It's funny, the zero is more like a lotus than anything, lightweight and incredibly agile. Most of the american fighters scream "american," not particularly graceful but big and powerful and beautiful because the form that follows the function is awesome. (A lot for one sentence but I'm tired and couldn't figure out any other way to word it ) Think muscle car, big and powerful.
The messerschmidts very much reminds me of germany, well built and very well performing, ie a porsche. I don't know enough about the fiats, but to compare them to ferrari implies huge power and incredible manouverability.
The spitfire- grace and performance, definitely an aston martin.
Not a bad choice, but I still go with the GT 40 mk2 big heavy (they were about 800lbs heaver than the competition) for it's purpose but extreamly effective even so.
The Dewoitine D.520 was vey elegant monoplane wich was used against germany ans then against the allies very sucesfully.
The 13 june of 1940 a couple of D.520 manned by capt Assolant and leutenat Le Gloan, engaged a large formation of italian aircraft wich was bombing the south of France.
Assolant destroyed 1 Fiat CR-42 and Le Gloan shot down 4 plus 1 Fiat BR-20 bomber.
The Hawk-75 was a superior aircraft and the D.520 had no success against the Allies, at all. The Vichy French Air Force was slaughtered by USAAF and FAA aircraft over the Torch beaches.
Hmmm...dont think so... the Hawk 75 was 40 Km/h slower and it had no cannon.
Between the 8 and 10th november of 1942 the Aeronavale lost 19 D-520 and 7 Martin 167.
The Armee del Air ( Vichy) lost 13 Dewoitines and 43 a/c of other types.
The fighters destroyed 44 allied aeroplanes including an entire formation of 9 Fairey Albacore of HMS Furious shot down by the GC III/3s D-520s.
So... with 82 losses (mostly destroyed on ground by air attack and naval gunfire) and 44 victories ( all in air-to-air operations) it dont seemed so disastrous to say "slaughtered".
'Hmmm...don't think so...' The Hawk-75 was superior to the D.520 in every other aspect. It had a superior combat record, it also achieved the first kill in Europe (Two Bf-109E, September 8th, 1939). The Hawk-75 was the French Air Force's most successful fighter during the Battle of France.
The Seafires over the torch beaches obliterated the D.520s. 82:44 is appalling.
Probably, but as a say before, about a dozen or more french craft was crippled on groun so the air-to air kill ratio give us and advantage to 1: 1,7/8 wich dont seems so appalling.
Taking for example another air battle in an amphibius assault such as the operation "jubilee" in August 19th, 1942.
The defensive forces lost 41 planes, but the attacking Anglo-american air Forces ( wich incidentally had much better planes than the froggys and more) los 104 fighters and bombers......still, I would not say that the top cover for the Dieppe raid was "slaughtered", simply "defeated"...semantic you now