In some of these discussions we are talking about generalities.
And with generalities we can always find exceptions.
Do the exemptions prove the "rule" or do the exceptions prove the rule is false?
I like using the P-40 as an example, in part because it was just a P-36 with a V-12 engine. So the aerodynamics, while very good, are not advanced like the P-51. Wing flaps are pretty basic, a bit better than the Spitfire and about equal to the Hurricane, not as good as many other planes. Early P-40s were pretty zippy for the 1090hp engine and the 6800lb weight.
This 'zip' only came about after a wind-tunnel session and subsequent series of modifications. The ailerons were also modified to allow better high speed roll (P-36 rolled very well at low speed but not about 250 mph) and the flaps were much more sophisticated than the Spitfire and arguably more so than the Hurricane. The Spit was just all up or all down, the Hurricane had intermediate settings, the P-40 had a switch on the joystick (activated by a lever on the side) which allowed rapid deployment of flaps to any setting from 0-100%.
Perhaps not as good as having a combat flaps setting or (better still) automatic maneuvering flaps but it did allow the pilot to set any amount they wanted to quite easily. And apparently the flaps worked at partial settings at relatively high speeds.
Now without actually changing the size of the airplane (wingspan, length, wing area, size of fuselage) the US rapidly ran the weight up to over 8,000lbs without much gain in power. In the 15,000 to 20,000ft range)
But as we know, increasing to ~1570 hp (officially) at below 8-10,000 feet, depending on atmospheric conditions
In part due to BP glass, armor and self sealing fuel tanks. and the weight of guns and ammo that would have collapsed the landing gear of a lesser airplane
Fuel was always useful, when needed. It's debatable how many guns and how much ammunition were needed. Same for armor etc. Guns in the nose did tend to be more accurate, it seems. Especially hub cannons.
Spitfire and Hurricane got big wings, not so much to put the eight machine guns in (although the size helped) but to get the 5,000-5300lb airplanes out of and into the standard British fighter fields of the time. Getting out was also a product of the fixed pitch propellers, long take-off runs at about 2/3rd throttle.
P-36 carried about 1/2 the armament (one .50 being about 1/3 the weight of the .30cal guns). US was using at least two pitch props in the 1937 P-36 order (maybe constant speed?)
P-40 had constant speed propeller as did the P-36.
Gross weight was about 5600lbs with 105 (?) US gallons. Plane would hold about 160 gal overloaded for ferry use and some combat maneuvers were restricted.
See how confusing it is already
It's not really that confusing. Multiple fighter types including the P-51 and the P-40 had fuel tanks which were used for the first leg of long flights, which were often over friendly territory. If attack over their own airfields was likely these tanks were typically not filled. Same with external tanks.
Bf 109 was designed to carry either 2 7.9mm MG OR a single 20mm cannon (not adopted) using the jumo 210 engine (600-700hp) so the small airframe worked. They did keep stuffing more things (bigger engine, more guns, more fuel). It did hit limits in late 1941/early 1942 and then it was a problem of trying to retool during a war and loose production or to grin a bear it.
Bf 109s seemed still very competitive through 1942. Their big issue was fuel / short range. The Germans needed but never developed a longer ranged fighter.
Being on the defensive helped. The Enemy (the allies) came to the Germans, the Germans did not have to fly very far to reach the allies.
The Germans were still very much on the
offensive in the East through 1943. Americans tend to forget who was mainly responsible for defeating the Germans in WW2, (hint: it wasn't the US or England). The Siege of Leningrad was only partly alleviated in January 1943, and not fully lifted until a year later. The Battle of Kharkov was Feb-March 1943 and Kursk / Citadel was July-August 1943.
The difference is that while the Americans and British take it as axiomatic that a sustained strategic / heavy bombing campaign was necessary and worth expending resources on, the Germans, Soviets, and Japanese did not come to this conclusion, and the Italians and lesser Axis powers did not have the option due to limited resources. The Germans and Soviets in particular were mainly concerned with their own ground war and the conduct of frontal aviation, wherein the job of fighters was to establish air superiority over the very fraught, very dangerous, very dynamic and extremely huge battlefield on the ground so that their tactical bombers could harm the enemy and the enemy's tactical bombers could not harm them.
They did experiment with some kind of quasi-strategic bombing during the Battle of Britain of course, though they did not make a sustained effort to destroy British industry, they definitely could have used some longer-ranged but fighters (still effective in daylight combat, unlike the Bf 110) but they did not seem to see it that way and did not prioritize
The Stuka, Fw 190, Ju 88, Sturmovik and Pe 2 arguably had more to do with the outcome of WW2 than the B-24, B-17, Lancaster and Manchester bombers did.
YAK-9 got the big increase in fuel when they got metal spars in the wing instead of wood. The thinner spars had more room between them so they could fit bigger tanks in the same space or push the tanks further out into the wing. YAK-1 about the same weight as Hurricane I (summer of 1940) Take-off and landing runs of the YAK-1 were longer than the Hurricane runs. How much was the higher landing speed and how much were the brakes?
They didn't seem to have any problem operating Yak, Polikarpov and Lavochkin fighters from
very forward,
very primitive airfields, including during the winter when many German aircraft were grounded and those that were flying were doing so only through extreme effort and privation by German ground crews.
By contrast many Western made aircraft like the P-40, Spitfire, and Hurricane had trouble operating in the primitive conditions of the Soviet front, and the extremely long takeoff run for the P-47 was one of the reasons they declined to even field test it, considering it "not a fighter".
A YAK-1 would have been an "interesting" airplane to try and operate off a carrier
No doubt. So would a Bf 109, a P-51, or a P-38. Even Spitfires and Hurricanes made pretty mediocre carrier aircraft (and suffered a lot of mishaps), especially early on.
But as I already noted, there are pros and cons to specialist vs generalist designs.
MC 202 was another legacy airframe. Use as much of the MC 200 radial engine as you can while reducing the height of the fuselage. MC 200/202 had the two fuselage mounted machine guns with 400rpg (?) Swap 20mm for the two 12.7mm guns? cut way down on the 12.7mm ammo? Yes one of the 205 versions managed to get a cannon in the prop hub, How much time did it take?
I think it was more a matter of perceived need and priority. For whatever reason, the Italians were fine with two 12.7mm machine guns firing through the prop hub. The MC 202 had a good combat record in North Africa and the MTO, including against very heavily armed fighters like the Hurricane IIC and P-47.
More power can reduce take-off runs. Landing is harder.
I really haven't seen or read any reports of Yak or MC 202 fighters having trouble on short or primitive airfields. To the contrary. Have you?
Things for the US would have been harder without the near oceans of bulldozers the US had.
What was important to each air force at different times in the war changed. Many air forces were forced to make do with planes that were already in production with modifications, not what they would have asked for if allowed a clean slate.
Well that's always true, no argument there.
