Recent content by corpcasselbury

That was because each of the He 177's two propellors was turned by two engines. There was insufficient space between the paired engines, so heat built up and eventually a fire broke out. Losses were heavy, even when no one was actually shooting at them.

My pick remains the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair. I'd match one of them against any other piston engined fighter. In fact, during the Korean War, a Corsair pilot actually shot down a MiG-15! 8)

It needs to be said that the Italian antishipping squadrons were better at hitting Allied ships than any German unit except for Fliegerkorps 10. No one who made the Malta convoy runs ever laughed at the Regia Aeronautica.

It should be noted that the German fighter pilots were polled after the war as to which air force had been their toughest opponents in the air. The RAF was the overwhelming choice for first, with the USA second.

The Swordfish is also my pick. Provided its performance limitations were kept in mind, it was astonishingly versatile, being used in roles it was never designed for, including as a fighter! I don't know the details for that last one, but someone, somewhere, used a "Stringbag" as a fighter one...

Horse feathers! The Shiden could indeed, in the hands of a skilled pilot, take a Grumman Hellcat, but a Corsair or a Mustang was another proposition. Given that the Shiden had a lot of engine problems, any assumed superiority must be taken with a grain of salt.

My prolonged absence is due to real life problems my wife and I are having (not with each other, however!). We had to give up our computer, which means that I can only get online at our local public library. This limits my access. So I will only be able to pop in here intermittently.

I've been having a lot of real life problems lately; losing this site was one of them. I only rediscovered this group when a moderator e-mailed me with some news. It's good to be back, I must say. :)

Apology accepted. :D Nice picture, BTW.

Sir, I am an American, and I can assure you that I am not a joke, nor is my country.

Just as a cool side note, the only US Navy ace of the Korean War flew the F4U Corsair. And one Corsair even managed to shoot down a MiG-15! Not bad! 8)

All I have to say on the subject is that if I had a choice between going into combat in either an IL-2 or a Ju 87, I'd pick the Sturmovik over the Stuka any day! An interesting note about Rudel is that he aborted a mission only once, when jumped by an American fighter unit operating in Russia...

My pick for worst aircraft of WW2 goes to the Douglas TBD Devastator, one of the most mis-named aircraft of the entire war! This dog of a torpedo bomber was decimated at the Battle of Midway, with 36 of 41 planes being shot down by Japanese Zeroes.

Whoops, my mistake! Make that *eighteen* .50 caliber machine guns! :oops:

Neither would I. The ground attack version packed six .50 machine guns in the nose (plus four more in twin tail and dorsal positions), with an additional *ten* machine guns could be mounted in special packs (eight on the wings in pairs, two more on the outside of the fuselage). Plus, the twin...