MOST OVERRATED AIRCRAFT OF WWII

Gemhorse said:

Ah Udet, you may not have studied your history that well.....What makes you think the 'Channel Dash' was a failure on the part of the British ?...You don't want to talk about the German battleships AFTER the event, so what about before ?....

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Very good point the German battleships were rendered useless during the war. The only major accomplishment of a German battleship I can think off was the sinking of the Hood by the Bismark. Not too say that the German battlehships were not good. They were very good ships but they did nothing to help the war effort for Germany.

Besides what does any of this have to do with MOST OVERRATED AIRCRAFT OF WWII?

At the start of the war, Italy had a very impressive navy as well. What a waste!

yeah i think when the italians are mentioned it's time we get back on topic...........

I love these threads. Good post.

well thank you...........

Geez this is an active thread. I'm going to have to start posting what I mean to respond to. No insult intended to you Lanc.

I think that the overrated Aircraft were the Russian IL-2 Stuka.

no they both did play a major part in the war.........

Yes, they played a big part, but were still overrated.

I think the P-51 is most over rated aircraft. I think it was a good compettive fighter. However I don't think it was:
The Best Fighter ever (in it's own time) Discover Wings Poll
The plane that turned the tide in WWII
The best Piston Fighter
The plane that destroyed the Luftwaffe.

These are used to describe the Mustang very often, not that it was compettive and after help from planes like the P-47, and Spitfire short range and the P-38 in the long range missions durring the most criticle period of the air war in Europe and then smothered what was left of the Luftwaffe.

Agreed.

Okay. So where does that leave us. I can't include the P-51, it was a great plane, accomplished what its rumours, history, and legends indicate. Even if the P-51s accomplishments were achieved by sheer numbers alone (which we all know is not solely true), the accomplishments are undeniable.

I still think that the most overrated fighter was the Zeke (Zero). An excellent fighter that turned out to be a paper tiger. And I do mean an excellent plane with more than commendable characteristics (range!!, maneuverability, firepower and reliability). But it did have its shortcomings (ability to absorb battle damage, diving speed, armour protection, self sealing fuel tanks, etc). Further, I don't think you can decouple any airplane from the pilots who flew them and Japan made a grave mistake by not rotating their best seasoned pilots homeside to train new cadre. Attrition was the final blow to the Zeke as surely as the obsolesence of the airframe and its weapons. Keeping these two in perspective provides insight into the basis for any airplane's fame...or its relagation to mediocrity. Fate has many faces. Ask the Italians about their G.55 or Macchi MC205 or the Regiane 2000 series. Surely world class fighters if their ever were ones.

Early in the war, the Zeke was credited with being undefeatable.
Did turn the tide in Japan's favor in early WWII.
Was considered the best piston fighter by many world powers at the beginning of the war.
And was credited with the defeat of China and winner of early US battles.


...but turned out to be a relatively toothless dog if treated with distance.

Aren't we talking about airplanes that were credited with great accomplishments, but by definition of 'overrated' were not worthy of the moniker?

Perhaps some others might include the Bf110 (not really much of a Destroyer after all), Mitsubishi G4M (the Flying Cigar...'nuff said), or maybe the Soviet Petlyakov Pe-8 (long range, but unreliable and subject to constant upgrades...not good for a superpower's only strategic bomber which constantly broached Berlins defenses).

wmaxt said:

I think the P-51 is most over rated aircraft. I think it was a good compettive fighter. However I don't think it was:
The Best Fighter ever (in it's own time) Discover Wings Poll
The plane that turned the tide in WWII
The best Piston Fighter
The plane that destroyed the Luftwaffe.

These are used to describe the Mustang very often, not that it was compettive and after help from planes like the P-47, and Spitfire short range and the P-38 in the long range missions durring the most criticle period of the air war in Europe and then smothered what was left of the Luftwaffe.

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This I will agree with you that I think it was overated but not the most overated. The 51 was a great aircraft just not the best. Personally it is my favorite allied aircraft but I think the P-38 was much better and gets overshadowed by the P-51 a lot.

I think the most overated would have to go to the Ju-87 Stuka, Bf-110 (it was okay though in the night fighter role), and the Zero.

wmaxt said:

I think the P-51 is most over rated aircraft. I think it was a good compettive fighter. However I don't think it was:
The Best Fighter ever (in it's own time) Discover Wings Poll
The plane that turned the tide in WWII
The best Piston Fighter
The plane that destroyed the Luftwaffe.

These are used to describe the Mustang very often, not that it was compettive and after help from planes like the P-47, and Spitfire short range and the P-38 in the long range missions durring the most criticle period of the air war in Europe and then smothered what was left of the Luftwaffe.

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Oh man RG is going to flip out, here we go again. You are burning his baby.

it's true though.......

Zero is definitly not overrated. It just could not fight well against the more modern fighters, like the hellcat. Japs made big mistake by only updating the zero instead of producing new airplane(yes they did create shiden and raiden later, but that was too late).Zero was not good enough to fight the hellcat, for it had little less manuverability but much higher speed and better armor(hellcats 8 machineguns could rip the zero apart very quick,while zero had to spend half of his 20mm ammo to kill it).
But zero fought its contemporaries with great succes. It, in combination with great japanese pilot flying it, was more than a mach to all fighters it fought in 39-42(I-16,P-40,P-36,P39,Wildcat).Was any of those planes beter than it?
So do not bash the zeke untill you find a historical evidence, for it was not overrated, just not well suited for operations from 43 on, because USAAF and USN pilots developed tactics and improved planes to fight it.

Geronimo said:

Zero is definitly not overrated. It just could not fight well against the more modern fighters, like the hellcat.

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And you just helped my point. Thankyou. The Zero was overated. It may have been fast at the beginning and could maneuver well but it was very weak in armor and was outdated very early on. What you just said pretty much confirmed my overated status for the Zero, thankyou again.

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

wmaxt said:

I think the P-51 is most over rated aircraft. I think it was a good compettive fighter. However I don't think it was:
The Best Fighter ever (in it's own time) Discover Wings Poll
The plane that turned the tide in WWII
The best Piston Fighter
The plane that destroyed the Luftwaffe.

These are used to describe the Mustang very often, not that it was compettive and after help from planes like the P-47, and Spitfire short range and the P-38 in the long range missions durring the most criticle period of the air war in Europe and then smothered what was left of the Luftwaffe.

Click to expand...

Oh man RG is going to flip out, here we go again. You are burning his baby.

Click to expand...

I think the P-51 is a very good plane just not the very best.

I just think the P-38, Spitfire, fw-190 and the F4U are shall we say Number 1. The P-51, me-109, and the P-47 1b very compettitive but a little behind.

The redesigned P-51H and P-47N/M maybe even the Ta-152 could have become the 1s and religated the P-38, Spit, fw-190 and Corsair to the 1bs or even possibly the 2s. They didn't get the chance

The P-38 needed the redesign upgrades the P-51H, P-47 and Ta-152 got - lighter weight, Laminar wings etc. to get there even the K wouldn't quite have gotten it there. P-38 would still be compettitive though.

The later models of the Spit and the Corsair were in the ballpark too.

Also remember I'm talking Fighter here where range and payload etc is not an issue.

The Zero was overated at first but once the shock wore off I think it was regaurded as just another problem to deal with.

wmaxt

That is pretty much what I agree with what you said about the number 1 and 1b's. The zero however I think was overated by 1942.

I detect some confused people around.

It appears to me you are mingling concepts here. That a particular plane got defeated does not imply, at all, it was overrated; even if it performed in a superb fashion in the beginning.

Most planes facing the Zero in the early stages of the war flatly died. You name them and i will tell you they died. Whether British or USA, they perished.

The fact it did not develop well enough to keep up with the pace of newer enemy planes arriving to the front does not imply it was overrated either.


Quite actually, i am not even sure if there is anything like "the most overrated plane". Most planes which saw action in significant numbers certainly helped the side fielding it in one level or another.

The point would rather be some of the combatant nations give some of their planes characteristics they did not have, or better said, they describe them as capable of achieving things that do not fit with battle field facts.



For those tagging the Stuka as overrated, well, it can lead me to believe they have got some reading pending.

The Stuka record is proven. Hand in hand with the Wehrmacht proved to be one of the most efficient and destructive weapons ever.

The accounts of many eastern front veterans of the Wehrmacht tell that when on the march forward, after a fierce battle, they were astonished to see vast areas littered with countless enemy tanks, vehicles and artillery horribly and utterly shattered to pieces. Tons and tons of charred and twisted metallic carcasses. The authors of such destruction had been the Panzer spearheads, the STUKAS and German powerful artillery barrages moving ahead the marching infantry.

That in the end, especially in the west, the Stuka was mainly used for night harassment missions does not make it "overrated". Conditions for deploying it following the original Stuka notion had ceased to exist past half the war. Again, that does not make it overrated.


Two overrated types, that of course played their part for final victory over the enemy, are the Spitfire and the IL-2. The gold medal being awarded to the IL-2.

It was not an efficient tank destroyer as the soviets depict it. It was slow, clumsy and extremely vulnerable to enemy fighters. But hell yes, it helped the soviets a good deal.



I have stated my ideas on the Spitfire. It is one of the great fighters of the war. Glory was brief but relevant: Battle of Britain.

Yes many of my British mates here do not like it, but i will repeat it, when the Sptifire had to leave its cave and attempted going out after the enemy the type proved to be not a succesful toy.


That is one of the Victor´s drunkness symptoms: victory turns them into pretentious beings. They will not admit "well, some of our weapons were not that good; furthermore, some of the enemy toys were well ahead ours. Still our weapons helped us good in defeating the enemy." Impossible. You will not witness such a thing.

They want to make it clear their hardware was superior in every possible aspect. There are cases, however, when that turns out impossible to prove.