pathchampion
Recruit
- 6
- Jul 6, 2006
but, I could imagine that i wouldnt be fun for a US pilot in a P-51 to go "one on one" against Erich Hartmann in a Me-109 K4 or Gerhar Barkhorn in his Fw-90 D9
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Put Hartmann in the P-51 and Pretty in the K-4.... Johnson in the D-9 and Barkhorn in the 47-M.
I think I'd rather have Pretty in the K-4 and chase her with Preddy in the 51..
Ive been watchin this little story with great amusement... Atleast Bill was able to point it out.... The original poster, madmax, wrote Pretty and it kept on going.... It is infact George Preddy...
Nice one Bill..
Good first period, lots of bangin bodies....
My kind of hockey...
[quote="Soren]
The Bf-109 was a MUCH better pure fighter than the P-51.
The P-51 was out-runned, out-turned, out-rolled and out-climbed by the 109K series, and everything but out-runned by the G series.
With a properly trained pilot in each a/c, the Bf-109 would make mince meat of a P-51 in a dogfight !
However all this being said, the P-51 wasnt "Designed" as a pure fighter like the 109, but as an escort-fighter, at which role it operated nicely.
So the P-51 was by no means a failure, just not the wonder-plane some people thought/think it was.
An American pilot even said he could easely take on two or three P-51 Mustangs in his 109.
The P-38 could have been the plane very easily but production was never high enough. The AAF averaged 1,200 servicable P-38s World wide at any one time in '43 and 2,500 in '44/'45. It was only second sourced in Jan. '45!
The Fw-190 was very versatile too able to effectively fill many rolls.
The P-47 was good to, at least equal to the '51 interestingly in '44 it cost only $11,569 less than the P-38, $85,578 to $97,147.
wmaxt
One thing all these aircraft had over the P 51 was availability at altitude prior to 1943 and 1944 for the P 51D. Speaking as a Brit we needed to stop raids on UK in 1940 not 1943. The 109s record of being a LW front line fighter from before the start to the end counts for a lot in my book. The P51 was exceptionally good at something the US desperately needed a good plane for, long range escort missions. However it won by weight of allied numbers not by individual performance. To perform deep penetration raids a bomber group needed four waves of escorts many of which were P47s or others and by the time the P51D was arriving in Europe the Germans had the Me262. I am not dissing the P51, just sayin'.I believe you overrate the 109 as much or more than you claim the P-51 is overrated....
One thing all these aircraft had over the P 51 was availability at altitude prior to 1943 and 1944 for the P 51D. Speaking as a Brit we needed to stop raids on UK in 1940 not 1943. The 109s record of being a LW front line fighter from before the start to the end counts for a lot in my book. The P51 was exceptionally good at something the US desperately needed a good plane for, long range escort missions. However it won by weight of allied numbers not by individual performance. To perform deep penetration raids a bomber group needed four waves of escorts many of which were P47s or others and by the time the P51D was arriving in Europe the Germans had the Me262. I am not dissing the P51, just sayin'.
I don't think any were really saying it was inferior, I prefer not to get into discussions about performance, unless there was a big difference then other factors were more important. The Hurricane was inferior in almost all respects to the 109 but did its job perfectly adequately in 1940 despite being approx 30 MPH slower.I don't disagree with anything you said, however, the 51 wasn't as inferior as a combat fighter as some in this thread have claimed, and in some cases, it was superior...in other words, it could hold its own against anything the Germans had except for the 262...