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

One of the key problems with Germany, and to an extent, Japan, is that their immediate prewar and start of the war aircraft production was not at priority capacity.
It wouldn't be until 1944 for Germany and Japan both, that their aircraft production peaked - two full years after they lost any hope of a win or negotiated peace.

1939, Germany started their war with a production of nearly 8,300 aircraft and Japan, who was already two years into their conflict, produced 4,465 aircraft.
By 1940, the U.S., who was not at war at this point, actually out produced Japan's wartime production with over 6,000 aircraft produced compared to Japan's 4,768.

By 1943, the U.S. has not reached full production yet, manufacturing nearly 84,900 aircraft, which was almost 10,000 more than Japan would manufacture between 1939 and 1945.

In the end, the totals by all nations were:
Japan - 76,320
Germany - 119,907
Britain - 131,549
Soviet Union - 158,220
United States - 300,557

And not only did the U.S. have enough aircraft on hand to wage a global war, but provided aircraft to every Allied nation involved in the war and several nations who were neutral.

So it is safe to say that the U.S. had an impact on the Allied victory.

GrauGeist said:

One of the key problems with Germany, and to an extent, Japan, is that their immediate prewar and start of the war aircraft production was not at priority capacity.
It wouldn't be until 1944 for Germany and Japan both, that their aircraft production peaked - two full years after they lost any hope of a win or negotiated peace.

1939, Germany started their war with a production of nearly 8,300 aircraft and Japan, who was already two years into their conflict, produced 4,465 aircraft.
By 1940, the U.S., who was not at war at this point, actually out produced Japan's wartime production with over 6,000 aircraft produced compared to Japan's 4,768.

By 1943, the U.S. has not reached full production yet, manufacturing nearly 84,900 aircraft, which was almost 10,000 more than Japan would manufacture between 1939 and 1945.

In the end, the totals by all nations were:
Japan - 76,320
Germany - 119,907
Britain - 131,549
Soviet Union - 158,220
United States - 300,557

And not only did the U.S. have enough aircraft on hand to wage a global war, but provided aircraft to every Allied nation involved in the war and several nations who were neutral.
So it's safe to say the US had an impact on the Allied victory.

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I think absolutely the US had a HUGE impact on the war but the assertion brought up by the two posters that got this started was that the allies would have lost without the US or Russia.
Unless one constructs unlikely scenarios like that Japan attacks British and Dutch interests but not US ones and the U.S. supplies nothing to the allies the allies still win even without the U.S. or without Russia but not without both, imho.
One of the reasons I believe this that the British alone were outproducing Germany and not suffering the same atrition. At some point the situation will become untenable for the Germans it would seem.
Of course we'll never know for sure how it would have played out.

Dimlee said:

And someone can say that this just "European" or "pro-Soviet" revisionism.
Operation Barbarossa did not succeed even before serious lend lease supplies started to arrive, indeed. But Barbarossa brought USSR to the brink of collapse. And there were other German operations later which threatened the very existence of the Soviet Union.
Regarding US war materials... If we change the topic of this thread to "which vehicle did the most to turn the tide of the war", I'd suggest Studebaker trucks (probably US6 should be singled out) and Liberty ship. I see no opportunity for the Red/Soviet Army to conduct its large offensive operations in post Kursk period without this equipment.

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And the tons of flour that all this tracks transported...

How about we move this "male member size measuring comparison" competition to its own thread and stop derailing this one? Oh, and try and keep it civil...

ykickamoocow said:

Not entirely relevant to this topic but why wasn't the Mosquito used more than it was? I mean I read that it left for bombing runs over Berlin hours after the Lancasters did and it still made it before the Lancasters in order to mark areas for Lancasters to target. I also know that the Mosquito was far more accurate with its bombings than the Lancasters (eg Operation Jericho) so why was it that thousands more Mosquitoes were not built and them being used to target key infrastructure in Germany to cripple their war effort?

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IIRC there was a bottleneck in the supply of one type of thin laminated wood.

Re accuracy etc, the Mosquito squadron crews were elites, so the standard was higher than most of Bomber Command.

Incidentally, the USAAF also used Mossies as recce aircraft.

Timppa said:

1. Mosquito was operational (and "proved) in 1941, Lancaster only next year
2. For other factories, reverse engineering all-metal Mosquito would not have been so time consuming. Same fuel/electric/engine/landing gear/instrument/weapons/cockpit -systems. Same aerodynamic shape.
Only replacing the structural components with 2024 or 7075 alloys.

Russians did this on the fly.

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It wouldn't be "reverse engineering" - it would be a complete structural redesign. You may also have things such as different cg with metal. And remember that a major reason for going for wood was to avoid possible bottlenecks in alloy supplies.

Note also that by being made of wood the Mosquito also tapped a totally different skill set in the British economy, so avoiding skilled labour bottlenecks. One contractor for the Australian-built mozzies was a piano factory!

TLR - go to metal and you're removing a major part of the Mosquito concept, and taking up engineering time that was scarce.

Dimlee said:

Back to original subject of the airplane turning the tide.

I thought about Eastern Front and began to draw my own list of "tide turners" there... But then I thought again and about the definition of "to turn the tide of the war". And I dropped the list.
In my (so humble) opinion, there were no such aircraft on the Eastern Front.
One could mention Il-2 or Pe-2 - but they were used since summer 1941 and with mixed results. Or La-5 models which helped VVS in critical periods or lend lease bombers as B-25 and A-20 with their reliability and ruggedness. Or omnipresent and multirole PS-84/Li-2, etc. But I don't recall any major battle where one single type (OK, not single but 2-3) of the Soviet aircraft made decisive impact.
There were, however, several "tide turning" factors of which I'd name just a three in no particular order.
1. Improvements in training and education.
2. Change of tactics.
3. Improved supply (including lend leased materials).
Aircraft type could be one or another, Il-2 could be replaced by Su-2, new Yaks could lose competition to I-185 in the corridors of the Kremlin politics, Tu-2 could be accepted in mass production 2 years earlier. But I don't think that any historical or imaginary "wunderSovietwaffe" could turn the tide of events in the East without the factors mentioned above.

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I was thinking along the same lines, that is, are we again forgetting the eastern front and focusing solely on bob and Midway? (At least I think El-Alamain has not popped up).*

It's also what we mean by 'turning the tide'. taken literally, it should mean either high tide or low ebb, and will relate primarily to the map. Then by most accounts the turning point is the autumn of 42, that is after Moscow, Midway and certainly bob. other sharp corners were of course Kursk (and certainly Studebackers were extremely important at least for the speed of the subsequent Soviet advance), The Marianas and D-day, to name a few. In any event I think we are forgetting the inter-relatedness of ares. To take aircraft, the Soviet airforce was tying down the majority of die Luftwaffe until the daylight bombing offensive made for a shift to defence of Das Reich, the Mediterranean was at least a distraction throughout. The salient point being that Germany could not prioritize both, or rather all, of its fronts at the same time. As Evan Mawdsly (2005) mentioned in Thunder in the east Lend-lease worked to the advantage of all the allies. Thus USA got other nations to fill cockpits of more aircraft fighting the axis, and quite often of planes that the forum (mostly) agrees were not the aircraft the USA (or GB) most wanted for their own pilots. Though to be sure, they were sometimes better suited to some of the areas where they fought than to 8 kilometres above Europe, or many hundred miles out to sea in the Pacific.

I do think you are a little harsh on the soviet aircraft (or airforce), it can be argued that in most cases we could imagine other aircraft being equal or even better, still the aircraft that fought were the aircraft that fought. And even if we can't feel confident in accessing the actual effect of aircraft, it is bold to claim the Soviet airforce did not influence the land battle (I am not saying that you make that claim, rather that we lack a big airbattle or great leap in technology as turning point).

Actually i ended up suggesting the Il-2 for the sheer numbers employed, even if we can't find a sharp corner. it seems the Germans were worried enough of the effect of Soviet bombers (or Soviet interceptors) to keep at least some fighters in the east. In that vein, I'd suggest the yak family was important too. No doubt overclaiming of tanks destroyed by IL-2's were wildly exaggerated, but so seem also to be the case for Tempests or any other 'tankbuster'. I would be little surprized if the claims for tanks destroyed by air amounts to more tanks than Germany fielded, for eastern and western theaters both. I have not even tried to count, though.

Soviet (and Italian) air operations are the ones I most wish I knew more about. To take advantage of the people like you here that have the most profound knowledge of the first, I'll start another thread avoiding the word turning point and instead asking about general importance, though that raises other questions of definitions.

*Indeed the bob was significant, but if we argue that it directly led to the invasion of the Soviet Union, we must acknowledge that would have been of little benefit had Barbarossa succeeded.

Shortround6 said:

Reverse engineering the mosquito to use metal construction might not be as easy as you think, certainly not impossible however.

It is not just changing the structural components, it is changing the wing and fuselage skinning. On the Mosquito much of the fuselage strength was in the 'skin". You need to design a whole new fuselage with frames, longerons and stringers to be covered in metal. I am not sure of the wings but again just sticking in metal spars and ribs isn't going to do the trick.

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Obviously wing/fuselage skin were structural components.
IL-2 was fabricated both with wooden and all-metal tail sections (behind the steel shell) and wings.
It is possible that British engineers could not have done that so quickly.
Lazy sods they were.

pinehilljoe said:

The turning point in Europe was November 1942. November '42 was a global Waterloo. Torch, El Alamein, Stalingrad, and Guadalcanal. After November '42, the Germans and Japanese never had a strategic victory.

Overlord wasn't a turning point, it was the final step to victory in the West.

I agree the C-47 was critical, Eisenhower called it one of the most important weapons of the War.

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The list of weapons that Eisenhower supposedly called the most important weapon of the war is endless. Oddly enough they are all American.

Reluctant Poster said:

The list of weapons that Eisenhower supposedly called the most important weapon of the war is endless. Oddly enough they are all American.

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Is that the guy who became US president?

Hmm, Spit and hurricane major contributors to 'stopping' LW control of air over UK - eliminating invasion prior to Barbarossa; IL-2 major contributor to stopping German advance in Ukraine and Russia; SBD major contributor to neutralizing Japan's carrier fleet and subsequent high-water mark in Pacific; P-51B major contributor to achieving air supremacy over Germany and neutralizing LW prospects to disrupt Overlord.. and so on. In the meantime GM vehicles and Douglas transports and Allied naval forces leverage logistics for rapid force movement.. which won the war? Mostly the grunts that lived and died on the ground to recapture lost ground.

Fighterguy said:

Well, wars are won through logistics. With that, I'll go with the C-46 Commando and C-47 Skytrain.

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If wars are won by logistics all aircraft are irrelevant. The amount of cargo carried by aircraft in WWII was insignificant compared to ships, railways and trucks.
It is a very American concept to believe that wars are won by material alone. History give many examples where the materially weaker side won. The French knights at Crecy and Agincourt were lavishly equipped compared to the peasants on the English side. More recently Vietnam would have been over quickly if materiel and logistics were all that matters, but war is more complicated than that.
The US may have supplied many of the tools of war, but war is a very human endeavor and is not won without the sacrifice of flesh and blood. The Russians contributed far more in human lives than the western allies and without that contribution the Germans would not have been defeated..

pbehn said:

Is that the guy who became US president?

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Oh dear

I initially jumped on the C-47 as a major tide-turner but the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that it merits inclusion. Until 1944, the C-47's major contribution was resupplying Guadalcanal Canal and supporting operations in New Guinea which, although the start of the Pacific island-hopping campaign of 1943-44, weren't exactly key to the Allied overall success.

By the time the C-47 truly made an impact on global warfare (to include the massive reinforcement of the resupply effort over The Hump), the writing was already on the wall for the Axis partners. Rather than "turning the tide", perhaps the C-47 simply enabled the coup de grace to be delivered more rapidly?

Glider said:

Oh dear

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Not a bad idea, if you want to become president to be complimentary about the nations industry.

Lots of great picks and insight into planes and other equipment that contributed alot or possibly the most to win the war like the p51, F6F, or B29. Not so sure they did anything to turn the tide however. My impression though I could be wrong( its been known to happen) was the tide had been turned before any of these types or some of the other mid to late war picks had been in combat in any significant numbers if at all.
Just a friendly reminder from your thread sponsor to prevent thead drift.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....................carry on

michael rauls said:

Lots of great picks and insight into planes and other equipment that contributed alot or possibly the most to win the war like the p51, F6F, or B29. Not so sure they did anything to turn the tide however. My impression though I could be wrong( its been known to happen) was the tide had been turned before any of these types or some of the other mid to late war picks had been in combat in any significant numbers if at all.
Just a friendly reminder from your thread sponsor to prevent thead drift.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....................carry on

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You are right, the tide was turned in Nov 42. After Nov 42 the Axis never had a strategic victory, the initiative was lost.

Reluctant Poster said:

The list of weapons that Eisenhower supposedly called the most important weapon of the war is endless. Oddly enough they are all American.

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General Eisenhower's "Four Tools for Victory" were: the Bazooka, the Jeep, the C-47 and the Atomic Bomb.
General Patton stated that "the M1 Rifle is the greatest battle implement ever devised".

All five listed, American or not, were valuable contributors to the war effort and shouldn't be surprising to anyone that these Generals would point out their value.

I think one could put any reasonably successful combat aircraft into an answer and make a case supporting it, but I also believe that the question is not well-posed, in that it's one in which there is no sensible answer.

swampyankee said:

I think one could put any reasonably successful combat aircraft into an answer and make a case supporting it, but I also believe that the question is not well-posed, in that it's one in which there is no sensible answer.

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Agreed.

Considering the war started with biplanes and ended with jets and was waged in nearly every weather condition known to man, there simply isn't a constant where any single aircraft could possibly occupy.

Like while the SBD was the scourge of the Japanese fleet, it saw only limited action in Europe and the MTO. While the Bf109 was a constant threat in Europe and the MTO, there were only 5 in the entire PTO and CBI, none of which ever saw combat.

So perhaps figure out which type was the champion of a particular theater or mission profile?