What is one plane that is underappreciated for how effective it was in combat?

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With regards to the gun, maybe...don't think I'd want to try tank-busting in a B-25H.
Very few machines saw combat with the 75mm very late in the war.
The lion's share was done with the mk 101 and mk103 30mm cannons, which was effective for most situations till the end, I believe.
That Panzerjager book talks about the attempt ls to fit a Pak 40 in a Ju88 then they tried a 129 when that failed ...I can PM or post those pages if you'd like...
 
Just my opinion, but the gun has a low muzzle velocity and needs to be manually loaded-will need to fly higher, straighter runs if you want to get more than 1 round off -not sure of armour on the 25 but think you'd get chewed pretty good, it's a big target too.Ju88 was washed out for the same reasons.
IIRC, read somewhere (book had some errors, take it with a grain of salt) that the Soviets pulled their A-20s from the deck-level bombing/strafing/infantry support role because of losses.
Takes a special-purpose aircraft to survive down there.
This is from a JU88 unit during Barbarossa, book is Junkers Ju88 kampgeschwader on the Russian Front
 
Venomstick121 said:
Why not?
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The problem is not so much with the gun itself but the ranges and aiming.
Using a gun that can shoot through the back of a Panther tank at close to 1000yds, should do the trick.....
except.......
They never got off more than 3 shots when attacking a freighter on one firing pass.
The sight system sucked, they were not using a telescope like a tank did. Do you really want the pilot flying at 250-280mph 50-150 ft off the ground squinting through scope that distorts his vison/depth perception?
The plane moves so much from shot to shot that every shot is a first shot, there is no correcting from the results of the first shot since the plane has changed location by hundreds of yds.

B-25s (and Ju-88s) are rather large targets compared to fighters (or even Hurricane IIDs or Ju 87s)
Hurricane IIDs or Ju 87s sometimes got several hundred pounds of extra armor when playing tank buster.
This was pretty much to defend against rifle caliber guns, Trying to armor against 20mm guns (or most 12.7mm guns) was very hard (read heavy).
 
How about the Folland Gnat? Designed by W.E.Petter of Westland Whirlwind and Lysander, English Electric Lighting and Canberra fame.



This diminutive trainer come fighter earned the nickname, Sabre Slayer during the Indo-Pakistani War.

Gnat – The IAF’s Small “Sabre Slayer”

The Gnat’s hour of glory came during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War. The IAF’s Gnat pilots quickly learned to engage the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Canadair F-86 Sabre jet, considered the best dogfighter of the period. In all, seven Sabres were shot down.
www.sps-aviation.com
 
One of my earliest memories of anything to do with aeroplanes was seeing the Red Arrows at Middleton St George, th Gnat was far too pretty to ever be considered for combat, almost sinful TBH.
 
pbehn said:
Just forget about the fuel, simples.
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I think Petter took this approach in most of his fast aircraft, with his Lightning needing a belly bulge just to be relevant to its intended mission. Petter's Whirlwind could have had much better endurance had the wings between the engines and fuselage been used for fuel, with the radiators under the wings rather than within them. As it was, just two tanks in the outer wings were the entirety of his design's fuel allotment.

 
re the Whirlwind

Just providing underwing DTs for the Whirlwind would ~double the combat/operational radius. I suspect this would have occurred if the aircraft had been slotted for a future.

re the EE Lightning

To be fair, when the Lightning was designed the need for fast climb and top speed was seen as more important than range - returning to base radioactive crater was considered secondary to best chance of successful intercept.
 
In it's day it was highly respected, but now, it's been so long since its been a front line fighter, I think most people don't even consider that it was ever a very effective fighter.

...and that plane is....




























...The McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom II.

It was the premier American fighter during Vietnam (although F-106 Pilots and fans might have something to say about that ).
It's versatility kept the plane in service past Desert Storm.

 
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I think the single PAF F-104 equipped Sqn (only 12 airframes) claimed 4 kills for 1 loss (due to a mid-air with one of the claims where the F-104 gun shot the Mystere and subsequently collided). I think another kill was a Canberra shot down with a Sidewinder during a night intercept. I do not know what the other claims were.
 
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