Bf-109F-4 and a bleak time for RAF

Sgt. Pappy said:

From such information, I'd say that the German pilots were individually better but not trying their absolute hardest, while the RAF boys were really giving it everything they had - tactics especially.

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I really don't think anyone is qualified to make a comment like that.

Sgt. Pappy said:

From such information, I'd say that the German pilots were individually better but not trying their absolute hardest, while the RAF boys were really giving it everything they had - tactics especially.

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WHAT???

I really dont think you can say that any one country had the best pilots. Each and every country that was fighting in the war had excellent pilots, good pilots, average pilots, below average pilots and just plaine shitty pilots. It all came down to experience and if you lived long eneogh to gain that experience.

Ah yes. Anyway, Davparlr, I meant to say that the Lufwaffe boys were the most experienced overall, and often believed that their superior flying ability would make them win.

The RAF pilots were the underdogs and were not as confident or as experienced and so, pulled out all the stops (i.e. tactics) to shoot dwn the LW planes.

surely then that makes them the better pilots? remember the RAF pilots were defending the Empire, that's effectively home soil in the mindset of the British, Jerry was fighting for what would appear to them to be an island, hundreds of miles from their home land, NEVER underestimate the will of anyone defending their homeland.........

Who's got the accoustic?

The idea of anyone going into combat, from any nation, in any arm, land sea or air, isn't trying their best I find unbelievable. Theres no second place in combat, you live or die.

The political leaders may not support you or give you the best/sufficient equipment and you may not have been given the right training, but the people on the ground will always do their damndest.

It really didn't matter a whole lot who had the best pilots. All the "quote" best pilots
say the same. Atleast in WWII.

Know your aircrafts strengths and fight the enemy's aircraft weakness. Attack with
surprise and/or when it's best for you. Always check your 6 at all costs. Are some tactics, but the
most important ones.

Just like any other "sport" the more practice/experience you have..the more your likely
to do the right things by instinct instead of thinking what your doing.

What was the biggest saying in the 8th AF... live 5 sorties and your on your way to living
through the war. Well until they started to straf airfields.

Hello Kurfürst!
Some facts on the last LW effort to neutralize Malta.

If we compared the failed LW and RA bombing campaign against Malta during the first part of Oct. 42 and the Tunisia campaign, it seems to me that the Axis problem was the weak defensive power of their bombers which their fighter pilots could not effectively compensate if they operated against well integrated fighter defence. I don't have time to read the Shores' et al Malta the Spitfire Year (1991) but have to rely on Playfair's et al The Mediterranean and Middle East IV (1966) but Shores' article The Long Struggle for Malta in his Duel for the Sky (1985) is in agreement with the first book. Axis flew 2400 sorties against Malta in 9 days and the defending fighters flew 1115 sorties.Playfair p. 195 "...At first Axis used formations as big as 80 Ju 88s escorted by nearly double that number of fighters, but by 15th Oct. as few as 14 bombers were being escorted by nearly 100 fighters. By 18th Oct, after heavy losses in bombers, the enemy had given up using his Ju 88s altogether in favour of Me 109 fighter bombers...The British lost 30 Spitfires in the air ... and only 2 a/c - one Beaufighter and one Spitfire - on the ground. German records disclose the loss of 9 fighters and 35 bombers, some of which fell to the guns" and Italian losses were unknown. Later in same page"...so effective were the air defences of Malta that strikes against Axis shipping were carried out every night exept one, on which no enemy ship came within range of the island."

Shores, on the article p. 92 "...Again and again the formations of Ju 88s, protected by swarms of Messerschmitts and Macchis, attempted to fight their way through to their targets. And again and again they were thwarted."

On losses, on same page "...at least 30 Ju 88s were lost and 13 more damaged seriously, some of them to written-off levels...at least a dozen Bf 109s and MC 202s being shot down and another 10 or so badly damaged...27 Spitfires being shot down during seven days and more than 20 more crash-landing or suffering heavy damage..."

IMHO Bf 109F-4 was the best air-superiority fighter when it came to service, but it suffered a lack of fire power as an interceptor, Spit V had appr. a twice the firepower than Bf 109F-4 and the fact that Spit's firepower wasn't so concentrated didn't matter much in attacks against bombers. Bf 109F-4 was maybe too optimized for fighter vs fighter combat and that made the stopping of Allied bombers (excluding Bisleys) difficult. On the other hand Spit Vs had enough firepower to hurt the German bombers if they got to firing position and if the British had a good fighter control system as on Malta they usually got there even if the German and Italian fighters could make them pay a price but British fighter pilots based on Malta had the guts to force their way to bombers in the extent that the were able to force the bombers away from their targets.

Juha

Glider said:

The idea of anyone going into combat, from any nation, in any arm, land sea or air, isn't trying their best I find unbelievable. Theres no second place in combat, you live or die.

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This is why I said "WHAT??".

I was commenting on an earlier post from Sgt Pappy who implied the Germans were not trying their hardest. I assume you agree with my statement.

I must say I disagree. There are some studies, even if there is disagreement on their validity, which imply that in average in a rifle squad 1-2 men do most of the fighting, majority do their duty but not much above that and 1-2 men concentrate to survive. Also the fact that in military statutes there are hard sanctions to those who disregard their duties during war implies that it isn't unknown phenomenon. IMHO one of main purposes of military discipline is to try to suppress man's natural instinct to try to survive.

Juha

Juha said:

I must say I disagree. There are some studies, even if there is disagreement on their validity, which imply that in average in a rifle squad 1-2 men do most of the fighting, majority do their duty but not much above that and 1-2 men concentrate to survive. Also the fact that in military statutes there are hard sanctions to those who disregard their duties during war implies that it isn't unknown phenomenon. IMHO one of main purposes of military discipline is to try to suppress man's natural instinct to try to survive.

Juha

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I see where you are coming from and wouldn't disagree with the statement iro land battles. However, we are talking about pilots and unless you run, there is no place to hide.

Hello Glider
I agree that You are partly right, airmen were selected group but even RAF had their LMF cases. Now I think that many of LMF cases had done their outmost but the circumstances were just too much for them. But I would be surprised if among the LMF cases there were no one who had simply decided that dam the disgrace I'd opt out and survive. And not all pilots press on regardless. But I who had only served in a peacetime conscript army would not judge them. To almost everyone there are limits of psychological endurance and those varied between individuals.

Even in air one can turn away a little earlier or fly a little bit higher and so on.

This has been a bit off topic but we might come back to topic by thinking why LW failed to neutralize Malta in early Oct. 42. The reason wasn't technical, Bf 109G-2/-4 and F-4 were better than Spit VC in fighter vs fighter combat and Macchi 202 wasn't a bad fighter either. That should have compensated the weak defensive firepower of Ju 88A. I doubt that it was tactical because LW's fighter tactics were usually very good. Park was excellent defensive fighter commander but still I think that an important factor in this failure was that the Germans didn't know what will happen a month later ie they didn't know that that was their last chance to neutralize Malta and that a month latter it would be strategically even more important base for Allied anti-shipping and recon planes and that their brothers-in-arms in Tunis would have to pay such a price for their failure. Of course they probably would not have imagined that their Führer would try to keep Tunis much too long and turn a defeat to a catastrophe. To British the situation was clear, the usual situation of underdog.

When your fighting in the air the pilots are fighting for the here and now, to sum up one quote they wanted to do their job and get back in one piece. Doing their job involved fighting the Spits defending Malta and destroying them. The quicker they could do it the quicker the Battle for Malta would be over and the safer they would be.
It doesn't make any sense to me to pace myself and go for a battle in the longer period. In almost any kind of battle, one important factor is to overwhelm the enemy and destroy them. This is particually important in a situation like Malta where you have the British on the defensive, spare parts are hard if not impossible to come by, workshops have been destroyed, there are no refueling facilities and it takes a fair amount of time to turn a plane around. Plus of course there are no reserves, everything that can fly must fight.
Germany had all these advantages, the reserves, spare parts, workshops, numbers, bombers, initiative, secure bases (occaisional raids but nothing like those endured on Malta) and still failed to destroy the Maltese defences. The question is why?
As fara as I can see Malta only had two adantages. Park who was probably the best defensive fighter commander of the war, and a surplus of pilots. As a result off the aircraft losses on the ground as well as in the air the pilots may have been fresher, despite the poor food and heavy bombing.

You will have twigged by now that I don't believe the Spit V to be any worse than the F4, not any better but a fair match. The Macchi 202 performance wise, didn't have to apologise to either of the other planes (why didn't they give it 2 x 20) it wwas just underarmed
My argument is that if the 109 was better than the Spit V then with all the other disadvantages then Malta would have fallen, it didn't fall and the spit couldn't have been any worse than the 109..

The only reason that I can see why the Germans failed is due to poor planning and poor tactics. Ju88's can fly across the whole island in minutes there was no reason for the German bombers to suffer the losses they did unless the planning and tactics employed were innadaquate.

Juha said:

IMHO one of main purposes of military discipline is to try to suppress man's natural instinct to try to survive.

Juha

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No military discipline is in place so that a soldier remains professional and does his duty and follows orders. It is not there to suppress his natural instinct to survive. AS a matter of fact, soldiers are tought and trained to do everything they can to survive.

I know I was a soldier until just recently...

X

X

Hello Adler
I still disagree, IMHO dicipline is there for forcing those who are not too enthusiastic to obey orders even if they are dangerous for individual's survival and training is there to make soldiers able to do their duties and to increase their chances to survive when doing the job. IMHO soldiers do risky things for many reasons, out of patriotism, out of sense of duty, out of group solidarity, out of showing their mates that they can do it etc but dicipline is there in case if some of soldiers in certain circumstances in certain time begin to feel that enough is enough.

Chingachgook said:

Glider, Parks was not at Malta until October (maybe September). He came after the Spits got the upper hand. Parks had not embraced good flight level tactics yet (if my poor memory serves - it rarely does). I think he was still stuck on vic formations over the channel before he went to Malta.
One good thing about Parks going to Malta is that he went on the offensive - sending raids to hit LW and Italians on Sicily.

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I have to admit that you are correct about the timin of Parks arrival, my error. That reduced the davantages to the British to only one, the questionable one about having fresher pilots.