What of the Me 410?

Udet · Feb 19, 2007

syscom:

Germany could have had much more fighters with the proper pilots to man them available to put an even more terrible fight against the USAAF.

If Germany had, say, 500 serviceable fighters available to confront the heavy bombers in the first months of 1944 as part of Luftflotte Reich, they could have had 1000, no sweat. 1000 fighter pilots, with the pilots and fuel to put them in the air.

My point being they failed to do what was necessary to achieve such goal.

Also you are not getting my point: even if the USAAF had an apparent capacity to replace its dead, such ability has been greatly overstated, but you should know it, as i strictly referr to the kind of political entity the USA is.

Just as it happens today, during world war two the USA was already the type of nation not good at bearing losses. Even if having the necessary replacements, sufficient in both numbers and quality, the USA does not know very much what to do when their men commence dying in huge numbers.

I am amazed to discover you and me agree on something: it was not until late 1944 when the USAAF could commence believing final victory could be attained.

If during the first half of 1944, the USAAF had suffered the types of losses of 1943, i doubt they would be willing to continue paying the price.

Gimmeacannon! · Feb 19, 2007

Agreed, Britain and Germany along with other European countries had become accustomed to the idea of losing thousand of men in a very short time, 60 thousand dead in one day on the Somme, thousands more in a few days at Paschendale.
Britain has always had something to shoot at and being shot at in return and it is in our conditioning to expect death and disaster in wartime, but America has never had a war on its own doorstep or had its cities reduced to rubble in one night with thousands dead in the space of 12 hours such as happened to Cologne , Dresden and Hamburg.

DerAdlerIstGelandet · Feb 19, 2007

Off topic but the fact that the US has not had a war on its door step is wrong.

War of 1812
War Against Mexico
The American Civil War

In the American Civil War, Americans (northerners and southerners) died by the thousands on the battlefield. Look up the great battles of that war and there were a whole lot of them. Many with 20,000 or more casualties per side.

Okay sorry about that, lets get back to WW2.

Gimmeacannon! · Feb 19, 2007

Hopefully I am going for an afternoon out next week to visit my 'old girl' at Cosford and take loads of photos of her, a friend who works there is 'escort' while I spend a lot of time around and in the Me 410.
I am taking two SLR's and plenty of film and hope to remove the access panel on the port side just above the trailing edge to give me a shot at the large mechanism that controls the two barbette guns in the rear fuselage and also hope to get some decent photos of the cockpit interior.
My friends boss is away next week so we will have plenty of time to do the job so will let you know how I get on,

regards.

Gimmeacannon! · Feb 19, 2007

War of 1812
War Against Mexico
The American Civil War

But these are ancient history and nobody remembers them, plus they were all 'cowboy' dustups and didnt include the kind of massive forces of men or machinery that Europe had to contend with, admitted they lost a lot of men on Iwa Jima and other places and did an excellent job of keeping the momentum going where lesser nations would have given in and sued for peace.

DerAdlerIstGelandet · Feb 19, 2007

Gimmeacannon! said:
Hopefully I am going for an afternoon out next week to visit my 'old girl' at Cosford and take loads of photos of her, a friend who works there is 'escort' while I spend a lot of time around and in the Me 410.
I am taking two SLR's and plenty of film and hope to remove the access panel on the port side just above the trailing edge to give me a shot at the large mechanism that controls the two barbette guns in the rear fuselage and also hope to get some decent photos of the cockpit interior.
My friends boss is away next week so we will have plenty of time to do the job so will let you know how I get on,

regards.

Yes please do take pictures and post them!

DerAdlerIstGelandet · Feb 19, 2007

Gimmeacannon! said:
But these are ancient history and nobody remembers them, plus they were all 'cowboy' dustups and didnt include the kind of massive forces of men or machinery that Europe had to contend with,

Cowboy Dustups? You really dont know much about American History do you? In the American Civil War it was divisions upon divisions facing each other with cannons and the first machine guns in use. Ever heard of the gatling gun? There were litterally 10,000s of men and in some cases over a 100,000 men on the battle field during the major engagements. Aprox. 618,000 men were killed in the Civil War which lasted 4 years. Thousands of men were killed on the Battle Field every day in that war.

It was no 'cowboy' dustup!

Besides who does not remember it? It was still fresh in the minds of the population of the United States who still had veterans of the war living. It is still remembered today and in some parts there are still sentiments about the war.

It was not ages ago and long forgotten as you say....

Civettone · Feb 19, 2007

Udet said:
If Germany had, say, 500 serviceable fighters available to confront the heavy bombers in the first months of 1944 as part of Luftflotte Reich, they could have had 1000, no sweat. 1000 fighter pilots, with the pilots and fuel to put them in the air.

1000 badly trained fighter pilots = more targets for the Americans to practice their gunnery.

My point being they failed to do what was necessary to achieve such goal.

They needed to train their pilots better instead of producing more fighters. The extra production capacity could then have gone to the army which never abandoned training.

the USA does not know very much what to do when their men commence dying in huge numbers.

Are you saying the Americans wouldn't be able to deal with high losses? I hope not because then you apparently don't know much about American resilience and war history but more about racial prejudism.

Kris

syscom3 · Feb 19, 2007

Udet said:
Civettone:
Seeing the record of Major Eduard Tratt is one can be informed he shot down 3 P-38s in the same combat mission, one at 12:50 hrs, the second at 13:00 hrs and the third at 13:10 hrs. How would that be possible when flying a "sitting duck"?

Do you have a date this occured?

Also interesting to note is that another enemy fighter he shot down flying the Hornisse on February 10, 1944 was a P-38 above 7,000 meters.

Any pilot who catches a superior plane by surprise, will have a good chance of shooting it down. This kill was the excpetion, not the rule.

I am sure syscom will burst out and say "those were just claims and not precisely kills..."

I will check the monthly loss report for the USAAF if you give me the date the action occured.

.... You really believe the raw materials to produce the fuselages, engines, equipment and spare parts for the bombers that carried out Unternehmen Steinbock could not instead have been allocated to produce Bf 109s and/or Fw190s? Now add the fuel the ~550 bombers that comprised the assambled force consumed during the rough 5 months the operation lasted. Finally add the number of pilots and crewmen that were lost during such operations.

Actually I agree with you on that.

syscom3 · Feb 19, 2007

Udet said:
If during the first half of 1944, the USAAF had suffered the types of losses of 1943, i doubt they would be willing to continue paying the price.

Nope. Loss's would be high but the P38's and P51's would simply shoot down more Germans, undoubtably killing or wounding quite a few.

The US had a training program (system is a better description) to make good the loss's. The LW didnt.

Udet · Feb 19, 2007

Civettone:

Do you know how many planes, bombers and fighters alike -RAF and USAAF- such ill-trained, ill-fated, ill-omened, misleaded, misguided, doomed German fighter pilots shot during 1944 alone?

Syscom:

The dates for Major Tratt´s kills you are asking me are February 11, 1944 in the case of the 3 P-38s, and February 10, 1944 for the P-38 shot down above the 7,000 meter altitude.

CharlesBronson · Feb 19, 2007

The dates for Major Tratt´s kills you are asking me are February 11, 1944 in the case of the 3 P-38s

Date and time of the kills.

-11.2.1944 12:50 P-38 Stab II./ZG 26
-11.2.1944 13:00 P-38 Stab II./ZG 26
-11.2.1944 13:10 P-38 Stab II./ZG 26

He also had another triple kill day over the city of Durkirk in 1940 when he downed 3 Hurricanes while Flying the underrated Me-110C, remarkable.

Erich · Feb 19, 2007

I will ask my contact further but the US 20th fighter group lost 8 P-38's on 11 February 44..........

Udet · Feb 19, 2007

Charlie and Erich: thanks for the input.

Udet · Feb 19, 2007

Gimmeacannon! said:
Hopefully I am going for an afternoon out next week to visit my 'old girl' at Cosford and take loads of photos of her, a friend who works there is 'escort' while I spend a lot of time around and in the Me 410.
I am taking two SLR's and plenty of film and hope to remove the access panel on the port side just above the trailing edge to give me a shot at the large mechanism that controls the two barbette guns in the rear fuselage and also hope to get some decent photos of the cockpit interior.
My friends boss is away next week so we will have plenty of time to do the job so will let you know how I get on,

regards.

Excellent!

hey cannon, did you see the photo showing a diagram of the remote controlled MG 131 guns? It looks very simple, but you stated it seems very complicated...

Civettone · Feb 19, 2007

Udet said:
Civettone:

Do you know how many planes, bombers and fighters alike -RAF and USAAF- such ill-trained, ill-fated, ill-omened, misleaded, misguided, doomed German fighter pilots shot during 1944 alone?

Yes, I do, just like everybody else who has access to German and American loss lists, and I'm not impressed.

I didn't want to react to everything you said because I'm still hoping for a certain ground on which we can agree on. But in that case, it's better not to quote me as having said the Me 410 was "a nightmare/piece of cake/sitting duck". I said nothing of the sort. But costing three times as much as a Bf 109 I do wonder if it has enough advantage over single-engined fighters to warrant its production.

If you want me to agree that you can have many more Bf 109s for the cost and fuel consumption of the Me 410, and that you'll shoot down more aircraft with these Bf 109s than with the (fewer) Me 410s, I wholeheartidly agree!

I'm just stating that this won't change a thing! The Luftwaffe was going down, no matter what, it dug its own grave back in 1943 (or even back in the thirties). If you really want to change something, put a quarter of your fighters in training schools and hope they'll start delivering well-trained pilots before it's too late.

All the other stuff about fuel, Bf 109s, Me 410s and even Me 262s is academic. Nice to discuss but close to irrelevant.

Kris

syscom3 · Feb 19, 2007

Yes, the P38's took a beating that day.

He must have been a great pilot roughing up some rookies.

Either way, a kill is a kill.

But how often did the 410 come up on top of a P38/P47/P51?

DerAdlerIstGelandet · Feb 20, 2007

syscom3 said:
Yes, the P38's took a beating that day.

He must have been a great pilot roughing up some rookies.

So if a Luftwaffe pilot shot down an USAAF fighter the USAAF pilot had to be a rookie huh?

Hunter368 · Feb 20, 2007

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
So if a Luftwaffe pilot shot down an USAAF fighter the USAAF pilot had to be a rookie huh?

Good point Chris. Nothing like a little national pride to make a person bais.

Many good German pilots were shot down by poor Russian pilots, UK pilots, American pilots and the same in reverse.

As a pilot certainly I would of been afraid of fellow enemy aces, but they were few. I would of been most worried about being shot down by the hordes of average pilots they a person just can't see every single one of them or watch every single angle.

Ace on Ace kills I would think would be some what less common then Ace killing average pilot or average pilot killing Ace. That all being said Ace on Ace kills certainly happened and Aces did count for a vast number of total kills acheived by all AF's.

So to be to the point the P-38 pilot certainly could of been an Ace or solid vet pilot he certainly did not "have" to be a rookie (but he might of been who knows, kill is a kill).

I don't think many people would argue that they would sooner fly a 410 than a P-38/47/51 but certainly 410's would of achieved "some" kills vs better planes. Not saying the 410 was a bad plane it just was not built as a air superiority fighter.

Saying or comparing the 410 to a P-38/47/51 (you are comparing apples to oranges) and saying it sucked as a fighter is like comparing a FW190 to a P-61/C-47/B-17 and saying the 61/c-47/B-17 sucked as fighters (yes I am streching it just to make a point, you are comparing apples to oranges).

The 410 was not built as a air superiority fighter so don't compare it to them.

syscom3 · Feb 20, 2007

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
So if a Luftwaffe pilot shot down an USAAF fighter the USAAF pilot had to be a rookie huh?

The 410 was inferior to the P38 in every respect. If the 410 had success's it was due to the P38 being ambushed, or more likely, a rookie or bad pilot making a mistake and paying for it.

Just like in the PI when you had a P26 getting lucky and shooting down a Zero.

Either way, the number of -410 kills over any allied fighter was limited.

What of the Me 410?

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