Best Jet of WW2?

Best Jet of WW2?

  • Me262

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Gloster Meteor

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Bell P-59 Aircomet

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • He162

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Ar234

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Me-163

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Yokosuka Ohka

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • P-80

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0

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DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
That maybe I can believe. But until they came out with the Lightning in the 50's I personally and in my opinion dont think the Brits had a very good jet fighter and neither did the Americans.
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Two P-80 Shooting Stars were operating out of Rome before VE day. These were competative with the Me-262, probably even superior in fighter vs. fighter combat (they were certainly more manuverable).

The P-80 was a decent Jet for its time.

=S=

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The P-80 was no more than a decent attempt to service a jet fighter. I believe that had the war taken on a few more years the allies would have cought up with the germans in jet technology and I think at the current time they were not far behind but the 262 was what you compared all jets of that time too.
 

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The P-80 NEVER saw service in WW2
 
cheddar cheese said:
The P-80 NEVER saw service in WW2
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That is wrong. Two P-80's and were sent to Italy and two to England late in 1944. The two in Rome flew CAP duties over Rome, I'm not sure what the two sent to England did.

The two sent to Rome were primarily there to encourage Allied pilots that the US had its own jet, but these did fly combat sorties (they were fully armed and had orders to engage if the enemy came within their combat zone), none did. At the same time pilots were being trained in the new jet stateside.

So it really depends on how you define "service". I would agree a plane that never saw action on the front lines is not much of a contender, but it depends on the criteria of the question - are we talking about technology or about effectiveness?

=S=

Lunatic
 
cheddar cheese said:
I dont think the P-80 was even flying in 1944, it didnt at least take to the air in 1945.

Id like to see some evidence that backs up your statements 8)
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http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/lockheed_xp80.htm

Also, my college roomate's uncle was one of the pilots who flew CAP over roam in a P-80. I met him once and we discussed his WWII combat experiances (mostly in the P-51B). He was pissed off because he only needed one kill to become an ace, and he was flying around for months over Rome in the hottest plane the US had to offer and he never saw a single bandit. The temptation to violate orders and cross the water to Yugoslavia, where there were pleanty of bandits, was very compelling.

As you can see from the link above, the P-80 was in the air in mid '44 and four were deployed to Europe in the fall of '44.

=S=

Lunatic
 
Thats interesting I have only talked to a few pilots from WW2 and none of them had flown Jets. It is always great hearing the stories from the WW2 vets. My grandfather was doctor and Major in the Wehrmacht on the eastern front and his stories especially about Stallingrad and then in a Russian POW camp were very interesting. My other grandfather who landed served in the US Army landed on Normandy's Omaha Beach and his stories are amazing. Unfortunatly both are dead now and so are some of the stories that they never told. It must be hard to tell some of them.
 
cheddar cheese said:
Ah but they were pre-production prototypes, the actual finish plane never saw service.
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Well, that is an issue of nomenclature. The same could be said of almost all 262's and Ta-152's that flew. They were undergoing constant change trying to get them to work reliably. These were not built as testing prototypes, they were early production units. They have the YP designation because they were sent to europe for combat trials.

Armed P-80's were flyig CAP over Rome and had authority to engage the enemy if the enemy approached Rome. To me that's a combat mission, but not actual combat. My point is the tech did exist during WWII, in fact pretty well in advance of VE day.

The USA was just a lot more conservative at that point than the Germans. There were still a lot of "accidents" happening with the P-80, so it was not deployed for frontline combat. The same is true of the 262, but it was deployed for combat. You have read of the terminal dive issues with the 262? Of the pilot who went up to test and document the problem, put his 262 into a mild high speed dive, and then calmly reported his observations all the way down to the instant he ate dirt?

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Lunatic

=S=

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