What WW2 fighters should be compared?

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Kevin J

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May 11, 2018
Portmeirion
Having read through the entire Yak-1 vs Hurricane vs P-40 thread, I feel the wrong comparisons are being made, we should have :-

Interception / Patrol: Lightning vs Beaufighter
Counter Air: P-40 vs Whirlwind vs Allison Mustang vs Typhoon / Tempest
High altitude interceptor: Spitfire V/VI vs MiG-3 vs P-43
Bomber Interceptor / ground attack: LaGG-3 vs Hurricane vs Yak-7
Interception / Air Superiority: La-5/7 vs Spitfire VIII/VIII/IX/XVI vs Thunderbolt
Escort / Air Superiority : Merlin Mustang vs Yak-9
Battlefield air superiority / escort: Yak-1 vs P-39 vs Yak-3 vs P-63

Or any variation on this. Feel free to add other planes to the comparison list.
 


Not sure what you are basing this off of.
Interception / Patrol: Lightning vs Beaufighter
The Lighting started as an interceptor with more endurance than a single engine plane carrying the same armament. What it wound up being used as is something else. I am not sure the Beaufighter was ever intended to to be an "interceptor" although it was supposed to be a "heavy" fighter. Perhaps some of our English friends can clarify that? Most (or at least many) Beaufighters in 1940-41-42 were tasked with carrying radar and being used for night fighters. Something the P-38 wouldn't attempt to about 1945.

Counter Air? again what the planes wound up doing vs what they were designed for are very different things. None of those aircraft were designed for "counter air" operations in the sense of going after enemy airfields. They all were assigned the role as they were replaced in the interceptor/air superiority role.

LaGG-3 vs Hurricane vs Yak-7? The Hurricane was performing as a bomber interceptor in 1940. if not 1939. The Russian aircraft don't show up for another year year and half to two years. ANd then you have the problems with armament comparisons, The Russian aircraft are better than an eight gun Hurricane, a 12 gun Hurricane might be subject to much debate but a four cannon Hurricane is carrying twice the firepower of the Russian aircraft at a minimum. Granted teh Hurricane is slower.

Planes to be compared should be doing the same mission and be of about the same age.

Russian planes are often going to be at a disadvantage because the Lagg-3 and Yak series were designed around the promised M-106 engine which was a flop and were forced to use the much lower powered M-105 engines.
 
Shortround6 said:
Not sure what you are basing this off of.
I am not sure the Beaufighter was ever intended to to be an "interceptor" although it was supposed to be a "heavy" fighter.
Click to expand...

I think the main intention initially was the scramble to get a 4-cannon fighter into service - the Beaufighter being green lit as a rather economical option.

Later things got more specific with the long range fighter and night fighter requirements;

Long Range Fighter
  • protection of seaborne trade from air attack
  • fighter support for Naval operations - particularly in the North Sea
  • interception of German bombers at some distance out to sea
  • provision for fighter support in the Heligoland Blight area, and elsewhere in Germany
Short Range Fighter
  • use as a fighter at night with AI equipment
 
Thank you, some plane's missions evolved during the planning stages let alone when actual put into squadron service.
Initial estimates called for the Beaufighter to hit 370mph which it missed by a considerable margin. WHich may have called for a rethink on what missions they wanted it to do. Just throwing that out there, it may have nothing to do with what jobs it wound up doing (and many of them very well)
 
The reason I've paired the LaGG-3 and the Hurricane II(Soviet) is that both are heavily armed and in the case of the initial variants of the LaGG-3 not very fast, sluggish and non too manoeuvrable. Both were good in the bomber intercept role. The LaGG-3 was to be replaced by the Yak-7, the Hurricane II(Soviet) being an interim measure.
 
Lightning vs Beaufighter. Both fly first around the same sort of time. The Beaufighter has a navigator, the Lightning doesn't. Where is the Lightning most successful? Over the Med and the Pacific. So maybe the British were right in 1939/40, a navigator is a useful crew member. So I put them together. Both have a long range and a heavy armament. Both are successfully employed over water.
 


I guess that depends on your definition of "heavily armed" as to my way of thinking the Lagg-3 wasn't. Medium armed at best unless your comparisons are the Japanese and Italians. One 20mm cannon and two 12.7mm machine guns is not bad but it is hardly great. Granted there were number of combinations of guns on the early Lagg-3s. Some had an extra pair of 7.62mm machine guns. Some used a 12.7mm machine gun instead of the 20mm through the prop. Some may have used the 20mm with a single 12.7mm machine gun in an effort to lighten the plane and improve performance. The Lagg-3 stayed in production until 1943. Perhaps due to a lack of M-82 engines? There were at least 3 factories making Lagg fighters and not all switched to LA-5s at the same time.
The Russian 20mm gun was much less powerful than the Hispano.
 

That seems to be a rather simplistic view. The P-38 was never really tried "over land" until late 1943/early 1944. The nature of the theaters it was deployed to dictated the "over water" part.
The P-38 could engage enemy single engine fighters with at least some degree of success (or at least not too bad a negative loss ratio in the very early days) and the P-38s extra long range depended heavily on drop tanks. The Beaufighter was quite successful deployed as a night fighter about the time the P-38 was entering squadron service in a version that was not combat capable. The British figured the Beaufighter had no place in air to air combat in daylight over Europe in 1941/42 or any time after that. However since it carried over twice as much fuel inside without drop tanks it did make a very effective long range maritime fighter.

Both planes did a lot of good work but didn't really overlap much. The P-38 started as a high performance/high altitude bomber interceptor and the Beaufighter started as a quick and dirty way of getting four 20mm Hispano guns into the air based off the Beaufort bomber. While the wing structure wound up not staying the same the original idea was to take the wings and tail of Beaufort bomber and use a 'skinner' fuselage and bigger engines to get a heavy fighter. The Beaufighter had a bigger wing than an A-20 and weighed more than some of the early R-2600 powered A-20s.
 
I'm just looking at these three planes in the 1939 - 42 period so the armament is heavier at the beginning. It was lightened later, to be on a par with the Yak-1b which was of course a better plane, but then the Yak-1 was designed as Sturmovik escort. So there's no real equivalent to it.
 
Where do you get the idea that the Yak 1 was designed as a Sturmovik escort?

The Lagg-1 (soon to be Lagg-3) and the Yak 1 were designed as general replacements for the I-16. That would be to do all jobs/roles that a front line fighter would do. Not to provide escort for one particular type of ground attack plane.
 
Greyman said:
I think the main intention initially was the scramble to get a 4-cannon fighter into service - the Beaufighter being green lit as a rather economical option.
...
Click to expand...

Beaufighter was many things, but it was not an economical option to get a 4-cannon fighter in the air. Two 14 cyl engines (mostly), totaling at 2850-3500 HP and 15000-20000 lbs worth of tare weight is not economical way to arrive the 4 cannons flying.

Shortround6 said:
...
The Lagg-3 stayed in production until 1943. Perhaps due to a lack of M-82 engines? There were at least 3 factories making Lagg fighters and not all switched to LA-5s at the same time.
The Russian 20mm gun was much less powerful than the Hispano.
Click to expand...

There was a surplus of M-82 engines in 1942, Soviets were trying to power almost anything with that engine by 1941-41: Su-2, 1-engined fighters from Yakovlev, Mikoyan, Lavotchkin and Gudkov (separately), Pe-2, Il-2 and Tu-2.
I'd say that only Soviet fighters that were heavily armed were the LaGG-3-37 and Yak-9T; having one or two 20 mm cannons by 1941 was nothing special, let alone by 1942 and later.
 
tomo pauk said:
There was a surplus of M-82 engines in 1942, Soviets were trying to power almost anything with that engine by 1941-41: Su-2, 1-engined fighters from Yakovlev, Mikoyan, Lavotchkin and Gudkov (separately), Pe-2, Il-2 and Tu-2.
Click to expand...
was there a surplus of actual engines (hundreds of engines sitting in creates) or realization that the M-106 was long, long way from entering service, The M-105 offered limited scope for improvement (and the M-105PF only was approved/built in May of 1942) and the AM-35/38 might be in short supply?
This leaving the M-82 as the only viable high powered engine in the near future?
There were only 24,000 M-82s built during the war so the numbers actually available in in 1941-42 might not really be large compared to later production.
Total production in the Soviet Union is given as 57,898 as of 1962 by one source and engines were also built in China and Czechoslovakia in the 1950s.

If a designer wanted a competitive airplane in Russia in 1941/early 42 the engine choices were limited.
 

In 1942, there was 3940 copies of M-82 produced (+29 of the M-82F/ASh-82F). In same year, they produced 1129 La-5 fighters, 79 Tu-2 (obviously ~160 engines for those), 40 Su-2. In late 1942, there was a token number of Pe-8 with the M-82 produced (in whole 1942 production was 21, with any engine type installed). That will make ~1330 M-82 engines actually utilized to power different A/C, plus a token number aboard the P-8s* and several prototypes that used it (versions of Yak-7, Il-2, Pe-2).
Leaves almost 2600 M-82 engines as a surplus in 1942 - coupled with it's decent performance, there is no wonder Soviets were trying to cram M-82s in anything they considered as viable combat aircraft.
engine production
aircraft production


AM-35A, AM-38, M-82. Not too bad, but it was too bad that aircraft with those engines were either with other problems (lousy armament, problems with canopy), or didn't materialized, or were almost too late, respectively.

*just two for testing in 1942, per Russian wikipedia
 

Depends what you're comparing it to. Germany is gobbling up countries and you need that 4-cannon fighter yesterday -- an airplane that uses existing (Beaufort) wings, tail structure, landing gear, etc. is money in the bank. Assembly on "existing jigs so that priority for bomber and fighter production could be switched at short notice as dictated by events" is no small saving of time and effort - if not money.
 
In a financial sense I would agree, but it was a quick way of getting 4 x 20mm in the air. It was developed from the lessons learned during the design of the Beaufort and was probably considered to be the low risk approach to finding solution.
In war, time is often far more important than cash. Think of the difference a six month saving would have to any force, air, sea or land.
 


I have no quarrels that Beaufighter was a relatively quick way to have a heavily armed fighter in service. What I disagreed (and still disagree) with was the notion that it was a 'rather economical option', as well as that UK have had no other options in 1938-40.
Ditto to the notion that Beaufighter was given green light when Germany was gobbling up countries (fromm Wikipedia, source being "The Bristol Beaufighter I & II (Aircraft in Profile Number 137)": On 16 November 1938, Bristol received formal authorisation to commence the detailed design phase of the project and to proceed with the construction of four prototypes.)
 
I meant Czechoslovakia and Austria. Should have been more clear and just referred to the Munich Crisis. Point still stands though, there was justifiable concern that other four-cannon designs would take too long to bring into service -- or hit other snags.
 
Not what I've read. The LaGG-1 was to be the bomber escort, it had heavy armament initially, the Yak-1, the Il-2 escort, lighter armament.
 

Perhaps not Interception / Patrol: Lightning vs Beaufighter
But
Interception / patrol / long range escort: Beaufighter vs Lightning vs DH Hornet vs Twin Mustang

I'd still put the Beaufighter and the Lightning together as they first fly in the same year and they are variations to a solution for a similar requirement. The Beaufighter is the quick fix. The Lightning, a solution with more long term potential. You have to go post-war to get the perfect aircraft.
 
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