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.
