How good a plane was the P-40, really?
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This should be the epigraph to the whole discussion.
I suspect, that the Soviet "сobras" could be selectively transferred to the distinguished fighter regiments. This is an unconfirmed hypothesis, but some correlations can be revealed. As a result, the average efficiency of this airplane could drastically increase. Again, this is just my speculation, but the quota of Guards regiments on "cobras" is disproportionately high, and many of them were awarded the Guards rank either before receiving "cobras" or too shortly after. Unfortunately I cannot check the validity of this hypothesis by myself - the available literature sources are insufficient, and I have no access to any Russian archives.
All I'm going to say is that I doubt the possibility of a correct comparison of aircraft performance based on aircraft operational results, which are rather a complex convolution of a large number of factors.
Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
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Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,231
- Mar 18, 2022
That starts to tumble into a hall of mirrors ala "how can we really know anything"
Statistics do work though. It's ultimately impossible to eliminate all of the extraneous factors, and with a very small sample you can't necessarily detect a trend in a reliable way. But with enough iterations and a wide enough data set, patterns do emerge. Eventually these become pretty clear.
And yet there will always be wiggle room, so that arguments can go on and on forever. For example, some enthusiasts will find it heartbreaking, and therefore impossible, to ever acknowledge that the Soviets ever made or had an aircraft which was better than their German opposition. And yet, somehow the Soviets won the war.
We can help to resolve these perplexing mysteries by looking at the data set.
The commanders and administrative managers of the armed forces had to make evaluations on this kind of data. That's how they decided which aircraft to keep, which to phase out and which to immediately get rid of. Which to invest in make (or ask for) more of, which to improve and in what respects (engine, armament, agility, range?).
The Soviets tended to promote successful units in the VVS to "Guards" status. Guards air units either got their choice of planes or were assigned what were believed to be the best available aircraft types. This was part of the whole strategy of 'reinforcing success' that the Soviets relied on up to the division and corps level in the land armies as well as with air units.
For a while the P-39 was definitely one of the favorite types, and for some units and individual pilots, it remained so through the end of the war. Many others however switched over to Yak-3, Yak 9 or La 7 etc. Normandie Niemen is a classic case. They had their choice of any Soviet, US, or British type (including P-39, P-63, P-47, and Spitfire IX). They chose the Yak 3, which was probably very wise.
A few pilots got the P-63, though it's operations remain somewhat mysterious due to the agreement between the US and Soviets to restrict it's use (which the Soviets seem to have ignored, more or less, but it cut down on the available unit data.
Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
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Anyway, I don't think people read threads like this for the opinions. I know I don't. The data is what matters. We have presented some relevant data.
I deal with statistics (including ML, etc.) everyday. I analyze big amounts of various process data in order to make it suitable for AI applications. And I swear: a large data volume provides no guarantee that the data will be interpreted correctly and the revealed correlations are not random if you data was collected improperly.
No Soviet air regiments - neither Guards nor regular - were allowed to choose their type of airplane. The only exception was the 16th Guards Regiment (the "ace regiment" or "Pokryshkin's regiment") - they were allowed to keep their Cobras after Klubov crashed in the La-7 (Pokryshkin had refused the Yaks despite of a personal request from Yakovlev before). But possibly - I am not absolutely sure - pilot training was taken into account by the command when distributing new airplanes in reserve aviation regiments. In the Soviet system, the impact of the pilot training factor was more significant, since the average level was extremely low. This is a fact not questioned by those who have any real understanding of the subject.. American and British pilots were on average better trained (as well as German pilots in the early to mid war), so the role of aircraft performance could be better deconvoluted.
The total number of Airacobras on the Eastern Front was significantly lower than Soviet fighter types, so deviations from the typical distribution of training levels may have a much greater impact on the overall assessment of the efficiency of that particular aircraft.
I have a list of air regiments on "cobras" with the dates of the re-training on "cobras" and awarding the Guards rank with indication of all aircraft types on which the regiment fought. Unfortunately, these data are absolutely insufficient to draw conclusions. The data on deliveries of Soviet fighters from the factories and their distribution among the regiments that were withdrawn to the reserve for replenishment or retraining on new aircraft types is necessary.
About Normandie-Niemen. The choice of the French was mainly politically motivated, they immediately asked for "the best Soviet fighter" in an effort to make the Soviets feel good (according to the French N-N historian C.-J. Ehrengardt). No other offers were made to them, although the British were surprised (perhaps they had considered Hurricanes and early Spitfires as a better choice in early 1943, but then I am surprised at their surprise). Americans in Moscow asked the French to explain their choice, as they believed it might affect U.S. aircraft deliveries under Lend-Lease and to Algeria. The French gave quite reasonable arguments, and there were no further discussions. The French were happy with the Yak-1, moreover, it was equipped with an HS descendant engine. I cannot except that their results would be worse on Cobras. Most Soviet pilots switched to Cobras having combat experience on difficult to pilot airplanes (I-16, MiG-3, LaGG-3).
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Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
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And? I wrote database software for 25 years, including for military and Fortune 100 clients. You can swear all you like, it's not such a mystery. Of course a large data volume alone doesn't guarantee anything, but if you have the sufficient quality of data and the means to analyze it, you can certainly determine likely outcomes. This is done all day long in dozens of industries, and by military forces all over the world. Again, I deny the suggestion that you can't distinguish the merits of one aircraft over another based on their operational history, especially where there is a large volume of data and where aircraft are fighting side by side in the same Theater.
The claim that it's impossible is ridiculous.
Not according to books I've read on this subject. But it would be a major derail to get into that.
Well then you know that the Soviets did a three month workup before their initial deployment of the P-39, and they did much the same thing with the Spitfire Mk V around the same time (early 1943 if I remember correctly). You'll also know that not all of the P-39 units were guards units, and not all of them were promoted, as not all did well. Nor did the Spitfire units, which is why they were relegated to PVO where they were believed to be better suited.
As for the rest of it, I believe this is opinion. You clearly have an agenda.
That may be the opinion of one monsieur Ehrengardt but he's not the only historian of that very famous unit and that is not the consensus on this particular subject. As far as I have read their decision was made on the basis of what aircraft could best save their life in combat.
I really don't see why the choice of one unit, however famous, would impact US Lend Lease deliveries or why they would be worried about it. Stalin specifically asked for P-39s as is well known, and Lend Lease was very much for the Soviets and at their request.
No disagreement there. The plane the French flew home with was the Yak-3, again given a choice of anything they wanted. I again don't blame them.
It is not the same as statistical analysis of data.
Sure. But this analysis is much more complicated and comprehensive that suggested here.
You can deny anything you want. It doesn't mean that you're right. The correctness of the deconvolution procedure should be proved.
I do not claim that it is impossible. I just doubt that it can be made here in a proper way.
References would be much appreciated.
There was no analogy between the use of Spitfires and Cobras. Spitfire Mk V were deployed from the beginning of 1943, at the front from May 1943 (only two regiments - 57th Guards and 821st), from the end of August 1943 the remaining Spitfires were transferred to PVO, their application at the front was very short. The Mk.IX began to arrive only in 1944, most of them were immediately sent to PVO, as their performance at the front was found insufficient. By the end of the war, 26 out of 81 PVO regiments were equipped with Spitfires. Cobras were used since May 1942, and by the middle of 1943 they were found almost all over the Eastern Front. The largest numbers were in the southern and northern sections due to logistics.
Not all Cobra regiments were Guard regiments, but their fraction was disproportionately large. And according to my estimates, most of them either received or were preparing to receive the Guard rank BEFORE they were retrained on Cobras.
What exactly is my agenda?
He worked in French archives and published a book at least («Normandie-Niemen», Cayeux, Heimdal, 1989). I would appreciate any reference on a source of a comparable quality.
Source?
Perhaps they feared any reputational damage - rather for the planned deliveries of fighters to Algeria. But Capt. Mirlesse was invited to the American Embassy, where he answered questions from the American and British military attachés concerning the choice of aircraft.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
So you're not going by actual records?
What do you mean by actual records?
Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
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I guess you aren't very familiar with database software. Among other things I wrote BI reports for a living which were ... statistical analysis of data, via data cubes. Multi-dimensional arrays of data which could be accessed through a wide range of complex queries, and presented as visual data. Not that it matters.
I'm really Ok with that, don't think it needs to be proven as I believe it is self-evident (within certain obvious limitations) and you don't strike me as being on the level, so I believe debating it at length would be futile. I think most people reading the thread can grasp the concept.
I am not prepared to quote chapter and verse, but I have
It's an interesting topic, but not one I think needs to be discussed in this thread, and unfortunately the P-39 as a topic has kind of been worn out around here.
The Spit V had a short combat debut because it wasn't considered ideal for frontal (VVS) units, but IIRC the Spit IX was sent strait to PVO due to it's excellent performance at altitude and very high rate of climb, which made it ideal for that job.
I think your handle here is a dead giveaway
I'm not prepared to cite chapter and verse, but I have the memoir (in French) of Roland de la Poype, who was one of the pilots, an ace and HSU, who also flew with the RAF. My father, a journalist with an interest in aviation, interviewed him back in the 1970s.
I fail to see where the US or British are alarmed, they were probably trying to determine if Mirlesse was a communist. Roland del a Poype by the way, was about as far from being a communist as you could get.
Speaking of the French by the way, another useful example of side by side comparisons was during the Battle of France. It was clear that the MS.406 and Bloch 152 were not ideal for combat, given their records. D.520 showed promise in spite of going into action before being properly shaken out. Hawk 75 also showed a great deal of promise.
GregP
Major
Hi to another statistics person. I was on the Motorola Six Sigma team when we used SPC to almost eliminate customer returns ... using statistical correlation. The main root cause was found to be ESD (electrostatic discharge damage)! Go figure.
If the data are gathered improperly as suggested above, a large data volume guarantees incorrect conclusions. Biased data cannot be analyzed to get valid results; it invariably leads to biased results. A main culprit is the manner in which data are "randomly" collected. Example: Taking data from only engines or aircraft with some anomaly eliminates data from normally-operating aircraft or engines. So, your results are not normal, either. You have to choose your sample population randomly for statistical analysis results to be valid. Very many people forget this basic requirement, including people who sampled data for the Dewey-Truman Presidential election, and they took over a million samples of biased data and got famously flawed results as a reward for incompetent sampling.
I've personally not seen ANY WWII aviation data set that even addresses how data were collected and correlated ... it was more or less presented as the data the author had together with the conclusion(s) of the author, with NO complete data set. What that does is pretty much preclude anyone else coming in with another conclusion that disagrees with the author. It's tough to disagree when you don't have the data! People with an agenda rarely present the entire data set to their audience.
That is especially true for the ETO combat experiences with the P-38, which was riddled with things that would sabotage it's success. But, I digress and that's another story.
Cheers!
I can only smile broadly in response.
Ok, you know data cubes and BI reports. That's great!
I agree with the latter statement. Not that it matters.
Many things seem self-evident before you start to analyze them more deeply. So far I find your reasoning rather superficial. Appealing to the majority is a sign of weakness in argumentation.
The major factor was the insufficient performance of the Mk.IX for the Eastern Front demands in 1944. No one needed high altitude performance in air combat there. Both high climb rate and altitude performance were a virtue for PVO, but it wasn't the deciding factor - Cobras were also massively transferred to PVO in 1944.
I think you're just trying to denigrate me having no any serious arguments in the discussion.
Why do I have no troubles finding the relevant citations?
Memoirs are much less reliable source of information than a research based on archival data. de la Poype could not know exactly how the selection of the airplane took place.
Why de la Poype "was about as far from being a communist"? Just because he was from a noble family and Mirlesse was from a Jewish family? I know a person of Earl rank who was a convinced communist.
Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
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- Mar 18, 2022
I can only smile broadly in response.
Ok, you know data cubes and BI reports. That's great!
I agree with the latter statement. Not that it matters.
Let me help circle this back to relevance. Which is here is that you tried to argue from authority, as if you were the only person on the forum who understands statistics, which you were leveraging to insist that there is no observable correlation between combat outcomes and merits of a given fighter aircraft in WW2. Which is patently, objectively, ridiculous. I don't need to write a SQL query to tell me that, and I don't need a degree in statistics either. It is really just a coincidence that I wrote BI software (for highly demanding clients, and which was heavily scrutinized) for more than 20 years. I don't have the knowledge of a true statistician, but I certainly understand how sampling, survey methodology, and statistical quality assurance work.
None of that is really necessary to recognize that the combat outcomes of the Bloch 152 are dramatically worse than those of the D.520, and that is in turn, at least in large part, a reflection of problems with the aircraft type.
Do you base that on a statistical analysis of arguments or on your intuition, or are you just using it as a device to further what you see as your cause?
I don't think that was the case, but this isn't really the thread to debate that.
Let me be clear and candid then. There are three issues at hand:
1) You came across in a previous discussion here as a fanatic adherent of outlier positions, including blanket disparagement of the Soviet air forces. It struck me as more ideological than "data driven" to use a corporate buzzword from the database world. Your handle is also a hint of a particular bent. People with various agendas show up on forums like this and I have learned from experience it's both pointless and boring to debate them. We had past exchanges which reinforced this view in your case. True to this type of forumite, in my experience, you do not seem to be receptive to, or even aware of points which refute your pre-concieved positions.
2) The P-39, which you seem eager to discuss, was driven deep into the ground as a subject by another forumite with just such an agenda driven bent, in the not too distant past. To the extent that people here didn't even want to mention that aircraft type by name and were using euphemisms as a joke. Which ties into...
3) ... the thread is about the P-40 and I don't want to heavily derail it. There is another pretty recent thread on the effectiveness of the Soviet Air Forces which you can chime in on if you want to expand upon your theories of general Soviet inferiority.
I admit that for these three reasons, I am not eager to wade into the weeds with you about these various issues, but if you want to revive the Soviet Air Force thread I will engage with you in there in detail. I think it is unlikely we will learn much from each other, but there are many other people on this forum with a wealth of knowledge of WW2, maybe we will both learn something from them.
So you are suggesting that Ehrengardt is the only relevant source on the Normandie Niemen squadron, and that his conclusion that they chose the Yak fighter to appease the Soviets is the irrefutable truth, rather than a theory?
I have a day job today as an historical researcher, on a very different era. It has become abundantly clear to me from that vocation that both primary sources (like memoirs) and secondary or tertiary sources (like any postwar history, whether academic or popular) have their own unique challenges. Pilots do sometimes make mistakes in their writing, particularly in postwar literature like memoirs - we were recently discussing some of those of Pierre Clostermann, speaking of French aces. I admire Clostermann but he clearly did make some mistakes. However, taken in aggregate primary sources, including both wartime writing by pilots and post-war memoirs, are very useful. It just has to be checked alongside more prosaic primary data like unit histories.
Postwar analysis and histories are also not free of mistakes, very much to the contrary, as anyone who has read them is well aware. This is particularly the case when it comes to the technical details of war, for which hard, easily quantifiable data can be elusive. I would say it is doubly so with postwar analysis of WW2, and in particular many 20th Century books on WW2 (like Ehrengardts) are full of postwar cliches, tropes, and legends, and are often missing data from both sides. That is why a new generation of authors have become so prominent in this field of study in recent years. They have used data from Axis sources to help us verify Allied claims, for example, and to flesh out the whole narrative.
I haven't read Ehrengardt's history so I don't want to make any assumptions about him. He might be a good historian and it may well be a good history. But I don't automatically take your word for this particular issue, nor do I believe he is the last word on the subject of that unit. In fact I know perfectly well to the contrary.
Why would being Jewish have anything to do with communism necessarily? I have to admit that I don't know anything about Mirlesse personally.
I say de la Poype was about as far from a communist as you can get because he was an entepreneur and businessman, and an avowed capitalist. He designed a car for Citroen and owned multiple factories making plastics, as well as resorts in the Caribbean. He was a remarkable guy, who went to Russia to fight the Germans out of patriotism, I believe. His father was killed in the Battle of France. That, and wanting to avenge the fall of France seem to have been his key motivation. He was flying for the RAF (and was wingman of Paddy Finucane for a while) but at a time (1941) when the front was somewhat static. He wanted to be at the tip of the spear.
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Just Schmidt
Senior Airman
That one was new to me.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Interestingly enough, the Japanese Navy had a nearly identical design with the Yokosuka R2Y, which they did follow through with.
Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
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- Mar 18, 2022
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
The Me509 and R2Y weren't the only ones, the British were toying with a mid-engined Mustang, powered by a Griffon - the project was called the Mustang FTB.
Thumpalumpacus
Major
I actually like reading varying opinions, so long as they have some factual basis. I can read the data in a book. I come here for the people.
Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,231
- Mar 18, 2022
The problem with those double engine things, aside from double the engine maintenance I guess, is they didn't leave much room for fuel or anything else...
