The airplane that did the most to turn the tide of the war.

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I really don't understand why the Swordfish gets knocked for being a slow speed biplane. Lets face it, what have we replaced it with in the 21st Century? Why, helicopters with the same sort of top speed, naturally.
 
It depends on the role and the weapons the aircraft uses.

Helicopters are not making daylight , short ranged attacks on defended warships to any great extent.

They are not making short ranged night attacks to any great extent either so the radar equipped Swordfish hasn't been replaced either.

Now you do have things like this flying about.


But the stand off distance of the missles changes the whole engagement picture.

Off course the Helicopter that can carry exocet missiles has about zero chance of escaping fighter planes so the ships it is after better not have air support.

Modern Anti sub work has also changed. For a lot of WW II it was a race between the aircraft and the sub, running on the surface, as to which one spotted the other first and if the sub could submerge in enough time before the aircraft reached a weapons release point, faster aircraft having an advantage over slower aircraft here. Now that subs, even diesel electrics, spend much more time under water (and are much faster under water) that race no longer exists.

sensors and weapons have changed anti-sub warfare.


Dipping sonar for one, requires the ability to hover and homing torpedoes vastly expand the weapons release area.

But since these are post war developments (for the most part) speed was needed for many of the missions that torpedo bombers did in WW II.
 

Most of the time, the Swordfish wasn't dropping torpedoes!
 
Kevin J said:
Most of the time, the Swordfish wasn't dropping torpedoes!
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You are right, it wasn't. But that was it's designed role.

And for it's other main role, anti-sub warfare, speed was an asset.

Once the sub was spotted (visually or with radar) an attack run had to made and the Swordfish (or other aircraft) had to get to a firing position (or dropping position) before the sub submerged and moved away form the spotted location. Rockets helped but you still needed to get within 1000yds or under. Now a sub forced under water could very well loose contact with the convoy and loose it's attack opportunity so any attack was a success from that standpoint.

An Avenger, given the same distance from the sub when spotted, could close the distance quicker with better (but by no means guaranteed) chances of success, (sub has less time to move the swirl/submerge location) or is more exposed (less under water) when the rockets arrive.

Now with modern sensors, modern weapons and modern subs, most of this does not apply.
 
I have completed my checks into the Spitfire V candidate. Though I couldn't find any references to Barbarossa plans or operations calling for minimum aircraft to be kept in the West to oppose the RAF I did note from an earlier post that Aircraft were withdrawn from duties in NWEurope to help resist Tunisia landings. So the idea that forces were pinned in the West was not fanciful. Coming back to on-line resources I found this from the Imperial War Museum
"Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 put pressure on the RAF to step up its attacks and tie down as many Luftwaffe fighters as possible in France. Operations became larger and more sophisticated. The so-called 'summer offensive' saw about 90 major sweeps, mostly between Rouen and Lille, alongside Rhubarbs and attacks against coastal shipping (known as 'Roadsteads'). The results were disappointing, and costly. Some 300 RAF pilots were lost. The famous British ace Douglas Bader, who had lost both his legs in a pre-war flying accident, was one of those shot down and captured. Nor did the attacks prevent the Luftwaffe from moving most of its force eastwards. Only two German fighter units with about 200 aircraft remained in France, and these proved more than enough to counter the RAF." What Did Fighter Command Do After The Battle Of Britain?
which puts the tin lid on that explanation.

So, I'm back to first principles. Until otherwise proven, by default, the null hypothesis is that no causal effects exist, all apparent relationships are in fact random. Which is to say the Type and model of aircraft performing the most combat sorties before whatever you consider to be the turn is the one that did the most to turn the tide. Now I'm not saying that he null is true, only that to be reasonable, rational, one would need evidence not opinion to overturn the null.

For example parsifal argued that no fighter could be "the one that did most". As I understand it his argument was that fighters do not by themselves cause strategic change. I think again that this addresses a different form of the question, we are trying to identify the aircraft that did most to turn the tide, not putting up a theory that one model did turn the tide.

Running through the numbers as a summary
Aircraft production
Country 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 Total
U.S. 2,141 6,068 18,466 46,907 84,853 96,270 45,852 300,557
USSR 10,382 10,565 15,737 25,436 34,900 40,300 20,900 158,220
UK 7,940 15,049 20,094 23,672 26,263 26,461 12,070 131,549
Subtotal 22,402 33,622 56,238 97,957 147,959 164,975 80,767 590,326
Cumulative 22,402 56,024 112,262 210,219 358,178 523,153 603,920 (error)
Germany 8,295 10,862 12,401 15,409 24,807 40,593 7,540 119,907
Japan 4,467 4,768 5,088 8,861 16,693 28,180 8,263 76,320
Subtotal 12,762 15,630 17,489 24,270 41,500 68,773 15,803 196,227
Cumulative 12,762 28,392 45,881 70,151 111,651 180,424 196,227
Total 33,225 47,312 71,786 120,285 187,516 231,804 94,625 786,553
Allowing that the RAF rejuvenated in 1941 replacing front line platforms from Spit/Hurri I to II and Blenheim to Wellington
and that Soviets lost all aircraft notionally during Barbarossa 1941
and that only isolated lend-lease units from the USA were in operational use
and that the USAF had not deployed significantly
and neglecting that the USN had significant activity in the time frame (January 1941 - September 1942)
and neglecting that all the P40s everywhere could count as one model
I falsely concluded that from squadron numbers that Spitfire V's flew the most sorties and therefore attempted to explain why they might be influencing the turn (that is the stop) at Stalingrad. That was an error, I should have said it is for others to find evidence why the biggest sortie flyer does not have the most to do with turning the tide. Also I left out the Axis sorties. All we know for sure is that the Allies won and the Axis lost. So it is logically as sound to say that every Axis sortie disadvantaged the Axis as it is to say that every Allied sortie advantaged that side -until otherwise proven. So the answer may quite likely be A6M or Me109.

I hope you can see why I think this approach is promising.
 
The Swordfish was slow, but also very good at its job. This is shown, for one thing that it outlasted one of its successors, the Albacore. It also operated in some appalling weather conditions, which may have been outside of the realm where more modern monoplanes may have been able to fly safely enough for operations.
 
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Did the advantages of being slow, short take off, low landing impact, short stopping distance, low impact of torpedo on release fade with time as carriers became larger, faster, better equipped to launch and recover,, as torpedo ruggedness improved? Did the longer mission times it was built for make for less pilot fatigue? Was the assessment against Albacore statistical or a matter of judgement? I've heard it said that a lot was the Swordfish crews as much as the machine itself that had the advantages. Would you agree? Thanks.
 


I really don't know why the Albacore left service before the Swordfish.
 
swampyankee said:
I really don't know why the Albacore left service before the Swordfish.
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You could swing the initially quite large ASW radar underneath a Swordfish but not an Albacore. The Swordfish had better handling and was more manoeuvrable after a torpedo was dropped. However the Albacore was successfully used for both close and indirect air support over North Africa, and it could dive bomb. The skills needed to navigate over the Sahara Desert were similar to those needed to navigate over an Ocean. Even the Germans used biplanes for close air support at night, Fiat Cr 42's were specifically ordered and used for that purpose.
 
The CR 42s were already there - they had been the primary air superiority fighter in the early days of the Desert War, facing off against Gladiators and later Hurricanes. As the war scaled up and more capable fighters came into the Theater, they were relegated to CAS but they were still flying missions in the day time, not just as night. So long as they had sufficient fighter cover.

However, it wasn't so much a matter of their being ideal for the mission type as they were on hand, as were pilots trained to fly them, and the Axis were desperate for military assets so they did what they could with them. I think it's a very similar story with the Swordfish. It was an obsolete aircraft which, thanks to the ineptitude of the Italians in particular managed to do some damage to the enemy. In the case of the Bismarck they were barely adequate. I still say the SBD would have been a vastly better weapon for that job.

CR 42s were sometimes used in quite large numbers of 40 or 50 aircraft, through the end of 1942. Somewhere on here I posted a breakdown of all the air-victories and losses for Oct 1942 in the Desert War and you'll see several Cr 42s on that list.


And speaking of 1942, per our earlier discussion, I checked my sources for the P-39. The earliest batch which came from the UK amounted to 212 aircraft delivered, mostly in late 1941 and early 1942. It is a stretch to call them "British" P-39s but they were diverted from the British Order and had some British instruments and so on, some of them had 20mm guns. This was the original batch the Soviets worked up from Jan-April 1942.

However, the Americans were sending mostly later model P-39s directly and they began arriving in the Soviet Union from September 1942 via the Iran / Azerbaijan route and in the same month via the Alaska - Siberian route (flying under their own power). So it is incorrect to suggest that there were only ~200 P-39's flying by the time of Stalingrad. By the time the new planes were coming in the Soviets had streamlined the process of adapting them and they could be gotten into action in a matter of a few weeks. 61 P-39D were delivered from the US via Iran before the end of 1942 as well as 50 P-39K. I couldn't determine the number shipped via Alaska.

There were also quite a few Tomahawks already in action in 1941 and early 1942 and there were P-40 units actually in battle at Stalingrad.

From Oct 1941 to April 1942 126 IAP (Tomahawks) flew 666 sorties over Kalinin (Tver) and the Western Front (mostly near Leningrad) and 318 sorties for the defense of Moscow, claiming 29 enemy aircraft for 4 losses. However they lost most of the planes to mechanical problems over the winter including 38 with burst radiators. They were down to 9 flying aircraft by Jan 1942 so most of the victories were in the first two months. They got new (used) P-40E's starting in March in 1942. They were sent to Stalingrad in August 1942. They flew 194 sorties from 28 August to 13 September, mostly escorts to Il2 Sturmoviks. Fighting at Stalingrad at that time was very intense and they were quickly 'reduced'. They claimed 36 aircraft destroyed and lost 13 aircraft and 7 pilots. They were withdrawn on 18 September and re-equipped with La-5s.

154 IAP and 159 IAP, equipped with Tomahawks fought over Leningrad from November 1941, escorting DC-3s contending with the siege of Leningrad (bringing in supplies and bringing out wounded). By March 1942 they were getting Kittyhawks as replacements for their Tomahawks. Total deliveries of P-40s to the Northern route via Murmansk was 272 in 1942 and 108 in 1943.

147 IAP / 20 GIAP was transitioned from Hurricanes to Tomahawk IIB and Kittyhawk P-40E by May 1942. They used the P-40 (mostly P-40E and K) through the end of 1943 after which they transitioned to the P-39N. They lost 38 P-40's in 1942 and 26 in 1943, of which 35 were lost in air combat. Victory claim numbers for the unit have been lost but since they retained the Guards designation must have been high.
 
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Stig1207 said:
So the Soviets method of confirming victory claims was more credible and effective than that of the other airforces, Allied and Axis?
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I never made that claim, and wouldn't make such an assumption. Claims verification processes for every air force and every side evolved during the War. The Soviet leadership, like all parties involved in the war, wanted and needed to know how many enemy aircraft their fighter pilots were actually shooting down.

The process of recovering the metal identity plates from the downed enemy fighters wasn't fool-proof. Aircraft lost to engine trouble, or shot down by another plane that didn't make a claim, or shot down by flak could be claimed that way. But I do believe it reduced the number of false claims.

The reality is that all sides had errors in their claiming process, and all sides overclaimed. The Germans were hardly immune to this problem as is very clear in the records.

Based on Christer Bregstroms Black Cross / Red Star, which can hardly be called pro-Soviet in it's bias, the raw numbers reveal that the Soviet overclaiming, while fairly high was not astronomically higher than the Germans. I think you probably know this.
 

Go look at the production numbers, 692 by Fairey in the initial pre war and early war production runs followed by 1699 out of Blackburn from 1941. If I'm not mistaken then this means that the FAA would have to have trained a substantial number of pilots post BoB to fly them.
 


I suspect that command — any command — is far less interested in how many planes pilot X shot down than the collective number shot down in an operation or an operational area.
 
swampyankee said:
I suspect that command — any command — is far less interested in how many planes pilot X shot down than the collective number shot down in an operation or an operational area.
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sorry to but in, but you say the operation or operational area?
Would the scope of interest get wider with rank and time? For example a commander at Dunkirk might worry about each separate days sorties getting kills to protect his beaches. In 11 Group Parks had to be concerned about trends in kills and losses in his area at a week's distance perhaps, Dowding might be interested in the implications on reserves, rotation of squadrons and the same for the enemy in a month. CAS might take a force balance view over the next say 6 months, Chiefs Of Staff/Cabinet might suggest changes of strategy even of war aims over a year or three on the basis of whole force analysis and diplomacy/intelligence.

I ask because of the approach I'm trying to Stalingrad as a turning point and the possible contribution of Spitfire Vs and Hurricane IIs in France a year of less before Stalingrad. Aircraft being so potentially quick to move from Russia to the Atlantic seaboard if necessary, or out of production to one front or another.

It all hangs on what a turning point is, is it in an operation, in a theatre or in the world as a whole?

Thanks

I'm sure you have read this before, but it's what prompted my question: The Circus/Rhubarb operations were aimed to relieve pressure on the Soviets but they had no way to measure success it seems, I don't know much about the Eastern front but checking what i have it doesn't seem that the planning for Barbarossa had any concern for the threat from British attacks, not even to say these could only be nuisance raids. Nor any later high command level concerns. Do you perhaps know where or under what heading I might find a discussion at that level? Or do you happen to know there were none as at that level the British efforts were a non-problem? I find plenty about Churchill giving assurances to Stalin. Plenty saying the "lean forward" was a mistake in kill/loss terms. But nothing to say it definitely did or didn't help in the East.
1941: The Difficult Year — Articles | 1941 | history
 
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Schweik said:
The Soviets should have known better since they actually helped the Germans redevelop the Luftwaffe on Soviet territory in the 30's, allowing them to evade Versailles Treaty monitoring.
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Just for the sake of accuracy: German flight school in Lipetsk, USSR was operational 1925-1933, testing centre at the same school 1928-1933.
 
BBear good data but their is a slight flaw in it. The year was added into the subtotal for the allies. I corrected it and played around with it in a spreadsheet.


Re posted with some corrections.
Added more corrections
 

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swampyankee said:
I suspect that command — any command — is far less interested in how many planes pilot X shot down than the collective number shot down in an operation or an operational area.
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Yes I agree, though for the Soviet VVS that could come down to individual squadrons.

The issue is that so much fighter combat took place at the individual level and the pilot doing the shooting was quite often the only, and usually at least the first person to be able to indicate that an enemy aircraft was shot down to begin with. The Soviets did not relish the individualism of fighter pilots and more than any other State I am aware of, emphasized group victories in terms of giving credit. But inevitably certain individuals stood out, and as their successes were good for morale, they were increasingly tolerated.

But the main issue of course was evaluating effectiveness by aircraft type, aircraft manufacturer, unit / leadership and training.

The higher leadership needed to know which aircraft and which pilots were scoring victories. Both aircraft quality and pilot training were critical issues for the Soviets - they had a wide variety of aircraft deployed, both native made and foreign types, and an equally wide range of different levels of pilot training. Even within a specific type - an LaGG-3 or Yak-1 for example, could range enormously in build quality from given factories from essentially flying coffins / unusable with very low victory to loss ratios, to fairly good aircraft close to parity with the Germans. Similarly, some of their Lend Lease fighters had serious maintenance issues, or were clapped out (including many hand-me-downs from fighting in North Africa for example) and weren't performing up to par.

A badly made Soviet fighter might have so many holes, gaps and other construction defects (landing gear not fully closing and so forth) that due to the induced drag it flew 20 or 30 mph less than it should have, and in many cases the canopies were so poorly made that the pilots didn't trust them to come off if they needed to bail out so they flew without them which cost another 30 or 40 mph or more (this is not unique to the Soviets mind you, but happened with many early war types all over the world with maintenance challenges). Wood could delaminate and fall apart. Fuel and hydraulic fluid leaks could start fires. Soviet leaders needed to know which aircraft and which with modifications (they were constantly trying minor tweaks to designs) they were getting the job done. They were facing annihilation.

And the Anglo-American fighters could be almost as bad - several hundred planes in the early deliveries had already seen combat in North Africa or elsewhere and in many cases the engines were either already worn out or shortly after arrival (due to things like overboosting engines and inadequate engine oil filtration and so on) got burned out in a matter of weeks, and were delivering 70-80% of their rated horsepower or even less. Airframes too got worn out and even the airframe could be below par- wings sometimes had a set from high G turns and so on. Then once Winter conditions set in the Soviet mechanics had to scramble to figure out how to prep them for 40 below temperatures, and that was another steep learning curve.

As for training, it also varied quite widely. To give one example from the P-40 in Soviet Aviation article:

"The 6th ZAB was one of the best-equipped training bases in the Soviet VVS. Pilots trained here practiced not only takeoffs and landings but also gunnery at both air and ground targets, solo and group flight and tactics. Therefore the majority of units that were trained here achieved success at the front and became guards units. Thus, 436th and 46th IAP, for combat on the Northwest Front (flying the P-40) were reformed in March 1943 as the 67th and 68th Guards IAP; the 10th IAP was reformed as the 69th Guards IAP and re-equipped with Airacobras. Many foreign units also passed through training here - the Normandie squadron, 1st Czechoslovakian IAP, and others. "

This is much better conversion training than some Anglo-American units got in 1941 or 1942. Training in aerial gunnery, individual and group combat, strafing and navigation would have been very welcome for many DAF squadrons in North Africa, who had to extemporize training techniques and the RAAF squadrons who had to defend Darwin and Port Moresby. Same for a lot of American fighter pilots in the early days of WW2, many of whom had as little as 20 -40 hours on type before going into combat (for example the 49th FG also over Darwin, who luckily for them had very good leadership which helped compensate for this deadly lapse to some extent).

So units going through an outfit like the 6th ZAB would have a much higher ratio of victories to losses than units flying identical aircraft but with less effective or more hasty training, which was much more the norm particularly in 1941 or most of 1942.

This was quite evident with the Lend Lease aircraft - most of the Soviet P-39 units as we know did well, some spectacularly well, but some had fairly dismal records and were quickly rotated out of the front - again an indication that the higher command was paying close attention. It's unclear from my sources what the problem was - local climatic conditions, mechanical issues, training or leadership, or just the quality of the local opposition or bad luck with the group of pilots recruited for that squadron. The Soviet Leadership couldn't always determine why a given unit was performing poorly (or well - some units with inferior planes like LaGG-3 did unusually well for example) but they could respond accordingly - bad units were rotated out and either eliminated or assigned different duties (one badly performing P-39 unit was assigned to fly ferry flights which was probably a stroke of luck for them) or transitioned to different aircraft. They only had so many good fighter aircraft and they desperately needed to get the most mileage out of every one they had. High performing units were assigned 'Guards' designation, given priority treatment in terms of support and were also given better planes if possible.

Bottom line is that they of course needed to know how many planes were being shot down by their fighters and they did what they could to ensure that they did know. The trail of determining if an enemy aircraft was destroyed usually started with the fighter pilot who shot it down, and the policy of recovering crashed aircraft was one way they tried to determine if the claim was valid. Much like Anglo-Americans added gun cameras and also sometimes required identifying wrecked aircraft where possible (i.e. not shot down over water or deep into enemy territory).


During WW II, the Soviet leadership had to rapidly evolve their air forces (VVS, PVO, Navy etc.) from antiquated, poorly trained units flying open cockpit, stubby mid-30's vintage I-153 biplanes and I-16 series monoplanes, and burned out Hurricanes and Tomahawks, to excellent, cannon armed, streamlined 400 mph + La 7, Yak 3 and Yak 9s, late model P-39s and P-63s escorting increasingly deadly Il-2, Pe-2 and Tu-2 bombers and attack aircraft. In 1942 and 1943 they straightened out most of their production problems, improved their designs, imposed uniformity in manufacturing at least to some extent, and greatly improved the management of Lend Lease and other foreign aircraft (P-40, P-39, Spitfire, A-20, DC-3) vis a vis maintenance, winterization and training, and determination of the specific roles where each type would be best suited. They did so under the most difficult and brutal conditions imaginable and had effectively transformed their air forces by mid 1943 into something that the once dominant Luftwaffe could no longer handle except locally and for a short duration.
 
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MakerDude said:
BBear good data but their is a slight flaw in it. The year was added into the subtotal for the allies. I corrected it and played around with it in a spreadsheet.
View attachment 534641

Re posted with some corrections.
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Thanks very much for sorting out my clumsy error. The data is national WW2 museum sourced though their fact sheet link is inoperative and only an incomplete table is currently available. The exact numbers appear to be adjusted or updated. There is a claim that the table disagrees with other sources. With that caveat and a few checks I think it's ok. I'd be a bit shocked if the national museum was dud. But these days, who knows. Their website doesn't fill me with confidence I have to say. Numbers for the USSR will be the weak point if any I suspect.

The obvious feature is the one you've high lighted, production for the USA dwarfs all else by the end of 1942 and counting Lend Lease and other support to USSR other allies and the power of the war $ is plain. And I believe that was achieved on an economy only 50% devoted of war by %of GDP counted at war's end IIRC.

You also pick out the jump in UK production as total war was engaged.

This data is close as we can come to an idea of forces or at least the potential for force balance. Data for deployment of RAF June 1942 and Luftwaffe September 1942 I posted already if I find similar data for the USSR and Japan, and the US Navy, we're set for a lower level of analysis.

But even then allowing for losses and replacements, I think there is an intimation at least that UK forces must have dominated in scale the remaining USSR force June 1941 - September 1942. I believe their factories had reorganised by about June 1942. So the products of that period from the deployment data for RAF June 1942 were very roughly all the air power making sorties against the Luftwaffe in the approach to the stopping of the tide before Stalingrad. And whichever one did the most sorties, is the answer : aircraft that did the most (an answer to my version of the word 'turn').

Now that is still an hypothesis and there are other contenders for whom an equally strong* argument can be made**. In any case it's more the method that interests me, not the result.


*(equally weak at the moment)
** P40, IL-2, Yak-3, TBD,
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EDIT added
There weren't enough P 40's produced and delivered in the relevant period to September 1942 (7,000?) to get close to the 10's of 1000's of Spit. V's or IL2s, Most IL-2s deployed had not seen action on that dateline (though there was a dramatic shift round straight after). TBD's only existed in tiny numbers.

However coming up on the rails from nowhere is - the Lockheed Hudson which with an installed base with British and Commonwealth force of 65 Squadrons 500 perhaps in similar use as for Coastal Command (200 RAF CC,) used as Maritime patrol/anti-surface may have clocked up a credible 50,000 sorties*

* better estimate to follow : currrently estimated in the period June 41 to September 42. (15 months, out of 6 years, RAF CC where 200 made 240,000/6/1.25/500 sorties = 24,000 sorties, or 50 missions per day for the 200 which seems like remarkable reliability. I assume equivalent patrol/anti-surface role use across commonwealth - 50,000 missions is a low estimate )

So, despite never being posted to Midway or Stalingrad or Malta or North Africa possibly - that's my new answer. Lockheed Hudson did the most.
 
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