P-38 Lightning vs P-51 Mustang: Which was the Better Fighter?

FLYBOYJ · Nov 20, 2011

Arossihman said:
you are correct! the germans called the p-38's the fork tailed devil's because they hated fighting them because a p-38 could send them to hell!

That is NOT true. the "Forked Tailed Devil" title is a myth created by the aviation author Martin Cadin. Most Luftwaffe expertain thought the P-38 was a relative easy target. Read "Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe" by Toliver.

DerAdlerIstGelandet · Nov 20, 2011

Arossihman said:
you are correct! the germans called the p-38's the fork tailed devil's because they hated fighting them because a p-38 could send them to hell!

Sources?

If you are going to boldly state that, then please provide sources that back it up.

tomo pauk · Nov 21, 2011

Arossihman said:
To my knowledge the mustang was designed as a fighter but pushed into service as a dive bomber because of poor performance. A-36 pilots had to be careful because early P-36's would lose their wings tryin to pull out of steep dives so i think they added dive brakes later on to combat this.

Mustang was better performer than P-40 or P-39, so the argument about 'poor performance' is not valid.
A-36 was built because USAAC did not have more funds allocated for fighters, but had funds available for bombers/attack planes.
Dive brakes were part of the A-36 from day one.

Vincenzo · Nov 21, 2011

just a note P-36 and A-36 are not the same plane with a different mission, the A-36 is a P-51 variant

Arossihman · Nov 21, 2011

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
Sources?

If you are going to boldly state that, then please provide sources that back it up.

Will try to find the interview of that german pilot that made that statement.....got a lot of stuff to go through if im gonna find it

FLYBOYJ · Nov 21, 2011

Arossihman said:
Will try to find the interview of that german pilot that made that statement.....got a lot of stuff to go through if im gonna find it

"The last of my Second World War examples is the name given to the distinctive Lockheed P-38, another aircraft designed as a heavy fighter (and arguably more effective in that role than the previous aircraft). Earliest reference is once again the latter half of 1943, in Popular Science magazine. Here (along with the Flight mag snippets posted above and countless websites/forums etc today) we see the power of the enthusiast to propagate what is essentially rumour, simply because it sounds powerful and macho, just like the other names given in this post. This time "Nazi pilots" are cited, but yet again, no individuals or other sources are named – it's simply asserted with a good amount of relish, and a vaguely racist rendition of a hapless Japanese (note, not a German) pilot getting hosed by the "Devil"'s guns. Perhaps tellingly, the Engineering News Record then claims that both German AND Japanese pilots use the term! This is clearly exaggeration at the least (assuming either one did use the name), if not total BS. Were the Axis powers conferring on their cowardly conventions for naming enemy aircraft?! If this too is a piece of wartime propaganda (created by press or military), the modern-day US Air Force is still buying it."

fork-tailed devil « The BS Historian

Arossihman · Nov 21, 2011

tomo pauk said:
Mustang was better performer than P-40 or P-39, so the argument about 'poor performance' is not valid.
A-36 was built because USAAC did not have more funds allocated for fighters, but had funds available for bombers/attack planes.
Dive brakes were part of the A-36 from day one.

Okay...the documentery i have,stated that the military was unimpressed with the original mustangs performance and wanted more out of it at high altitude.....it was better than the 39 and 40 but not by enough.....hence it was used by england through lend lease and pushed into service as a dive bomber. Only after the merlin was added did the U.S. military see the potential of that design,from what i have seen without the merlin the mustang would have been a footnote in ww2 history. I will try and dig up which documentary i saw that on and repost tomorrow.

Arossihman · Nov 21, 2011

Vincenzo said:
just a note P-36 and A-36 are not the same plane with a different mission, the A-36 is a P-51 variant

Sorry...typo on the p-36 thing

FLYBOYJ · Nov 21, 2011

Here's another online article about the "Forked Tail Devil" myth.

P-38 Trivia

"Many writers claim that the Germans referred to the P-38 as "Der Gabelschwanz Teufel" (The Fork-tailed Devil"). This is likely a post-war myth. Several authoritative books on the P-38 state that there is no period evidence to suggest this moniker was used during the war."

DerAdlerIstGelandet · Nov 21, 2011

Arossihman said:
Will try to find the interview of that german pilot that made that statement.....got a lot of stuff to go through if im gonna find it

You will find it is wrong. The whole thing was a myth...

parsifal · Nov 21, 2011

I'll bite...maybe it wasnt the germans who said it...sounds more like a japanese name....

DerAdlerIstGelandet · Nov 22, 2011

parsifal said:
I'll bite...maybe it wasnt the germans who said it...sounds more like a japanese name....

I can believe that more myself.

FLYBOYJ · Nov 22, 2011

Likewise. Countless German pilots gave their accounts of the P-38 and it seemed like they did not fear it. Ray Toliver documented this in many of his books.

Arossihman · Dec 4, 2011

parsifal said:
I'll bite...maybe it wasnt the germans who said it...sounds more like a japanese name....

Still havent found where i heard the germans called it that but in staying in this line of thinking or speculation....if the japanese feared it then why not the germans? The zero was just as good a fighter as anything the germans had early on so one could speculate that the german pilots had reason to fear it as well. This is all speculation for me at this point but it makes sense to me....then again i'm just a simple country boy! I will keep searching for the syuff to back up my claim!
Tony

Arossihman · Dec 4, 2011

Arossihman said:
Still havent found where i heard the germans called it that but in staying in this line of thinking or speculation....if the japanese feared it then why not the germans? The zero was just as good a fighter as anything the germans had early on so one could speculate that the german pilots had reason to fear it as well. This is all speculation for me at this point but it makes sense to me....then again i'm just a simple country boy! I will keep searching for the syuff to back up my claim!
Tony

Okay guys it says on wiki that the germans called it the "forked tailed devil" and the japs called it "two planes one pilot", so i'm back where i started with this little circus act! Gonna delve a little deeper tomorrow and see what pokes up!
Tony

FLYBOYJ · Dec 4, 2011

Arossihman said:
Okay guys it says on wiki that the germans called it the "forked tailed devil" and the japs called it "two planes one pilot", so i'm back where i started with this little circus act! Gonna delve a little deeper tomorrow and see what pokes up!
Tony

Take Wiki with a grain of a salt. Sometimes the writer of the article will give references from where they got their info. If there's anything on the Wiki page you saw that references Martin Cadin, it's BS, plain and simple.

Again, read Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe by Toliver and Constable - they have good documented interviews on what the top Luftwaffe pilots thought about the P-38 and it wasn't that favorable. None of them ever called the aircraft "The Forked Tailed Devil."

parsifal · Dec 5, 2011

FLYBOYJ said:
Likewise. Countless German pilots gave their accounts of the P-38 and it seemed like they did not fear it. Ray Toliver documented this in many of his books.

They might have feared it if it was on their tail, but not enough as a group to give it a fearsome nickname.

I doubt very much it ever received that name by German flyers. According to DG not that many German fighters were lost to the p-38, until quite late in the campaign over NW Europe.

the guy who would know for sure about this is Erich..........

DerAdlerIstGelandet · Dec 5, 2011

Arossihman said:
Still havent found where i heard the germans called it that but in staying in this line of thinking or speculation....if the japanese feared it then why not the germans? The zero was just as good a fighter as anything the germans had early on so one could speculate that the german pilots had reason to fear it as well. This is all speculation for me at this point but it makes sense to me....then again i'm just a simple country boy! I will keep searching for the syuff to back up my claim!
Tony

Keep searching.

I am sure you heard it, but it is just a myth. A story that was started up. As Joe pointed out, Luftwaffe pilots did not think favorably of the aircraft. Of course any aircraft type that is on your tail is going to cause some fear (as parsifal has pointed out).

Arossihman · Dec 5, 2011

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
Keep searching.

I am sure you heard it, but it is just a myth. A story that was started up. As Joe pointed out, Luftwaffe pilots did not think favorably of the aircraft. Of course any aircraft type that is on your tail is going to cause some fear (as parsifal has pointed out).

Without a doubt!

tomo pauk · Dec 5, 2011

Hi, Tony

Arossihman said:
Still havent found where i heard the germans called it that but in staying in this line of thinking or speculation....if the japanese feared it then why not the germans? The zero was just as good a fighter as anything the germans had early on so one could speculate that the german pilots had reason to fear it as well. This is all speculation for me at this point but it makes sense to me....then again i'm just a simple country boy! I will keep searching for the syuff to back up my claim!
Tony

Perhaps you might check out compare what Germans had to throw in combat vs. what Japanese had, for each of war years. The Zero was far slower than a contemporary Bf-109 or Fw-190, German fighters were about as good climbers as Zero, but far better divers, Fw-190 was one of best armed fighters in ww2. In pre-1943 time, German fighters were doing some 400 mph (give or take), P-38 is there too, but Zero can make up circa 350 mph. It took quite a while for Japanese to introduce a 400 mph fighter (1944?) so no wonder Japanese had a healthy respect for P-38.

Then, P-38 did encountered some issues in Europe, and that was because of technical, tactical training issues, and those issues were seldom occurrences in PTO. You may check out Shortround6's posts in this forum, or get yourself a book ("America's hundred-thousand" is great source about US planes).

As for a supposed name Germans gave it, it's already covered in above posts.

From a complicated country boy

P-38 Lightning vs P-51 Mustang: Which was the Better Fighter?

Which was the better fighter? The P-38 Lightning or the P-51 Mustang?

P-38 Lightning

P-51 Mustang

Neither was better.

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