Recent content by OldSkeptic

Oh the 262 was a damn good airframe, better than anything the allies had until the F-86/Mig-15 era and capable of a lot of further development. Obviously the first was reliable and easier to use engines. But the airframe had the potential to have a lot of different weapon systems added. Not to...

A lot of that was post war rationalisation. At the time they were totally confused as to what they were doing or wanted (at one point they nearly went to war with the USSR...). Plus they had aspirations far beyond their capabilities. Greece was the classic. Even the Greeks didn't really want...

The 1940/41 period was disasterous for the British. They were all over the place in terms of strategy and went from disaster to disaster. A large part of that was due to Churchill himself, never one for consistency. What really mattered to them at that time were: clearing the Med and winning...

I think Bungey (His book "Most Dangerous Enemy") pretty much has debunked that common mythology. Only one airfield (Manston) was ever put out of operation. Virtually no planes were caught on the ground. The radars were hard to take out, only a Stuka might do it and they were easy prey, and the...

True, there was lot of variation with the 'F' being the best. Both the 109 and Spit had'1st generation' meredith radiators, which probably offset radiator drag by about 50%, the Mustang (and Mossie to a slightly lesser extent) were 2nd generation, offsetting by 90% for a Mustang. Hawker claimed...

I agree entirely (good scenario) and there is an additional factor. The great successes the Luftwaffe achieved in late '43 was also because they could use their heavily armed twins. As the US escorts got more range they were obliterated, putting more pressure on the SE fighters. In your...

Thanks to their extensive radar (and radio listening) network, which stretched into France and Holland, they had hours of warning of USAAF raids from whatever direction. In 1940 Park had 30-40 mins warning and had to react to that, which he did masterfully. They didn't need 10,000 fighters...

Good little book is CINDERELLA SERVICE: RAF Coastal Command 1939 - 1945. Part of the problem was that BC over promised (lied?) in that it claimed it would take out the U-Boat production (it didn't) so there was no need to go "swanning all over the ocean" (Harris quote). Every decent plane that...

Very underestimated plane the Spit XII, pretty competitive at low level even in July '44 as per their V1 victories (and by that stage they were getting pretty old). Run rings around a Typhoon. A rear tank (even an L shaped on) is the best for the Spit because of simplicity. You have the...

In all this the 8th and BC were aided by the poor tactics of the Luftwaffe defending Germany. I shake my head at times how just badly they did. Both of them were very lucky that the Luftwaffe didn't have a Keith Park. Though the sheer resources that the US could bring would have meant air...

Actually there was a great missed opportunity in not putting Merlin XX series (single stage, two speed) engines into a Mustang, a much easier conversion than a 60 series Merlin and there were plenty of them. That would it made it very competitive with the FW-190 (at least) in the 20,000-25,000ft...

Stripping down the Lanc and getting another 50mph out of it would have given the German nightfighters a much harder job. Their pursuit curve would have been much harder and they would have had to have ran at full(er) throttle for far longer periods, thus reducing their loiter time and forcing...

Their job was to kill the Luftwaffe, the bombers were really just bait to bring them up. That was the great innovation by the great (and always underestimated) Doolittle. He realised that just chasing them away was pointless, the Luftwaffe pilots lived to fight another day and that would let it...

Oh the RAF after the BoB was a litany of strategic and tactical disasters. In fact it is hard to work out something they did right until they were finally forced to. Ok lets look at the British overall strategy, what did they have to do: (1) Win the Battle of the Atlantic, this is the #1...

That's right. One of the annoying things about the Mustang 'myth' is that it takes credit away from NA and their whole design team. Every part of the design was carefully done to reduce drag, from the nose backward. This included fit and finish as well. Very, very clever people. We know from...