Best Fighter III

well this is weird though not surprising for JG 301. The book only lists 1 kill by Dora's which is incorrect.

Lt. Rudi Wurff who singlehandedly attacked Pierre Clostermanns squadron of Tempests. Rudi shot down Pierre's wingman and nearly took out Pierre. a perfect bounce by the 6./JG 301 pilot totally surprising the Allied crews. Funny too as Pierre credited the Dora pilot with 3-4 kills in his book, but Rudi was only given 1 confirmed. Date 21 April 1945 über Dammer See. Rudi Wurff made it through the war with 3 kills, but probably more..........

Erich ♪

I have not been able to find too much info on Dora kills but it might be hard do to the fact that late 1944 and beyond they were no longer keeping track of the kills or atleast like they used to.

Guys:

I digress: it is not my intention to debate further on fighter specifications.

I have been told by men who flew during WWII, the Bf109 G-10 could fly circles around the P-51 virtually at any altitude. The P-51 of course made a great opponent but was not unbeatable, AT ALL, according to the words of some of them.

The late dogfighting (repeat, dogfighting) versions of the Bf109 had everything to outfly any enemy fighter.

It is amazing but it appears like the allied propaganda devoted to defame the Bf109 has paid its dividends. The firmly established notion of the "absolute inability and obsolence" of the Bf109 against the late allied fighter models.

Illiterate hogwash gentlemen.

Yes, the model suffered throughout its evolution, and a lot of Blah, blah, blah...but so did the Spitfire. And both planes were among the very best during the whole conflict.

I am quite confident affirming this. I have talked to some men who were there and have had the chance of seeing guncamera footage showing the P-51s taking lead from German fighters and going down.

That Erich or any other brilliant researcher such as him, have not found any confirmed registered victory of Doras over P-51s in dogfights does not imply at all it did not actually happen! (This is not directed to you Erich)

It is pointless to continue arguing the P-51 was the best, greatest and only perfect fighter of the war, because it was not.

One of the greatest? Yes; sharing the place along with the Bf109, Fw190s and the glorious Spitfire though.

Only experts and noted researchers such as Erich know that even if the Luftwaffe suffered frightful losses fighting both the RAF and USAAF, the victory achieved by the allies was everything but the pop corn chumping run depicted by the allied propaganda.

The mob does not know this. They are convinced the USAAF arrived to Europe to immediately, promptly and utterly erase the Luftwaffe of the skies of Europe, with ease. Have you seen the movies of the USA made by the hollywood boys of the 50s? Real caricatures, but to the mob that is about it!

Illiterate hogwash gentlemen.

Sum the total number of pilots and airmen killed in action of both the RAF and the USAAF and the number will show how frightening their losses were as well.

By the way, and off topic, my completely favorite fighters of the war are the Spitfire on its many versions, all Bf109s and Fw190s.

I will agree with you that it was not a run in the park for the allies but one reason why the allied airmen killed was so high is because many of the aircraft shot down were bombers. If you shoot down 10 fighters you kill 10 of them (not to say that they all die, but just for this purpose we will say so), if you shoot down 10 B-17 you kill 100, that is why there so many killed airmen for the allies.

Der Adler:

You are virtually quoting me there, just in kind of a different approach. )

I said what you just posted on another thread around here; it was about the very high cost paid by the USAAF to get the job done by putting on one sole aircraft ten men.


The allied propaganda has tried to depict the fight against the Luftwaffe was similar -if not identical- against the fight with the Japanese Air Force in the Pacific. There lies my point.

The outcome was the same in both places: VICTORY.

But the path followed to get there was not similar; quite the opposite, the allied air run over Europe was a real tragedy for the USAAF.

1944 surely was the year when the Luftwaffe lost the battle, still it was the year when the Sturmgruppen obliterated heavy bomber formations.

See my point? It was not as utter and easy as their propaganda accounts. Victory, of course! But not in the style achiieved against Japan.

Der Adler, what you posted here is correct, but it is only part of the whole deal.

Many many times the German fighters were ordered to get the bombers and to forget the escort fighters.

"Get the bombers: they are killing lots of innocent civilians; each bomber you destroy saves lives and erases the 10 bastards on it."

For example, in the allied propaganda campaign to defame the Bf109, it is always depicted that as the Bf109 evolved, the manouverability of the machine was affected, especially the G version. To some extent it is true, but never to render the fighter "nearly obsolete" and the like.

The Spitfire, from the MkI to the XIV version suffered a nearly identical process of evolution: more and more powerful engines being fitted, different armament configurations, fuselage modifications, etc....do they ever mention the model suffered accordingly throughout its evolution? Very hardly. And it did.

Notwithstanding that, the Spitfire remained one of the very best fighters of the war.

If you ask me, I see the P-47 above the Mustang; it did lots of very hard work, taking high losses many times, but it helped more than the P-51 did to the allied war effort.

kiwimac said:

We can argue all we like but German Aircraft design was ahead of that of the allies in 1939 and was still ahead in 1945. That the Germans did not have the raw materials in 1945 to build them is beside the point.

Kiwimac

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First off, I have never argued that German aircraft "design" was not ahead of the Allies in WWII in many areas. What I have argued is that their materials and industrial technologies were insufficient to mass produce those designs. This is made all to clear by the inability of the Germans, despite 5 years of trying to do so, to build an operational turbo-supercharger even in small quantities. They simply did not have the tooling to do so.

And it wasn't just raw matrials that were lacked, it was also materials technologies. The German A-Bomb projected totally lacked the capacity to produce weapons grade uranium on even a small scale, let alone the quantities required for a bomb.

The Germans never made any alloy similar to IM11, which was composed of Alluminum, Magnesium, and Barium nitrate. They did try to use this combination by mixing the powdered forms and using wax to hold it together (which gave an unsatisfactory result). They understood the principal and value of such an alloy, but lacked the materials technology to produce it, because this required extremely precise temperature contol during the alloying and cooling process. Without such precise control, the metals would not alloy, and hot spots would form, and the whole thing would explode. I'm sure they could do it in small labratory quantities, but not on an industrial scale.

The German's were never able to mass produce their own ALNICO magnets. This dispite the fact that the fundimental knolwege was originally discovered by a Japanese scientist named Mishimo (or something close to that) in 1933. Again, they had the basic knowlege necessary, but lacked the materials technology to mass produce such an item, which required extremely precise control of the cool down temperatures. Without it, the Aluminum/nickle/Cobalt alloy would seperate making a worthless pile of crud. Without this the magnitron, cavity magnitron, and thus small wavelenth radar and the proximity fuse were out of reach.

It is one thing to be able to design a fancy end product, it is entierly another to be able to mass produce it. And that is not beside the point, that IS THE POINT!

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Lunatic

About the Airbus....

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=49046#49046

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Lunatic

I will deffinatly enjoy reading this!

jet wise i think the germans were ahead but in piston aircraft i think the americans were with planes like the p-51h and the p-38 and the tigercat

but look were it is now......

again not having the Ta 152 run up against the P-51K we will never know

That would be an interesting match.

I agree would have been interesting to see how that would have turned out.

Erich said:

again not having the Ta 152 run up against the P-51K we will never know

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Erich, did you mean the P-51H, for the P-51K was the Dallas built version of the P-51D?

Udet, I've seend several quotes from German pilots indicating the the maneuverability of the 109 was seriously degraded by the time of the G and later models. Not to say that it was obsolete by any means. But to claim that the 109 could fly rings around a P-51 may be stretching the truth a bit. This seems to be verified by the compartivie flight tests conducted as well.

I would agree with you that the P-47 contributed as much (if nor more) to the daylight bombing raids as the P-51. However, The P-51 was the better air-to-air fighter. Of course, I would choose a P-38L over either one of them.

KK no what was available at hand. We have all thought the what if. posed the Ta 152 H against the P-51D or K in high altitiude combat..........

I think had the Ta-152 would have been a great match for a P-51D, K at high alltitudes. Even maybe would have a considerable advantage over the D.

I wonder what kind of impact it would have made had the Ta-152's been built in larger numbers and earlier then they had.

would depend if the Luftwafe pilots had as much time to train on the Tank as the US fighter pilots on their P-51's. We would of then read of hihg altitude flights as high as 40,000 plus feet. who knows........ ?

P-51's could not fight effectively above about 33-35K. The Ta's would have to have come down to fight.

The Ta could never have been produced in large numbers (like the P-51), it was a very difficult plane to manufacture.

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Lunatic

that's true of most german engineering, very advanced and couldn't be produced in large numbers...........