Manoeuvre rating for WW2 aircraft

[parsifal]

yes they won, and not just because of numbers. numbers were a part of it, but that advantage didnt just happen. it was an advantage the allies had to plan for.

Warmaing military problems doesnt deal with grand strategy. and in terms of grand strategy, the germans really sucked. our system would forego short term military benefits in the interest of a wider objective.

but even with all of thet, it doesnt explain the decisive allied victory that was eventually achieved. however the allies changed, learned and adpated as the war progressed. the military of 1939 9or in your country's case, 19410 were in no position to win. even if they had multiplied but not changed, they would have lost. The allied militaries changed, learned and adapted. and guess what, that included adopting a systems approach to military problems....which included wargaming military problems.

It remains an integral part to this day, although since 1980 computers have been used to an increasing degree to terst out military theories. gone are the days of the general or admiral walking the bridge, or pacing at his HQ, pondering and inuitively working out his next move. the military more and more is a machine, analysing, and weighing up the best options to a military problem. That means, to avery great extent that they "game" out a given military situation, if time and resources permit.

 

[GregP]

Right. We won because of wargaming. Are you sure that is military fact? I hope that's not an Australian general opinion. Becasue if it is, there are some serious misconceptions down under.

We're pretty far apart here (shock), but that's OK. It all happened a long time ago.

Throw some shrimp on the barbie, relax, and watch some tennis. Sure, it's hot, but the Open is going well.

 

[Francis marliere]

Gary,

You can contact me at francismarliereXyahoo.com

Best,

Francis

 

[parsifal]

Right. We won because of wargaming. Are you sure that is military fact? I hope that's not an Australian general opinion. Becasue if it is, there are some serious misconceptions down under.

We're pretty far apart here (shock), but that's OK. It all happened a long time ago.

Throw some shrimp on the barbie, relax, and watch some tennis. Sure, it's hot, but the Open is going well.

no, but it became part of the overall package for allied victory. We actually got better than the germans at something called validation simulation. This helped to make our military planning more thorough and accurate than they did, though the Germans retained a very high standard of staff work until the end.

im surpised that you dismiss gaming (or more correctly simulation) as not relevant, or nonexistent. It remains an integral part of the US military system to this day. how do i know that? because once a upon a time a long time agao I was one of those geeks that actually participated in thgose studies and tried to use simulations to get the most out of people and systems. in case youve never heard of it it comes under the general name of staff work, and its a big part of officer training these days. how do i know that? i helped design and teach the courses that trains both australians and American officers for that very purpose, and I can tell you, without any hesitation, that simulating or validating what your weapons and people can do is a big part of learning to be an officer.

During WWII, allied military simulations were confined to military operations.

The term military simulation can cover a wide spectrum of activities, ranging from full-scale field-exercises, to abstract computerized models that can proceed with little or no human involvement - such as the Rand Strategy Assessment Center (RSAC).

As a general scientific principle, the most reliable data comes from actual observation and the most reliable theories depend on it. This also holds true in military analysis, where analysts look towards live field-exercises and trials as providing data likely to be realistic (depending on the realism of the exercise) and verifiable (it has been gathered by actual observation). One can readily discover, for example, how long it takes to construct a pontoon bridge under given conditions with given manpower, and this data can then generate norms for expected performance under similar conditions in the future, or serve to refine the bridge-building process. Any form of training can be regarded as a "simulation" in the strictest sense of the word (inasmuch as it simulates an operational environment and allows officers to observe the effectiveness of a new strategy or technique as close to reality as is possible. Without this sort of testing actual military operations are usually failures, and usually costly, as the expereiences of the western front clearly show); however, many if not most exercises take place not to test new ideas or models, but to provide the participants with the skills to operate within existing ones.

Full-scale military exercises, or even smaller-scale ones, are not always feasible or even desirable because observing the results can be difficult. Availability of resources, including money, is a significant factor — it costs a lot to release troops and materiel from any standing commitments, to transport them to a suitable location, and then to cover additional expenses such as petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) usage, equipment maintenance, supplies and consumables replenishment and other items. It is often far cheaper to test new ideas or prospective equipment using simulation technologies In addition, certain warfare models do not lend themselves to verification using this realistic method. It might, for example, prove counter-productive to accurately test an attrition scenario by killing one's own troops.

Moving away from the field exercise, it is often more convenient to test a theory by reducing the level of personnel involvement. Map exercises can be conducted involving senior officers and planners, but without the need to physically move around any troops. These retain some human input, and thus can still reflect to some extent the human imponderables that make warfare so challenging to model, with the advantage of reduced costs and increased accessibility. A map exercise can also be conducted with far less forward planning than a full-scale deployment, making it an attractive option for more minor simulations that would not merit anything larger, as well as for very major operations where cost, or secrecy, is an issue.

Increasing the level of abstraction still further, simulation moves towards an environment readily recognised by civilian wargamers. This type of simulation can be manual, implying no (or very little) computer involvement, computer-assisted, or fully computerised.

These are all tools in use and of great assistance to all western military establishments including the US and Australian militaries.

Graf Helmuth von Moltke is nowadays regarded as the grandfather of modern military simulation. Although not the inventor of Kriegsspiel, he was greatly impressed by it as a young officer, and as Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army promoted its use as a training aid.Manual simulations have probably been in use in some form since mankind first went to war. moltke has influendced both the real military planning establishments and the more commercial areas of the "boardganers". Having been exposed in both professional planning excercises and commercial gaming, there are many commercial games that can be regarded as simplified versions of the real military simulation.

Military simulation, at all its levels (from full scale military excercises to map reading excercises) reamins a powerful tool and still cogent in the modern, computer-heavy military simulation environment. There remains a recognised place for umpires as arbiters of a simulation, hence the persistence of manual simulations in war colleges throughout the world. Both computer-assisted and entirely computerised simulations are common as well, with each being used as required by circumstances. The Rand Corporation is one of the best known designers of Military Simulations for the US Government and Air Force, and one of the pioneers of the Political-Military simulation.Their SAFE (Strategic And Force Evaluation) simulation is an example of a manual simulation, with one or more teams of up to ten participants being sequestered in separate rooms and their moves being overseen by an independent director and his staff. SAFE was used in the planning for both Iraqi operations in recent history, with very high levels of accuracy achieved.

Computer-assisted simulations are really just a development of the manual simulation, and again there are different variants on the theme. Sometimes the computer assistance will be nothing more than a database to help umpires keep track of information during a manual simulation. At other times one or other of the teams might be replaced by a computer-simulated opponent (known as an agent or automaton). This can reduce the umpires' role to interpreter of the data produced by the agent, or obviate the need for an umpire altogether. Most commercial wargames designed to run on computers (such as Blitzkrieg, the Total War series and even the Civilization games) fall into this category.


Another method of categorising military simulations is to divide them into two broad areas.

Heuristic simulations are those that are run with the intention of stimulating research and problem solving; they are not necessarily expected to provide empirical solutions.

Stochastic simulations are those that involve, at least to some extent, an element of chance.

Most military simulations fall somewhere in between these two definitions, although manual simulations lend themselves more to the heuristic approach and computerised ones to the stochastic.

Manual simulations, as described above, are often run to explore a 'what if?' scenario and take place as much to provide the participants with some insight into decision-making processes and crisis management as to provide concrete conclusions. Indeed, such simulations do not even require a conclusion; once a set number of moves has been made and the time allotted has run out, the scenario will finish regardless of whether the original situation has been resolved or not.

Computerised simulations can readily incorporate chance in the form of some sort of randomised element, and can be run many times to provide outcomes in terms of probabilities.

 

[parsifal]

Since WWII, a new arm in simulation has developed and become a powerful element of the US planning arsenal known as the political-military simulation the US has used these to a vastly increasing extent since 1954. Simulations of this nature include the aforementioned SAFE, STRAW (Strategic Air War) and COW (Cold War). The typical political-military simulation is a manual or computer-assisted heuristic-type model, and many research organizations and think-tanks throughout the world are involved in providing this service to governments. During the Cold War, the Rand Corporation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, amongst others, ran simulations for the Pentagon that included modeling the Vietnam War, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the rise of pro-communist regimes in South America, tensions between India, Pakistan and China, and various potential flashpoints in Africa and South-East Asia. Both MIT and Rand remain heavily involved in US military simulation, along with institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, and the National Defense University. Other nations have their equivalent organizations, such as Cranfield Institute's Defense Academy (formerly the Royal Military College of Science) in the United Kingdom. To try and argue that these efforts are pointless or somehow absurd, is itself absurd, and whilst during WWII there were no political military simulations, there were mountains of mil sims conducted by all parties, but at the outbreak of the war, the US forces were hopelessly unprofessional and didnt really know about this stuff. their orange war plans were exceptions but they were fatally unrealistic, mostly because the people devising them had no real experience or depth to draw on.....simulations were not all that big an issue before the war for the US. guess they were too busy putiing shellfish on the barbies and watching the tennis.

Why is military simulation of thius scale an magnitude not better known. It is a tradition in US simulations (and those run by many other nations) that participants are guaranteed anonymity. The main reason for this is that occasionally they may take on a role or express an opinion that is at odds with their professional or public stance (for example portraying a fundamentalist terrorist or advocating hawkish military action), and thus could harm their reputation or career if their in-game persona became widely known. It is also traditional that in-game roles are played by participants of an equivalent rank in real life, although this is not a hard-and-fast rule and often disregarded. Whilst the major purpose of a political-military simulation is to provide insights that can be applied to real-world situations, it is very difficult to point to a particular decision as arising from a certain simulation — especially as the simulations themselves are usually classified for years, and even when released into the public domain are usually heavily censored. This is not only due to the unwritten policy of non-attribution, but to avoid disclosing sensitive information to a potential adversary. This has been true within the simulation environment itself as well — former US president Ronald Reagan was a keen visitor to simulations conducted in the 1980s, but as an observer only. An official explained: "No president should ever disclose his hand, not even in a war game".

In the context of simulation, validation is the process of testing a model by supplying it with historical data and comparing its output to the known historical result. If a model can reliably reproduce known results, it is considered to be validated and assumed to be capable of providing predictive outputs (within a reasonable degree of uncertainty).


HMS Exeter at the Battle of the River Plate in 1939. As predicted by Pratt's naval warfare model, despite taking heavy damage the lighter British cruisers were able to defeat their much larger opponent, the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee.Developing realistic models has proven to be somewhat easier in naval simulations than on land.One of the pioneers of naval simulations, Fletcher Pratt, designed his "Naval War Game" in the late 1930s, and was able to validate his model almost immediately by applying it to the encounter between the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee and three British cruisers in the Battle of the River Plate off Montevideo in 1939. Rated on thickness of armour and gun power, Graf Spee should have been more than a match for the lighter cruisers, but Pratt's formula correctly predicted the ensuing British victory. Pratts modelling took hold slowly but it was an invaluable admiralty tool neverthelss

Historically, there have even been a few rare occasions where a simulation was validated as it was being carried out. One notable such occurrence was just before the Ardennes offensive in World War II, when the Germans attacked allied forces during a period of bad weather in the winter of 1944, hoping to reach the port of Antwerp and force the Allies to sue for peace. According to German General Friedrich J Fangor, the staff of Fifth Panzerarmee had met in November to game defensive strategies against a simulated American attack. They had no sooner begun the exercise than reports began arriving of a strong American attack in the Hűrtgen area — exactly the area they were gaming on their map table. Generalfeldmarschall Walther Model ordered the participants (apart from those commanders whose units were actually under attack) to continue playing, using the messages they were receiving from the front as game moves. For the next few hours simulation and reality ran hand-in-hand: when the officers at the game table decided that the situation warranted commitment of reserves, the commander of the 116th Panzer Division was able to turn from the table and issue as operational orders those moves they had just been gaming. The division was mobilised in the shortest possible time, and the American attack was repulsed.

Many of the criticisms directed towards military simulations derive from an incorrect application of them as a predictive and analytical tool. The outcome supplied by a model relies to a greater or lesser extent on human interpretation and therefore should not be regarded as providing a 'gospel' truth. However, whilst this is generally understood by most game theorists and analysts, it can be tempting for a layman — for example, a politician (or indeed a red necked one eyed would be wanna be flyer) who needs to present a 'black and white' situation to his electorate — to settle on an interpretation that supports his preconceived position. Tom Clancy, in his novel Red Storm Rising, illustrated this problem when one of his characters, attempting to persuade the Soviet Politburo that the political risks were acceptable as NATO would not be in a position to react in the face of political uncertainty caused by a division of opinion between the Allies. Such a political wargame result was used as evidence the results of a simulation carried out to model just such an event. It is revealed in the text that there were in fact three sets of results from the simulation; a best-, intermediate- and worst-case outcome. The advocate of war chose to present only the best-case outcome, thus distorting the results to support his case. This fictional scenario is rumoured to be lossely based on facts

The Japanese extensively wargamed their planned expansion during World War II, but map exercises conducted before the Pacific War were frequently stopped short of a conclusion where Japan was defeated. One often-cited example prior to Midway had the umpires magically resurrecting a Japanese carrier sunk during a map exercise, although Professor Robert Rubel argues in the Naval War College Review their decision was justified in this case given improbable rolls of the dice. Given the historical outcome, it is evident the dice rolls were not so improbable, after all. There were however equally illustrative fundamental problems with other areas of the simulation, mainly relating to a Japanese unwillingness to consider their position should the element of surprise, on which the operation depended, be lost.

 

[Garyt]

Warmaing military problems doesnt deal with grand strategy. and in terms of grand strategy, the germans really sucked. our system would forego short term military benefits in the interest of a wider objective.

Parsifal, I guess my question here is how did the Germans "grand strategy" suck? I do think there were some problems in their command structure, most notably IMO Hitler's thoughts of himself as a great military commander/planner. Had he left the operational strategy to his generals, Germany would have done much better.

But mostly I think, the Allies, most importantly the US out produced the Axis. Look at crude oil produced in millions of tons in WW2 per nation:

Country
United States 833.2
United Kingdom 90.8
Soviet Union 110.6
Canada 8.4
Germany 33.4
Japan 5.2
Italy 4.4
Hungary 3.1
Romania 25.0


The US produced 60 times as much crude as Japan. It's obvious why the Japanese had limited fuel to train pilots, and why it's fleet had to conserve it's oil, while the US could pretty well use it's fuel at will.

And this same disparity was evident in all facets of the war.

The Germans has a qualitative superiority through much of the war in it's armour over the US (though Russia was a bit more even footing), and has better tactical leadership than most throughout much of the war.

The Japanese initially had a better trained fleet air arm initially. The US however almost built a new fleet from scratch, meaning it had state of the art ships in it's navy while Japan was fighting with a fleet constructed mostly in the 30's or older, if looking at it's battleships. The US had not only numerical superiority but qualitative superiority in the Pacific.

Given the huge discrepancies in production it would be difficult to lose the war as the Allies - one would have to do a pretty bad job.

The one thing I will say however for the US - With it's AFV's at least, it seemed to be able to produce them faster. In other words, given the same amount of time and material resources, the US could turn more AFV's out and quicker than the Germans. This is one of the few times I agree that quantity has a quality of it's own. The US practiced standardization well. The .50 caliber may not have been the best armnament for a plane, but all planes were armed with it and it alone, which made logistics including service easier.

 

[GregP]

I don't dismiss realistic training, but erecting a bridge is training, not simulation. The thing training cannot do is to predict what the enemy will do. All it does is give the troops some training on what you THINK the enemy will do.

It is vital that your troops know how to use their equipment, make rapid field repairs as possible, and have a coordinated plan.

Sure, war games happen once in awhile.

But realistic training (real, not simulation) is vital if you are going to field an effective force. During WWII, George Patton trained his tank units out in the California desert about 100 miles east of where I live. It wasn't simulation, it was desert operations training in tanks.

If you choose to think of all training as simulation, that is you perogative. I choose to think if it as keeping the troops familiar enough with the equipment to use it when needed.

Pilots require recurrent training, and some can make that happen in simulators where the instruments are well-modeled and the flight dynamics at cruise are simple. That type of training in sims is useful to someone who needs to learn to use the avionics and stay current on it. I call putting up a bridge over a small river training, not "simulation" since they are really doing it, not pressing a button and watch softwate soldiers do it.

Perhaps we aren't so very far apart after all.

I still like the idea of shrimp on the barbie and am still watching the Australian Open.

 

[OldSkeptic]

Hi, New to the forum.

What really suprised me - the P-38. The late model P-38 seems a very fine plane. My guess it had fallen a bit out of favor do to the problems the earlier modles had, and the US was more geared towards the P51 by this point.

You need to add in mach limit too. The P-38's was miserable (abut 0.65-0.68), so much so that the late models' max speed was very close to their mach limit at altitude and they had severe altitude dive restrictions put on them (ie 10 degrees, you could dive a Lancaster more than that...).

The boom and zoom for them was more of just a boom ... as they hit the ground.

The P-47s was better but still poor at 0.7 to 0.72. To be competitive you had to have at least 0.75-0.8 in the ETO.

They later added dive recovery flaps to both, note the word 'recovery', they were not a fix, just gave the pilot a chance to recover from loss of control in a dive (not always though, if you got too fast you'd still run out of room).

 

[Garyt]

You need to add in mach limit too. The P-38's was miserable (abut 0.65-0.6, so much so that the late models' max speed was very close to their mach limit at altitude and they had severe altitude dive restrictions put on them (ie 10 degrees, you could dive a Lancaster more than that...).

Interesting. Is this the compression issue I have read about? I have read that they put the powered control surfaces on the L version of the P38 to help cope with this.

Sounds like it is in a way similar to the dive restrictions on Zeroes, but for different reasons. I guess the M-109's and FW190's did not share this problem?

Information like this though is the stuff that is not readily available from just the base specs on a vehicle.

Seems like the P-38 struggled perhaps a bit. While it had good speed and acceleration, it's compressibility issues limited it's effectiveness as a boom and zoomer, and while it could turn reasonably well, it could not turn as well as a true dedicated turner.

I guess it could out boom and zoom a zeke and out turn a FW190

I have heard though again that the powered control surfaces prevented some of the "controls frozen in concrete" that the P38 experienced in Hi-speed dives.

 

[OldSkeptic]

Interesting. Is this the compression issue I have read about? I have read that they put the powered control surfaces on the L version of the P38 to help cope with this.

Sounds like it is in a way similar to the dive restrictions on Zeroes, but for different reasons. I guess the M-109's and FW190's did not share this problem?

Information like this though is the stuff that is not readily available from just the base specs on a vehicle.

Seems like the P-38 struggled perhaps a bit. While it had good speed and acceleration, it's compressibility issues limited it's effectiveness as a boom and zoomer, and while it could turn reasonably well, it could not turn as well as a true dedicated turner.

I guess it could out boom and zoom a zeke and out turn a FW190

I have heard though again that the powered control surfaces prevented some of the "controls frozen in concrete" that the P38 experienced in Hi-speed dives.

Interesting. Is this the compression issue I have read about? I have read that they put the powered control surfaces on the L version of the P38 to help cope with this.

Sounds like it is in a way similar to the dive restrictions on Zeroes, but for different reasons. I guess the M-109's and FW190's did not share this problem?

Information like this though is the stuff that is not readily available from just the base specs on a vehicle.

Seems like the P-38 struggled perhaps a bit. While it had good speed and acceleration, it's compressibility issues limited it's effectiveness as a boom and zoomer, and while it could turn reasonably well, it could not turn as well as a true dedicated turner.

I guess it could out boom and zoom a zeke and out turn a FW190

I have heard though again that the powered control surfaces prevented some of the "controls frozen in concrete" that the P38 experienced in Hi-speed dives.

Nope the hydraulic controls didn't help its mach limit. Here's the limits for the H,J L models

:




And from the manual:

"DIVE RECOVERY FLAPS.—P-38L and Later P38J
airplanes are provided with dive recovery flaps to improve
the dive recovery characteristics of the
As described above, the airplane without these flaps becomes
very nose heavy and starts to buffet above placard
dive speeds. This condition is caused by a high speed
stall and a consequent decrease in lift in the wing producing
the nose heavy condition. The dive recovery flaps
which are installed under the wings between the booms
an d the ailerons, restore the lif t to this portion of the
wing and thus cause the uncontrollable nose heaviness
to occur at a higher speed. The flaps also add some drag
to the airplane, which in conjunction with the higher
allowable dive speed, permit s saf e dives at a much steeper
diving angle. The dive recovery flaps should be extended
before starting the dive or immediately after the dive
has started before a buffeting speed has been reached. If
the airplane is buffeting before the dive recovery flaps
are extended, the buffetin g will momentarily increase
an d then diminish. With these flaps extended, the nose
heaviness is definitely reduced but the diving speed
should never be allowed to exceed the placard by more
than 15 or 20 mph. With the dive recovery flaps extended
before enterin g th e dive, angles of dive up to 45° may
be safely accomplished. Without dive recovery extended,
the maximum angle for extended dives is 15°.
Diving characteristics are better with power off than
with power on.
WARNING
Although the dive recovery flaps greatly improve
the diving characteristics of the. airplane,
dangerous buffetin g and nose heaviness will
still be encountered at diving angles above 45°
if the diving speed is allowed to exceed the
placard limits by more than 15 to 20 mph."


The 109,190 and Mustang were ok up to the ultimate 0.8 range, with the Spit being the king in 0.85+ range.

One thing that it is important to remember is that compressibility effects may start to be noticeable earlier but it is still possible to control (and even fight) the aircraft up to the ultimate limit. The Mustang was a good example, you could start to notice effects (in its case porpoising) before its maximum allowable limit, but it was still controllable (interestingly in certain flight regimes the Mustang could nose up, rather than the usual nose down). So there was a large margin for the pilot to work with.

One of the problems with the P-38 was that the margin between noticing effects and being totally out of control were very small.

 

[OldSkeptic]

Here's another one which shows the small margin for error the P-38 had:

 

[GregP]

The dive limits are vastly over-rated as a combat variable. The P-38's were fixed when the intake manifold was corrected and the electric heater was installed. The pilots finally got training on the P-38 by dint of flying them enough to be familiar with them.

When the P-38 was "fixed," the P-51 had begun to appear in the ETO and there was no reason to continue two supply lines for fighters to do the same job. So the P-38's were largely released to the MTO and PTO.

It might be worth remembering that the top TWO US aces both flew the P-38 and not the P-51.

The generally-quoted tally for the P-51 usually includes about 50% or so ground kills. The P-38 was no slouch at ANY time during the war and really didn't need to dive at very high speed all that often, especially if they were staying with the bombers as escort. That from some pilots who flew it in the war and have spoken at the Planes of Fame Museum.

We tend to speak in absoultes in here and the war wasn't very absolute. Many times an older, slower aircraft flown by a good pilot fought quite well against a newer, supposdely better-performing aircraft flown by an average pilot.

 

[Milosh]

It might be worth remembering that the top TWO US aces both flew the P-38 and not the P-51.

It is also worth remembering that those 2 US aces flew against the Japanese.

 

[OldSkeptic]

It is also worth remembering that those 2 US aces flew against the Japanese.

Correct. And in that environment (as in the Med) the P-38 was a much happier plane. Lower altitudes therefore less mach issues, less over cooling issues, etc.

More ever in the PTO there was less need to go absolutely flat out to be competitive, the P-38 having a very significant speed advantage over nearly all the planes it went up against there.

Bit different to being at 30,000ft+ going against late model 109s.

 

[drgondog]

You need to add in mach limit too. The P-38's was miserable (abut 0.65-0.68), so much so that the late models' max speed was very close to their mach limit at altitude and they had severe altitude dive restrictions put on them (ie 10 degrees, you could dive a Lancaster more than that...).

The boom and zoom for them was more of just a boom ... as they hit the ground.

Pre J-25 and you aren't exaggerating too much re: Mcr. Post -25 and the P-38 was very controllable in a dive, particularly with respect to max dive speed. Having said that, the F6F, F4U, P38J/L were within 9mph g limit speeds (449 to 440)

The P-47s was better but still poor at 0.7 to 0.72. To be competitive you had to have at least 0.75-0.8 in the ETO.

They later added dive recovery flaps to both, note the word 'recovery', they were not a fix, just gave the pilot a chance to recover from loss of control in a dive (not always though, if you got too fast you'd still run out of room).

The P-47D and P-51D and P-63 were all placard limited to 500-505 mph TAS. All were more than 'competitive' in a dive against the Bf 109, FW 190.

The one advantage to both the P-51 and P-63 was the delay to MCr due to laminar flow airfoils, as well as mitigated pitch down CM
that both the P-38 and P-47 experienced.

 

[drgondog]

Duplicate

 

[GregP]

I only have the USAAF Statistical Digest numbers for the ETO for the P-51 and the USAAF acknowledged 4,950 air kills and 4,131 ground kills for a total of 9,081. That is from the USAAF itself, not my opinion. I have absolutely no stake in the numbers whether they be larger or smaller. I have 5,163 for the F6F. When I entered the data from US Navy Opnav-P-23V No. A129, dated 17 June 1946 into Excel, I found after many checks that the Navy had made a slight math error in the table, Excel doesn't usually come up with an error when adding numbers.

For the P-47 in the ETO the USAAF has 3,082 air kills and 3,202 ground kills. For the P-38 in the ETO the USAAF has 1,771 air kills and 749 ground kills. Given the fact that it wasn't operating in the ETO for half of the US involvement, that isn't too bad.

And as far as the dive limits are concerned, I believe the number of times a fighter wound up in a near vertical dive up to or near the critical Mach number was VERY low, whether or not they were fightiing a Bf 109 or Fw 190 of any sort. If you dive away, you exit the fight in pursuit of your target, leave your assigned unit, and take yourself out of the action by separation from the rest. I'm sure it happened, but am just as sure it was reasonably infrequent. If I were flying a plane with known issues in steep dives, I might just decide to let the diving bugger go and pursue other targets that were sticking around to fight my unit.

I've been listening to fighter pilots give talks once a month at the Planes of Fame for more than 8 years, usually 2 - 3 per event, and the number of times they describe vertical dives in combat has been 2 - 3 in all that time. Each one talks for anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour and describes many aspects of WWII air combat. Dives just aren't mentioned much. So, you might be right when saying the dive limits were a severe handicap in WWII combat, but I wouldn't know it to listen to the guys who were there and did it.

Anyone who thinks the Japanese were less combat worthy than the German might remember that when Spitfires came up against Zeros, they didn't fare too well. Like all air forces (and Navy air arms), the Japanese had their expert pilots along with average pilots and raw recruits just out of flight school. Right to the end of the war the experts were a significant threat to anyone they encountered. There seems to a feeling in here that the Japanese pilots were meat on the table for the last two years of the war, but the guys who were there aren't the people saying it. To a man they respected the Japanese pilots and considered them worthy foes.

Like you, Bill, I'd LOVE to come across Soviet combat data for anything including P-39 / P-63's. If anyone knows where it can be found, please sing out.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I only have the USAAF Statistical Digest numbers for the ETO for the P-51 and the USAAF acknowledged 4,950 air kills and 4,131 ground kills for a total of 9,081. That is from the USAAF itself, not my opinion. I have absolutely no stake in the numbers whether they be larger or smaller. I have 5,163 for the F6F. When I entered the data from US Navy Opnav-P-23V No. A129, dated 17 June 1946 into Excel, I found after many checks that the Navy had made a slight math error in the table, Excel doesn't usually come up with an error when adding numbers.

For the P-47 in the ETO the USAAF has 3,082 air kills and 3,202 ground kills. For the P-38 in the ETO the USAAF has 1,771 air kills and 749 ground kills. Given the fact that it wasn't operating in the ETO for half of the US involvement, that isn't too bad.

Greg, those numbers for ETO fighter claims (17,885 air and ground) don't jive with USAAF Statistical Digest Table 167, which gives a total of 14,218 credits (air and ground) to all USAAF fighters in the ETO.

I don't know if the Table 167 numbers are post war revised or not, but 3,550 odd claims is a pretty significant difference.

 

[Milosh]

To the European total should be added 4,664 (3,300 - air, 1,364 - ground) from the MTO.

 

[GregP]

You know it's funny. A couple of years ago I got the data by type (P-51, P-38. etc) from a website that went to Maxwell AFB USAFHS (US Air Force Historical Society). Now that site gives me an "unavailable" error when I try to access it from favorites. I erased the link in anger.

But the site I just looked at using "USAAF Statistical Digest" as a search criteria sends me to a pdf that lists totally different data broken out differently. The new file says things like, "Enemy Aircraft Destroyed in the ETO" and is listed by heavy bomber. medium bomber, fighters, etc ... and never mentions the type (P-51. P-38. etc.).

Curious and frustrating, to say the least. Perhaps Drgondog is correct.

It needs further digging, which I stopped doing after inputting it all into Excel ... and now can't find that same file even though I am using the same search terms and same link. So ... maybe my data are at odds with the new files. Seems so and I really wonder why. The file I used a few years back was dated 1946, but I didn't record the doc number since it was a US government site I expected to continue in being. Stupid error in retrospect.

So, Bill, perhaps you are correct. At this time, I simply am confused since I can't seem to find the same document at the same site.

I'll continue digging and back out of claiming things about victories at this time until I get it researched AGAiN. When I do, every document number, date, and website will be saved! Bill's numbers are OK unless proven wrong by an authority other than me.

Cheers to all ... except Maxwell AFB.

Please continue the thread ...