Which is the better fighter, P-40F or Typhoon?

P-40 or Typhoon


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Well, here is the thing.
JG 27 started pulling back in Sept of 1942 with two squadrons rotated out in October, and the last in December. JG 77 came into North Africa from June to Dec 1942 (with different squadrons coming in) and was still pretty fresh at that time. This corresponds to the phase in of the US merlin-engined P-40 units, starting with the 57th FG in June 1942. These were originally small elements attached to some of the British squadrons like 112, 250 and 260 RAF and 3 RAAF, but by October (2nd El Alemain) was a substantial contingent and were flying as independent units. 57th FG was fully operational by Aug 1942, 33rd FG by November, and 79th by December of 42. US P-38 units first arrived in November 1942.

The tipping point began around mid 1942 which was both when the Spitfires arrived (in small numbers at first) and when the Americans arrived with their P-40Fs and later, P-38s.

The arrival of the Yanks also coincided with three* important Tactical and Operational changes to DAF missions - first and foremost, to the use of wingmen and "finger four" formations (with assorted variations). According to at least one German pilot the Americans were the first ones he encountered doing this although it seems like the RAF started adopting the formations as well which may be unrelated. Second, was the RAF (or specifically, Australian) derived tactic of swinging into an attack as an entire squadron, guns blazing. This turned out to be a very effective way to break up a German 'bounce' from above, (quite important since most engagements with the Germans started with being bounced from above). Third, apparently due to an American impetus, was the switch in tactics to attacking Axis airfields with medium and heavy bombers, escorted mostly by P-40s which would then engage the German fighters that came up to defend. This was effective and had a lot to do with the destruction of both JG 27 and JG 77 in North Africa. A lot of Axis aircraft were destroyed by bombers on the ground and a lot of them were shot down as they climbed up from below to engage fighter escorts. This was made more possible by the new bombers brought into the Theater by the Americans - mainly B-25s and B-24s.

JG 27 was worn down by the RAF / DAF which was indeed mostly due to the British and Commonwealth pilots, JG 77 got there as the Yanks did and were in large part beaten by the Americans, specifically by escort fighters in those raids over their airfields. They were both broken** between third quarter 1942 and second quarter 1943, but they got only that way because of fierce fighting (and many casualties) by Allied forces. Neither unit was quite as hopeless in 1942 or 1943 as you suggest. Other German units like JG 2 (Fw 190, from Nov 1942) and JG 53 (Bf 109, from May 1942) were also involved in the campaign. Both were elite units.

I also think that too little attention is paid, and too little respect given to the Italian pilots in North Africa and their aircraft. In the early war they had obsolescent planes, though so did the Allies, and which side had the advantage went back and forth. But by 1942 the older cadre of CR 42 biplanes and open cockpit MC 200 and G.50 fighters was giving way to the excellent and quite deadly MC 202 and later in 1943, the MC 205, as well as more exotic types like the Re 2000 series and the rare but superb Fiat G.55. The venerable SM.79 meanwhile may have been the single most effective ship killer in the Med, certainly in the top three types***. Some of the Italian pilots may have been ambivalent about the war, and about Fascism in general which they had been enduring ten years longer than the Germans had by then, but they still gave a very good fight and showed a great deal of courage in many air battles, they were not the push-overs which seem to be assumed in the shorthand of the history.

As an aside, you seem to be a bit eager to engage in some Brit vs. Yank debating, but that is not the goal of this thread and what is more, quite a bit of that has already been discussed and hashed out upthread, which I'd again encourage you to read through or skim if you really want to wade into it. I really don't have a dog in that hunt - I think the Spitfire IX was the best fighter overall in the Theater full stop. The Spitfire mk V was more comparable with both it's competition and some of it's Allied stablemates but was still the best overall Allied fighter for 1942. I'm not claiming the P-40 of any version was the best fighter in the region, I am only suggesting that the historical record as we can currently percieve it shows us that it was a big more useful than had been previously assumed (or declared in the often misleading shorthand) and definitely was far from the worst.

The signals angle while quite interesting is certainly tangential to the discussion about comparing the two fighter types. Each of the major Allied powers, British and Americans, certainly made their mistakes and had their blind spots, as did some of the smaller countries involved, but thankfully they worked together, complimenting each others strengths and started to do so quite effectively by the third quarter of 1942 and from that point onward. In the Air in particular they seemed to have merged together well, and unlike the Luftwaffe the DAF was already quite good at being useful to the ground war. In 2nd El Alemain, on which battle I concede I am not an expert, from my understanding the air battle in general and CAS in particular was indeed quite important. Allied tank losses were very high and were nearing a tipping point, when air strikes for example took out some emplaced 88mm AT guns. I have the details somewhere and can dig them up if needed. Montgomerry notably formed a close relationship with the 79th Fighter Group as the result of some of these strikes, of which they were justifiably proud, and he continuously made use of them as a kind of CAS 'fire brigade' from that point onward.

The larger point we are addressing here is your claim that the air opposition was weak and worn out by the time the Americans got involved in the war. I would say that is far from the truth, the Axis air forces were strong and quite dangerous, and the battle was very hard fought. Commonwealth forces in general and DAF in particular were hard pressed for most of the first half of 1942 and the third quarter of that year in Tunisia etc. was a ferocious all out bloodbath comparable in scale and ferocity to some of the battles going on in Russia at that time. They could certainly have used the Typhoon, and they definitely needed the P-40.

The various arguments put forth as to why the Typhoon wasn't sent to the Med and more broadly why it didn't score more victories in the long period from 1941-1944 are somewhat plausible but not 100% convincing to me. Yes the Sabre would have been a new engine with a new supply chain, though this was partly true for the R-2800 of the P-47 and the B-26 (and the Ventura as well apparently). Yes the Typhoon was perhaps wanted for defense of the Home Island which certainly did take priority, but I think the Spitfire was ideal for that - however it is true that once Fw 190 raids started the Tiffy had an important role in countering them.

Overall however I suspect that if the Typhoon had performed more like the Tempest from an earlier period, and there is no real reason in my mind that it couldn't have (if they had made the wing a bit differently and sorted out a few other design problems) they probably would have sent some to fight in the Med and it would have made a big difference.

* There may have also been increasing use of overboosting engines but that is a bit controversial around here and we don't need to go down that tunnel, as I doubt it was as important as the three things I mentioned above.
** And were of course, quickly re-formed to rejoin the fight
*** Ok realistically I'd say Beaufighter, Ju 88 and then SM 79. But they were quite dangerous.
 
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Yes the Sabre would have been a new engine with a new supply chain, though this was partly true for the R-2800 of the P-47 and the B-26 (and the Ventura as well apparently).

Between P&W and Ford they built over 11,000 R-2800 engines in 1942 alone. Nash-Kelvinator had built their first 6 engine, the P&W Kansas plant was not delivering yet but was in the planning/construction stage. Supply of R-2800 engines and parts was in a whole different league than the supply of Sabre engine and parts.
 

Ok but the turbo on the P-47 does add a bit of extra supply chain complication, albeit one the Americans were better positioned to handle.
 
Well imho, to say that the Brits didnt need the Americans help in the theater kinda misses the point. Could the Brits have prevailed without help from the US? In my opinion absolutely and coversly the US could have eventually prevailed in the theater without help also but in either case it would have been alot tougher, more guys would have had to die, and ultimately that's not how it happened. Thank goodness
 
I personally don't think either the British or Americans could have won decisively in North Africa on their own, especially if you include weapons (like trucks, tanks and planes) in addition to direct military involvement. Their assets and capabilities really complimented each others ability to fight, and their opponent was quite formidable.
 

IMHO, the Americans would, like the Russians, have needed total mobilisation to win, a fleet the combined size of the RN and USN, their children working in factories, their entire black population conscripted as labourers, and their women folk too.
Military production during World War II - Wikipedia
World War II casualties - Wikipedia
 
Are you referring to the Desert War, or the entire war? If entire war, I think you're right. If North Africa only, I think your "extreme total mobilization" is a bit of a stretch. I think it would have been long and costly, but we could have done it with the level of mobilization we did in fact have. That theater was over with by the time we reached our peak production levels in materiel and personnel.
Cheers,
Wes
 
Yes, total global war. If you throw everything at the French then you lose Guadalcanal. Rommel of course moves in to Tunisia, then Algeria and Morocco to help the French. Maybe the French don't come over to your side either?
 
Yes, total global war. If you throw everything at the French then you lose Guadalcanal. Rommel of course moves in to Tunisia, then Algeria and Morocco to help the French. Maybe the French don't come over to your side either?
Well with no British establishment in N Africa, it would have been a long, costly slog, having to learn the lessons of desert warfare the hard way, and having to root the Axis out of Egypt and Suez. Overlord would have been later, and VE Day as well. But the British could have concentrated their resources more on the Med, more effectively restricting supplies to Afrika Korps, and had more to prep with for D-Day.
In hindsight, this might have been a more equitable sharing of the burden, as the brits had already paid and were still paying the heavy price for that campaign, when the Johnnie-come-lately yanks come waltzing in and tip the tables at relatively little cost to themselves.
As for the French, I don't think prolonging the war in this way would endear them to the Nazis, only make them more digusted and hostile to their ever more desperate and brutal masters.
Cheers,
Wes
 
To further beat up on the recently deceased horse that is the deployment of Typhoons to the Med.
There were only 4991 Sabres built from 1939 til the end of 1945.
In 1941 they built 220 engines, in 1942 they built 746 engines and in 1943 they built 1141 engines. By the end of 1943 they had built 2107 Sabres and 1851 Typhoon airframes. a bit under 14% spare engines and early Sabres were rather notoriously short lived engines. The US got in trouble in NA with the Merlin P-40s with around 20% extra engines.

P&W and Ford together built more than twice as many R-2800s in 1942 than Napier did (using two factories) for the entire war.

When Canada ordered engines from the US the standard contract added 20% more engines for a reserve over/above the number needed to equip the airframes.
 
I was just talking about the theater as my post was in answer to a poster that had asserted that the Brits didn't need the help of the U.S. in such.
If the subsequent question is could the U.S. have won the global conflict without Britain or visa versa I still think the answer in both cases is yes. It's going to be a hell of alot tougher, go on alot longer, and I don't even want to think of the aditional tens of thousands of dead and wounded but simply pulling the U.S. or Britain out still leaves Russia in and barring a quick decisive victory and subsequent occupation by Axis forces which in the case of Britain and Russia we already know was tried and failed and in the case of the U.S. was impossible the war would nescesarily evolve into a war of attrition/production. In such a war the outcome for the Axis is a done deal.
They cannot outproduce the Russians and the British empire and they sure as heck can't outproduce Russia and the US.
I think the only posible barrier to total victory for the Alies in this scenario is the Allies political tolerance to sustain the greatly increased losses to achieve the same objective.
This is how it looks to me anyway.
 

Well I guess that explains it all. $22 trillion of debt and still rising. War without end. The British Empire kept wars to about 7 years max then negotiated.
 
They cannot outproduce the Russians and the British empire and they sure as heck can't outproduce Russia and the US.
Hold on just a minute! It might not be so simple as that. If Britain falls, the empire, industry, and Navy become Axis assets, and the stranglehold on raw material supply chains dissolves. Then Axis industry, along with its newly acquired assets, might very well outproduce the unlikely bedfellows, US/USSR. The blitz on London might be B36s from Bangor and Presque Isle rather than HE111s from France. And the US might be subject to invasion from the north.*
Cheers,
Wes
*Unless we follow Benedict Arnold's lead in 1775, and annex Canada. Some of the MAGAs around here like to think of Canada like the mainland Chinese think of Taiwan: as a rogue province separated from the motherland, and thus our rightful property.
 
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Well true. If the Germans actually managed to mount a successful amphibious invasion and occupation of the British Isles that would indeed complicate things.
However the original assertion by one poster and subsequent expanded suposition were that of the U.S. or Britain succeeding without each others help on the battlefield as I understood it anyway.
 
However the original assertion by one poster and subsequent expanded suposition were that of the U.S. or Britain succeeding without each others help on the battlefield as I understood it anyway.
You mean like the British in the Med and North Africa pre-Torch? Or in BoB, or Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Rangoon? It's tough going it alone. Thank God for FDR. Or we might have sat the whole thing out, snug (and smug) behind our two oceans, profiting from the arms trade, and wound up with a world not to our liking.
Cheers,
Wes
 
Just removing the wing guns and nose armor plate saved 300#. That alone would have added 360fpm climb.
With the P39, you've got to be careful about removing weight from the nose! Your climb performance gain comes at the cost of making an already twitchy airplane twitchier. Shifting the CG aft like that does give you the benefit of a slight reduction in drag, as the horizontal stabilizer doesn't have to generate as much negative lift, with its attendant induced drag. OTOH, pitch stability is reduced and stick force gradients get terrifyingly light. An enhanced performance mount for experten, but a handful for the less experienced.
Cheers,
Wes
 
Yes I certainly agree. It's going to be alot tougher without any one of the Allies. I do still think they prevail ultimately but fortunately we'll never know for sure how that would have turned out.
 
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