What Was the worst Aircraft of WWII?

[kiwimac]

Airfix used to make a 1:72 Defiant. The Roc was pretty awful but I have to give pride of place to the Fairey Battle. Normally I can find something good to say about an aircraft but I'm afraid the Battle (hehe) is too much for me.

Kiwimac

 

[cheddar cheese]

it looked good

 

[Lightning Guy]

Tom, the Me-163 was a very novel idea (a bit of a stretch for the techonology available perhaps, but a novel idea).

Kiwi, I can say some good things about the crews that flew the Battle. That required a special kind of bravery, but of course I feel the same way about the crews flying the TBD.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

i think thew 163 was juat ahead of it's time, like many of the german ideas....................

 

[SKIBC]

So you drop them at several points along the coast, especially at Calais. They were doing it with ordinary raids. A few scattered Tallboy strikes along the coast would have kept Jerry totally guessing.

they didnt have enuf tallboys to waste them like that. 617 was under direct instructiongs NOT to jettison their tallboys unless it was life or death.

never mind thats an old topic i got mixed up

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

it wasn't just 617 that dropped tallboys, No.9 did it too, but i think that on the morning of the 6th of june 1944 they should have been put in some of the batteries that the paratroopers had to take with high casualties.......................

 

[Lightning Guy]

That wouldn't have been that easy. Alot of the guns (like the ones attacked by US Army Rangers at Point du Hoc) had been moved. In order to attack them, but air or by ground, you have to know where they are.

 

[plan_D]

The Tallboys would be dropped on those in imobile batteries like the Todt battery. A lot of the artillery was silenced by the counter-artillery in Dover but those ones in the huge concrete by bunkers would have been better dealt with by Tallboys instead of American, British and Canadian ground forces who had just come off the beach. Or in the 6th Airbornes case just landed in the middle of the night (Merville Battery).

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

they were a bit late in coming though, the first tallboys were used on the night 8/9th june 1944, i think....................

 

[plan_D]

I know, I'm saying IF they could have been used.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

617 was under direct instructiongs NOT to jettison their tallboys unless it was life or death

what, so they would be using them in a defensive capibility, like if they didn't drop them they would die??

 

[toffi]

The worst was in my opinion the French Cauldron C.714 Cyclone. It was slow, turned awfully and had bad climb rate. Its' weapon was really weak. And very often it had lost its' horizontal stab when max speed was gained (especially in diving). Sounds enough for me.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

all of that true for the fairey battle, anouther contender.......................

 

[toffi]

There can also be one more worst aircraft. It's Russian LaGG-3. The Lavochkin-Gudkov-Gorbunov got a nickname Lakirovannyj-Gvarantovannyj-Grob (Varnished-Guaranteed-Grave) given because of its' tendency to crash often. It was wooden made mostly, ussualy very bad quality.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

but many of the designs the russains were using were considered outdated.......................

 

[Lightning Guy]

The LaGG-3 was a very bad plane. But it was better than the I-15s and I-16s the Russians were still using at the time.

 

[toffi]

Sure it was much better, but the quality of production was horrible. These planes were "able" to fall apart while flying!
That is why pilots sometimes prefered I-16 or I-153 (or MiG-1/3 when it was possible) than LaGG-3. The LaGGs' only good point was it quite nice overlook.

 

[NightHawk]

the sowrdfish they where WW1 carrier based planes only bye luck they took down the rader of the DKM bismark. if there was a bf-109 near bye there would have goten sloughterd.

 

[plan_D]

They didn't take down the RADAR on the Bismarck. They hit the rudder, under heavy AA coming up from the Bismarck. It wasn't luck at all, it was a very daring and skillful attack.
That's the thing, the Swordfish didn't have to meet any 109s, so it was perfect for the job of taking on the Kriegsmarine. And it did its job very well.

 

[lesofprimus]

I second that...