History Channel "Dogfights"

davparlr said:

I saw a new Dogfights on the History Channel last night. I hope this means that it will be back.

One of the pilots highlighted was Donald Bryan and his escapades in shooting down five Bf-109s in one mission on Nov.22, 1944. A couple of things were interesting, one was that the pilots of the 352 FG considered the Bf-109 as "easy meat", the other was that, while he said he had the fastest P-51 in the group (the crew chief had hopped it up), a Bf-109 got on his tail and he could not shake it. The Bf-109 outperformed his P-51 in everything he did. He escaped by doing a fancy snap roll. He said that he did not go looking for that guy again. I was wondering if that could have been a "K" Bf-109. Would anybody know if Bf-109Ks were involved in the fight that day? It involved a B-17 raid on an Oil Refinery in Maresburg (?) Germany.

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Thorlifter said:

I watched that show. It had three different stories about the Mustang from both the ETO and PTO. They (history channel commentators) just went on and on about how the Mustang ruled the sky and was so superior. I wanted to throw a brick through the TV. I hear what your saying, drgondog, and agree. I believe we have discussed this many time that one of the main reasons the Mustang was superior is, one, they outnumbered the 109's and would pounce on them when they got airborne, and two, 1944-45 most of the Luftwaffe aces were dead and they were going up against green pilots.

Ah no, I have not said that nor do I agree that. I have illustrated in about 50+ threads that the number of Mustangs available to intercept attacking LuftFlotte fighter forces in the Jan 1944 through May 1944 was one and maybe two groups in 100 miles square area during that time frame.

The early 8th AF Mustang groups were far outnumbered and often ayyacked from above during escort missions. Bryan's scores were in November 2, 1944 battle in which many of the German vets were long dead from those winter/spring battles.

Having said that all of the illustrated battles were 1-2 against many which didn't illustrate the superiority of the P-51 so much as the average pilot skill of 8th/9th and RAF pilots against the average pilot skill of the Germans. It was no unusual feat for a small number of Allied pilots to jump a much larger force of Luftwaffe - contrary to popular belief.

Just Donald Bryan said, he ran across a plane that he couldn't shake and only because of an extreme snap roll was he able to get away from the guy. So he ran up against either a veteran pilot or a G-6 or newer 109.

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Erich said:

but it's a matter of few experienced Staffelkapitäns and staffelführers leading a very inexperienced band of kids......sorry but it sounds lame but it is very true. drop tanks still fitted according to fool fat mans orders, do not break formation even when being assaulted from above and the rear by Allied escorts as the main objective is to attack the bombers at all costs.......insane !

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JoeB said:

I don't know about "Dogfights" in general, I've only watched some parts of some episodes, and heard about others on forums. Aside from the graphics etc. seems like the basic approach is an oral history approach, IOW what first hand participants perceived to have happened, rather than trying to rigorously determine what actually happened, in a given episode. Oral history has value, but has definite limits.

On the issue of numbers in air combat, I think it tends to get oversimplified. There's a learned published author on another forum neither of which I'll name basically insists the tendency to positive exchange ratio's by USAAF fighters against LW ones ETO ca. 1944 is meaningless as measures of quality because the overall numbers were so much in favor of the Allied by then. This is very shallow and oversimplified IMO. Order of battle superiority in numbers is very important to the overall outcome of a campaign, but theater-wide order of battle numerical superiority can be a pretty poor predictor of the outcome of a given air combat engagement. In ETO much of that numerical superiority was the Allied TAF's (9th and Brit) which encountered German fighters on a small % of their missions. And has been mentioned here, even over Germany once 8th/15th numbers were superior, it doesn't mean that larger formation of US fighters always met smaller ones of German fighters. Rather, often some US units would not meet German fighters, and accomplish their escort missions easily, while others would have their hands full. If anything as was already mentioned, there seemed some tendency for smaller USAAF formations to run across bigger German ones.

Joe - you have tapped into a study area for me for the past 30 years. I have maintained, and believe I have proven, that the order of Battle for Mustangs and Lightnings from December 1943 through May 1944 would almost guarantee that no more that 2 groups of Target escort fighters would be between the LuftFlotte Reich and what ever forces they concentrated from 1 to 300 and an entire DIVISION of B-24s or B-17s over a 40 mile stretch.

Of course the German veterans liked to see the later defeats of the Luftwaffe solely in terms of numbers, or 'green' pilots under them, not USAAF fighter units that may have been the most effective fighter units the LW ever had to face. Of course the USAAF fans would like the latter explanation. There's a lot of subjectivity possible. But the problem IMO is when people basically make up generalized facts to back their predispositions, quotes like 'there were 8 Mustangs to each of us by then what could we do' and make that quote into a generalized fact, rather than study engagements and see if that was actually a common type of engagement. Again the limits of oral history.

Joe

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JoeB said:

There's a learned published author on another forum neither of which I'll name basically insists the tendency to positive exchange ratio's by USAAF fighters against LW ones ETO ca. 1944 is meaningless as measures of quality because the overall numbers were so much in favor of the Allied by then. This is very shallow and oversimplified IMO. Order of battle superiority in numbers is very important to the overall outcome of a campaign, but theater-wide order of battle numerical superiority can be a pretty poor predictor of the outcome of a given air combat engagement. In ETO much of that numerical superiority was the Allied TAF's (9th and Brit) which encountered German fighters on a small % of their missions. And has been mentioned here, even over Germany once 8th/15th numbers were superior, it doesn't mean that larger formation of US fighters always met smaller ones of German fighters. Rather, often some US units would not meet German fighters, and accomplish their escort missions easily, while others would have their hands full. If anything as was already mentioned, there seemed some tendency for smaller USAAF formations to run across bigger German ones.

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Erich said:

Dave it was probably a G-10 which was faster than the K variant.

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