Best Fighter

[the lancaster kicks ass]

damn right!!!

 

[Erich]

my that factory looks familiar............... 8)

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

What I am saying is the Germans would have done the same wiht there engines.

Just some more on fighter designs by the Germans:

The first of five designs, the He. P.1078A was designed as a nightfighter. The crew of two sat back-to-back in the cockpit which was located near the nose. The wings were swept back 35 degrees and were mounted mid-fuselage, with two HeS 011 turbojets located in the wing roots. There was a V-tail and armament was to be four MK 108 30mm cannon.
http://www.luft46.com/heinkel/hep1079a.html

This was the second design (Entwurf II) for the He P.1079B all-weather heavy fighter. The wings were swept back sharply and contained six fuel tanks. Two He S 011 jet engines were located in the wing roots and were fed by intakes in the wing leading edges. A crew of two sat back-to-back in the cockpit, and armament was to be four MK 108 30mm cannon. No evidence has been found that the P.1079 projects were ever submitted to the RLM, but it is known that designer Siegfried Günter, along with his engineers Eichner and Hohbach, were working on these designs under U.S. supervision during the summer of 1945.
http://www.luft46.com/heinkel/hep1079c.html

Messerschmitt Me P.1102/5


During the summer of 1944, the Messerschmitt Me P.1102 series was being developing at the same time as the Me P.1101 project. Both were swing-wing designs, except the P.1102 was being developed as a fast bomber and heavy fighter.
The variable-sweep wings were mounted in the center of the fuselage and could be swept between 15 and 50 degrees. For takeoff and landing the wings were to be set at 20 degrees and for high speed flight the wings were to be set at the maximum of 50 degrees. The tail unit was of a normal configuration, with the tail planes swept back at 60 degrees.
Three jet engines powered the Me P.1102, two were located beneath the fuselage nose and one was located in the tail (an air intake on the top of the rear fuselage fed this turbojet). Either three BMW 003 or Heinkel-Hirth He S 011 jet engines were to be employed. A single pilot sat in a cockpit located in the forward fuselage and three fuel tanks of 1200 liter capacity each were located behind the cockpit. The lower fuselage held an internal bomb bay and the tricycle landing gear. No armament was designated at this stage in the design.
The end of the war ended work on this design. All Messerschmitt documentation was seized by the US and was used in the development of several aircraft, possibly including the Martin XB-51. This US aircraft which first flew in 1949 also shared the same engine arrangement as the Me P.1102.
http://www.luft46.com/mess/mep1102.html

And the list goes on and on more than I can post, but just as the aircraft designs the engines would have done so too.

 

[plan_D]

Of course the Germans would have moved on, I'm not saying that. I'm saying the British would have stayed ahead because they were already ahead, and were always developing engines more powerful. Even in peace time the British engine companies were making bigger, better and more powerful engines just to stay on top.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

It is very interesting to see how it would have panned out. I think at some point the Germans would have come up with something that was far ahead it was only a matter of time in which they ran out of time. But I will not argue with you the fact that the British were masters at jet engines. That is true my friend.

 

[Anonymous]

RG_Lunatic:

With all due respect for some of the veterans you mentioned (Chuck Yeager, Bud Anderson, etc.) I would certainly take some of their arguments with all due reserves. Why?

These USAAF veterans will of course speak about the Luftwaffe in terms very very similar, if not identical, to those Kozhedub and other soviet aces would use. A very normal and unsurprising thing; a standard procedure for any victor of any war.

Chuck Yeager, for instance, appears to speak gladly and fluently on the war sometimes apparently losing the ground.

That their answer to your question "was the Dora better than the P-51" was no, tells very little about the issue.

Yeager should really slow down sometimes for he himself got shot down in combat with German interceptors. In fact, mr. Yeager is as lucky to be alive as many of the top German aces who saw service virtually throughout the entire war.

This means mr Yeager was effectively surpassed in combat and went down. Very lucky to be alive.

Even a soviet lady shot down more planes than he did. Furthermore, Yeager´s total bag was in many cases, a half an hour job for a big number of German experten.

My point is, those famous veterans of the USAAF over Europe are experts at pointing the weak spots of the enemy craft they faced, but curiously tell nothing regarding the weak spots of the aircraft they flew.

I agree, combat stories are often full of apparent inaccuracies, and must always be taken with a grain of salt. But this does not change the point that I have never heard even one USAAF pilot speak of "dreading the late model FW" or any other German prop plane. It's not just one or two pilots I'm talking about, it's dozens.

As for Yeager, yes I agree he is of particular note for inaccuracies in his WWII flying stories, nor was he the greatest Ace of the war. I just included him because he was among the Aces I've heard speak. But to say he was "lucky to be alive" because he survived being shot down one time is absolute hogwash!

I suppose we might say the same of Adolf Galland? He was shot down FOUR TIMES! Or what about Marseille, who was shot down several times before his luck finally ran out in September 1942. I guess Gunther Rall was a really crappy fighter pilot, since he got shot down EIGHT TIMES!

As far as the high kill totals of many of the "Experten", in most cases they flew in very advantageous conditions. The great majority of them chalked up most of their kills on the E. front during the first 3 years of the war on that front. They had the advantage of superior aircraft and superior training at that point. As an example, consider Wilhelm "Willi" Batz, who fought starting in March of 1943. At this time the German's enjoyed numerical advantage. His first 15 kills over the first 4 months of combat consisted of six Lagg-3 "wooden coffins" (one unconfirmed), four Yak-1's, three IL-2's, one P-39 and one Boston. All pretty easy meat for his Bf-109G fighter. His next ten kills consisted of one Spitifire (model unknown, but probably a Spit Ia or maybe a Spit V) and 9 Yak-1's. Again - easy meat. By the time he faced his first worthy opponent, in a Lagg-5 he'd already had the luxury of plenty of combat experience against much weaker enemy aircraft. Of his first 123 kills, 60 were the much inferior Yak-1, and 17 were IL-2's.

Of Galland's 104 victories, 96 of them were scored in 1940 and 1941 when Germany held the initiative.

My point is German "Experten" had a huge advantage early in the war. With very few exceptions, the first 20 or more kills scored were against inferior aircraft, relatively poorly trained pilots with little combat experience, with numerical advantage, or all three. This allowed them to develop combat skills that can only be gained in actual combat in relative safety. And German pilots were rarely deep behind the enemy lines.

Allied pilots on the other-hand, started off facing technically superior German aircraft, flown my more experienced pilots, and were often outnumbered. When technical parity had been achieved, USAAF pilots in particular were flying missions deep into Axis territory - there was no getting shot down EIGHT TIMES and continuing to fly, in fact Yeager is a rarity in that he did manage to get back to friendly lines and fight again. Then when the Allies finally gained the upper hand, the Luftwaffe' was hard to find and aerial kills were hard to come by. To say that having been shot down ONE time means Yeager was a poor pilot is just STUPID!

ANY PILOT COULD BE SHOT DOWN! OVER 90% OF THE FIGHTER PILOTS SHOT DOWN IN WWII WHO SURVIVED IT SAID THEY EITHER NEVER SAW THE PLANE THAT SHOT THEM DOWN OR NEVER SAW IT UNTIL AFTER THEY'D TAKEN CRITICAL DAMAGE.

This is true of some of the greatest Aces of the war.

I suggest you buy and watch Hunter's in the Sky and listen to the many interviews in that documentary.

=S=

Lunatic

 

[Anonymous]

What I am saying is the Germans would have done the same wiht there engines.
....

And the list goes on and on more than I can post, but just as the aircraft designs the engines would have done so too.

You can speculate all you want about the quality of German aero-engineering but the fact remains they could not mass-produce working jet engines of any reliability and there is nothing to suggest this was going to change any time soon. Designs are meaningless if they cannot be mass produced.

Even the British jet engines were built using American machine tools like the Thompson Centerless Grinder and the automated milling machine. These tools were exported to England throughout the war. In fact, in many cases, the first new units were diverted from the American companies which had specified them and paid for their development, delaying American projects such as the R-2800(c).

=S=

Lunatic

 

[Anonymous]

Every fact points to the inability of Germany to even break 2000 lbs s.t., let alone 6000! It's easy to design something and assume perfectly balanced parts... but making it.... that's a whole different story.

Yes the German's were designing all sorts of advanced technology. That doesn't mean they could actually build it!

The fact is that Germany was not going to have a significantly better jet engine to power its wonder weapons. That's the reality of it. The rest is just pure fantasy.

=S=

Lunatic

 

[Anonymous]

Alder,

That is exactly my point. All the pilots who flew competitive planes THOUGHT theirs were at least as good if not better than the enemies. You are affirming my position, which is that P-51 pilots were not in fear of the dreaded Dora9. I question the source of such info because, frankly, it is completely contrary to what I've heard from every pilot I've had the opportunity to hear speak on the topic.

I do not hate everything German. Certainly their tanks were much much better than those of the Allies. And the MG42 and MK108 were both revolutionary weapons. I simply point out that the very nature of the evolution of European machine tools was much different than those of the USA, and not well suited to mass production of very precise mechanisms like turbines. This is totally backed up by the historical fact that the USA was mass producing turbosuperchargers from the start of the war, but Germany was unable to produce them even in small quantities right up to the last days of the war. They tried repeatedly and failed repeatedly. In fact, they had a hard time getting even one-off's from the engineering labs that worked.

P-51's most certainly did encounter Dora9's in WWII. It was relatively infrequent, as there weren't that many Dora9's, but it certainly did happen. I'm going out of town for a couple of days but will try to find some accounts of this matchup when I get back.

As for the Airbus, I'm sure it's a very good plane. What bothers me is that Airbus is government subsidized which is not right in our supposedly free-market system. I hope that recent market studies are right and the new Airbus is a failure because of lack of demand for the superlarge airliner, the European's loose their shirts on the thing, and that puts an end to such subsidizations - which amount to nothing more than exportation of unemployment from Europe to the USA.

=S=

Lunatic

 

[plan_D]

I can't see anyones posts, except RGs. I don't like the way you're talking about yourself wanting the Airbus to be a failure. Sounds awfully a lot like because it's not American, even with your excuse for wanting it to fail.

The Germans were ahead in design technology in quite a few things. I give the Germans credit for being the first country to produce an axial-flow turbojet but the British still built one a few years later in 1941, I believe.

 

[evangilder]

I agree, that comment was just ridiculous. Wishing the failure of the Airbus was mean spirited. Government subsidies? Please, all the government contracts going out to what few aircraft manufacturers we have left for military orders is more or less a subsidy as well. Whether direct or indirect, the aircraft industries are subsidized. You sound like a pissed off Boeing worker.

 

[Nonskimmer]

I hope that recent market studies are right and the new Airbus is a failure because of lack of demand for the superlarge airliner, the European's loose their shirts on the thing, and that puts an end to such subsidizations - which amount to nothing more than exportation of unemployment from Europe to the USA.

=S=

Lunatic

RG, I frequently enjoy reading your posts. You present some decent facts and often come at a topic from a different angle than others, causing some folks to pause and think. It adds real flavour to the discussion.
And of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

But that was just a completely asinine thing to say! Particularly considering the company you're in!

 

[kiwimac]

LOCKED. continued in BEST FIGHTER III.

Kiwimac