Nightwitch
Airman
- 67
- Feb 12, 2009
So, how many were sold for export or delivered as a superior choice to the Mossie, the B-25.
Would it have been better than even the P-61 or F7F or the P-38J had other a/c not been better in the individual roles?
Would the LW have picked it over the JU-88/188 if it had a choice? Or Do 217?
To me the Peshka was a medium performing twin that was pressed into a lot of roles - not because there weren't superior choices but because it was available and flexible.. and it did a good job.
The Russians didn't sell any planes for export during the war, they needed them. But neither did they buy Mossies and B-25s to replace their Peshkas. They used A-20 Bostons early in the war, because they were cheaply available lend-lease planes, not because the Peshka was in any way inadequate.
Medium performing? The Peshka was faster and more maneuverable than the Ju-88 and more maneuverable than a Mossie. The variants used as heavy fighters and night fighters had quite a strong armament in their own right, though they might not have been as heavy as the guns on the Mossie or the Ju-88 night fighters.
If the Luftwaffe had the choice, yeah I think they would have picked the Peshka over the Ju-88. The only advantage the Ju-88 had was in bomb load. The performance of the Peshka was much better, even at high altitude. Here's a chart listing the speed by altitude of various bombers tested by the Soviet Union:
The fastest plane there, the thin blue line, is the Pe-2I, a Pe-2 using the new VK-107A engines. They were built in limited series production. The Mosquito MkIV is slower, it's the red line, though it's faster than most series production Peshkas with the older M-105 and VK-105 engines. But even those Peshkas are faster at all altitudes than the Ju-88A-6 that was tested alongside them.
So, how can you justify calling it a "medium-performing" plane while in the same breath extolling the virtues of the slower, less-maneuverable, less-advanced Ju-88?