Best Fighter III

renrich said:

The A6M had more than twice the range of the 109 and there was no modern fighter in ww2 that had the slow speed maneuver capabilities of the Zero. Having more than an hour to spend in the air over Britain instead of 15 or 20 minutes would have had a huge impact on the battle. The British Battle of Britain veterans in spitfires flying out of Darwin in 1942 tried to dogfight the A6M and paid heavily for that mistake. It is my understanding that neither the British or German fighters in 1940 had self sealing tanks so the 109 would have had no advantage in ruggedness and in fact with the air cooled engine the Zero would have had an advantage.

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It's kind of irrelevant since the Zero was not in production in time for the Battle of Britain. A preproduction batch saw service in China in September 1940.
People lose sight of the fact the the three best fighters in actual service in June 1940 were the 109, the Spitfire and the Hurricane. Trade the Luftwaffe or the RAF aircraft for any other airforce's front line fighters at that time the result would be a disaster.

renrich said:

New to this forum but with regard to the discussion about best ww2 piston engined fighter, consider this. In Europe the P47 flew 423,435 combat sorties for 3077 losses. The P51 flew 213,873 combat sorties for 2520 losses. The two leading American aces flew P47s.

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The two leading aces in Europe did fly the P-47, but there were only 79 P-47 aces vs 258 P-51 aces. The total enemy aircraft claims in Europe were 4950 for the P-51 vs 3082 for the P-47 and as you pointed out, the P-51 did it in far fewer sorties.

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

While the P-51 was more maneuverable than the P-47. The P-51 was not th greatest thing since bread and butter. Was it a great plane? Absolutely yes, one of the best ever built. But what really was the only thing that it had in advantage over other aircraft. Its range. There were other American, British, and German aircraft were faster and more manueverable.

Once the P-51 got over the target, you can take its range out of the equation because now it is just fighter vs. fighter over Germany and the P-51 no longer has to get to the target, it is there.

Why did the P-51 do so well in my honest opinion, because of its large number. It had numerical superiority. 5 Bf-109G's or Fw-190A's getting jumped by 25 to 30 P-51s is a pretty one sided fight.

The P-51s lay to fame was that it had the range to take the fight to the enemy. Take that away and it was no differnent than any other fighter over the skies of Europe.

The reason that I like the P-47 over the P-51 is because of its ruggedness. It was also better adapted to the close air support role than the P-51.

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You can't take range out of the equation because without it there is no fight.

The numerical superiority arguement doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. In the big air battles over Berlin in March 1944 the AAF could put up between 100 and 200 P-51's. The Luftwaffe certianly had more fighters than that. The P-51's also had to spread out along the path of the bombers.

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Reluctant Poster said:

You can't take range out of the equation because without it there is no fight.

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Depending on what you're talking about, however, range can be taken out of the equation to a certain extent.

The Spitfire LF/F.Mk.IX was believed to one of the best fighters of WWII and it had a less-than-generous range. Obviously, without thinking of range, you can't get to the enemy, but though the P-51 (for example) had a lot more range, that range didn't help it dodge and loop and roll and fight e/a.

If a Spitfire were to duel a P-51, range would not be regarded as it is not a fighter's performance quility; i.e. a PBY-5 has a long range but it's not ganna out-fight a Frank.

In terms of strict dogfighting/dueling, the a/c with highest amount of 'combat abilities' (i.e. turning both instant and sustained, climb, dive E-retention etc.) would come out on top.

renrich said:

The A6M had more than twice the range of the 109 and there was no modern fighter in ww2 that had the slow speed maneuver capabilities of the Zero. Having more than an hour to spend in the air over Britain instead of 15 or 20 minutes would have had a huge impact on the battle. The British Battle of Britain veterans in spitfires flying out of Darwin in 1942 tried to dogfight the A6M and paid heavily for that mistake. It is my understanding that neither the British or German fighters in 1940 had self sealing tanks so the 109 would have had no advantage in ruggedness and in fact with the air cooled engine the Zero would have had an advantage.

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The Ki-43 was significantly more agile than the Zero at slow speeds, and kept that agility better through the speed range because of a better alieron design.

The Spitfire had a self sealing lower tank, but the upper tank wasn't, due to space reasons (rectified on the Mk V).

The 109E-3s/E-4s had better pilot armour and selfsealing tanks than the Zero.

They were also

Faster, particularly above 15,000 feet;
More reliable (the early Zeros Sakae 12 was very tempremental until modified after combat trials in July-August, 1940);
Had better top speed and dive speed;
More controllable at high speed;
Better armed (MG-FFM);
Better equipped (superior radios and cockpit equipment).

While an hour of loiter time over London would of been fatastic, the highest loss rates experiance by the LuftWaffe were not over England itself, but over the English Channel, 50-100 miles closer to France than London. Strangely enough, where they had as much, or more, endurance than their RAF counterparts in Spitfires and Hurricanes.

If I wanted to survive over the UK in 1940, i'd want to be in a 109E rather than a A6M2.

Enjoyed your reply. Many points well taken. The question is whether the Hes and Dos survived to do the bombing.

The F4F-3 was operational with the US Navy in April, 1940. In fact, by October 31, 1940 the Royal Navy had taken delivery of 81 Martlets. The F4F-3 was superior to the Hurricane in most respects.

The significance of the comparison between the P47 and P51 sorties versus losses was that the P47 was almost twice as likely to come back from a sortie as a P51. The P47 was operational with the 8th air force in April, 1943. The P51B did not become operational out of Britain until December, 1943. It would follow that when Gabreski and Johnson were running up their totals, they were flying against an enemy that was both quantitatively and qualitatively superior to what the P51 pilots faced seven months later. The P51 victories relatively speaking were achieved against Luftwaffe pilots in many cases who were inexperienced and outnumbered. By the late stages of the war the German fighters were modified with heavier weapons that took away some of their ACM capabilities. Many of the P47 squadrons were changed to Mustangs for the escort role while the P47 itself was used more extensively for air to mud missions which were inherently more dangerous than escort missions especially late in the war. Notwithstanding all those factors the Jug was almost twice as likely to come back as the Mustang. Seems clear to me that the sole advantage ( and a huge one) that the P51 had over the P47 was longer legs.

renrich said:

had an air cooled engine, (couldn't be brought down by a single round like the liquid cooled engined fighters)

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You sure about that. Ive flown on combat missions and I have seen aircraft go down by a single 7.62mm round. Granted they were not WW2 aircraft, but what I am saying is....one well placed round is all it takes.

Reluctant poster:

There were quite a few times during the whole year of 1944 when German fighter pilots had the opportunity to engage P-51s or P-47s in situations where the allied guys did not enjoy a numerical superiority having thus a more balanced match in terms of planes joining the fight...most of such times the Germans taught them real tough lessons, either wiping out the USAAF flight or giving them a battering with minimum or no losses from the German part. More importantly, many of such times the German fliers were mainly rookies..."ill-trained" as depicted on most accounts.

Of course such kind of enagements were not too common as most times the German boys found themselves overwhelmed by sheer numbers of enemy planes, and even then most of the times the big majority of the German fliers managed to escape and return to base even after having their fighter units enduring very high losses.

So the generally accepted allied tale of "German pilots that were ill-trained and barely capable of flying" for the 1944 period seems quite unaccurate.

Reluctant Poster said:

You can't take range out of the equation because without it there is no fight.

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No in the instance that I am talking yes you can. Once the P-51D was at its patrol area over Germany it no longer had the 6 hours of flight time (or however long it was), because it had to get back to England. So during that time the Luftwaffe fighters were more on par with the time they could spend in the air. We are not talking about 1943 here or anything.

Understand what I am saying. Sure range is a great thing but lets say an aircraft has 2000mi range and it takes 600mi to get to its loiter spot and 600mi to get back. That leaves 800mi left that it can spend to fly around and search for enemy fighters. A Luftwaffe fighter with 800mi range (not talking about Bf-109 here but any fighter) can now stay in the air for the same amount of time.

Now it is just aircraft vs. aircraft and pilot vs. pilot.

Reluctant Poster said:

The numerical superiority arguement doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. In the big air battles over Berlin in March 1944 the AAF could put up between 100 and 200 P-51's. The Luftwaffe certianly had more fighters than that. The P-51's also had to spread out along the path of the bombers.

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Oh it holds up very very well actually. At the hight of the P-51s time in the ETO the Luftwaffe never was able to up superior numbers of fighters to combat the P-51s. They rarely were able to up 100 to 200 fighters in the air at the same time in one location.

The one time they were able to and it is considered the last ditch effort of the Luftwaffe was Operation Bodenplatte which was launched on 1 January 1945. On this operation which had no effect on the war the Luftwaffe was able to muster about 1000 aircraft (and I am not sure on this actual amount)

The allies lost 405 aircraft during Operation Bodenplatte. The Luftwaffe lost 304 aircraft (most of them to AA guns and many to there own AA guns because the German AA gunners did not know about the mission and fired on anything that flew.)

As you see allied numerical superiority is what won the skies over Europe.

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But also the Luftwaffe guys shot down a large number of TAF/USAAF fighters that made it to the air...again shattering the classical allied night tale of a Luftwaffe comprised mainly of "ill-trained naive young boys" by that period of the war.

Chingachgook said:

Bodenplatte - most of the allied losses were on the gound, but a few Mustangs and Spits got airborn and then got even. One Spit pilot did quite well.

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62 German fighters were lost in Air to Air Combat to Allied fighters. 70 Allied aircraft were shot down. You see with closer numerical numbers the Luftwaffe did not fair to bad against Allied Aircraft.

88 German fighters were lost to Allied ground fire and 84 were lost to German ground fire.

Adler, correct.

It´s been quite some time since i learned how incorrect the views on aerieal warfare in the ETO for 1944 are.

No one will deny German fliers suffered tremendous casualties during said year, and likewise prohibitive losses during 1945, but they want to make it look as if the ETO had been about indentical to the PTO in terms of aerial combat.

I will always say that if a thing such a "Great Marianas Turkey Shot" took place in the Pacific, when countless Japanese combat planes were shot down apparently with utmost easiness by US forces -an minimum losses from the US part if any- it will not mean anything similar came close to happen against the Luftwaffe.

~80 TAF/USAAF fighter planes shot down in a few hours of fierce air combat... Can anyone tell if the Japs were capable of achieving something that could resemble such a thing during the entire year of 1944? By the time "Bodenplatte" was launched the Japs had already gained several months of practice in terms of sending thousands of pilots to carry on with suicidal attacks.

This might help clearing the atmosphere for some, a force comprised mainly of the kind of pilots allied mythology describes, will not achieve such a thing, even if the end the operation turned out a failure and even if losses were high.

I continue to gather more information regarding the alleged "hastily ill-trained", "naive", "stupid", "misleaded", "barely capable of flying, much less to navigate" young boys of the Luftwaffe sent en mass to face an unavoidable death at the hands of the superb allied western air forces during the last 18 months of the war in Europe.

Also i continue to gather information on names, and possibly lists of Luftwaffe flight instructors, that in accordance with the allied fairy tale, "got all sent out to first line units to fly combat missions leaving flying schools without proper instructors contributing thus to the ever poorer quality of new fighter pilots." Already have the names of many who remained as fly instructors to the very last day of the war and never served in combat units.

The casualty free meless against the Luftwaffe during 1944 will become what they are: junk.

It has also become customary to say "the allies could replace their losses with ease, while the Germans could not". Sounds nice and comfortable, even reasonable as argument. But i am not sure on the whole extent of the phrase.

If on one day the Germans lost say 60 fighters shot down in combat -high losses- but in the process they managed to destroy 40 heavy bombers and 21fighters the USAAF lost 421 men...a 7 to 1 exchange ratio...and as i also have said elsewhere in the forum, the USA is a country that has always had issues at enduring heavy losses...

A pilot must commence its career as such at one point; that many German pilots got shot down after flying a mere fistful of missions is correct, but would that mean they were "ill-trained"?

Do you have any numbers for how many USAAF pilots flying the overhyped P-51 got shot down and killed after a having flown say no more than 5 combat missions? I bet no one does, because it should not be known but you bet many US guys ended their days frying in their cockpits and had not fly more than many German pilots who died during 1944.

None of the German fighters could be described as "outclassed" by any of its allied contemporary foes. The G-5/G-6/G-14/AS, G-10, K-4 of the Bf 109 Fw 190 of the late Antons and D-9s could more than handle any of their foes.

Also i have studied the accounts of JG 1 and JG 11, two units which used the G-6/R6 of the Bf 109 in large numbers to improve their fire delivery against heavy bombers...and it is easy to detect the G-6/R6, certainly heavier than a none R6 could find their way through the swarms of Mustangs, shoot some of those down and even return to base.

I can not say what was the very best fighter of the war...but my vote goes for the P-47 D and Fw 190 A-8 and Fw 190 D-9.

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Chingachgook said:

You need to consider also that the allied aircraft were at a huge disadvantage. They did not have alt, they had to climb to fight, with LW aircraft that were B&Z'ing them. This is the worst tactical situation. To have K.O.'d 62 agaist those odds does not look good for LW.
One patrol of Spits was already up, and they laid waste to the German fighters that they found working over their base with no a2a losses for the airborne Spits. I will look up the details.

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These battles were not fought at high alltitudes.

renrich said:

The F4F-3 was operational with the US Navy in April, 1940. In fact, by October 31, 1940 the Royal Navy had taken delivery of 81 Martlets. The F4F-3 was superior to the Hurricane in most respects.

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THe RN received the F4F before the USN. The F4F-3 entered service with VF-41 on December 4, 1940, not in April. The USN had the grand total of 22 on hand. Like the other aircraft mentioned , the Zero and the Ki-43, the F4F was not in production in time for the Battle of Britain.

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