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A point to make here. It was stated, quite correctly, that it was tough to tell by asking pilots.
Let's examine that.
Let's take a American pilot who was trained in the U.S.A. and then was posted to Europe flying P-51's. And let's say he has lived and flown 15 missions. The P-51 is his sum total fighter experience and he is till alive, so the P-51 is "tops!"
Talk to a British Spitfire pilot and the Spitfire is "tops."
Talk to a German and whichever of the main fighters HE was assigned to was "tops."
Then we have people like Capt. Eric Brown of the RAF who flew more different types than any other test pilot. He may or may not have been a normal squardron pilot, and so may or may not have been in air combat. If he WAS in air combat, my bet is that he was mostly in one type of fighter. That is, he probably didn't do a tour in Spits followwed by a tour in Hurricanes followed by a tour in Tronados followed by a tour in Mustangs.
When test flying, the test pilot rarely achieves complete knowledge of the flight characteristics of the type. He is much more concerned with flight at the edges of the performance envlope. That is, top speed, best rate of climb, best angle of climb, stall speed, max speed in a dive, etc.
So ... I contend we'll never reach a consensus of which was the best.
The Mustang had some great characteristics and I am American, so I like it. I still don't think it was quite the dogfighter that the Spitfire was and didn't have the armament of an Fw 190. If usually had an edge in SOME area against almost any opponent and that edge was used by the Mustang drivers to win fights.
The same can be said of La-5's, Yak-3's, Fw 190's, Bf 109's, etc.
It is a TOUGH thing to pick a "best" when all the designers were striving for that exact thing, and all were coming very close!
The fun is in the trying!
I volunteer at a museum every weekend taht flies WWII warbirds every week. We fly Mustangs more often than most, but that is because we have more spare Mustang parts than any other parts. We only fly the P-47G about once or twice a year, and the Spitfires (a Mk IX and a Mk XIV) are privately owned and fly when the owner wahts them to fly. Our P-38 flies 5 - 10 times per year depending on what is happening, and the P-40 flies more than most others.
these are all old fighters in civilian hands and we don't fly them at the edges of the performance envelope, so we'd NEVER know which was the best when pushed to the limits because we don't push them to the limits on purpose!
It makes these threads all the more fun!Cheers to you.
What a piece of wartime propaganda!
In a level turn at a particular speed and "g" loading, all aircraft turn with the same radius.
I also wanted to comment on the turning circle chart above. What a piece of wartime propaganda!
The important curve is the "g-availble" curve. Since the Spitfire had a lower wing loading than most of its opponents, it could pull more "g" without stalling, and so could turn tighter, but at the cost of higher g-loading.
The turning circle chart makes it appear as though the Spitfire could turn tighter easily as a matter of course, but tThat is true ONLY if the Spit driver is pulling more g's and is only one aspect of dogfighting.
.And not very well I might add.... Those kind of diagrams suck and do nothing more than incorrectly inform the general public....It's also true about sustained turns. The diagram is meant to show overall turning performance, though
Be very careful using the WWIIaircraftperformance site as reference for German fighter performance as it has a habbit of presenting the very lowest of figures obtainable in this area - the author being known for his bias toward Allied a/c.
Nontheless it is a good source for info on allied a/c, but please draw your conclusion(s) from the originial data available and not from what someone says !
As to the P-51 maneuverability, well at low to medium speeds it was clumsy compared to the German fighters while at high speed it could compete.
Suppose we want to have a level flight turning battle between tehse two aircraft (would WE want that?). Further, suppose we want both planes to have a 10% buffer in speed.
Spitfire: 80 mph + 10% = 88.0 mph. Now, suppose we pull 8g. The stall speed will be 248.9 mph. The radius of turn is 521.8 feet.
Fw 190D: 85 mph + 10% = 93.5 mph. Now, suppose we pull 8g. The stall speed will be 264.46 mph and the turn radius will be 589.1 feet.
Mike Williams said:Read a couple of hundred of these P-51 Encounter Reports, go ahead – set aside a few hours and do it, you won't regret the time spent - you can't help but be impressed with the P-51's capability.
The airplane is very maneuverable with excellent controllability at all speeds up to slightly over 400 MPH indicated, the highest speeds attained in level flight. Stability is good about all axes, and recovery from stalls is normal. The airplane has a fairly short radius of turn and an excellent rate of roll."