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Disagree strongly. Just as easy to lie or shade truth or make silly pronouncements, unfounded opinion, in a book as in a video. Greg, the subject of this debate, seems to me hold strong opinions but to base them on original source material, as much as possible. That's the way good academic historians are supposed to do it. Whether mode of presentation is written or video has nothing to do with the validity of either opinion or research.The problem with watching a video, is that you're listening to someone's opinion.
Reading books from the source may not be as entertaining, but far will be far more accurate.
Disagree strongly. Just as easy to lie or shade truth or make silly pronouncements, unfounded opinion, in a book as in a video. Greg, the subject of this debate, seems to me hold strong opinions but to base them on original source material, as much as possible. That's the way good academic historians are supposed to do it. Whether mode of presentation is written or video has nothing to do with the validity of either opinion or research.
While I agree your primary point, in the case of Greg, his sources are selective (in my experience). In particular, his video bovine fecal matter thesis that the 'bomber mafia' witheld combat tanks from P-47s in ETO was slander. Further, he went on to base the thesis on ridiculous 'range calculations' to 'prove that P-47 could have escorted all the way to Regensburg on August 17th.Disagree strongly. Just as easy to lie or shade truth or make silly pronouncements, unfounded opinion, in a book as in a video. Greg, the subject of this debate, seems to me hold strong opinions but to base them on original source material, as much as possible. That's the way good academic historians are supposed to do it. Whether mode of presentation is written or video has nothing to do with the validity of either opinion or research.
I have pointed this out before but will do so again. Before the arrival of the Merlin P-51 the P-47 had accomplished virtually nothing. According to the Statistical Digest the ETO fighter claims amounted to 451 to the end of 1943. Of these the P-47 contributed 414 with the rest divided among Spitfires, P-38s and P-51s. Note that up to the end of 1943 the P-47 was only serving in the ETO. To put this into persecutive the Luftwaffe had lost ~22,000 aircraft to operational causes up to the end of 1943. If you give the P-47 the benefit of the doubt and assume the claims are actual kills (I typically discount fighter claims at a ratio of 2:1) this places the P-47 contribution at a minuscule 2 percent. If any American fighter deserves credit for doing the "heavy lifting" it is the P40 and of course at lot of that was in RAF and Commonwealth AF service. The distruction of the Luftwaffe was a long drawn-out war of attrition starting with the Battle of France. I personally find these attempts to credit one aircraft (or air force) to be tiresome.Robert S Johnson in an interview and Greg both point out that the P-47 had decimated the highly experienced Luftwaffe pilots by the time the P-51 arrived on scene in significant numbers. This and the total losses were the primary reason that the Luftwaffe was powerless to interfere with the D-Day landings. Johnson pointed out that many of the P-51 victories were over low time pilots with little or no combat experience.
The Wrights did make the first powered flight.As long as Greg is being discussed, has anyone seen his video on the Wright Brothers? He made a video responding to other YouTubers making a claim that the Wright weren't the first.
He disagreed.
The 325th FG made its first claim on December 30th, 1943, so technically yes. The 57th FG had started conversion as well and actually made 2 claims on December 16th according to Jerry Scutts in P-47 Thunderbolt Aces of the Nineth and Fifteenth Air Forces. I was debating whether to confess this earlier, but you forced my hand! It doesn't materially affect my thesis, but any facts should not be ignored.Before the arrival of the Merlin P-51 the P-47 had accomplished virtually nothing. According to the Statistical Digest the ETO fighter claims amounted to 451 to the end of 1943. Of these the P-47 contributed 414 with the rest divided among Spitfires, P-38s and P-51s. Note that up to the end of 1943 the P-47 was only serving in the ETO.
Not to dispute the broader topic, but the 348th FG began operations at New Guinea in June 1943 (Neel Kearby etc)
The 325th in Italy converted from P-40s in October 43. Probably there were others.
Actually the changes to intake/Intercooling to J model created issues in overcooling the oil, but the primary issues were operational procedures to a.) cruise settings, an b.) ramping up RPM and Boost from those cruise settings. Air Tecnical Service screwed that one u. Lockheed and Allison knew what the problem was.I am reminded that the P-38 got to Europe with 4 basic flaws:
1) The early Allison had some intake issues that took about 7 - 9 months to fix.
The addition of a second generator largely solved the cockpit heating problem -2) The early gasoline the P-38s were using was not the same as the engine was jetted for at the factory. Again, this got fixed, but it took awhile,
3) The cockpit heater was extremely weak for the cold in Europe. A simple electfric heater fixed that.
The P-38H didn't have the same problems as the new J with re-design of cooling scheme - but the high altitude stress on cockpit and the incorrect cruise philosophy still blew up turbo and engines when going from low RPM and boost to High.4) The early crews had little to no actual combat experience, and were basically flying into engagements before the aircraft was configured for combat. Again, time fixed this.
The early C/Ds were plagued with radio issues, no wing rack/plumbing, no water injection as primary issues. The internal wing modifications to provided structure for pylons, and internal plumbing from pylon to aux tank were long and labor intensive before the -15/-16s arrived in spring 1944. But the root cause was lack of internal fuel tankage necessary for R-2800 engined airframe to go long. Not solved until the D-25, then the P-47N.The early P-47s likewise had some issues:
1) The early pencil propeller made it a terrible cimber. It wasn't until early 1944 that the Curtiss paddle-bladed propeller changed the character of the aircraft. By then. the P-51s were firmly established in the ETO. Similar to the P-38 problems in that once the P-51 was there, fixing the issue likely didn't change the mission assignments unless there was some compelling reason to do so.
Yes, but... Before December 1, 1943 there only existed One P-38 FG operational for 6 weeks, No P-51B operations, Seven P-47 FGs. The 4th, 56th 78th were operational eight months, 353rd four months, 352nd and 355th for three months. To me the more intersting number is for the month of December 1943. At that time 8 P-47 FGs were operational, One totally inexperienced P-51B group and One+ P-38 FG (20th began December 28). The victory credits were 78, 9 and 5 respectively for P-47 then P-51 and P-38.2) The early turtledeck units were not the best for rearward visibility. It wasn't until the P-47D-25-RE that the bubble canopy was incorporated. They never made another turtledeck unit after that.
3) It wasn't widely publicized, but the P-47 could suffer from the same critical Mach issues the P-38 did. It wasn't until 1944 that the P-47 got Mach dive brakes. Yanks Air Museum has a P-47D with the WWII-issue dive brakes on it. Our P-38 also has the dive brakes installed. These went a long way to changing the likelihood of a pilot diving steeply after an opponent.
So, I wouldn't be too hard on the early P-47s that went over there. Saying they did almost nothing through 1943, when they actually contributed 414 of 451 claims is a bit disingenuous. It actually means that the P-47 contributed 91.8% of the claims. Does that mean all the other fighters were dogs and not worthy of mention? I don't think so. It rather means we were getting our collective feet wet in actual combat and it took some time to develop the skills and tactics to be successful at it. If I recall, the the Brits went into the war flying the Vic combat formation and it took some time for them to convert to the finger four formation with wingmen for each element leader. They learned that from the Germans, who developed it in Spain, unless I misremember.
It performed very well for a high altitude interceptor converted to Mid range escort and fighter bomber. The Mustang performed well for a medium altitude Pusuit to Jack of all trades, including the most difficut - fight on equal terms or better over adversary's capital, at hgh or low altitude. .Do the P-47 units get less forbearance in developing successful tactics? They did good work with what they had to work with, and developed the aircraft into a good weapon system as the war went on. But, as we see, it didn't happen overnight.
As I posted previously the cockpit heating was improved by using both engines to provide cockpit heat. Originally the starboard engine heated the cockpit while the port engine heated the armament or cameras. The intensifier tubes were enlarged as well. A plugin was also added for a heated flying suit.The addition of a second generator largely solved the cockpit heating problem -