Hardest plane to take down in WW2?

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FLYBOYJ said:
Nice shots, but the Raiden was built just a little better than the Zero...
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The Jack was built quite a bit tougher than the Zero. It was exactly the opposite design philosphy. It did not have the range or low speed manuverability, but it was fairly well armored, fast, and packed a good punch.

The biggest problem with the Jack was produciton quality. For instance, the steel in the landing gear was so crappy that it'd break off if the landing gear were not retracted by about 100 mph. Balace on the propeller shaft extension was also poor causing vibration problems. This caused the designer (who also designed the Zero, can't spell his name w/o looking it up) to make negative comments about the Japanese war industry which resulted in his "institutional retirementt" (i.e. he was retired into a nut house).

Another problem was the pilots, who thought armor was for cowards and typically ripped it out of their planes in the field.

The design was innovative - the implentation was poor.

=S=

Lunatic
 

I'm talking about control surfaces such as ailerons, where aluminum skinning is streched over alluminum brackets of mimimal thickness.

But, even for the wings themselves, the Soviet's found that, barring fire, the wood usually was less succeptable to combat damage than the metal equivalent (example: Yak3 vs. Yak9).
 

Except the Corsair clearly didn't have "less" structure in the outer wing panels than other fighters - in fact it appears to have more.

Besides, in the inter-war years the Corsair wings were converted to all metal, the fabric have been deemed to hazardous and labor intensive to maintain, and continued to operate off carriers.

=S=

Lunatic
 
Hun in the Sun said:
Fighter-P-47
Bomber-B-17
Ground Attack-Il-2
Carrier fighter-Corsair
Carrier torp. bomber-TBF avenger

How tough were the Tempest and Typhoon? I have never heard much about them.
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They were quite tough. The only thing taking them out of the running for "toughest" is that they were liquid cooled. Any damage to the coolant system (including the engine's water jacket) was fatal.
 
Except the Corsair clearly didn't have "less" structure in the outer wing panels than other fighters - in fact it appears to have more.
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I was generally speaking that to look at a cutaway drawing to determine structural strength is an excersize in futility.

You have to look at the actual blueprints to determine strength. There are so many facets to this, a couple of books could be written.

Cutaway drawings do not show the actuall as built shapes, the types of metal(s) used nor the thickness's. Once you know all this, then you can start to look at how they all interact. Dont forget that just the placement of the fuel tanks and the guns and ammo box's can have a huge bearing on structural strenth.
 
And of course, stresed aluminum skin over a skeletal structure also provides aditional structural strength that fabric does not.
 
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