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Subject: Best All-Around Fighter of World War II
sentinel28a    10/13/2009 3:38:03 PM
Let's try a non-controversial topic, shall we? (Heh heh.) I'll submit the P-51 for consideration. BW and FS, if you come on here and say that the Rafale was the best fighter of WWII, I am going to fly over to France and personally beat you senseless with Obama's ego. (However, feel free to talk about the D.520.)
 
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oldbutnotwise       7/5/2013 10:32:19 AM
What did I say about Sydney Camm being Britain's Willy Meserschmidt? How did the Typhoon's combat record really stack up? 
It was a fine ground attack plane. About as good as the Apache. The thing still vibrated like a badly tuned kazoo .

It also operated as low level escort fighter and worked well

We won't mention the Hawker Tornado that was to be equipped with the defective RR Vulture engine.



Again the Tornado was just an RR engined typhoon
And how did that work out, please? At least the Sabre engined Typhoon was of 'some' use.
 
And thats why it was canned, but it was an alternative if the sabre had failed and the Vulture succeeded, its call not putting your eggs in one basket

As for the Hunter, it was the most shot down non-Russian plane the Mysteres in all their versions killed. True Israelis versus Arabs, but the Jordanians and Iraqis were not bad pilots.    
 
I think not.
Ourside my interest period but from what I can find the Israelis regarded the Hunter asn being a match for thier Mirage II and superior to the Mysteres -
 
 
 
I think you need to look beyond those figures, the HUnter might have been shot down a lot but that alone does not make it a poor fighter, in fact it was more manuvuerable in all planes than most of its competitors and was the plane and as posted before was regarded as a match for the Mirage II and superior to the Mysteres (pilot quality counts a lot ) plus I beleive that a large proportion of these kills were against ground targets
it does not mean they were not shot down but the opinion of the opposition counts a lot, it is also worth mentioning that Switzerland were happy with the Hunter into the 80s it was a good match for any fighter in a subsonic fight it tight enviroments
--
Lansens were better designs. as were Mysteres (My opinion of course.)


Lansens I know noting about so will not comment, however from what I have read I would not put the Mysteres on par with the Hunter, as pointed out above the Israelies certainly did not think that they were a match let alone superior

Lansen... think of it  as a Swedish Hawker Hunter with a slightly lower service ceiling, much better air to air missiles (American Sidewinders) slightly lower cornering speed, and more useable minutes in the air than the Hunter. Also a lot TOUGHER as it was built to operate in Sweden.   
 
As the Hunter was operated in such varried enviroment I could argue against it being tougher on that point, the Hunter did use Sidewinders stall speed in a turn I dont know but from what is written about the Hunter I would be supprised, range - another range is king arguement that to be honest I completely disagree with, range is ONLy a factor whe you are a big distance from the fight and the Hunter and the Lansen wouldnt be

But not the high temperature jet engine (turbo-charger) steels. The British imported many American alloys.
a large proportion of the steels and alloys that were used in allied jets were developed in the UK, the primary alloy for turbine blades was a Rolls Royce developed alloy

This is not so. You do know what the Sendzimir process is? - Galvanising, not a new Idea he just improved the process
Have you heard of Nimonic? or Inconel?

Yes I have.      
 
Haynes of the US, and Leon Alexander Guillet and Albert Portevin of France. Then there was Frederick Becket of Westinghouse. (A Canadian I believe.) Without them, the British would have nothing upon which to start or which to catch up. 
 
 
seems that they too needed something to start with
 
actually wrong Nimonic and Inconel (vital in the production of axial flow turbines and turbo chargers) were British the above worked on stainless (also arguably Brtish)
 
 
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oldbutnotwise       7/5/2013 10:38:37 AM







They had the alloys, just not enough time, fuel, or pilots . A five hour jet engine is good enough for a nation that would use the Me 163, don't you think?  Their problem was not that of MHBTO, I t was numbers and that braindead Luftwaffe high command. If Udet had listened to Heinkel, they would have BMW 004 powered Arados and the He 280s which would have used a Whittle style centrifugal engine the Ohain HeS-8  ...   flying over Normandy.
I would say that having an engine that often wouldnt get you into the air and would need replacing ever mission was a big drawback, it was the lack of suitable allows and the lack of supplies of theones they did have that was a major set back in the axial flow department, I poiinted out that a working whittle was far superior to a dog of an axial, the Germans were shocked when they tested a Whittle post war, after an extended test the Brits stopped for Lunch, the Germans wanting to look keen offered to stay and replace the engine parts for the next test, they couldnt believe it when they were told that no changes were required, the engines had already lasted longer than any german jet engines they had tested
 
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marat,jean       7/5/2013 9:33:14 PM

What did I say about Sydney Camm being Britain's Willy Meserschmidt? How did the Typhoon's combat record really stack up? 

It was a fine ground attack plane. About as good as the Apache. The thing still vibrated like a badly tuned kazoo .


It also operated as low level escort fighter and worked well

It needed top cover, which is a big no-no over France in 1944.

We won't mention the Hawker Tornado that was to be equipped with the defective RR Vulture engine.

Again the Tornado was just an RR engined typhoon

And how did that work out, please? At least the Sabre engined Typhoon was of 'some' use.

 
And that's why it was canned, but it was an alternative if the sabre had failed and the Vulture succeeded, its call not putting your eggs in one basket

But it did not work. Putting an additional rotten egg into a flying kazoo, as one pilot called that vibrational harmonic tail flutter mistake is not spreading your risk. You compound it.




 
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marat,jean       7/5/2013 9:36:03 PM
As for the Hunter, it was the most shot down non-Russian plane the Mysteres in all their versions killed. True Israelis versus Arabs, but the Jordanians and Iraqis were not bad pilots.      

Data.

I think not.

Outside my interest period but from what I can find the Israelis regarded the Hunter asn being a match for thier Mirage II and superior to the Mysteres -

I think you need to look beyond those figures, the Hunter might have been shot down a lot but that alone does not make it a poor fighter, in fact it was more manuvuerable in all planes than most of its competitors and was the plane and as posted before was regarded as a match for the Mirage II and superior to the Mysteres (pilot quality counts a lot ) plus I believe that a large proportion of these kills were against ground targets

it does not mean they were not shot down but the opinion of the opposition counts a lot, it is also worth mentioning that Switzerland were happy with the Hunter into the 80s it was a good match for any fighter in a subsonic fight it tight environments

This is true, much of what you say, but... the Hunter was flown by GOOD pilots (Iraqis when they were British trained, and Jordanians, also British trained. (Those numbers count, when you look at India versus Pakistan, too.

http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_324.shtml

The F-86 Sabre flown by Paks wins against Indians who pilot Hunters? This does not say that the Hunter was that good. It says that mediocre pilots shot down Hunters flown by good pilots.

--

Lansens were better designs. as were Mysteres (My opinion of course.)


Lansens I know nothing about so will not comment, however from what I have read I would not put the Mysteres on par with the Hunter, as pointed out above the Israelis certainly did not think that they were a match let alone superior

Lansen... think of it  as a Swedish Hawker Hunter with a slightly lower service ceiling, much better air to air missiles (American Sidewinders) slightly lower cornering speed, and more useable minutes in the air than the Hunter. Also a lot TOUGHER as it was built to operate in Sweden.   

 

As the Hunter was operated in such varied environment I could argue against it being tougher on that point, the Hunter did use Sidewinders, stall speed in a turn I don't know but from what is written about the Hunter I would be surprised, range - another range is king argument that to be honest I completely disagree with, range is ONLY a factor when you are a big distance from the fight and the Hunter and the Lansen wouldnt be.

 
See below.


 
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marat,jean       7/5/2013 9:58:08 PM

I will discuss those points about the Lansen and the Hunter.

  1. Sweden is a long nation from north to south. It's air frontier is huge for its small size. It is also a nation of climate extremes, with weather that is arctic to north German in variation. In addition, its conscript air force, though well educated, was a conscript air force, not a professional one like the RAF or the USAF or the AdA. The Swedish plane would have to be tough to take off and land from unimproved airstrips, and be maintained by boys who were not trained jet engine mechanics.

  2. The Lansen was designed with the same type British engine as the Hunter used, the same type cannon, with  American and German avionics. It would therefore have those mechanical parities and advantages compared to the Hunter. It's search radar WORKED, as did its missiles (*Sidewinders were better than Firestreak or Red Top.)

  3. The Lansen was INTENDED to carry assorted guided missiles the start, (hence the backseat radar operator), the Hunter was not.

  4. The Lansen with a slightly greater payload had a faster climb to a lower height and a better corner speed in the turn than the Hunter which it so closely resembles. That this is surprising is true, but SAAB aircraft are notorious good turners. (See pilot comments about Gripen.)

  5. About range... from the Negev to western Egypt is about an hour and a quarter one way, at Mach 0,7. That would be three hours round trip per combat sortie. Both the Hunter and Lansen would make it, but the Lansen would have more useable minutes over target, and as both were originally designed as BOMBERS, that endurance does matter.

  6. The Lansen, because it used (Swedish) air to ground guided missiles had a standoff weapon capability, useful to avoid flak. The (originally) Hunter did not. The very heavy cannon armament, far in excess of what was needed to down a Rusian bomber of the period, indicates a CAS function was in mind for both aircraft. Both planes were designed to fire (French) strafing rockets for the CAS mission. 

To be honest, if the Lansen had been in Arab service, I would expect more losses than the Hunter, because the Arabs would have made a bigger mess of it with the more capable (and complex from a weapon platform point of view) aircraft than the simpler Hunter, which was the simpler plane to fly and use.   

If the Indians had the Lansen? Now there, would be a FAIR test of our opinions. I have no respect for the Pak air force after 1966, that air force being too much arabized by imshalla by that time. The Indians, however, improved to the point where their RAF inspired traditions made them the best air force in south Asia. (That includes the PLAAF, the Vietnam's Peoples' Air Force, and even the Americans USAF of that sorry era.).

 
 
 
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marat,jean       7/5/2013 10:13:27 PM

It wasn’t until 1895, when Hans Goldschmidt of Germany developed the aluminothermic reduction process for producing carbon-free chromium, that development of stainless steels became a reality.

In 1904 French Scientist Leon Guillet undertook extensive research on many iron-chromium alloys.

Guillets work included studies on the composition of what would now be known as 410, 420, 442, 446 and 440-C. In 1906 Guillet went on to analyse iron-nickel-chrome alloys, which would now be considered the basics of the 300 series. However, while noting the chemical composition of his alloys, Guillet failed to acknowledge the potential corrosion resistance of his materials.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
 
However, it wasn’t until 1911 that the importance of a minimum chromium content was discovered by Germans P. Monnartz and W. Borchers. Monnartz and Borchers discovered the correlation between chromium content and corrosion resistance, stating that there was a significant boost in corrosion resistance when at least 10.5% chromium was present. The pair also published detailed works on the effects of molybdenum on corrosion resistance.
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 
In 1908 the Germans entered the fray, the Krupp Iron Works in Germany produced a chrome-nickel steel for the hull of the Germania yacht. The Half Moon, as the yacht is now known, has a rich history and currently lies on the seabed off the east coast of Florida. Whether the steel contains the minimum 10.5% chromium content remains inconclusive. Employees of the Krupp works, Eduard Maurer and Benno Strauss, also worked from 1912-1914 on developing austenitic steels using <1% carbon, <20% nickel and 15-40% chromium.
 
Please note that the Krupp steel boat still exists and is documented.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Not happy with Europe hogging the glory, the USA got in on the act. Firstly, Elwood Haynes, after becoming disenchanted at his rusty razor, set out to create a corrosion resistant steel, which he supposedly succeeded in doing during 1911. Two other Americans, Becket and Dantsizen, worked on ferritic stainless steels, containing 14-16% chromium and 0.07-0.15% carbon, in the years 1911-1914.
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Also documented, which gave rise to the German joke, that all the Americans were good at making was refrigerators and razor blades. A LOT of razor blade steel went into the turbocharged bombers and fighters the Americans used.   I will comment on refrigeration whenever we discuss American pressurization systems. It appears that the Americans did not make good refrigerators.    
 
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marat,jean       7/5/2013 11:39:10 PM
They had the alloys, just not enough time, fuel, or pilots . A five hour jet engine is good enough for a nation that would use the Me 163, don't you think?  Their problem was not that of MHBTO, I t was numbers and that braindead Luftwaffe high command. If Udet had listened to Heinkel, they would have BMW 004 powered Arados and the He 280s which would have used a Whittle style centrifugal engine the Ohain HeS-8  ...   flying over Normandy.
I would say that having an engine that often wouldn't get you into the air and would need replacing ever mission was a big drawback, it was the lack of suitable allows and the lack of supplies of the ones they did have that was a major set back in the axial flow department, I pointed out that a working whittle was far superior to a dog of an axial, the Germans were shocked when they tested a Whittle post war, after an extended test the Brits stopped for Lunch, the Germans wanting to look keen offered to stay and replace the engine parts for the next test, they couldn't believe it when they were told that no changes were required, the engines had already lasted longer than any german jet engines they had tested
 
Let me address these points.
 
1. Nowhere can I find, more than four RAF squadrons converted over to Gloster Meteors during WW II. That means operationally, less than 100 aircraft deployed for combat. Perhaps as many as 500 aircraft may have been built by the end of the European war, but I doubt it, as the type had compressibility airframe design defects, needed a reworked cannopy, jet tunnel issues (nacelles were TOO short in the initial marks that robbed the aircraft  of about 100 km/h airspeed ) and nose cannon mount problems that plagued initial service entry That the Whittle could fly 50+ hours was pfft, when all those deleterious issues were detailed. The RAF technical department (no fools they) had good reason to not risk jet fighter combat with the Me 262s until the bugs were worked out. Good enough against a V-1 buzz bomb was not good enough against 'experten' in Messerchmidt jets.
 
2. Postwar you have the Meteor built to the number of about three thousand aircraft.  It was massively exported and became almost the signature fighter of the British commonwealth and British allies.
 
3. It could, when finally rationalized and fixed postwar, (around 1948), outclimb and outturn the contemporary Lockheed Shooting Star, but NOT in 1945, when it, the Meteor, was a DOG.
 
Now for the Vampire.
 
1. This de Havilland design was a mixed construction aircraft that flew delayed with a de Havilland designed copy of the Whittle engine (and thus missed WW II). Their prototype engine (Halford H-1) failed certi8fication (*That would be the actual Goblin, not a Whittle, that the Americans tested and MELTED because the steels in it weren't good enough in their bench-test. Lockheed went searching for a better engine for the P-80 after that failure. Enter Allison and GE.)  
 
2. If anything, the Vampire was built and exported in larger numbers than the Gloster.  Once again, when rationalized, it could outperform its contemporary. the FH Phantom I, being a slightly faster climber and able to marginally out-turn the American plane. But of course that was 1948, again.

More follows ===============>
 
 
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marat,jean       7/5/2013 11:59:40 PM
 
The Messerchmidt 262 was built during the war in 1100+ examples. It flew combat missions against enemy aircraft. During March of 1945, these missions involved several German documented sorties by twenty to thirty jet fighters per intercept. As the German day fighter force inside the Reich rarely exceeded about 200-300 aircraft on alert at that time, that is a respectable 8-10 percent of the available Luftwaffe aircraft in combat. The Germans claimed an exchange ratio of 4 to 1 against the USAAF. The USAAF kept good records, yet mysteriously these records for this period against that type, appear 'missing.'     
 
I am convinced that when your mission is as a target defense interceptor, the average five hour lifespan of a Jumo 004 is not only acceptable, but sustainable in an era, where the crazy Russians and the desperate Germans fielded rocket propelled fighters fueled by hydrazine and hydrogen peroxide!     
 
Not to say that the Schwabe didn't have its faults.
 
1.-The jet tunnels were not optimized. Parasitic drag and flame-out were problems leading to 2.
2.-Flame-out from compressor stall (not engine melting as so many historian falsely claim) killed Nowotny and a score of pilots who mishandled the fuel feed throttles and over-spun the turbine disks. Allied pilots helped by aiming for the engines which when mixed with FOD [bullets] exploded into steel confetti.
3. -Bailout was never considered with this design. Over the side and into the tail and the poor pilot fell to the ground in several pieces. This happened too often.  
 
 
 
 
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oldbutnotwise       7/6/2013 11:57:23 AM
have to disagree strongly that the Lansen was a superior fighter, a couple of thing stand out, first the Hunter was designed as an interceptor/air superiority fighter NOT a bomber as you claim
 
secondly, why, if the Lansen was superior did Sweden buy Hunters? I cannot imagine why a country would buy another countries aircraft when they were making one that as you claim, superior?
 
It does not make sense
 
as for the Pak/India war it looks on a cursory investigation that honour's were pretty even, both side had well trained pilots and kills look fairly even
 
But the bottom line is that most think the Hunter was probably the best transsonic fighter built
 
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oldbutnotwise       7/6/2013 12:24:47 PM
1.  Nowhere can I find, more than four RAF squadrons converted over to  Gloster Meteors during WW II. That means operationally, less than 100  aircraft deployed for combat. Perhaps as many as 500 aircraft may have  been built by the end of the European war, but I doubt it, as the type  had compressibility airframe design defects, needed a reworked cannopy,  jet tunnel issues (nacelles were TOO short in the initial marks that  robbed the aircraft  of about 100 km/h airspeed ) and nose cannon mount  problems that plagued initial service entry

actually only 1 squadron 616 was converted to fly meteors and By January 45 the F3 had the above issues fixed

That the Whittle could fly  50+ hours was pfft, when all those deleterious issues were detailed. The  RAF technical department (no fools they) had good reason to not risk  jet fighter combat with the Me 262s until the bugs were worked out. Good  enough against a V-1 buzz bomb was not good enough against 'experten'  in Messerchmidt jets.

actually the restriction was not to avoid combat but to avoid the possibility of the Germans getting hold of a Meteor, are you aware that their is a Meteor F3 flying today that has its original engines?
    
 
2. Postwar you have  the Meteor built to the number of about three thousand aircraft.  It was  massively exported and became almost the signature fighter of the  British commonwealth and British allies.    
     
3.  It could, when finally rationalized and fixed postwar, (around 1948),  outclimb and outturn the contemporary Lockheed Shooting Star, but NOT in  1945, when it, the Meteor, was a DOG.    
 
it could ALWAYS outperform the Shooting star, which in 45 was barely able to compete with piston engine fighters and was only available in single figures
 
Now for the Vampire.     
 
1.  This de Havilland design was a mixed construction aircraft that flew  delayed with a de Havilland designed copy of the Whittle engine (and  thus missed WW II). Their prototype engine (Halford H-1) failed  certi8fication (*That would be the actual Goblin, not a Whittle, that  the Americans tested and MELTED because the steels in it weren't good  enough in their bench-test. Lockheed went searching for a better engine  for the P-80 after that failure. Enter Allison and GE.)       
 
I give up even after correcting you several time you insit on repeating this idea that somehow the GE owned nothing to the Brits, I don't see the point on rehashing it
 
2.  If anything, the Vampire was built and exported in larger numbers than  the Gloster.  Once again, when rationalized, it could outperform its  contemporary. the FH Phantom I, being a slightly faster climber and able  to marginally out-turn the American plane. But of course that was 1948,  again.     
 
the Development of the Vampire was delayed, had it continued as originally planned in could have been available late war but it was delayed as the it engine was diverted to the P80 program when they blew there own up
 
the vampire entered service pretty much the same period as the P80 and was superior
 
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