fastmongrel
1st Sergeant
If only the RAF had used the P39 the war would have been over before it started in December 1941
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You know Karl, the Spitfire is both the best and the worst aircraft of WW2 and everything in between
True !If only the RAF had used the P39 the war would have been over before it started in December 1941
And the Germans would start calling it the "Rear Engined Devil" or something like that.If only the RAF had used the P39 the war would have been over before it started in December 1941
Flugzeug mit Motor im hinteren TeufelAnd the Germans would start calling it the "Rear Engined Devil" or something like that.
Flugzeug mit Motor im hinteren Teufel
Now say that twice over the radio in combat
You can just say +Motorschwanzteufel+. Shows how far superior to English the German language is, especially with added balkencreutzen.Flugzeug mit Motor im hinteren Teufel
Now say that twice over the radio in combat
Flugzeug mit Motor im hinteren Teufel
Now say that twice over the radio in combat
Currently I would say that the Mitsubishi A6M Zero is the most overrated fighter of world war two. Indeed, in Japan, it's reputation has risen to the level of a cult status. The Zero was a very good airplane for what it was supposed to do. The thinking amongst the Military's of Japan and Italy during the years leading up to world war two was that fighters were meant to be used in 'Dogfighting' meaning horizontal combat. At the same time the rest of the world was designing aircraft more suited for 'Boom and Zoom' or vertical combat. Curiously enough, with the exception of Germany, the rest of the worlds military's didn't get the memo and were still training their pilots in horizontal combat. This is why the Zero did so well during the first part of the war. The best known of the very few people pushing vertical combat was Claire Chennault and he was considered an 'outsider' by the US military at that time. Curiously it was the German Air Service in the final months of world war one that came to the conclusion that vertical combat had clear advantages over dogfighting. There is anecdotal evidence from WWI of individual pilots who discovered the advantage of boom and zoom on their own. Werner Voss thought the Pfalz DIII, that other pilots thought to slow and unwieldy, was a excellent fighter for diving attacks and for trading off the energy generated by the dive into altitude after the firing pass. Erik Shilling of the Flying Tigers speaks of a British pilot he refers to a Squadron Commander Brandt who was able to survive against the Zero while flying the Brewster Buffalo by using vertical combat tactics. Think of it this way; if allied fighter pilots had been given training in the type of tactics they eventually adopted, the Zero would not be considered as good as it is currently thought of.
Unfortunately the anecdote about Brandt is incorrect. Firstly he was a flight commander not a squadron CO. Secondly, neither the Brits not the AVG encountered the Zero in Burma - only the Ki-43 and Ki-27 fought in Burma.
I don't think the Zero was overrated. It was given plenty of respect in the first few years of the Pacific war. Once the Akutan Zero was tested and other pilot reports came in, the Zero wasn't given quite the respect it once had even during WW 2. Its mystique was gone. It did, however, give the IJN tactical air projection that the Allies couldn't match over the Pacific for a long time. Most of the stuff I come across about the Zero usually says the Zero would burst into flames or come apart with a few hits. That doesn't sound like overrating.
Above 350 the aluminum skin on the wings and fuselage would deform and ripple. At speeds above 370 there were cases of pilots losing sections of the Airframe including the occasional wing.
A couple of books come to mind; Samurai an autobiography by Saburo Sakai with Martin Caidin. Zero Fighter published by Ballantine books. There was also an article I read a very long time ago that was part of a study done by US Naval Intelligence on the various aircraft used in Japanese Kamikaze operations which went into the the performance figures and limitations of the machines used for those operations. I too have come across those 400 mph figures and found that they were estimated figures based on extrapolations from the perfomance figures of the late model Zeros. I'm sure with a little digging you can come across that info. The G forces involved in trying to recover from a terminal dive have easily caused structural failure in the wings as well as other structural parts of aircraft that were far more ruggedly built than the Zero. I know of one case where a P 51B Mustang was able to surprise a Messerschmitt 262 and the P51 pilot, knowing he had the German, went into a very steep power dive accelerating well past the never exceed speed (VNE). The German pilot spotted the P 51 just after he had initiated the dive and spooled up as quickly as the Jumo's could at that time. The upshot was that the 262 accelerated away leaving the American pilot with the choice of either auguring into the ground or pulling out of the dive. He succeeded in pulling out at the cost of permanently distorting both wings, which made the plane just barely flyable, and by hearing a very loud sound as if a giant piece of fabric was being torn in two. Upon landing he found that the tearing sound had been caused by a line of rivets, starting just aft of the canopy and extending all the way back to the tail, that had literally been popped out from the bending forces that the fuselage had sustained in the recovery.Provide your reference for this! Earlier Zeros had dive limitations but this was improved on the A6M3 and A6M5 which was able to dive in excess of 400 mph. Also the Zero's wing was one unit so loosing a wing was very unlikely unless there was structural failure elsewhere
I did say I thought the Zero wasn't overrated. Romanticized and fictionalized are something else again.
The B-17 didn't win the war in the air single handedly despite the movies and TV shows like 12 O'clock High, Memphis Belle (either one). The Spitfire didn't single handedly save Civilization from Darkness. I can only imagine what kind of press the Sturmovik or MiG 15 got behind the Iron Curtain. If an Allied fighter pilot came upon a Zero he probably WAS outnumbered. Slapped-together clapped-out Buffalos, Hurricanes and P-Something Elses piloted by undertrained pilots with their first familiarization flight in type up against Saburo Sakai and his friends. Yeah, one on one, they'd have been outnumbered. At least during the first few years. Then, not so much.
I found it far easier to list underrated planes but we have a thread for that.
By the way, that was a great post, Akuma.
So you're saying the P-51 B is overrated?
Something you may not have heard of. In 1945 the RAAF (Australian Air Force) were still using the Buffalo along with P 40s, P 51s, Spits and Hurris. The Buffalos were properly maintained but were pretty much the same model as those with which the war began. Those Buffalos were not only scoring well against Japanese Bombers and Reconnaissance but were even managing to shoot down Zeros. True, they didn't get many, but they did get them and did so while suffering much lower and in some cases no losses against their enemies. It can be fairly argued that the Japanese pilots by the end of the war were of much poorer quality than those at the beginning, but it should be remembered that the allied pilots had been learning to use their strengths while denying the Japanese their aircraft's weaknesses.