What did Australians train in to be unused to 1000HP engines and fixed U/C? How did their training differ from other RAF units? I thought the majority converted from Hurricanes.
P40 Vs all other fighters in Europe (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter denny
- Start date
It was a medium range fighter. Which is to say, it seems to have had about twice the effective range of a Spit V, 109E or F, of MC 202. Or most of the Soviet fighters.
The relevance in the Med was that the Spitfires were almost always used for point defense and rarely for escorting strikes, except when they were really close to the base.
I have no idea, I am just referring to what happened when the Australian 75th FS were flying their new P-40s across Australia, from the South to Darwin. Two of the issues they mentioned was engine torque and retractable landing gear. They made about 6 hops and lost about 2/3 of their fighters in the process. Same thing happened to the 49th FG on their way up, and then again to the RAAF 74th FS. Some of the aircraft were later repaired and flown up.
wuzak
Captain
It is instructive to know how important that the northern desert campaign was for the RAF and Luftwaffe to see what aircraft they did and did not use.
The RAF used the Tomahawk II and Hurricane II, but did not, initially, use Spitfires, of any mark, in theatre.
The Luftwaffe initially used the Bf 109E, though the Bf 109F had entered service nearly a year before Tomahawks show up in North Africa. The Bf 109F-4 had entered Luftwaffe service in July 1941. The Bf 109G-1 started production in early 1942.
The Focke Wulf Fw 190 did not appear in North Africa for more than a year after its debut in Europe,
I thought you were discussing N Africa. That is just lack of training.
The US top leadership (i.e. FDR, George Marshall) knew that the US was probably going to end up fighting the Germans and would be allied with England and France. They also knew England and France were going to be fighting sooner. So it made sense to give priority to these soon to be Allied nations for the early ramp up in military aircraft production, which is something they did quite deliberately. Thus conferring upon the French and the British their best attack bombers etc.
They were, though they suffered at the hands of P-40s in China
Partly because they knew they were going to start the war, while some of the Allied leadership was still hoping they could prevent it.
They had a lot of problems in N. Africa too. According to squadron leaders like Billy Drake, Clive Caldwell, Eddie Edwards, Bobby Gibbes etc., the British / Commonwealth pilots there had basically zero gunnery training (until Caldwell invented some system of shooting at shadows) and had almost no combat training in North Africa in the early years.
Actually the war started with the Italians using CR 32s against British Gladiators (plus Lysanders and various other oddball crates), which were about evenly matched. Then the British sent in Hurricanes and the Italians Cr 42s and a few MC 200s, but the Hurricanes had the better of it. So the Germans initially sent in Bf 110s, which were not good enough. Then the Germans sent JG.27 with the 109E, which swung the balance back in their favor, and the British sent Tomahawks in fall of 1941. J.G. 27 was still dominating the British but after a couple of rough days the Germans brought in the 109F-2, the British sent Kittyhawks, then the Italians started sending more and more MC 202s, and then the Spitfires came in mid 1942. The US came with P-40Fs and P-38s, and then the Germans sent F-4s and G-2s, and some Fw 190s, and brought in some more squadrons of Bf 109s (JG 77 and part of 53) as J.G 27 was finally broken.
So it was, IMO, more of a tit for tat which gradually escalated both in the scale and quality of the aircraft.
However, while it's true that neither side sent their very best fighters at first, that doesn't mean it was an unimportant Theater. The importance ramped up from a backwater to a raging full scale war. The British having suffered a 'near thing' at the Battle of Britain, hoarded their Spitfires for a while, but eventually they started deploying them because the threat to the Suez etc. was getting very real. The Germans were already facing a mounting emergency in Russia, even before Stalingrad - which felt more existential. The Russians would eventually be in Berlin after all. But they saw an opportunity to choke off British lines of communication to India etc. so they made a serious effort.
Shortround6
Lieutenant General
Well, the world standard was certainly varied 
The Hawk 75 is supposed to be the best the French could get.
I haven't compared training times or time in service.
However the Hawk 75 and the P-36 were both noted for structural weaknesses, one reason the P-40 may have porked up?
There was a French officer running around Buffalo trying to by 30 wing sets in Dec 1939/Jan 1940 as they had about 30 planes grounded because they had no spare wings.
The French had purchased (in money value) the equivalent of 50 airframes for 200 complete aircraft.
Reasons looked into were damage due to gun fire, wing failures due to high stresses at poor wartime airdromes and a high rate of landing accidents, plus an insufficient order for spare parts.
It does make you wonder what the rest of the French fighters were like?
While the maneuverability of the Hawk 75 is often mentioned against the Spitfire what is often left out is that the Spitfire could enter or break off combat at will due it's superior speed. The test Spitfire was number K9944 was one of the first 215 or so flown and while it is highly doubt it had a fixed pitch prop it is very likely it used a two pitch prop while the Hawk had a constant speed prop. The constant speed prop reduced the climb 20,000ft from 11.3 minutes to 7.7 minutes.
The Hawk 75 is supposed to be the best the French could get.
I haven't compared training times or time in service.
However the Hawk 75 and the P-36 were both noted for structural weaknesses, one reason the P-40 may have porked up?
There was a French officer running around Buffalo trying to by 30 wing sets in Dec 1939/Jan 1940 as they had about 30 planes grounded because they had no spare wings.
The French had purchased (in money value) the equivalent of 50 airframes for 200 complete aircraft.
Reasons looked into were damage due to gun fire, wing failures due to high stresses at poor wartime airdromes and a high rate of landing accidents, plus an insufficient order for spare parts.
It does make you wonder what the rest of the French fighters were like?
While the maneuverability of the Hawk 75 is often mentioned against the Spitfire what is often left out is that the Spitfire could enter or break off combat at will due it's superior speed. The test Spitfire was number K9944 was one of the first 215 or so flown and while it is highly doubt it had a fixed pitch prop it is very likely it used a two pitch prop while the Hawk had a constant speed prop. The constant speed prop reduced the climb 20,000ft from 11.3 minutes to 7.7 minutes.
Thumpalumpacus
Colonel
Thanks for the leads, I'm bookmarking this post to add to the shopping list once I catch up on current reading.
Well, the world standard was certainly varied
The Hawk 75 is supposed to be the best the French could get.
I haven't compared training times or time in service.
However the Hawk 75 and the P-36 were both noted for structural weaknesses, one reason the P-40 may have porked up?
There was a French officer running around Buffalo trying to by 30 wing sets in Dec 1939/Jan 1940 as they had about 30 planes grounded because they had no spare wings.
The French had purchased (in money value) the equivalent of 50 airframes for 200 complete aircraft.
Reasons looked into were damage due to gun fire, wing failures due to high stresses at poor wartime airdromes and a high rate of landing accidents, plus an insufficient order for spare parts.
It does make you wonder what the rest of the French fighters were like?
While the maneuverability of the Hawk 75 is often mentioned against the Spitfire what is often left out is that the Spitfire could enter or break off combat at will due it's superior speed. The test Spitfire was number K9944 was one of the first 215 or so flown and while it is highly doubt it had a fixed pitch prop it is very likely it used a two pitch prop while the Hawk had a constant speed prop. The constant speed prop reduced the climb 20,000ft from 11.3 minutes to 7.7 minutes.
I suspect the D.520 was actually the best fighter the French had, they just had so little time to get used to it before the battle started, and relatively few of them were even out with their units and so on. D.520 was considerably faster than the Hawk 75, much better armed (with a 20mm HS.404) and being smaller, inline engined and nicely streamlined probably kept up a better combat speed. The D.520 had armor and a self sealing fuel tank too. I think the Hawk maybe had some armor?
The French didn't seem to have any complaints about the sturdiness of the Hawk 75 during the BoF though, to the contrary, they said it was a beast. They also did pretty well with it against the US Navy during Torch as I pointed out before (actually with both the Hawk 75 and the D.520).
It was, but it was a lot more difficult to fly and train on, the Hawk 75 was praised because of its ease of handling. The MS.406 was the most numerous French fighter at the time of the German invasion.
Shortround6
Lieutenant General
It does help to figure how they were really using it.
The gross weight usually listed for was with 120 US gallons of fuel.
They could put 160 US gallon into a P-40B or early Tomahawk. The later ones got about 135 US gallons but could be fitted with the drop tank.
But then you have to figure the performance loss (climb and turn) for the extra fuel/oil load.
Jabberwocky
Tech Sergeant
The RAAF pranged a lot of Spitfires around Darwin as well.
Anthony Cooper's Darwin Spitfires book gives 36 Spitfire VCs damaged badly enough during takeoff or landing between February and September 1943 to require attention from the Repair and Servicing unit. He attributes this to the conditions inherent to the bush airfields the Spitfires were operating from. These were narrow and made of dirt (compared to the wide grassy airfields used by in the UK and in NSW). Of the 36 Spitfires, only seven (~20%) were actually damaged at the main paved Darwin airfield, the rest were damaged at the smaller ancillary dirt fields.
The number of P-40s in theatre at the time was small by comparison however and they weren't at that time everywhere the Japanese were going. The Ki-27 was used against the Soviet Union, whose fighters were more of the type the Japanese were expected to encounter. The problem is that believing that fixed undercarriage is behind the times doesn't equate to the status quo at the time and as we know, at the time the Ki-43 and A6M were undergoing development; fully modern and in the case of the A6M, the best and most modern aircraft carrier fighter of the age.
True, but politics enters the fray and frowns upon the USA from overtly supporting the Allied war effort. The US was, at the time, as it is today politically divided, over the war. Needless to say though, FDR was very keen on providing the Allies military hardware.
Obviously. Fully because their intentions were to make war in Western Europe despite the machinations of other European leaders.
All of that is true for every longer ranged fighter; P-51Ds didn't handle so well with a full load of fuel either. The idea was that they usually encountered enemy fighters near or over the target area, by which time they had burned off most of the less conveniently located (as in in external or overload tanks) fuel while taking off, climbing up to altitude, and flying to the target. If they were jumped early on a strike when they had drop tanks they sometimes had to jettison the tanks and abort the mission in order to defend themselves.
I thought the P-40B couldn't take a drop tank, but the P-40C could. I may be remembering wrong.
Didn't the Spitfire have an unprotected or lightly protected (i.e. no self sealing) fuel tank in front of the pilot?
Shortround6
Lieutenant General
Well, they were having trouble with the wings, and they broke at least one (some stories say several) when they tried to do acrobatics with the behind the seat tank filled. That was more of a too far aft CG thing.
Problem is that the active French campaign was so short and chaotic that that reports more than losses are hard to come by, like maintenance problems.
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Yes. MS 406 was a 30's era fighter whose time had come and gone. And lets not forget the Bloch 150 / 152 series, which seems to have been a dud.
But it's not really clear because the Bloch 150 series, like so many French planes, really never had a proper work up / shakeout before the war started. Many of them were not even fully equipped (with radios, all their guns, instruments etc.) before they went into combat.
Same for the D.520. They just got to the units and were just starting to learn to fly them when the fighting really started. Whereas IIRC there were several French squadrons which had already been flying the Hawk 75s a few months (?) before the fighting started. I don't remember the exact dates but I know they had more time on it. The French also had some other promising types just coming out like the VG 33 / 35 series and some interesting attack planes like the Breguet 693 which might have done a lot better if they had time to get them worked up and maybe tweak the tactics a little.
Shortround6
Lieutenant General
Point is you can you have the extra fuel or you can have the weight penalty.
If the Germans are operating at less than a full load they have the advantage.
If your Hurricane is operating at, say 50% full (combat then getting home) then a P-40 isn't going to have much more fuel or it is going to be carrying more weight.
Thumpalumpacus
Colonel
I just want to say that nice discussions like this, thick with information, are one of the reasons I love reading here.
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