were certainly within P-47 escort range. On 2 Mar 1944 it was attacked by P-47s from the 8th on a low level strafing attack.
Gilze Rijen in Netherlands was bombed and strafed by P-47s on 23 Dec. 1943, then on 23, 25, 31 Jan then in February on 14th. 
From the planes destroyed like Bf 210 and Ju 88 these were not day fighter bases but that doesnt mean the efforts were worthless or pointless. 


http://www.ww2.dk/Airfields%20-%20Belgium%20and%20Luxembourg.pdf




http://www.ww2.dk/Airfields%20-%20Netherlands.pdf





drgondog said:


> My only point is that if any significant damage was obtained by strafing French/Belgium/Netherlands it was by RAF and to my knowledge neither JG 2 nor JG 26 abandoned any airfields due to AAF strafing by either P-47 or P-38.
> 
> My last observation is that dominance over LW, pre-D Day, was not achievable without the combined forces of 8th and 9th AF P-47, P-38 and P-51Bs - augmented by RAF Mustang III as required. The tactic of tasking the P-47 to *Penetration and Withdrawal Support was crucial *to permit P-38/P-51 to fly straight to deep Germany RV to initiate Target escort with maximum internal fuel for combat.


I agree completely which is why I contested the "P-47 range was inadequate". The RAF received over 800 P-47s used mainly in Burma utilising the "cab rank" system where range is expressed as loiter time waiting to be called by ground control.


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## nuuumannn (Jul 16, 2021)

pbehn said:


> This discussion started with the P-47 being called inadequate, the term is purely relative,



Coo-rectamundo! The presumption that the P-47 was "short-ranged" in 1943 is ignorant of the facts as they were at the time and is based entirely on someone looking through the good ole retrospectoscope. For a single-seat fighter to possess the range and combat radius of the Mustang on its debut in 1942 was extraordinary, that the P-38 and P-47 could go as far as they did when they did was extremely useful at the time and replacing them with the P-51, with its capabilities was just doing what anyone in that position would have done, but in _no way_ does it diminish what the P-38 and P-47 achieved.

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## pbehn (Jul 16, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> Coo-rectamundo! The presumption that the P-47 was "short-ranged" in 1943 is ignorant of the facts as they were at the time and is based entirely on someone looking through the good ole retrospectoscope. For a single-seat fighter to possess the range and combat radius of the Mustang on its debut in 1942 was extraordinary, that the P-38 and P-47 could go as far as they did when they did was extremely useful at the time and replacing them with the P-51, with its capabilities was just doing what anyone in that position would have done, but in _no way_ does it diminish what the P-38 and P-47 achieved.


Also in my opinion range alone is almost useless, what is the point of flying to Berlin with machine guns? Unless you have a lot of bombers with you, you have a very expensive aircraft and more expensive pilot trading blows with every platoon that has a heavy Mauser. From the start of the war to the end the highest performing allied aircraft took pictures, true of the Spitfire, Mosquito but also the Mustang/P-51.

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## Shortround6 (Jul 16, 2021)

A lot of things are relative. 
An early P-47 will fly about twice as far as a Spitfire on internal fuel at about the same speeds. 
There is your "short" ranged P-47.

The hitch was that it needed about 3 times the fuel to go twice as far. 

Next hitch is that to escort B-17s and B-24s in daylight you needed to fly further and faster and higher than the initial requirements which really screwed things up. 

I would note that the P-40 no letter (and no self sealing fuel tanks) held 181 gallons of fuel for a pretty good range in 1940. 
However that fuel load put it over designed gross weight and the plane had to fly under restrictions. 
Normal fuel load for designed gross weight was 120 gallons. 

Many US fighters had significantly longer range than many European fighters of 1937-41 simple to make it easy to deploy the planes from one US base to another. 

Mustang may have been designed to hold about the same amount of fuel for the same basic engine but without (or with less) restrictions? 
Some P-40s had center of gravity issues if the tank behind the pilot was full. P-36s and Hawk 75s even more so. 

The Mustang certainly had less drag and could carry its 180-184 gallons in protected tanks. P-40s lost fuel capacity as tank protection increased. 
P-39C carried 170 gallons which dropped to 120 gallons with protected tanks. 

None of these aircraft were going to escort B-17s or B-24s, protected tanks or not as they lacked the superchargers needed for for accompanying turbo charged bombers.

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## Big Jake (Jul 21, 2021)

In my opinion, the most overrated (when reputation exceeds contribution) fighter airplane of WW2 was the Spitfire. It made its reputation and became a public legend during the Battle of Britain but its contribution to the war effort afterwards and eventual victory was very little.

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## GrauGeist (Jul 21, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> In my opinion, the most overrated (when reputation exceeds contribution) fighter airplane of WW2 was the Spitfire. It made its reputation and became a public legend during the Battle of Britain but its contribution to the war effort afterwards and eventual victory was very little.


wow...really?
So the Spitfire being the first bomber escort and the first to engage the Luftwaffe on their own turf and the nemesis of the Bf109 is over-rated?

Interesting...


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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

Malta, N Africa?


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## Ovod (Jul 21, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Malta, N Africa?


The Spitfire didn't see service in the Mediterranean theatre, Malta or Africa, until the middle of 1942. The RAF had been in combat against the Italian Air Force since June 1940 (East African campaign). The predominant fighter types of the British Commonwealth throughout the North African campaign would have been the P-40 and Hurricane.


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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

Ovod said:


> The Spitfire didn't see service in the Mediterranean theatre, Malta or Africa, until the middle of 1942. The RAF had been in combat against the Italian Air Force since June 1940 (East African campaign). The predominant fighter types of the British Commonwealth throughout the North African campaign would have been the P-40 and Hurricane.


What happened in Malta and N Africa after it arrived?


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## buffnut453 (Jul 21, 2021)

Ovod said:


> The Spitfire didn't see service in the Mediterranean theatre, Malta or Africa, until the middle of 1942. The RAF had been in combat against the Italian Air Force since June 1940 (East African campaign). The predominant fighter types of the British Commonwealth throughout the North African campaign would have been the P-40 and Hurricane.



So what? The P-47 didn't fly combat ops until March 1943 and the P-51 even later. Bet you won't put either of them forward as overrated.


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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

Didnt it do PR jobs throughout the war?

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## Snowygrouch (Jul 21, 2021)

From about 1941 to 1944, it was the only competetive single engine fighter for high altitudes the RAF had - and took many of the most important
PR photographs of the European war, as 
P
 pbehn
states above.

(Finding the V-2 missile at Peenemunde, getting a good low-level image of the German Freya radar, and finding the Bismark in Norway, all images
below captured by PR spitfires)









Which was the best photo reconnaissance (PR) aircraft in WW2?


Answer (1 of 8): From an article about Spitfire pilots, by John Bendixsen (( hope I am honoring him by reproducing it here, not abusing him—not marked as copyright). The PRU (Photo Reconnaissance Unit) Spitfures were likely the highest flying and highest performance photo-reconnaissance aircraft ...




www.quora.com





















By 1941 the Hurricane was at the end of its development potential (even the British thought this at the time) and it wasnt until 1944
that two-stage Mustangs became fully operational. Without it, there would have been a very serious problem for about three years.

Of course it is over-rated, but, only because it has been elevated to a virtually god-like mythical realm, which no aircraft can justifiably reside in
from an objective perspective of its real performance. Even if you subtract that, you`re still left with an essential, and irreplacable machine for the war effort.

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## Ovod (Jul 21, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> So what? The P-47 didn't fly combat ops until March 1943 and the P-51 even later. Bet you won't put either of them forward as overrated.



Well, seeing as 25% of all the votes went to the P-51 I didn't need to select the Mustang, now did I? 

Obviously many American aircraft types wouldn't see action until 1942, but nor did the Mosquito or Lancaster bombers, they could hardly be considered "overrated" either.


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## Ovod (Jul 21, 2021)

pbehn said:


> What happened in Malta and N Africa after it arrived?



The USAAF arrived as well, not long after?


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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

Ovod said:


> The USAAF arrived as well, not long after?


In Malta? The Battle of Britain formally ended in 1940, but that didnt stop the LW wanting to get into UK airspace. Without the complete denial of access by the Spitfire, D-Day may well have been much more difficult.


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## Ovod (Jul 21, 2021)

Snowygrouch said:


> Of course it is over-rated, but, only because it has been elevated to a virtually god-like mythical realm, which no aircraft can justifiably reside in
> from an objective perspective of its real performance. Even if you subtract that, you`re still left with an essential, and irreplacable machine for the war effort.



Sure, most aircraft proved to be essential to the war effort - I wonder how many of them could be considered "irreplaceable" though? I mean, the P-51D was doing a job in the last 18 months of the war which no other aircraft could do (perhaps P-47 excepted) escorting bombers to the depths of Germany and back - and yet - 25% of voters selected it as most overrated aircraft of ww2.


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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Sure, most aircraft proved to be essential to the war effort - I wonder how many of them could be considered "irreplaceable" though? I mean, the P-51D was doing a job in the last 18 months of the war which no other aircraft could do (perhaps P-47 excepted) escorting bombers to the depths of Germany and back - and yet - 25% of voters selected it as most overrated aircraft of ww2.


The P-51D didnt appear until mid 1944, are you discussing WW2 or some other?


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## Snowygrouch (Jul 21, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Sure, most aircraft proved to be essential to the war effort - I wonder how many of them could be considered "irreplaceable" though? I mean, the P-51D was doing a job in the last 18 months of the war which no other aircraft could do (perhaps P-47 excepted) escorting bombers to the depths of Germany and back - and yet - 25% of voters selected it as most overrated aircraft of ww2.



Because a huge proportion the poll results are made by people with an axe to grind about their "favourite" plane, and very little to do with any objective facts.

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## Ovod (Jul 21, 2021)

pbehn said:


> The P-51D didnt appear until mid 1944, are you discussing WW2 or some other?


Well OK - in the last 12 months of the war - do you really want me to go back and edit my post?


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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Well OK - in the last 12 months of the war - do you really want me to go back and edit my post?


No, it is just a discussion. The P-51B/C were vital to sweeping the LW away before D-Day, but P-51D appeared after that. It is just about opinions, to me it is unfair to say the Spitfire did nothing after the BoB, it was doing PR work before and after the BoB and was key in winning in Malta, N Africa and maintaining protection over UK until the end of the war.

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## drgondog (Jul 21, 2021)

Strictly speaking the only tangible difference between the P-51-NA and the XP-51/Mustang I was the armament. For purposes of discussion, the Mustang I began combat ops in Army Cooperation Command as well as tactical recon - for which it was unmatched for low level and deep recon missions from May 1942 to EOW in Europe.

The P-51B was fully operational on December 1, 1943, the P-51D (only a couple) were operational, as in physically deployed to operating fighter Groups from BAD2 in ETO, and MTO very late May 1944. I still have a couple of data points to flesh out, but evidence points to several P-51Hs going to 8th AF for familiarization prior to Group level transportation in preparation for invasion of Japan - August 1945. The big glaring hole are records for deployment of 20th AF, 7th AF Fighter Groups into the 8th as well as operational FGs completing training in US.

To the above comments, I find the notion that Spitfires were useless post 1942 is akin to belief that Critical Race Theory is a peaceful doctrine to teach our youth.

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## drgondog (Jul 21, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Sure, most aircraft proved to be essential to the war effort - I wonder how many of them could be considered "irreplaceable" though? I mean, the P-51D was doing a job in the last 18 months of the war which no other aircraft could do (perhaps P-47 excepted) escorting bombers to the depths of Germany and back - and yet - 25% of voters selected it as most overrated aircraft of ww2.


In all fairness, I may not be 100% objective in the lens that I view the role and importance of the Mustang. But, pointing out that the P-51D was irreplaceable? No. The P-47D-25 with 370 gal of internal fuel, the P-38J-25 with dive flaps, engine and cockpit woes solved - could have picked up the slack for long range escort in summer 1944. Maybe not quite as effective as the P51D in combat vs LW, but 'good enough'. The P-51D was arguably a slightly better weapon system but the fleet of P-51Bs plus remainder of B/C production in July through September would have been sufficient for ETO ops through end of 1944.

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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

As a kid in the 1960s who got 90% of his knowledge of aviation from Airfix catalogues and products the P-51D WAS a *Mustang. *When I got a model of a Mustang MkI as a present I thought Revell had made a mistake with the labelling. The two just look like WW2 era airplanes not particularly related to each other, it was some years later that I read about the P-51B/C, I still cant remember ever seeing a P-51B/C shown in a documentary that wasnt specifically about the Mustang story. I think as the war went on attitudes to taking pictures and video became more relaxed and since the P-51D is more photogenic it stole the whole show.

By contrast there is very little footage of WW2 bombers taking off so documentaries all use the same footage. You can often see the distinctive three tails of an Avro Manchester which makes it look common, in fact only about 20 were built.

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## drgondog (Jul 21, 2021)

pbehn said:


> As a kid in the 1960s who got 90% of his knowledge of aviation from Airfix catalogues and products the P-51D WAS a *Mustang. *When I got a model of a Mustang MkI as a present I thought Revell had made a mistake with the labelling. The two just look like WW2 era airplanes not particularly related to each other, it was some years later that I read about the P-51B/C, I still cant remember ever seeing a P-51B/C shown in a documentary that wasnt specifically about the Mustang story. I think as the war went on attitudes to taking pictures and video became more relaxed and since the P-51D is more photogenic it stole the whole show.
> 
> By contrast there is very little footage of WW2 bombers taking off so documentaries all use the same footage. You can often see the distinctive three tails of an Avro Manchester which makes it look common, in fact only about 20 were built.


Ahh - there are many common parts and assemblies between NA-73, 83/91 and NA-97 and NA-99, and NA-102/103/104/106/109/111 etc. 

True, after the P-51B, the P-51D upper frame-aft was changed from firewall, aft. The empennage and wings firewall forward, and lower fuselage Frame aft are basically the same.

Primary changes from Allison to Merlin was Firewall- forward, dropping wing, changing cooling system - most of airframe was same.

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## Just Schmidt (Jul 21, 2021)

Snowygrouch said:


> Of course it is over-rated, but, only because it has been elevated to a virtually god-like mythical realm, which no aircraft can justifiably reside in
> from an objective perspective of its real performance. Even if you subtract that, you`re still left with an essential, and irreplacable machine for the war effort.


That is indeed the problem with these over or underrated threads. Even spitfires are sometimes rated too high, even groundhuggers are occasionally buried too deep.

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## SaparotRob (Jul 21, 2021)

If we went strictly by manufacturer's claims then it may be much easier. I seem to remember a manufacturer making grandiose claims from another thread.


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## fastmongrel (Jul 21, 2021)

pbehn said:


> You can often see the distinctive three tails of an Avro Manchester which makes it look common, in fact only about 20 were built.


Probably just a typo but according to wiki 202 Manchesters were built


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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

fastmongrel said:


> Probably just a typo but according to wiki 202 Manchesters were built


If you read in the wiki article only about 20 were built with that tail, plus the first Lancaster prototype.


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## fastmongrel (Jul 21, 2021)

pbehn said:


> If you read in the wiki article only about 20 were built with that tail, plus the first Lancaster prototype.


Got you I should have read the whole article 🤪

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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

fastmongrel said:


> Got you I should have read the whole article 🤪


While the Manchester was designed with a twin tail, the first production aircraft, designated the *Mk I*, had a central fin added and twenty aircraft like this were built. They were succeeded by the *Mk IA* which reverted to the twin-fin system but used enlarged, taller fin and rudders mounted on a new tailplane, with span increased from 22 ft (6.71 m) to 33 ft (10.06 m). This configuration was carried over to the Lancaster, except for the first prototype, which also used a central fin and was a converted, unfinished Manchester.[12]​

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## FLYBOYJ (Jul 21, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Ahh - there are many common parts and assemblies between NA-73, 83/91 and NA-97 and NA-99, and NA-102/103/104/106/109/111 etc.
> 
> True, after the P-51B, the P-51D upper frame-aft was changed from firewall, aft. The empennage and wings firewall forward, and lower fuselage Frame aft are basically the same.
> 
> Primary changes from Allison to Merlin was Firewall- forward, dropping wing, changing cooling system - most of airframe was same.


Bill - many years ago I did an annual on a NA Navion, very well kept polished aluminum bird. When I looked into the interior empennage I could see some original P/N markings that were changed and re-identified, also had some rivet patterns painted into the zinc chromate that were not picked up when the aircraft was assembled. IIRC the owner told me his aircraft was the 11th built by NA and the skins were originally supposed to be for P-51s and the Navion had some common components with the Mustang. Have you ever heard of this?


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## pbehn (Jul 21, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Ahh - there are many common parts and assemblies between NA-73, 83/91 and NA-97 and NA-99, and NA-102/103/104/106/109/111 etc.
> 
> True, after the P-51B, the P-51D upper frame-aft was changed from firewall, aft. The empennage and wings firewall forward, and lower fuselage Frame aft are basically the same.
> 
> Primary changes from Allison to Merlin was Firewall- forward, dropping wing, changing cooling system - most of airframe was same.


I was speaking purely from perception, as I as a child and the average man in the street views things, which isnt based on facts at all but impressions. 
Compare to a Mustang 1A from approximately the same angle to the P-51D. 











https://www.cybermodeler.com/hobby/builds/hc/build_hc_p-51.shtml

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## nuuumannn (Jul 21, 2021)

pbehn said:


> While the Manchester was designed with a twin tail, the first production aircraft, designated the *Mk I*, had a central fin added and twenty aircraft like this were built. They were succeeded by the *Mk IA* which reverted to the twin-fin system but used enlarged, taller fin and rudders mounted on a new tailplane, with span increased from 22 ft (6.71 m) to 33 ft (10.06 m). This configuration was carried over to the Lancaster, except for the first prototype, which also used a central fin and was a converted, unfinished Manchester.[



A small detail missed out in the wiki appraisal of the situation is that the taller twin fins were fitted to the Manchester Mk.III BT308 first after the removal of the smaller fins and central tail, which was renamed "Lancaster", and from then the tall fins were fitted to the Manchester that appeared as the Mk.Ia.

The central fin was wooden and covered in fabric and buffetting caused by rotating the FN.7 mid-upper turret caused its fabric to balloon and eventually tear, with the fin disintegrating at its severest. The turning of the turret also caused rudder vibration. The taller fins were fitted to BT308 before major trials at the very end of January 1941, but it wasn't until July 1941 that the first Manchesters on the production line received them.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 21, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> In my opinion, the most overrated (when reputation exceeds contribution) fighter airplane of WW2 was the Spitfire. It made its reputation and became a public legend during the Battle of Britain but its contribution to the war effort afterwards and eventual victory was very little.



I don't think the Spit was or is overrated amongst folks who know a little about WWII aviation, but I do think podcasts like Spitfire -- the People's Plane, which I've listened to on the way to work, really gloss over the impact the plane had on fighter design.

I'd disagree to its contribution to victory. It not only stood good combat value, but in extending the lifespan and combat capability of the airframe, taught fighter designers a lot about how to get the most out of a planform.


SaparotRob said:


> I'd like to have an award for "insightful".
> 
> I mean we should have an insightful award.



The closest here is the "useful" bomb. I use it to signify "this made me think about it more", which is, of course, a very useful thing.

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## nuuumannn (Jul 21, 2021)

pbehn said:


> While the Manchester was designed with a twin tail, the first production aircraft, designated the *Mk I*, had a central fin added and twenty aircraft like this were built.



I'm not 100 percent certain this is accurate, pbehn, not criticising you, of course, but the source. According to the Avro Putnam book by Jackson, total production amounted to Avro built 156 and assembled 44 that were built by Metro-Vick. The first production batch of Mk.Is was for 49 aircraft, the second for 29, and of the third, five were completed as Mk.Is, whereas the following 69 were built as Mk.Ias with the taller fins. Of the Mk.I production lot, a total of 35 were converted to Mk.Ias, all of which equates to 48 airframes completed as Mk.Is with the triple fins, of Avro production alone. There isn't a breakdown of the differences between Mk.I and Mk.Ia production in the Metro-Vick figures, but a large portion of them were completed or converted as Mk.Ias.

I first noticed the discrepancy in Buttler's Warpaint book on the Manchester, which has nice colour profiles and there are more than 20 illustrated with the triple fins in that book alone, from different serial batches. So beware, wiki watchers...


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 21, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Didnt it do PR jobs throughout the war?



Lutjens probably regretted them having spotted his departure. Kinda sealed his fate, and all.


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## nuuumannn (Jul 21, 2021)

Let's also not forget that Spitfires played a massive part in Overlord, maintaining standing patrols over the beaches and the fleet as it headed south for France, not to mention throughout the coming months of taking back enemy-held territory, from makeshift fields in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Spitfires made it as far as Berlin, RAF squadrons flying fighter sweeps deep into Germany following the invasion, so its contribution was vital by being available in numbers alone, let alone the performance advantages it enjoyed compared to its contemporaries through constant innovation.

This all sounds like putting it on a pedestal, heck, all I need do now is put a pretty picture of one up, but what is undeniable are the facts surrounding the type.

More than 22,700 Spitfires were built of all marks, with production from 1938 to 1948. More Spitfires were built than any other Allied fighter of the war. It was a frontline fighter at the outbreak of war in 1939 and was still equipping RAF frontline fighter squadrons at the end of 1945, despite the first jet fighter squadrons having been established the previous year. The Spitfire XIV is frequently rated as one of the best performing fighters of the war. The following gives an indication of how good the type was, with comparisons with Mustang III, Spitfire IX, Tempest V, and Bf 109G and Fw 190A.



Spitfire Mk XIV Tactical Trials

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## Big Jake (Jul 21, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> In my opinion, the most overrated (when reputation exceeds contribution) fighter airplane of WW2 was the Spitfire. It made its reputation and became a public legend during the Battle of Britain but its contribution to the war effort afterwards and eventual victory was very small.


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## drgondog (Jul 21, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Bill - many years ago I did an annual on a NA Navion, very well kept polished aluminum bird. When I looked into the interior empennage I could see some original P/N markings that were changed and re-identified, also had some rivet patterns painted into the zinc chromate that were not picked up when the aircraft was assembled. IIRC the owner told me his aircraft was the 11th built by NA and the skins were originally supposed to be for P-51s and the Navion had some common components with the Mustang. Have you ever heard of this?


Joe - I don't know. I will check

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 21, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> More than 22,700 Spitfires were built of all marks, with production from 1938 to 1948.



Building 23,000 of anything is quite the vote of confidence, from them who had to both build and fly it. Few airplanes from that era were built in that numbers.

Sarcastic question: I wonder what the Germans thought about it? Did they think it was overrated?

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## nuuumannn (Jul 21, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I wonder what the Germans thought about it? Did they think it was overrated?



From what I remember off the top of my head from test flights done in 1940, they thought it (and the Hurricane) very easy to land, well, anything was compared to the Bf 109, but the Germans all believed the Bf 109E was superior to the Spitfire Mk.I, which in many respects it certainly was.

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## GrauGeist (Jul 21, 2021)

If I remember right, Gunther Rall liked the Spitfire.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 21, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> From what I remember off the top of my head from test flights done in 1940, they thought it (and the Hurricane) very easy to land, well, anything was compared to the Bf 109, but the Germans all believed the Bf 109E was superior to the Spitfire Mk.I, which in many respects it certainly was.



I'm pretty sure they regarded Spits as dangerous opponents both in 1940 and later years.

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## drgondog (Jul 22, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Bill - many years ago I did an annual on a NA Navion, very well kept polished aluminum bird. When I looked into the interior empennage I could see some original P/N markings that were changed and re-identified, also had some rivet patterns painted into the zinc chromate that were not picked up when the aircraft was assembled. IIRC the owner told me his aircraft was the 11th built by NA and the skins were originally supposed to be for P-51s and the Navion had some common components with the Mustang. Have you ever heard of this?


Joe - I checked with my co-author Lowell Ford who said that it was possible certain stock parts like rudder/elevator linkages, etc may have been used for the Navion, that he was not aware of any rumors of specific P-51 parts that might have been drawn from Spares and selected for incorporation into the new design.

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## drgondog (Jul 22, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> If I remember right, Gunther Rall liked the Spitfire.


How could anybody not love the Spitfire? Post VE-Day, dad had time in the IX and said it might have been the most delightful aircraft to fly of any that he ever flew. He ranked P-51H, F-86E/F, and Spit IX in any order. He was surprised that the Spit was easier to land in a crosswind than the 51.

Rall liked the Spit very much but stated that the Mustang was the 'Best' allied fighter - and cited the combination of extreme range with high performance equal or near equal to any fighters that he flew.

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## pbehn (Jul 22, 2021)

drgondog said:


> How could anybody not love the Spitfire? Post VE-Day, dad had time in the IX and said it might have been the most delightful aircraft to fly of any that he ever flew. He ranked P-51H, F-86E/F, and Spit IX in any order. He was surprised that the Spit was easier to land in a crosswind than the 51.


Pilots who flew the whole range throughout the war said the early versions were the nicest to fly. Adding the weight of cannon and other stuff affected the feel, but that is just discussing a Sunday jaunt, training flight or take of and landing, in terms of fighting someone else the preference was always a Mk VII, IX, XIV or similar late model.


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## GrauGeist (Jul 22, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Joe - I checked with my co-author Lowell Ford who said that it was possible certain stock parts like rudder/elevator linkages, etc may have been used for the Navion, that he was not aware of any rumors of specific P-51 parts that might have been drawn from Spares and selected for incorporation into the new design.


Bill, didn't NAA have similarities between the Navion's and the Mustang's main gear?


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## FLYBOYJ (Jul 22, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Joe - I checked with my co-author Lowell Ford who said that it was possible certain stock parts like rudder/elevator linkages, etc may have been used for the Navion, that he was not aware of any rumors of specific P-51 parts that might have been drawn from Spares and selected for incorporation into the new design.


Thanks Bill!!

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## Peter Gunn (Jul 23, 2021)

I always thought the Navion was one of the best looking light planes ever built. North American sure could and did build some beautiful airplanes, makes you think they had artists designing some of them.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 23, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> I always thought the Navion was one of the best looking light planes ever built. North American sure could and did build some beautiful airplanes, makes you think they had artists designing some of them.




There's two of them at the airstrip up in Lampasas.

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## GrauGeist (Jul 23, 2021)

The Twin Navion is sexy as hell, too.

Used to be one here at Redding Muni (RDD).

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## drgondog (Jul 23, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Bill, didn't NAA have similarities between the Navion's and the Mustang's main gear?


Dave - define similarities? AFAIK, no common parts.


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## GrauGeist (Jul 23, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Dave - define similarities? AFAIK, no common parts.


I've never paid close attention, mostly because I haven't been around them much, but I recall a conversation ages ago where it was said that the design features were based on the Mustang's.


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## 33k in the air (Jul 25, 2021)

drgondog said:


> A decent sample is on Spitfireperformance but mine were largely found in the microfilm of squadron histories obtained from USAFHRC over the course of 45 years. I think Dr. Frank Olynyk may have included the site of each victory credit in his many volumes on the subject. I have his data by VC by type AC by Theatre by date by Squadron/unit - but not specific location/time.



Thanks for the reply. And I salute your long-term research project! Impressive.


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## Big Jake (Jul 26, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Building 23,000 of anything is quite the vote of confidence, from them who had to both build and fly it. Few airplanes from that era were built in that numbers.
> 
> Sarcastic question: I wonder what the Germans thought about it? Did they think it was overrated?


Numbers don't mean much. Case in point - many more B-24s were built than B-17s (almost twice as many) and nobody can tell me that the B-24 was better bomber than the B-17! And I think that they built more P-40s than Spitfires. So? The Brits had one good design that they stuck to - the Spitfire. Difficult to manufacture and maintain but aerodynamically great. All their other designs during the war had a lot of issues that took forever to rectify. I submit that had they been quicker in solving the structural issues with the Typhoon and its engine, a lot of things would have looked differently.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 26, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> Numbers don't mean much. Case in point - many more B-24s were built than B-17s (almost twice as many) and nobody can tell me that the B-24 was better bomber than the B-17!



"Better" depends on what metrics one is looking at. I'm biased towards the B-17 myself; my grandfather fought and died on one. But the powers-that-be are the ones which write the budget and fund the procurements, and they thought the -24 was better insofar as it had longer range and usually a heavier bombload.




Big Jake said:


> And I think that they built more P-40s than Spitfires. So? The Brits had one good design that they stuck to - the Spitfire.



The Brits never built P-40s, nor the Americans any Spitfires, so those numbers, being segregated between the countries, renders the comparison inapt, to me. I'm talking about the decision-process inside an air ministry or other single-government organ of state. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

The fact the Brits built so many Spits tells me that of their early-war fighters, it was the one which checked more boxes for them.

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## pbehn (Jul 26, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> Numbers don't mean much. Case in point - many more B-24s were built than B-17s (almost twice as many) and nobody can tell me that the B-24 was better bomber than the B-17! And I think that they built more P-40s than Spitfires. So? The Brits had one good design that they stuck to - the Spitfire. Difficult to manufacture and maintain but aerodynamically great. All their other designs during the war had a lot of issues that took forever to rectify. I submit that had they been quicker in solving the structural issues with the Typhoon and its engine, a lot of things would have looked differently.


There were a lot more Spitfires than P-40s produced, but they were in production longer and the Spitfire was also made as a PR and a carrier aircraft. Between the Hurricane, Typhoon and Tempest Hawkers sold about the same number of planes as Supermarine did but they were rarely doing the same job in the same place at the same time

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## drgondog (Jul 27, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> Numbers don't mean much. Case in point - many more B-24s were built than B-17s (almost twice as many) and nobody can tell me that the B-24 was better bomber than the B-17! And I think that they built more P-40s than Spitfires. So? The Brits had one good design that they stuck to - the Spitfire. Difficult to manufacture and maintain but aerodynamically great. All their other designs during the war had a lot of issues that took forever to rectify. I submit that had they been quicker in solving the structural issues with the Typhoon and its engine, a lot of things would have looked differently.


There was more global demand for B-24s because overall it was a better combat performer. Longer range, larger bomb load for same range, 15% faster cruise speed at altitude, more flexible mission profile, lower loss rate per sortie - Usually one of those will work for you. And yes, B-17 my favorite bomber all-time. 

Reflect that the B-17 had a very strong AAF top leadership support when WWII started and it was the bell cow for 8th and 12th AF early stage combat ops. It was only heavy bomber available in 1942 in Pacific. But also recognize that range/payload was a premium attribute and the B-17s were gradually replaced in all theatres except MTO and ETO in 1943 and that only B-24s could do something like the Ploesti strike. Further reflect that even the 8th was beginning to replace B-17 equipped BGs with B-24s and the MTO finished 3:2 ratio B-24:B-17.

All the new BGs arriving for ETO in January 1944 forward were equipped with B-24s.

Even Spaatz was 'converted'.

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## pbehn (Jul 27, 2021)

Aircraft had many uses apart from dropping bombs. One of the first uses of the B-24 was taking ferry pilots back to the USA. There was an Atlantic gap to close. All those VIPs, documents, drawings and pattern parts that crossed the Atlantic needed something to transport them.

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## Ovod (Jul 27, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> Numbers don't mean much. Case in point - many more B-24s were built than B-17s (almost twice as many) and nobody can tell me that the B-24 was better bomber than the B-17! And I think that they built more P-40s than Spitfires. So? The Brits had one good design that they stuck to - the Spitfire. Difficult to manufacture and maintain but aerodynamically great. All their other designs during the war had a lot of issues that took forever to rectify. I submit that had they been quicker in solving the structural issues with the Typhoon and its engine, a lot of things would have looked differently.


Twice as many Bell P-39s were produced during the war compared to the figure for the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest put together. Make of it what you will...

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## fastmongrel (Jul 27, 2021)

Big Jake said:


> Difficult to manufacture and maintain


Can't have been too difficult to manufacture, when the Supermarine factory was flattened by the Luftwaffe production was dispersed to smaller units across Southampton and Hampshire. Maintenance well they kept them flying in N Africa and Malta and those conditions don't come much worse.

If the Spitfire had never fired a shot it would still have been one of the best aircraft of the war. Photo reconnaissance Spits flew over Europe constantly finding targets for RAF and USAAF bombers then checking the damage caused. Soldat Schmidt couldn't sneak off for a quick smoke without being photographed by a PR Spitfire

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## swampyankee (Jul 27, 2021)

I disagree with the logic that production numbers are directly related to whether an aircraft is overrated or not, at least once they are in mass production, as this merely shows that the customer thought they were worth enough to continue in production, even in preference to aircraft that may be somewhat better. Whether or not an aircraft is overrated is dependent on how it's viewed by posterity, not by its users at the time of its service.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 27, 2021)

swampyankee said:


> I disagree with the logic that production numbers are directly related to whether an aircraft is overrated or not, at least once they are in mass production, as this merely shows that the customer thought they were worth enough to continue in production, even in preference to aircraft that may be somewhat better. Whether or not an aircraft is overrated is dependent on how it's viewed by posterity, not by its users at the time of its service.



Or perhaps how it's viewed by a concurrent adversary? USAAF thought highly of the P-38; LW pilots apparently not so much. Could we not then say that the USAAF overrated it, or conversely, the LW underrated it?

No one datum will tell the entire truth of the matter, but production choices and numbers do give insight into what the respective nations thought of the planes they were building at the time they were building them.

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## 33k in the air (Jul 27, 2021)

Ovod said:


> Twice as many Bell P-39s were produced during the war compared to the figure for the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest put together. Make of it what you will...



Yes, but how many of those were shipped to the Soviet Union?

The USAAF didn't care much for the P-39, but the Soviets found it suited their needs well.


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## Shortround6 (Jul 27, 2021)

Once you have a factory (or two) tooled up and cranking out several hundred planes a month it is hard to turn off the system. Often things like landing gear and air frame forgings are ordered months in advance.
It can take months or nearly a year from first production to the 500th example.
Switching production from a not so great plane to the latest and greatest can mean hundreds of planes not built in a given year.

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## GrauGeist (Jul 27, 2021)

P-38, produced 1941 - 1945: 10,037
P-39, produced 1940 - 1944: 9,588
P-40, produced 1939 - 1944: 13,738
P-47, produced 1941 - 1945: 15,636
P-51, produced 1941 - 1945: 15,586

Hurricane, produced 1937 - 1944: 14,487
Spitfire, produced 1938 - 1948: 20,350
Typhoon, produced 1941 - 1945: 3,317

Of those 9,588 P-39s built, 4,719 went to the Soviet Union.

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## SaparotRob (Jul 27, 2021)

Spitfire doesn't seem so overrated by that metric.

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## fastmongrel (Jul 27, 2021)

I have always been proud that the last official RAF Spitfire flight took off from my local aerodrome RAF Woodvale. PS915 a Spitfire XIX of the Temperature and Humidity Monitoring flight took off on the morning of 11th July 1957 flew her mission then in the afternoon flew in formation with her sister PRXIXs PS853 and PM631 to RAF Biggin Hill to join the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

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## pbehn (Jul 27, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> P-38, produced 1941 - 1945: 10,037
> P-39, produced 1940 - 1944: 9,588
> P-40, produced 1939 - 1944: 13,738
> P-47, produced 1941 - 1945: 15,636
> ...


And of those used in training in USA a total of 865 P-39 airframes were lost in 1,934 accidents.

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## fastmongrel (Jul 27, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Spitfire doesn't seem so overrated by that metric.


Especially if you throw in nearly 3000 Seafires.

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## buffnut453 (Jul 27, 2021)

fastmongrel said:


> I have always been proud that the last official RAF Spitfire flight took off from my local aerodrome RAF Woodvale. PS915 a Spitfire XIX of the Temperature and Humidity Monitoring flight took off on the morning of 11th July 1957 flew her mission then in the afternoon flew in formation with her sister PRXIXs PS853 and PM631 to RAF Biggin Hill to join the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.



Always loved the THUM Spitfires. My first flight in a RAF aircraft was in a 10 AEF Chipmunk at Woodvale. Many fond memories of that place!

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## GrauGeist (Jul 27, 2021)

pbehn said:


> And of those used in training in USA a total of 865 P-39 airframes were lost in 1,934 accidents.


Many of which were fatal.

Some time back, I went through Joe Baugher's P-39 listings and was appalled at how many pilots were killed in it.

If memory serves right, of the first production block, 5 pilots were killed in accidents.

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## pbehn (Jul 27, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Many of which were fatal.
> 
> Some time back, I went through Joe Baugher's P-39 listings and was appalled at how many pilots were killed in it.
> 
> If memory serves right, of the first production block, 5 pilots were killed in accidents.


There were 395 fatalities in USA in the P-39, the real shocker is the A-36, training for dive bombing is a dangerous activity.


United States World War II Aircraft Loss Statistics during Flight Training

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## fastmongrel (Jul 27, 2021)

buffnut453 said:


> Always loved the THUM Spitfires. My first flight in a RAF aircraft was in a 10 AEF Chipmunk at Woodvale. Many fond memories of that place!


The sound of the Chipmunks Gipsy engine puttering overhead was the sound of summer to me and my friends.

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## SaparotRob (Jul 27, 2021)

I have always loved listening to the sound of propeller driven airplanes. I know where you're coming from.

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## Schweik (Jul 27, 2021)

pbehn said:


> There were 395 fatalities in USA in the P-39, the real shocker is the A-36, training for dive bombing is a dangerous activity.
> 
> 
> United States World War II Aircraft Loss Statistics during Flight Training



They eventually retired the A-36 due to wing damage (including sometimes catastrophic) during pullout from dives. I used to assume this was partly due to metal fatigue (dive bombing can wear out wings pretty quickly) but I wonder if they lost some earlier due to this kind of thing.


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## pbehn (Jul 27, 2021)

Schweik said:


> They eventually retired the A-36 due to wing damage (including sometimes catastrophic) during pullout from dives. I used to assume this was partly due to metal fatigue (dive bombing can wear out wings pretty quickly) but I wonder if they lost some earlier due to this kind of thing.


I found this below. It think it is quite easy to overstress a fighters wings doing repeated dive bombing attacks, it happened to Spitfires.





On the A-36 flying today, I can think of no reason for the Dive Brakes to ever be functional. During WWII Training Command issued a directive to wire them shut after as few fatal accidents. The primary single issue was failure to deploy the brakes BEFORE initiating the dive.






P51 Empty weight increase from B/C to D model


Hoping for some clarification regarding P51 empty weights. Depending on the source, I typically find the razor back B/C models listed at about 7000 lbs. empty, and the D bubble top listed at around 7,600 lbs. Does the empty weight include the guns? If so I'm guessing the modified wing...



ww2aircraft.net

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## Schweik (Jul 27, 2021)

I have a personal account from an A-36 pilot I'm going to post later in another thread when I get around to it. It's pretty interesting. They proved to be quite useful in combat in Italy but it doesn't sound like easy work ...

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## GrauGeist (Jul 27, 2021)

The A-36, even though strengthened for dive-bombing, simply didn't have the strength of purpose designed dive-bombers like the SBD and Ju87.
..


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## Thumpalumpacus (Jul 27, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Once you have a factory (or two) tooled up and cranking out several hundred planes a month it is hard to turn off the system. Often things like landing gear and air frame forgings are ordered months in advance.
> It can take months or nearly a year from first production to the 500th example.
> Switching production from a not so great plane to the latest and greatest can mean hundreds of planes not built in a given year.



The Brits clearly decided to go all-in on continued upgrading of the Spit, even as they were working on better propeller fighters and jets. If it was a stopgap, it was one with huge wings.

I get that factory changes are costly and hard to execute, and that follow-ons aren't always successful. I don't think that explains the Spitfire's large numbers sufficiently, or its construction and retention in service after the war.



SaparotRob said:


> Spitfire doesn't seem so overrated by that metric.



I'm sure the AM wish they insisted on a gas-heater to get out of such a big contract!

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## nuuumannn (Jul 28, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I don't think that explains the Spitfire's large numbers sufficiently, or its construction and retention in service after the war.



You're right, it doesn't. The Spitfire was sought after. It was the RAF's primary fighter interceptor in the war and as a result, it was built in large numbers. If anything, the numbers speak volumes as to the adaptability of the airframe to modification and its use in service.



Big Jake said:


> Numbers don't mean much.



Hate to break it to ya, numbers mean the difference between victory and defeat. It's one reason why the Luftwaffe lost the Battle of Britain; it couldn't sustain the continuing losses. It's why the Battle of the Atlantic was won; the Allies were building more merchant ships than were being sunk by U boats. It's why the USA contributed so much to victory in WW2, its manufacturing capacity meant the Allies were supplied with everything they needed. It was the only country that could fight a war on two fronts and win because of the numbers of equipment its manufacturing and manpower capacity could produce.

"Numbers don't mean much..." pfft...

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Jul 28, 2021)

pbehn said:


> There were 395 fatalities in USA in the P-39, the real shocker is the A-36, training for dive bombing is a dangerous activity.
> 
> 
> United States World War II Aircraft Loss Statistics during Flight Training


Highly interesting. Specially regarding the B-26. The accident rate was very small for a "widow maker", much lower than the A-20 for example.

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## pbehn (Jul 28, 2021)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> Highly interesting. Specially regarding the B-26. The accident rate was very small for a "widow maker", much lower than the A-20 for example.


I'm not an expert on it but the stats are for USA training. I think the problem with the B-26 was the landing speed. Experienced pilots werent used to the high landing speed and accidents happened just because they came in too slow. So accidents were more likely abroad with operational units making a transition. There never was a problem with the plane itself, and its landing speed was the new normal in aviation anyway.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Jul 28, 2021)

pbehn said:


> So accidents were more likely abroad with operational units making a transition.


I could be very interesting to compare with those operational loses.


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## pbehn (Jul 28, 2021)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> I could be very interesting to compare with those operational loses.


Initial operations just add to the legend, one of the first operations was an unescorted low level attack on a power station in the Netherlands where all planes were lost to ground fire or the LW. Make the same type of attack with any twin engined bomber and they would probably suffer the same losses, something else that was nothing to do with the plane itself but the way it was used.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Jul 28, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Initial operations just add to the legend, one of the first operations was an unescorted low level attack on a power station in the Netherlands where all planes were lost to ground fire or the LW. Make the same type of attack with any twin engined bomber and they would probably suffer the same losses.


Sure, plenty of examples about that: Operation Oyster, low level attack on Aalborg airfield by Blenheims, the Augsburg Raid and some more.

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## Peter Gunn (Jul 28, 2021)

pbehn said:


> There were 395 fatalities in USA in the P-39, the real shocker is the A-36, training for dive bombing is a dangerous activity.
> 
> 
> United States World War II Aircraft Loss Statistics during Flight Training


Are we looking at the same A-36 numbers? I see two (2) fatalities in 1942, twenty (20) in 1943 and two (2) again in 1944 for a total of 24.

Or...

A). I'm reading the chart wrong
B). You're be facetious


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## pbehn (Jul 28, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Are we looking at the same A-36 numbers? I see two (2) fatalities in 1942, twenty (20) in 1943 and two (2) again in 1944 for a total of 24.
> 
> Or...
> 
> ...


There were only about 500 made, look at the accident rate. and compare to the P-51(and others). per 100,000hrs flying 274 for the A-36 and 105 for the P-51.

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## Peter Gunn (Jul 28, 2021)

pbehn said:


> There were only about 500 made, look at the accident rate. and compare to the P-51(and others). per 100,000hrs flying 274 for the A-36 and 105 for the P-51.


AH HA!!! I see what you mean now, thanks for clarifying. 

So in the end, the answer was "A", I was reading the chart wrong.


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## SaparotRob (Jul 28, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> AH HA!!! I see what you mean now, thanks for clarifying.
> 
> So in the end, the answer was "A", I was reading the chart wrong.


I'm guessing that since you read the chart wrong OR don't know how to read a chart, you must be an experienced pilot. 
Source: this thread.

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## SaparotRob (Jul 28, 2021)

Wait, which thread is this?


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## GrauGeist (Jul 28, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Wait, which thread is this?


Nice shootin', Tex.
The thread you want is next door...

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## pbehn (Jul 28, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> AH HA!!! I see what you mean now, thanks for clarifying.
> 
> So in the end, the answer was "A", I was reading the chart wrong.


Its that thing with statistics, lies and damned lies. It is a valid point to say that the actual numbers were low. You cannot extrapolate to what the numbers would have been if they made 10,000 A-36 aircraft. Some accidents were due to incorrect use of dive brakes (deploying after the dive started). So it would be fair to assume the rate would drop as frequency increased. Similarly, primary, basic and advanced trainers look "safe" but a pilot has to fly all three so in part the accident rate is cumulative. What cant be argued is the total, 13,621 fatalities in training is a huge number of deaths and 12,506 aircraft lost is around the production numbers of many popular individual types of WW2 aircraft.

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## Schweik (Jul 28, 2021)

From Shores, the A-36s had a pretty high loss rate in combat (to all causes). But they were doing very dangerous work: tactical bombing over German held territory at low altitude. Most fighter bombers (including P-40, P-47) lost 5-10% when doing similar raids.

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## pbehn (Aug 1, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> Once you have a factory (or two) tooled up and cranking out several hundred planes a month it is hard to turn off the system. Often things like landing gear and air frame forgings are ordered months in advance.
> It can take months or nearly a year from first production to the 500th example.
> Switching production from a not so great plane to the latest and greatest can mean hundreds of planes not built in a given year.


This was the story of both the Spitfire and the Typhoon.
Before war was declared all Spitfires were MkIs despite all the many differences they had during and after construction. With the opening of the Castle Bromwich factory it could be put into "mass production" with the MkII. But the new fatory started producing as the BoB was reaching its height and only numbers mattered. The next generation of Spitfire should have been the Mk III but this was shelved in favour of more Mk Vs which were almost as good and used the many already manufactured fuselages. Then there should have been the Mk VII and VIII but these were made in small numbers because the MK IX was almost as good and could be made in bigger numbers because the fuselages were already there. It wasnt until the last months of the war that Supermarine could start to produce what they wanted instead of what was needed.

With the Typhoon after the tip and run scare was over some Typhoons were produced and put in storage then uprated in preparation for D-Day. There were many things that could have been done to make a better Typhoon but what was wanted was more of the same basic Typhoon.

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## glennasher (Aug 1, 2021)

Holy Bejeebers, I'm gone for a month or so, and this thing ballooned up like a Zeppelin being chased by a beltfull of DeWilde ammo. I had my old computer die on me, and I took my time getting a new one. Looks like I've got a lot of catching up to do.

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## Greg Boeser (Aug 2, 2021)

pbehn said:


> I'm not an expert on it but the stats are for USA training. I think the problem with the B-26 was the landing speed. Experienced pilots werent used to the high landing speed and accidents happened just because they came in too slow. So accidents were more likely abroad with operational units making a transition. There never was a problem with the plane itself, and its landing speed was the new normal in aviation anyway.


Only one operational unit transitioned to B-26s during the war. That was the 73rd Bomb Squadron in Alaska that traded in their old B-18s in early 1942. All others 22nd BG, 38th BG, 42nd BG trained on them prior to the war or were stood up as B-26 units from the get go. Exception being the 17th BG that was converted from B-25s to become one of the two B-26 training units in 1942, before handing that job off and going to North Africa later that year. 1942 was the worst year for B-26 accidents as thousands of newly graduated pilots were thrust into an unforgiving high performance twin with zero prior twin engine experience. The early short wing birds, B-26 and B-26A and early B-26Bs that formed the core of training units had the early R-2800-5 engines that were only rated to 1850 BHP at takeoff. They also had a lot of issues with prop failures and weak landing gear. In Alaska, based on the accident reports that I have seen (Tip to aviationarcheology.com for making these available at a reasonable price) most accidents were weather related, with landing accidents being the next biggest offender. Of the landing accidents, material failure was a major cause - burst tires, hydraulic failure or failure of landing gear to properly extend or lock. A couple crashes were due to too much speed, not enough runway. Only a couple were due to running out of altitude before reaching the runway.

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## Ascent (Aug 2, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> Only one operational unit transitioned to B-26s during the war. That was the 73rd Bomb Squadron in Alaska that traded in their old B-18s in early 1942. All others 22nd BG, 38th BG, 42nd BG trained on them prior to the war or were stood up as B-26 units from the get go. Exception being the 17th BG that was converted from B-25s to become one of the two B-26 training units in 1942, before handing that job off and going to North Africa later that year. 1942 was the worst year for B-26 accidents as thousands of newly graduated pilots were thrust into an unforgiving high performance twin with zero prior twin engine experience. The early short wing birds, B-26 and B-26A and early B-26Bs that formed the core of training units had the early R-2800-5 engines that were only rated to 1850 BHP at takeoff. They also had a lot of issues with prop failures and weak landing gear. In Alaska, based on the accident reports that I have seen (Tip to aviationarcheology.com for making these available at a reasonable price) most accidents were weather related, with landing accidents being the next biggest offender. Of the landing accidents, material failure was a major cause - burst tires, hydraulic failure or failure of landing gear to properly extend or lock. A couple crashes were due to too much speed, not enough runway. Only a couple were due to running out of altitude before reaching the runway.


When 14 Squadron RAF converted to B26's in 1942 from Blenheim's the only accident was one of the American instructors and that wasn't his fault.



Winged Crusaders extract



Attached is an article from the 14 Sqn association about their conversion to the type.

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## Snowygrouch (Aug 6, 2021)

That's my statistical contribution to this thread. I have all the surviving German Air Ministry (RLM) records digitised to text searchable pdf. I've simply run a few keyword searches and the chart above is the result.

The disclaimers are:
This does not cover the entire war
Some pages are too rough for the OCR to work
The dates covered are not balanced (ie there is very little during the battle of Britain, but a virtually complete record from late 42 to late 44. So that would obviously slightly bias the chart towards aircraft which were most active in the last three years of the war.

Obviously it is only pertinent to aircraft in engagement with Germany. There are others I could search for, but this was my first serious attempt.

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## DarrenW (Oct 21, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> 252 Kokutai launched 23 Zeros to intercept the raid, claiming 14, but losing 16 pilots, a further six Zeros escorting seven G4M to reinforce the atoll were bounced by F6Fs. losing three, but the bombers turned back and escaped.
> 
> Source: _Japanese Naval Fighter Aces, _Hata, Izawa, Shores



_F6F Hellcat vs A6M Zero-Sen_ (Young) mirrors similar statistics. It further adds that 48 Hellcats from VF-5, VF-9, VF-16, and VF-25 claimed 30 "Zekes" in the early morning attack on October 5th.

The book also mentions encounters between the A6M and F6Fs on both the 6th and 14th of September 1943, with Ensign James A. Warren of VF-33 becoming the first Hellcat pilot to claim a Zero-Sen in aerial combat on September 6th.

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## Deleted member 79357 (Oct 31, 2021)

The most over rated aircraft has to be the B-17.

Only place it was really used was in England, every other theatre it was surpassed by the B-24.

The B-17 was designed as a 4-engine medium bomber (they used 4-engines to get the speed required for the AAC competition). 

If WWII was started one year earlier, the B-17C/D was the front line variation and would have been dropped faster then the TBD-1.

If WWII was started 1-year later, the B-17 would have been out of production (as obsolete) and Douglas and Vega would have been already building B-24's and Boeing gearing-up for the B-29.

The only place the B-17 is the hero is in the movies because England during WWII was the vacation spot for war correspondents and Bassingbourne was the country club of WWII airfields.

The next most over rated design has to be the Bf 109 - again, a cheap design, poor armament, poor handling, pretty much obsolete in 1943

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## GrauGeist (Oct 31, 2021)

wow...

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> The most over rated aircraft has to be the B-17.
> 
> Only place it was really used was in England, every other theatre it was surpassed by the B-24.


It was used in the Pacific and in the MTO, 15 AF, do your homework


Tervuren said:


> The B-17 was designed as a 4-engine medium bomber (they used 4-engines to get the speed required for the AAC competition).


Not true


Tervuren said:


> If WWII was started one year earlier, the B-17C/D was the front line variation and would have been dropped faster then the TBD-1.


If the Queen had balls she'd be the King!


Tervuren said:


> If WWII was started 1-year later, the B-17 would have been out of production (as obsolete) and Douglas and Vega would have been already building B-24's and Boeing gearing-up for the B-29.


Again, If the Queen had balls she'd be the King!


Tervuren said:


> The only place the B-17 is the hero is in the movies because England during WWII was the vacation spot for war correspondents and Bassingbourne was the country club of WWII airfields.


Can I have a hit of what ever you're smoking?


Tervuren said:


> The next most over rated design has to be the Bf 109 - again, a cheap design, poor armament, poor handling, pretty much obsolete in 1943


Delirium has now set in!

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## GrauGeist (Oct 31, 2021)

Good thing the Bf109 was so poorly built and armed, the Allies would have had a rough go, otherwise...

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## drgondog (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> The most over rated aircraft has to be the B-17.
> 
> Only place it was really used was in England, every other theatre it was surpassed by the B-24.
> 
> ...


Are you a professional - or amateur - Troll? If professional, please register for limited access via Joe or Chris? If amateur, bless your heart.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

I was going to choose either the Lancaster or Me-262 because I'm bored. This is better.

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## GrauGeist (Oct 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I was going to choose either the Lancaster or Me-262 because I'm bored. This is better.


My favorite bit, is this:


Tervuren said:


> Only place it was really used was in England,



Just imagine if the B-17 had ventured to other places, like perhaps France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and so on.

Would have been interesting to see how things turned out...

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

It would have been interesting, though, if B-17s had been at the Philippines or the New Guinea campaign or even flying reconnaissance from some island in the Pacific. Say mid way between some place and another.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> Only place it was really used was in England, every other theatre it was surpassed by the B-24.



Italy.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 31, 2021)

It should be noted that most aircrew preferred the -17 to the -24. I suppose their considered opinion doesn't much matter, though. I mean, they only flew and fought the damned things.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

DarrenW said:


> _F6F Hellcat vs A6M Zero-Sen_ (Young) mirrors similar statistics. It further adds that 48 Hellcats from VF-5, VF-9, VF-16, and VF-25 claimed 30 "Zekes" in the early morning attack on October 5th.
> 
> The book also mentions encounters between the A6M and F6Fs on both the 6th and 14th of September 1943, with Ensign James A. Warren of VF-33 becoming the first Hellcat pilot to claim a Zero-Sen in aerial combat on September 6th.


I hit reply in error. Good post though!


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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> The most over rated aircraft has to be the B-17.
> 
> Only place it was really used was in England, every other theatre it was surpassed by the B-24.
> 
> ...


Thank you Tervuren. I now know what to use as my avatar. If I can only get it right.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

Any thoughts on the Buffalo?

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## BiffF15 (Oct 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Any thoughts on the Buffalo?



Please, nobody ask him about the P-39!😉

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 31, 2021)

BiffF15 said:


> Please, nobody ask him about the P-39!😉



Oh, what harm could come from that?

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## Ovod (Oct 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Any thoughts on the Buffalo?



The Brewster Buffalo - an overrated aircraft? I wouldn't have thought so, but maybe in Finland?

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## GrauGeist (Oct 31, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Oh, what harm could come from that?


Surely it's discussion would only warrant a thread of five or six pages at best?

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## Schweik (Oct 31, 2021)

DarrenW said:


> _F6F Hellcat vs A6M Zero-Sen_ (Young) mirrors similar statistics. It further adds that 48 Hellcats from VF-5, VF-9, VF-16, and VF-25 claimed 30 "Zekes" in the early morning attack on October 5th.
> 
> The book also mentions encounters between the A6M and F6Fs on both the 6th and 14th of September 1943, with Ensign James A. Warren of VF-33 becoming the first Hellcat pilot to claim a Zero-Sen in aerial combat on September 6th.



Hi, can you expand on this a little bit? It looks like Hellcats were deployed in the South Pacific since April or May 1943, and in significant numbers since August. Are you sure the first Hellcat claim against an A6M was in September?


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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Schweik said:


> Hi, can you expand on this a little bit? It looks like Hellcats were deployed in the South Pacific since April or May 1943, and in significant numbers since August. Are you sure the first Hellcat claim against an A6M was in September?


From wiki - "The Hellcat first saw action against the Japanese on 1 September 1943, when fighters off USS _Independence_ shot down a Kawanishi H8K "Emily" flying boat."

First Zero Claim;

"Warren was credited with the first official Hellcat aerial victory in the South Pacific, shooting down an enemy fighter on September 6, 1943 near the Shortland Islands."









Pacific Wrecks - F6F-3 Hellcat Bureau Number 25801


On December 23, 1943 took off from Torokina Airfield piloted by Ensign James A. Warren on a mission to escort B-24s over Rabaul and was shot down and taken prisoner.




pacificwrecks.com

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> The most over rated aircraft has to be the B-17.
> 
> Only place it was really used was in England, every other theatre it was surpassed by the B-24.
> 
> ...



Funniest post of the century!

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## Schweik (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> From wiki - "The Hellcat first saw action against the Japanese on 1 September 1943, when fighters off USS _Independence_ shot down a Kawanishi H8K "Emily" flying boat."
> 
> First Zero Claim;
> 
> ...


Yeah, interesting... the magnificent database on the other thread indicates F6F were in the Pacific Theater as early as April and in some numbers already by June. But looking closely, it seems that the carriers with F6F squadrons seemed to be sticking around Pearl Harbor until August. I guess they were working up on the new type.

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## DarrenW (Oct 31, 2021)

Schweik said:


> Hi, can you expand on this a little bit? It looks like Hellcats were deployed in the South Pacific since April or May 1943, and in significant numbers since August. Are you sure the first Hellcat claim against an A6M was in September?


Although there were fighter units fully equipped with the F6F as early as May 1943, the carriers they were assigned to were not deployed to the South Pacific until late August/early September. And as Flyboy stated the first aerial claim by Hellcat pilots occurred on September 1st of that year. The first A6M to be claimed by a Hellcat pilot was over the Solomon Islands by VF-33, which was a land based unit at Munda. VF-38 and VF-40 were also stationed there.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 31, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Are you a professional - or amateur - Troll? If professional, please register for limited access via Joe or Chris? If amateur, bless your heart.



I’m going with troll, because no one with a clue would actually say think any of this.

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## DarrenW (Oct 31, 2021)

Schweik said:


> Yeah, interesting... the magnificent database on the other thread indicates F6F were in the Pacific Theater as early as April and in some numbers already by June. But looking closely, it seems that the carriers with F6F squadrons seemed to be sticking around Pearl Harbor until August. I guess they were working up on the new type.


Looks like you figured it out on your own! Also it can be a bit tricky to look at locations in the database because often when a ship left on deployment it still may show it at Hawaii or somewhere else as it might take a month or two for the reports to catch up and show "At sea", "SoPac","Fwd Pacific" ect.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 31, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Surely it's discussion would only warrant a thread of five or six pages at best?



Like the plane, that thread should have short legs.

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## pbehn (Oct 31, 2021)

The Gloster Gamecock was the most overrated fighter in my war starting in 1927. But the Finns made good use of it.
Pic from wiki. Gloster Gamecock - Wikipedia

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> The most over rated aircraft has to be the B-17.
> 
> Only place it was really used was in England, every other theatre it was surpassed by the B-24.
> 
> ...


I gave you a winner for having the funniest post of the century.

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## Schweik (Oct 31, 2021)

pbehn said:


> The Gloster Gamecock was the most overrated fighter in my war starting in 1927. But the Finns made good use of it.
> Pic from wiki. Gloster Gamecock - Wikipedia
> View attachment 646623



With the proper tactics, I feel that the gamecock could easily defeat both the B-17 and Bf 109 in a single mission. It had a good power to mass ratio and excellent wing loading.

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## pbehn (Oct 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I gave you a winner for having the funniest post of century.


Apparently being cheap is a negative and being a top class fighter for six years is poor.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

My source is Der Eagle. FACT.


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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Schweik said:


> With the proper tactics, I feel that the gamecock could easily defeat both the B-17 and Bf 109 in a single mission. It had a good power to mass ratio and excellent wing loading.


Hmmmm, maybe after kissing the Blarney Stone! But then again a Po-2 was credited with the destruction of an F-94.

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## Schweik (Oct 31, 2021)

True facts about the Gloster Gamecock can be found on the Dark Web. Apparently they were flown in a unique formation called *Väinämöinen's spears*, which was superior to all American or German tactics, and was used by Gamecock pilots to exploit the weak spot in heavy bombers and cheap, poorly armed fighters alike. 







The technique used against this harpy here was essentially the method used by Gamecock pilots against B-17s in the little known "Fall War" between US and Finnish pilots. Which I read about on the Dark Web.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Schweik said:


> True facts about the Gloster Gamecock can be found on the Dark Web. Apparently they were flown in a unique formation called *Väinämöinen's spears*, which was superior to all American or German tactics, and was used by Gamecock pilots to exploit the weak spot in heavy bombers and cheap, poorly armed fighters alike.
> 
> View attachment 646628
> 
> ...


This is a joke, right?

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## Schweik (Oct 31, 2021)

Ya think?

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## Schweik (Oct 31, 2021)

Sorry I couldn't help myself...

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## Schweik (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> This is a joke, right?



I hope that's not how most of my posts read to you hahahah

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Schweik said:


> Ya think?


After a few earlier posts by another individual I was starting to wonder. I mean, it is Halloween not April's Fools Day!

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## Schweik (Oct 31, 2021)

And yet this time of year all the spirits of mischief are loose just the same!

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## GrauGeist (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Hmmmm, maybe after kissing the Blarney Stone! But then again a Po-2 was credited with the destruction of an F-94.


Trying to shoot down "Bed Check Charlie" with modern (for the day) combat jets was like trying to shoot a fly with a .45

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## Deleted member 79357 (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> It was used in the Pacific and in the MTO, 15 AF, do your homework
> 
> Not true
> 
> ...


1) It was in limited use in the Pacific until the end of 1942 then used as armed transports

2) yes, I should have said Europe not the England (slip of the keyboard).

3) B-17 systems was very much obsolete before WWII - do your homework on the B-17 structure. The systems, flight controls, defenses were all top of the line in 1938 and well surpassed by 1942.

4) B-17 was definitely a medium bomber - just because you put balls on the queen does not change the original AAC specifications followed by Boeing when designing the B-17 

5) the 15th AF had serious talks with the 8th AF to swap out the 5th BW's for B-24 groups that were inbound to the 8th.

6) I noticed you did not disagree that RAF Bassingbourne was called the Country Club by the press !

That's the difference between being a B-17 historian vs being a *B-17 fanboy*, when you read several thousand combat reports, S-3 reports, accident reports, unit reports, engineering reports you learn how to find the truth vs somebody that only watches 12-o'clock high reruns.

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## Deleted member 79357 (Oct 31, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> My favorite bit, is this:
> 
> 
> Just imagine if the B-17 had ventured to other places, like perhaps France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and so on.
> ...


Try reading slowly and enunciating the words - the B-17 really (again note the word really) was only used by the 8th AF in England.

1) There was 35 x B-17 units in England
2) There was 6 x B-17 units in Italy.

Majority of the B-17 units (really used) was over England

Don't be a Karen


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## Deleted member 79357 (Oct 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I was going to choose either the Lancaster or Me-262 because I'm bored. This is better.



Read the 15th AF combat reports -- a lot of mentions of Me 262's running away from combat and refusing to fight


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## Deleted member 79357 (Oct 31, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Are you a professional - or amateur - Troll? If professional, please register for limited access via Joe or Chris? If amateur, bless your heart.



I have 4 B-17 books published, a 5th book on the way and a 15th AF war diary

What have you done


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## pbehn (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> I have 4 B-17 books published, a 5th book on the way and a 15th AF war diary
> 
> What have you done


What are those books?

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## Shortround6 (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> B-17 systems was very much obsolete before WWII - do your homework on the B-17 structure. The systems, flight controls, *defenses *were all top of the line in 1938 and well surpassed by 1942.


OK I will bite, what "defenses" was anybody lese using in 1942 that were better than the B-17 was using? 
Because the B-17E & F sure weren't using what the YB-17s were using for defense. 

From Joe Baugher's web site. 

"Outwardly, the B-17B differed from the Y1B-17 only in having a revised rudder with larger area, larger wing flaps, and a revised nose that eliminated the greenhouse gun turret in the upper nose and the belly bomb-aiming window in the lower nose. "
" More-powerful R-1820-51 engines were fitted which delivered a maximum power of 1200 hp for takeoff and 900 hp at 25,000 feet. The most significant change was the addition of turbo-superchargers. Internally, many systems were changed and crew members were relocated. The brakes were changed from pneumatic to hydraulic."

and the kicker.

"The first B-17B (38-211) flew for the first time at Seattle on *June 27, 1939*."
The _single_ YB-17/B-17A was flown in useable form in Nov of 1938. 

So no B-17 used in any combat theater was using 1938 engines, or turbos, or the 1938 defensive set up or very many of the same systems as the "1938" B-17.

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## pbehn (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> Try reading slowly and enunciating the words - the B-17 really (again note the word really) was only used by the 8th AF in England.
> 
> 1) There was 35 x B-17 units in England
> 2) There was 6 x B-17 units in Italy.
> ...


Some were used in Scotlands Shetland Isles, a place called Pearl Harbour, Ive seen the movie.

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## Ovod (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> Try reading slowly and enunciating the words - the B-17 really (again note the word really) was only used by the 8th AF in England.
> 
> 1) There was 35 x B-17 units in England
> 2) There was 6 x B-17 units in Italy.
> ...


The Il-2 was only used on the Eastern Front, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero was only used in the Pacific Theatre - so what? They were still some of the most important combat aircraft of WW2?

The B-17 was used in many parts of Europe: flown from Great Britain, Italy and even from the Soviet Union. The B-17 was also widely used by the USAAF in the Pacific against the Japanese.

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## drgondog (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> I have 4 B-17 books published, a 5th book on the way and a 15th AF war diary
> 
> What have you done


I have published two FG histories plus latest. "P-51B: North American's Bastard Stepchild that Saved 8th AF". And your point? Check the Amazon ratings on it, and Our Might Always - History of the 355th FG in WWII. Tell me where I may find yours?

BTW - insulting GrauGeist with the Karen remark is way over your knowledge base paygrade. Forget about me for the moment, the guys you are debating have forgotten far more than you will ever know - unless you are a.) Roger Freemen is back from the dead and b.) suffering from juvenile Dementia.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> 1) It was in limited use in the Pacific until the end of 1942 then used as armed transports


And you state that after a google search?


Tervuren said:


> 2) yes, I should have said Europe not the England (slip of the keyboard).


Good on you


Tervuren said:


> 3) B-17 systems was very much obsolete before WWII - do your homework on the B-17 structure. The systems, flight controls, defenses were all top of the line in 1938 and well surpassed by 1942.


There you are totally full of it - the B-17 structurally and system wise was compatible if not superior to anything operated during the era - corrugated wing structure covered with aluminum skin, the same constriction used on the P-38 and many other WW2 combat aircraft.


Tervuren said:


> 4) B-17 was definitely a medium bomber - just because you put balls on the queen does not change the original AAC specifications followed by Boeing when designing the B-17


It wasn't a medium bomber - it competed against a medium bomber on the initial contract competition (B-18). Compare the bombload of the B-17 to other medium bombers of the period (B-18. B-23. B-25)



Tervuren said:


> 5) the 15th AF had serious talks with the 8th AF to swap out the 5th BW's for B-24 groups that were inbound to the 8th.


Show us your reference for that!


Tervuren said:


> 6) I noticed you did not disagree that RAF Bassingbourne was called the Country Club by the press !


Because it was too stupid to comment on!


Tervuren said:


> *That's the difference between being a B-17 historian vs being a B-17 fanboy*, when you read several thousand combat reports, S-3 reports, accident reports, unit reports, engineering reports you learn how to find the truth vs somebody that only watches 12-o'clock high reruns.


And I guess you're neither!

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> *I have 4 B-17 books published, a 5th book on the way and a 15th AF war diary*
> 
> What have you done


Are they in comic book form or a coloring book?

I suggest you curtail your attitude your your lifespan on this forum will be short!

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

A B-17 Fanboy? Moi?

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## GrauGeist (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> Try reading slowly and enunciating the words - the B-17 really (again note the word really) was only used by the 8th AF in England.
> 
> 1) There was 35 x B-17 units in England
> 2) There was 6 x B-17 units in Italy.
> ...


Well, look at you go...and calling me a Karen.
First rule of internet: "calling names is a clear indication that one's argument lacks substance:.

Second rule of internet: "be sure that the person you're calling names lives far enough away that they won't find you and kick your ass..."

Now, in regards to the B-17, it was used in the ETO, MTO, PTO and North Atlantic.

The Fleet Air Arm used their Fortress in ASW duties, accounting for 11 U-Boats sunk.

I could go on, but I fear that without pictures and using too many words, I'd lose you along the way...

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## pbehn (Oct 31, 2021)

Famous picture of B-17s in England or Italy








b 17 pearl harbor - Bing


Find high-quality images, photos, and animated GIFS with Bing Images




www.bing.com

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

I have very fond memories of watching a new TV show called "12 O'Clock High" with my Dad when I was a child.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I have very fond memories of watching a new TV show called "12 O'Clock High" with my Dad when I was a child.


It was a great show - I learned everything I need to know about the B-17 from that show!  

This was my favorite episode - I swear the model for the nose art was Ann Margret!

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## Schweik (Oct 31, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Famous picture of B-17s in England or Italy
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That was shot down over Helsinki by *Väinämöinen Lemminkäinen *flying a Gloster Gamecock during the battle of Ei Tapahtunut. He had just previously shot down a Spitfire a Bf 109 and two P-51s prior to attacking this ungainly, helpless bird, thus tying his record of five for a single sortie set the previous night while shooting down B-17s while on a long range mission over Seattle. This record was smashed of course during his VE day attack of the flyover in New York, where she shot down 40 B-17s.

I'm sorry I'll go away now.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Schweik said:


> That was shot down over Helsinki by *Väinämöinen Lemminkäinen *flying a Gloster Gamecock during the battle of Ei Tapahtunut. He had just previously shot down a Spitfire a Bf 109 and two P-51s prior to attacking this ungainly, helpless bird, thus tying his record for a single sortie.
> 
> I'm sorry I'll go away now.


I wish I can give you bacon as well

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## drgondog (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> Try reading slowly and enunciating the words - the B-17 really (again note the word really) was only used by the 8th AF in England.
> 
> 1) There was 35 x B-17 units in England
> 2) There was 6 x B-17 units in Italy.
> ...


You may be a flaming asshat, but I'll have to ponder more on the probability.

Couple of points. If you believe what you just stated and pose that you have written several books on the B-17, my first question is a.) how old are you?, b.) were your 'books' actually published and intended for adult consumption?, c.) were coloring books included?


Tervuren said:


> 1) It was in limited use in the Pacific until the end of 1942 then used as armed transports


The reason that B-17 BG assignment to all theatres was the extremely high priority to ETO/MTO for USSTAF and the task of destroying the LW and German industy base.


Tervuren said:


> 2) yes, I should have said Europe not the England (slip of the keyboard).


Brainfart from eating too many crayons.


Tervuren said:


> 3) B-17 systems was very much obsolete before WWII - do your homework on the B-17 structure. The systems, flight controls, defenses were all top of the line in 1938 and well surpassed by 1942.


Ah an airframe structures Expert. We can chat. As to defenses, 1938 armament was clearly Inferior to the task to be faced in ETO and major strides were made to improve - with power turrets and computing gunsights. Quick test - name other heavy bombers that match up? B-29, yes. But B-24 slightly inferior.


Tervuren said:


> 4) B-17 was definitely a medium bomber - just because you put balls on the queen does not change the original AAC specifications followed by Boeing when designing the B-17


Ohh, dirty talk and glib remarks. I sense a keyboard warrior in sunglasses and 50 mission hat with a stub of a cigar as you fight for control of a hostile 'ether'.

Name a medium bomber with range, defensive armament and bomb load comprable to 5,000 pounds at 600 mile combat radius.


Tervuren said:


> 5) the 15th AF had serious talks with the 8th AF to swap out the 5th BW's for B-24 groups that were inbound to the 8th.


So, what. The fighter threat in MTO was less severe for the lower ceiling capable B-24, so slightly less bomb load/but greater range was appealing to Eaker and Twining. 


Tervuren said:


> 6) I noticed you did not disagree that RAF Bassingbourne was called the Country Club by the press !
> 
> That's the difference between being a B-17 historian vs being a *B-17 fanboy*, when you read several thousand combat reports, S-3 reports, accident reports, unit reports, engineering reports you learn how to find the truth vs somebody that only watches 12-o'clock high reruns.


So, what? And BTW someday when you learn to spell Bassingbourn (no 'e') you may graduate to student - level one. Is that above or below 'B-17 Fanboy'.

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## Greg Boeser (Oct 31, 2021)

So, the Army's own findings are irrelevent. From a study by the AAF Operations and requirements Division, Spring 1944


> ... it would be desirable to increase B-17 production and decrease that of the B-24, because the former airplane is a much more effective combat weapon.

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## Greg Boeser (Oct 31, 2021)

It is true, that with the introduction of the B-29, General Doolittle envisioned reclassifying B-17s and B-24s as mediums, and discontinuing the B-25 and B-26.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> 3) B-17 systems was very much obsolete before WWII - do your homework on the B-17 structure. The systems, flight controls, defenses were all top of the line in 1938 and well surpassed by 1942.


I have 42 years of aviation experience (maintenance, flight ops and quality assurance) and am well aware of how the B-17 is constructed. Structure, flight controls and some systems were pretty generic for aircraft of that era. By this and other dribble you have stated on this forum, I'm wondering what kind of aircraft experience you have besides generic books and possibly a commercial flight or two????

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> It is true, that with the introduction of the B-29, General Doolittle envisioned reclassifying B-17s and B-24s as mediums, and discontinuing the B-25 and B-26.


100% true! It took the B-29 to OFFICIALLY make that happen

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## GrauGeist (Oct 31, 2021)

We should also take into consideration that when one creates a webpage (like in war Thunder, for example), it's referred to as "publishing" once it's set to the server.

As far as a medium bombers go, the B-17 was the undisputed champ, with a max. loadout of 17,600 pounds (using internal and external racks) and of course, a reduced range.

Meanwhile, the B-24 (which we must assume is still a "heavy" according to some authorities) carried a staggering 8,000 pounds at max. load at short distances.

But if course, we shouldn't let numbers get in the way of a good story. Right?

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> Don't be a Karen



And likewise, don't be a douche. If you disagree, great. Disagree agreeably and everyone can get along. Be a douche, well, when you buy the boat you get the leaks.

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## pbehn (Oct 31, 2021)

drgondog said:


> So, what? And BTW someday when you learn to spell Bassingbourn (no 'e') you may graduate to student - level one. Is that above or below 'B-17 Fanboy'.


That's the funny thing about names, especially in UK , you either know or you dont and its right or its wrong, there are no rules in place at all.

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## drgondog (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> I have 4 B-17 books published, a 5th book on the way and a 15th AF war diary
> 
> What have you done


Puleeze dont leave us hanging in breathless anticpation. Enumerate the titles and publishers that you are showcasing to present expertise. Don't hold back - we will bask in your glory.

Did you infer, or use suggestive language.

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## Deleted member 79357 (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> I have 5 B-17 books published -- what have you done ?





pbehn said:


> What are those books?



Definitely not comic books -- something with big words that Fanboy would not be able to comprehend


Book 1

Book 2

B-17 Book 3

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## Deleted member 79357 (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> And you state that after a google search?
> 
> Good on you
> 
> ...



Oh fanboy should be renamed karen

The only person calling others insulting names (or stupid) is this little fanboy

so when you lose an argument or somebody does not like what you claim (even when proven wrong 30 years ago) you threaten to goto your mommy as the big bad B-17 researcher has hurt your petty little feelings.

Waaaaaaaaaaa !

Suck-it up

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> Oh fanboy should be renamed karen
> 
> The only person calling others insulting names (or stupid) is this little fanboy
> 
> ...


You're done, your stupidity has been entertaining, enjoy cyberspace!

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## nuuumannn (Oct 31, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Good thing the Bf109 was so poorly built and armed, the Allies would have had a rough go, otherwise...



And they didn't build many either, hardly any...



SaparotRob said:


> It would have been interesting, though, if B-17s had been at the Philippines or the New Guinea campaign or even flying reconnaissance from some island in the Pacific. Say mid way between some place and another.



Fake news, never happened (I like the new avatar image, the pre-big tail Forts looked cool...)



Tervuren said:


> Definitely not comic books -- something with big words that Fanboy would not be able to comprehend



So, the best way you could think of for promoting your books on this forum is to come here and be a dick? Your customer service skills are out of the gate!

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## nuuumannn (Oct 31, 2021)

Damn, I never found out how he thought promoting his books in this fashion was working out for him. I bet his editors loved dealing with him...

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> Damn, I never found out how he thought promoting his books in this fashion was working out for him. I bet his editors loved dealing with him...


He calls me a B-17 fanboy but yet his books are all about B-17s!

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## pbehn (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> He calls me a B-17 fanboy but yet his books are all about B-17s!


All production figures, with two or three rating reviews and not available or with a price. I know nothing about the murky world of publishing but that seems like some sort of creation.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

pbehn said:


> All production figures, with two or three rating reviews and not available or with a price. I know nothing about the murky world of publishing but that seems like some sort of creation.


Perhaps self published.

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## nuuumannn (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Perhaps self published.



With the charm and sophistication he displayed, no one else will work with him

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## pbehn (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Perhaps self published.


It names a publisher *First Mountain Belgians *, the book weighs 6 pounds and has 1800 illustrations on premium paper. Quite an investment, if it had a price and actually did exist.


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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

pbehn said:


> It names a publisher *First Mountain Belgians *, the book weighs 6 pounds and has 1800 illustrations on premium paper. Quite an investment, if it had a price and actually did exist.


Good point! A legend in his own mind!


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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

This was from a review on Amazon







And I'm a "Fanboy"!!!

His books actually look interesting, too bad his demeanor was about as pleasant as a diarrhea filled toilet bowl

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## GrauGeist (Oct 31, 2021)

Sadly, In this day and age, anyone can "publish" a book with content grabbed from the internet.

I have published books, on landscape photography mostly, in very limited numbers for gifts and such.
But I would NEVER jump into a forum and start insulting members while exclaiming that I have published anything.

And Joe, you got a bacon only because there isn't a "bacon and beer" award!

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## pbehn (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> This was from a review on Amazon
> 
> View attachment 646641
> 
> ...


Turvuren is in Flanders, Belgium, any reference to mountains in Belgium and Netherlands is a joke, it is as flat as a horses kiss.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Sadly, In this day and age, anyone can "publish" a book with content grabbed from the internet.
> 
> I have published books, on landscape photography mostly, in very limited numbers for gifts and such.
> But I would NEVER jump into a forum and start insulting members while exclaiming that I have published anything.
> ...


LOL! Thanks my friend!

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## glennasher (Oct 31, 2021)

Wow, just Wow.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 31, 2021)

Well, that didn't last long.

Something Mom used to say about flies, honey, and vinegar comes to mind.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

What does "production" mean?


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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

Sad thing is I thought he was referring to me as Fan Boy. I'll have to settle for Moterator.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 31, 2021)

Well that did not end well.

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## XBe02Drvr (Oct 31, 2021)

Jees, look away for a day and you miss all the fun!
I notice his infatuation with the silver lady seems to start with the "G", and seems to pretty much discount all that went before. He's clearly never flown in or even seen the inside of one up close and personal. His comments on the "obsolessence" of its structure are quite revealing. The "more modern" B24 with its lighter structure turned out to be noticeably less damage tolerant, a factor that seems to have escaped him. He sounds like a disciple of Robert McNamara, all numbers and no context.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> His comments on the "obsolessence" of its structure are quite revealing. The "more modern" B24 with its lighter structure turned out to be noticeably less damage tolerant, a factor that seems to have escaped him. He sounds like a disciple of Robert McNamara, all numbers and no context.







B-17




B-24

Boy that B-24 was lightyears ahead in construction technology!

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## GrauGeist (Oct 31, 2021)

I'm still laughing at this bullshit Joe shared:






I didn't realize that the "new group of historians" were clowns, but this is the 21st century, so no surprise there.

The guy is claimed to love the B-17, but blows in here tearing it apart with ridiculous claims.

So this leaves me to wonder if that was a lame attempt to promote his publications or did he not actually read what he "researched"?

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> It was a great show - I learned everything I need to know about the B-17 from that show!
> 
> This was my favorite episode - I swear the model for the nose art was Ann Margret!



Just finished watching it. Great episode. I think you're on to something about the nose art.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Just finished watching it. Great episode. I think you're on to something about the nose art.


I'm thinking of building a B-17 model "Angel Babe"

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

So was I. I'll wait till I have some space.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 31, 2021)

Nah. The Picadilly Lilly.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 31, 2021)



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## at6 (Nov 1, 2021)

He's going to be with Pops Pao0lo soon. The B-17 was a "beast". It tmay not have carried a load like that of the Lancaster or the B-24, but it flew at high altitudes and could take more punishment than either of it's counterparts. Just ask the Japanese pilots when they ran out of ammunition trying to shoot one down. Still one of my favorites from the Great War.

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## at6 (Nov 1, 2021)

When it comes to Tervuren, he was banned faster than a hooker changes condoms. He asked for it. Well done Moderators.

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## drgondog (Nov 1, 2021)

I did searches on Alibris.com - no joy for used editions which is very unusual.


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## special ed (Nov 1, 2021)

My suspicions, for what they are worth, is there are no publications, never were, just photoshop.

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## Greg Boeser (Nov 1, 2021)

He did seem to be a bit historically challenged. B-17s retired from operations in the Pacific in October 1942? So the 19th BG is sent home, but the 43rd is just warming up. Its another whole year before they fully convert to B-24s. 11th BG didn't convert to B-24s until mid-43

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## Greg Boeser (Nov 1, 2021)

I just checked amazon. One of his books is available. Maybe someone can buy one and give us a review?


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## Clayton Magnet (Nov 1, 2021)

at6 said:


> He's going to be with_* Pops Pao0lo*_ soon. The B-17 was a "beast". It tmay not have carried a load like that of the Lancaster or the B-24, but it flew at high altitudes and could take more punishment than either of it's counterparts. Just ask the Japanese pilots when they ran out of ammunition trying to shoot one down. Still one of my favorites from the Great War.


Was Pops Pao0lo the guy that called everyone "brah" and assumed the MC.205 was a war-winner because of War Thunder?

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 1, 2021)

Clayton Magnet said:


> Was Pops Pao0lo the guy that called everyone "brah" and assumed the MC.205 was a war-winner because of War Thunder?


Yep - and Italians were destined to rule the world.

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## soulezoo (Nov 1, 2021)

Just when the popcorn finished popping, he's done. Sigh.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Nov 1, 2021)

Clayton Magnet said:


> Was Pops Pao0lo the guy that called everyone "brah" and assumed the MC.205 was a war-winner because of War Thunder?



And the kid still tries every day to login to the forum despite being banned. He is persistent. Imagine if he was this persistent in actually learning something.

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## fubar57 (Nov 1, 2021)

Damn...I gotta get out more

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## GrauGeist (Nov 1, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> I just checked amazon. One of his books is available. Maybe someone can buy one and give us a review?


Check out the reviews of his books at Amazon, mostly the same persons and the same review language.

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## SaparotRob (Nov 1, 2021)

I'm just bored enough to try it.

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## pbehn (Nov 1, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I'm just bored enough to try it.


I was so bored I weighed the heaviest book we have, a huge hard backed cookery book which weighs 4 Lbs. His paperback tome weighs 6Lbs.

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## fubar57 (Nov 1, 2021)

What's left of my liver weighs 3.4lbs

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 1, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I'm just bored enough to try it.


You can donate some of the pages to some members who have pet birds/ parrots so they have something to put at the bottom of the cage!

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## pbehn (Nov 1, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> You can donate some of the pages to some members who have pet birds/ parrots so they have something to put at the bottom of the cage!


Those books have 1,600 illustrations, it says.

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## glennasher (Nov 1, 2021)

I am happily ignorant and know it, that's how I avoid this kind of stuff. It's pretty rare that I show my backside on a forum like this. I know what I don't know, and avoid commenting when it doesn't make sense. I KNOW I don't know much, that's what makes this place wonderful to me, I learn an awful lot by keeping my fingers still, and reading what those who DO know have to say. 
OTOH, I grew up on a farm and know the smell of BS pretty well, I can at least recognize fecal aromas and avoid stepping in the middle of it.

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## Greg Boeser (Nov 1, 2021)

William Wolf's _B-26 Marauder - The Ultimate Look, _636 pages, hardbound, one of the bigger books on my shelf, weighs 7.5 lbs. So it's doable.

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## Just Schmidt (Nov 1, 2021)

Tervuren said:


> Definitely not comic books -- something with big words that Fanboy would not be able to comprehend
> 
> 
> Book 1
> ...


Does anybody else think his name sounds suspiciously familiar?

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## soulezoo (Nov 1, 2021)

Hmm.... Velly Interesting....

If I had the talent, I'd post an old Rowan and Martin's Laugh In meme.

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## Dana Bell (Nov 1, 2021)

Far too often there is a disconnect between whatsome one writes and how that person plays on the internet. Here, the writer acted foolishly and earned his banishment. But his B-17 books appear to be quality productions, even if they _are _self-published. Nick and Paul are highly respected researchers and writers - I'd be shocked if they fully endorsed Gansz's books unless they meant it. Too bad Gansz found it necessary to deprive us all of any of his more worthy contributions.

Cheers,



Dana

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## SaparotRob (Nov 1, 2021)

It was just starting to get fun.

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## fubar57 (Nov 1, 2021)

Just went to Amazon and read the first review..."I watched the research for this book evolve on the Aerovintage.com web message board as author David Gansz contributed some fantastic information to the conversation there........" I goes over to the above web-site and type David M. Gansz into the search box....no hit

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## SaparotRob (Nov 1, 2021)

When it comes to uncovering information aeronautical, you guys can’t be snowed. 
I‘ll bet 10 quatloos The Forum ’figgers out what plane that wreckage is from on the “found in Russia” thread. 
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.

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## pbehn (Nov 1, 2021)

Dana Bell said:


> Far too often there is a disconnect between whatsome one writes and how that person plays on the internet. Here, the writer acted foolishly and earned his banishment. But his B-17 books appear to be quality productions, even if they _are _self-published. Nick and Paul are highly respected researchers and writers - I'd be shocked if they fully endorsed Gansz's books unless they meant it. Too bad Gansz found it necessary to deprive us all of any of his more worthy contributions.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> ...


I was just thinking about this, is there any proof that this guy is the author of the books, anyone who has read just the wiki page on the B-17 site would know what he posted was wrong.

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## drgondog (Nov 1, 2021)

special ed said:


> My suspicions, for what they are worth, is there are no publications, never were, just photoshop.


I could not find the Pubisher or the Book in Alibris ;

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## drgondog (Nov 1, 2021)

Dana Bell said:


> Far too often there is a disconnect between whatsome one writes and how that person plays on the internet. Here, the writer acted foolishly and earned his banishment. But his B-17 books appear to be quality productions, even if they _are _self-published. Nick and Paul are highly respected researchers and writers - I'd be shocked if they fully endorsed Gansz's books unless they meant it. Too bad Gansz found it necessary to deprive us all of any of his more worthy contributions.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> ...


Dana - I agree your point about Nick and Paul but there are interesting outcomes when one searches on David M. Ganz as author on Amazon, there is only one reference to "David Ganz" as a Gaelic translator.



Amazon.com : David M. Ganz



The other 'nagger' is the question re: Boeing copyrights. I can testify to Lengthy and $$ discussions with Boeing (with a friend in Boeing Archives) to get permission AND pay for license for 100 images that were in our collection dating to and originating from North American. Army PRO pics overseas would not be a problem - but factory images would be a huge issue if unpaid for.

Last - no David M. Ganz on Facebook - just wondering?

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## Milosh (Nov 1, 2021)

Wiki has a large list of books by *David M. Glantz.*


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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 1, 2021)

Something is really fishy here - Reading his bio, some of his work and where he's been, most of his stuff centers around the Soviet military

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## pbehn (Nov 1, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Something is really fishy here - Reading his bio, some of his work and where he's been, most of his stuff centers around the Soviet military


Glantz (author of soviet history books) or Gansz (the author of books on B-17).

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## nuuumannn (Nov 1, 2021)

Dana Bell said:


> Far too often there is a disconnect between whatsome one writes and how that person plays on the internet. Here, the writer acted foolishly and earned his banishment. But his B-17 books appear to be quality productions, even if they _are _self-published. Nick and Paul are highly respected researchers and writers - I'd be shocked if they fully endorsed Gansz's books unless they meant it. Too bad Gansz found it necessary to deprive us all of any of his more worthy contributions.


This is exactly what I thought as well, Dana. His behaviour is a terrible PR exercise for him and his research, however credible. If he is to be taken seriously he needs to sharpen his image up. He can't spit in the faces of his audience and not expect backlash.

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 1, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Glantz (author of soviet history books) or Gansz (the author of books on B-17).


Ahhh, yes

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## pbehn (Nov 1, 2021)

I have taken a gander at the gaggle of posts and I think Mr Gansz's goose is cooked, he has fallen fowl of the moderators, I canard'ly think what happens next, hopefully not a cygnet of things to come, we dont want anyone getting a cob on. I will swan off now any more goose, duck, bird references are welcome.

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## Shortround6 (Nov 1, 2021)

fubar57 said:


> Just went to Amazon and read the first review..."I watched the research for this book evolve on the Aerovintage.com web message board as author David Gansz contributed some fantastic information to the conversation there........" I goes over to the above web-site and type David M. Gansz into the search box....no hit


The "reviews" of the 3 books on Amazon are all by the same 'customer/reviewer' and are almost word for word. the page numbers, photos and weight of the books do change and perhaps a few other things but there was a lot of cut and paste between the reviews.

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 1, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> The "reviews" of the 3 books on Amazon are all by the same 'customer/reviewer' and are almost word for word. the page numbers, photos and weight of the books do change and perhaps a few other things but there was a lot of cut and paste between the reviews.


Based on his forum name and his publisher (First Mountain Belgians) it sounds like this tool self published (paid for the production of his book) and got a buddy to leave a review.

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## Greg Boeser (Nov 1, 2021)

Definitely self-published. That's clear from the amazon entry.

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## nuuumannn (Nov 1, 2021)

pbehn said:


> any more goose, duck, bird references are welcome.



Always worthy of a topical reference...

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## SaparotRob (Nov 1, 2021)

nuuumannn said:


> Always worthy of a topical reference...



Always.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 2, 2021)

fubar57 said:


> What's left of my liver weighs 3.4lbs



If you move it around a little maybe you can walk without wobbling ...

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 2, 2021)

pbehn said:


> I have taken a gander at the gaggle of posts and I think Mr Gansz's goose is cooked, he has fallen fowl of the moderators, I canard'ly think what happens next, hopefully not a cygnet of things to come, we dont want anyone getting a cob on. I will swan off now any more goose, duck, bird references are welcome.



This post is hard to swallow. The eagle-eyed will notice puns slanted into some words ... but don't worry, I won't be crowing over finding these niggles. It's a cardinal tenet of mine to be gracious where at all possible.

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## Zipper730 (Nov 2, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> If the Queen had balls she'd be the King!


My dad used to be a huge fan of that quote...

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 4, 2021)

pbehn said:


> any more goose, duck, bird references are welcome.


Regarding Herr Gansz, poope de poule comes to mind.

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## SaparotRob (Nov 4, 2021)

I’m still laughing over “Big Bad B-17G Researcher”.

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## Snautzer01 (Nov 4, 2021)

Or some dodo is using his name to dis credit this author. Happened before.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 4, 2021)

It's a shame no one [eta: myself included] thought to start a B-17 thread while he was still around to see if the Thread That Shall Not Be Named could be rivalled in page-count.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 4, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> It's a shame no one thought to start a B-17 thread while he was still around to see if the Thread That Shall Not Be Named could be rivalled in page-count.


Groundhogs of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your scarcity!

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## SaparotRob (Nov 4, 2021)

I was thinking that myself. Let’s bring him back!

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 4, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I was thinking that myself. Let’s bring him back!

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## SaparotRob (Nov 4, 2021)

That was quick!

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## buffnut453 (Nov 4, 2021)

MAKE....THE....BAD.....MAN....STOP!!!!!!

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## GrauGeist (Nov 4, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I was thinking that myself. Let’s bring him back!

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 4, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Groundhogs of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your scarcity!



What if the B-17E had the tail-fillet installed to cure CoG instead of yaw? I think I have a conspiracy-theory here!

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## Peter Gunn (Nov 5, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> What if the B-17E had the tail-fillet installed to cure CoG instead of yaw? I think I have a conspiracy-theory here!








You may leave now...

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## nuuumannn (Nov 8, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> You may leave now...



That's a rather caddish coat...

"You take care of the bill darling, while I go out and warm up the Jyyaaaaag..."

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## at6 (Nov 8, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> View attachment 647140
> 
> 
> You may leave now...


What Thrift store did you get that from?

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## Greg Boeser (Nov 8, 2021)

Got it cheap off the post-Halloween discount rack.

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## P-39 Expert (Nov 9, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I was thinking that myself. Let’s bring him back!


B-17 was a good, useful plane. As was the B-24.

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## swampyankee (Nov 9, 2021)

Of course, "useful" and "overrated" are somewhat related: all overrated aircraft were "useful"; the whether an aircraft is overrated or not depends on how it's treated by people talking and writing about it. _Every_ belligerent had combat aircraft that could be considered overrated.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 11, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> Got it cheap off the post-Halloween discount rack.



He may have been prowling through my old stage attire!

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## Howard Gibson (Nov 11, 2021)

renrich said:


> Early in the war the P39 was supposed to be hot stuff and it certainly looked the part. Operationally it was a real dud.


The P-39 was fast at low altitudes. The Russians liked that. Below 10000ft, it could outrun, outclimb and out dive the Mitsubishi Zero. By the time the tactics needed to defeat the Zero were understood, the P-39s were being replaced mostly by P-38s.

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## Howard Gibson (Nov 11, 2021)

I am trying to wrap my mind around the concept of over-rated. If something is not working in the shooting war you have gotten into, you replace it as fast as you can, or you just don't put the thing in service. I am amazed that Hawker Hurricanes were manufactured into 1944, and that they were in combat in Burma at the end of the war. The RAF got part way through replacing them with Thunderbolts. 

How about the Martin Baker MB-5? It is written about in very positive terms, and it may well have been a good piston engined fighter had it gotten into service. 460mph sounds fast, but is it not that much faster than a Spitfire XIV or Spitfire 22. The MB-5 had the Griffon 85 with the six bladed propeller. The Spitfires, the ones we have speeds quoted for anyway, had Griffon 65s (approx) with five bladed props. Look closely at the YouTube videos and note the lack of pilot armour. What other vitally important combat equipment was missing, and what would it have weighed?


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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 11, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> The P-39 was fast at low altitudes. The Russians liked that. Below 10000ft, it could outrun, outclimb and out dive the Mitsubishi Zero. By the time the tactics needed to defeat the Zero were understood, the P-39s were being replaced mostly by P-38s.


Just so you know that post was from 2007 and the poster is deceased.


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## GrauGeist (Nov 11, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> How about the Martin Baker MB-5? It is written about in very positive terms, and it may well have been a good piston engined fighter had it gotten into service. 460mph sounds fast, but is it not that much faster than a Spitfire XIV or Spitfire 22. The MB-5 had the Griffon 85 with the six bladed propeller. The Spitfires, the ones we have speeds quoted for anyway, had Griffon 65s (approx) with five bladed props. Look closely at the YouTube videos and note the lack of pilot armour. What other vitally important combat equipment was missing, and what would it have weighed?


The MB.5 had several things in it's favor: It's clean lines, contra-rotating prop, Meridith-effect cooling and so on.
What wasn't in it's favor, was it's debut in 1944 which coincides with the Gloster Meteor's entering service, which was over 100 miles an hour faster.

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## pbehn (Nov 11, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> I am trying to wrap my mind around the concept of over-rated. If something is not working in the shooting war you have gotten into, you replace it as fast as you can, or you just don't put the thing in service. I am amazed that Hawker Hurricanes were manufactured into 1944, and that they were in combat in Burma at the end of the war. The RAF got part way through replacing them with Thunderbolts.


The Hurricane was almost obsolete when it first went into service, but it was very easy to make and use, it is up to the opposition to bat it out of the game, it was better than nothing and when the enemy has nothing then all is good.

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## Shortround6 (Nov 11, 2021)

pbehn said:


> The Hurricane was almost obsolete when it first went into service, but it was very easy to make and use, it is up to the opposition to bat it out of the game, it was better than nothing and when the enemy has nothing then all is good.


I would disagree to some extent. Almost obsolete depends on the opposition and that did change quite a bit in just a few years. 
In 1938 there wasn't much around that was any better, most were not as good. The Hurricane didn't fall behind in the ETO until the 109F showed up. 
In the Med the Italians couldn't match it until they got DB 601 engines in the summer of 1941. 
Japanese would have had a very hard time matching it 1940. Claudes and Nates vs Hurricane Is? 

For 2 1/2 years the Hurricane was one of the front runners. 
How much of the Hurricanes problems were due to poor tactics in the Med and Far East is also subject to question. 
British stuck with the 3 plane Vic formation for far too long.

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 11, 2021)

IMO the Hurricane was one of the most *underrated* aircraft of WW2.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 11, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> The P-39 was fast at low altitudes. The Russians liked that. Below 10000ft, it could outrun, outclimb and out dive the Mitsubishi Zero.


Hoo boy, here we go again. The primary P39 model that fought the Zero early days (P39D) COULDN'T outclimb it, and though ultimately faster in an extended chase, couldn't match its instantaneous acceleration, which is a serious disadvantage in combat. Early days combat in New Guinea had P39s defending against bombing raids way above their optimum performance altitudes. Later P39s with more horsepower and less weight would have performed better against Zeke, but by then the P38 had taken over and the Airacobras were going to Russia. It's real shortcoming in the PTO was its limited range.

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## Snautzer01 (Nov 12, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Hoo boy, here we go again. The primary P39 model that fought the Zero early days (P39D) COULDN'T outclimb it, and though ultimately faster in an extended chase, couldn't match its instantaneous acceleration, which is a serious disadvantage in combat. Early days combat in New Guinea had P39s defending against bombing raids way above their optimum performance altitudes. Later P39s with more horsepower and less weight would have performed better against Zeke, but by then the P38 had taken over and the Airacobras were going to Russia. It's real shortcoming in the PTO was its limited range.


You forget the groundhog effect on cog wich in an other thread was explained.

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## SaparotRob (Nov 12, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Hoo boy, here we go again. The primary P39 model that fought the Zero early days (P39D) COULDN'T outclimb it, and though ultimately faster in an extended chase, couldn't match its instantaneous acceleration, which is a serious disadvantage in combat. Early days combat in New Guinea had P39s defending against bombing raids way above their optimum performance altitudes. Later P39s with more horsepower and less weight would have performed better against Zeke, but by then the P38 had taken over and the Airacobras were going to Russia. It's real shortcoming in the PTO was its limited range.


I thought the P-39 had no short comings.

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## SaparotRob (Nov 12, 2021)

Oh no. It’s happening again.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Nov 12, 2021)

The P-39 is like an STD. A gift that keeps on giving.

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 12, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> The P-39 is like an STD. A gift that keeps on giving.


I'd give a bacon on that too if I could!

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## Greg Boeser (Nov 12, 2021)

It's funny. Guys like Eric Hammel really went out of their way to malign the P-39 by only including pilot memoirs in which they talk about suffering turn stalls in the middle of combat. Or that oft repeated slander that P-39 pilots were ordered to scramble and fly out to sea to avoid danger when Port Moresby was attacked. The reason there is only one reported American P-39 ace is that the performance was so good that the actual combat results remain classified to this day, to protect the reputations of such dogs as the P-38, P47, and P-51. If the actual numbers were ever revealed there would be a huge outcry about the millions of $$$ squadered on these also rans.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 12, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> I thought the P-39 had no short comings.



Given its range -- or lack thereof -- the -39 had both shortgoings and shortcomings.

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## pbehn (Nov 12, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> I would disagree to some extent. Almost obsolete depends on the opposition and that did change quite a bit in just a few years.
> In 1938 there wasn't much around that was any better, most were not as good. The Hurricane didn't fall behind in the ETO until the 109F showed up.
> In the Med the Italians couldn't match it until they got DB 601 engines in the summer of 1941.
> Japanese would have had a very hard time matching it 1940. Claudes and Nates vs Hurricane Is?
> ...


Isnt that what I posted? The Hurricane was always behind the Spitfire in performance, and increasingly behind the Bf109. Putting better engines in the Hurricane to keep it competitive jut shows the gap between to two.


FLYBOYJ said:


> IMO the Hurricane was one of the most *underrated* aircraft of WW2.


I agree, I have posted similar myself, but that is more because of ease of production and use than performance. The fact that Park had one as a run about during the BoB shows how the Hurricane took production out of the equation, there was never a shortage of Hurricanes just pilots to fly them.

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## SaparotRob (Nov 12, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> It's funny. Guys like Eric Hammel really went out of their way to malign the P-39 by only including pilot memoirs in which they talk about suffering turn stalls in the middle of combat. Or that oft repeated slander that P-39 pilots were ordered to scramble and fly out to sea to avoid danger when Port Moresby was attacked. The reason there is only one reported American P-39 ace is that the performance was so good that the actual combat results remain classified to this day, to protect the reputations of such dogs as the P-38, P47, and P-51. If the actual numbers were ever revealed there would be a huge outcry about the millions of $$$ squadered on these also rans.


And now I know.

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## SaparotRob (Nov 12, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Given its range -- or lack thereof -- the -39 had both shortgoings and shortcomings.


Man I wish I thought of that first! Brilliant.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 12, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Man I wish I thought of that first! Brilliant.



Say what you will about me, I'm a cunning linguist.

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## Snautzer01 (Nov 12, 2021)

Best description ever. As good as: cockpit access difficult should be made impossible.

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## WARSPITER (Nov 13, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> It's funny. Guys like Eric Hammel really went out of their way to malign the P-39 by only including pilot memoirs in which they talk about suffering turn stalls in the middle of combat. Or that oft repeated slander that P-39 pilots were ordered to scramble and fly out to sea to avoid danger when Port Moresby was attacked. The reason there is only one reported American P-39 ace is that the performance was so good that the actual combat results remain classified to this day, to protect the reputations of such dogs as the P-38, P47, and P-51. If the actual numbers were ever revealed there would be a huge outcry about the millions of $$$ squadered on these also rans.



This just shows that all they had to do was put a jet engine in the P39 (with upgrades over time) and the F22 / F35 would not be controversial as they never would have 
been produced.

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## GrauGeist (Nov 13, 2021)

Maybe now is not a good time to bring up the P-59?

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## SaparotRob (Nov 13, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Maybe now is not a good time to bring up the P-59?


Yes it is. I was just of thinking of the Planes of Fame Museum's P-59.

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## Howard Gibson (Nov 13, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Hoo boy, here we go again. The primary P39 model that fought the Zero early days (P39D) COULDN'T outclimb it, and though ultimately faster in an extended chase, couldn't match its instantaneous acceleration, which is a serious disadvantage in combat. Early days combat in New Guinea had P39s defending against bombing raids way above their optimum performance altitudes. Later P39s with more horsepower and less weight would have performed better against Zeke, but by then the P38 had taken over and the Airacobras were going to Russia. It's real shortcoming in the PTO was its limited range.








I have been looking into this. This graph shows aircraft available for combat in the Pacific in 1943. The graphs are by me scanning WWII Aircraft Performance graphs with my Mark_I eyeball, and placing them on my chart again using my Mark_I eyeball. The A6M2 curves were done by the US Navy, and people have pointed out that they were being very, very gentle with their one and only flying Zero. The A6M3 Hamp would have been in service by this time. Both P-38s and F4Us were souped up later in the war. The A6M5 Zeros did around 350mph, a remarkable accomplishment for something with a 28_litre radial engine. 

The P-39D had an advantage in speed and climb below 10,000ft. Flying a P-39 against Zeros over a battlefield, you keep your speed high, your altitude fairly low, and you hit and run. According to David Brown in his book on Seafires, an LIIC could dogfight a Zero by outclimbing it, doing its turns at 250mph, and attacking in a series of yoyos. The LIIC also was complete crap at altitude. 

Everybody else was told to not dogfight Zeros. The process of learning how to fight Zeros, and the process of replacing P-39s with P-38s, all happened at about the same time.


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## Greg Boeser (Nov 13, 2021)

The problem faced by P-39 drivers early in the war was a lack of adequate early warning, which left the P-39s at a height disadvantage vs high flying Zeros. Climbing into a fight is never good and to be avoided if possible. This is why sometimes, if the Japanese were detected too late, the P-39s had to fly out to sea to avoid getting bounced. The P-39's high wing loading meant getting drawn into a turning fight with a Zero was a losing proposition. Not enough acceleration to maintain a high G turn would lead to stalling and tumbling out of the fight.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Nov 13, 2021)

I thought we had a groundhog thread?

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## pbehn (Nov 13, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I thought we had a groundhog thread?


I sense this thread slipping down to the dark side.

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## SaparotRob (Nov 13, 2021)

A chill just went down my spine.

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 13, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I thought we had a groundhog thread?


Hoping it will be averted!

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## at6 (Nov 13, 2021)

Just where did you think the XP-59 came from?


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## GrauGeist (Nov 13, 2021)

at6 said:


> Just where did you think the XP-59 came from?


From the XP-52 project...

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 13, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Hoping it will be averted!



Or, like the plane itself, run out of gas soon.

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## wuzak (Nov 13, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> View attachment 648167



The F6F-3 curve looks wrong.

The F6F-3 had basically the same engine as the F4U-1, so the curve should have the same shape, just to the left (lower speed) and slightly lower altitude for the change points.

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## WARSPITER (Nov 13, 2021)

Excuse my ignorance but what is the climb rate of a groundhog - assuming it has somehow left the ground ?

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## pbehn (Nov 13, 2021)

WARSPITER said:


> Excuse my ignorance but what is the climb rate of a groundhog - assuming it has somehow left the ground ?


With or without IFF and nose armour?

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## WARSPITER (Nov 13, 2021)

pbehn said:


> With or without IFF and nose armour?


All that and a good feed first to maintain the centre of gravity

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## WARSPITER (Nov 13, 2021)

Oh ,the feed must be high fibre to ensure there is no boost blockage from the exhaust

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## WARSPITER (Nov 13, 2021)

Just for the technically minded - fibre exhaust boost is similar but more effective than the Meredith effect - it's formal
term is the Metamucil Mach +.25, or MM25 as opposed to MW50 for other gas boost.

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## WARSPITER (Nov 13, 2021)

Also, there is the specialist dual purpose nose armour. If they don't fire they will still die laughing.

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## GrauGeist (Nov 13, 2021)

WARSPITER said:


> Excuse my ignorance but what is the climb rate of a groundhog - assuming it has somehow left the ground ?


The "D" variant of the Bell product had a RoC of 3,750 ft. per minute.

This is with all of it's gear (as manufactured) on board.

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## SaparotRob (Nov 13, 2021)

With or without heater?

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## at6 (Nov 13, 2021)

WARSPITER said:


> This just shows that all they had to do was put a jet engine in the P39 (with upgrades over time) and the F22 / F35 would not be controversial as they never would have
> been produced.





WARSPITER said:


> Excuse my ignorance but what is the climb rate of a groundhog - assuming it has somehow left the ground ?


It only takes one each Cherry Bomb to put it into the air.

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## GrauGeist (Nov 13, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> With or without heater?


Probably no heater, because if you recall, those pesky Brits messed that whole deal up!

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 14, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> Flying a P-39 against Zeros over a battlefield, you keep your speed high, your altitude fairly low, and you hit and run.


That's all well and good if you can get Saburo and Hirioshi to consent to abandon their bombers, come down from on high, and play your game on your turf. Good luck! Otherwise, you've got to labor your way up to 20,000 feet where the Betties are and your Allison engine is a little short of breath and your smallish symmetrical airfoil wing can't deliver as much G for maneuvering.
Do you have any experience flying low altitude planes at higher altitudes? A normally aspirated (non turbo) Cessna, Piper, or Beechcraft which is a tiger down low wallows like a stuck pig when you get up in the twenties with your nosebags on. But the boss wants to make nonstop max range flights and doesn't mind subjecting us all to oxygen masks for hours on end.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 14, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> The graphs are by me scanning WWII Aircraft Performance graphs with my Mark_I eyeball, and placing them on my chart again using my Mark_I eyeball. The A6M2 curves were done by the US Navy, and people have pointed out that they were being very, very gentle with their one and only flying Zero.


Given your statement above, that chart is not a very accurate predictor of actual combat performance of P39D vs A6M2 over New Guinea, given the circumstances under which most combats occurred.


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## Stig1207 (Nov 14, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> The problem faced by P-39 drivers early in the war was a lack of adequate early warning, which left the P-39s at a height disadvantage vs high flying Zeros. Climbing into a fight is never good and to be avoided if possible. This is why sometimes, if the Japanese were detected too late, the P-39s had to fly out to sea to avoid getting bounced. The P-39's high wing loading meant getting drawn into a turning fight with a Zero was a losing proposition. Not enough acceleration to maintain a high G turn would lead to stalling and tumbling out of the fight.



Over New Guinea it was the other way round, the Coastwatchers gave better early warning for the P-39's than the Zero's had. Not always, but generally the P-39's had the advantage of early warning and height.


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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 14, 2021)

Stig1207 said:


> Over New Guinea it was the other way round, the Coastwatchers gave better early warning for the P-39's than the Zero's had. Not always, but generally the P-39's had the advantage of early warning and height.


That's fine if the Japanese took the coastal route, the long way around. If they chose to come straight over the Owen Stanleys they would have distance, altitude, and surprise on their side. No brainer.
The Japanese tended to prefer high altitude and the direct route to Port Moresby, while US medium bombers leaned towards high speed treetop "surprise" raids, often with circuitous approaches to avoid detection.

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## Howard Gibson (Nov 14, 2021)

wuzak said:


> The F6F-3 curve looks wrong.
> 
> The F6F-3 had basically the same engine as the F4U-1, so the curve should have the same shape, just to the left (lower speed) and slightly lower altitude for the change points.


I am working with WWII Aircraft Performance. These are two separate reports. It likely was two different pilots, twiddling switches and levers differently. I don't know how accurate airspeed indicators and altimeters are. It looks like the people testing the Hellcat were not interested in performance above critical altitude. I read somewhere that the supercharger gears on the Packard Merlin Mustangs could be changed to suit tactical requirements. Maybe the gear ratios were different between R-2800s. 

I imagine somebody is sitting in a cockpit with a wristwatch and a clipboard, reading gauges and taking notes all while flying the aircraft. The jiggles in the Corsair's curve are not due to supercharger gear changes.

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## Greg Boeser (Nov 14, 2021)

From my reading, I get the impression that the Japanese were very proficient in the early days, but there was a lingering overconfidence from fighting against very poor opposition in China and the disorganized defense of Malaya and the East Indies. By April 1942, the initial shock had worn off and the US and Australian air forces were beginning to get their feet under them. Even though the early units facing the Japanese had much less experience, they were nevertheless very aggressive in taking the fight to the Japanese. The fact that allied aircraft were armored meant that the allied pilots could make mistakes and live to fight another day. The Japanese were losing exceptional pilots that their training establishment could not replace. The Tainan Kokutai gives a good example of the hubris of the Japanese in that they removed their radios (which didn't work that well anyway,) and voted to not wear parachutes.

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## wuzak (Nov 14, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> I am working with WWII Aircraft Performance. These are two separate reports. It likely was two different pilots, twiddling switches and levers differently. I don't know how accurate airspeed indicators and altimeters are. It looks like the people testing the Hellcat were not interested in performance above critical altitude. I read somewhere that the supercharger gears on the Packard Merlin Mustangs could be changed to suit tactical requirements. Maybe the gear ratios were different between R-2800s.
> 
> I imagine somebody is sitting in a cockpit with a wristwatch and a clipboard, reading gauges and taking notes all while flying the aircraft. The jiggles in the Corsair's curve are not due to supercharger gear changes.



The F4U-1 and F6F-3 used essentially the same engine. The main difference was the direction of the carburetor.

In the F4U-1 curve you can see it reaches its critical altitude with auxiliary supercharger in NEUTRAL at about 5,000ft. Performance starts to drop off, then picks up again when the auxiliary supercharger is in LOW gear.

Performance continues to rise until just before 20,000ft, where it reaches critical altitude in LOW gear. Performance again starts to drop off until it is changed to HIGH gear.

Performance increase in HIGH gear until the critical altitude is reached at around 23-24,000ft. After which performance falls off.

This is similar to this F4U-1 speed graph


http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f4u/17930-level.jpg



And an F6F-3 graph


http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f6f/42633-level.jpg



Some of the speed graphs on wwiiperformance.com seem to show the F6F operated in one gear (HIGH) only.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 14, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> I am working with WWII Aircraft Performance. These are two separate reports. It likely was two different pilots, twiddling switches and levers differently. I don't know how accurate airspeed indicators and altimeters are.





Howard Gibson said:


> I imagine somebody is sitting in a cockpit with a wristwatch and a clipboard, reading gauges and taking notes all while flying the aircraft.


Flight test results obtained by a random line pilot using cockpit flight instruments and a flight test card are not likely to match the same s/n airplane outfitted with recording flight test instrumentation, flown by a professional engineering test pilot, and following the flight test department's standard flight profile. The conditions of the test are as important as the numbers achieved.

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## Peter Gunn (Nov 15, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> *SNIP* But the boss wants to make nonstop max range flights and doesn't mind subjecting us all to oxygen masks for hours on end.


Good that you're not bitter about that...

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## pgf_666 (Nov 16, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Richard - the only reliability problems I am aware of were over Europe/High Altitude/Very cold conditions in Winter 1943-1944 for the P-38


O.K., back in the '70s, when I was going to Cal Poly, Pomona, I would take a bus from good ol' 'Cow Plopy' down to Holt and Gary to transfer to another one that took me to Riverside, where I was living. Sometimes I would miss the connection, and have to wait an hour or so for the next one. Many times I would go to a delicatessen about 2 or 3 blocks away, but on occasion I'd visit some of the other commercial establishments in the immediate area; one of these was a locally owned gun shop--the owner was a slightly gruff, but generally nice man. One day when I'd stopped there, I saw that he was wearing a camouflage baseball cap with an embroidered image of a P-40 Warhawk on it. I couldn't resist--I asked. Seems he was the crew chief on one of them in the Pacific. Then he said something that took me a few seconds to draw the right conclusion. He told me tht they had shared a strip with a squadron of about 48 P-38s, and while his squadron of about 40 planes could usually put up about 36 for a mission, the '38s were happy if they launched 16 or so; explained that it was the greater reliability of the 'Hawk's engines, and ease of maintenance that maid the difference. After puzzling out that one fora little bit, I realized what the situation had to have been, assuming we were still in the 'No BS Zone. "Oh, you had F's."
"And L's"

Also, the USAF used ab F-82B in its (successful) attempt to set an absolute unrefueled distance record back in the late '40s. Didn't trust the E's Allisons,,,,

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## drgondog (Nov 16, 2021)

pgf_666 said:


> O.K., back in the '70s, when I was going to Cal Poly, Pomona, I would take a bus from good ol' 'Cow Plopy' down to Holt and Gary to transfer to another one that took me to Riverside, where I was living. Sometimes I would miss the connection, and have to wait an hour or so for the next one. Many times I would go to a delicatessen about 2 or 3 blocks away, but on occasion I'd visit some of the other commercial establishments in the immediate area; one of these was a locally owned gun shop--the owner was a slightly gruff, but generally nice man. One day when I'd stopped there, I saw that he was wearing a camouflage baseball cap with an embroidered image of a P-40 Warhawk on it. I couldn't resist--I asked. Seems he was the crew chief on one of them in the Pacific. Then he said something that took me a few seconds to draw the right conclusion. He told me tht they had shared a strip with a squadron of about 48 P-38s, and while his squadron of about 40 planes could usually put up about 36 for a mission, the '38s were happy if they launched 16 or so; explained that it was the greater reliability of the 'Hawk's engines, and ease of maintenance that maid the difference. After puzzling out that one fora little bit, I realized what the situation had to have been, assuming we were still in the 'No BS Zone. "Oh, you had F's."
> "And L's"
> 
> Also, the USAF used ab F-82B in its (successful) attempt to set an absolute unrefueled distance record back in the late '40s. Didn't trust the E's Allisons,,,,


Certaily not disputing his memory but wonder about linking 'Squadron' mission numbers with his memory. Squadron composition was pretty standard with all AAF units - at 16 composed of 4 flights of four with perhaps some spares at Group force level. I don't have SWP/CBI group histories and have no relevant comment or rebuttal to his comments. Did he confirm 'F' as that makes more sense than J/L's, Additionally co-existance of P-40 Groups with P-38F/G in late1943 than late 1944 and beyond. 

Also not sure about comment of reliability between different dash number engines, but understand if he is lumping turbo and oil cooler issues due to much more complicated maintenance.

I knew Bob DeHaven who flew both in combat and had 10 and 4 respectively in P-40/P-38 w/49th G - he liked the P-40 a litte more than P-38 but had no complaints per se about the p-38. Ditto for John Landers who liked the P-38J but Mustang most.

The reliability isssues causing aborts and early RTB even in ETO had largely been ironed out by summer 1944 with full Group staffing of J-15s (not all, sme J-10s soldiered on).

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## pgf_666 (Nov 16, 2021)

wuzak said:


> Neither the Manchester or Botha have been rated at all highly, so how can they be overrated?



There is a bit of ambiguity ib the question; just _when_ are we talking about? You rad contemporary comments about these, and many others, before those pesky BFs had their say, and you'd think that the war was already won. After, eh, not so much. Of course, this _*never*_ has happened here in the good old USA, right? (What? "TFX", you say? Nevermind...."SB2C-1"? just an anomaly <BTW, my choice for the _second_ most over-rated bird of the war>)


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## pgf_666 (Nov 16, 2021)

drgondog said:


> Certaily not disputing his memory but wonder about linking 'Squadron' mission numbers with his memory. Squadron composition was pretty standard with all AAF units - at 16 composed of 4 flights of four with perhaps some spares at Group force level. I don't have SWP/CBI group histories and have no relevant comment or rebuttal to his comments. Did he confirm 'F' as that makes more sense than J/L's, Additionally co-existance of P-40 Groups with P-38F/G in late1943 than late 1944 and beyond.
> 
> Also not sure about comment of reliability between different dash number engines, but understand if he is lumping turbo and oil cooler issues due to much more complicated maintenance.
> 
> ...


Ah, apparently y comment was not quite clear--it was _P-40 F's & L's_ his unit had; he didn't specify the variant(s) of the P-38s. And I've always suspected that the units involved were Groups, but I _*never*_ pick nits with a fellow carrying _2_ .44 magnums.....

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## GrauGeist (Nov 16, 2021)

pgf_666 said:


> back in the '70s, when I was going to Cal Poly, Pomona, I would take a bus from good ol' 'Cow Plopy' down to Holt and Gary to transfer to another one that took me to Riverside,


Just an aside, there used to be a place near Holt and Garey that was a popular hangout for my folks and their friends back in the late 50's, early 60's called "Mel's" that was a drive-in Burger joint.

Haven't thought about that place in ages!

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## pgf_666 (Nov 16, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Just an aside, there used to be a place near Holt and Garey that was a popular hangout for my folks and their friends back in the late 50's, early 60's called "Mel's" that was a drive-in Burger joint.
> 
> Haven't thought about that place in ages!


Nine! Mel's was at the corner of Holt and--was it Towne or San Antonio? I ate there quite often in the '60s,'70's '80s, etc.The chocolate shakes....(sigh)

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## drgondog (Nov 16, 2021)

pgf_666 said:


> Ah, apparently y comment was not quite clear--it was _P-40 F's & L's_ his unit had; he didn't specify the variant(s) of the P-38s. And I've always suspected that the units involved were Groups, but I _*never*_ pick nits with a fellow carrying _2_ .44 magnums.....


In other words Packard Merlin 1650-1 powered. Most of those went east to North Africa, 57th FG, 325th FG - in combat from Nov 1942. The last F was delivered abouth the same time as M - Jan 1943. Betting he was 9th AF, then either 12th (if re-equipped with P-47D) or 15th if re-equipped with P-51B. That Genre of F/L almost certainly P-38F/early G.

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## Greg Boeser (Nov 16, 2021)

He said Pacific. P-40F and L were sent to Guadalcanal.


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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 16, 2021)

pgf_666 said:


> it was the greater reliability of the 'Hawk's engines, and ease of maintenance that maid the difference. After puzzling out that one fora little bit, I realized what the situation had to have been, assuming we were still in the 'No BS Zone. "Oh, you had F's."
> "And L's"
> 
> Also, the USAF used ab F-82B in its (successful) attempt to set an absolute unrefueled distance record back in the late '40s. Didn't trust the E's Allisons,,,


It's funny, my engines instructor in mech school had the opposite opinion. He was in a polyglot outfit that maintained a mixed bag of mostly photo recon planes in 8th AF. They had Spits, Lightnings, Mosquitos, Allison Mustangs and Merlin Mustangs, as well as a couple L4s and a target tug short wing Marauder. He liked the normally aspirated Allisons, detested the turbocharged Lightnings, and considered the Merlins a PITA. Parts were a nightmare, ditto documentation, but he said you got real versatile real quick. When a "reorganization" occurred, and he got sent to a depot level bomber maintenance facility, being able to concentrate on Wright 1820s was a relief.

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## drgondog (Nov 16, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> He said Pacific. P-40F and L were sent to Guadalcanal.


I did read that - I only found deployment of F and L to MTO in late 1942 through mid 1943. The 9th, 49th in SWP flew mostly P-40E before converting ti P-38FG, the 23rd flew P-40E, then K so I'm having hard time finding the F/L in Pacific - but many (5 plus French and Commonwealth) in MTO.

That said, I do know that 18th FG at Guadalcanal flew E/F/M and transitioned to P-38G.

Which FG's did you have in mind?

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## Greg Boeser (Nov 16, 2021)

18th


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## Stig1207 (Nov 17, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> That's fine if the Japanese took the coastal route, the long way around. If they chose to come straight over the Owen Stanleys they would have distance, altitude, and surprise on their side. No brainer.
> The Japanese tended to prefer high altitude and the direct route to Port Moresby, while US medium bombers leaned towards high speed treetop "surprise" raids, often with circuitous approaches to avoid detection.



From P-39/P-400 vs A6M2/3 , the quote is not exactly as I remembered it (no real surprise ) :



> ...due to the Australian spotter network whose warnings presaged most Japanese air raids proving a force-multiplier that went some way to countering the Airacobra's poor rate of climb.

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 17, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Good that you're not bitter about that...


One man's "ordeals" are another man's "adventures". The view from the office was worth it.

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## VA5124 (Nov 17, 2021)

Has to be the bf 110 it had the guns but it didn't have the speed and turning of something like a P-38 which had good guns too and the british mosquito so the 110 is my pick for overrated


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## Greg Boeser (Nov 17, 2021)

VA5124 said:


> Has to be the bf 110 it had the guns but it didn't have the speed and turning of something like a P-38 which had good guns too and the british mosquito so the 110 is my pick for overrated


the Bf 110 shot down more 4 engined bombers than the P-38 and Mossie combined.

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## VA5124 (Nov 17, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> the Bf 110 shot down more 4 engined bombers than the P-38 and Mossie combined.


The only reason for that is because the germans didnt have 4 engined bombers for us to shoot at

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## GrauGeist (Nov 17, 2021)

Luftwaffe four engined bombers:
Fw200
Ju290


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## wuzak (Nov 17, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Luftwaffe four engined bombers:
> Fw200
> Ju290



He 177?

Though that often didn't need to be shot down.

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## buffnut453 (Nov 17, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> Luftwaffe four engined bombers:
> Fw200
> Ju290



Respectively, only 276 and 65 built of those types. The RAF was sending out way more than that number of 4-engined bombers on single raids...and that doesn't consider the scale of USAAF 4-engined operations.


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## wuzak (Nov 17, 2021)

Greg Boeser said:


> the Bf 110 shot down more 4 engined bombers than the P-38 and Mossie combined.



I think that the number of kills a type has is largely due to the opportunities it is presented.

And while the Bf 110 was an effective night fighter, the Mosquito was better again and was used to hunt Luftwaffe night fighters once they were cleared to use the latest radar over the Continent.


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## GrauGeist (Nov 17, 2021)

wuzak said:


> He 177?
> 
> Though that often didn't need to be shot down.


The claim was that the Luftwaffe didn't have four engine bombers.

The He177 was classified as a heavy, but only had two engines.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Nov 17, 2021)

wuzak said:


> I think that the number of kills a type has is largely due to the opportunities it is presented.
> 
> And while the Bf 110 was an effective night fighter, the Mosquito was better again and was used to hunt Luftwaffe night fighters once they were cleared to use the latest radar over the Continent.was



But does not being as good as another aircraft make one overrated?

The Bf 110 was not a bad aircraft. It just had to be used properly. Its initial role as a destroyer it was not as effective. It was effective as a night-fighter though.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Nov 17, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> The claim was that the Luftwaffe didn't have four engine bombers.
> 
> The He177 was classified as a heavy, but only had two engines.



Technically it had 4. They were just coupled.

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## wuzak (Nov 17, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> But does not being as good as another aircraft make one overrated?



No.


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## GrauGeist (Nov 18, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Technically it had 4. They were just coupled.


But the DB610 was *supposed* to be (in theory) a V-24


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## WARSPITER (Nov 18, 2021)

If the BF 110 is looked at from the Battle of Britain stage wasn't it somewhat misused anyway ?


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## MCamp (Nov 18, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> I am working with WWII Aircraft Performance. These are two separate reports. It likely was two different pilots, twiddling switches and levers differently. I don't know how accurate airspeed indicators and altimeters are. It looks like the people testing the Hellcat were not interested in performance above critical altitude. I read somewhere that the supercharger gears on the Packard Merlin Mustangs could be changed to suit tactical requirements. Maybe the gear ratios were different between R-2800s.
> 
> I imagine somebody is sitting in a cockpit with a wristwatch and a clipboard, reading gauges and taking notes all while flying the aircraft. The jiggles in the Corsair's curve are not due to supercharger gear changes.


That’s exactly what the bumps are, supercharger change points. These dips are seen on all superchargers that have either or both a dual speed or a dual stage. To shift up you have to pull throttle back temporarily. Superchargers make max power only when unthrottled. So all the planes with multi stage or speed SC will have that. the turbocharged p-38 don’t have shift points and thus are smooth as Turbos didn’t have that issue.

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## wuzak (Nov 18, 2021)

MCamp said:


> That’s exactly what the bumps are, supercharger change points. These dips are seen on all superchargers that have either or both a dual speed or a dual stage.



A twin stage supercharger driven by a variable speed drive, such as the DB 603L or the experimental Packard V-1650-19 don't have the "dips". Those are for supercharger drives with multiple fixed gear ratios.

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## Clayton Magnet (Nov 18, 2021)

VA5124 said:


> Has to be the bf 110 it had the guns but it didn't have the speed and turning of something like a P-38 which had good guns too and the british mosquito so the 110 is my pick for overrated


The Bf110 was an excellent aircraft, and was an extremely dangerous adversary to ANY fighter in 1939/40.
Comparing it head-to-head against aircraft that entered service 4 years later is somewhat apples to oranges.

Edit: I should add that it continued to *routinely* destroy allied aircraft, from September 1939, right up until VE-Day in May 1945. Not many designs from 1935/36 can claim that

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## Howard Gibson (Nov 18, 2021)

MCamp said:


> That’s exactly what the bumps are, supercharger change points. These dips are seen on all superchargers that have either or both a dual speed or a dual stage. To shift up you have to pull throttle back temporarily. Superchargers make max power only when unthrottled. So all the planes with multi stage or speed SC will have that. the turbocharged p-38 don’t have shift points and thus are smooth as Turbos didn’t have that issue.


Did the Corsair's R-2800 have a three speed supercharger?


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## MCamp (Nov 18, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> Did the Corsair's R-2800 have a three speed supercharger?


Dual stage(two SC) and two speed, so yes three settings. F4f was the first to have that setup, F6F did as well.

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## Howard Gibson (Nov 18, 2021)

MCamp said:


> Dual stage(two SC) and two speed, so yes three settings. F4f was the first to have that setup, F6F did as well.


If two stages were a setting, two stages plus two speeds would equal four settings. Unless there was some way to flip the second stage off, you have two settings.


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## MCamp (Nov 18, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> If two stages were a setting, two stages plus two speeds would equal four settings. Unless there was some way to flip the second stage off, you have two settings.


First supercharger was used first than the second supercharger was added inline, than high speed for the second supercharger so really only three settings. Only the second superchager was dual Speed. This video explains it well starting at two minutes

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 18, 2021)

MCamp said:


> First supercharger was used first than the second supercharger was added inline, than high speed for the second supercharger so really only three settings. Only the second superchager was dual Speed. This video explains it well starting at two minutes




This was a good watch, thanks for posting it.

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## MCamp (Nov 18, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> This was a good watch, thanks for posting it.


Your welcome, the whole channel is awesome as he uses orignal sources and isn’t afraid to say when he doesn’t know something for sure. Lots of great videos

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 18, 2021)

MCamp said:


> Your welcome, the whole channel is awesome as he uses orignal sources and isn’t afraid to say when he doesn’t know something for sure. Lots of great videos


He's very good, very rarely do I find any errors in his clips. As you say, I like the fact that he isn't afraid to say when he doesn't know something.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 18, 2021)

MCamp said:


> Your welcome, the whole channel is awesome as he uses orignal sources and isn’t afraid to say when he doesn’t know something for sure. Lots of great videos



Yeah, I've watched a couple of Greg's videos and appreciate his attention to detail. I intend on diving deeper into his channel once I've finished plumbing Drachinifel's naval Youtube channel, as that's another area of fascination for me and he too is very detail-oriented.

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## MCamp (Nov 18, 2021)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Yeah, I've watched a couple of Greg's videos and appreciate his attention to detail. I intend on diving deeper into his channel once I've finished plumbing Drachinifel's naval Youtube channel, as that's another area of fascination for me and he too is very detail-oriented.


Drach puts out so much content it’s near impossible to keep up especially with the dry dock series. He’s also funny and his voice is so relaxing I sometimes use them to fall asleep to as well

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 18, 2021)

MCamp said:


> Drach puts out so much content it’s near impossible to keep up especially with the dry dock series. He’s also funny and his voice is so relaxing I sometimes use them to fall asleep to as well



I'm about 125 episodes into the Drydock as well as going through the various ship guides. He knows his schtuff.

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## Peter Gunn (Nov 19, 2021)

Yeah, been watching Drach for a couple of years, sometimes he get's a bit long winded though, but still, entertaining and insightful to the end.

The Greg (not ours) guy though, isn't he the one that posted a video claiming that the Thunderbolt could have done the Mustangs job in 1942-43 but government corruption or reasons or some such other drivel? Or am I confusing him with someone else?


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## Just Schmidt (Nov 19, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Yeah, been watching Drach for a couple of years, sometimes he get's a bit long winded though, but still, entertaining and insightful to the end.
> 
> The Greg (not ours) guy though, isn't he the one that posted a video claiming that the Thunderbolt could have done the Mustangs job in 1942-43 but government corruption or reasons or some such other drivel? Or am I confusing him with someone else?


I never was able to wrap my head around Drachinifel using robot voice initially because he thought his own was lousy.

When it comes to Not Our Greg, he is indeed the one with the conspiracy theory about the Thunderbolt, though I think it was covering up the 'fact' that the need for long range fighters were realized too late. Or something. He also have disagreed with Calum Douglass, but I suppose nobody (goes for all of us) is perfect. there's still a lot of great content in both of the guy's videos.

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## drgondog (Nov 19, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> Yeah, been watching Drach for a couple of years, sometimes he get's a bit long winded though, but still, entertaining and insightful to the end.
> 
> The Greg (not ours) guy though, isn't he the one that posted a video claiming that the Thunderbolt could have done the Mustangs job in 1942-43 but government corruption or reasons or some such other drivel? Or am I confusing him with someone else?


Same guy but I have listened to several other presentations that are pretty good, but his 'Thunderbolt' presentation had way too many errors.

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## tomo pauk (Nov 19, 2021)

Howard Gibson said:


> If two stages were a setting, two stages plus two speeds would equal four settings. Unless there was some way to flip the second stage off, you have two settings.





MCamp said:


> First supercharger was used first than the second supercharger was added inline, than high speed for the second supercharger so really only three settings. Only the second superchager was dual Speed. This video explains it well starting at two minutes




For the 2-stage superchaged versions of the R-2800 and R-1830 as used during the ww2: 
Engine-stage supercharger was always turning if the crankshaft was turning - IOW, single speed only for that stage. The auxiliary stage was de-clutched in low altitude, thus it used no engine power to turn; all supercharging was done by engine-stage S/C.
Above ~5000 ft, the aux S/C was clutched in, using the 1st set of gears (1st speed). Incoming air was 1st compressed by aux stage, than by engine-stage - ie. 2-stage supercharging. Above ~20000 ft, the aux S/C was shifted into second gear (2ns speed now), again 2 stages of supercharging.

So we have a combination of 1 stage being just with 1 speed gearing, and 2nd stage being with 2 speed gearing + neutral setting. What we can make from the 'apples + oranges' equation?

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## XBe02Drvr (Nov 19, 2021)

tomo pauk said:


> Engine-stage supercharger was always turning if the crankshaft was turning - IOW, single speed only for that stage. The auxiliary stage was de-clutched in low altitude, thus it used no engine power to turn; all supercharging was done by engine-stage S/C.





tomo pauk said:


> So we have a combination of 1 stage being just with 1 speed gearing, and 2nd stage being with 2 speed gearing + neutral setting. What we can make from the 'apples + oranges' equation?


Thanks Tomo! I was halfway through this very explanation, but you beat me to it and said it more clearly than I would have.
I never cease to marvel at how much confusion reigns about radial engine supercharging. Imprecise terminology and overly complicated explanations combine with preconceived notions to lead to faulty understanding. I never really understood it myself until we took an 1820 apart, reassembled it and ran it in mech school.

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## pgf_666 (Nov 19, 2021)

swampyankee said:


> I remember a statistic: the casualty rate for strategic bombing by the 8th AF and its British equivalent was not only higher than the ground forces engaged in combat, but greater than the Japanese kamikaze squadrons.



If I remember correctly, the 8th's pilots had to get 25 good missions under their belts....

The Special Attack groups, not so much....

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## drgondog (Nov 20, 2021)

pgf_666 said:


> If I remember correctly, the 8th's pilots had to get 25 good missions under their belts....
> 
> The Special Attack groups, not so much....


Early on, 25 was the magic gate home - later it was raised to 30 and IIRC to 35.

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## P-39 Expert (Nov 27, 2021)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Hoo boy, here we go again. The primary P39 model that fought the Zero early days (P39D) COULDN'T outclimb it, and though ultimately faster in an extended chase, couldn't match its instantaneous acceleration, which is a serious disadvantage in combat. Early days combat in New Guinea had P39s defending against bombing raids way above their optimum performance altitudes. Later P39s with more horsepower and less weight would have performed better against Zeke, but by then the P38 had taken over and the Airacobras were going to Russia. It's real shortcoming in the PTO was its limited range.


The P-39D was a 1942 airplane so it should be compared with the A6M2 which was in service at the same time. P-39D would not outclimb the A6M2 but would climb at about the same rate at combat power (3000rpm). P-39D was significantly faster at all altitudes, 368mph at 15000' vs 316mph for the A6M2 from the official IJN tests. The captured Zero would reportedly do 330-335mph in US Navy tests, still slower than the P-39D.

1942 P-39s biggest problem was performance with the ever present drop tank. The tank made climbing above about 18000' difficult as that was it's combat ceiling (1000fpm). Cruising at below 18000' meant the A6M2 would almost always be above. Later 1942 P-39L was lightened by 650lbs in an AAF test in September at Guadalcanal and would operate at 27000'. But then in a couple of months the P-38F/G would be in theater.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Nov 27, 2021)

Oh great, here we go again…

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## Thumpalumpacus (Nov 27, 2021)



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## Greg Boeser (Nov 27, 2021)

Ruffato and Clairingbould, cross referencing Japanese and Allied loss records have determined that the Tainan Kokutai, the main Japanese fighter unit in the SWPA during most of 1942, shot down 38 Airacobras, while losing only 12 Zeros to Airacobras.

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## fubar57 (Nov 27, 2021)

P-39 after front armor removed

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## SaparotRob (Nov 27, 2021)

Awwwww.

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## buffnut453 (Nov 27, 2021)

SaparotRob said:


> Awwwww.



Don't be fooled. It has a vicious streak a mile wide....and sharp, pointy teeth.

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## SaparotRob (Nov 27, 2021)

RUN AWAY!!

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## special ed (Nov 27, 2021)

In the US there was an actual groundhog attack on a homeowner in the news. I figured it must be one of those rare AP-39D attack groundhogs.

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## nuuumannn (Nov 27, 2021)

swampyankee said:


> Of course, "useful" and "overrated" are somewhat related: all overrated aircraft were "useful"; the whether an aircraft is overrated or not depends on how it's treated by people talking and writing about it. _Every_ belligerent had combat aircraft that could be considered overrated.



Agree, Swampyankee. As the saying goes, nothing is totally useless, some things can be used as a bad example.

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## pgf_666 (Dec 4, 2021)

Schweik said:


> What I meant is that the statement "Plainly and obviously 109's will shoot down more Spitfires than they lose if they are only fighting Spitfires" implies that if you have 20 Spitfires and 20 Bf 109s in a fight, the Bf 109s are going to shoot down more Spitfires than they lose. That may not be what he meant to say but that is how it reads.
> 
> Which I don't think is generally true, though it depends on the sub-variants of both.
> 
> ...



OK, just a point--What the guy is saying is that the Spit pilots have to ry and dedstroy the bombers, '109s & such are just a very nasty nusence. Thr '109s, on the other hand, need only concentrate on the RAF fighters so the only time Spits engage DLW fighters is when defending against a German attack--and historically, the guy who attacks is at a serious advantage. I've seen estimates that, at least through Korea, most fighters that were lost had pilots who didn't even realize that they were in the enemy;s Revi....

PGF

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## pgf_666 (Dec 4, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Of course it would, but the allies in 1941 were officially UK and Russia and primarily concerned with defence. Nice to think about flying to Hamburg and Paris but you will meet Bf109s





> The _best_ offence...


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## pgf_666 (Dec 4, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Biff, the point I was making is that if your airfields are being attacked by bombers escorted by fighters at 20 to 25,00 ft the first thing to do is stop it, not to make plans to bomb a city on their northern coast or a capital city just captured by your enemy who he couldn't give a damn about.



But destroy all the airfields close enough to the Chanel, now he has to send bombers without escorts--and BoB pretty much proved that the '110 was useless as such--and it's 17 September but way earlier....

Or hit Dresden, now the DLW has to pull back a lot of those fighters from Abbeville....


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## pbehn (Dec 4, 2021)

pgf_666 said:


> But destroy all the airfields close enough to the Chanel, now he has to send bombers without escorts--and BoB pretty much proved that the '110 was useless as such--and it's 17 September but way earlier....
> 
> Or hit Dresden, now the DLW has to pull back a lot of those fighters from Abbeville....


No it doesnt, Me110s were perfectly capable of mauling any unescorted bomber even heavily defended ones like the B-17. The British had given up daylight raids on Germany before the BoB started.


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## pgf_666 (Dec 4, 2021)

Schweik said:


> We were talking about a (ridiculous) hypothetical scenario of using A6Ms to escort Wellingtons ... and you are giving me grief about an offhand suggestion that they put a 20mm gun on the Wellingtons tail? Seriously bruh? So use G4MS if you can't figure it out. Or borrow some ShVak cannon from the Soviets in reverse lend-lease...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Ah....Ma Deuce?


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## pgf_666 (Dec 4, 2021)

pbehn said:


> No it doesnt, Me110s were perfectly capable of mauling any unescorted bomber even heavily defended ones like the B-17. The British had given up daylight raids on Germany before the BoB started.


But if the RAF still has Hurries, and maybe even a few Spits--for Eleven Group....


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## pgf_666 (Dec 4, 2021)

Peter Gunn said:


> That's it buddy... You are definitely OFF my Christmas Card list...
> 
> grampi however, gets two cards...
> 
> PS You forgot Best Torpedo Bomber, Best Liaison, Best Recon and best BESTEST ever plane...



The F-6 was quite good.....

And remember, Ike flew over Normandy in one on D+1....


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## pbehn (Dec 4, 2021)

pgf_666 said:


> But if the RAF still has Hurries, and maybe even a few Spits--for Eleven Group....


A Spitfire will get you to the coast of the Netherlands.


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## pgf_666 (Dec 4, 2021)

pbehn said:


> A Spitfire will get you to the coast of the Netherlands.



Ayh...That's why they want the Zekes....


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## Acheron (Dec 4, 2021)

I voted for the Me 262, the hype around it is just silly at times. Close second to me was the B-17 Flying Fortress, yes it could withstand and dish out a lot of punishment, but not enough to bomb unescorted in a sustained campaign.

Question to those who voted for the P-51, how many of you are P-47 fans? 



 johnbr


 model299


 l'Omnivore Sobriquet
out of curiosity, why did you vote for the He 111? AFAIK it's reputation is a mediocre early war bomber that got dated by mid-war but had to carry on, do you consider this middling rep already to be overly generous?


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## NTGray (Dec 4, 2021)

pgf_666 said:


> The F-6 was quite good.....
> 
> And remember, Ike flew over Normandy in one on D+1....


I had not heard that, and so far am unable to confirm it. It would have required either that Eisenhower be a capable pilot, or that there was an F6F two-seater available. Can you give more details or a URL link?


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## GrauGeist (Dec 4, 2021)

Eisenhower was flown over Normandy in a P-51 - he didn't fly it himself...









The Day General Eisenhower Stuffed Himself In The Back Of a P-51 Mustang


In the modern day military, senior leaders travel in specially equipped 737’s, Gulfstream G-Vs and Learjets. Every once in a while, they’ll travel in a specially equipped C-17 or C-130…




avgeekery.com

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## Greg Boeser (Dec 4, 2021)

That was awesome.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Dec 5, 2021)

Acheron said:


> I voted for the Me 262, the hype around it is just silly at times. Close second to me was the B-17 Flying Fortress, yes it could withstand and dish out a lot of punishment, but not enough to bomb unescorted in a sustained campaign.
> 
> Question to those who voted for the P-51, how many of you are P-47 fans?
> 
> ...



1. How can the Me 262 be overrated? It was the first fully operational jet fighter in the history of the world.

2. B-17? Your argument for it us that it sustainably perform a day light bombing campaign over Germany unescorted. Seriously? Name me any bomber that could. I’m waiting.

3. I voted for the P-51. Not because of its performance or capability. It was probably the best fighter built in mass numbers in WW2. I voted for it because so many people (mostly Americans) think it is the only reason the allies won WW2.

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## drgondog (Dec 5, 2021)

NTGray said:


> I had not heard that, and so far am unable to confirm it. It would have required either that Eisenhower be a capable pilot, or that there was an F6F two-seater available. Can you give more details or a URL link?


Dave beat me to it. General Pete Quesada CO IX FC was the taxi driver.

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## Snautzer01 (Dec 5, 2021)

NTGray said:


> I had not heard that, and so far am unable to confirm it. It would have required either that Eisenhower be a capable pilot, or that there was an F6F two-seater available. Can you give more details or a URL link?








North American P-51 Mustang


:thumbright:



ww2aircraft.net

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## Acheron (Dec 5, 2021)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> 1. How can the Me 262 be overrated? It was the first fully operational jet fighter in the history of the world.


Yes, but that doesn't make it invincible in the skies. Yet I get the impression that all too often, that is what a lot of people seem to think, that if only it had arrived in numbers a year or two earlier, bam, instant axis-win.


DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> 2. B-17? Your argument for it us that it sustainably perform a day light bombing campaign over Germany unescorted. Seriously? Name me any bomber that could. I’m waiting.


The issue is, that to my knowledge, few people make claims about the other heavy bombers (B-24, Lancaster, Halifax) that they were, well, "Flying Fortresses". Again, I get the impression that all too often, folks gush all over the ruggedness and defensive armament of the B-17 and kinda overlook that it still wasn't enough to bring enough back from unescorted raids.


DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> 3. I voted for the P-51. Not because of its performance or capability. It was probably the best fighter built in mass numbers in WW2. I voted for it because so many people (mostly Americans) think it is the only reason the allies won WW2.


That is kinda my issue with the Me 262 and the B-17, it is not that either aircraft was bad, just that neither was as awesome as it is all too often claimed.


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## pbehn (Dec 5, 2021)

The B-17 first entered service with the RAF and was named the Fortress I, not a claim but a name like Invader Marauder Havoc Liberator etc.

From wiki "in early 1940, the RAF entered into an agreement with the U.S. Army Air Corps to acquire 20 B-17Cs, which were given the service name Fortress I. "


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## SaparotRob (Dec 5, 2021)

I gush over the B-17 because crews preferred it, nothing to do with it being the most beautiful plane to ever take to the skies. I have never heard it said that the B-17 was the box that the B-24 came in. 
I have no documentation.

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## GrauGeist (Dec 5, 2021)

The B-17 was one of the heaviest defended bombers, with thirteen .50MGs, while the B-24 had ten .50MGs, the Lancaster (typically) had eight .303MGs, the Stirling had eight .303MGs and so on.

The B-17's construction and design was such, that it could receive considerable damage and remain airworthy long enough to return to base, where many other types would be lost.

It's also notable that the B-17 was manufactured from 1936 to 1945, remaining in front line service to war's end.

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## FLYBOYJ (Dec 5, 2021)

Acheron said:


> Yes, but that doesn't make it invincible in the skies. Yet I get the impression that all too often, that is what a lot of people seem to think, that if only it had arrived in numbers a year or two earlier, bam, instant axis-win.


The -262 wasn't invincible and it wasn't going to be an "instant win" if it was introduced two years earlier (I think the outcome of the war in Europe would have been the same) but it certainly would have prolonged the war. 


Acheron said:


> The issue is, that to my knowledge, few people make claims about the other heavy bombers (B-24, Lancaster, Halifax) that they were, well, "Flying Fortresses". Again, I get the impression that all too often, folks gush all over the ruggedness and defensive armament of the B-17 and kinda overlook that it still wasn't enough to bring enough back from unescorted raids.


I knew several people who flew B-24s and B-17s and in some cases they preferred the B-24. The Lancaster got it's place in the spotlight many times but at the end of the day just about any heavy bomber of the period, despite heavy armament was not going to succeed unescorted.


Acheron said:


> That is kinda my issue with the Me 262 and the B-17, it is not that either aircraft was bad, just that neither was as awesome as it is all too often claimed.


Well you have to define your definition of "bad" and "awesome." Both aircraft were history makers and changed the course of aviation warfare.

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## Shortround6 (Dec 5, 2021)

The B-17 "Flying Fortress" had nothing to do with number of guns on the later versions (like the B-17E).

It was supposed to have been coined by a paperman at a photo opportunity/press prelease in 1937/38.(or earlier?)

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## pbehn (Dec 5, 2021)

FLYBOYJ said:


> I knew several people who flew B-24s and B-17s and in some cases they preferred the B-24. The Lancaster got it's place in the spotlight many times but at the end of the day just about any heavy bomber of the period, despite heavy armament was not going to succeed unescorted.


Pilots and crews perceptions were sometimes wrong. Many preferred the Halifax because it had more space and was easier to get out of. The statistics dont support that view and from Harris' point of view it was no contest, on a long distance raid he would need to send many more Halifaxes than Lancasters to drop the same load and they would suffer more losses.

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## GrauGeist (Dec 5, 2021)

Shortround6 said:


> The B-17 "Flying Fortress" had nothing to do with number of guns on the later versions (like the B-17E).
> 
> It was supposed to have been coined by a paperman at a photo opportunity/press prelease in 1937/38.(or earlier?)


During it's debut in 1935, Richard Williams of the Seattle Times exclaimed: "Why, it's a Flying Fortress!" because of it's many gun emplacements.

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## Shortround6 (Dec 5, 2021)

Thank you !

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## SaparotRob (Dec 5, 2021)

GrauGeist said:


> During it's debut in 1935, Richard Williams of the Seattle Times exclaimed: "Why, it's a Flying Fortress!" because of it's many gun emplacements.


...and Boeing copyrighted the name ASAP. Or so the story goes.


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## l'Omnivore Sobriquet (Dec 5, 2021)

Acheron said:


> [ATTACH=full]650533[/ATTACH]  johnbr  [ATTACH=full]650534[/ATTACH]  model299
> 
> l'Omnivore Sobriquet
> 
> ...





> I voted He-111 because it was the Luftwaffe's 'big stick', garanteed to bring to their knees any opponent it was sent against.





> Didn't work out against Warsaw, might have worked somehow against the Dutch (that Rotterdam story), didn't work against the Britts, not even at night. Remember the scare from air attack against cities was 'the big one' in the inter-war period, quite similar to the nuclear one afterwards (in terms of 'people psychology' so to speak.) So the He-111 failed in what it was heavily advertised beforehand.





> A rather good aeroplane nonetheless, though weakly defended even by 1940 standards. Besides I just don't like it.


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## l'Omnivore Sobriquet (Dec 5, 2021)

He-111 : should have remained an airliner really.

Fast and modern, unpressurized but a neat Vip/1st class transport for the day.

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## swampyankee (Dec 5, 2021)

l'Omnivore Sobriquet said:


> He-111 : should have remained an airliner really.
> 
> Fast and modern, unpressurized but a neat Vip/1st class transport for the day.



Never really intended to be an airliner. If it was, it would look more like the DC-3 or at least the 247.

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## Howard Gibson (Dec 6, 2021)

l'Omnivore Sobriquet said:


> He-111 : should have remained an airliner really.
> 
> Fast and modern, unpressurized but a neat Vip/1st class transport for the day.


There was nothing wrong with the Heinkel He 111 that a good, long range escort fighter would not have solved. Tactically, no WWII medium bombers were functional against determined fighter opposition.

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## GrauGeist (Dec 6, 2021)

Nothing was safe from determined fighter opposition.

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## Acheron (Dec 6, 2021)

Good points regarding the He-111. Yes, as the nightmare of pre-war Douhet thinking of a bomber that would level cities and decide the war by itself, it definitely was a failure. Personally, I have a soft spot for it, as it's reputation is, to my knowledge, only so-so, overshadowed by the Ju-88 in particular. Yet built in massive numbers, it soldiered one, long, LONG past its best-date.


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## pbehn (Dec 6, 2021)

Acheron said:


> Good points regarding the He-111. Yes, as the nightmare of pre-war Douhet thinking of a bomber that would level cities and decide the war by itself, it definitely was a failure. Personally, I have a soft spot for it, as it's reputation is, to my knowledge, only so-so, overshadowed by the Ju-88 in particular. Yet built in massive numbers, it soldiered one, long, LONG past its best-date.


Considering how long it was in production, it wasnt built in massive numbers.


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## Acheron (Dec 6, 2021)

pbehn said:


> Considering how long it was in production, it wasnt built in massive numbers.


Just noted that they DID actually build more Ju 88 then He 111, my mistake.

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## pbehn (Dec 6, 2021)

Acheron said:


> Just noted that they DID actually build more Ju 88 then He 111, my mistake.


The UK built more Lancasters, more Halifaxes, more Mosquitos and massively more Wellingtons than the HE111 while Blenheim Whitley and Hampden numbers combined were about the same, also 11,000 Avro Ansons used as trainers and gophers.

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## Venturi (Dec 13, 2021)

Can’t believe that the P-51 was voted “the most over rated.” To me every aircraft that had a great reputation, had it for a reason. Aircrews and soldiers in general are not forgiving of hardware flaws when their lives depend on it, and the after the fact reputation will show that. I would say the P-51 like the Spitfire, Bf-109, Hellcat, and Zeke all had reputations that were deserved. In their own ways, all were great for their particular roles, at different times in the war.

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## Acheron (Dec 13, 2021)

Venturi said:


> Can’t believe that the P-51 was voted “the most over rated.” To me every aircraft that had a great reputation, had it for a reason. Aircrews and soldiers in general are not forgiving of hardware flaws when their lives depend on it, and the after the fact reputation will show that. I would say the P-51 like the Spitfire, Bf-109, Hellcat, and Zeke all had reputations that were deserved. In their own ways, all were great for their particular roles, at different times in the war.


An aircrafts reputation does not necessarily come form the pilots or other users alone. Marketing is a thing.

Plus, one aircraft might be pleasant to fly, giving it a good rep, but a more demanding one might still be the better bet to survive in, due to for example being faster (thinking of B-25 vs B-26). Survivor's bias, those downed in the more pleasant aircraft often don't get to change their votes.

Double-Plus: An aircraft might be wonderful for the crew to fly in, but be worse for the war effort as a whole. Thinking of the bombers here, as the bomber crew, the size of the payload doesn't really concern you, but for the war effort as a whole, it is rather crucial.

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## John Vasco (Feb 3, 2022)

VA5124 said:


> Has to be the bf 110 it had the guns but it didn't have the speed and turning of something like a P-38 which had good guns too and the british mosquito so the 110 is my pick for overrated


I'll just leave this here...

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## pbehn (Feb 3, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> I'll just leave this here...
> View attachment 656857


There must be something seriously wrong with those figures, if they are true, both sides would have huge numbers of new aircraft, sitting around at the end of October Bf 110 losses were approximately the same as production circa 700, while UK single engined fighter production from August was 500 per month with around 500 damaged from all causes returned to service per month, Bf 109 production was around 250 per month. 544 RAF aircrew were killed in the BoB.








Remembering the Pilots of the Battle of Britain | CWGC


From July to October 1940, much of the fighting during World War Two in Western Europe was concentrated in the skies above the English channel, pitting the might of the Luftwaffe against the RAF.




www.cwgc.org

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 3, 2022)

Perhaps this is only reported combat losses?
So operational and non-operational losses not included?

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 3, 2022)

pbehn said:


> [...] also 11,000 Avro Ansons used as trainers and gophers.



!


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 3, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> I'll just leave this here...
> View attachment 656857


Let assume these numbers are somewhat correct - to really validate this, sorties would have to be included. Of these aircraft, which ones had the greatest exposure to a combat environment? The fact that the Bf110 is shown with a .06 higher claim to loss ratio is a bit meaningless, 2 or 3 aircraft in either direction of claims/ losses puts it right there with the -109 and Spitfire.


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## Howard Gibson (Feb 3, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> I'll just leave this here...
> View attachment 656857


Given the overclaiming done during the Battle of Britain, particularly by the Luftwaffe, those numbers mean nothing.

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## nuuumannn (Feb 3, 2022)

Acheron said:


> I have a soft spot for it, as it's reputation is, to my knowledge, only so-so, overshadowed by the Ju-88 in particular. Yet built in massive numbers, it soldiered one, long, LONG past its best-date.



Agree, the He 111 is an intriguing aeroplane, at best a compromise and the measures taken to incorporate both bomber and airliner requirements into the airframe were compromises. Bomb cassettes in the fuselage where the pax cabin was in which bombs could only be stored vertically, rubber bomb bay doors actuated by a Bowden cable, defensive armament scabbed on, that redesigned glazed nose tunnel was an attempt at streamlining but there wasn't much space in there and despite all that glazing, visibility was not that great and it certainly messed with instrument placement in the cockpit. And then there was visibility forward on the ground, which was non-existent, which meant the pilot had a seat that could be raised so his head poked above the sill of the cockpit, with a retractable windscreen, effectively turning the thing into an open-cockpit bomber.

I do have a fondness for it, and yes, it wasn't intended on being in service for anywhere as long as it was. The BoB should have been its last hurrah.

The clumsy way in which bombs exited the aircraft can be seen in this museum example of a Spanish Heinkel. The bombs' fins hit the rubber doors on exiting the airframe. The cable that opened the doors can be seen and to prevent them from sagging in flight owing to aerodynamic effect was the springs on the tubing around which the doors rotated 90 degrees. The L shaped metal brackets fitted to the doors were stiffeners.




Gatow 168

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## nuuumannn (Feb 3, 2022)

Howard Gibson said:


> Given the overclaiming done during the Battle of Britain, particularly by the Luftwaffe, those numbers mean nothing.



It does depend on where the figures come from. Relying on combat reports is meaningless for this reason, but these days, more thorough research and wreck recovery has meant that more accurate figures behind kills and losses can be produced, so it isn't so easy to dismiss recent combat figures for the BoB as a shed-ton of research has been ploughed into this subject.

My standard of reference on the battle for figures is Bungay's The Most Dangerous Enemy, which certainly does benefit from extensive research done from different sources, which avoids overclaiming and does illustrate what producing these figures was supposed to do, what each side was up against.

Bungay states this in his chapter "Appraisal"

"Attempting to gain daylight air superiority over south-east England cost the Luftwaffe 1,887 aircraft. Stopping them cost Fighter Command 1,023. Bomber Command lost 376 aircraft in helping stop an invasion, and Coastal Command, which supported both efforts lost 148. Total losses for the RAF were therefore1,547. In comparing the cost to the air forces of each side, the Luftwaffe lost only 20% more aircraft than the RAF." 

"In the air fighting, however, the Luftwaffe as a whole was directly confronted by Fighter Command. It destroyed all but a handful of the 1,887 aircraft the Germans lost, achieving an overall kill ratio of 1.8:1. the margin of victory was not narrow. The Luftwaffe never came close."

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## SaparotRob (Feb 3, 2022)

Could the small "c" by the claims number mean confirmed?


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## Vincenzo (Feb 4, 2022)

We have already talked of this here now and time ago, probably there is a trouble with the translation


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## wuzak (Feb 4, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> Could the small "c" by the claims number mean confirmed?



c = circa/approximate?

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## Geoffrey Sinclair (Feb 6, 2022)

The Battle of Britain Then and Now have the following all cause loss totals, 10 July to 31 October 1940, Bf109 649, Bf110 270, Hurricane 586, Spitfire 364, so while it is possible the various reported losses plus the 1 to 9 July 1940 period saw around 20 Hurricanes and 30 Spitfires lost, the Luftwaffe fighter loss figures differ by around 190 aircraft. Christer has the RAF up an extra 50 losses (997 vs 950), Luftwaffe down 190 (730 vs 919) losses.

The Luftwaffe quartermaster figures July to October 1940 for Bf109 have 502 lost on operations due to enemy action, 98 on operations not due to enemy action, 63 not on operations, total 663. Bf110 224+11+17 = 252. Another 259 Bf109 and 77 Bf110 damaged, all causes (From Wood and Dempster)

The Battle of Britain Then and Now has 233 Bf109, 91 Bf110, 490 Hurricane and 401 Spitfire listed as damaged.

That compares with production of 1,025 Hurricane and 619 Spitfire total 1,644, July to October, or an average of 411 per month.

The USSBS production of Bf109 in 1940 was 1,868, Bf110 1,231, so for four months around 620 Bf109, 410 Bf110.

German Aircraft Production says 1,719 or 1,693 Bf109 and 1,158 or 1,083 Bf110 for 1940, which would drop the 4 month average to around 570 Bf109 and 370 Bf110.

Another reference says 195 Bf109 in September, 144 in October, 60 in November and 115 in December 1940. Bf110 production was 112, 100, 73 and 43.

He111 Production was 6,607 from 1939 to 1944 (USSBS), plus 232 another He111D, H and P delivered to end 1938, then add the prototypes, A, B, C, E, G and J models, (399 B and 30 J delivered to March 1938) another 700 or so machines. So around 7,500 He111.

Excluding prototypes, Britain produced
5,656 bomber + 509 transport Halifax = 6,165
6,944 bomber + 82 transport Lancaster = 7,026 (Then add Canada)
1,030 bomber + 4,917 fighter/PR + 362 trainer Mosquito = 6,314 (Then add Canada and Australia)
1,271 Hampden, 150 Hereford, 1,812 Whitley = 3,233 + 5,402 Blenheim = 8,735 (Plus Canada)

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## SaparotRob (Feb 6, 2022)

Geoffrey Sinclair said:


> The Battle of Britain Then and Now have the following all cause loss totals, 10 July to 31 October 1940, Bf109 649, Bf110 270, Hurricane 586, Spitfire 364, so while it is possible the various reported losses plus the 1 to 9 July 1940 period saw around 20 Hurricanes and 30 Spitfires lost, the Luftwaffe fighter loss figures differ by around 190 aircraft. Christer has the RAF up an extra 50 losses (997 vs 950), Luftwaffe down 190 (730 vs 919) losses.
> 
> The Luftwaffe quartermaster figures July to October 1940 for Bf109 have 502 lost on operations due to enemy action, 98 on operations not due to enemy action, 63 not on operations, total 663. Bf110 224+11+17 = 252. Another 259 Bf109 and 77 Bf110 damaged, all causes (From Wood and Dempster)
> 
> ...


So which one was overrated?

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## NTGray (Feb 6, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> So which one was overrated?


I _think_ this is a continuation of the Bf110 discussion (see post #2872 and following), but I could be wrong.


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## SaparotRob (Feb 6, 2022)

I have to scroll up every now again to see which thread I'm on. For awhile, they all seemed to become about the same plane.

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## Acheron (Feb 6, 2022)

Wiki claims that the Me 110 did somewhat acceptable using boom-and-zoom tactics, at leat early in the war. Wiki also claims that the Me 110 had poor acceleration and that making it do close escort duties was disastrous. Opinions here?


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## NTGray (Feb 6, 2022)

Acheron said:


> Wiki claims that the Me 110 did somewhat acceptable using boom-and-zoom tactics, at leat early in the war. Wiki also claims that the Me 110 had poor acceleration and that making it do close escort duties was disastrous. Opinions here?


Let's back up just a bit and clarify the question. Since the thread title has to do with which airplanes are considered overrated, the answer depends not only on the actual performance of the airplane, but on how inflated its reputation was. So what are we discussing with the Bf110? What was its _reputation_ during and following the war? Was it more than it legitimately deserved?

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## stona (Feb 6, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Let's back up just a bit and clarify the question. Since the thread title has to do with which airplanes are considered overrated, the answer depends not only on the actual performance of the airplane, but on how inflated its reputation was. So what are we discussing with the Bf110? What was its _reputation_ during and following the war? Was it more than it legitimately deserved?


What close escort duties?


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## NTGray (Feb 6, 2022)

stona said:


> What close escort duties?


Oops. I think you questioned the wrong answer.

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## SaparotRob (Feb 6, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Oops. I think you questioned the wrong answer.


I like the cut of your jib!


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## buffnut453 (Feb 6, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Oops. I think you questioned the wrong answer.



That's funny 'cos I often answer the wrong question. Is that karma?

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 6, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Let's back up just a bit and clarify the question. Since the thread title has to do with which airplanes are considered overrated, the answer depends not only on the actual performance of the airplane, but on how inflated its reputation was. So what are we discussing with the Bf110? What was its _reputation_ during and following the war? Was it more than it legitimately deserved?



If we're talking night-fighter, I don't regard the -110 as underrated at all. Superseded by the Ju-88? Sure. But it was effective as hell.

Daylight escort of bombers? Not so sure. That raid from Norway during BoB, escorted by -110s, got shot up pretty badly. 

So again, the value of an aircraft often depends on what you're asking it to do.

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 6, 2022)

The raid from Norway was escorted by Bf 110D-0s and -1s with the _Dachelbauch _conformal belly tank which greatly affected maneuverabilty, and were not easily jettisoned.

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## John Vasco (Feb 6, 2022)

Howard Gibson said:


> Given the overclaiming done during the Battle of Britain, particularly by the Luftwaffe, those numbers mean nothing.


Fighter Command overclaimed equally. Go check the claims for Stukas on 16th & 18th August 1940, for example.

Or get hold of some volumes of the 'Battle of Britain Combat Archive' series and see other examples of overclaiming on a regular basis. By both sides...

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## John Vasco (Feb 6, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Let assume these numbers are somewhat correct - to really validate this, sorties would have to be included. Of these aircraft, which ones had the greatest exposure to a combat environment? The fact that the Bf110 is shown with a .06 higher claim to loss ratio is a bit meaningless, *2 or 3 aircraft in either direction of claims/ losses puts it right there with the -109 and Spitfire.*


Which shows it performed every bit as well as those two.

The fact is, the fighters on both sides battered the hell out of each other during the Battle of Britain.


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## John Vasco (Feb 6, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> Could the small "c" by the claims number mean confirmed?


I believe the 'C' = circa...


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 6, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> Which shows it performed every bit as well as those two.


No - not until you can make a comparison that has sorties thrown in there. If the -110 was in the air just as much as the Spitfire, -109 or Hurricane, I'd buy that but until that is known I personally question these numbers as how effective the -110 really was.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 6, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> The raid from Norway was escorted by Bf 110D-0s and -1s with the _Dachelbauch _conformal belly tank which greatly affected maneuverabilty, and were not easily jettisoned.



How did they do in the South where such a hindrance wasn't a mission requirement?


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## Greg Boeser (Feb 6, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> How did they do in the South where such a hindrance wasn't a mission requirement?


Who cares? The D-1 is a cool model though.

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## John Vasco (Feb 6, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> No - not until you can make a comparison that has sorties thrown in there. If the -110 was in the air just as much as the Spitfire, -109 or Hurricane, I'd buy that but until that is known I personally question these numbers as how effective the -110 really was.


Well you need to look into the Battle of Britain in great detail then.

And do you throw in all of the fighter-bomber Bf 110 sorties flown by Erprobungsgruppe 210 (Gruppenstab and two Staffeln)? Their role was to get in, bomb, and get back, not get embroiled in combat unless it was impossible to avoid. And does the period of time come into it? Elements of JG 27 (Bf 109) were withdrawn before the end of the Battle due to heavy casualties. JG 77 (Bf 109) didn't enter the Battle until late-August and initially got hammered. As soon as you start to introduce 'catch-all' restrictions, you lose sight of what actually happened. Don't fall into that trap.

And you also need to consider the words '_pro rata_'. The details of claims v. losses IS '_pro rata_'...


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## John Vasco (Feb 6, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> The raid from Norway was escorted by Bf 110D-0s and -1s with the _Dachelbauch _conformal belly tank which greatly affected maneuverabilty, and were not easily jettisoned.


The Dackelbauch was not jettisonable at all.

And it greatly affected speed and performance. The two pilots I interviewed who had flown the Dackelbauch, Hans Jäger and Hans-Ulrich Kettling, both considered the Dackelbauch was a dreadful variant to fly because of this.

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 6, 2022)

Well, I am relying on Squadron/Signal Aircraft no. 30 Messerschmitt Bf 110 Zerstoerer in Action, which I consider a definative source, and it says that the Dackelbauch was theoretically jettisonable. It also says that it had a tendency to hang up and explode.


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## John Vasco (Feb 6, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Well, I am relying on Squadron/Signal Aircraft no. 30 Messerschmitt Bf 110 Zerstoerer in Action, which I consider a definative source, and it says that the Dackelbauch was theoretically jettisonable. It also says that it had a tendency to hang up and explode.


Unfortunately, that book is way out of date on so many things. It is not a definitive source. I could recommend more up to date books on the Bf 110, but modesty forbids...

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 6, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Who cares? The D-1 is a cool model though.



Well, talking about its effectiveness as an escort fighter was the gist of my post. You presented a cogent reply, and so I was hoping to learn about comparative stats. But if you're not into it, it's all good.


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## Greg Boeser (Feb 6, 2022)

Right. I was pointing out that the Bf 110s used from Norway were hamstrung by their configuration.
Imagine flying Hurricanes into battle with ferry tanks bolted to their wings. Oh, wait, they did that in Burma. Once.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 6, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Right. I was pointing out that the Bf 110s used from Norway were hamstrung by their configuration.
> Imagine flying Hurricanes into battle with ferry tanks bolted to their wings. Oh, wait, they did that in Burma. Once.



On the other hand, I was asking about how they did in the south without those tanks. I think it was a pertinent question deserving more than a glib answer.


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## Greg Boeser (Feb 6, 2022)

You will need someone with far greater knowledge on the subject than me. I tend to be attracted to the unusual, the unique. My knowledge is broad, but shallow.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 6, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> Well you need to look into the Battle of Britain in great detail then.
> 
> And do you throw in all of the fighter-bomber Bf 110 sorties flown by Erprobungsgruppe 210 (Gruppenstab and two Staffeln)?


Does the data you posted include in claims vs losses include Erprobungsgruppe 210 (Gruppenstab and two Staffeln?


John Vasco said:


> Their role was to get in, bomb, and get back, not get embroiled in combat unless it was impossible to avoid. And does the period of time come into it? Elements of JG 27 (Bf 109) were withdrawn before the end of the Battle due to heavy casualties. JG 77 (Bf 109) didn't enter the Battle until late-August and initially got hammered. As soon as you start to introduce 'catch-all' restrictions, you lose sight of what actually happened. Don't fall into that trap.


I get that - but if you're going to make an across the board comparison then you're going to lump everything into one basket or break out those -110s who were not engaged in an air-to-air role



> And you also need to consider the words '_pro rata_'. The details of claims v. losses IS '_pro rata_'...


It could only be truly proportional if all aircraft saw at least the same amount of sorties and that's why I think that has to be considered

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 6, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> You will need someone with far greater knowledge on the subject than me. I tend to be attracted to the unusual, the unique. My knowledge is broad, but shallow.



Fair enough, no sweat.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 6, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> The Dackelbauch was not jettisonable at all.
> 
> And it greatly affected speed and performance. The two pilots I interviewed who had flown the Dackelbauch, Hans Jäger and Hans-Ulrich Kettling, both considered the Dackelbauch was a dreadful variant to fly because of this.



John, you'd know this -- were -110s used as escorts in the south without that tank?


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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> It could only be truly proportional if all aircraft saw at least the same amount of sorties and that's why I think that has to be considered


I can only come to the conclusion that you are mis-interpreting the term _'pro rata'_.

You feed in more fighters/squadrons. You get more victory claims. You suffer more losses. _Pro rata_. You can argue against it all you like, but you would be wrong, for the stated reasons in the first three sentences in this paragraph.

The Battle of Britain is the perfect scenario to test the point in the above paragraph.

So the 'same amount of sorties' is a red herring. It doesn't stand up to objective and logical examination. My second paragraph does.


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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> John, you'd know this -- were -110s used as escorts in the south without that tank?


Thump: Yes. It was only the Bf 110 Ds of I. Gruppe, Zerstörergeschwader 76 that escorted the bombers in the early afternoon raid of 15th August 1940 against the north-east coast of England that had the Dackelbauch fitment. The Bf 110 units based in France flew Bf 110s with the standard fuel capacity, as their range was sufficient for escort against the airfields, and later, the bombing raids against London from 7th September 1940. Not a problem. The problem was for the Bf 109s, who had a shorter range, and the trip to London and back (without any auxiliary fuel tank) meant combat over London was severely limited.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> I can only come to the conclusion that you are mis-interpreting the term _'pro rata'_.


Not at all - "pro rata" = proportional


John Vasco said:


> You feed in more fighters/squadrons. You get more victory claims. You suffer more losses. _Pro rata_.


Only if your additional fighter squadrons are ACTUALLY in the air and ACTUALLY engaged in combat. Less sorties, less losses = PRO RATA


John Vasco said:


> You can argue against it all you like, but you would be wrong, for the stated reasons in the first three sentences in this paragraph.


Well I'm showing you my point


John Vasco said:


> The Battle of Britain is the perfect scenario to test the point in the above paragraph.
> 
> So the 'same amount of sorties' is a red herring. *It doesn't stand up to objective and logical examination.* My second paragraph does.


And you're ignoring the fact that the more sorties flown will bring the more chances of combat and show how effective/ ineffective the fighter really is. 10 Hurricanes fly 100 sorties and shoot down 30 enemy aircraft but lose 5 of their own - 10 Spitfires fly 100 sorties and bring down 80 aircraft and lose 3 of their own, statistically which is more effective example?


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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Not at all - "pro rata" = proportional


EXACTLY! Thank you for agreeing to what I said!


FLYBOYJ said:


> Only if your additional fighter squadrons are ACTUALLY in the air and ACTUALLY engaged in combat. Less sorties, less losses = PRO RATA
> 
> Well I'm showing you my point
> 
> And you're ignoring the fact that the more sorties flown will bring the more chances of combat and show how effective/ ineffective the fighter really is. 10 Hurricanes fly 100 sorties and shoot down 30 enemy aircraft but lose 5 of their own - 10 Spitfires fly 100 sorties and bring down 80 aircraft and lose 3 of their own, statistically which is more effective example?


Once again, you are agreeing with my point! Go read it in my previous post! Pro rata!!!

Your last paragrpah is hypothetical. I don't do hypothetical. 40+ years of research into the Battle of Britain means I deal with facts, and deal with them objectively, without any bias one way or the other (I am English, but that does not colour or impact on how I examine the evidence and ultimately put it forward).

If you cannot see the simple logic of '_pro rata_' and how it applies to the fighters in the Battle of Britain, their operations, their claims and their losses, then there really is no point in continuing the discussion with you, as you are displaying a closed-mind to anything but your own views.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 7, 2022)

Who the hell pissed in your Cheerios? Why the attitude?

You can get your point across without being a pompous ass.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> EXACTLY! Thank you for agreeing to what I said!
> 
> Once again, you are agreeing with my point! Go read it in my previous post! Pro rata!!!
> 
> ...


I'm not the one being closed minded here, I am open to your statistics but putting I'm in what I believe is a major consideration when comparing claims to loss ratios. We'll agree to disagree and I advise you to curtail your attitude if you want to continue to play in the sandbox!

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 7, 2022)

Would it be too much to ask that the moderators behave, you know, moderately?
I don't see Mr. Vasco being out of line at all. But I have noticed a tendency for some individuals to lose their cool when their sacred cow is being challenged. Threatening to cancel someone because you don't accept their argument is so uncool.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> *Would it be too much to ask that the moderators behave, you know, moderately?*
> I don't see Mr. Vasco being out of line at all. But I have noticed a tendency for some individuals to lose their cool when their sacred cow is being challenged. Threatening to cancel someone because you don't accept their argument is so uncool.


I believe we are and point blank I'm telling you to *MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!*


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Would it be too much to ask that the moderators behave, you know, moderately?
> I don't see Mr. Vasco being out of line at all. But I have noticed a tendency for some individuals to lose their cool when their sacred cow is being challenged. Threatening to cancel someone because you don't accept their argument is so uncool.


I have no problem being challenged and will accept being corrected, in this situation there is no "sacred cow" here. As you know however, we will not tolerate crappy attitudes and rude behavior. I hope I made myself abundantly clear!!!!


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## XBe02Drvr (Feb 7, 2022)

"Gotta rocket in your pocket - stay cooly-cool, boy...
Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it - stay cooly-cool, boy!"
Let's all keep our cool, gentlemen, pompous asses or not. We all could use a little slow burning fuse here.

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## GrauGeist (Feb 7, 2022)

So then...now may not be a good time to ask why the P-63 isn't on the list?

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

GrauGeist said:


> So then...now may not be a good time to ask why the P-63 isn't on the list?


Because it has armor around the gearbox! 😁

I tried to edit the poll - no joy

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## XBe02Drvr (Feb 7, 2022)

GrauGeist said:


> So then...now may not be a good time to ask why the P-63 isn't on the list?


Shhh! Too close to groundhog day. Let him sleep.

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 7, 2022)

So what are we arguing about? Mr. Vasco threw up a table comparing claims vs losses. In this table the Bf 110 edges out the Spitfire and Bf 109 based on the proportion of claims vs losses. It is a single point of comparison. From the table, one can see that the Hurricane fairs worst, the Sputfire and Bf 109 are statistically tied and the Bf 110 has a slight edge. What it doesn't show is loss to sortie rate, or loss to replacement rate. These are far more important to determining if you can sustain an air campaign. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> So what are we arguing about? Mr. Vasco threw up a table comparing claims vs losses. In this table the Bf 110 edges out the Spitfire and Bf 109 based on the proportion of claims vs losses. It is a single point of comparison. From the table, one can see that the Hurricane fairs worst, the Sputfire and Bf 109 are statistically tied and the Bf 110 has a slight edge.* What it doesn't show is loss to sortie rate, or loss to replacement rate. These are far more important to determining if you can sustain an air campaign. Correct me if I'm wrong.*


You're correct - and all I said that sorties need to be considered as well. You seen the response.

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## XBe02Drvr (Feb 7, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> So what are we arguing about?


A spoiled bowl of Cheerios, as far as I can tell.

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## SaparotRob (Feb 7, 2022)

I’m looking forward to Saturday, Wes!


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> I’m looking forward to Saturday, Wes!


Me too!

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## stona (Feb 7, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Oops. I think you questioned the wrong answer.


Indeed. But the question still stands. 

Goering's instructions of 19 August were quite clear.

_"Only a part of the fighter escort will be provided to the bombers as close escort. *The goal must be to employ as many free ranging fighters (Freijagd) as possible*_*, so that they can simultaneously protect the bombers and intercept enemy fighters under favourable conditions.* _For such operations there can be no rigid plan, their execution depends on both enemy tactics and weather."_

Kesselring did request that his fighters escort the bombers more closely, about a month later, on 18 September much to the dismay of the fighter commanders. Hannes Trautloft wrote in his diary,

_"We received a hail of abuse. Kesselring now requires us to fly even closer to the bombers during our close escort missions."_ 

This was because as an artillery officer Kesselring imagined this would stem the unsustainable losses of bombers. Goering, on August 19th, had made it clear that the majority of his fighters should not be hobbled in this way. British reports of the period still record most of the escorts stacked up at various altitudes, some more than 10,000 feet above the bombers, some ranging miles ahead (and to be ignored if possible).

It's also worth mentioning that on several occasions the so called close escort inflicted heavy casualties on Fighter Command aircraft that had evaded or fought their way through the wider fighter screen. 

An account of the September 3 raids on North Weald (and Debden and Hornchurch) shows the damage that Bf 110s could inflict on their would be interceptors. 21 British fighters were shot down, at least 6 by the Bf 110s of III./ZG 26, which was flying top cover while ZG 2 remained closer to the bombers. 

I tell you who did not underestimate the Bf 110; the pilots who flew against it.

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## MikeMeech (Feb 7, 2022)

stona said:


> An account of the September 3 raids on North Weald (and Debden and Hornchurch) shows the damage that Bf 110s could inflict on their would be interceptors. 21 British fighters were shot down, at least 6 by the Bf 110s of III./ZG 26, which was flying top cover while ZG 2 remained closer to the bombers.
> 
> I tell you who did not underestimate the Bf 110; the pilots who flew against it.


Hi
'Fighter Command Losses' Volume 1, by Norman Franks, pages 72-73 has 16 fighters 'lost' on that day not all during those raids or to enemy action. Two appear to be confirmed definitely due to Me 110s; No. 17 Sqn. Hurricane P3673 over Essex at 1030, pilot Sgt. D Fopp baled out wounded, and 310 Sqn. Hurricane P8811, written off after being brought down at 1000, pilot Sgt. J Kopriva safe. 

Mike

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 7, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Would it be too much to ask that the moderators behave, you know, moderately?
> I don't see Mr. Vasco being out of line at all. But I have noticed a tendency for some individuals to lose their cool when their sacred cow is being challenged. Threatening to cancel someone because you don't accept their argument is so uncool.



Where did I threaten to cancel anyone?

I simply said there is no need for an attitude.

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 7, 2022)

I wasn't referring to you.
I have been politely asked to refrain from commenting on the issue further. So I will.

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## stona (Feb 7, 2022)

MikeMeech said:


> Hi
> 'Fighter Command Losses' Volume 1, by Norman Franks, pages 72-73 has 16 fighters 'lost' on that day not all during those raids or to enemy action. Two appear to be confirmed definitely due to Me 110s; No. 17 Sqn. Hurricane P3673 over Essex at 1030, pilot Sgt. D Fopp baled out wounded, and 310 Sqn. Hurricane P8811, written off after being brought down at 1000, pilot Sgt. J Kopriva safe.
> 
> Mike


I wrote shot down, not destroyed. That includes all those that made forced landings, 9 of which would eventually be repaired. This one of the great advantages of fighting over home ground.

No.17 Squadron had four of its Hurricanes shot down, all by Bf 110s.

No.257 had two of its Hurricanes shot down and two damaged by Bf 110s.

No.310 had a Hurricane shot down by a Bf 110.

There were other losses, notably No. 603 Squadron's two Spitfires, which fell to Bf 109s.

The _overall _total of 21 meant that 1 in in 6 of the British fighters that were engaged this day were shot down.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> Thump: Yes. It was only the Bf 110 Ds of I. Gruppe, Zerstörergeschwader 76 that escorted the bombers in the early afternoon raid of 15th August 1940 against the north-east coast of England that had the Dackelbauch fitment. The Bf 110 units based in France flew Bf 110s with the standard fuel capacity, as their range was sufficient for escort against the airfields, and later, the bombing raids against London from 7th September 1940. Not a problem. The problem was for the Bf 109s, who had a shorter range, and the trip to London and back (without any auxiliary fuel tank) meant combat over London was severely limited.




Thanks for the reply and info, JV.

Without the funny tank, how did the bombers under their escort fare, if you know?


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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 7, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Who the hell pissed in your Cheerios? Why the attitude?
> 
> You can get your point across without being a pompous ass.



Lol, this has never been John's strong-suit. I like the guy and he's forgotten more about the BoB than I'll ever know ... but man, he can be hard to take at times!

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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> I'm not the one being closed minded here, I am open to your statistics but putting I'm in what I believe is a major consideration when comparing claims to loss ratios. We'll agree to disagree and I advise you to curtail your attitude if you want to continue to play in the sandbox!


I will answer your point about sorties with some examples. And why I therefore consider sorties to not always be an accurate rider with regard to combat, claims, and losses.

On 30th August 1940 303 Squadron, on a training flight, encountered a German raid. Although all were up, only one engaged in combat, claiming a Bf 110 of II./ZG 76. This was actually a half-claim, as Wicks of 56 Squadron was also involved in the shooting down of the Bf 110

1st September: 54 Squadron Intelligence report: '...Nine a/c of 54 Squadron took off from Rochford at 10:45 to intercept an enemy raid approaching Hornchurch. The attack seems to have been diverted due to intense A.A. fire in the Kent area and the squadron had little contact with the enemy. P/O Gray intercepted two vics of three of Heinkel bombers with an escort of Me109 fighters...' Of the 9 that took off, only Gray made an interception. (cf: Battle of Britain Combat Archive, Volume 9, page 8).

2nd September: Attacks on Eastchurch and Detling. '... Again Fighter Command reacted by scrambling eleven squadrons, six of which remained over the airfields and did not engage the enemy...' (cf: Battle of Britain Combat Archive, Volume 9, page 47).

So you can see by the three examples above, taking off on a sortie did not necessarily mean that the enemy was engaged. There are numerous other examples of this. This was the case also for Luftwaffe fighter units when, on occasions, they took off for a mission but did not engage the enemy. The most famous example of this was elements of JG 52 who were tasked to escort the fighter-bombers of Erprobungsgruppe 210 on the early evening raid against Kenley on 15th August (Erprobungsgruppe 210 actually attacked Croydon in error). Part-way to the target, JG 52 turned back and returned to their airfield, the reason for which has never been ascertained.

So that is why sorties are not an accurate rider to events. That is all.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> I will answer your point about sorties with some examples. And why I therefore consider sorties to not always be an accurate rider with regard to combat, claims, and losses.
> 
> On 30th August 1940 303 Squadron, on a training flight, encountered a German raid. Although all were up, only one engaged in combat, claiming a Bf 110 of II./ZG 76. This was actually a half-claim, as Wicks of 56 Squadron was also involved in the shooting down of the Bf 110
> 
> ...


And thank you for the extremely detailed and leveled response!

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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> And thank you for the extremely detailed and leveled response!


I think part of my problem is that I have so much information available, that I try to condense it to a manageable/reasonable size. Perhaps I should expand my posts so that I can provide more information. Like Hans-Ulrich Kettling telling me and Peter Cornwell that the Bf 110 'Dackelbauch' was 'a pig to fly!' - his words.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> I think part of my problem is that I have so much information available, that I try to condense it to a manageable/reasonable size. Perhaps I should expand my posts so that I can provide more information. Like Hans-Ulrich Kettling telling me and Peter Cornwell that the Bf 110 'Dackelbauch' was 'a pig to fly!' - his words.


Good to know!!!!

I briefly worked with the USAF as a contractor where we would include "completed" mission sorties into our statistics and bounce that data against mission hours, that's why I felt that sortie count should be included, but as you pointed out there were many times during this period where that would be extremely difficult if not impossible to do.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> Hans-Ulrich Kettling telling me and Peter Cornwell that the Bf 110 'Dackelbauch' was 'a pig to fly!' - his words.


Now without going back though some threads, do you think the Dackelbauch -110s attributed to some of the bad press this aircraft as gotten over the years?


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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Now without going back though some threads, do you think the Dackelbauch -110s attributed to some of the bad press this aircraft as gotten over the years?



I think that is possible, yes. The 110 got a bad press, yet the 109 losses were over 500 during the Battle, but the 109 has never got bad press. Decades ago, the myth surfaced that the Bf 1210 fighter units needed Bf 109 fighter escort. 

By the way, when Peter and I got back to our hotel that night and discussed the days events, we both agreed that Kettling made damn sure he came down on land once he tangled with RAF fighters! We strongly suspected that there was no way he was going to go down into the North Sea! All the others of his Gruppe that were shot down went into the sea.

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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Good to know!!!!
> 
> I briefly worked with the USAF as a contractor where we would include "completed" mission sorties into our statistics and bounce that data against mission hours, that's why I felt that sortie count should be included, but as you pointed out there were many times during this period where that would be extremely difficult if not impossible to do.


The Croydon raid by Erprobungsgruppe 210 I mentioned in another post. 111 Squadron was one of the two squadrons to intercept the unit, yet at the Public Record Office (PRO), now the National Archive, I could only find 5 combat reports of the 9 who were scrambled. It was only when I consulted the Squadron Operations Record Book (ORB) and the Intelligence Summary that I found out that only 5 of the 9 engaged. This was a very 'tight' combat over Croydon, with 111 piling in first, followed by 32, yet not all managed to get in a position to fire their guns, hence no combat report. No pilots of 111 were wounded or killed, so that had to be discounted. I'm not picking fault with those 4, just highlighting the kind of things one comes across when doing research.

Another thing, which I hope might interest you, was that on that mission, 32 Squadron was led by Flight Lieutenant Crossley as 'Red 1', while Squadron Leader Worrall flew as 'Red 2'! What the hell!!! Then, when I contacted Worrall and got a reply, all was revealed. See below.






Another small mystery solved!

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 7, 2022)

Chris Goss (_Luftwaffe Fighters and Bombers - the Battle of Britain_) describes the aircraft used by ZG 26 on 14 May as being fitted with wing tanks as well as the Dackelbauch. He includes an interview with Kettling, who states the same. I hadn't heard of that configuration before.


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> I think that is possible, yes. The 110 got a bad press, yet the 109 losses were over 500 during the Battle, but the 109 has never got bad press. Decades ago, the myth surfaced that the Bf 110 fighter units needed Bf 109 fighter escort.


I've seen that mentioned many times over the years and always found it suspect. Why do I believe the name "Caidin" has something to do with it!


John Vasco said:


> By the way, when Peter and I got back to our hotel that night and discussed the days events, we both agreed that Kettling made damn sure he came down on land once he tangled with RAF fighters! We strongly suspected that there was no way he was going to go down into the North Sea! All the others of his Gruppe that were shot down went into the sea.


Great info!

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 7, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Chris Goss (_Luftwaffe Fighters and Bombers - the Battle of Britain_) describes the aircraft used by ZG 26 on 14 May as being fitted with wing tanks as well as the Dackelbauch. He includes an interview with Kettling, who states the same. I hadn't heard of that configuration before.








from Wiki

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 7, 2022)

I don't see the wing tanks.


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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> I don't see the wing tanks.


The Dackelbauch had a large auxiliary fuel tank and a small auxiliary oil tank. When it was decided that the Dackelbauch was not such a good idea after all, it's use was discontinued, and the wing tanks were then used, on the 'D-3' sub-variant.


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## cherry blossom (Feb 7, 2022)

There may be a parallel between the damage to the reputation of the Bf 110 arising from it being handicapped by the Dackelbauch and the relatively poor performance of the A6M2 Zero operating from Rabaul over Guadalcanal against the F4F4 over August and September 1942. Richard Dunn states “It should be kept in mind that during the period under review Zeros flying from land bases over Guadalcanal almost always entered combat with their external fuel tanks attached. Zeros in combat over New Guinea generally flew without such tanks or dropped them before combat. Without the tank the Zero would have been somewhat faster than flying with the tank attached” Zero Model 21 Performance: Unraveling Conflicting Data.

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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> View attachment 657284
> 
> 
> from Wiki


This is the Bf 110 Dackelbauch that Kettling was shot down in on 15th August 1940. It carried the fuselage code M8+CH, and the Werke Nummer 3155.

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## tomo pauk (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> I think that is possible, yes. The 110 got a bad press, yet the 109 losses were over 500 during the Battle, but the 109 has never got bad press.



We can take a look at the reperecussions of respective losses of Bf 109 and that of the Bf 110 force. A lost Bf 110 is twice as hard to replace vs. a lost Bf 109. Or, if the double as expensive to make and use Bf 110 does not return the investment in racking at least 50% (if not 100%) better kill ratio than the Bf 109, it is rightly so that Bf 110 received the bad press for it's BoB role.
We also know that British will have a far easier time to replace a lost Hurricane or Spitfire, than it will be the case with Germans to replace a lost Bf 110.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 7, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Lol, this has never been John's strong-suit. I like the guy and he's forgotten more about the BoB than I'll ever know ... but man, he can be hard to take at times!



I have no issues with him personally. I said the same thing to him that I would say to anyone. You can get your point across without an unwarranted attitude.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 7, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I have no issues with him personally. I said the same thing to him that I would say to anyone. You can point across without an unwarranted attitude.



I'm not defending his attitude, I'm giving him stick for it.


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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

tomo pauk said:


> '... it is rightly so that Bf 110 received the bad press for it's BoB role...'


The bad press it received decades ago was due to myths being propounded by the writers of the day, viz, that it was a poor fighter, couldn't fight, and needed Bf 109 fighter escort in the Battle of Britain. As I posted previously, it performed no worse than the other 3 main fighters in the BoB.

The whole issue in combat is 'Advantage'. And it doesn't matter whether you are an experienced fighter pilot or not, if your opponent has the advantage over you for a few seconds, you are in trouble. Werner Mölders was shot down during the Western Campaign in the Spring of 1940. Why? Because his opponent had those vital few seconds advantage, and made it tell. When he returned to combat in July 1940, on his first mission he was hit and wounded but got back to France; Galland managed to get his damaged 109 back to France on one occasion in 1940; one of the top claimers in the Luftwaffe in 1940, Helmut Wick of JG2, was shot down into the Channel forever on 28th November 1940 because Dundas of 609 Squadron had those few seconds advantage over him. The matter of advantage was impressed on me time and time again by those I interviewed who had taken part...

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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I'm not defending his attitude, I'm giving him stick for it.



You gave me stick for years on a certain guitar forum, Thump, and got it back in equal measure!

Admin: me & Thump have known each other for over a decade. We wind each other up, and laugh about it. That man plays a guitar like a man with no hands!

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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Chris Goss (_Luftwaffe Fighters and Bombers - the Battle of Britain_) describes the aircraft used by ZG 26 on 14 May as being fitted with wing tanks as well as the Dackelbauch. He includes an interview with Kettling, who states the same. I hadn't heard of that configuration before.


14th May does seem a bit early. I know that Kettling's Gruppe (I./ZG 76) did try experimentally fitting wing tanks as well as having the Dackelbauch, but I believe the German Air Ministry jumped on that once they heard about it.

Must have a word with Chris (as fellow researchers, we have been in touch for decades, and still keep in touch now).

Here's a photo of a Dackelbauch with both:

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> You gave me stick for years on a certain guitar forum, Thump, and got it back in equal measure!
> 
> Admin: me & Thump have known each other for over a decade. We wind each other up, and laugh about it. That man plays a guitar like a man with no hands!



Brotha can play some blues, even if he is a numpty at times!

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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Brotha can play some blues, even if he is a numpty at times!


Hahaha!

I play like a man with no hands also!

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 7, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> Hahaha!
> 
> I play like a man with no hands also!



Anyone here wanting to hear some good blues, look up the Cruiser Blues band. He's the best lefty guitarist I've heard ...




































... the last week or so.

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## John Vasco (Feb 7, 2022)

Here's another Dackelbauch that took part in the raid against the east coast of England on 15th August 1940
Messerschmitt Bf110D-0(3182). Returned damaged in attack by fighters off English east coast 1.00 p.m. FF Oberlt Gordon Gollob unhurt, BF Uffz Friedrich Meyer slightly wounded - admitted to hospital in Leeuwarden. Aircraft M8+PL 15% damaged but repairable.




One of the lucky ones.

Gollob survived the war. Don't know what ultimately happened to Meyer.

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## Dimlee (Feb 7, 2022)

It seems that Bf 110 of the BoB period deserves its place in that thread:





Most 'Underrated' Aircraft of WW2?


Following from the excellent question posed by Lucky13, I'd like to know what aircraft people think has received a raw deal. A number of the polls here have argued over the worst aircraft, sometimes basing their views on dated information, or information passed down from those with prejudiced...



ww2aircraft.net

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 7, 2022)

Sorry. I was referring to the 15 August 1940 mission. Funny how things get garbled between brain and fingers.


John Vasco said:


> 14th May does seem a bit early. I know that Kettling's Gruppe (I./ZG 76) did try experimentally fitting wing tanks as well as having the Dackelbauch, but I believe the German Air Ministry jumped on that once they heard about it.
> 
> Must have a word with Chris (as fellow researchers, we have been in touch for decades, and still keep in touch now).
> 
> ...


.

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## Spindash64 (Feb 11, 2022)

The 109, hands down.

Yes, the Mustang gets more hype than it deserves, but it was still an excellent aircraft with few vices

Yes, the Spitfire had problems, but it was a war winner in performance in every mark but the V, and even then it wasn’t out of the fight

No, these planes had problems, but in the 1944 45 era we typically think of for the “best planes” of the ETO, they were very good. The same cannot be said of the Bf 109s, which had become incredibly overweight, and even with much more powerful engines, the design was simply not up to the task anymore. Trying to take off or land from even an EARLY model was difficult, doing so in a Gustav or Kurfürst was a deathwish for a new pilot.

The Germans actually wanted to replace it years ago, but the Me 309 and 209V II projects failed, and the 190 didn’t have enough power at bomber height until the Jumo 213 was introduced



I can’t think of many other cases where people call a BAD version of an aircraft a GOOD aircraft

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## pbehn (Feb 11, 2022)

Spindash64 said:


> The 109, hands down.
> 
> Yes, the Mustang gets more hype than it deserves, but it was still an excellent aircraft with few vices
> 
> ...


It did play a part in the invasion of Poland, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Russia and others, so not too shoddy, and one of the few that was there at the beginning and the end.

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## SaparotRob (Feb 11, 2022)

That’s the problem with which plane is overrated. The planes in question were, at one time or another, great. What grabbed the headlines often? It’s really which plane had the better press corps.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 11, 2022)

I wouldn't call it overrated, but the -109 was by 1944 really outside its useful updating shelf-life. It seems it outgrew its ability to be upgraded. It could be, however, still a very dangerous airplane.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 11, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> That’s the problem with which plane is overrated. The planes in question were, at one time or another, great. What grabbed the headlines often? It’s really which plane had the better press corps.

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## GrauGeist (Feb 11, 2022)

The Bf109, for all it's negatives, was still a dangerous opponent even in the last days of the war, where many of it's early contemporaries had become relegated to second line duties as the war and technology progressed.

Several key issues hampered it's effectiveness in the last month's of the war, such as declining pilot experience, lack of fuel and spare parts plus overwhelming Allied numerical superiority - meaning that every time a Bf109 went up, there were scores of Allied fighters waiting for it, like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat.

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## tomo pauk (Feb 11, 2022)

P-38 may be a contender here?

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 11, 2022)

tomo pauk said:


> P-38 may be a contender here?


Depends where and when you're talking about. I think a lot of hype was always centered around the P-38, (mainly because of it's pre-war accolades) as the US entered WW2. It can be said in the bigger picture it was somewhat of a disappointment in the ETO (as this been beat to death) but you also have to put some blame on "operator error" which at times seems to be conveniently ignored. During Torch, P-38s were diverted away from the PTO (to the dismay of General Kenny who couldn't get enough of them). In the PTO, as we know, quite a different story.

I guess it could be considered if you don't like twin engine fighters!


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## tomo pauk (Feb 11, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Depends where and when you're talking about.



That's kinda my point, too. 
We have some aircraft (Zero, Bf 109) wiping the floor with Allied 'B Team', but when the Allied 'A Team' enters the fray, those tend to loose. P-38 was doing the same with Axis B Team, it's succes vs. Axis A Team was spotty. However, the P-38 rarely if gest bad press (usually it's heaps of laurels), unlike the Bf 109 or Zero.


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## Greg Boeser (Feb 11, 2022)

Home team bias.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 11, 2022)

tomo pauk said:


> That's kinda my point, too.
> We have some aircraft (Zero, Bf 109) wiping the floor with Allied 'B Team', but when the Allied 'A Team' enters the fray, those tend to loose. P-38 was doing the same with Axis B Team, it's succes vs. Axis A Team was spotty. However, the P-38 rarely if gest bad press (usually it's heaps of laurels), unlike the Bf 109 or Zero.


Well I think the P 38 fought ”A“ teams quite well at least statistically. Even in the ETO it’s air to air claims versus losses numbers are at least close to 1 to 1, not bad when you consider many inadequately trained P-38 pilots were thrown into combat against many seasoned Luftwaffe veterans. Where I think the P 38 is severely underrated in the ETO is when it was used as a fighter bomber and ground support aircraft, I have spoken to many P 51 pilots who although recognized the superiority of the Mustang, would choose the P 38 on ground attack missions. When the P 38 entered operations in the PTO, I think there were still plenty of “A“ pilots around.

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## pbehn (Feb 11, 2022)

Curiously, the over rated aircraft were produced in their thousands whilst the underrated aircraft stayed on the drawing board. What would the air war look like without the overrated P-51, P-38, P-47, F4F, F4U, Spitfire, Hurricane, Bf109, FW 190 and Zero? You cannot compare the Hurricane's performance to a Tempest, but you cannot compare the Tempest's contribution to the the Hurricane.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 11, 2022)

pbehn said:


> Curiously, the over rated aircraft were produced in their thousands whilst the underrated aircraft stayed on the drawing board. What would the air war look like without the overrated P-51, P-38, P-47, F4F, F4U, Spitfire, Hurricane, Bf109, FW 190 and Zero? You cannot compare the Hurricane's performance to a Tempest, but you cannot compare the Tempest's contribution to the the Hurricane.



"The proof of the pudding is in the eating." So-called "underrated" aircraft as listed in that thread seem for the most part to have been passed over in large part because they did not perform as well as these "overrated" aircraft you've compiled from this thread here.

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## GrauGeist (Feb 11, 2022)

The fastest way to determine an "over-rated" or "under-rated" aircraft, is to remove it from the equation and see how the war (or key battles) would have been altered by that type's absence.

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## pbehn (Feb 11, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." So-called "underrated" aircraft as listed in that thread seem for the most part to have been passed over in large part because they did not perform as well as these "overrated" aircraft you've compiled from this thread here.


And in legalese "time is of the essence of the contract". The Gloster Whittle 28/39 took to the air in April 1941, the Germans had jets flying before that. All piston powered aircraft were racing against time to make an impact before they were obsolete.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 11, 2022)

pbehn said:


> And in legalese "time is of the essence of the contract". The Gloster Whittle 28/39 took to the air in April 1941, the Germans had jets flying before that. All piston powered aircraft were racing against time to make an impact before they were obsolete.



The time frame defines the standard of quality.


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## NTGray (Feb 12, 2022)

Let's remember that the question is about which planes were over-_*rated*_. That is, which planes did not actually deserve the _level of praise_ typically heaped upon them. So, this conversation is all about our opinion of other people's opinions, not the objectively measurable actual _performance_ of the plane in question. So maybe we think that, yeah, the P-51 was a good plane, but it wasn't _that_ good. 
Which planes were _*under*_-rated is a separate question, but obviously it is related. Maybe there should have been more than 364 F7Fs built. Either way, those are legitimate expressions of _opinion_.
And I stand by my opinion that the most over-rated plane of them all is the Zero, a decent enough plane, but totally undeserving (based strictly on the numbers) of its initial awesome reputation.

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## Venturi (Feb 12, 2022)

Wildcat - nothing close to it in USN in 1941/2.
P-40 - nothing close to it in USAAC in 1941/2. Also why is this in the over rated thread?
Zeke - not over rated. Terribly effective until P-38, Corsair.
Bf-109 - one of the best of the war esp considering it’s low construction cost
Spitfire - one of the best of the war despite its inability to escort strategic bombers long range
P-47 - a capable plane at a high altitude with longish range, where it was needed
Corsair - deadly and demonstrated a whole new performance envelope over Zeke, hampered by landing problems on CVs, something only the Brits could solve because otherwise… Seafires (with airframe issues)
Hellcat - the right plane for the right job, not a world beater but a solid step above the Zeke in most categories
Fw-190 - fastest plane in the sky initially. Not all that good at a dogfight. Later, does it do a good job against the bombers of 1944 at 20-25k feet? Argument might be made here. 
P-51 - the best American fighter of the war, with range of the Zero, speed and altitude capability of P-47, turning performance between Fw-190 and Bf-109 (better depending on speed).
P-38 - Excellent turner, good range, good speed, heavy armament. complicated to operate. Good against most but pilot workload an issue. Boom and Zoom against Zekes lowered workload compared to high altitude ETO and improved effectiveness for most pilots. Change my mind. 
P-39 - not overrated. Lol
Hurricane - Solid for 1940…
Macchi 202 - not many guns, good aerobatic show plane..

What I would like to see is an in depth analysis of the Russian aircraft… these seem to me to be under represented in these discussions but definitely should have their place. The Mig-1, Yak-1/3/9, La-5, Lagg-3…

Thanks to those who have given their time and much real source material to this thread. As always these individuals are what brings me to read here..

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 12, 2022)

Venturi said:


> P-38 - Excellent turner, good range, good speed, heavy armament. complicated to operate. Good against most but pilot workload an issue. Boom and Zoom against Zekes lowered workload compared to high altitude ETO and improved effectiveness for most pilots. *Change my mind.*


Training, training, training...

It was complicated to operate because it was a twin (two of everything) and if you look at it's systems and layout was no more complicated than the Mosquito, Beaufighter or Bf 110.

2-300 hours+ of multi engine time (twins) "would have" saved many green pilots.

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## Venturi (Feb 12, 2022)

Yeah training is what it always comes down to. Of course in 1942 we were traumatized, panicked, and needed pilots STAT - nevermind airframes. Wartime brings a new meaning to the term expedience , especially if it seems you’re losing, and it does cost..


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## GrauGeist (Feb 12, 2022)

Venturi said:


> Corsair - deadly and demonstrated a whole new performance envelope over Zeke, hampered by landing problems on CVs, something only the Brits could solve


The FAA Corsair pilots were trained by the USN in carrier ops.

For some reason the myth that the British "solved" several of the Corsair's carrier related issues is a persistant one.

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## wuzak (Feb 13, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Training, training, training...
> 
> It was complicated to operate because it was a twin (two of everything) and if you look at it's systems and layout was no more complicated than the Mosquito, Beaufighter or Bf 110.
> 
> 2-300 hours+ of multi engine time (twins) "would have" saved many green pilots.



Did the turbochargers and their controls add a bit of complexity for the pilot?


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## Geoffrey Sinclair (Feb 13, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> The Croydon raid by Erprobungsgruppe 210 I mentioned in another post. 111 Squadron was one of the two squadrons to intercept the unit, yet at the Public Record Office (PRO), now the National Archive, I could only find 5 combat reports of the 9 who were scrambled. It was only when I consulted the Squadron Operations Record Book (ORB) and the Intelligence Summary that I found out that only 5 of the 9 engaged.


I understood it was a regular occurrence that only a portion of a fighter formation would actually open fire in an intercept. There is Malan's rules about teamwork and top cover for systematic reasons why, so those pilots who do not fire are contributing. Beyond that setting up a shot tends to lose you situational awareness, making a good number 2 valuable including while you figure out what to do next. As the formations close the fighter leaders will be moving to set up the best intercept as they see it, which usually seems to leave some pilots without obvious targets, or the same target, then there the faulty estimates of range and speed ruining the chance of a shot, pilots overshooting and losing touch, being in the middle of a fight, where it seems someone is always about to get on your tail or is shooting at you, plus hitting slipstreams and avoiding all the other solid objects in the airspace. And so on.

In WWI the Germans pulled the good pilots into the same unit and discovered this, regularly not all fighter pilots in a combat will be in a position to actually open fire, best to leave the better pilots as leaders of other units, not juniors in the elite unit.


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## drgondog (Feb 13, 2022)

Venturi said:


> Wildcat - nothing close to it in USN in 1941/2.
> P-40 - nothing close to it in USAAC in 1941/2. Also why is this in the over rated thread?
> Zeke - not over rated. Terribly effective until P-38, Corsair.
> Bf-109 - one of the best of the war esp considering it’s low construction cost
> ...


P-38 was superior to the P-40 in 1941/42. The P-40 was superior in roll and turn but P-38 would always be able to extend if combat scenario not favorable.

I know I bash the P-39 but consider that VVS preferred P-39 over P-40 and P51 (NA-73/83) because it fit VVS battle doctrine better.

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## DarrenW (Feb 13, 2022)

Venturi said:


> Wildcat - nothing close to it in USN in 1941/2.
> P-40 - nothing close to it in USAAC in 1941/2. Also why is this in the over rated thread?
> Zeke - not over rated. Terribly effective until P-38, Corsair.
> Bf-109 - one of the best of the war esp considering it’s low construction cost
> ...


If the British FAA never adopted the Corsair they still would have had the Hellcat which was able to deliver the same capabilities as the former. This would make it a "world beater" as far as carrier fighters are concerned.

I do agree however with most of the other points you make.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 13, 2022)

drgondog said:


> P-38 was superior to the P-40 in 1941/42. The P-40 was superior in roll and turn but P-38 would always be able to extend if combat scenario not favorable.
> 
> I know I bash the P-39 but consider that VVS preferred P-39 over P-40 and P51 (NA-73/83) because it fit VVS battle doctrine better.



For those reasons I don’t consider the 39 overrated. I just don’t put it on a mythical pedestal like a certain person we know does.

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## Howard Gibson (Feb 13, 2022)

Venturi said:


> What I would like to see is an in depth analysis of the Russian aircraft… these seem to me to be under represented in these discussions but definitely should have their place. The Mig-1, Yak-1/3/9, La-5, Lagg-3…


Why did the Russians like the P-39 so much? This may be the answer to your question.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 13, 2022)

wuzak said:


> Did the turbochargers and their controls add a bit of complexity for the pilot?


IMO, no. There are manifold pressure limits shown in the flight manual and vary depending on what turbo (B-13 or B-33) is in the aircraft flown, I believe the P-38H could have either/ or. P-38J and later used the B-33 turbo. The turbos were controlled with the throttles and light illuminated when you were going into over-speed. Late P-38J and P-38Ls had supercharger regulators that prevented over-speed and did not have warning lights.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 13, 2022)

Venturi said:


> Yeah training is what it always comes down to. Of course in 1942 we were traumatized, panicked, and needed pilots STAT - nevermind airframes. Wartime brings a new meaning to the term expedience , especially if it seems you’re losing, and it does cost..


There were plenty of pilot trainees coming down the pipe when the war started for the US.

_When France fell to Germany in 1940, the Air Corps increased the number of pilots to be trained to 7,000 per year. By December 1941, the Air Corps had contracted with 45 civilian flying schools, and by 1943 the number increased to 63.

In the first class at Randolph Field in 1939, only 257 pilots graduated. In contrast, by the end of 1941 over 2,000 were enrolled in each class._









Flight Training on the Eve of WWII


During the Depression of the 1930s, the number of pilots the U.S. Army Air Corps trained decreased until in 1937 only 184 graduated from advanced pilot training. Facing resurgent German militarism and



www.nationalmuseum.af.mil





The issue was the AAC/ AAF did not have a good high performance twin engine trainer for transition into the P-38. Some of the more successful P-38 drivers managed to get some time flying either the A-20 or B-25, I think the later was preferred. 
Here's a good article that describes trainee pilots transitioning from the P-63 to the P-38. 









Pacific Northwest Lightning: Portland's P-38 Lightning Flying Training Program of 1944 - 1


Many today may be familiar with the Portland Thunder professional arena football team, but how many are familiar with the Portland Lightning's? Of the P-38 variety, that is.Twin-engine fighter planes



www.142fw.ang.af.mil

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## Venturi (Feb 13, 2022)

Great post. Some very knowledgeable people here and I always pay attention to their comments.

And I of course agree with drgondog. P38 far superior to P40 in performance (also beautiful).

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## NTGray (Feb 13, 2022)

Venturi said:


> Zeke - not over rated. Terribly effective until P-38, Corsair.


Not correct, according to the numbers. The initial success of the A6M0 was more due to surprise than anything else. It did in fact outmaneuver everything else; nobody disputes that. Wildcat pilots were told not to engage a Zero in a dogfight, because they would lose. However, after the Americans had time to analyze the Zero's strengths and weaknesses, they were able to come up with tactics that emphasized the Wildcat's strengths and negated the Zero's advantages. The result was that in the period from May to August, 1942, the Wildcat:Zero kill ratio was slightly better than 1:1, showing that at the very least the Wildcat was _just as good as_ the Zero in head-to-head combat. And by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign the Wildcat:Zero kill ratio was approaching 6:1. So being _more maneuverable_ did not directly translate to being a better airplane to be flying.

BTW, there was a saying about teamwork among Navy pilots that went like this: "A Wildcat is no match for a Zero. But two Wildcats can take on four Zeroes." It was all about tactics and teamwork, and using the Wildcat's strengths to best advantage.

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## NTGray (Feb 13, 2022)

GrauGeist said:


> For some reason the myth that the British "solved" several of the Corsair's carrier related issues is a persistant one.


I have been led to believe that it was the British who devised the turning approach to a carrier, giving the pilot good visibility right up until the last moment, when he had to trust the LSO. (But didn't trust in the LSO _always_ play a key role?) So, is that not correct? What else are the British credited with that is not necessarily accurate?


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## SaparotRob (Feb 13, 2022)

Ya' got me on that one!


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 13, 2022)

From a performance, achievement, and technological standpoint, none of the main fighters can be considered overrated. That includes the P-51, Fw 190, Bf 109, Spitfire, Zero, etc. The fact that the Bf 109 was still a more than capable fighter in 1945 (a decade after its introduction) is an attest to its design, performance, and achievements.

I voted for the P-51. Not because I think it was overrated. On the contrary, I think it was the overall best fighter of the war. Not the best at everything, but just the best at a combination of everything if that makes sense. Rather, I find it is overrated by people today (and not people in this forum that are knowledgable). They probably have all their knowledge on WW2 aviation from watching Memphis Belle or Red Tails. It may even be because of national pride, I don’t know. For so many people its the only aircraft they seem to know.

Typical conversation with your average American…

_“Man the Spitfire was a sexy and powerful machine. It really came at the right time for the Battle of Britain.”

“Yeah, but what about the P-51???!! Greatest airplane ever made. The best of the best, most superior of all! If it was not for the P-51, the British would be speaking German!”

“Ummm, no, it if it were not for the Spitfire and Hurricane, and the Royal Navy (Besides the fact that there was no way for the Germans to get an invasion force across the Channel) there would not even be this natural aircraft carrier parked off the European continent for your P-51 to operate off of. Slow you roll…”_



Too many people simply forget there were many different types of aircraft that all contributed to victory in WW2

_“What’s your favorite bomber?”

“P-51, duh. What else is there?”_

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## SaparotRob (Feb 13, 2022)

I recently was involved in such a conversation. I just nod and smile.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 13, 2022)

NTGray said:


> I have been led to believe that it was the British who devised the turning approach to a carrier, giving the pilot good visibility right up until the last moment, when he had to trust the LSO. (But didn't trust in the LSO _always_ play a key role?) So, is that not correct? What else are the British credited with that is not necessarily accurate?


This myth is well busted in the book "The Jolly Rogers" by Tom Blackburn. Written by the CO of VF-17, the source doesn't get any better!

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## DarrenW (Feb 13, 2022)

NTGray said:


> I have been led to believe that it was the British who devised the turning approach to a carrier, giving the pilot good visibility right up until the last moment, when he had to trust the LSO. (But didn't trust in the LSO _always_ play a key role?) So, is that not correct? What else are the British credited with that is not necessarily accurate?


US Navy F4Us had been performing that particular turning approach from the very beginning. It was modifications to the landing gear oleos and the addition of a stall strip on starboard wing which really improved the Corsair's ability to safely land on carriers.

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## pbehn (Feb 13, 2022)

DarrenW said:


> US Navy F4Us had been performing that particular turning approach from the very beginning. It was modifications to the landing gear oleos and the addition of a stall strip on starboard wing which really improved the Corsair's ability to safely land on carriers.


Pilots had been using a curved approach to an airfield since WW1.

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## DarrenW (Feb 13, 2022)

NTGray said:


> What else are the British credited with that is not necessarily accurate?


The British devised a lot of wonderful things during the war but unfortunately the Corsair's carrier landing approach wasn't one of them.

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## GrauGeist (Feb 13, 2022)

Some of the other pervasive myths about the Corsair were the British clipped the wings 8 inches to solve the sink rate - the 8 inch wing reduction was to allow it to fit in the carrier's hangar, the sink rate was a by product.

The stiff Oleo was a problem that Vought was aware of and the issue was resolved by VF-17 and Vought's engineer Jack Hospers, who changed the air-oil ratio.
The stall strip was also a result of teamwork between VF-17 and Jack Hospers.

The F4U-A1 was a result of VF-17 (and Hosper's) efforts.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 13, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> I recently was involved in such a conversation. I just nod and smile.



Just go to the majority of website or facebook comment sections. lol

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## NTGray (Feb 13, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> This myth is well busted in the book "The Jolly Rogers" by Tom Blackburn. Written by the CO of VF-17, the source doesn't get any better!


Great!
Ummm. . .what did he say??

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## NTGray (Feb 13, 2022)

pbehn said:


> Pilots had been using a curved approach to an airfield since WW1.


I know the standard "enter the pattern, downwind leg, base leg, and final approach" used at general aviation airports, and I used to own a house where I could sit in the back yard, look straight up, and watch the Cessnas and others make the turn from downwind to base leg for the nearby GA field. So what did the British contribute (or not contribute) to Corsair carrier approaches?


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## pbehn (Feb 13, 2022)

NTGray said:


> I know the standard "enter the pattern, downwind leg, base leg, and final approach" used at general aviation airports, and I used to own a house where I could sit in the back yard, look straight up, and watch the Cessnas and others make the turn from downwind to base leg for the nearby GA field. So what did the British contribute (or not contribute) to Corsair carrier approaches?


As I understand it, in the Corsair the approach was at just above deck height, this kept the "bat man in view and minimised bounce, but I dont see how such a thing could be "patented" it is the logical thing to do.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 13, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Great!
> Ummm. . .what did he say??


Read the book and find out! 😬

There's a whole chapter of how his squadron took delivery of some of the first F4Us and got carrier qualified, well before any Corsairs reached the FAA.

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 13, 2022)

Tom Blackburn was CO of VF-17, the original fighter squadron assigned to CV 17, _Bunker Hill. _Equipped with F4U-1s during the shakedown cruise of Bunker Hill, they worked out the necessary procedures for operating F4Us from a carrier. As mentioned above, recommendations by Blackburn and others involved in the trials were incorporated into the F4U-1A. VF-17 recieved F4U-1As prior to Bunker Hill's departure for duty in the Pacific, but the squadron was beached at Pearl Harbor in favor of standardizing carrier-borne squadrons with F6Fs. VF-17 operated from shore in the Solomons late '43 to early '44.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 13, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Tom Blackburn was CO of VF-17, the original fighter squadron assigned to CV 17, _Bunker Hill. _Equipped with F4U-1s during the shakedown cruise of Bunker Hill, they worked out the necessary procedures for operating F4Us from a carrier. As mentioned above, recommendations by Blackburn and others involved in the trials were incorporated into the F4U-1A. VF-17 recieved F4U-1As prior to Bunker Hill's departure for duty in the Pacific, but the squadron was beached at Pearl Harbor in favor of standardizing carrier-borne squadrons with F6Fs. VF-17 operated from shore in the Solomons late '43 to early '44.


And it seems he (Blackburn) was rather disappointed when VF-17 was assigned as a shore based unit

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## NTGray (Feb 13, 2022)

Here is an article, at the _Smithsonian_ web site, that says pretty much the same thing I've read in other places. They talk about the oleos and the stall strip being fixed by Americans, but still credit the British with changing the landing approach. If it's a myth, why is it so durable?









How the Navy Tamed the “Killer Corsair”


A little piece of aluminum solved the WW2 fighter’s vicious behavior problem.




www.smithsonianmag.com


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## DarrenW (Feb 13, 2022)

NTGray said:


> If it's a myth, why is it so durable?


Hard to tell. Maybe because the FAA were first to fully implement carrier operations with Corsair??? There are a lot of falsehoods out there that eventually become fact after being shared enough times. There's actually a thread on this forum which has countless examples of this sort of phenomenon.

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## SaparotRob (Feb 13, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Here is an article, at the _Smithsonian_ web site, that says pretty much the same thing I've read in other places. They talk about the oleos and the stall strip being fixed by Americans, but still credit the British with changing the landing approach. If it's a myth, why is it so durable?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Because sources like this keep repeating it.

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 13, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> And it seems he (Blackburn) was rather disappointed when VF-17 was assigned as a shore based unit


Wouldn't you be? Months training on board your carrier, and then poof! No more ice cream.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 13, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> And it seems he (Blackburn) was rather disappointed when VF-17 was assigned as a shore based unit



Harder to keep up with the action, I can understand any fighter's disappointment with that. When you want to scrap, you gotta be where the scrap is!

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 13, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Wouldn't you be? Months training on board your carrier, and then poof! No more ice cream.


Absolutely! Especially when he jumped through hoops to get his squadron trained and combat ready.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 13, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Wouldn't you be? Months training on board your carrier, and then poof! No more ice cream.



You callin' them gedunk pilots?!

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## Vincenzo (Feb 13, 2022)

NTGray said:


> And by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign the Wildcat:Zero kill ratio was approaching 6:1. So being _more maneuverable_ did not directly translate to being a better airplane to be flying.


AFAIK was more on 1.6:1

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## nuuumannn (Feb 13, 2022)

DarrenW said:


> If the British FAA never adopted the Corsair they still would have had the Hellcat which was able to deliver the same capabilities as the former.



The FAA had both. With a few exceptions, such as the Chesapeake (SB2U), it wholeheartedly welcomed the US carrier types with open arms, especially combat aircraft. Not only were they well built for the job, they were available in numbers. The Avenger, Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair saw extensive use in FAA squadrons on British carriers.



FLYBOYJ said:


> This myth is well busted in the book "The Jolly Rogers" by Tom Blackburn. Written by the CO of VF-17, the source doesn't get any better!



Now, we've mentioned this before, guys, this continuous dispelling of long held myths with factual evidence has to stop...

Seriously though, I'm surprised how long-legged this one has gotten.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 13, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> The FAA had both. With a few exceptions, such as the Chesapeake (SB2U), it wholeheartedly welcomed the US carrier types with open arms, especially combat aircraft. Not only were they well built for the job, they were available in numbers. The Avenger, Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair saw extensive use in FAA squadrons on British carriers.



I've always thought it remarkable how adaptable the RN was, with carrier ops, in working with American types, what with the different kit and specs that that implies.

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## nuuumannn (Feb 13, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> I've always thought it remarkable how adaptable the RN was,



Say what you will about the British, but they are masters of getting the best out of the equipment they have, mediocre or otherwise. That doesn't mean they'll accept any old junk, but when forced to use indifferent types, such as the Skua and Fulmar, they still managed to sink major naval assets and produce fighter aces flying against superior types. 

The US stuff was a godsend to the FAA, not just because of its quality, which was exemplary (you should read just how glowingly Eric Brown speaks about these aircraft, with the exception of the Corsair), but they were able to be delivered and pressed into service very quickly. This was, of course because of the poor state of the FAA before WW2 broke out, which meant that anything that proved to be good was pushed onto the field and thrown at the enemy.

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## DarrenW (Feb 13, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> The FAA had both. With a few exceptions, such as the Chesapeake (SB2U), it wholeheartedly welcomed the US carrier types with open arms, especially combat aircraft. Not only were they well built for the job, they were available in numbers. The Avenger, Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair saw extensive use in FAA squadrons on British carriers.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yes I was well aware that the FAA flew Hellcats lol. That was my point.

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## nuuumannn (Feb 13, 2022)

DarrenW said:


> Yes I was well aware that the FAA flew Hellcats lol. That was my point.



Indeed, Darren, I get'cha. My point was to emphasis that the FAA took both with open arms and was able to make the most of them, but yes, you're right, the Hellcat alone was a good alternative, and Wildcats were still in operation at the end of the war aboard escort carriers, too.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 13, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Say what you will about the British, but they are masters of getting the best out of the equipment they have, mediocre or otherwise. That doesn't mean they'll accept any old junk, but when forced to use indifferent types, such as the Skua and Fulmar, they still managed to sink major naval assets and produce fighter aces flying against superior types.
> 
> The US stuff was a godsend to the FAA, not just because of its quality, which was exemplary (you should read just how glowingly Eric Brown speaks about these aircraft, with the exception of the Corsair), but they were able to be delivered and pressed into service very quickly. This was, of course because of the poor state of the FAA before WW2 broke out, which meant that anything that proved to be good was pushed onto the field and thrown at the enemy.



Speaking of the Skua, there's another multirole mishmash. Good dive-bomber, but I'll pay you cash money to take my spot in a dogfight if I'm booked for a Skua. I get why they went for it -- out at sea, probably not going to face top-notch fighters ... but they armored the carriers because they envisioned fighting in the North Sea and Med, within enemy fighter range much of the time.

The Fulmar's record is, I think, more a matter of RN having decent radar and protocols rather than a great fighter, but you're right, they got 'er done with it. Whatever it takes.

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## nuuumannn (Feb 13, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Speaking of the Skua, there's another multirole mishmash. Good dive-bomber, but I'll pay you cash money to take my spot in a dogfight if I'm booked for a Skua. I get why they went for it -- out at sea, probably not going to face top-notch fighters ... but they armored the carriers because they envisioned fighting in the North Sea and Med, within enemy fighter range much of the time.
> 
> The Fulmar's record is, I think, more a matter of RN having decent radar and protocols rather than a great fighter, but you're right, they got 'er done with it. Whatever it takes.



Yup, agree. The fighter/dive bomber requirement was decided upon back in 1933, long before any of the guys in the Air Ministry could have had any inkling of the impact that decision had. Nevertheless, before it even entered FAA service in 1937 the Air Ministry expressed its doubts about it, so that never helps, when the one responsible for the idea later thinks it's produced an inferior product because of it. Blackburn designed a fairly average aeroplane that did what it said on the tin; nothing more, and with a little bit less than what was expected, but as a dive bomber it certainly met the criteria and proved itself handy in a fight, again through the determination of the teams operating it rather than through any outstanding characteristics of the machine. It certainly did not introduce any capabilities that didn't exist elsewhere, on both sides of the coin, as an exemplary dive bomber and as a mediocre fighter.

The Fulmar was actually a good aeroplane that met the requirement and fulfilled what was expected of it. It was designed as a stop-gap and was meant to hold the line until something better came along - that that took longer than expected meant the Fulmar was around longer than expected. Nonetheless, it performed very well against the Luftwaffe and the RAI in the Med, where decent radar protocols and what have you were not available when operating from land bases, which the type did. So it is easy to miscast it purely because of its lower performance, but it was actually a good aircraft, just not the best fighter and certainly not what the navy _needed_ out of a fighter at the time. Again, its crews made the type's name as an adequate fighter that in a good pilot's hands made it a handful even for single-seat fighters.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 13, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Yup, agree. The fighter/dive bomber requirement was decided upon back in 1933, long before any of the guys in the Air Ministry could have had any inkling of the impact that decision had. Nevertheless, before it even entered FAA service in 1937 the Air Ministry expressed its doubts about it, so that never helps, when the one responsible for the idea later thinks it's produced an inferior product because of it. Blackburn designed a fairly average aeroplane that did what it said on the tin; nothing more, and with a little bit less than what was expected, but as a dive bomber it certainly met the criteria and proved itself handy in a fight, again through the determination of the teams operating it rather than through any outstanding characteristics of the machine. It certainly did not introduce any capabilities that didn't exist elsewhere, on both sides of the coin, as an exemplary dive bomber and as a mediocre fighter.
> 
> The Fulmar was actually a good aeroplane that met the requirement and fulfilled what was expected of it. It was designed as a stop-gap and was meant to hold the line until something better came along - that that took longer than expected meant the Fulmar was around longer than expected. Nonetheless, it performed very well against the Luftwaffe and the RAI in the Med, where decent radar protocols and what have you were not available when operating from land bases, which the type did. So it is easy to miscast it purely because of its lower performance, but it was actually a good aircraft, just not the best fighter and certainly not what the navy _needed_ out of a fighter at the time. Again, its crews made the type's name as an adequate fighter that in a good pilot's hands made it a handful even for single-seat fighters.



Were I in 1-on-1 air combat I wouldn't want either. The Fulmar managed due to support infrastructure, but the Skua lacked the support as well as being deficient on its own. Not many aircraft-carriers had radar in 1938, so you'd better have a better fighter.

Both are warnings against designing multirole into an aircraft, amongst other planes we could complain about.

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 13, 2022)

JSF?

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## nuuumannn (Feb 13, 2022)

The thing is, it is easy for us, as remote as we are from events between 1939-1945, to make assumptions about these things because of our situational knowledge and the benefits hindsight brings. It's like saying the A6M Zero is overrated - I freely admit this is a bugbear of mine.

Yes, we all know the story, but we were not there when the US Navy pilots came to the dawning realisation that conventional dogfighting tactics that they learned as trainees were just not going to cut it against this aircraft because it out-flew the F4F, it out-manoeuvred the F4F and it had more powerful armament than the F4F and its crews were aggressive and innovative - basically they had the upper hand. I'm pretty certain those navy guys, like Jimmy Thatch and Butch O'Hare, forced to re-evaluate everything they had learned and quickly come up with an alternative on the spot, would _not_ have regarded the Zero as "overrated".

They were forced to re-think their approach. The alternative was death and defeat. That puts the effectiveness of the Zero in a very different context and it is something that is so very often easily forgotten.

Anyway, the Zero is a great example because I see soooo many people bang on about "it had no armour plating or self sealing tanks so it was rubbish", yet NO fighter aircraft the Zero met in combat between 1940 and 1942 had them when they were first designed. They might have by the time they came into contact with the Zero, but as stipulated earlier, that was because the US learned from European combat in 1939/1940 that it was necessary, NOT from its own experiences and certainly not from having to deal with the Zero in 1942. I'm pretty certain the pilots that confronted the Zero were glad it was there, but it didn't always save them.

Another is that "manoeuvrability or acrobatic capability doesn't make a great fighter", yet oddly enough, virtually EVERY nation that built single-seat fighters, from the middle of the Great War to this day even, emphasise manoeuvrability as an asset in a close-in visual fight. The Viper has exceptional manoeuvrability because of its fly-by-wire flight controls. The Sukhoi fighters have vectoring nozzles, they aren't just there to do cool cobra manoeuvres at airshows. The Sopwith Camel and Fokker Dr I are defined in the public eye because of their manoeuvrability. It IS important, and the Japanese had the best naval fighter in the world BAR NONE until the appearance of the F6F because of that manoeuvrability.

Rant over... If you're wondering what's got my heckles up, I've had to go have a COVID test because my girlfriend, who is a nurse has come into contact with a COVID affected person. Dammit, that q-tip swab up the nose is an unpleasant sensation...

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## Admiral Beez (Feb 13, 2022)

The G4M Betty has to be up there. Yes, it did stellar work sinking HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse, but after that I don’t think the Betty found much success at all, with most turning into flaming wrecks. It was no Beaufighter, that’s for certain.


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## BlackSheep (Feb 13, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> _“Ummm, no, it if it were not for the Spitfire and Hurricane, and the Royal Navy (Besides the fact that there was no way for the Germans to get an invasion force across the Channel) there would not even be this natural aircraft carrier parked off the European continent for your P-51 to operate off of. Slow you roll…”_


So, Americans should thank you for existing in large enough form to allow for the operation, storage, and use of uncountable numbers of aircraft, vehicles, equipment, and men to effectively bankroll and hold down more than our share of a fight? Gee, thanks. 
Unrelated but for some reason I’m thinking of a quote from the movie Quigley Down Under…

-Uppity British Major: In our experience, Americans are uncouth misfits who should be run out of their own barbaric country.
-Square-jawed handsome Matthew Quigley: Well, Lieutenant….
-Wormy British Major: ah-hem…Major
-Heroic Manly Matthew Quigley: Major. We already run the misfits outta our country. We sent them back to their natural aircraft carrier errr country. 
😂


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## Shortround6 (Feb 13, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Were I in 1-on-1 air combat I wouldn't want either. The Fulmar managed due to support infrastructure, but the Skua lacked the support as well as being deficient on its own. Not many aircraft-carriers had radar in 1938, so you'd better have a better fighter.
> 
> Both are warnings against designing multirole into an aircraft, amongst other planes we could complain about.


To be fair the most common German fighter in 1937-38 was the Arado AR 68





with the 109B-D taking over. 
The He 51 was not proving to be a success in Spain in 1936-37.




Like several nations the development and production phases took to long. And in the Skua's case there was no MK III version and it took way too long for it's replacement to show up. 

Had the World seen combat during the Munich crisis the aviation world may have looked more kindly on the Skua.

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## nuuumannn (Feb 13, 2022)

BlackSheep said:


> -Uppity British Major: In our experience, Americans are uncouth misfits who should be run out of their own barbaric country.
> -Square-jawed handsome Matthew Quigley: Well, Lieutenant….
> -Wormy British Major: ah-hem…Major
> -Heroic Manly Matthew Quigley: Major. We already run the misfits outta our country. We sent them back to their natural aircraft carrier errr country.



Overheard in a pub somewhere in Suffolk in 1944...

"Americans, always late to a conflict and even then, they never stop whining once they get there..."

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## GrauGeist (Feb 13, 2022)

By the way, one of the best fighters of WWI, the D.VII, was so feared, Germany was not allowed to possess any after the war.


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## BlackSheep (Feb 13, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Overheard in a pub somewhere in Suffolk in 1944...
> 
> "Americans, always late to a conflict and even then, they never stop whining once they get there..."


It was probably one of the same chaps that had been heard complaining how English women were only interested in the young, strapping American soldiers with good manners, good teeth, and full wallets.😂😂😂🇺🇸💪🏻


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## nuuumannn (Feb 13, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> And in the Skua's case there was no MK III version and it took way too long for it's replacement to show up.



And when it did, it was so frightful it scared its enemies into submission... Boy, that Barracuda is a beast.


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## nuuumannn (Feb 13, 2022)

BlackSheep said:


> It was probably one of the same chaps that had been heard complaining how English women were only interested in the young, strapping American soldiers with good manners, good teeth, and full wallets.



American women are of course used to Yanks chasing other women, as Jeremy Clarkson once said, "When you drive the new Dodge Hellcat, you become instantly more attracted to your sister..." 

I'll give you the one about the teeth though...

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## Macandy (Feb 16, 2022)

For all the puffing up of the A6M…

In 1941/2, they were flown by the very best IJN elite pilots, many veterans with years of combat flying over China under their belts.

They were going up often pedestrian pilots, but against competent pilots, the A6M wasn't all that. 
Both RAF pilots in Hurricanes and USN/USMC pilots in F4F's were quite capable of holding their own against them if flown wisely - 2:1 in the Allied pilots favour was not that unusual.

But it was a dwindling resource, it took years to train IJN fighter pilot to the same level as these veterans, and after the catastrophic losses in Pacific in 1942, the A6M was no longer all that with its increasingly poorly trained pilots.

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## Vincenzo (Feb 16, 2022)

Macandy said:


> They were going up often pedestrian pilots, but against competent pilots, the A6M wasn't all that.
> Both RAF pilots in Hurricanes and USN/USMC pilots in F4F's were quite capable of holding their own against them if flown wisely - 2:1 in the Allied pilots favour was not that unusual.


Hurricane were beaten heavy against the Zero around 38 Hurricane for 6 A6M
the F4F could get this rate occasionally but this was not common

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## NTGray (Feb 16, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Another is that "manoeuvrability or acrobatic capability doesn't make a great fighter", yet oddly enough, virtually EVERY nation that built single-seat fighters, from the middle of the Great War to this day even, emphasise manoeuvrability


I don't think anybody would say that maneuverability _doesn't matter_. Of course it does, and everybody wants it in their plane. But maneuverability _alone_ does not make a great plane. The lack of armor and useless radios mattered. Oh, the Zero wasn't alone in having no armor; early Spitfires and Hurricanes and some other planes didn't have armor, either, if I remember correctly. But that deficiency was fixed by the British after combat experience was gained. But the Zero never had armor added. (Not in time to matter, anyway; I don't know about late in the war.) And since the Wildcat _did_ have armor, it mattered a lot that the Zero didn't. The Wildcats also had radios that actually worked, and the Zeroes didn't. Good, rapid communication made tight teamwork possible.


> the F4F could get this rate [2:1 kill ratio] occasionally but this was not common


The ratio got better as time went on. It was around or slightly better than 1:1 at first, but with experience, improved tactics, and training, it improved to nearly 6:1 by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign. But the phenomenal early reputation didn't die, because early reputations tend to live forever regardless of new information.

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## Vincenzo (Feb 16, 2022)

NTGray said:


> The ratio got better as time went on. It was around or slightly better than 1:1 at first, but with experience, improved tactics, and training, it improved to nearly 6:1 by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign. But the phenomenal early reputation didn't die, because early reputations tend to live forever regardless of new information.


I've already replied on Guadalcanal, "AFAIK was more on 1.6:1"

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 16, 2022)

NTGray said:


> The ratio got better as time went on. It was around or slightly better than 1:1 at first, but with experience, improved tactics, and training, it improved to nearly 6:1 by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign. But the phenomenal early reputation didn't die, because early reputations tend to live forever regardless of new information.


I'm not 100% on this but I believe that 6:1 kill ratio for the F4F over Guadalcanal was against all aircraft, I think it was 1.6:1 against the Zero specifically as Vincenzo pointed out.

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## Vincenzo (Feb 16, 2022)

Specifically they started with a 1:4.5 in favor of the Zero, and in all the Guadalcanal campaign was around 1.1:1 in favor of the Wildcat

all this from the old posts of JoeB from the Shore and other books

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## Clayton Magnet (Feb 16, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Oh, the Zero wasn't alone in having no armor; early Spitfires and Hurricanes and some other planes didn't have armor, either, if I remember correctly. But that deficiency was fixed by the British after combat experience was gained. But the Zero never had armor added. (Not in time to matter, anyway; I don't know about late in the war.) And since the Wildcat _did_ have armor, it mattered a lot that the Zero didn't


Keeping in mind that the Wildcat didn't have armour until well after Pearl Harbor.


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## NTGray (Feb 16, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> I'm not 100% on this but I believe that 6:1 kill ratio for the F4F over Guadalcanal was against all aircraft, I think it was 1.6:1 against the Zero specifically as Vincenzo pointed out.


I can only quote a source that appeared to me to be trustworthy:
"By the end of the Battle for Guadalcanal on February 3rd​, 1943, records show that Navy and Marine Corps aviators shot down *5.9 Zeros for every Wildcat lost*. When the Japanese surrendered in September 1945, the Wildcat to Zero exchange ratio had increased to 6.9 to one."








Wildcat vs. Zero – Resetting the Record


Conventional wisdom says that the performance of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero-Sen (Zero) was far superior to the Grumman F4F Wildcat. However, if that is truly the c




marcliebman.com




Anybody have more precise information?

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## buffnut453 (Feb 16, 2022)

NTGray said:


> I can only quote a source that appeared to me to be trustworthy:
> "By the end of the Battle for Guadalcanal on February 3rd​, 1943, records show that Navy and Marine Corps aviators shot down *5.9 Zeros for every Wildcat lost*. When the Japanese surrendered in September 1945, the Wildcat to Zero exchange ratio had increased to 6.9 to one."
> 
> 
> ...



I suspect he's using claims of Zeros shot down vs actual Wildcat losses...but happy to be proven wrong.

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## NTGray (Feb 16, 2022)

Clayton Magnet said:


> Keeping in mind that the Wildcat didn't have armour until well after Pearl Harbor.


Sometimes different sources will say different things, but this one says, "The remaining F4F-3As were handed over to the US Navy, which quickly field-modified them. *Starting in September 1941* the cockpits had built in armor, as in the F4F-3 version. Following the outbreak of war other modifications were incorporated. Self-sealing fuel tanks, *additional *cockpit armor, , ,

Grumman F4F Wildcat (p.5)

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## Shortround6 (Feb 16, 2022)

Clayton Magnet said:


> Keeping in mind that the Wildcat didn't have armour until well after Pearl Harbor.


Define "well after" 

From Mr Williams site. 
Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation
Report No. 1469A
*August 12, 1941*
Detail Specification
For
Model F4F-3 Airplane






F4F Performance Trials


WWII Aircraft Performance, wartime flight trials and reports of F4F aircraft.F4F data.



www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org




The weight charts show both armor and protected tanks.

I am not saying that all F4F-3s got them or even most. 
But certainly 4 months before Pearl Harbor the intention was there, the weight specifications were there, the performance specifications with the extra weight were there. 

Planes that were in use may have take time to modify but if they were doing that for the F4F-3 then how many F4F-4s were built without armor or protected tanks?

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## Clayton Magnet (Feb 16, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Define "well after"


I based my comment from this source, albeit, probably a shaky one at best...

"_The French had sought some refinements to the G-36 design: A reflector gunsight was fitted and, according to FAA Observer David Brown, some armour and fuel tank protection was installed in this variant. The USN would not get the reflector site on its Wildcats until 1941, _*nor armour until 1942*."









Armoured Aircraft Carriers


An overview of the production models of the Grumman Martlet, its evolution and changing specifications.




www.armouredcarriers.com


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## nuuumannn (Feb 16, 2022)

NTGray said:


> don't think anybody would say that maneuverability _doesn't matter_. Of course it does, and everybody wants it in their plane. But maneuverability _alone_ does not make a great plane. The lack of armor and useless radios mattered. Oh, the Zero wasn't alone in having no armor; early Spitfires and Hurricanes and some other planes didn't have armor, either, if I remember correctly. But that deficiency was fixed by the British after combat experience was gained. _But the Zero never had armor added. (Not in time to matter, anyway; I don't know about late in the war.)_ And since the Wildcat _did_ have armor, it mattered a lot that the Zero didn't. The Wildcats also had radios that actually worked, and the Zeroes didn't. Good, rapid communication made tight teamwork possible.



Perhaps you should do a bit more reading, because it appears you are shooting from the hip and hanging on to old preconceptions and the typical US stereotypes around the aircraft. Zeros_ were_ fitted with armour plating in their career, _and _self-sealing tanks. As mentioned in an earlier post, it took the Japanese hierarchy longer to do so than other countries. Placing that on the Zero ignores this fundamental truth.

As for the Wildcat against the Zero, again, you and too many others simply ignore that the Zero outperformed the Wildcat in almost every way in 1941/1942. The US Navy pilots _had _to take measures in changing their tactics because the Japanese had a weapon with which they could beat them. Again, I'm pretty certain Jimmy Thach didn't regard the Zero as "overrated".

As for manoeuvrability being the sole thing the Zero has going for it, seriously? _From 1940 to 1942 the A6M was the world's best carrier based fighter_, mind you, as I've mentioned, the competition isn't sterling, but that is an undisputed fact. It was capable of the same or better speeds than its carrier based contemporaries, it had a_ far_ greater range than its contemporaries, apart from the Fulmar and its eight machine guns it had equal if not better armament than its contemporaries, and it was available in numbers, not to mention the general aptitude displayed by its pilots. The Zero was the top of the food chain from when it entered service for the next two years, so I reckon it didn't have_ just_ manoeuvrability going for it.

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 16, 2022)

Marine F4F-3s at Wake had bulletproof windscreens and reflector sights but not back armor. Only one had self-sealing tanks.

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## nuuumannn (Feb 16, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Marine F4F-3s at Wake had bulletproof windscreens and reflector sights but not back armor. Only one had self-sealing tanks.



Yup, and not every F4F-3 that had been delivered to the navy had been modified by the time the Japanese attacked Pearl, but our friend keeps ignoring these pesky facts in an attempt to discredit the Zero. As recounted earlier, the Japanese were patently aware of these shortcomings in their aircraft, but took their time about implementing them (I distinctly recall making a wise crack at how the Japanese war council actively worked against its combat units at times), whereas the US armed forces acted relatively quickly and both the AAF and the navy had aircraft equipped with them by the time they went into action. Not every aircraft, but more than they had beforehand.


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## Greg Boeser (Feb 16, 2022)

VF-6 aboard _Enterprise _fitted their F4F-3s with improvised back armor prior to 1Feb '42 Marshall Islands raid. Don't know about the Lexington air group. I'm guessing that the changeover from unarmored windscreen to armored windscreen happened at the same time as the introduction of reflector sights. Telescopic sight protruded through earlier windscreen.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 16, 2022)

NTGray said:


> I can only quote a source that appeared to me to be trustworthy:
> "By the end of the Battle for Guadalcanal on February 3rd​, 1943, records show that Navy and Marine Corps aviators shot down *5.9 Zeros for every Wildcat lost*. When the Japanese surrendered in September 1945, the Wildcat to Zero exchange ratio had increased to 6.9 to one."
> 
> 
> ...


I think "The First Team" (John Lundstrom) has a more accurate picture of this (I don't have a copy of the book). A comment about this subject from another forum:

_"From February through June 1942, the Navy's fighting squadrons shot down seventeen Japanese carrier fighters (three Mitsubishi A5M4 Type 96 carrier fighters and fourteen Zero fighters, with sixteen pilots killed), while losing to them in aerial combat only ten Wildcats (seven pilots killed)." Since the book recounts virtually every air battle usually from both sides these figures are about as accurate as you are going to get, albeit the sample_

Maybe someone on here who has "The First Team" can add to this.

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## nuuumannn (Feb 16, 2022)

I watched the link, interesting, would like to see the presentation. I couldn't agree more with his synopsis, just from watching that passage, but basically speaking about the aircraft and its qualities versus is weaknesses-wise, and that's what the opposition to the Zero from NT Gray and Pat 308 is about, the record speaks for itself - why would such a thing be necessary if the Zero was a non-threat that could easily be disregarded? The F4F did not have the performance compared to the Zero but you put good quality airmen in it, against good quality airmen in the Japanese - no one could accuse them of being otherwise in the opening stages of the Pacific War and results speak volumes.

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## Vincenzo (Feb 16, 2022)

For the Naval Aviation Combat Statistic - WWII
the F4F destroyed (for clear this are just claims, awarded claims but it's a different thing from actual plane destroyed) 905 enemy airplane (487 fighters) for the loss of 178
In the alone 1941/42 was 715 japanese plane "destroyed" (355 fighters) for the loss of 122; 715/122=~5,9
In the 1943 was 190 japanese plane "destroyed" (132 fighters) for the loss of 56; 190/56=~3,4

so i think that source is not good

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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> I think "The First Team" (John Lundstrom) has a more accurate picture of this (I don't have a copy of the book). A comment about this subject from another forum:
> 
> _"From February through June 1942, the Navy's fighting squadrons shot down seventeen Japanese carrier fighters (three Mitsubishi A5M4 Type 96 carrier fighters and fourteen Zero fighters, with sixteen pilots killed), while losing to them in aerial combat only ten Wildcats (seven pilots killed)." Since the book recounts virtually every air battle usually from both sides these figures are about as accurate as you are going to get'_


Counting only Zeroes, that's a 14:10 ratio (or 1.3:1, which is a figure I came across and cited earlier). Meaning that in terms of simple effectiveness, the Wildcat was _at least as good as_ the Zero.

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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

Comments added *in bold*


nuuumannn said:


> Perhaps you should do a bit more reading, because it appears you are shooting from the hip and hanging on to old preconceptions and the typical US stereotypes around the aircraft. Zeros_ were_ fitted with armour plating in their career, _and _self-sealing tanks. *[not until much later in the war, when it no longer mattered] *As mentioned in an earlier post, it took the Japanese hierarchy longer to do so than other countries. Placing that on the Zero ignores this fundamental truth.
> 
> As for the Wildcat against the Zero, again, you and too many others simply ignore that the Zero outperformed the Wildcat in almost every way *[not correct. Not "almost every" way. The Wildcat had some significant advantages over the Zero]* in 1941/1942. The US Navy pilots _had _to take measures in changing their tactics because the Japanese had a weapon with which they could beat them. Again, I'm pretty certain Jimmy Thach didn't regard the Zero as "overrated". *[I don't think anybody was thinking in those terms at all. Thach just wanted to figure out a way to win with the airplane he had, and he succeeded.]*
> 
> As for manoeuvrability being the sole thing the Zero has going for it *[I never said that. You seem to have inferred it, but it's not what I said]*, seriously? _From 1940 to 1942 the A6M was the world's best carrier based fighter_, mind you *[that claim is called "begging the question." That is, you are stating the beginning premise as your final conclusion. In fact, the Zero was not the "world's best" fighter, it was simply a unique design that had some significant strengths but some equally significant weaknesses]*, as I've mentioned, the competition isn't sterling, but that is an undisputed fact. It was capable of the same or better speeds than its carrier based contemporaries [*in level speed, but not in a dive]*, it had a_ far_ greater range than its contemporaries, apart from the Fulmar and its eight machine guns *[No. Two 20mm cannons and 2 .30 caliber machine guns]* it had equal if not better armament than its contemporaries, and it was available in numbers, not to mention the general aptitude displayed by its pilots. The Zero was the top of the food chain from when it entered service for the next two years, so I reckon it didn't have_ just_ manoeuvrability going for it.



And now this:

*Zero advantages:*
Long range
Maneuverability at normal combat speeds
high rate of climb
Better pilot visibility
Heavier guns: 2x 20mm (with 2x .30 caliber)
*Zero disadvantages:*
Useless radios (often discarded to save weight)
No armor
Lighter overall construction
Poor maneuverability above 200mph
20mm slow rate of fire, limited rounds (60 per gun)
.30 caliber too light to be effective alone
Different gun types did not converge well
(20mm shells were slower & dropped sooner)

 

*Wildcat advantages:*
Faster diving speed
More maneuverable at higher speed
Armor & self-sealing gas tanks
More rugged overall construction
Guns more than adequate to kill a Zero (6x .50 caliber)
Greater ammo capacity
Useful radio, allowing coordinated tactics
Teamwork & training as experience was gained
*Wildcat disadvantages:*
Less range
Lower rate of climb
Less pilot visibility
Less maneuverable at combat speeds
 
Hmmm. Looks to me like the Wildcat has more advantages and fewer disadvantages than the Zero. But the one thing that really matters is the results: the Wildcat:Zero kill ratio was actually close to equal (slight advantage to the Wildcat) in the early days when the Zero was gaining that "superplane" reputation. As time went on, the ratio tilted strongly in favor of the Wildcat.

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## BiffF15 (Feb 17, 2022)

GregP posted a test on here and IIRC it showed the Zeros roll didn’t really start to degrade until about 280mph, which in turn covers a much larger swath of the fighting speeds. 

GregP,
Please repost or link to your report (I couldn’t find it).

Cheers,
Biff

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## buffnut453 (Feb 17, 2022)

I take a number of those criteria with a huge pinch of salt. The Zero had no problems maneouvering at speeds above 200mph. It was a different proposition above 300mph...but the 200-300 range was not a problem.

Also, including "Teamwork and training" as an attribute for the Wildcat is spurious. That's an operational employment issue, not a trait of the airframe itself. A world-beating aircraft can become a sitting duck if it's flown poorly or employs inappropriate tactics.

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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

Only the Zeros roll rate degraded above 300 mph, the elevators still worked just fine. And from I believe the Australian test, they said it could loop from cruise speed, I believe 210 mph, and GAIN altitude. The AM6-21 that were tested by the US were also reasonably fast, coming in around 330-335 mph without overboost (which the US didn’t use, didn’t know it had or could make it work or something) With overboost it was estimated to do 345 mph. 

Let’s also remember that the roll rate of the early Spitfire and Me109 was very poor at high speed as well. The Australian test mentions the Spitfire could outroll the Zero at high speed, just barely. The P40 had a great high speed roll and was fast as long as the Zero came down below 15,000 feet to play, but the Zero had the option of staying above the P40 if it wanted to.

It’s kind of funny but the roll rate for the Zero gets worse every time it’s mentioned. (As soon as a zero retracts the landing gear his roll rate goes to nothing!!) I’ve read of good roll (at least matching whatever they were testing it against) as high as 320 mph, but most sources agree to stay above 300 mph in a fight. Easier to do that in a 400 mph Corsair or P38 than in a 315 mph Wildcat or Hurricane.

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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

2 other advantages a Zero had that people fail to mention.

1. The bubble canopy. A Zero pilot had about the same field of view as I do sitting in a lawn chair in my driveway. If a Zero pilot wasn’t asleep or in a neck brace then you weren’t going to sneak up on him. 

2. Acceleration. You may be X many mph faster than a Zero, but if your running side by side at 200 mph and both pin the throttle he will gain a few lengths on you before you finally catch up and eventually leave him behind. If he’s behind you he only needs 2-3 seconds to fill you full of lead

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## buffnut453 (Feb 17, 2022)

The other problem with the advantages/disadvantages listings is that it doesn't specify a timeframe. In late 41/early 42 the Wildcat didn't have armour or self-sealing tanks (at least not at front-line units). Similarly, the A6M was eventually fitted with armour and self-sealing tanks. 

Which version of the Wildcat is being compared with which variant of Zero, and when?

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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> The other problem with the advantages/disadvantages listings is that it doesn't specify a timeframe. In late 41/early 42 the Wildcat didn't have armour or self-sealing tanks (at least not at front-line units). Similarly, the A6M was eventually fitted with armour and self-sealing tanks.
> 
> Which version of the Wildcat is being compared with which variant of Zero, and when?


According to The First Team, the F4F-3 pilots at Coral Sea didn’t think they gave up anything in climb or speed and had better protection and firepower (I was surprised by this but that’s what the book said). The F4F-4 gained several hundred pounds, couldn’t climb, was slower etc. If I had been a Wildcat pilot at Guadalcanal and they told me “if a Zero gets on your tail just jink up and down until he runs out of bullets or someone shoots him off your tail” I would have asked for a transfer!!!

If I had to fight a Zero 1 on 1 in 1942 my choices would have been:
1. FW190
2. P38, of course we had about 20 at the time
3. B17, no bombs, plenty of fuel at 30,000 feet, pin the throttle and run like the wind

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## Shortround6 (Feb 17, 2022)

Again, please, please 
Please, Please,
Be sure you are comparing the SAME Zeros.
Between the A6M2 and the A6M3's
You had 2 different engines.
A big wing with no trim tabs,
A short wing with no trim tabs.
A long wing with trim tabs. 
You had the original fuel tanks, 
You had the small tank/s with the new engine
Any you ended with the new engine plus wing tanks giving as or more range than the A6M2.

Perhaps someone who is better with Japanese engines can help us out.
The A6M2 used a single speed supercharger with best power just under 15,000ft.
I personally don't think you are going to get much, if any, over boost at higher altitudes than that although it may work at lower altitudes. 
The 2 speed supercharger offers more scope for overboosting.
With over 150 more HP it didn’t seem to offer much improved performance but that may be due to the test pilots not using the over boost 
None of these engines used water injection like later Zeros got and none of them used much in the way of exhaust thrust.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Counting only Zeroes, that's a 14:10 ratio (or 1.3:1, which is a figure I came across and cited earlier). Meaning that in terms of simple effectiveness, the Wildcat was _at least as good as_ the Zero.


It shows that but this is a lot lower than the almost 6:1 believed to be the victory ratio against the Zero.

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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

Ah, nothing like a spirited discussion. Yes, time frame and "which version of the plane?" does matter, and answering that in detail would require pretty much a battle-by-battle accounting. My list is only a gross generalization, quickly compiled, primarily intended to answer the charge that _anybody_ thinks that maneuverability was the Zero's _only _advantage. It wasn't. But on balance, the Wildcat had some crucial advantages itself. Having a working radio was actually a pretty big deal that a lot of people (most?) are unaware of.

If I recall, the F4F-4 was the version that first incorporated armor, but the dash 3 planes were retrofitted as quickly as they could get 'er done, and that process _began_ in September 1941. I don't know how quickly they completed the job.

As for the charge that the results of training and tactics should not be credited to the airframe, there is some justice to that, but the tactics would not have worked with a plane that simply did not have any redeeming qualities. For example, I doubt that even Jimmy Thach could have figured out a way to beat Zeroes with Buffaloes. (I could be wrong, but that's my guess.)

As for the Zero's roll rate, some people seem to think that things just HAPPEN beyond a certain threshold or amount of time. Like that a Zero simply couldn't roll if was going 1mph above some magic number. My source said that roll rate _began to fall off_ above 180 knots, which is actually 207mph, but that is only a gross generality. It may be more fair to say that at 300mph (which would be easily achieved during a diving attack) the Zero's ailerons were very, very difficult to move. The Wildcat's apparently were not (or at least not to anything like the same degree). So, at high speeds that's a Wildcat advantage. (Both planes had a top speed in level flight of about 330mph.)

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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> It shows that but this is a lot lower than the almost 6:1 believed to be the victory ratio against the Zero.


The 6:1 figure is claimed to be the ratio by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign. Without an explicit statement to the contrary, I assume that means the ratio _during_ those later days, meaning maybe a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio overall. But my assumption may be mistaken.


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## GrauGeist (Feb 17, 2022)

Just an observation, but if the A6M was so poor at handling at any reasonable speed, then why was the "Thach Weave" developed for F4F pilots?

It was not an offensive manouver...

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> *The 6:1 figure is claimed to be the ratio by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign.* Without an explicit statement to the contrary, I assume that means the ratio _during_ those later days, meaning maybe a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio overall. But my assumption may be mistaken.


But I still think that's against ALL aircraft, not just Zeros.


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## Shortround6 (Feb 17, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> The other problem with the advantages/disadvantages listings is that it doesn't specify a timeframe. In late 41/early 42 the Wildcat didn't have armour or self-sealing tanks (at least not at front-line units). Similarly, the A6M was eventually fitted with armour and self-sealing tanks.
> 
> Which version of the Wildcat is being compared with which variant of Zero, and when?


the difference was several years. 
I don't believe ANY F4F-4 (Martlet may be different?) left the factory without armor or protected tanks. 
In 1941 Grumman built 323 Wildcats and Martlets. 5 of them were F4F-4, 107 of them were F4F-3s. 
To this you can add 103 F4Fs and Martlets built in 1940.
In Dec 1941 the Navy and Marines had 181 F4F-3s and 65 F4F-3A's 

Some of the F4F-3s and F4F-3A's had been built without armor and protected tanks. 
By June 1942 any F4F-3s still aboard carriers were being transferred to shore bases. 

In fact at Midway,
the Yorktown had 25 F4F-4s with VF-3
The Enterprise had 27 F4F-4s with VF-6
The Hornet had 29 F4F-4s with VF-8

Zeros don't get armor until 1944?


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## Vincenzo (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> The 6:1 figure is claimed to be the ratio by the end of the Guadalcanal campaign. Without an explicit statement to the contrary, I assume that means the ratio _during_ those later days, meaning maybe a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio overall. But my assumption may be mistaken.


the overall ratio in the Guadalcanal campaign, and i've already posted it, it's 1.1:1 in the Zero:Wildcat

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## tomo pauk (Feb 17, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> The A6M2 used a single speed supercharger with best power just under 15,000ft.
> I personally don't think you are going to get much, if any, over boost at higher altitudes than that although it may work at lower altitudes.
> The 2 speed supercharger offers more scope for overboosting.
> With over 150 more HP it didn’t seem to offer much improved performance but that may be due to the test pilots not using the over boost
> None of these engines used water injection like later Zeros got and none of them used much in the way of exhaust thrust.



The 150 HP surplus was at low altitudes, much due to having the low speed gearing added, that sucked less power from the engine. At high altitudes, it was perhaps 50 HP advantage for the 2-speed type? Gain in speed was there, some 20 km/h. Another 10 km/h was gained later with better layout of exhaust stacks.
I'm not sure that water injection equipment was ever used on the Zero.

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## SaparotRob (Feb 17, 2022)

I have become more aware of the DO NOT EXCEED speed. I probably first heard of it when reading about the P-38. Greg, of Greg’s Planes, Trains and Automobiles or Something, brought up that the F4F didn’t have a “do not exceed“ speed. I assume that’s because so much of the Wildcat’s structure was of railway bridge components.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> I have become more aware of the DO NOT EXCEED speed. I probably first heard of it when reading about the P-38. Greg, of Greg’s Planes, Trains and Automobiles or Something, brought up that the F4F didn’t have a “do not exceed“ speed. I assume that’s because so much of the Wildcat’s structure was of railway bridge components.


Every aircraft will have a DO NOT EXCEED speed, to include an F4F. It is shown in flight manuals as VNE and is usually indicted as a red line on airspeed indicators. It is the speed at which structural damage to the airframe can occur if abrupt maneuvers are attempted or if flown in turbulent air. Even though we know the F4F was built like a tank, given the right circumstances, you can bend or break the airframe. 

Back in WW2 some parameters like VNE were sometimes not indicted in the flight manual or marked on the airspeed indicator

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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> But I still think that's against ALL aircraft, not just Zeros.


All I can do is quote a source that appears to be reliable. If it isn't reliable, or if he said "Zero" but meant "all Japanese planes," that's a different story. But here it is again:

"By the end of the Battle for Guadalcanal on February 3rd, 1943, records show that Navy and Marine Corps aviators shot down 5.9 Zeros for every Wildcat lost. When the Japanese surrendered in September 1945, the Wildcat to Zero exchange ratio had increased to 6.9 to one."

He very specifically says "Wildcat" and "Zeroes." But he does not say whether the ratios are supposed to be for that specific time period, or _cumulative_ up to that point (which would make the "time period" ratios even higher to balance out the lower ratios early in the war). As I stated earlier, I am assuming he means for that particular time period.









Wildcat vs. Zero – Resetting the Record


Conventional wisdom says that the performance of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero-Sen (Zero) was far superior to the Grumman F4F Wildcat. However, if that is truly the c




marcliebman.com


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> All I can do is quote a source that appears to be reliable. If it isn't reliable, or if he said "Zero" but meant "all Japanese planes," that's a different story. But here it is again:
> 
> "By the end of the Battle for Guadalcanal on February 3rd, 1943, records show that Navy and Marine Corps aviators shot down 5.9 Zeros for every Wildcat lost. When the Japanese surrendered in September 1945, the Wildcat to Zero exchange ratio had increased to 6.9 to one."
> 
> ...


A distinguished career, but I'd prefer to see the actual combat reports bounced against data from the Japanese. I think a source like "The First Team" is more reliable.


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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> A distinguished career, but I'd prefer to see the actual combat reports bounced against data from the Japanese. I think a source like "The First Team" is more reliable.


Oh, I would love to see actual numbers from somewhere; I have a calculator and know how to use it!

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

I found one article that describes air battles on 13 May and 16 June, 1943 - 

_A second Japanese series of five raids occurred between 13 May and 16 June. The first three produced losses of 19 Zeros for 10 American fighters. But on 16 June, another huge Guadalcanal strike by 70 Zeros escorting 24 Vals ran into a buzz saw. In exchange for six American fighters and five pilots, the Japanese lost 15 Zeros and 13 Vals. It marked the final major air battle over Guadalcanal._









North from Guadalcanal


Guadalcanal had only been the beginning. Now it was time to slug it out up the Solomons to the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul.




www.usni.org





I see this "snapshot" showing about 2.5:1 assuming all Wildcats lost were to Zeros and not by any of the Val's gunners.

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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> I doubt that even Jimmy Thach could have figured out a way to beat Zeroes with Buffaloes. (I could be wrong, but that's my guess.)


This just in:
It turns out (according to a Quora source that I kinda think probably is reliable) that the aircraft with the highest kill ratio of any WW2 plane is. . .the Buffalo! 26:1 kill ratio! I did not know or even suspect that.
Of course that was by Finnish pilots flying against various Soviet planes, but still. . .the _Buffalo_?? Wow!
Oh, one caveat: the Buffalo is technically #2, because the actual #1 is the P-61 Black Widow, which shot down 127 aircraft to ZERO losses. But of course the radar-guided night fighter had a bit of an unfair advantage, giving the Buffalo the highest "real" ("fair") ratio.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 17, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> I have become more aware of the DO NOT EXCEED speed. I probably first heard of it when reading about the P-38. Greg, of Greg’s Planes, Trains and Automobiles or Something, brought up that the F4F didn’t have a “do not exceed“ speed. I assume that’s because so much of the Wildcat’s structure was of railway bridge components.



Grumman iron.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> This just in:
> It turns out (according to a Quora source that I kinda think probably is reliable) that the aircraft with *the highest kill ratio of any WW2 plane is. . .the Buffalo! *I did not know or even suspect that.
> Of course that was against various Soviet planes, but still. . .the _Buffalo_?? Wow!
> Oh, one caveat: the Buffalo is technically #2, because the actual #1 is the P-61 Black Widow, which shot down 127 aircraft to ZERO losses. But of course the radar-guided night fighter had a bit of an unfair advantage, giving the Buffalo the highest "real" ("fair") ratio.


Now that I believe is true

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## Shortround6 (Feb 17, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Every aircraft will have a DO NOT EXCEED speed, to include an F4F. It is shown in flight manuals as VNE and is usually indicted as a red line on airspeed indicators. It is the speed at which structural damage to the airframe can occur if abrupt maneuvers are attempted or if flown in turbulent air. Even though we know the F4F was built like a tank, given the right circumstances, you can bend or break the airframe.
> 
> Back in WW2 some parameters like VNE were sometimes not indicted in the flight manual or marked on the airspeed indicator


I could be wrong but I think the F4F was the last Navy plane to be tested with a terminal velocity dive. 
Test pilot took the plane up to a certain altitude and then dove down vertical or near vertical until the plane simply didn't go any faster (drag equaled thrust/gravity) and the pilot pulled out. Quite often a special test pilot was hired to do this test instead of the regular company test pilot/s. The Navy also required every design to perform a 10 turn spin to the right and a ten turn spin to the left.
The Corsair was supposed to be the first plane that didn't have to pass these tests although they tried more than once. 
With planes that had the speed of the Corsair there simply wasn't enough altitude to perform these tests like they did with the biplanes and first generation monoplanes. The tests, like the spin tests, took a lot more altitude per turn of spin. The dive test was running into compressibility.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> I could be wrong but I think the F4F was the last Navy plane to be tested with a terminal velocity dive.
> *Test pilot took the plane up to a certain altitude and then dove down vertical or near vertical until the plane simply didn't go any faster (drag equaled thrust/gravity) and the pilot pulled out. Quite often a special test pilot was hired to do this test instead of the regular company test pilot/s. *The Navy also required every design to perform a 10 turn spin to the right and a ten turn spin to the left.
> The Corsair was supposed to be the first plane that didn't have to pass these tests although they tried more than once.
> With planes that had the speed of the Corsair there simply wasn't enough altitude to perform these tests like they did with the biplanes and first generation monoplanes. The tests, like the spin tests, took a lot more altitude per turn of spin. The dive test was running into compressibility.


I believe you're correct although I remember reading that Bob Hall, Grumman's Chief Test Pilot did do some terminal velocity dive tests. I don't know if that was before or after he became Chief Test Pilot.


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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Ah, nothing like a spirited discussion. Yes, time frame and "which version of the plane?" does matter, and answering that in detail would require pretty much a battle-by-battle accounting. My list is only a gross generalization, quickly compiled, primarily intended to answer the charge that _anybody_ thinks that maneuverability was the Zero's _only _advantage. It wasn't. But on balance, the Wildcat had some crucial advantages itself. Having a working radio was actually a pretty big deal that a lot of people (most?) are unaware of.
> 
> If I recall, the F4F-4 was the version that first incorporated armor, but the dash 3 planes were retrofitted as quickly as they could get 'er done, and that process _began_ in September 1941. I don't know how quickly they completed the job.
> 
> ...


The F4F-4 had a top speed more like 318 mph and that may have been optimistic. The climb rate was a joke, a bad joke, a bad off color joke with a horrible punch line. 

Your 100% correct that the Zeros roll rate slowly got worse, but you need to be able to get over 300 mph for this to help you. With the, at best, top speed of an F4F-4 at around 318 mph you simply didn’t have the power to stay above a speed where you could out turn the Zero. Now a P38 was a different story, with a top speed of 390-414 mph or so it could absolutely stay above 300 mph all day long. 

But even if a Zero is going fast enough he can’t roll, he can still loop and I have read that this was actually their favorite way to get on another fighters tail. They simply loop up and over and drop down on the heavier fighter that can’t follow the loop


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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> I could be wrong but I think the F4F was the last Navy plane to be tested with a terminal velocity dive.
> Test pilot took the plane up to a certain altitude and then dove down vertical or near vertical until the plane simply didn't go any faster (drag equaled thrust/gravity) and the pilot pulled out. Quite often a special test pilot was hired to do this test instead of the regular company test pilot/s. The Navy also required every design to perform a 10 turn spin to the right and a ten turn spin to the left.
> The Corsair was supposed to be the first plane that didn't have to pass these tests although they tried more than once.
> With planes that had the speed of the Corsair there simply wasn't enough altitude to perform these tests like they did with the biplanes and first generation monoplanes. The tests, like the spin tests, took a lot more altitude per turn of spin. The dive test was running into compressibility.


They did a terminal dive test on the XF5F skyrocket. I think it was a 505 mph straight down power dive. I can give the date after I get home. They did it a couple of times a day or so apart. Don’t know if they did it on the Wildcat or not


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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

pinsog said:


> The F4F-4 had a top speed more like 318 mph and that may have been optimistic. The climb rate was a joke, a bad joke, a bad off color joke with a horrible punch line.
> 
> Your 100% correct that the Zeros roll rate slowly got worse, but you need to be able to get over 300 mph for this to help you. With the, at best, top speed of an F4F-4 at around 318 mph you simply didn’t have the power to stay above a speed where you could out turn the Zero.


True, but don't forget that 300+ mph could also be attained in a dive, which was why a (relatively) safe attack tactic would be to bounce a flight of Zeroes from above (coastwatchers or radar could provide enough advance warning for the Wildcats to launch and get up high enough). The Zeroes then could not follow the Wildcats to counterattack, or if they tried, they couldn't follow the Cats in turns. But mostly they just couldn't follow because the Cats could dive faster in any case.


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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> True, but don't forget that 300+ mph could also be attained in a dive, which was why a (relatively) safe attack tactic would be to bounce a flight of Zeroes from above (coastwatchers or radar could provide enough advance warning for the Wildcats to launch and get up high enough). The Zeroes then could not follow the Wildcats to counterattack, or if they tried, they couldn't follow the Cats in turns. But mostly they just couldn't follow because the Cats could dive faster in any case.


Actually the Wildcat wasn’t faster in a dive. I think I can find the test, but they were about equal in top speed in a dive. I was shocked as I always thought the Wildcat was faster going down hill. I’ll look for the test when I get home. 
But if they were diving the Wildcat could get up to where it could out turn the Zero, until of course you ran out of altitude


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

pinsog said:


> The F4F-4 had a top speed more like 318 mph and that may have been optimistic. The climb rate was a joke, a bad joke, a bad off color joke with a horrible punch line.
> 
> Your 100% correct that the Zeros roll rate slowly got worse, but you need to be able to get over 300 mph for this to help you. With the, at best, top speed of an F4F-4 at around 318 mph you simply didn’t have the power to stay above a speed where you could out turn the Zero. Now a P38 was a different story, with a top speed of 390-414 mph or so it could absolutely stay above 300 mph all day long.
> 
> But even if a Zero is going fast enough he can’t roll, he can still loop and I have read that this was actually their favorite way to get on another fighters tail. They simply loop up and over and drop down on the heavier fighter that can’t follow the loop


A few things - understand that the Zero's controls got PROGRESSIVELY stiff, there wasn't a magic number when suddenly the aircraft couldn't maneuver, and this was probably true about any pitch movements. So take that into consideration with what the physical ability of your average IJN Zero pilot was capable of. Even with your so called loop maneuver, if any Zero pilot was doing this on his own or fighting without team coordination, in the end he was not going to win.

Despite anything you can say about the F4F, the Zero "should have" blown it out of the sky, but as it's been beat to death so many times, tactics and the ruggedness of the aircraft made it capable of taking on the Zero and this is evident in the end results.

Now did it have a 6:1 kill ratio over the Zero during the Guadalcanal campaign? I don't believe so. Over the Zero I believe the average would be like 2:1 or 3:1 depending where and when you're talking about. Because the Zero did not overwhelm it's opponents over places like Guadalcanal and Darwin, it failed it's mission. The Zero (IJN, or for that matter the JAAF) needed at least (IMO) a 4:1 or 5:1 kill ratio to maintain aerial superiority.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

pinsog said:


> *Actually the Wildcat wasn’t faster in a dive*. I think I can find the test, but they were about equal in top speed in a dive. I was shocked as I always thought the Wildcat was faster going down hill. I’ll look for the test when I get home.
> But if they were diving the Wildcat could get up to where it could out turn the Zero, until of course you ran out of altitude


Reference? I believe the Zero had a top diving speed of 410mph. Any abrupt maneuvers in the dive would more than likely cause structural damage.


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## nuuumannn (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> My list is only a gross generalization, quickly compiled, primarily intended to answer the charge that _anybody_ thinks that maneuverability was the Zero's _only _advantage. It wasn't. But on balance, the Wildcat had some crucial advantages itself.



And this sums up your entire approach, picking and choosing evidence and misusing evidence to support your own hypothesis. I see an inverse P-39 Groundhog emerging where one or two people are making claims based on bias and picking and choosing info in support and the rest expending posts in disproving those claims. _Mitsubishi A6M Groundhoggo_.

Here's what the experts said following the tests with the Akutan Zero.

"The Zero was superior to the F4F-4 in speed and climb at all altitudes above 1,000 ft, and was superior in service ceiling and range. Close to sea level, the two planes were equal in level speed. In a dive the two planes were equal with the exception that the Zero's engine cut out in pushovers. There was no comparison between the turning circles of the two aircraft due to the relative wing loadings and resultant low stalling speed of the Zero."

The next is recommendations, which were, naturally, taken literally.

"In view of the foregoing, the F4F-4 in combat with the Zero is basically dependent on mutual support, internal protection, and pull-outs or turns at high speeds where minimum radius is limited by structural or physiological effects of acceleration (excepting that the allowable acceleration of the F4F is greater than that of the Zero). however, advantage should be taken wherever possible of the superiority of the F4F in pushovers in rolls at high speed, or any combination of the two."

To counter this recommendation, the Japanese came up with a counter tactic, which was outlined in a memo of November 1942 regarding tactics used by fighter pilots. This was as follows: "If the Zero pilot was making a bean attack or slightly from below or even level, he would fire a clearing shot and make a descending turn roll, usually to the left as if breaking off the attack. Expecting the Wildcat pilot to pursue the diving Zero, the Japanese pilot had already started a steep climb for another attack and rolling in on the wildcat with advantage from above."

This was taken from Bob Mikesh in the previously mentioned Zero book.

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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Reference? I believe the Zero had a top diving speed of 410mph. Any abrupt maneuvers in the dive would more than likely cause structural damage.


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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

OK - you're comparing the *FM-2* to the* Zeke 52* - so ask yourself - did any of them fight over Guadlcanal?

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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

It isn’t exactly what I remembered, wrong models, it is the Zeke 52 vs FM2 Wildcat, not an early Zero vs an F4F-4 so regard the info as you see fit.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

pinsog said:


> It isn’t exactly what I remembered, wrong models, it is the Zeke 52 vs FM2 Wildcat, not an early Zero vs an F4F-4 so regard the info as you see fit.


Fair enough, but as stated, even at it's top diving speed, I doubt the Zero was going to do any abrupt maneuvers without risking structural damage, I'd bet dollars to donuts the F4F didn't have that issue


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## Just Schmidt (Feb 17, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> And this sums up your entire approach, picking and choosing evidence and misusing evidence to support your own hypothesis. I see an inverse P-39 Groundhog emerging where one or two people are making claims based on bias and picking and choosing info in support and the rest expending posts in disproving those claims. _Mitsubishi A6M Groundhoggo_.


Or perhaps the groundzero? The one with self combusting nut sacks?


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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> And this sums up your entire approach, picking and choosing evidence and misusing evidence to support your own hypothesis. I see an inverse P-39 Groundhog emerging where one or two people are making claims based on bias and picking and choosing info in support.


Ah, no. Really. 
I may be guilty of _quick and sloppy_ at times (my mom complained that that was how I built my model airplanes), but I never knowingly cherry-pick the data. I just take what I find, judge how likely it is to be reliable, and then lay it out.

A few posts upstream somebody says I am wrong about the Cat diving faster than a Zero. OK, if he's right, that's new information and I will incorporate in in future comments if necessary. But I'm not the sort of guy to cry "Fake News!" if I don't _want_ something to be true. If I'm shown to be wrong, then I'm wrong, and I'll admit it.

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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> A few things - understand that the Zero's controls got PROGRESSIVELY stiff, there wasn't a magic number when suddenly the aircraft couldn't maneuver, and this was probably true about any pitch movements. So take that into consideration with what the physical ability of your average IJN Zero pilot was capable of. Even with your so called loop maneuver, if any Zero pilot was doing this on his own or fighting without team coordination, in the end he was not going to win.
> 
> Despite anything you can say about the F4F, the Zero "should have" blown it out of the sky, but as it's been beat to death so many times, tactics and the ruggedness of the aircraft made it capable of taking on the Zero and this is evident in the end results.
> 
> Now did it have a 6:1 kill ratio over the Zero during the Guadalcanal campaign? I don't believe so. Over the Zero I believe the average would be like 2:1 or 3:1 depending where and when you're talking about. Because the Zero did not overwhelm it's opponents over places like Guadalcanal and Darwin, it failed it's mission. The Zero (IJN, or for that matter the JAAF) needed at least (IMO) a 4:1 or 5:1 kill ratio to maintain aerial superiority.


Oh I agree. I have stated in other threads that I know what the Wildcat did, but it defies explanation of how it did it. One of the aces at Guadalcanal stated that they should have been easily wiped out and he didn’t understand why they didn’t. I think I read that in the 2nd book of the First Team. The only thing that I can come up with that tipped the balance in favor of the Wildcat was the 50 was a great balance of hitting power, rounds per gun per minute, amount of ammo carried and the thorough teaching of deflection shooting in the US Navy.

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## pinsog (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Ah, no. Really.
> I may be guilty of _quick and sloppy_ at times (my mom complained that that was how I built my model airplanes), but I never knowingly cherry-pick the data. I just take what I find, judge how likely it is to be reliable, and then lay it out.
> 
> A few posts upstream somebody says I am wrong about the Cat diving faster than a Zero. OK, if he's right, that's new information and I will incorporate in in future comments if necessary. But I'm not the sort of guy to cry "Fake News!" if I don't _want_ something to be true. If I'm shown to be wrong, then I'm wrong, and I'll admit it.


My info on diving turned out to be Zero 52 vs FM2, instead of Zero 21 or 32 vs F4F-4 so feel free to process that info how you like. I will not disagree with your claim because my info was of different models of those airplanes than we were discussing

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## nuuumannn (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> If I'm shown to be wrong, then I'm wrong, and I'll admit it.




Glad to hear. You have refused to acknowledge that the Zero was eventually fitted with both armour and self sealing tanks, repeatedly stating it didn't have these things, but of course too late to have made a difference, which goes back to the issue of the Japanese not acting fast enough, not a fault of the aircraft's. Also you refuse to acknowledge that the Zero was the better carrier based aircraft between 1940 and 1942 out all frontline carrier aircraft, but you have acknowledged that it was far more than your initial assessment of the type, which I guess could be considered progress.

It was a clever design to have met the specification, which Nakajima believed was impossible to fulfil, so didn't bother, although the Ki-43 mirrored the A6M in many ways. It certainly was flawed, but it can be stated that it was expertly executed despite its flaws, which led it to do very well indeed, even unexpectedly so in the hands of highly motivated and highly trained aircrew. Having said that, its merits were not enough to save it as its career grew longer, those flaws becoming increasingly apparent and detrimental to the type, but the final argument about them has to be that the Japanese, again and not for the last time, dropped the ball and failed to get its replacement into service in good time, so it was kept at the front line for far longer than what was intended, exposing its weaknesses time and again.

It's no wonder that the aircraft has, in Japan at least come to symbolise and characterise the entire Japanese effort in WW2 and is held up in some reverence as a result. Not surprisingly, there are museums all over Japan with A6Ms in them.

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## FLYBOYJ (Feb 17, 2022)

pinsog said:


> Oh I agree. I have stated in other threads that I know what the Wildcat did, but it defies explanation of how it did it. One of the aces at Guadalcanal stated that they should have been easily wiped out and he didn’t understand why they didn’t. I think I read that in the 2nd book of the First Team. The only thing that I can come up with that tipped the balance in favor of the Wildcat was the 50 was a great balance of hitting power, rounds per gun per minute, amount of ammo carried and the thorough teaching of deflection shooting in the US Navy.


And teamwork

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## buffnut453 (Feb 17, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> And teamwork



IMHO, that's the absolutely key ingredient. One-vs-1, the Zero outperformed the F4F as shown in the test reports and various trials. However, air combat is seldom 1-vs-1. I don't think that USN training was any better than that of the IJN during the first year or 2 of the war. So the only logical explanation for the Wildcat's success lies in the tactics employed. That includes provision of early warning to enable the Wildcats to respond to incoming raids, as well as the techniques developed by the pilots themselves to counter the considerable threat posed by the A6M.

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## GrauGeist (Feb 17, 2022)

The F4F versus A6M kill ratio became higher as the war progressed.

There was quite a difference between the ratio in 1942 and the final number by war's end.

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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Glad to hear. You have refused to acknowledge that the Zero was eventually fitted with both armour and self sealing tanks, repeatedly stating it didn't have these things, but of course too late to have made a difference, which goes back to the issue of the Japanese not acting fast enough, not a fault of the aircraft's. Also you refuse to acknowledge that the Zero was the better carrier based aircraft between 1940 and 1942 out all frontline carrier aircraft, but you have acknowledged that it was far more than your initial assessment of the type, which I guess could be considered progress.
> 
> It was a clever design to have met the specification, which Nakajima believed was impossible to fulfil, so didn't bother, although the Ki-43 mirrored the A6M in many ways. It certainly was flawed, but it can be stated that it was expertly executed despite its flaws, which led it to do very well indeed, even unexpectedly so in the hands of highly motivated and highly trained aircrew. Having said that, its merits were not enough to save it as its career grew longer, those flaws becoming increasingly apparent and detrimental to the type, but the final argument about them has to be that the Japanese, again and not for the last time, dropped the ball and failed to get its replacement into service in good time, so it was kept at the front line for far longer than what was intended, exposing its weaknesses time and again.
> 
> It's no wonder that the aircraft has, in Japan at least come to symbolise and characterise the entire Japanese effort in WW2 and is held up in some reverence as a result. Not surprisingly, there are museums all over Japan with A6Ms in them.


I didn't refuse to acknowledge anything; I just tried to find some information as to when they began to put armor in the Zero, but found no information at all, so I have just assumed that it must have been late 1943 or beyond. If you can tell me when Zeroes began to appear in combat with pilot armor (and self-sealing gas tanks), I would greatly appreciate it. In any case, early in the war it was armored Wildcats taking on unarmored Zeroes; the armor situation did make a difference.
I also realize that the lack of armor was a choice, not a result of inability or stupidity.

I don't doubt that in Japan the Zero has tremendous emotional significance. So does the battleship Yamato, touted as the largest, most powerful battleship ever to sail. Yet American planes sank it easily, and the consensus is that an Iowa class battleship probably could have beaten the Yamato one-on-one on account of having several significant advantages that more than made up for having main battery shells that were smaller (16" to 18.1").

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## nuuumannn (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> I don't doubt that in Japan the Zero has tremendous emotional significance.



Yes, but you're missing the point, in the points with which you denigrate the Zero you are not seeing the bigger picture, hence my arguing against your responses, which initially were based on the usual bias against the type with little factual appreciation for the situation. Refusal to acknowledge its good points as well as its bad is biased. It would be like if I just argued that its range and manoeuvrability meant that it was the best and that's it, without acknowledging its faults.



NTGray said:


> I just tried to find some information as to when they began to put armor in the Zero, but found no information at all,



You're not trying very hard...









Mitsubishi A6M Zero - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





"A plate of armored glass 45 mm (1.8 in) thick was fitted to the windscreen."

"In addition, a 55 mm (2.2 in) thick piece of armored glass was installed at the headrest and an 8 mm (0.31 in) thick plate of armor was installed behind the seat."

Under A6M5b and c entries.


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## GrauGeist (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> So does the battleship Yamato, touted as the largest, most powerful battleship ever to sail. Yet American planes sank it easily


Easily?

It took over two hours, eleven torpedoes and six bombs to stop the Yamato.

It was only "easy" because the Yamato had no air cover and no significant task Force support.

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## nuuumannn (Feb 17, 2022)

GrauGeist said:


> Easily?



So, we now have a naval groundhog as well?


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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> Yes, but you're missing the point, in the points with which you denigrate the Zero you are not seeing the bigger picture, hence my arguing against your responses, which initially were based on the usual bias against the type with little factual appreciation for the situation. Refusal to acknowledge its good points as well as its bad is biased. It would be like if I just argued that its range and manoeuvrability meant that it was the best and that's it, without acknowledging its faults.
> 
> 
> "A plate of armored glass 45 mm (1.8 in) thick was fitted to the windscreen."
> ...


 Excellent. Yeah, I was looking everywhere and didn't thoroughly read all of the easy (Wikipedia) stuff. However, that info does confirm my assumption; the armored version appeared in late 1944, well after the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot broke the back of the Japanese Naval Air Service. Also, that model is said to have been used primarily against B-29s, not Wildcats (or more likely by then, Hellcats). So we come back around to the reality that Wildcats had armor, and the Zeroes that fought them did not. That difference wasn't the only thing that mattered, but it did matter a lot.
As for what you said in the first sentence, I think you might have been reading into my arguments stuff that I didn't say or mean. Also, I admit to being puzzled by your reference to "the usual bias against the type." What usual bias? The _usual_ bias is strongly in _favor_ of the Zero, as far as I can tell. My own opinion is that the Zero is a perfectly decent airplane that was built according to different design criteria than the Wildcat was. The Zero was not junk, but neither was it Superplane, and people who think of it as Superplane have too high an opinion of it. That's all. I have a somewhat similar opinion of the P-51 (though not to the same degree); it actually was a_ very _good plane, but anybody who thinks that it single-handedly won WW2 has too high an opinion of it.

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## SaparotRob (Feb 17, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> So, we now have a naval groundhog as well?


NOOOOOO!!! MAKE THE BAD MAN STOP!

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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

GrauGeist said:


> Easily?
> 
> It took over two hours, eleven torpedoes and six bombs to stop the Yamato.
> 
> It was only "easy" because the Yamato had no air cover and no significant task Force support.


Oh, I wondered whether anybody would quibble with that. Yes, it took _a lot_ to get that ship to sink. The thing was, the American fleet _had_ a lot, and those American planes just kept coming, and coming, and coming, and coming, until the job was done. So, "easy" in the sense that the outcome was never in doubt, especially given that lack of air cover.

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## Shortround6 (Feb 17, 2022)

There were also two if not three changes to the Zero's wing to allow higher dive speeds.
The A6M2 was limited to 340kts (not mph) while the A6M3 was limited to 360Kts. 

one of the later A6M5s may have had a higher limiting speed? 
The A6M5 had some major differences from model to model but since most of them show up well after 1942 and 1943 they can be ignored here. 
Except for the fact that most (all?) A6M5s used a short span wing with a rounded tip rather than the older big wing or short wing with square wing tip *and *
modified ailerons with trim tabs which are going to change roll response and effort needed to change the aileron deflection. So using flight tests and/or comparisons have to viewed very, very carefully.

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## Greg Boeser (Feb 17, 2022)

Yamato Sure scared the bejeezus out of Taffy 3 though.

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## 33k in the air (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Excellent. Yeah, I was looking everywhere and didn't thoroughly read all of the easy (Wikipedia) stuff. However, that info does confirm my assumption; the armored version appeared in late 1944, well after the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot broke the back of the Japanese Naval Air Service.



The back of Japanese aviation had been broken much earlier. It was a turkey shoot in June 1944 precisely because well-trained pilots were relatively few in number.


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## Greg Boeser (Feb 17, 2022)

Weren't the IJN pilots instructed to land ashore due to the lack of experience in carrier landings?


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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Yamato sure scared the bejeezus out of Taffy 3 though.


That it did. But I'm not sure about those who say that Admiral Kurita broke off the engagement too soon because he mistakenly thought that the jeep carriers were fleet carriers, and that more were probably coming. The fact that three Japanese heavy cruisers had already been sunk by American carrier planes and destroyer torpedo attacks, and several more had been seriously damaged. seems a good enough reason to break off the fight. Throw in the fact that Yamato's sister ship, the Musashi, had been sunk earlier, and I can understand that Kurita didn't want to chance losing the Yamato, too..


> Weren't the IJN pilots instructed to land ashore due to the lack of experience in carrier landings?


Good question. I actually don't recall reading that, but it sure sounds plausible. Anybody else know?


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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

33k in the air said:


> The back of Japanese aviation had been broken much earlier. It was a turkey shoot in June 1944 precisely because well-trained pilots were relatively few in number.


Essentially true. The Turkey Shoot happened because the best Japanese pilots were already mostly gone. But now most of the _planes_ were gone, too, so there would never again be a massed carrier attack on American ships.


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## buffnut453 (Feb 17, 2022)

Intelligence also played a key role in the Turkey Shoot, with tactical SIGINT intercepts providing real-time insights into where the Japanese were going to attack next. EdwinT. Layton's "And I Was There" is a worthwhile read on the topic.

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## NTGray (Feb 17, 2022)

Battle of the Philippine Sea. Scene of one of the most famous naval orders ever issued:
"Turn on the lights."

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## nuuumannn (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> "the usual bias against the type." What usual bias? The _usual_ bias is strongly in _favor_ of the Zero, as far as I can tell.



There is a strong bias against the Zero and the same arguments are put up regularly against it - they can be found on this forum - and are usually made without a more rounded view.



NTGray said:


> The Zero was not junk, but neither was it Superplane, and people who think of it as Superplane have too high an opinion of it.



I don't think there is anyone who thinks it's a Superplane and I've never read such a thing, mind you I tend to steer clear of conspiratorial ill-informed nonsense. The problem stems from the "Myth of Invincibility", which was definitely a thing during the war and people believed the hype, but it was dispelled once the US got their hands on an example. The Allies got their very first information about the Zero from Chinese intelligence and that had a tendency to embellish the aircraft, but the Allies only really made their minds up once they had encountered it in combat, the usual racist derived conclusions about the Japanese not being able to build modern fighters etc, or that it was based on the Hughes racer and so on prevailed.

Now, who is at fault for promoting the aircraft as being invincible? Quite possibly the Americans during the war, either from within the armed forces that encountered the Zero or the publicity machine back home, or both. So the perception has been to put the thing down ever since, without examining the story in a fuller context. It wasn't the last time this happened either, similar things arose around the MiG-15 and the MiG-25 post war. The US even posting a bounty if a pilot flew a MiG-15 into captivity.

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## SaparotRob (Feb 17, 2022)

Well, propaganda releases don't sound as cool when it says "Our brave pilots took on 32 mediocre enemy fighters and downed 6 of them". 

Sorry for the over claiming.

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## SaparotRob (Feb 17, 2022)

NTGray said:


> Oh, I wondered whether anybody would quibble with that. Yes, it took _a lot_ to get that ship to sink. The thing was, the American fleet _had_ a lot, and those American planes just kept coming, and coming, and coming, and coming, until the job was done. So, "easy" in the sense that the outcome was never in doubt, especially given that lack of air cover.


"Oh, I wondered....." Me too.  I, however, sensed a trap.


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## 33k in the air (Feb 17, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> "Oh, I wondered....." Me too.  I, however, sensed a trap.



Admiral Ackbar knew what he was talking about.

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## nuuumannn (Feb 17, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> Well, propaganda releases don't sound as cool when it says "Our brave pilots took on 32 mediocre enemy fighters and downed 6 of them".



The problem was that opinions about the Zero went to the opposite extremes, from thinking all Japanese aircraft were rubbish and inferior copies of Western equipment, to being promoted as being invincible. No wonder people get their nut on about it; during the war, getting the story straight was part of the problem, let alone identifying what to do about the aircraft.

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## GrauGeist (Feb 17, 2022)

A friend of mine was 82nd Airborne and part of the D-Day operation. He recalled that every AFV they encountered, was a "Tiger" because it's reputation preceeded it.

It wasn't until a while later, they actually encountered a Tiger (knocked out on the side of a road) that he and his buddies started laughing. They had been terrified of a legend.

Like the Tiger, the A6M built up a reputation of being invinsible which was mostly due to their opponents being largely unprepared for the performance. 

For every new threat, there will be a counter - the A6M's weaknesses were discovered and exploited, the Tiger's weaknesses were soon discovered and countered and in the case of the Yamoto, if the air attacks didn't stop her, there were six battleships, seven cruiser and no less than 21 destroyers enroute to prove she was not immortal...

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 17, 2022)

pinsog said:


> Oh I agree. I have stated in other threads that I know what the Wildcat did, but it defies explanation of how it did it. One of the aces at Guadalcanal stated that they should have been easily wiped out and he didn’t understand why they didn’t. I think I read that in the 2nd book of the First Team. The only thing that I can come up with that tipped the balance in favor of the Wildcat was the 50 was a great balance of hitting power, rounds per gun per minute, amount of ammo carried and the thorough teaching of deflection shooting in the US Navy.



Gerald Astor's oral history, _Wings of Gold_ (culled from WWII naval aviator interviews), makes much mention of deflection training.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 17, 2022)

GrauGeist said:


> The F4F versus A6M kill ratio became higher as the war progressed.
> 
> There was quite a difference between the ratio in 1942 and the final number by war's end.



Probably has a bit to do with pilot training as much as anything else.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 17, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> Weren't the IJN pilots instructed to land ashore due to the lack of experience in carrier landings?



I think that was more about operational efficiency in setting up a shuttle-run between the islands and the flattops. Not to argue that the pilots weren't green; they were.


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## Dimlee (Feb 18, 2022)

nuuumannn said:


> So, we now have a naval groundhog as well?


There was nose armour definitely. A lot of it.

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## GrauGeist (Feb 18, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> Probably has a bit to do with pilot training as much as anything else.


And availability.

Here's some quick production numbers:
F4F-3 [1940-1941] 183
F4F-3a [1940-1941] 30 (Greek AF, went to RAF)
F4F-3a [1941] 61 (went to USN)
F4F-4 [1941-1943] 1169
FM-1 [1943] 839
Wildcat Mk.V [1943] 311
FM-2 [1943-1945] 4437
Wildcat Mk.VI [1944-1945] 340

So you can see that early on, the Wildcat had an uphill battle in establishing dominance over the IJN (and IJA).

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## Akuma (Feb 23, 2022)

I suspect that, with the BF110, the Germans were trying to recreate the success they had with their CL aircraft in World War I. Those machines had excelled not only as observation aircraft, but had done unusually well as fighters and most surprisingly, ground attack aircraft. The 110 comes in as very overweight when compared to other twin engine fighters of it's era.


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## Thumpalumpacus (Feb 23, 2022)

Akuma said:


> I suspect that, with the BF110, the Germans were trying to recreate the success they had with their CL aircraft in World War I. Those machines had excelled not only as observation aircraft, but had done unusually well as fighters and most surprisingly, ground attack aircraft. The 110 comes in as very overweight when compared to other twin engine fighters of it's era.



The Walfisch as well was a well-armed, fairly maneuverable two-seater plane that could carry out a couple of missions well. It too was pressed into service as an escort fighter.


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## cherry blossom (Feb 24, 2022)

pinsog said:


> Oh I agree. I have stated in other threads that I know what the Wildcat did, but it defies explanation of how it did it. One of the aces at Guadalcanal stated that they should have been easily wiped out and he didn’t understand why they didn’t. I think I read that in the 2nd book of the First Team. The only thing that I can come up with that tipped the balance in favor of the Wildcat was the 50 was a great balance of hitting power, rounds per gun per minute, amount of ammo carried and the thorough teaching of deflection shooting in the US Navy.


One reason why the Zero did not do too well over Guadalcanal was that Guadalcanal was so distant from Rabaul that the A6M2 had to fight with its drop tank attached and the A6M3, which had a shorter range, could not be used.

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## GreenMottling29 (Oct 18, 2022)

First message on this forum after reading this nice thread which motivates me to contribute a bit.

I think stg gets "overrated" when its performance/behaviour is (way) below the expectations placed on it, its importance or value is exagerated. Now, from what pov the aircraft should be considered as overrated : public's eyes or air forces/pilots that use it in combat ?

I'll try to answer from these 2 perspectives with only one aircraft. Firstly, the most overrated aircraft should be famous, known by a wide audience, it can't be confidential. IMO that excludes a lot of aircraft of this poll : P-39, some americans bombers (A-20, B-24, B-26, TBF Avenger), Me 210, soviet fighters and bombers (except Yak series and Sturmovik), italian planes, japanese aircrafts (except Zero)... I think that nowadays, these are only known by amateurs/specialists that put a real interest and passion into WWII's aircrafts, or pilots who flew them. 

I won't go for the Mustang, the Spit, the Bf 109 or the A6M. The first two may have over-shadowed other aircrafts that contribute a lot in allies' victory but this can partially be explained by the massive psychological impact they had on the British during the BoB for the Spifire and on american bombers crews for the P-51. Beyond these symbolic factors, they were both excellent aircrafts for the role they were initially designated for. I don't vote for the 109 and the A6M for another reason. I actually find quite "unfair" to say that two fighters which dominate the skies for a period could be qualified of overrated. I would more describe them as outclassed in their latest versions rather than overrated. 

There's still plenty of aircraft to choose from, so I will introduce another criteria to answer precisely, more related to military specs. When they order a plane, Air forces generally have an idea of the role that it'll accomplish. If the aircraft suits the role there is no problem and no "overrated" aspect. But sometimes, it can be a desillusion. It was typically the case for the Bf 110 which quickly shows its limits against single engine fighter, even at the beginning of the war. However, it had a brilliant "second life" as a nightfighter that illustrates his zerstörer's potential. Same thing can be said IMO for the Hawker Typhoon, mediocre as a fighter but formidable when used as a fighter-bomber. 

Nevertheless, it's a bit different for the most overrated aircraft I have in mind, cause I think a better aircraft existed for the same role(s). With that last thing added my vote goes to (drum's roll)... the B-17. 
In fact, the B-24 was superior or equal in nearly all aspects : more bomb load, more range, more versatile, same speed, same armor... In the PTO, the B-17 disappears in 1943, because it was unable to do stg the Consolidated can't do. Maybe, the B-17 was a bit easier to handle and build but performance wise I can't see any advantages he enjoyed over the Liberator. In any case that justify the hype he gets, while the B-24 tends to be forgotten. 

Thx to all of you who read til the end, hope my non-english speaking doesn't appears too much haha

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Oct 18, 2022)

Wellcome to the forum 
G
 GreenMottling29


A very argued first post and well written. While the B-24 had the advantages you say, don't forget the enviroment were the B-17 thrived: high altitude bombing over Europe in close formations facing coordinated fierce flak and enemy fighters (not saying Japan air defenses weren't fierce, just not as elaborated as those of Germany).

There, ease of flight, higher flight altitude and rugedness played in the B-17 favour. 

I guess that a bunch of Hollywood stars like Jimmy Stewart & Clark Gable also make much for the B-17 fame, like been the banner of the premier AF fighting the nazi Germany.

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## buffnut453 (Oct 18, 2022)

Escuadrilla Azul said:


> I guess that a bunch of Hollywood stars like Jimmy Stewart & Clark Gable also make much for the B-17 fame, like been the banner of the premier AF fighting the nazi Germany.



Except that Jimmy Stewart was a B-24 pilot.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 18, 2022)

Thanks Escuadrilla Azul. I was hoping someone that could say it better than I would stop by. 
Great post, GreenMottling29 and welcome! That’s well written but you’re utterly wrong. I don’t waste my time with facts or knowledge. The B-17 is the most beautiful airplane to ever take flight. That alone should clinch it but wait, there’s more! The B-17 had a kick-ass TV show my Dad and I watched in the ‘60’s. Did the B-24?
I am also fond of the Amiot 143.

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## John Vasco (Oct 18, 2022)

GreenMottling29 said:


> But sometimes, it can be a desillusion. It was typically the case for the Bf 110 which quickly shows its limits against single engine fighter, *even at the beginning of the war. *


Er, no. Take a look at the the chart below. Might come as a bit of a surprise to you. Note that overclaiming occurred in equal measure on both sides. I say this having researched the Battle of Britain from both sides for the past 42 years.






Given the Bf 109 losses, one might be able to make a case out that it showed its limits against single engined fighters...

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## pbehn (Oct 18, 2022)

I would say the Typhoon was a good fighter until it started to be loaded up with extra armour and rockets, it was able to chase down the Fw 190 for example. It was a poor aircraft though because of its engine. Kept in service for the drive across northern Europe and scrapped immediately after.

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 18, 2022)

GreenMottling29 said:


> Nevertheless, it's a bit different for the most overrated aircraft I have in mind, cause I think a better aircraft existed for the same role(s). With that last thing added my vote goes to (drum's roll)... the B-17.
> In fact, the B-24 was superior or equal in nearly all aspects : more bomb load, more range, more versatile, same speed, same armor... In the PTO, the B-17 disappears in 1943, because it was unable to do stg the Consolidated can't do. Maybe, the B-17 was a bit easier to handle and build but performance wise I can't see any advantages he enjoyed over the Liberator. In any case that justify the hype he gets, while the B-24 tends to be forgotten.
> 
> Thx to all of you who read til the end, hope my non-english speaking doesn't appears too much haha


You make a good argument for your point but a few things to consider...

B-17s serving in the PTO had an appalling attrition rate for all reasons (logistics and enemy losses). The B-24 with it's longer legs worked out well when deployed in numbers to the Pacific. The B-24 was able to be operated at lower altitudes and didn't face the same amount of aerial opposition that the B-17 saw over the ETO. Lastly the B-17 was also directed away from the PTO because of the need to re-supply B-17s being lost in Europe.

The B-24 was not easily maintained and did not do well when one or more engines were lost.

A good piece about the B-17/ B-24

_A comparative analysis conducted in the spring of 1944 by the AAF Operations and Requirements Division concluded that "it would be desirable to increase B-17 production and decrease that of the B-24, because the former airplane is a much more effective combat weapon."

This recommendation was based on statistical comparisons:_


_Statistical data compiled on the utilization of both planes showed that the B-17 was easier to maintain and therefore more available for combat._
_Statistical data on time from aircraft acceptance to delivery in theater showed that the B-17's spend only half as much time in modification centers thus are availableat the theaters in a shorter time._
_Use of B-17 combat sorties, versus B-24, resulted in a 40% savings in personnel and material._
_The average man-hours expended in producing and modifying one B-24 were greater than for a B-17._
_Statistical comparisons done on loss rate per sortie showed that the B-17 had a 35% longer combat life than the B-24._

_*Another study was conducted in the fall of 1944 by the AAF Unit Training Division. In the final report, Colonel Walker, Chief of the Unit Training Division, states the following: "The extensive use of the B-24 is inconsistent with the blunt fact that it is the most extravagant killer of any airplane in the AAF. Since Pearl Harbor through September 1944, B-24 accidents in the U.S. have resulted in 2,188 fatalities. In the first 9 months of 1944, B-24's did only 6% of total flying in the U.S. but accounted for 26% of all fatalities. They flew 5% less than B-17's but had 105% more fatalities and 85% more wrecks. Had the B-24 had as good accident rate as the B-17 during the period 7 December 1941 through September 1944, there would have been a saving of 230 aircraft wrecked, 904 lives, and approximately $60,000,000."*

Although some in the AAF were not too enthused about the B-24's performance, the Royal Air Force (RAF) preferred it to the B-17. Unconvinced of the value of daylight precision bombing with a four-engine aircraft, the RAF was sold on the "safer" night area bombing. They also believed that the B-17 would make a satisfactory night bomber but pointed out that its firepower was wholly inadequate for protection during daylight missions, and that its bomb capacity was too light to warrant the radius of action of which it was capable. However, they considered the B-24 a superior night bomber because of its greater bomb load and larger fuselage which made possible the installation of increased defensive armament. The RAF also believed that the B-24 was useful for coastal patrol for locating and destroying enemy submarines and the German Focke-Wulf patrol bombers. Even though it had less defensive fire and high altitude speed than the B-17, the British felt that the B-24 was still superior to the German bomber. Thus, they preferred the B-24 and even named her the "Liberator".

In a letter dated 14 Feb 1944,Maj Gen Doolittle, 8th Air Force Commander, requested to Lt Gen Spaatz, U.S. Strategic Forces in Europe Commander, that B-24's be modified and redesigned in order to correct performance problems that the plane had been experiencing. He stated that the problems were a result of the efforts taken to increase the ability of the B-24 to protect itself by increasing its armament. He also explained that it was difficult to motivate his crews because the pilots flying the B-24's knew that the plane was not performing as well as the B-17._






B-17 vs B-24







www.globalsecurity.org





For a non-English speaker, you do fine!

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Oct 19, 2022)

buffnut453 said:


> Except that Jimmy Stewart was a B-24 pilot.


Upssss, nice gaffer on my part!!!!!


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## GrauGeist (Oct 19, 2022)

It might be interesting to know that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was a B-17 pilot in the Pacific Theater.

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## GreenMottling29 (Oct 19, 2022)

Thx for your comments and welcoming messages guys ! 

To Escuadrilla Azul and FlyBoyJ : 

I might have neglected those practical advantages the B-17 offers compared to the B-24, especially the "ease" to fly with one or several engine(s) damages for the Flying Fortress and its ease of maintenance. I also agree for the role Hollywood had given to the B-17. 
However, I stay convinced these differencies were insufficient to explain the gap in fame and glory between these two aircrafts and why IMHO the B-17 was overrated. I don't say it was a bad aircraft, just there was another one who achieve similar results and didn't get the recognition it deserves (at least in Europe). I don't know if it's the same in the USA but I've the feeling B-24's impact in Europe sink into oblivion. 

Concerning the attrition rate (in combat) of the two aircrafts in the 8th Air Force I've found this article : The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, or the Consolidated B-24 Liberator?
_"Advocates of the superiority of the B-17 are surprised to learn that their per-sortie overall loss rate was nearly half a percent higher among Eighth Air Force groups than that of their peers who flew B-24s. When comparing the number of sorties flown and losses sustained by the two types, the difference is even greater. Groups flying B-17s flew 60.38 percent of sorties flown by the Eighth Air Force and sustained 69.75 percent of the losses, while B-24 groups flew 29.77 percent of the sorties yet sustained only 26.1 percent of the heavy bombers lost. Groups that operated both types flew 9.85 percent of the sorties and took 4.14 percent of the losses." _

It would have been interesting to have more details about these groups that operate both types. I have to admit that these figures surprize me, I thought B-24 suffered a higher rate of losses per sortie. 

To SaparotRob : 

Hahaha I didn't saw that coming ! Well I recognize the B-17 is way prettier than the B-24. This sole fact is more than enough to invalidate my vote. Doing a TV show with a B-17 is already kinda weird in my mind, but doing the same with a B-24 seems impossible. What was the name of that show ? 

Aaaah finally speak with someone who praizes the beautiful French-designed aircrafts before WWII lol

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## GreenMottling29 (Oct 19, 2022)

To John Vasco : 

I'm impressed by the 110's stats actually, I like to learn things like this. It's quite contradictory with the impressions we can find on the Zerstörer. For me it was like (not nuanced at all) : 
- Excellent aircraft during the Poland's Campaign, and did well in Belgium and Holland. I believe it performs better than the 109 in September 1939
- Okish/decent during the Battle of France, starts to struggle in 1vs1 against A-3/A-4, D520, Hurricanes and Spit sent in France 
- Garbage during/after the BoB, affected to other missions than day fighting 

However, in 1939-1940, it had IMHO good caracteristics for a fighter : nice max speed (560 kph), heavy firepower with 2 20mm and 4 7,92mm, correct range... All in all, still capable to do plenty of good things except following a single-engine fighter in a turn. 

To Pbehn : 

The Typhoon did well as it contests the supremacy procured by the FW-190 at low-levels. What I remember from my readings is that it never gived full satisfaction in that role and that's why it was quickly turned into a ground attacking aircraft. 

My next posts should be shorter haha

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## pbehn (Oct 19, 2022)

GreenMottling29 said:


> T
> 
> The Typhoon did well as it contests the supremacy procured by the FW-190 at low-levels. What I remember from my readings is that it never gived full satisfaction in that role and that's why it was quickly turned into a ground attacking aircraft.
> 
> My next posts should be shorter haha


The Typhoon was to be the future, but that was before engine development allowed the Spitfire, especially with a Griffon engine to outperform it. The Typhoons wings were a big issue, they were just too thick, but the Tempest with Laminar flow wings was one of the best at low level, the restriction being the engine, to most casual observers a Typhoon and Tempest are the same plane. Certainly more similar than a P-51A and a P-51D which are all classed as "Mustangs".

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## XBe02Drvr (Oct 19, 2022)

GreenMottling29 said:


> - Excellent aircraft during the Poland's Campaign, and did well in Belgium and Holland. I believe it performs better than the 109 in September 1939
> - Okish/decent during the Battle of France, starts to struggle in 1vs1 against A-3/A-4, D520, Hurricanes and Spit sent in France
> - Garbage during/after the BoB, affected to other missions than day fighting


Bear in mind when comparing combat results of Me109/110, the 109s used in Poland and early Belgium/Netherlands/France were early versions, Cs and Ds. Later France/BoB saw the Emil, a whole new level of performance, though limited in range.


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## Peter Gunn (Oct 19, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> Er, no. Take a look at the the chart below. Might come as a bit of a surprise to you. Note that overclaiming occurred in equal measure on both sides. I say this having researched the Battle of Britain from both sides for the past 42 years.
> View attachment 691087
> 
> 
> Given the Bf 109 losses, one might be able to make a case out that it showed its limits against single engined fighters...


Hi John,

I've always felt the Bf 110 got the short end of the stick so to speak historically, I see there are 290 claims for July-October 1940, do you have numbers for actual kills for the 110 during the same time frame?

Thanks


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## pbehn (Oct 19, 2022)

G
 GreenMottling29
For many, the "history" of the Bf110 in the Battle of Britain is based upon what happened on Battle of Britain day itself (17 Sept). Bf 110s were ordered to stay close to the bombers which were flying into very strong head winds. To keep formation they flew with their flaps down, the very worst possible situation to put a heavy fighter in and they got hammered. This was not at all typical of the whole Battle of Britain conflict, or the early years of the war.

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## at6 (Oct 19, 2022)

GreenMottling29 said:


> was the name of that show ?


Twelve O Clock High.

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## 33k in the air (Oct 20, 2022)

pbehn said:


> G
> GreenMottling29
> For many, the "history" of the Bf110 in the Battle of Britain is based upon what happened on Battle of Britain day itself (17 Sept). Bf 110s were ordered to stay close to the bombers which were flying into very strong head winds. To keep formation they flew with their flaps down, the very worst possible situation to put a heavy fighter in and they got hammered. This was not at all typical of the whole Battle of Britain conflict, or the early years of the war.



I would have thought the raid on the Newcastle/Sunderland area on 15 August by Luftflotte 5 had more to do with it. The raid was by Norway-based aircraft, meaning the Bf 110 was the fighter escort.

8 of the 34 escorting Bf 110s (23.5%) were shot down while the RAF fighters suffered no losses.


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## pbehn (Oct 20, 2022)

33k in the air said:


> I would have thought the raid on the Newcastle/Sunderland area on 15 August by Luftflotte 5 had more to do with it. The raid was by Norway-based aircraft, meaning the Bf 110 was the fighter escort.
> 
> 8 of the 34 escorting Bf 110s (23.5%) were shot down while the RAF fighters suffered no losses.


Maybe, but they were the Dachelbauch versions I believe. to make the trip they had the huge extra fuel tank which meant they were initially mistaken for bombers and some screw up with navigation that meant a diversion "raid" by sea planes drew the RAF towards the attack itself.

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## Escuadrilla Azul (Oct 20, 2022)

pbehn said:


> Maybe, but they were the Dachelbauch versions I believe. to make the trip they had the huge extra fuel tank which meant they were initially mistaken for bombers and some screw up with navigation that meant a diversion "raid" by sea planes drew the RAF towards the attack itself.


Yes, the escort were the pregnant D model


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## SaparotRob (Oct 20, 2022)

at6 said:


> Twelve O Clock High.


_A Quinn Martin Production. _

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## PBPICS (Oct 20, 2022)

I’m wondering if the human element is being taken into consideration? Doesn’t the skill of the pilot have as much to do with the performance of the aircraft as the aircraft itself? I’ve often suggested to my wife that the camera used to take photos has less to do with the final product than the skills of the photographer. I’ve even shot myself in the foot by suggesting that I could make a shoebox with a coke bottle lens work…that definitely backfired when I wanted to get a new camera or lens. IMHO it’s skills over equipment that makes a difference. Open to suggestions…

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 20, 2022)

PBPICS said:


> I’m wondering if the human element is being taken into consideration? *Doesn’t the skill of the pilot have as much to do with the performance of the aircraft as the aircraft itself?* I’ve often suggested to my wife that the camera used to take photos has less to do with the final product than the skills of the photographer. I’ve even shot myself in the foot by suggesting that I could make a shoebox with a coke bottle lens work…that definitely backfired when I wanted to get a new camera or lens. IMHO it’s skills over equipment that makes a difference. Open to suggestions…


This is brought up here all the time. Aside from pilot skill you have to consider tactics.


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## Shortround6 (Oct 20, 2022)

PBPICS said:


> Doesn’t the skill of the pilot have as much to do with the performance of the aircraft as the aircraft itself?


Kind of depends what you mean by performance. 

Get in the plane and climb to 10,000ft. try to fly straight and level fun the engine at max allowed power and the pilot isn't going to make much difference, at least if the pilot can actually flight straight and level. 

Skipping a bunch of things here but trying to do tight turns can be a problem. Pilot is on the verge of blacking out and the varies from pilot to pilot, Trying to do a high G turn smoothly and on the verge of blacking out is not easy, over or under doing the control effort can really affect the turn (like stall the aircraft) but we still aren't talking about combat, just getting the plane to move through the sky in a desired pattern/course.
In Combat Performance the pilot has to all the maneuvering and fight the G forces while planning ahead for whatever it opponent/s are going to do and keeping an eye out for his own wingman or leader. The Ability to out think the opponents while going through the high G forces involved in air combat is where the pilots really make the difference. And here is where training/experience really helps.

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## PBPICS (Oct 21, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> Kind of depends what you mean by performance.
> 
> Get in the plane and climb to 10,000ft. try to fly straight and level fun the engine at max allowed power and the pilot isn't going to make much difference, at least if the pilot can actually flight straight and level.
> 
> ...


I would totally have to agree with you. I don’t have experience as a combat pilot, nor a pilot but I do have experience multitasking under high stress conditions and urban combat I.e. bricks and bullets and bombs…only as a frame of reference…so I can imagine that a combat pilot has a whole lot going on which is multitasking to the n-th degree. I think what I’m trying to say here is that I can empathize. Those people are owed a whole lot of respect.

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## John Vasco (Oct 21, 2022)

33k in the air said:


> I would have thought the raid on the Newcastle/Sunderland area on 15 August by Luftflotte 5 had more to do with it. The raid was by Norway-based aircraft, meaning the Bf 110 was the fighter escort.
> 
> 8 of the 34 escorting Bf 110s (23.5%) were shot down while the RAF fighters suffered no losses.


A few points.
The post to which you replied said that Battle of Britain day was 17th September 1940, when in fact it is 15th September 1940.

Now to your last paragraph:
'...8 of the 34 escorting Bf 110s (23.5%) were shot down...' This is incorrect. 6 were lost, not 8. Here are the full details for I./ZG 76 on that mission:
*Stab I./ZG76 *Messerschmitt Bf110D-0. Failed to return from sortie to east coast of England off Newcastle 1.00 p.m. FF Hptmn Werner Restemeyer _(Gruppenkommandeur), _BF Uffz Werner Eichert, and Hptmn Ernst-August Hartwich (of W.Leitstelle 15) all missing. Aircraft M8+AB 100% write-off.
_Ernst Hartwich was a signals officer operating specialist radio equipment installed to monitor RAF transmissions. _

*Stab I./ZG76 *Messerschmitt Bf110D-0. Shot down by fighters in combat off the east coast of England near Newcastle 1.00 p.m. FF Oberlt Gustav Loobes _(Gruppenadjutant)_ and BF Uffz Xaver Brock both missing. Aircraft 100% write-off.

*1./ZG76 *Messerschmitt Bf110D-0 (3155). Both engines disabled in attacks by P/O G.H. Bennions and P/O E.A. Shipman of No.41 Squadron during escort sortie for KG26 attack on east coast airfields. Tail broke off in heavy crash-landing near Streatlam Camp, Staindrop, near Barnard Castle, 1.36 p.m. FF Oberlt Hans-Ulrich Kettling captured with slight burns to right hand, BF Obergefr Fritz Volk captured wounded in right knee. Aircraft M8+CH fired by crew 100% write-off.
* 
2./ZG76 *Messerschmitt Bf110D-0. Shot down in combat with fighters of Nos.41, 72 and 79 Squadrons during escort sortie for KG26 attack on east coast airfields and crashed in the sea off Northumberland 1.00 p.m. FF Fw Klaus Ladwein captured unhurt, BF Obergefr Karl Lenk missing. Aircraft M8+EK 100% write-off.

*2./ZG76 *Messerschmitt Bf110D-0. Belly-landed on beach at Esbjerg badly damaged by fighters in combat over the North Sea off English east coast 1.00 p.m. BF Uffz Hans Geischecker baled out over the North Sea and missing, FF Uffz Bernhard Richter badly wounded - admitted to hospital in Esbjerg. Aircraft M8+JK under 50% damaged.

*3./ZG76 *Messerschmitt Bf110D-0(3157). Shot down in the sea off the east coast of England during combat off Northumberland coast 1.00 p.m. FF Lt Heinrich Köhler killed, BF Uffz Heinz Oelsner killed. Aircraft M8+SL 100% write-off.
_The body of Heinz Oelsner washed ashore on Ballum on the Danish coast on September 10. The body of Heinrich Köhler was washed up on the Danish island of Mandø on 11/9-40_. 

*3./ZG76 *Messerschmitt Bf110D-0(3182). Returned damaged in attack by fighters off English east coast 1.00 p.m. FF Oberlt Gordon Gollob unhurt, BF Uffz Friedrich Meyer slightly wounded - admitted to hospital in Leeuwarden. Aircraft M8+PL 15% damaged but repairable.

*3./ZG76 *Messerschmitt Bf110D-0. Shot down in the sea off the east coast of England during combat off Northumberland coast 1.00 p.m. FF Oberfw Hans Gröning and BF Obergefr Helmut Hahn both missing. Aircraft 100% write-off.

*3./ZG76 *Messerschmitt Bf110D-0. Returned damaged by fighters in combat off Northumberland coast 1.00 p.m. FF Uffz Erich Zickler unhurt, BF Gefr Josef Pudlik slightly wounded - admitted to hospital in Jever. Aircraft damage state not recorded.

Six shot down with a further three that returned damaged.


'...the RAF fighters suffered no losses...' This is incorrect. See below.
605 Squadron. Hurricane P3827. F/O C Passy – safe. Hit by return fire off Newcastle. Force-landed and wrecked one mile from Usworth.
605 Squadron. Hurricane P3308. F/Lt A McKellar – safe. Damaged by return fire off Newcastle.
605 Squadron. Hurricane P2717. P/O K Schadtler-Law – wounded. Hit by return fire. Force-landed near Hart railway station and admitted to Hartlepool hospital with suspected crushed vertebrae, laceration of scalp and concussion. P/O Schadtler-Law did not fly again operationally.
79 Squadron Hurricane. P/O Millington – safe. Damaged in combat.

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## pbehn (Oct 21, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> A few points.
> *The post to which you replied said that Battle of Britain day was 17th September 1940, when in fact it is 15th September 1940.*


My fault for typing in the dark lol

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## 33k in the air (Oct 21, 2022)

John Vasco said:


> A few points.
> The post to which you replied said that Battle of Britain day was 17th September 1940, when in fact it is 15th September 1940.
> 
> Now to your last paragraph:
> '...8 of the 34 escorting Bf 110s (23.5%) were shot down...' This is incorrect. 6 were lost, not 8. Here are the full details for I./ZG 76 on that mission:



The reference book I consulted stated eight. But this book was published a few decades ago.


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## John Vasco (Oct 22, 2022)

33k in the air said:


> The reference book I consulted stated eight. But this book was published a few decades ago.


I understand that. There is a hell of a lot of misinformation in books published decades ago.

What I posted is the correct information.

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## fannum (Oct 22, 2022)

Invariably, aircraft produced in quantity had good attributes ... just wound up being used in roles they were not designed for. IMHO, surveys like this tend to be fruitless exchanges, like sports challenges in a happy hour.
For not living up to its hype, it's hard to compare to the Fisher P-75

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## SaparotRob (Oct 22, 2022)

As pointless as it may be, it's great fun. Very few people I know have any interest in aviation. Those that do are more interested in air fares. The give and take, wanderings off thread, the stats and facts and "why didn't they just do this?" has given me new insights on aviation history. I like fannum's point about the most produced planes being used the most, including in unintended roles. 

The B-17 RULES!

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## fannum (Oct 22, 2022)

Note that who was writing about the air war, and most of all, where they were. Chronkite, Murrow and Rooney and with few exceptions, all others writing about the AIR WAR did so out of England ... talking to the crews between missions, and spending each night comparing notes in Mayfair London bars. 
So, the aircraft operating out of there got all the glory ... B-17s, Spitfires, Mosquitos, Mustangs, C-47s, P-47s, etc.

Few correspondents bothered to go to China-Burma-India, North Africa, Italy, Eastern Front, South Pacific and Aleutian Islands or travel with North Atlantic, Murmansk, South Atlantic convoys or the long USN shipboard cruises. Sure, they avoided them as it was difficult to file stories from those locations, but consider that many aircraft were mostly serving in those areas due to their availability at the time (mostly early war) or their longer range and the missions those remote locations concentrated on. Often a combination.
Early on, the P-40, P-39, P-36, Buffalo, F4F, PBY-5s, Gladiator, A-20s and Hurricanes were stop gaps, being supplanted by longer range P-38s, Venturas, B-24s, PBMs, Hudsons, C-46s which were heaped into the theaters for their range and load carrying.

The Navy realized that they were getting less coverage, and put correspondents on remote bases and aboard ships, like John Ford at Midway.
Only when the war in Europe wore down and conflict shifted to the Pacific did the B-29 begin to feature.

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## fannum (Oct 22, 2022)

Trivia: Which actress was named after an airplane?


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## SaparotRob (Oct 22, 2022)

fannum said:


> Trivia: Which actress was named after an airplane?


Swoosie Kurtz.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 22, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> The B-17 RULES!



Well, yeah, of course it does. It’s a Boeing.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 22, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Well, yeah, of course it does. It’s a Boeing.


I'll bet you read the manual!

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 22, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> I'll bet you read the manual!



I should…

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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 22, 2022)

fannum said:


> Invariably, aircraft produced in quantity had good attributes ... just wound up being used in roles they were not designed for.* IMHO, surveys like this tend to be fruitless exchanges, like sports challenges in a happy hour.*
> For not living up to its hype, it's hard to compare to the Fisher P-75


And the wonderful thing about this site is you always have the option of just scrolling to the next thread!

Always like the P-75A though

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## GrauGeist (Oct 22, 2022)

I've found these types of polls to be interesting, because everyone has a particular type in mind and with that, comes their contribution as to why they suggested it.

This leads to good conversation that has useful (or at the very least, interesting) information.

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## Shortround6 (Oct 22, 2022)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Always like the P-75A though


An inspiration to kit bashers everywhere

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 22, 2022)

My experience online is that these best-of/worst-of/most-overrated/most-underrated threads (guitars, general history, WWII av) never find a resolution but allow great conversation. What-ifs as well catch some stick but I like them for the same reason, that they make me think of alternatives and get me outside my own box.

Most decisive WWI battle? Biggest armored flop? Most useful gun? I don't need to agree, I just need to read, because the info will be flying fast and loose.

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## XBe02Drvr (Oct 23, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> The B-17 RULES!


Perhaps, but in future views of history, it's throne will be usurped by its great grandson, BUFF. (Four wars under its belt already, and 25+ years yet to go.)

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## SaparotRob (Oct 23, 2022)

What else would you expect from Boeing?

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## Airframes (Oct 23, 2022)

Bacon ?

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## soulezoo (Oct 24, 2022)

Airframes said:


> Bacon ?


The accountants that took Boeing over from the Engineers will not allow it. The Engineers would have considered the different kinds of bacon available to fit individual situations.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 24, 2022)

And just to be clear, turkey bacon is _not_ bacon, full stop, no matter what the accountants say.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 24, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> And just to be clear, turkey bacon is _not_ bacon, full stop, no matter what the accountants say.


The dog likes it though.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 24, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> The dog likes though.



Dogs will eat cat-turds, too.

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## GrauGeist (Oct 24, 2022)

At least Turkey bacon tastes better than that plant based crap and Turkey bacon is nasty...

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 24, 2022)

Bacon without any drippings is of the Devil.

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## Barrett (Oct 24, 2022)

Shortround6 said:


> I could be wrong but I think the F4F was the last Navy plane to be tested with a terminal velocity dive.
> Test pilot took the plane up to a certain altitude and then dove down vertical or near vertical until the plane simply didn't go any faster (drag equaled thrust/gravity) and the pilot pulled out. Quite often a special test pilot was hired to do this test instead of the regular company test pilot/s. The Navy also required every design to perform a 10 turn spin to the right and a ten turn spin to the left.
> The Corsair was supposed to be the first plane that didn't have to pass these tests although they tried more than once.
> With planes that had the speed of the Corsair there simply wasn't enough altitude to perform these tests like they did with the biplanes and first generation monoplanes. The tests, like the spin tests, took a lot more altitude per turn of spin. The dive test was running into compressibility.


I knew three Vought guys including two test pilots (one was Boone Guyton) and engineer Russ Clark. The F4U had a critical Mach of 0.74, which impressed my girlfriend whose 737 cruised at 0.74!

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## at6 (Oct 24, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> And just to be clear, turkey bacon is _not_ bacon, full stop, no matter what the accountants say.


It just so happens that I eat Turkey Bacon. The pig disagrees with my abdomen unfortunately. Other wise I'd eat Putin's family.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 24, 2022)

at6 said:


> It just so happens that I eat Turkey Bacon. The pig disagrees with my abdomen unfortunately. Other wise I'd eat Putin's family.



Then you are eating Turkey Strips. 

There is no such thing as Turkey Bacon. The idea was invented by the commies.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 24, 2022)

Thumpalumpacus said:


> And just to be clear, turkey bacon is _not_ bacon, full stop, no matter what the accountants say.



You sir, get some bacon.

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## wlewisiii (Oct 24, 2022)

Beef Bacon is a tasty alternative to the real thing. I have friends who keep kosher, and they use it too.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 24, 2022)

Bacon = Pig

Period. Oink oink.

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## at6 (Oct 24, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Bacon = Pig
> 
> Period. Oink oink.


You speak three languages?

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 24, 2022)

at6 said:


> You speak three languages?


 Four

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 24, 2022)

at6 said:


> It just so happens that I eat Turkey Bacon. The pig disagrees with my abdomen unfortunately. Other wise I'd eat Putin's family.



You have my sympathies.









































Of course, that means more bacon for me.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 24, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> You sir, get some bacon.



The _real_ stuff!

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## Greg Boeser (Oct 24, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Then you are eating Turkey Strips.
> 
> There is no such thing as Turkey Bacon. The idea was invented by the commies.


You are definitely going to trigger a few of our members for getting political.

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## GrauGeist (Oct 24, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> You are definitely going to trigger a few of our members for getting political.


Kill a commie for mommie!

Was that too political?

Am I banned yet?

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 24, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> You are definitely going to trigger a few of our members for getting political.



In this case…







We are talking about bacon for crying out loud.

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## Greg Boeser (Oct 25, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> In this case…
> 
> View attachment 691736
> 
> ...


Nature's candy.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 25, 2022)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Perhaps, but in future views of history, it's throne will be usurped by its great grandson, BUFF. (Four wars under its belt already, and 25+ years yet to go.)


BTW. I hold the B-52 in quite high esteem.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 25, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> BTW. I hold the B-52 in quite high esteem.



Thats because its a Boeing, and you have taste.

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## SaparotRob (Oct 25, 2022)

And we're the same age. It just looks better.

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## XBe02Drvr (Oct 25, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Thats because its a Boeing, and you have taste.


A real Bo*e*ing, from before the former inmates of MacD came along and dropped the * e* from the spelling!

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## Peter Gunn (Oct 25, 2022)

XBe02Drvr said:


> A real Bo*e*ing, from before the former inmates of MacD came along and dropped the * e* from the spelling!


Wait what?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 25, 2022)

XBe02Drvr said:


> A real Bo*e*ing, from before the former inmates of MacD came along and dropped the * e* from the spelling!



Huh? What are you talking about?


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## tomo pauk (Oct 25, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Then you are eating Turkey Strips.
> 
> There is no such thing as Turkey Bacon. The idea was invented by the commies.



Turkey Bacon is the _capitalist_ trick

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 25, 2022)

tomo pauk said:


> Turkey Bacon is the _capitalist_ trick



#Fake News

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## special ed (Oct 25, 2022)

I had a friend who spelled Boeing without the "e" until it was pointed out the way he spelled it was the way he made landings.

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## special ed (Oct 25, 2022)

Has anyone noticed how vegans try to convince you that their plants taste just like meat? That's what they really want, meat.

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 25, 2022)

tomo pauk said:


> Turkey Bacon is the _capitalist_ trick

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## XBe02Drvr (Oct 25, 2022)

Peter Gunn said:


> Wait what?





DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Huh? What are you talking about?


Come on guys, you know this (recent) history. Look at who wound up infiltrating the upper levels of Boeing management after it absorbed McDonnell Douglas; some of the same individuals whose failings had led to that company's demise. They brought with them the deadly mantra that the path to survival was through guaranteeing continuous high earnings to stockholders at all costs, including vicious cost cutting, technical shortcuts, tight, rigid schedules, and deliberate deceptive practices. Witness the Max fiasco. Longtime dedicated highly competent engineers with pride in their integrity and their products jumped ship in frustration, leaving behind those willing to indulge in smoke and mirrors. There are armies of former Boeing employees out there willing to attest to this. Sorry to rain on the parade of the faithful, but the big B ain't what it used to be.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 25, 2022)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Come on guys, you know this (recent) history. Look at who wound up infiltrating the upper levels of Boeing management after it absorbed McDonnell Douglas; some of the same individuals whose failings had led to that company's demise. They brought with them the deadly mantra that the path to survival was through guaranteeing continuous high earnings to stockholders at all costs, including vicious cost cutting, technical shortcuts, tight, rigid schedules, and deliberate deceptive practices. Witness the Max fiasco. Longtime dedicated highly competent engineers with pride in their integrity and their products jumped ship in frustration, leaving behind those willing to indulge in smoke and mirrors. There are armies of former Boeing employees out there willing to attest to this. Sorry to rain on the parade of the faithful, but the big B ain't what it used to be.



Seem’s to be doing fine to me. I ain’t complaining…


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 25, 2022)

Don’t take me wrong. It ain’t perfect, mistakes have been made, and like all companies it has its problems. But the company will survive, and will come out strong.

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## XBe02Drvr (Oct 25, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Don’t take me wrong. It ain’t perfect, mistakes have been made, and like all companies it has its problems. But the company will survive, and will come out strong.


After a thorough housecleaning.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 25, 2022)

XBe02Drvr said:


> After a thorough housecleaning.



The company is transforming from the bottom up/top down already.


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## Big Jake (Oct 26, 2022)

Boeing will always survive because no US government will dare leaving the civilian transport (airlines) field to the Europeans.

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## GrauGeist (Oct 26, 2022)

Big Jake said:


> Boeing will always survive because no US government will dare leaving the civilian transport (airlines) field to the Europeans.


huh...so I guess BAe aircraft don't qualify?


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## wuzak (Oct 26, 2022)

GrauGeist said:


> huh...so I guess BAe aircraft don't qualify?



Aren't they European?


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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 26, 2022)

BAe, is international, has many facilities in the US (I worked for them many years ago). I don't believe that are building complete airframes in the US.






Our locations







www.baesystems.com

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## Peter Gunn (Oct 26, 2022)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Come on guys, you know this (recent) history. Look at who wound up infiltrating the upper levels of Boeing management after it absorbed McDonnell Douglas; some of the same individuals whose failings had led to that company's demise. They brought with them the deadly mantra that the path to survival was through guaranteeing continuous high earnings to stockholders at all costs, including vicious cost cutting, technical shortcuts, tight, rigid schedules, and deliberate deceptive practices. Witness the Max fiasco. Longtime dedicated highly competent engineers with pride in their integrity and their products jumped ship in frustration, leaving behind those willing to indulge in smoke and mirrors. There are armies of former Boeing employees out there willing to attest to this. Sorry to rain on the parade of the faithful, but the big B ain't what it used to be.


Um... actually I thought that they had really removed the "e" from the name and I had missed it...

I go to penalty box... two minutes... feel shame...

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 26, 2022)

Big Jake said:


> Boeing will always survive because no US government will dare leaving the civilian transport (airlines) field to the Europeans.



Political death for the sitting president if that ever happens.


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## GrauGeist (Oct 26, 2022)

wuzak said:


> Aren't they European?


Exactly - Boeing does not have a monopoly on the U.S. civil carrier market.

The BAe 146 was very popular with smaller carriers in the U.S., for example.

What's interesting, is that the 146 has found a second life as an aerial tanker for fighting wildfires here.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 26, 2022)

GrauGeist said:


> Exactly - Boeing does not have a monopoly on the U.S. civil carrier market.
> 
> The BAe 146 was very popular with smaller carriers in the U.S., for example.
> 
> What's interesting, is that the 146 has found a second life as an aerial tanker for fighting wildfires here.



Its probably about 50/50 Boeing-Airbus when it comes to the civil carrier market in the US.

Fact remains both companies have made their fair share of mistakes and had their fair share of WTF moments (even though Airbus fans love to ignore the early fly by wire issues and the A380 Debacle). Both companies are here to stay, and they will continue to grow and make mistakes and learn.

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## WARSPITER (Oct 26, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Its probably about 50/50 Boeing-Airbus when it comes to the civil carrier market in the US.
> 
> Fact remains both companies have made their fair share of mistakes and had their fair share of WTF moments (even though Airbus fans love to ignore the early fly by wire issues and the A380 Debacle). Both companies are here to stay, and they will continue to grow and make mistakes and learn.


Too true. If they don't then market forces will determine their fate as has happened to many companies over time. 

That is the main strength of a free market economy. If you don't continue to improve and sit on your laurels then
someone else will and that will be that.

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## GrauGeist (Oct 26, 2022)

Here in Redding, I see several non-U.S. types coming and going from RDD.

Embraer, Bombardier and so on.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 26, 2022)

Speaking of debacles, look at the Bombardier and Airbus partnership. Granted Airbus came out very strong in that failed partnership.

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## at6 (Oct 26, 2022)

What happened to over rated aircraft and bacon?


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## at6 (Oct 26, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Then you are eating Turkey Strips.
> 
> There is no such thing as Turkey Bacon. The idea was invented by the commies.


Jimmy Dean says it's bacon and I never argue with Jimmy.

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## Greg Boeser (Oct 26, 2022)

He's a friend o' them long-haired, hippy-type pinko fags, he's even got a commie flag tacked up on the wall inside of his garage!

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 26, 2022)

at6 said:


> Jimmy Dean says it's bacon and I never argue with Jimmy.



Jimmy is a commie.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 26, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> He's a friend o' them long-haired, hippy-type pinko fags, he's even got a commie flag tacked up on the wall inside of his garage!



Alright, lets not go too far with this.


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## at6 (Oct 26, 2022)

No. He was a Hillbilly.


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## SaparotRob (Oct 26, 2022)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Alright, lets not go too far with this.


Hold on. I know the next line.


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## SaparotRob (Oct 26, 2022)

Greg Boeser said:


> He's a friend o' them long-haired, hippy-type pinko fags, he's even got a commie flag tacked up on the wall inside of his garage!


I don't even have a garage! You can call and ask my wife!

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## SaparotRob (Oct 26, 2022)

"Uneasy Rider"

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## Thumpalumpacus (Oct 26, 2022)

at6 said:


> Jimmy Dean says it's bacon and I never argue with Jimmy.



That's what he gets for hanging out at the five-and-dime, where they sell turkey "bacon".

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