I came to the same conclusion last week. Between this and
the other thread where he's calling people clueless bots (myself included, lol),
and Russian bots, constantly making fantastical claims without ever presenting a shred of evidence, ignoring everything written to him, and endlessly spamming ChatGPT-generated AI slop in his posts, I'm just glad this forum has an ignore button.
On the bright side, the stuff about the Spitfires sent to the USSR and how they were used there posted by multiple people who actually know a thing or two about what they're talking about, has been very interesting.
It's a pie-in-the-sky idea, because how would the Finns obtain them in the first place. But for the sake of argument let's say there's a time portal that teleports 40 P-51Ds to the Finns in 1941. My answer to the question then is: probably less than one might initially think. There would've been no access to spare parts, the Finns only really had 87-octane fuel, their runways were unpaved (i.e. a lot of dust kicking up outside of winter, requiring the installation of tropical filters - or at least installing them was advisable) and by European, and I imagine American, standards short, and most air combat over and near Finland occurred at relatively low altitudes, perhaps at around 1,000-4,000 metres (~3,300-13,100 ft), or less. Perhaps
@drgondog could comment on how the P-51D would do under such conditions and limitations. I genuinely don't know.
But I imagine even if it could have performed decently under those conditions, the lack of spare parts would've killed operating the aircraft. Historically a lack of spare parts grounded the few Finnish Hurricanes for most of the Continuation War (1941-44), and due to a lack of spare engines the Fiat G.50s were grounded for much of it too, particularly the latter half of that war (which is partly also why their KLR in Finnish use is very high,
though not as high as is usually claimed; they were spared the hardest years of the air war). Conversely the Finns were able to keep their Brewster 239 and Curtiss Hawk 75A fleet flying the entire Continuation War and beyond. This was only possible because they could use spare parts obtained from Soviet planes and German stocks. In the 1930s the Americans had licensed the Soviets Wright Cyclone engines, among other things, and the Soviets then built very large quantities of their own spin-off designs. These were then captured by the Finns, and the Germans captured many more of them, which the Finns purchased from Germany. They weren't as well-made as the original American engines and engine parts, but with a little tuning they could be fitted onto the Brewster (the plane normally using a Wright R-1820-G5 Cyclone, American parts and all). The Curtiss Hawk used various iterations of the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp (initially some had a Wright R-1820-G205A instead, but these were swapped out for Twin Wasps IIRC due to reliability issues), but a lot of Twin Wasps had been supplied to France before the French surrender, which were then captured by the Germans. They too were then, like the Curtiss Hawks themselves, purchased from Germany by the Finns.
One thing also worth mentioning is that the heavily armoured Il-2 was tough to shoot down with 4 x .50 cals. I'm not sure two more .50s would've made that big of a difference in that particular case. The engine-mounted 20 mm cannon on a Bf 109 G on the other hand, had little issue taking down Stalin's
Sturmoviks. IIRC a few G models delivered to Finland in '44 even had a 30 mm cannon in the nose! And then there were the attachable 20 mm wing gunpods as well, though my understanding is it was preferred to fly without them due to how heavy they made the aircraft in a dogfight.
With all that in mind, the real question is, I think: what could the Finns have done with more Bf 109s, and earlier? Hell, throw in some Fw 190s too, which they did try to get but Germany wouldn't sell them any (the Germans needed them for themselves).
Also regarding the octane thing, I have made a table of the FAF's fuel and lubricant stocks, and I might as well put that here just to show how little high-octane fuel the FAF had in 1941-44.
View attachment 898113
