Colin1
Senior Master Sergeant
Is the answer 'all of them'?While I have found much of the discussion here interesting most seem to ignore the simple truths of the reality.
The P-51 was an escort fighter without peer in WW2 because it was specifically designed to be one.
The P-51 was specifically designed to address the British Purchasing Commission's desire to buy new aircraft, NAA threw their hat into the ring and claimed they could build the BPC a better aircraft than the P-40. The RAF realised that range was an issue with their existing stock but no-one envisioned escorting heavy bombers all the way to Berlin, least of all the USAAF who at that stage were not even interested in the P-51.
An escort fighter protects a fleet of bombers at approx 25000ft, climbing isnt at all important.
Really? Would you care to elaborate on that? The simple truth of the reality seems to have escaped me.
The fighters of the Luftwaffe had to attack the bombers which required heavy armour and armament. An Fw190 attacking a fleet of bombers wasnt the same animal as was seen in France.
Some people here speak of the P-51 as if it could fight all over the channel, across Belgium and Holland and then on to Berlin.
Weasel statement. Please indicate, anywhere in the forum, where anyone ACTUALLY said that.
A Mustang with its full load of fuel and external tanks was only just airworthy small changes to the throttle at low altitude after take off could result in a crash.
Take-off is a particularly vulnerable time for an aircraft, esp if combat-loaded. Mustangs certainly were lost during take-off, but do you have any statistical data to support a notion that its 'only just airworthiness' made it more of a liability than any other type, on either side, during the war?
The P-51 was very late in the game it was very slippery in aerodynamics but heavy (the original Mustang was rushed into service)
Fw190A-8 MTOW 9,735lbs; P-51A MTOW 9,000lbs - no heavier than one of its principal adversaries it would seem. I don't recall the Mustang being 'rushed into service', the Brits got roughly half of their original order as a result of Pearl Harbour and the USAAF only really started to warm to it in 1942.
There was little use for the Mustang until the USAAF got hammered on unescorted raids. The Spitfire was the better air superiority fighter and gradually got the better of the 109 variants whereas the Fw190 was a fantastic plane which was pretty much neck and neck with the Spitfire untill the end of hostilities. In fact all these planes were at the peak of their development and jets were already being introduced....
I don't know where to begin with this. I think you'll find there was plenty of use for the Mustang, it was precisely this use that got the USAAF interested and the RAF thinking Merlin power. Mustangs with their decisive range and speed advantage over the Spitfire V were put to use over France, in their one of their earlier engagements vs the Fw190, one P-51 was shot down and the chasing Focke-Wulf of the second P-51 couldn't catch him after pursuing him all the way back to Folkestone.
As regards the Spitfire vs Bf109 debate, I don't think there was a period during the war when the Spitfire was decisively better than the German fighter. Late-war tribulations for German manufacture made it difficult but the Bf109K was a clear example that the Bf109 wasn't finished by any means.
When precisely are you referring to when you say that all of these planes were at the peak of their development, because at the time of the P-51's introduction, they most certainly weren't and jets were nowhere near introduction.
.......just remember most pilots didnt see the plane that shot them down in WW2. Additionally the Spitfire was never designed for absolute top speed its wings had a washout of (from memory) 1 1/2 degrees which induces drag but increases control at the limits of stall, a Mustang with straight laminar flow wings stalls with little warning. The Bf109 had automatic leading edge slats to improve turning performance but towards the end of the war many pilots didnt know how they worked and so didnt make full use of the plane thinking it was at the limit when the slats had only started to work (they made the 'plane vibrate)
That's pretty much a string of incoherent thoughts strung together into a paragraph but I'm interested to know why you think German pilots had forgotten how their wing slats worked.
As far as the P-51 is concerned it was its mass deployment with huge formations of bombers that was the reason for its success.
No it wasn't. There were several reasons, technical and tactical, the most fundamental being its range capability - the ability to put it over targets deep into Germany in the first place. Secondly, once there, it had the fighting qualities that enabled it to meet the best of the Luftwaffe on comparable terms. There was the quality of training of USAAF pilots and the soundness of tactics used to cancel any advantages held by the Luftwaffe. The .50cal allowed the P-51 to hit German fighters with a warhead big enough to cause critical damage, yet small enough to be carried in sufficient amounts to see out the mission. The P-51 generally held the initiative, it was on the side that was doing all the choosing of targets and usually met the defensive fighters at the P-51's best altitude.
Germany in 1944/45 was fighting on at least 4 fronts and running out of pilots fuel and equipment.
FOUR fronts? I don't know anything about that but there were two fronts that mattered to the exclusion of all else to the German High Command in the autumn of 1944; the one rolling in from the west and the one rolling in from the east
Regardless of the Me262 being vastly superior they had no chance. How many Sopwith camels could a Eurofighter cope with before being overwhelmed?
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It was a poor analogy, the P-51 was arguably WWII's high point in piston-engine fighter design and it had trouble containing a jet-engined threat in its infancy but these were two combatants contemporaneous of one another and there was at least a ballpark combat margin in which the two fighters could engage one another.
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