Discussion of best exploitable A/C strengths

davebender said:

Top notch performance for all six years (summer 1939 to summer 1945) that constituted the European portion of WWII. Probably the only two fighter aircraft which can make that claim. Many of the competition mentioned (P-51D and Fw-190D come to mind) were available only during the final year, 1/6th of the total war period.

Click to expand...

Which is also why the Bf 109 served so many of the top scoring 'experten' so well.

They were both outstanding designs and both sides would have been in big trouble had they not had theirs whilst the other side had theirs. The initial advantage over their contemporaries that both had, and which all aircraft designers strove for throughout the war, was speed. You can have all the other attributes of a good fighter aircraft, many mentioned already, but slow is no good. Otherwise something like a CR.42 would have been the best fighter of the early years of the war
Speed combined with good tactics allows you to fight on your terms.

Cheers

Steve

davparlr said:

The P-51B was lighter and slightly cleaner than the P-51D so performed slightly better and was slightly faster (it was equivalent to the Fw190D-9 at low altitude and superior at high altitude). Due to this many pilots preferred the B even with two less guns. The Malcolm hood improved the one major issue with the B and that was pilot visibility with little impact to aerodynamics (I would guess).

Click to expand...

The P-51D had different supercharger settings to the P-51B and C, it had more power down low.

Some pilots thought its dive performance was inferior, probably due to Mach effects from the canopy. There are a few stories around of Me 109 out diving the P-51D and getting away as it were. This would be late model Me 109 that had a taller tail with the rudder horn replaced by a balance tab. The Me 109's initial dive limit had come from rudder horn overbalancing at high speed due to mach effect.

Nothing outclassed the P-51B/C/D at low altitude speed. It was unbeaten with both 100/130 fuel and 100/150. The Fw 190D-9 maybe matched it in speed at medium altitudes. There were versions of the Fw 190D that might have outclassed the P-51D such as the Fw 190D13 which due to a two stage three speed supercharger had a speed of about 455 mph (a few maybe a dozen or so got into service: the NASM has one) a variant known as the Fw 190D12/R25 or Fw 190D13/R25 had the Jumo 213EB engine which added an intercooler, added water injection and removed the need to use high octane fuel was expected to do 488mph and nearly 400 down low.

There was a version of the Fw 190D9 run with the first stage supercharger set for optimal operation at sea level, managed an impressive 400mph. Never saw service.

If the Germans had more reliable supply of C3 fuel they might have done better. Note however the P-51H was not far from seeing service, the 'brochure speed' of 487 mph is a nonsense but it could manage 475mph in confirmed tests and there were improvements on the way.

GrauGeist said:

The master of deflection shooting was Hans-Joachim Marseille, who also mastered the inside turn by slowing his aircraft considerably, almost to the point of stalling, in order to get inside of a turning adversary.

Click to expand...

Which he didn't learn in training. As Werner Schroer who served with H-JM in the desert, wrote:

"But you must hit - and that was the problem. How often I have missed because accurate deflection shooting was not taught in training schools or on practice flights. My unforgettable Staffelkapitan 'Vati' Redlich, who was a wonderful person and a great leader, taught me shooting at the expense of many hours of his flying allowance for months, because I missed again and again...
However, there is no doubt that my true school master was Marseille; I studied his tactics for attacking British defensive circles for a long time, tried it myself often without success - and finally learned the lesson."

HJ-M certainly had an ability that few other could match as Ernst Dullberg of II./JG 27 noted.

"If Marseille was often able to shoot down one aircraft after another out of a defensive circle, this was an isolated success. So far as I know his outstanding successes could not be repeated by other German pilots."

Friedrich Korner of I./JG 27 also offers some insight into the top 'experten' methods.

"Our top aces were very self willed characters who had been able to develop their own methods of attack which could not be copied by the average pilots. The average pilots in Africa were very well trained and full of fighting spirit (an old slogan was 'Der Geist machts! - the spirits counts!) I believe our tactics of breaking formations into pairs at the start of combat was the key to our success. It should be mentioned that all top aces had outstanding eyesight."

HJ-M's tactics for attacking an RAF defensive circle were remarkable, here described by Werner Schroer.

"He would dive down near the circle, pull out and zoom into it from below. He reached the level of the circle just before stalling, just in time to level off, shoot down a Tommy and start to spin to sea level, where he pulled out at the last second, it was impossible to follow him. He then climbed back to his own formation and repeated the performance until the circle broke up."

Almost all pilots on all sides over claimed but it should be pointed out that for a variety of reasons, not least the visibility, claiming in the desert (with rare and well documented exceptions which do not include Marseille) was much more accurate than elsewhere. A substantial majority of Marseille's claims can be reconciled with allied losses.

Cheers

Steve

Bad-Karma said:

I know this sounds random but why is the p51 b-15 with malcom hood considered to be better than the d? I saw those comments in another thread but didn't want to bump it if I could get an answer here. Drgondog I think it was your comments that I was reading in the p51 vs f6f thread.

Click to expand...

My father got three of his seven air credits in a B and C w/Malcolm hood. He preferred the B/C with Malcolm hood for pure flying but the D for real combat ops. He felt the D visibility and extra firepower were worth sacrificing slight manueverability advantage of the B/C. Post war, when several ace pilots of the 355th were flying FW 190A and D, and 109G-12 he preferred to rat race in the B.

Drgondog,
I would have liked to speak with your father about his experiences! It would be interesting to compare how things were done then with how we do them now.
Did he get to fly any of the German stuff (Fw or Me)?
Biff

Gents,

After re-reading this thread I wanted to throw a few things out. At any given time the performance of the prime players (Spit, Mustang, 190, and 109) were fairly close. The predominate "kill" seems to have been not from a prolonged engagement, but from an "unobserved" entry or attack. The gun footage I have seen on the History channel, Dogfights, and Youtube are for the most part against non to very light maneuvering targets. Most are no more than 30' angle off the tail.

The attributes that allowed for "success" in that environment would be visual lookout, flying the "pursuit curve" (maneuvering to a position of advantage / the bandits 6 o'clock), and gunnery. Don't get me wrong, there were huge furballs and keeping ones head on a swivel combined with good or better gunnery skills would be of benefit. However, furballs get both strong and weak players killed as it's difficult to kill someone and keep your six clear.

As for the speed differences, faster is better but not everything. Being able to look at a situation and determine where you need to put your plane is an excellent strength. An example is when and how do you defend against a gun attack. When someone is trying to gun you they telegraph it by showing you his belly (obviously WW2 was a gun only air to air event). If a guy is pointing at you from inside your turn, and you have a decent amount of speed, he can't hit you (they canted the gun up on the Eagle / Hornet to remedy that little problem). And from that you learn that the closer the attacker is the more you have to move your plane (jink) to avoid being hit. An example from flying the Eagle would be a guy could come on the trigger (squeeze it) and you would have enough time as the defender to get out of the way before his rounds impacted if the shot was not at close range. Time of flight for the bullet is not instantanious, and hitting another plane, particularly an aware opponet, is not easy. Experiance helps whether you are the offender or defender. The bottom line is if a guy looks like he going to shoot at you, move your plane and spoil his shot while giving him a closure problem in return.

When defensive "NEVER GIVE UP". The longer you can survive the greater the odds one of your bud's will come in a whack the guy trying to whack you, or he will run out of ammo, gas or patience.

Cheers,
Biff

A good deal of the Allied gun camera footage seen is usually against the terrified green Luftwaffe pilot where they either bail-out as the first tracers whizz past, or they hunker down in the seat in a frozen panic.

There is also gun camera footage of Allied aircraft attacking Luftwaffe aircraft, which is hardly seen pictured. This was because that Luftwaffe pilot knew what to do and was evading the Allied fighter.

BiffF15 said:

...they canted the gun up on the Eagle / Hornet to remedy that little problem

Click to expand...

That must increase the pucker factor when strafing!

Greyman said:

That must increase the pucker factor when strafing!

Click to expand...

Only if the strafe rag is on the ground...

BiffF15 said:

The predominate "kill" seems to have been not from a prolonged engagement, but from an "unobserved" entry or attack. The gun footage I have seen on the History channel, Dogfights, and Youtube are for the most part against non to very light maneuvering targets. Most are no more than 30' angle off the tail.

Click to expand...

That is backed up by most accounts of fighter to fighter combat. The angle off for most successful gunnery was actually less. A British research section discovered that almost all hits on both their own aircraft and downed Luftwaffe aircraft during the BoB were from less than fifteen degrees angle off the tail.

This was because the pilots of the RAF and Luftwaffe were not properly trained in deflection shooting, a state of affairs that the RAF was still struggling with in 1941/2 and which was never truly overcome by either.

The earliest gun camera footage taken by the RAF in 1940 revealed that most pilots couldn't shoot.

221 of the Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed were credited to just seventeen pilots! 162 were destroyed by the top ten alone!

Better gun sights mitigated the problem, but not until very late in the war.

An experienced pilot, who saw an attack developing could very often avoid it even when caught at a disadvantage.

There were of course some more prolonged combats. I recall one 56th FG combat report in which a turning fight descended to tree top height before the final German aircraft seemed to run out of ammunition. The surviving US pilot wrote in his report that he 'felt like getting out and dancing the rumba'.

Cheers

Steve

Most pilots went up as targets, but that does not lessen their importance. both Germany and Japan at the end of the war tried to form super elite formations, in which all, or nearly all the pilots were of elite quality. it was not a success. it was a case of too many chiefs, as no pilots were really ready to play second fiddle to anyone else, also ever pilot was a valuable target, with no protection in numbers.

Wingmen were important, and giving someone an easy target means the enemy will go for that rookie, whilst your own experts are given greater freedom of manouvre

parsifal said:

Most pilots went up as targets, but that does not lessen their importance.

Click to expand...

In the period referred to above most pilots went up unable to manoeuvre their aircraft into a position from which they could make a successful attack, which meant directly behind a target as they could neither estimate angle off nor range accurately.
They were therefore incapable of performing their primary mission, reiterated time and time again by their commanders, which was to shoot down Luftwaffe bombers. That is something that caused considerable alarm at the time. It caused considerable alarm later too when Sholto-Douglas had almost identical exchanges with the Air Ministry on the subject of gunnery as those had by Dowding eighteen months earlier.

Whether that makes the majority of pilots 'flying as targets' more or less 'important' I don't know.

Cheers

Steve

parsifal said:

Wingmen were important, and giving someone an easy target means the enemy will go for that rookie, whilst your own experts are given greater freedom of manouvre

Click to expand...

This is commonly referred to as the "towed decoy"...

Cheers,
Biff

parsifal said:

Most pilots went up as targets, but that does not lessen their importance. both Germany and Japan at the end of the war tried to form super elite formations, in which all, or nearly all the pilots were of elite quality. it was not a success. it was a case of too many chiefs, as no pilots were really ready to play second fiddle to anyone else, also ever pilot was a valuable target, with no protection in numbers.

Wingmen were important, and giving someone an easy target means the enemy will go for that rookie, whilst your own experts are given greater freedom of manouvre

Click to expand...

I wonder how applicable this is to infantry?

stona said:

This was because the pilots of the RAF and Luftwaffe were not properly trained in deflection shooting, a state of affairs that the RAF was still struggling with in 1941/2 and which was never truly overcome by either.

Click to expand...

Wasn't the USN supposed to have the best training in deflection shooting?

BiffF15 said:

Bad-Karma,

I will throw the game ball to get things started!

P-38J/L:
Performance:
Hi dive speed, dive brakes,

Click to expand...

Sorry Biff, it hadn't. It had the worst mach limit of any of the ETO fighters (0.68 vs 0.75-0.8 for the rest, with the Spit being 0.85 and the P-47 only being 0.72).
It didn't have dive brakes it had dive recovery flaps, which raised the mach limit by about 15mph and would let you regain control (eventually and you had enough altitude) when it became a lawn dart.

The pilots instructions gave a dive limit of only 15 degrees without the recovery flaps being used.

OldSkeptic,
You are correct! I keep learning stuff I didn't know or remembered incorrectly. I assumed (incorrectly) that the frozen flight controls / max Mach was fairly flat across the board!
Cheers,
Biff

Is there any data available for average time a US pilot would require to remain on target for a kill vs German or really any cannon armed fighter? I get that .50's weren't an ideal solution but I'm curious if there are any measurable dogfighting disadvantages.

Bad-Karma said:

Is there any data available for average time a US pilot would require to remain on target for a kill vs German or really any cannon armed fighter? I get that .50's weren't an ideal solution but I'm curious if there are any measurable dogfighting disadvantages.

Click to expand...

Bump for any info.

I was reading in another thread from member Renrich:

As regards roll rate of the P47, Bob Johnson's book stated that the P47 had an excellent roll rate much better than the Spitfire. In mock dogfights when a Spit got on his tail since he could not outturn it or outclimb it he usually would start rolling and the Spit could not stay with him in that maneuver. His next move if he had the altitude was to dive since the Spit could not stay with him in a dive either. At the bottom of his dive he would zoom climb until the Spit was well below him then he would hammerhead stall the Jug and come down on the Spit which was rapidly running out of airspeed trying to follow him. An excellent example of early energy tactics.

Click to expand...

What exactly would the "roll maneuver" in this case be? I'm trying to visualize this scenario and I can't really see how a roll would get the p47 away from a spit.

Bad-Karma said:

Bump for any info.

I was reading in another thread from member Renrich:

What exactly would the "roll maneuver" in this case be? I'm trying to visualize this scenario and I can't really see how a roll would get the p47 away from a spit.

Click to expand...

I agree a roll alone would be ineffective. But a plane can change direction quickly only perpendicular to the wing surfaces, preferable the top surface. So if the evading pilot can get his wings oriented in a direction appreciable different from a pursuing plan he can outturn the following plane. A turn in a direction in which the evader has some superiority, usually diving for U.S. planes, can be parlayed into an advantage, or at least an escape.