Best Fighter

[plan_D]

The Mosquito was cheaper, easier to produce, better bomber, better ground attack, better armament, more versitile.

 

[Lightning Guy]

Not more versatile in an individual airframe. The B.IV would have made a lousy fighter. The Lightning was extremely effective as a ground attack and considered to be the best of the American fighters at divebombing. The P-38's firepower wasn't as heavy but more concentrated and that helps to compensate. Oh, and it could outclimb the Mossie.

 

[plan_D]

Who cares about other American fighters, it's Mosquito against P-38 here.

 

[Lightning Guy]

Just making a point. And again, if it's all about turn radius (best naval fighter thread) the Lightning has the Mossie.

 

[plan_D]

But this isn't all about dogfighter, the Naval thread is.

 

[Lightning Guy]

"Best fighter" against "Best naval fighter." So does naval mean dogfighter or have I missed the point?

 

[plan_D]

Well generally in Naval warfare the divebombers and fighters were more for their indivdual roles. A Dauntless was a divebomber, a Hellcat escorted it.

But in this moment in time we're not only talking about dogfighting on this thread, but we are on the Naval thread

 

[Lightning Guy]

Well every advantage you mentioned of the Mossie (excluding armament) isn't applicable to a "fighter" at all.

 

[plan_D]

In war, ease of build and cost are very good attributes of ANY plane in war time.

 

[Lightning Guy]

That is true. Of course it has to be remembered that the P-38 was never intended to be mass produced. In the initial specification, Lockheed was told not to expect an order of more than 60 aircraft! Instead they ended up building 10,000!

 

[plan_D]

Well that just proves what a great plane the P-38 was, I don't think anyone said otherwise.

 

[Lightning Guy]

I'm saying that the fact that the Lightning wasn't designed to be mass produced should be considered. And that fact obviously didn't cause too much trouble in producing it.

 

[Lightning Guy]

And I've never said the Mossie wasn't a great plane either.

 

[plan_D]

But I was saying that the Mosquito was easier and cheaper to produce than the P-38. If they put they put the Mosquito under American construction and they just wanted more and more, I dare say it could have had hte highest production of the war.

 

[Lightning Guy]

I'm not sure that would have been the case because America had several good designs that were all in production at the same time. If America had been producing the Mossie it probably would have been produced in numbers comparable to the other American planes (10,000 or so).

 

[plan_D]

I'm saying it could have been produced in higher numbers if wanted, and it was quite a bit cheaper. Wood is a lot easier to build with, and cheaper.

 

[Lightning Guy]

Easier to build with once the initial costs are taking care of. I'm not sure what the "tooling up" costs for producing the Mossie would have been but that would have, in part, offset the cheaper production costs.

 

[plan_D]

Tooling up to build a wooden construct would be cheaper than metal, it is an easier material to build with therefore less complex machines are used.

 

[Lightning Guy]

But I was talking about the development and production of the glues. Those were fairly complex (for the time) chemical formulas. The Germans had all kinds of trouble coming up with an equal glue. I imagine that would have added to the costs.

 

[plan_D]

Once you've sorted it though it's not that bad, and plus the savings (by using that design with wood) would have far out weighed the expenses.