P-39 vs P-40

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Shortround6 said:
Have I called you out about your behavior or treated you unfairly or insulted you personally?

I think we know who is throwing a tantrum
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You are right I apologize I was too rude to you, some of the other posts rubbed me the wrong way.
 
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We seem to have strayed away from the P-39/P-40 topic here a bit. We should leave the P-38 out as it doesn't arrive until after the Bf 109G does. The Bf 109F/Trop has speed, dive, climb, and roll rate going for it and the Ki-43 speed (maybe), climb, roll rate and turning circle against either a Hurricane II/Trop or Spitfire V/Trop. So I do know which planes I won't be choosing for a dogfight. Hurricane for rear area air defence, no problem, rugged plane, good destructive armament, should be able to take on a Me 110 without a problem and competitive with the Bf 109E below 15000 feet, not so sure about the Ki-45 though. The Spitfire V should do better against a Ki-43, but I've not seen any figures. The Spitfire Vc Trop struggled against the A6M3 below 20000 feet. It would be nice to see a breakdown of exactly what types the Bf 109F and Ki-43 were victorious over. Can I assume that the Ki-61 got deployed rapidly to the Pacific because of the inadequacy of the Ki-43's armament against heavier American bombers such as the Mitchell, Flying Fortress and Liberator? Was the Ki-43 successful in the CBI because it was mainly up against planes like the Hurricane, Blenheim, Vengeance and Wellingtons (?) although less successful against the Warhawk(?). The Mitchell packed a heavy defensive punch for a twin and could be used as a long range bomber, is that why the IJA needed Ki-44's in China to defeat Mitchells and Liberators. In the case of the Hurricane, 6500 were built in the UK between 1942 to 1944, so assuming 1500 went to the Soviets, 1500 to the Middle East, that would leave 3500 for the K-43 to shoot down.
 
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We have a tremendous amount of variables here as some of these aircraft had variations even among what are supposed to be the same model.
Assuming much of anything with the Japanese may be hard as they had problems with production all during the war which affected not just new models of engines and air frames but guns and ammo. It took quite a while to get the Ho 103 sorted out apparently. So saying they should have mounted four of them in the Ki 43 and Ki 61 from the start may have been better in theory but not practical given the amount of guns and 12.7mm ammo being produced. HE shells are almost always much harder to produce than ball or AP rounds due to the fuses needed. Japanese did develop a "fuseless" round but that depended on a small quantity of air being heated as the nose crushed and a more sensitive than normal explosive filling.
That lead to more accidents.

I am not sure the Hurricane should be getting quite the blame that it is because at some point well before the end of production they gave up any pretense of it being a fighter and it was used pretty much in the ground attack role
 

Spit V/Trop should be much faster than a Ki-43 at most altitudes, Hurricane II as well I would think though it would be closer.

What is the armament of a 109G-2 or G-4? Similar to 109F4 right?

Yes but I think mainly because they hadn't adopted new tactics for it (still using Western desert tactics basically) and had a ton of maintenance problems, plus range issue.

It would be nice to see a breakdown of exactly what types the Bf 109F and Ki-43 were victorious over.
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I would love to see that as well.


You have a good point about the bombers. My theory about the twin nose guns (or 1 cannon + 2 LMG) is that it's perfectly good for fighter vs. fighter, and it's good enough for attacking lightly defended bombers, especially since HMG and cannon pretty much outrange defensive LMGs. This is also why I think the 8 LMG armament was limited, .30 cal (.303, 7.9mm etc.) lose a lot of their 'punch' at longer range.

But as bombers start to acquire more 20mm, 13mm, 12.7mm etc. defensive guns the simple two nose gun armament is no longer sufficient. The early B-25 had a lot of heavy guns though it was still somewhat weak on defense as it lacked proper tail guns. However they seemed to have survived pretty well in combat in the Med. A-20 was a bit more vulnerable but also very good compared to say, a Blenheim. B-24 had tons of guns but also seemed to be weak for some reason (they shot down a lot of them in the Med that is for sure and they seem to have lost some to Ki-43s as well).

By the way I was just reading in Shores MAW Vol II, a British pilot commented that they took out a pair of LMGs from their Spit VC(2)s to improve climb and altitude performance. And I also previously read they took out two of the cannon from Hurri IICs if they were expected to face fighters. So that was not just an adaptation for P-40s by any means.

On the contrary though, when they expected to shoot down a lot of bombers or have to strafe AAA they wanted as many guns as possible. They routinely switched out P-40s from 4 to 6 guns and back again depending on what kind of missions they were flying.



One question I have for you who know the British kit well. I'm struck simultaneously by what a deathtrap the Blenheim and Beaufort seemed to be while on the other hand, the Beaufighter seemed to be excellent. Isn't it almost the same plane?



EDIT: Sorry about the broken quote tags, that drives me nuts. Fixed.
 
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You have a good point about the bombers. My theory about the twin nose guns (or 1 cannon + 2 LMG) is that it's perfectly good for fighter vs. fighter, and it's good enough for attacking lightly defended bombers, especially since HMG and cannon pretty much outrange defensive LMGs. This is also why I think the 8 LMG armament was limited, .30 cal (.303, 7.9mm etc.) lose a lot of their 'punch' at longer range.

But as bombers start to acquire more 20mm, 13mm, 12.7mm etc. defensive guns the simple two nose gun armament is no longer sufficient. The early B-25 had a lot of heavy guns though it was still somewhat weak on defense as it lacked proper tail guns. However they seemed to have survived pretty well in combat in the Med. A-20 was a bit more vulnerable but also very good compared to say, a Blenheim. B-24 had tons of guns but also seemed to be weak for some reason (they shot down a lot of them in the Med that is for sure and they seem to have lost some to Ki-43s as well).

By the way I was just reading in Shores MAW Vol II, a British pilot commented that they took out a pair of LMGs from their Spit VC(2)s to improve climb and altitude performance. And I also previously read they took out two of the cannon from Hurri IICs if they were expected to face fighters. So that was not just an adaptation for P-40s by any means.

On the contrary though, when they expected to shoot down a lot of bombers or have to strafe AAA they wanted as many guns as possible. They routinely switched out P-40s from 4 to 6 guns and back again depending on what kind of missions they were flying.



One question I have for you who know the British kit well. I'm struck simultaneously by what a deathtrap the Blenheim and Beaufort seemed to be while on the other hand, the Beaufighter seemed to be excellent. Isn't it almost the same plane?[/QUOTE]
I agree the Blenheim was a deathtrap, but it may surprise you to know that Beauforts in RAAF service actually scored aerial victories. As for the Beaufighter, if one of them hit you with its four 20 mm cannon and 6 lmg then I think you're a gonna. The Blenheim and Beaufort should be fast enough to evade the Cr 42, G50, A5M, Ki-27 and IJN float planes at max speed.
 
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this is common view (the outrange lighter guns bit) but one that may not have much basis in facts.
Or at least it depends on the guns involved.

You have the light guns which almost universally used rather streamlined bullets.
Then you had the Italian and Japanese 12.7mm and the German 13mm guns which used rather short stumpy poorly shaped bullets. Yes they were heavier per unit of frontal area than the rifle caliber bullets but they slowed down at about the same rate and had similar times of flight out to any practical air combat range.
Then you had the US .50 and the Russian 12.7mm which used heavier bullets of very streamlined shape and they had higher muzzle velocities. Aside from the German 15mm they had the longest practical range of aircraft guns until you get to the big German 30mm.

For the 20mm guns we are all over the place as projectile weights and velocities vary considerably and nobody was using a projectile with great streamlining, although some were better than others.
The 20mm Hispano was pretty much a match for the US .50 unless you have a bar bet going. Every other 20mm was worse. Some were a lot worse and show no practical range advantage over some of the rifle caliber machine guns.
 
One of the things I have come to understand about the .30 cal guns is that their energy dissipated at range, as in after ~ 300 meters or maybe quite a bit less, the energy for punching through armor or ripping open self sealing fuel tanks etc. had declined a lot. You or somebody commented upthread or in the P-40 vs Typhoon thread about how even HMG bullets got deflected by hitting wing spars and so on and didn't always get through armor, well this is much more true for LMGs.

20mm cannon of course will explode regardless of range pretty much and do their ripping apart stuff thing, and .50 cal will still punch through engines, put big holes in fuel tanks and rip apart defensive gunners from 1,000 meters or more.
 

Doesn't really surprise me, but the Beaufighter seemed to perform much better. Sometimes they lost a lot of them and it did seem somewhat vulnerable to Bf 109s or MC 202s but it could handle basically anything else and usually dominate. One of the few planes which seemed to have the number of the Ju 88 for example.

I can see Beauforts shooting down a crap plane but what you see in the operational history is,
12 Blenheims go out, 9 get shot down, no damage to target
12 Beauforts go out, 6 get shot down, one enemy ship damaged by a torpedo (maybe sunk)
12 Beaufighters go out, 3 get shot down, 6 enemy planes shot down, 4 E-boats sunk and a Submarine strafed to death
 
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Shortround6 said:
I am not sure the Hurricane should be getting quite the blame that it is because at some point well before the end of production they gave up any pretense of it being a fighter and it was used pretty much in the ground attack role
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Not really blaming Hurricanes so much as just think they were too vulnerable even as fighter bombers by 1942, let alone 1943 or later. Carrying bombs slowed them down a lot.

Same for P-40s really - while very helpful as fighter bombers almost everywhere in 1942 I don't think they were that great at ground attack, at least for Europe (Italy), in 1943 or certainly by 1944. Carrying a bomb, let alone 1500 lbs of them, slowed it down too much making it vulnerable to both flak and fighters. Could still fight after releasing the bombs but it was a stop gap solution for ground attack.

Of course, CAS was a dangerous game regardless and I'm not sure what they had which could fit the niche. A-36 had potential but not quite up to the task, P-38s, P-47s and Corsairs were pressed into the role, as were Typhoons, but I'm not sure they were ideally suited either. P-51 and Spit definitely weren't.

Mosquito of course, and perhaps the A-26 Invader seemed to be one of the few successful marriages of damage causing ability with speed and agility but maybe too expensive to make for that dangerous role. Plus Mossie had inline engines.

I think for CAS or precision bombing by 1943 you needed either a very fast twin engine plane (350 mph or better) or a very fast dive bomber (300 mph or better at least... which means probably an internal bomb bay) which the Americans or British really didn't have as such. The Helldiver was supposed to do this job and almost had the chops but had extended and very painful teething problems it's not clear to me if they ever resolved. I think it was a bad design. The fighter bombers were pressed into service as shallow angle (45-60 degree) dive bombers but at great cost in terms of losses to flak and fighters.

Strafers like the A-20 and B-25 with all the guns in the nose worked in the Pacific but not as viable against German light AAA.

The Japanese had some promising designs which would fit this bill except no self sealing tanks usually (Yokosuka D4Y) and / or couldn't get them into the War anywhere near quick enough. (B7N)

The B7A looked fantastic on paper - 350 mph, more maneuverable than a Zero supposedly, 2 x 20mm cannon, 1,800 mile range and could dive bomb or also carry a torpedo. Not sure about armor or self sealing tanks. But they couldn't get the thing running, development cycle was an amazing 4 years (1941-45). And meant for giant carriers that never had a chance to fight, though they could have made it a great land based bomber.
 
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Schweik said:
20mm cannon of course will explode regardless of range pretty much and do their ripping apart stuff thing, and .50 cal will still punch through engines, put big holes in fuel tanks and rip apart defensive gunners from 1,000 meters or more.
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The .50 can do that if it hits!
In ground combat this much easier to do than in air to air combat. Most of time in ground combat the gun is stationary and the target not moving very fast, OK a truck can be moving 30 meters a second or more but that is about it. You can also see misses sometimes and correct the fire.

In the air every range is a guess. Some pilots didn't use tracers or many of them. Even a slow bomber is moving 100 meters a second and a fast one is going 140m/s. Time of flight to 1000 meters could be nearly 2 seconds . It varied with altitude further complicating things. Tracers are going to tell you where you should have been aiming 2 seconds ago, assuming that a, your tracers last 1000 meters and b, you can actually see your tracers at that distance. But in the air there are no puffs of dust, dirt from near misses. Talk of 1000 meter shots air to air was just that 99% of time, talk.

I would note that rifle caliber bullets are quite capable of killing people or holding radiators/ oil coolers at 1000 meters.
 

Taking out 2 lmgs didn't change the firepower of the V as much as taking out 2 of the P-40's hmgs (which amounted to 1/3 of the firepower).

Some Spitfire Vs had their cannon removed, so they could reach the high altitude Ju 86P reconnaissance aircraft.
 

Yeah I was reading about that. They put in two .50 cals. Good for a long chase.
 
I was referring specifically to field modifications made to intercept high flying Ju 86 recon planes in 1942. I think we both were. I'll try to find the quote.
 
Here is the passage from Shores (MAW II, pages 232-233). The bolded emphasis is by me. Other than that it's a direct transcription from Shores and you ware welcome!

"During the spring and summer of 1942, Junkers JU-86-R-1 reconnaissance aircraft (referred to in British records as the Ju 86P) were supplied in small numbers to 2.(F)/123 based on Crete, supplementing that unit's Ju 88D's. This aircraft flew several ultra-high photographic missions over British military installations in Egypt. This advanced aircraft was powered by two Jumo 207 diesel engines with two-stage superchargers, and had a pressurized cabin for it's two-man crew.

Throughout June 80 and 1 SAAF Squadrons had been attempting to intercept these high-flying reconnaissance intruders which were appearing regularly over Port Said and the Delta area. Each squadron had stripped a HUrricane IIb of it's armor and eight of the 12 machine guns in order to achieve sufficient performance to catch one of these pressurised aircraft. However, to date these attempts had met with no success. With 8th Army dug in along it's 'last ditch' line at El Alamein, and with Rommel preparing a major offensive to penetrate that line, the ability of the Ju86Rs to run line coverage of large parts of the British defenses and rear areas at regular intervals, effectively unchallenged, was not acceptable.

In an initial bid to counter this menance, half a dozen Spitfire VI high-altitude fighters had arrived in Egfypt. With it's pressurised cockpit, however, this variant was just too heavy to reach the altitude at which the Ju 86R were operating. Engineers at 103 Maintenance Unit at Aboukir then sought to lighten two Spitfire Vs in a similar manner to that employed with the Hurricanes. All unneccessary equipment was removed, including armor and the four .303in machine guns. The engines were modified to gfive an increased compression of 7:1, although this decreased take-off boost, and each fighter was fitted with a four-bladed propeller taken from a Spitfire VI; all protruding nuts were also cut off flush wherever possible. At least three Spitfires, BP985, BR114 and BR234 were modified this way. They were also fitted with locally-manufactured pointed wingtips and an armament of two .50 in Browning machine guns instead of the 20mm cannon."
 
By the way, as far as the P-39 goes, in the Med per Shores (volume IV) the 350th Fighter Group started having a lot more success toward the middle of 1943. Anyone interested in the P39 might want to take a closer look at that unit. Maybe the pilots figured out how to use the plane properly like the Russians did.

Apparently they shifted from 'coastal patrol' to a more active role largely inside Italy in Summer of 1943

350th Fighter Group - Wikipedia
 
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