Most Overrated aircraft of WWII.....?

[Dan Fahey]

I have had a reconsideration about most over rate fighter during WW2.
That would be the Spitfire!
Reasons.
It was a fragile aircraft compared to the P40.
Did not do well in ground attack
It was hard to build and maintain.
The Merlin's engine got less than half the life time of a Allison.
It's use was rather limited compared to the P40.
As a Defense fighter or Intectptor it was ok.
Range was half that of a P40 which limited its combat effectiveness.

2 cents

 

[Shortround6]

I have had a reconsideration about most over rate fighter during WW2.
That would be the Spitfire!
Reasons.
It was a fragile aircraft compared to the P40.
Did not do well in ground attack
It was hard to build and maintain.
The Merlin's engine got less than half the life time of a Allison.
It's use was rather limited compared to the P40.
As a Defense fighter or Intectptor it was ok.
Range was half that of a P40 which limited its combat effectiveness.

2 cents

You can, of course, prove some of those points?
And considering that there were multiple models/versions of P-40s and multiple models/versions of the Spitfire perhaps you could narrow it down a bit as to which versions you are comparing and in what year?
The engine life claim needs some looking at too. Merlins may not have lasted as long as Allisons but less than 1/2? what years, what conditions?
The Range claim also appears suspect. Plane with 123 imp gallons of fuel inside has twice the range of of a plane (that is lighter and more streamlined) with 84 imperial gallons? 50% more range I could easily agree with.
as to your 6th point "As a Defense fighter or Intectptor it was ok." well as a Defensive fighter or interceptor the P-40 was far from OK so where does that leave us?

 

[Dan Fahey]

You can, of course, prove some of those points?
And considering that there were multiple models/versions of P-40s and multiple models/versions of the Spitfire perhaps you could narrow it down a bit as to which versions you are comparing and in what year?
The engine life claim needs some looking at too. Merlins may not have lasted as long as Allisons but less than 1/2? what years, what conditions?
The Range claim also appears suspect. Plane with 123 imp gallons of fuel inside has twice the range of of a plane (that is lighter and more streamlined) with 84 imperial gallons? 50% more range I could easily agree with.
as to your 6th point "As a Defense fighter or Intectptor it was ok." well as a Defensive fighter or interceptor the P-40 was far from OK so where does that leave us?

Yes...British built the Spitfire like their Merlin's. Slow, expensively and labor intensive. Merlin were improved dramatically with better US bearings. Read up on Yancy who rebuilds those engine. Mechanics called the Merlin a Watchmakers engine. P40 consistently carried more internal fuel,and more ammo. Allowing it to stay in a fight much longer. Spitfires in combat were just not as rugged as the P40 especially not suitable for ground operations. These are all well documented! The narrow track was difficult to land and carrier operations a lot of bent wings. They were withdrawn in Korea. As a point defensive fighter did well. P40 with the 100/130 fuels their performance improved dramatically as did the P51/A36 Mustangs.

P40 was just a more versitile Fighter and fought in every theater.

 

[wuzak]

Spitfire production was slow to ramp up, but once it did they built over 20,000 of them.

Of the Merlins built, 2/3 of them were made in Britain. Hardly slow production.

The benefit of the American bearings was small. Made no difference to power.

Rugged is another way of saying over-built.

P-40s also had narrow undercarriage, and the Spitfire was not regarded as difficult to land.

Spitfires were modified for carrier operations. No-one even suggested that a P-40 be modified as such.

Seafires at least made it to the Korean war. Don't recall too many P-40s flying there.

Spitfire performance also improved with the availability of 100/130 fuel.

You could argue that the Spitfire's 2 20mm cannons were more effective than the P-40's 4 or 6 0.50" hmgs, so less ammo was required.

The Spitfire carried less fuel because it was designed for a specific role - interceptor. But the extra fuel in the P-40 hardly made it a long range aircraft.

The USAAF modified a Spitfire IX to achieve a significantly longer range. Obviously they thought it was worth the effort - something that would not have happened for an overrated, underperforming aircraft.

The use of Spitfires outside of Britain was restricted because priority was on home defence. Once production had ramped up and enough were available, they were sent to all theatres, or at least most of them.

 

[Shortround6]

Yes...British built the Spitfire like their Merlin's. Slow, expensively and labor intensive. Merlin were improved dramatically with better US bearings. Read up on Yancy who rebuilds those engine. Mechanics called the Merlin a Watchmakers engine. P40 consistently carried more internal fuel,and more ammo. Allowing it to stay in a fight much longer. Spitfires in combat were just not as rugged as the P40 especially not suitable for ground operations. These are all well documented! The narrow track was difficult to land and carrier operations a lot of bent wings. They were withdrawn in Korea. As a point defensive fighter did well. P40 with the 100/130 fuels their performance improved dramatically as did the P51/A36 Mustangs.

P40 was just a more versitile Fighter and fought in every theater.

Perhaps you should do a bit of reading?
Ford of England was mass producing Merlins with tight tolerance and interchangeable parts before the the US and Packard ever got into the act.
Most allied engines got better as the war went on, overhaul life for Allison's improved dramatically also.
Merlin engines in fighters were rated at 240 hours in 1939 and this increased to 300/360 hours in 1944/45 despite making much greater power.
Bomber engines improved from 300 hours to 360/420 hours.
Merlins used alot more fasteners to hold things like covers on. A pain in the butt to service but has no bearing on the durability or reliability of the engine.
P-40s using Merlins in North Africa tended to use them up pretty quick due to the change in air intake location compared to Allison P-40s and no air filter (or ineffective one). This was made worse by lack of sufficient spare engines and parts in US supply chain. British Hurricanes and Spitfires did have dir filters. But few engines could swallow dirt and keep running for long.
Many US bombers got rather large, high drag airscoops in order to house dirt filters.

Wheel track of the Spitfire was 5 ft 8 1/2 inches. Which is a bit narrow but the P-40 was hardly a wide track with 8ft 2 1/2 inches. A P-51 was 11ft 10 in.
Criticising the Spitfire for carrier landing problems is really stretching things. How many P-40s ever landed on a carrier? They were put on board with cranes and flown off once, usually with reduced fuel and ammo.

Let's see, Spitfires withdrawn from use in Korea, P-40s withdrawn from US in US forces in 1944, for the most part. Yeah, I can see how that makes the SPitfire look bad.
Mid/late war Spitfires got bigger fuselage tanks, some got wing leading edge tanks and some got rear fuselage tanks. MK VIIIs carried 120 Imp gallons of fuel inside without using rear tanks. They also got 30 and 45 gallon slipper tanks with some of them being self sealing and could be carried in combat. Result was that many of the later Spitfires could hold more fuel than a P-40 and those crappy two stage Merlins made a lot more power than any Allison used in a P-40, while running on 100/130.
MK VIII Spitfire was rated as having a 680 mile range while carrying a 500lbs bomb and dropping it at 1/2 range. (340 mile radius)

Some of this is from "The Merlin in perspective -the combat years" by Alec Harvey-Bailey.
SOme of it is from WWII Aircraft Performance

want to list your sources?

 

[GrauGeist]

P40 with the 100/130 fuels their performance improved dramatically as did the P51/A36 Mustangs.

FYI, the A-36 was called the "Apache".

 

[KiwiBiggles]

The narrow track was difficult to land and carrier operations a lot of bent wings.

Grammar aside, the serviceability rate of Seafires in Korea was the same as that of F4Us. The Spitfire was not fragile, it was not slow, it was not undergunned. As far as I can see, the only thing it wasn't was American.

 

[rochie]

Grammar aside, the serviceability rate of Seafires in Korea was the same as that of F4Us. The Spitfire was not fragile, it was not slow, it was not undergunned. As far as I can see, the only thing it wasn't was American.

Bingo !

 

[Marcel]

Don't touch the Spitfire here

 

[rochie]

Don't touch the Spitfire here

Oh you can.
Just be objective

 

[Marcel]

Hmmmm, objective... here?..........

 

[rochie]

Hmmmm, objective... here?..........

Yeah, what the hell was i thinking

 

[Marcel]

But seriously, you're right. One should be able to have objective critique on airplanes. And quite often, this happens as well. Still, we've got so many nationalities and sentiments, that quite often people react with a biased view.
I'm not biased, it's just the undisputed fact that the Fokker G-1 was the best twin engined aircraft of the start of the war, has nothing to do with me being Dutch. It just was......

 

[Juha2]

I have had a reconsideration about most over rate fighter during WW2.
That would be the Spitfire!
Reasons.
It was a fragile aircraft compared to the P40.
Did not do well in ground attack
It was hard to build and maintain.
The Merlin's engine got less than half the life time of a Allison.
It's use was rather limited compared to the P40.
As a Defense fighter or Intectptor it was ok.
Range was half that of a P40 which limited its combat effectiveness.

2 cents

Hello Dan
I have already answered to your range point in Most Overrated aircraft of WWII.....?
I have no firm opinion how well Spits did the ground attack job but at least in 1944 Mk IXs usually carried twice the normal bomb load of P-40s (1000 lb vs 500 lb). P-40 was a rugged plane and the normal gun armament of the later versions (6 x .5) might well be better for strafing than that of the most usual armament of Spits, namely 2 x 20 mm + 4 x .303 but stll P-40 was powered with a vulnerable liquid cooled engine and after dropping the bomb(s) IMHO a Spit could watch after itself better than a P-40.

Juha

 

[Shortround6]

I may have this wrong but the argument seems to be that since the Spitfire wasn't as good at ground attack as a P-40 then the Spitfire was over rated?

Arguments like the Spitfires problems with carrier landings are brought in to attempt to show how superior the P-40 was. A Spit MK I landed at about 67mph. later ones came in a bit faster. P-40Es landed at about 84mph at 7500lbs. A early P-40 (no letter) landed at 80mph at 6655lbs. There was no way anybody was really going to try using P-40s from a carrier, and extra few feet of wheel track notwithstanding.

Bomb, fuel loads and range get rather complicated. Yes some P-40s operated with larger bomb loads than Spitfires, please note the some. mostly in Italy at very short ranges. The P-40Ns (at least later ones) were rated for three 500lbs which is more than Spitfires but that was in 1943 and it had already been decided that the P-40 would no longer be issued to new fighter squadrons.
Attempts to make the P-40 a better interceptor/higher altitude fighter included pulling two guns and restricting the ammo to 200/201 round per gun and yanking a fuel tank to cut the fuel to 87 US gallons (or 72 imp gallons) so there goes any advantage in range the P-40 had and certainly makes the firepower claim a bit suspect.

P-40s did a lot of good work and often performed in combat better than might be expected. That doesn't really mean other planes were overrated.

 

[swampyankee]

Considering something over- or under-rated is, intrinsically, subjective. If we look at any aspect of combat performance, tactics, training, and operational considerations can easily be more important than aerodynamics. An example would be the Israeli Air Force vs Syria's. Switch the hardware, but leave all else the same. Who wins?

 

[Juha2]

...Bomb, fuel loads and range get rather complicated. Yes some P-40s operated with larger bomb loads than Spitfires, please note the some. mostly in Italy at very short ranges. The P-40Ns (at least later ones) were rated for three 500lbs which is more than Spitfires but that was in 1943 and it had already been decided that the P-40 would no longer be issued to new fighter squadrons..

Thanks for correction, Dean's bible mentioned only 500 lb centreline bomb and seldom used light bombs under wings and a quick look on Wolf's USAAF Jabos reveals only the same info, but yes, digging out Kinzey's P-40 Warhawk Part 2 (in detail series) reveals than from N-20 onwards three 500 lb was possible bomb load, that means that appr. 3/5 of the P-40Ns were able to carry 1500 lb bomb load.

 

[Schweik]

Thanks for correction, Dean's bible mentioned only 500 lb centreline bomb and seldom used light bombs under wings and a quick look on Wolf's USAAF Jabos reveals only the same info, but yes, digging out Kinzey's P-40 Warhawk Part 2 (in detail series) reveals than from N-20 onwards three 500 lb was possible bomb load, that means that appr. 3/5 of the P-40Ns were able to carry 1500 lb bomb load.

They were doing that in the field with Kittyhawks in North Africa and Russia by mid - 1942. The 23rd Fighter Group (successor to the AVG) also did similar field modifications. The Russians also put rockets on them by 1942.

But that doesn't affect which was the best fighter or which fighter was overrated. There is such a thing as pilots who preferred the P-40 to the Spit in certain Theaters and for certain purposes, but there were far more pilots who preferred the Spit. The Spitfire was the ultimate "pilots fighter" on the Anglo-American side, fast, high flying, turned on a dime, low drag, and yes tough, it was a fighter and had armor and self-sealing tanks, if not perhaps as tough as a P-47 or a Fw 190, few fighters were.

I am hardly an Anglophile, but the Spitfire was without a doubt the best interceptor of the Western Allies in the whole war. It was the best interceptor and defensive fighter available to the UK in 1940, was the best in 1941 and to the UK or USAAF in 1942 (even when it was outclassed by the Fw 190 for a while, it was the best we had), best in 1943, best in 1944 and probably still the best in 1945 though it was, by then, a very different aircraft and still a Spitfire in name only.

The range limitations were of course, very real and the advantages of the Spitfire didn't apply equally in all Theaters. It didn't do very will in the South Pacific or in Russia. But I don't think the Spitfire is overrated. It's a beautiful aircraft, of racing pedigree, it matched or exceeded the Germans and Italians in performance (most of the time), exceeded them in maneuverability and gave the Allies their only really "superior" tool to use against the Germans in particular until probably mid 1943.

Many other Allied fighters were adequate or even probably at or near parity, but only the Spitfire can truthfully be called superior to the German types in this time period, even if this waxed and waned somewhat. The importance of this reality for morale and Strategic planning cannot be overstated. The English may have been able to win the Battle of Britain without the Spitfire, on paper, but in the hearts of the brave men who won that engagement, they needed that plane, they needed something special.

Yes it was mainly a defensive fighter but think of how important that was. They needed to defend Britain from a rain of bombs. Couldn't survive without that. Later on they needed to defend Malta from being flattened and starved of supplies. This was critical to the war effort. The Spitfire accomplished this mission admirably.

That said I think we have a double standard. The Mustang isn't my favorite aircraft of the war because it came so late, basically past the tipping point, and I like planes which fought in the more bitterly contested years and months of the war. But a lot of people around here and elsewhere will dismiss the P-51 as a 'mere' escort fighter, while failing to qualify the Spitfire as what it was, basically an interceptor or defensive fighter. Certainly a short range fighter. Similarly we all in the Anglophone world tend to ignore the excellence of the Yak-3, La 5FN and other Soviet types, because they were essentially low altitude fighters. So what? The battlefield in Russia was at low altitude. We dismiss the Zero because it wasn't as dominant in 1944 as it was in 1941. But in 1941, nobody in England, the US, or even Russia or Germany was dismissing that plane.

The only way you would have an aircraft which could excel at all categories would be to bring a Mig 15 or a F-16 or Rafale or (pick your jet) back in time to WW2.

And lets not pretend the Americans are more jingoistic than the British. Please.

S

 

[Shortround6]

That said I think we have a double standard. The Mustang isn't my favorite aircraft of the war because it came so late, basically past the tipping point, and I like planes which fought in the more bitterly contested years and months of the war. But a lot of people around here and elsewhere will dismiss the P-51 as a 'mere' escort fighter, while failing to qualify the Spitfire as what it was, basically an interceptor or defensive fighter. Certainly a short range fighter. Similarly we all in the Anglophone world tend to ignore the excellence of the Yak-3, La 5FN and other Soviet types, because they were essentially low altitude fighters. So what? The battlefield in Russia was at low altitude. We dismiss the Zero because it wasn't as dominant in 1944 as it was in 1941. But in 1941, nobody in England, the US, or even Russia or Germany was dismissing that plane.

The Yak-3 didn't show-up until about 5-6 months after the Merlin Mustangs. The First nearly 200 carried 1/2 the armament of a late Spitfire. One 20mm and one 12.7mm machine gun. After that they got a 2nd 12.7mm. Fuel was roughly 100 US gallons/83 Imp gal? later ones got around 3-4 more gallons?
The Yak-3 would have been a great plane at the end of 1942 or during 1943. In 1944, while it was very good at what it did, it was pretty much a one trick pony. A low altitude, short range/endurance dogfighter.

 

[Schweik]

The Yak-3 didn't show-up until about 5-6 months after the Merlin Mustangs. The First nearly 200 carried 1/2 the armament of a late Spitfire. One 20mm and one 12.7mm machine gun. After that they got a 2nd 12.7mm. Fuel was roughly 100 US gallons/83 Imp gal? later ones got around 3-4 more gallons?
The Yak-3 would have been a great plane at the end of 1942 or during 1943. In 1944, while it was very good at what it did, it was pretty much a one trick pony. A low altitude, short range/endurance dogfighter.

I can't say I'm surprised, but you are completely missing my point while providing a good example of what I think is wrong with a lot of WW2 Aviation analysis. You are applying a single yard stick to an area where it doesn't fit.

What is the mission of the Yak 3 (or any Soviet fighter at almost any part of the Soviet involvement in WW2?)

A hint - it does not need to shoot down vast fleets of high flying He 111s and Do -17s like the Spit did in the BoB. It does not need to shoot down hundreds of B-17s and B-24s like the Germans were trying to do over Berlin. It doesn't need to shoot down Sturmoviks over the Russian Front, like the Germans had to do*.

It needs to shoot down German fighters, and German light ground attack aircraft, especially Stukas which were the main German close support aircraft throughout the war. By 1944 you can pretty much rule out the Stuka so for the Yak 3, the mission was essentially just to shoot down German fighters and thus protect the Sturmoviks so they can destroy German tanks. Pretty straitforward. So given that is the mission, consider a few facts:

• One 20mm cannon and two 12.7mm machine guns actually superior armament to what was considered the top German dogfighter of the War - the Bf 109F series (and also the early G series through the G-4 I think).
• A 20mm cannon firing through the prop hub, not to mention the other nose guns, is plenty of firepower to shoot down a Bf 109 or a Ju 87. Add the two 12.7mm guns and you have what you need to bring down a Fw 190 I think.
• They are not shooting down B-17s or B-24s, or Sturmoviks like the Germans have to by that point, hence there is really no need to mount cumbersome wing gondolas with extra guns.
• The Yak 3 is a highly specialized dogfighter designed specifically to take over the air space over the giant tank and infantry war which was the Russian Front. It was the best plane ever made for that purpose, and scared the crap out of the Germans.

It was without a doubt one of the best aircraft of the war.

It was, by the way actually on track to be developed by 1942 or 1943, circumstances prevented that, though the La - 5FN was there thankfully to fill the gap, not to mention the earlier / mid war Yak (-1b, 7b and 9) variants. All of the above did better in the field than the Spitfire did in this particular Theater.


* of course they did have some Hs 129 and other dedicated (and larger and / or more armored) bombers and ground attack types, but not enough of them to affect the war.

S