If you were a pilot in ww2 which plane would you want to fly

[XBe02Drvr]

Wow - this this thread is still rollin!

ASW Patrol, SAR, Key West NAS flying a JRF-5 "Grumman Goose."

Debrief at "Sloppy Joe's."

I would never have qualified for a commission or flight training in WARII, would have wound up a Garand pilot, but would have applied for a transfer to be your enlisted plane captain down at NQX.
Applaud your choice of a debriefing room, but couldn't join you; off limits to enlisted back then.
Cheers,
Wes

PS: According to old timer Conchs who remembered WarII, enlisted guys at the Air Station, the seaplane base, and the Naval Station and submarine base weren't allowed off base except for special circumstances. Only officers had the run of the town. And local girls weren't allowed on base to visit the EM club, as they were in my day. All the restrictions of a combat zone (it was surrounded by U-boat waters) without the overseas pay or the combat pay.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

And cowardice is what several you are inferring by these claims that only a small percentage of World War II soldiers in fighter squadrons and an infantry actually participated in the fight. You're inferring cowardice.

Care to support that opinion?

 

[parsifal]

I guess in a way he has, though not very well. I don't think we are saying anything about cowardice here, its about experience.

I was never a pilot, but I did direct pilots. new pilots have their hands full just getting up and then back. they have less situational awareness and they are nervous. that's not cowardice, its nerves. it takes time to get your air groups up to steam, and the importance of the unit leaders cannot be over-stated.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

I hear a lot of extraordinary claims being made in the last few posts and zero extraordinary proof.

This is the age of search engines. Opinions are meaningless unless you can connect them to the reasons you hold them. facts and data are easy to find. All the information in the history of mankind is basically at your fingertips .

Use it.

I do not buy the premise that most Pilots were flying around just avoiding combat. And nobody here is bothered to source that notion. Some facts are that we had more pilots coming through training than we knew what to do with. We washed out thousands of fighter pilots. My father was a Hellcat pilot. I know what he went through in flight training. Only the most aggressive true believers made it out of fighter pilot flight schools. If you didn't show the proper aggression you ended up being a flying truck driver in a c-47 or a B-17. Most all of them were itching for a fight. Read the books written by fighter pilots. They hated missions where they couldn't find a fight. My uncle was a bombardier on a B-17 shut down December 1st 1943 And spent 18 months in prisoner-of-war camps. He said B-17 bombing missions were absolutely terrifying. The helpless feeling of making long flights in broad daylight with German Fighters trying to kill you and the German 88's on the ground trying to kill you and all you can do is keep flying in a straight line. And this was before the Mustangs. But he says almost without exception everybody did the professional job they were trained to do. I've read the daily reports of the 91st Bomb Group 322nd Squadron through 1943. I see no evidence of the kind of cowardice you are inferring. I didn't hear it from my uncle, I didn't hear it from my father, I didn't hear it from my father's best friend who flew b-29s. I didn't hear it the air crew guys that I've met or the Guadalcanal veteran that I met and others.(as a long hair anti-war Counter Culture type I somehow became friends with this Guadalcanal veteran.... And a Korean War Navy SEAL now that I think of it.)

And cowardice is what several you are inferring by these claims that only a small percentage of World War II soldiers in fighter squadrons and an infantry actually participated in the fight. You're inferring cowardice.

What I've read, and what I've heard from direct sources is that by the time you made it to combat the thing you are most worried about was letting down the other guys in your squad or your squadron.

The kind of thing you're talking about more describes the later years of Vietnam more than it does World War II, but that's a whole different story. But even in Vietnam the combat infantryman feared most doing something that got one of his friends killed.

If you're in a Fighter Squadron in World War II and you end up in a fight with the Enemy you don't have a choice but to fight.

Even in the real world best defense is an offense.

One time long ago this huge tough guy took a swing at me at a bar. I have extremely fast reflexes and he missed badly. As his arm went across me he was close enough that I got hold of his shirt at the chest as we went to the floor I held him as close to my body as I could so that he couldn't get his arms out and swing. People stepped in and broke it up.

But that does not describe combat.

This is not a glorification of War. There is no glory in war, ever. I hate the war, not the warrior.

My OPINION is you're misconstruing here. Take a fighter finger four; you've got one, possibly two shooters, for at best a 50% shooting opportunity. For a vic, it's one in three. Does that make the wingmen cowards? I think not! It takes gonads to hold your leader's back while yours hangs out in the breeze. Aces only become aces by surviving their apprenticeship on their leader's wing. Once they graduate to section or flight leader, if their marksmanship or tactical skill or acrobatic ability isn't stellar, does that make them cowards? Not being a shooter is not the same as cowardice. Nor does it imply avoiding combat.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[swampyankee]

RE: Cowardice.

The number I've heard-- and I believe that this number was derived by interviewing combat veterans in several armed forces, including the USMC and US Army -- was either from Gwynne Dyer's book War and its associated mini-series or, more likely, John Keegan & Richard Holmes' mini-series Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle. One of the comments was that post-WW2 armies are trying very hard to get that 15% up to 100%. A somewhat counter-intuitive statement was that the composition of that active 15% was not constant, i.e, you couldn't go into a unit and pull out the 15% super-soldiers and discharge the 85% failures, because people jumped from one group to another.

 

[pbehn]

RE: Cowardice.

The number I've heard-- and I believe that this number was derived by interviewing combat veterans in several armed forces, including the USMC and US Army -- was either from Gwynne Dyer's book War and its associated mini-series or, more likely, John Keegan & Richard Holmes' mini-series Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle. One of the comments was that post-WW2 armies are trying very hard to get that 15% up to 100%. A somewhat counter-intuitive statement was that the composition of that active 15% was not constant, i.e, you couldn't go into a unit and pull out the 15% super-soldiers and discharge the 85% failures, because people jumped from one group to another.

Air combat is in some ways a special case. A pilot qualified on a bi plane cannot be strapped into a Spitfire and take part in combat he is a danger to himself and his squadron until he has at least 50 hours training and not really effective until he has about 200 hours on type.

 

[vikingBerserker]

I have always loved the P-47 and the fact it had 8 x .50's.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I have always loved the P-47 and the fact it had 8 x .50's.

Juggernaut
Unbelievable
Gravity defying
Sh!t hot
!

True Belief = Faith in God and Pratt and Whitney.

 

[swampyankee]

Air combat is in some ways a special case. A pilot qualified on a bi plane cannot be strapped into a Spitfire and take part in combat he is a danger to himself and his squadron until he has at least 50 hours training and not really effective until he has about 200 hours on type.

I agree. Interestingly, a number of quite successful combat pilots were not very good technical pilots; this was probably a bigger issue during WW1 than WW2. I suspect that the not shooting issue is more prevalent in large, conscript armies than in smaller, professional volunteer forces. This, too, doesn't apply to fighter pilots. Many combat aircraft are notoriously difficult to fly, requiring constant attention; this is one of the reasons that I get rather aggravated by people who discount the importance of how easy a combat aircraft is to fly. A lot of WW2 pilots were put into squadron service with less than 150 total flight hours and fewer than 40 hours in type (Supermarine Spitfire - A pilot's memoirs).

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I get rather aggravated by people who discount the importance of how easy a combat aircraft is to fly.

Two of the most successful fighters of all time in terms of kills, the Fokker D-7 and the Grumman F6F, were renowned for their ease of handling and forgiveness of pilot inexperience while giving outstanding combat performance. They were acemakers. It doesn't get much better than that!
Cheers,
Wes

 

[XBe02Drvr]

A lot of WW2 pilots were put into squadron service with less than 150 total flight hours and fewer than 40 hours in type

In my modern era flight instructing days, no insurance company would cover a pilot with less than 200-300 hours total time and 20-30 dual instruction in type to fly any retractable gear airplane.
In the "bad old days" I set off on a 1500 mile cross-country odyssey in my first "complex/high performance airplane", a T-34, with 100 hours in my logbook and 5 hours dual in type. First leg was 200 miles over water at night. The Good Lord protects fools and aviators!
Cheers,
Wes

 

[pbehn]

I agree. Interestingly, a number of quite successful combat pilots were not very good technical pilots; this was probably a bigger issue during WW1 than WW2. I suspect that the not shooting issue is more prevalent in large, conscript armies than in smaller, professional volunteer forces. This, too, doesn't apply to fighter pilots. Many combat aircraft are notoriously difficult to fly, requiring constant attention; this is one of the reasons that I get rather aggravated by people who discount the importance of how easy a combat aircraft is to fly. A lot of WW2 pilots were put into squadron service with less than 150 total flight hours and fewer than 40 hours in type (Supermarine Spitfire - A pilot's memoirs).

A great read Swampy. There was a passage in Bungays "The most dangerous enemy" where Bob Doe described how he flew which was not how he was taught, he used to throw the plane about in very violent random control inputs figuring that if he didn't know exactly what he was doing next no enemy could get a lead on him for a shot. My numbers were based on what I undersatand about the best and worst cases of allied fighter pilots. Battle of Britain pilots in the worst case had 40 to 50 hours on type and that was not enough, I understand US pilots by 1944 had approx. 200 hrs on type or similar and that made a huge difference.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Battle of Britain pilots in the worst case had 40 to 50 hours on type and that was not enough, I understand US pilots by 1944 had approx. 200 hrs on type or similar and that made a huge difference.

A late neighbor of mine started flying raids out of North Africa as a green B-24 aircraft commander in late '42. He flew his 200th hour (total time since first flight) over the target on his first mission. This was after he and his green crew had ferried their brand new bird across the Carribean, South America, the South Atlantic, and the Sahel in hurricane season. He had fifty hours in type at the time, including the ferrying and the outbound leg across the Med.
Cheers,
Wes

PS: He survived his tour, including 3 trips to Ploesti, went on to command a B-24 training squadron out of Westover AAF, and became Deputy Commissioner of Aeronautics for Vermont. And he gave me my first airplane ride. Years later, I got to return the favor and give him a Biennial Flight Review in the same state airplane. Such a privilege is a rare and precious thing.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Some of the muskets found had a high number of cartridges rammed down the barrel one on top of the other, in the most rigid of military activity some were just going through the motions..

Have you ever fired one of these "muskets"? I own one. Both the report and the recoil are much "softer" than a more modern (WWI, WWII, KW) weapon. It's not hard to imagine a city boy soldier who didn't grow up around guns not noticing in the din and stress of battle that his piece was misfiring and winding up with multiple loads in his barrel.
There were battles where opposing sides fired at each other at point-blank range for an hour or more across a stone wall, a thicket or a hedgerow. Or even a couple of rail fences. (Remember the opening scene of "Dances With Wolves"?) Not everybody is born with the fortitude to keep a cool head in a situation like that.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[swampyankee]

Have you ever fired one of these "muskets"? I own one. Both the report and the recoil are much "softer" than a more modern (WWI, WWII, KW) weapon. It's not hard to imagine a city boy soldier who didn't grow up around guns not noticing in the din and stress of battle that his piece was misfiring and winding up with multiple loads in his barrel.
There were battles where opposing sides fired at each other at point-blank range for an hour or more across a stone wall, a thicket or a hedgerow. Or even a couple of rail fences. (Remember the opening scene of "Dances With Wolves"?) Not everybody is born with the fortitude to keep a cool head in a situation like that.
Cheers,
Wes

Muskets and rifled muzzle-loaders also had quite high rates of misfire, especially in damp weather. I've heard numbers as high as 25%. Black powder would also foul bores pretty quickly, probably not helping things.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Muskets and rifled muzzle-loaders also had quite high rates of misfire, especially in damp weather. I've heard numbers as high as 25%. Black powder would also foul bores pretty quickly, probably not helping things.

The Civil War era Springfield Rifle Musket uses a peculiar "top hat" percussion cap that requires that it be pressed on the nipple just so. If you stick it on in a hurry or with shaking hands it may not seat properly and can pop off when you throw the weapon up to your shoulder to shoot. In the heat of battle a stressed out terrified soldier could easily not notice losing his cap. With all the sound and fury he may not notice that his weapon didn't fire, either.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[fastmongrel]

Have you ever fired one of these "muskets"? I own one. Both the report and the recoil are much "softer" than a more modern (WWI, WWII, KW) weapon. It's not hard to imagine a city boy soldier who didn't grow up around guns not noticing in the din and stress of battle that his piece was misfiring and winding up with multiple loads in his barrel.
There were battles where opposing sides fired at each other at point-blank range for an hour or more across a stone wall, a thicket or a hedgerow. Or even a couple of rail fences. (Remember the opening scene of "Dances With Wolves"?) Not everybody is born with the fortitude to keep a cool head in a situation like that.
Cheers,
Wes

My Pedersoli Enfield P53 can set off car alarms at 50 yards.

Black Powder firearms are LOUD and after 10 rounds or so the fouling in the barrel makes the recoil painful. Propelling a 500 grain (1 1/4 ounce) lump of lead with 60 to 70 grains of BP is not soft. I usually shoot a 470 grain bullet cast from a Lee mould and use a 45 grains by equivalent volume measure of Pyrodex.

If your using stuff like Pyrodex or Goex they are not Black Powder and are more like solid rocket fuel in that they burn steadily and produce a push to the end of the barrel rather than the thump that genuine BP produces.

This Youtube vid is too simplistic for a proper test but shows how BP differs to modern substitutes like Pyrodex.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhwlsthKv_w

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Muskets and rifled muzzle-loaders also had quite high rates of misfire, especially in damp weather. I've heard numbers as high as 25%.

On a humid, not even damp, day my flintlock Kentucky sometimes misfires as much as 50%. I sometimes wonder how the old guys got by with them.
Cheers,
Wes

EDIT: (one day later) one of my old timer flintlock fanatic friends called me up:"Saw ya spoutin' off on some airplane forum on th' Intynet, knewed rightway twas you. Still usin' dex in yer kaintuck, aintcha? TSK, TSK, TSK, serve ya right. Nuthin' but fffg POWDAH fer th'charge n'ffffg fer prime. N' ya gotta keep ya pan n' vent n' pick CLEAN, son."

 

[XBe02Drvr]

My Pedersoli Enfield P53 can set off car alarms at 50 yards.

Black Powder firearms are LOUD and after 10 rounds or so the fouling in the barrel makes the recoil painful. Propelling a 500 grain (1 1/4 ounce) lump of lead with 60 to 70 grains of BP is not soft. I usually shoot a 470 grain bullet cast from a Lee mould and use a 45 grains by equivalent volume measure of Pyrodex.

1863 Springfield rifle musket replica; .58 cal Mineh ball out of an ancient Lyman (I think) mold, 60 grains + - BP or Pyrodex out of a replica US Army standard issue measure for making up cartridges.
For shooting comfort I'll take 10 rounds of '63 Springfield over 10 of '03 Springfield any day. (Or .303 SMLE, M1917 Enfield, '98 Mauser, 7.7 Arisaka, BAR,...you name it.) The difference in feel is like the difference in burn in your video: smoother and steadier (BP) vs sharper, harder, and more explosive (Smokeless). More of a good solid shove than a karate kick. More of a boom than a crack. The ol' shoulder ain't what it used to be!
Cheers,
Wes

 

[swampyankee]

On a humid, not even damp, day my flintlock Kentucky sometimes misfires as much as 50%. I sometimes wonder how the old guys got by with them.
Cheers,
Wes

Well, that's what bayonets were for. Also, you couldn't store them loaded. That's why people carried swords, not guns, for self-defense.