Worst mass produced, monoplane, single-engine, single-seat, retractable undercarriage fighter of WW2?

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Kevin J said:
Because its more realistic. So your opponent over claims by 100 maybe 200 %, one's own losses are double overall because of non operational reasons.
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You need to measure multiple things during a campaign. From a logistic perspective, you absolutely need to measure total losses to ensure that replacements can keep pace with overall wastage. However, that does not give you any indication of how you're doing on the field of battle. Kill/loss comparisons are a rather blunt tool to do that but it's easy to understand and, during the Battle of Britain, helped keep the population engaged in fighting that, although right over their heads, they couldn't really see.

I still take issue with your use of the term "lie" in this discussion. Overclaiming was rampant on all sides during WW2 but that doesn't mean everyone was lying. Similarly, the use of combat losses as part of a kill/loss analysis is a reasonable way to measure operational success but it doesn't mean that the British Government or the RAF was lying.
 
Being economical with the truth maybe a better way of describing the situation. LOL. Think about this one. For the number of aircraft 'used up', the Hurricane destroyed 10% more enemy aircraft than the Spitfire and cost 10% less to build, so naturally the Air Ministry would want to put the Merlin XX in it rather than the Spitfire.
 

Truth for whom? The British people really didn't care about the complexities of aircraft production keeping pace with losses, or even whether the Mk II Scruggs Wonderplane should be introduced in preference to the MkIII Hot Air Balloon. They only cared if Britain was winning the battle...and that was measured by combat kills/losses.

Again, the RAF knew exactly what its losses were, as well as the capacity of the aircraft industry to replace those losses. It was also keenly aware of performance disparities between the RAF fighters and those of the Luftwaffe. While I'm not suggesting every decision was right, at least it was based on the knowledge then available and, while propaganda certainly played a part in the war, you can only stretch the truth so far. If RAF losses had greatly increased to unsustainable levels, it would have been visible in other metrics (e.g. aircraft factories unable to keep up with supply, redoubling of recruitment efforts for pilots and/or lowering of medical standards etc).

I'm really struggling to understand the point you're trying to make regarding the Merlin XX. Retooling a factory to build an entirely different type of aircraft is a long and painful process, and it massively disrupts the logistics tail supporting the front line force. Eking more performance out of an existing in-service type is often better than the disruption caused by changing production over to another type. As Stalin is often reported to have said, "Quantity has a quality of its own."
 
swampyankee said:
Interestingly, one book (the first version of The World's Worst Aircraft) had a Luftwaffe pilot claim the Me163 had some of the best in-flight handling of any German fighter.
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I've come across a couple references to Eric Brown flying the Me 163. Here is the wikipedia text:

Captain Eric Brown RN, Chief Naval Test Pilot and commanding officer of the Captured Enemy Aircraft Flight, who tested the Me 163 at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough, said, "The Me 163 was an aeroplane that you could not afford to just step into the aircraft and say 'You know, I'm going to fly it to the limit.' You had very much to familiarise yourself with it because it was state-of-the-art and the technology used."[56] Acting unofficially, after a spate of accidents involving Allied personnel flying captured German aircraft resulted in official disapproval of such flights, Brown was determined to fly a powered Komet. On around 17 May 1945, he flew an Me 163B at Husum with the help of a cooperative German ground crew, after initial towed flights in an Me 163A to familiarise himself with the handling.[citation needed]
The day before the flight, Brown and his ground crew had performed an engine run on the chosen Me 163B to ensure that everything was running correctly, the German crew being apprehensive should an accident befall Brown, until being given a disclaimer signed by him to the effect that they were acting under his orders. On the rocket-powered "scharfer-start" takeoff the next day, after dropping the takeoff dolly and retracting the skid, Brown later described the resultant climb as "like being in charge of a runaway train", the aircraft reaching 32,000 ft (9.76 km) altitude in 2 minutes, 45 seconds. During the flight, while practicing attacking passes at an imaginary bomber, he was surprised at how well the Komet accelerated in the dive with the engine shut down. When the flight was over Brown had no problems on the approach to the airfield, apart from the rather restricted view from the cockpit due to the flat angle of glide, the aircraft touching down at 200 km/h (120 mph). Once down safely, Brown and his much-relieved ground crew celebrated with a drink.[57]
Beyond Brown's unauthorised flight, the British never tested the Me 163 under power themselves; due to the danger of its hypergolic propellants it was only flown unpowered. Brown himself piloted RAE's Komet VF241 on a number of occasions, the rocket motor being replaced with test instrumentation. When interviewed for a 1990s television programme, Brown said he had flown five tailless aircraft (which did not include the pair of American Northrop X-4s) in his career (including the British de Havilland DH 108). Referring to the Komet, he said "this is the only one that had good flight characteristics"; he called the other four "killers".[58]

and this:

The aircraft was remarkably agile and docile to fly at high speed. According to Rudolf Opitz, chief test pilot of the Me 163, it could "fly circles around any other fighter of its time".

I haven't come across any comments that the Me 163 was a bad airplane to fly. My thought on what makes a good candidate for this thread have to do with the inherent risks of the power plant and fuels, the limited combat ability of the aircraft, and combat vulnerability during landing.
 
Blackburn Roc/Skua is close to 500 units. Apparently Skua was a multi-role carrier fighter-bomber with 4x.303 in wings, and Roc a fighter with 4x.303 in turret ala Defiant. The top speed of both is given at 225mph which is pretty woeful even in 1940 which is why I chose it.
 

But neither the Skua nor the Roc are single-seat...which is one of the criteria in the OP.
 
If I had choice between having Buffalo's or no aircover at all I will take the Buffalo's anytime. But the Russian I16 with 4 .30 calibers, 335 max range, 291 mph top speed when brand new and no hours on the motor. 1 to 2 kill ratio now that is 2 lost for each kill. That is the worst fighter of ww2 to me
 

I wonder if we should remove the "dumb" rating - it seems rather rude.
 
I can't believe the Buffalo has been nominated here. Statistically maybe the best bang for buck fighter in WW2. BW-364 possibly the highest scoring airframe of the war and the kill-loss ratio with the Finns was head and shoulders above anything else .......... once they fixed the engines so they were more reliable (yes, the cold weather helped too). Seems odd the yanks couldn't work out what was wrong with it ......
I think the I-16 is also unfairly judged here - it came into service in 1935, so really it is a pre-war aircraft with only a fraction of those produced still flying after the first days of Barbarossa.
The LaGG-3 is a better fit. Introduced in 1941 and with over 6,500 produced, I think it contributed greatly to the high scores gained by some Luftwaffe pilots.
 
I agree. The I-16 was a fantastic fighter, but a victim of being developed at a time where technological relevance lasted weeks.

Lagg3 is my number 2 choice. I say M.S.406. I am applying the same system that Clarkson and May did when trying to decide what the worst car in the world ever was (they got it right imho, but that's a different thread.) It has to be terrible not cheap. Someone had mentioned Caudrons earlier, I would call them cheap, not terrible.
More important is the manufacturer that should have known better requirement.

Even if the Buffalo was actually as bad as all that, which it wasn't, Brewster was hardly an established old mill. In fact almost the definition of the little guy, an upstart.

The LaGG... Well frankly it's amazing they built it at all imho given the climate in the USSR at the time leading up to the German invasion.

The MS406 OTOH... Well that was one of the oldest airframe firms in the world. Their catalog was deep, to say the least. "406" could very well have literally meant it was the 406th design by Moraine Saulnier (not all necessarily built of course). They should have known better. The 406 was a dog, in every respect.

If I had to fight one of the two it would be the Buffalo every day of the week. And that was Brewster's second aircraft!!

Anyway that's my thinking behind my vote for the 406.
 
tyrodtom said:
Why don't you put it to a forum poll.
Is your argument dumb ? Or is Buffnutt dumb for not agreeing with you ?
You might be surprised.
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I'm not asking him to agree with me, I just think he's throwing irrelevant arguments at me. If he wants to argue then argue on the points I've made. Its like those who say the Swordfish was obsolete. It couldn't have been because it was used effectively throughout the war. There are even those who say the Hurricane was obsolete at the start of WW2.
 

Was the Henschel Hs 123 obsolete at the start of WW2?
 
The Bf 109 was from 1937, the Buffalo was 1939, 1935 is close but the Russians had a very long time to refine and improve the I 16. The I16 The Buffalo produced 40 Aces 32 Finns 8 British Commowealth pilots. 40 Aces compared to 509 units built per Wikipedia. That last number seems incredible. LaGG3 looks pretty awful though but Russia sacrificed their fighters to make sure their ground attack planes were able to kill German soldiers, trucks and supply columns. It worked. So I have to give LaGG3 a hall pass.
 
Kevin J said:
Small numbers of Hurricane IIs and Spitfire IIs were operational in the Bob. There's not a lot of performance difference between them.
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It is a mighty small numbers in the BoB. The First Hurricane IIs don't show up until September and the Spitfire MK IIs only went to the first operational squadron in August.
With the Germans shifting over to mostly night attacks by the beginning of October neither of the MK IIs really had any influence on the Battle.

The performance difference was so small because they made the deliberate choice to use the MK XX engine in the Hurricane because any other version of the Merlin available in late 1940/early 1941 would have meant a fighter that was NOT competitive with 109E.

If you swapped the engines you would have had a really great Spitfire at the end of 1940 using MK XX engines but a Hurricane with a MK XII engine wasn't something the air ministry wanted to use. That meant a real reduction in the number of 1st rate fighters. So the Hurricane got the MK XX engines to help keep it competitive.
 

It is clear that the Hurricane required the XX to remain competitive, while the Spitfire did not.

They didn't know about the Bf 109F4 or Fw 190A at the time, otherwise they may have pressed ahead with the Spitfire III with Merlin XX.

I would like you to lay out the statistics that support the assertion that "Think about this one. For the number of aircraft 'used up', the Hurricane destroyed 10% more enemy aircraft than the Spitfire and cost 10% less to build".

And are you advocating dropping Spitfire production in favour of the Hurricane?
 
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