evangilder
"Shooter"
Good points guys. Let's not forget that a lot of the American fighters were designed or altered based on lessons learned by the British.
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Jabberwocky said:......Spitfires VIIs were running 4 hour long daylight escort missions by mid 1943....
.....as useless in the post '43 ETO/PTO/MTO as syscom would have us believe...
Similarly, while the Spitfire couldn't operate effectively over Germany as a long range escort in 1944, the P-51 could hardly of fulfilled the role of point interceptor that the Spitfire played over Britain in 1940, Malta in 1942 and over the Continent in the post D-Day period.
Its really a case of design priorities. Spitfires were designed as short ranged point interceptors. The P-51 was designed for long range operations.
The Spitfire pushed the LuftWaffe back into France and then kept it there. Can you imagine the USAAF trying to to build up its first mass bomber formations in late 1942 and 1943 without the RAF running constant interference? Or getting masses groups of P-51s, P-47s and P-38s into the air without the RAF controling British airspace?
The excellence of the Spitfire and the dedication of the RAF allowed the USAAF to concentrate on destroying the LUftWaffe. Someone else was running defence, so they could concentrate on offence. If the USAAF were forced to defend their own airspace, do you think they could of projected power nearly as effectively as they did?
There were no "mass" 8th AF bomber formations untill summer of 1943. In fact, there were also few P47 groups to go with them. It really wasnt untill Jan/Feb 1944 that the AAF had enough P38's and P51's to penetrate deep into Germany.
it could climb to altitude and wait for the incoming German planes than to have to stay on the ground and then scramble
pbfoot said:yes they became a force to be reckoned with but probably lacked experienced aircrew to man the force except for those that cut their teeth with RAF/RCAF many of the top US pilots trained with the RCAF
the reason for the frantic scrables was not because the pilots thought they didn't have much fuel so wanted to stay on the ground as long as possible, it was simply because they didn't get much warning, france is only a few miles away, that means you aint gonna get much warning, as soon as incoming raiders were spotted, fighters were scrabled, P-38s would've got no more warning than spits, in fact they proberly would've got less because of all the extra channels it had to get through to get to the americans, the british got warnings straight from the horse's mouth, we were the horse's mouth!
pbfoot said:I'm not sure the radios or frequencies were compatable plus the time involved in upgrading the crews and a/c to work within the RAf system the compatability issue is still with us today as for your previous post about air combat in the PTO the USAAF from mid 43 til the end of hostilities only accounted for 501 a/c destroyed 370 in the air and 131 on the ground the USN was the major force
syscom3 said:the reason for the frantic scrables was not because the pilots thought they didn't have much fuel so wanted to stay on the ground as long as possible, it was simply because they didn't get much warning, france is only a few miles away, that means you aint gonna get much warning, as soon as incoming raiders were spotted, fighters were scrabled, P-38s would've got no more warning than spits, in fact they proberly would've got less because of all the extra channels it had to get through to get to the americans, the british got warnings straight from the horse's mouth, we were the horse's mouth!
Not true. The P38's could have been up at altitude loitering around for 6 to 7 hours at a time and then pounced on the incoming aircrfat. the Spits didnt have that type of endurance. And extra time to scramble fighters becaus eof communication channels? Ummmm...... ever heard of placing a telephone into the P38 base operations center? And then why worry about scrambling times when your P38 is already up at altitude and only needs to be vectored into position.
Not true. The P38's could have been up at altitude loitering around for 6 to 7 hours at a time and then pounced on the incoming aircrfat. the Spits didnt have that type of endurance.
And extra time to scramble fighters becaus eof communication channels? Ummmm...... ever heard of placing a telephone into the P38 base operations center?
And even if a pilot is a little tired from sitting around up there for few hours will be plenty alert and ready to fight once they get a shot of adrenaline going