Damaging / destroying aircrafts

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True.Pity the same cannot be applied to my beloved Defiants though, 1 small nick in its Rolls-Royce and it was tickets.
 

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Maybe putting a Griffon in it plus some cannon in the wings would've helped it...Defiants did great work in the initial role starting the Nightfighting War....if only they had got underneath the German bombers and let-strip with those 4x .303's, like the German 'Shrage Musik' installation in their nightfighters....Firing forwards in the Defiant, ruined the pilot's night vision from the gunflash, but they got the Allies started, along with the Hurricanes searchlights, until radar in Blenheims took it a step further.....
 
Defiants also hold the record (to this day) for enemy aircraft destroyed in 1 day.38 destroyed by 264 Sqn during the Battle of Britain.Was short lived though , they soon found all of its weaknesses.
 

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A one second burst off eight .303 machine guns could bring down a BF-109, without killing the pilot. Anything could happen, control surfaces could get torn apart for example. With your elevators stuck up right forcing your plane facing down, you'll want to get out and keep yourself alive.
 
I believe that Rocs served until 1943 , when the last one was written off in
Bermuda due to lack of spares.My mums uncle flew Typhoons in the war and always said that the Spitfire was the glory plane during the war but the other types like his and the Hurricane did all the work.Never did believe him! ( am probably biased towards the Spitfire)
 

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You shouldn't believe him. The Spitfire did, in fact, do most of the work. The Hurricane was the work horse during the Battle of Britain but after that the Spitfire was the shining model in the skies over Europe.

The Spitfire PR.IX and .XIX were probably the most important recce planes of the European war. It did ground attack, fighter duties and the recce role and it was excellent at the latter two.
 
That was one of the most important jobs during the war.Can you imagine doing a bombing attack without it.Getting to target and finding 10/10th cloud.Bloody horrible.
 

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10/10th cloud and 3 batteries of 24 FlaK36 88mm cannon each. Or even worse, that the target that was a depot has moved. Instead of damaging the fighting capability, you annoy some French or German farmers.
 
I hardly think 38 kills by one type of fighter can be considered the record. During the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, the US Navy destroyed upwards of 380 IJN aircraft in a single day and the vast majority of those kills would have been made by the Hellcat.
 
I think in all fairness plan-D, the Typhoons did alot of very dangerous work, and they didn't receive much recognition [compared to the Spitfire Sqn.'s]....You may want to check-out 'RAF 198 Sqn.' on the Net, these guys, as with all the Typhoon Sqn.'s, suffered big losses breaking in the Typhoon and clearing the Way for the D-Day attack and subsequent invasion....
 

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Now, now Gemhorse I'm not saying that the other aircraft didn't do anything. I'm saying people who say that the Spitfire was just a glory hog, are completely wrong. It did a hell of a lot of work from start to finish.
 
Yeah, they did get the nickname 'Brylcream Boys' !!!...but even the Tempest pilots got more glory than the Typhoon pilots, which is a shame, they were hoping the Typhoon would really sort-out the Fw-190's but their forte became ground-attack, such was their stable attack-platform with thick wings like Hurricanes.....Tempests had much thinner elliptical-like wings better for combat....Spits on all fronts worked hard.....
 

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