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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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earlm       7/12/2011 11:44:57 PM
H,
 
How do you stack the Yak vs the Lavochkin?
 
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Hamilcar21       7/13/2011 12:30:24 AM

H,
 
How do you stack the Yak vs the Lavochkin?

The armament and engine was better in the La-5 than the Yak-3  I like the Berezins. The flight characteristics  above 3000 meters was inferior in the vertical and the roll.  Control systems layout and pilot ergonomics were AWFU:L. Loss rates because of the stupid cockpit layout was the highest among Soviet type target defense interceptor for pilots killed trying to move all the damned levers and switches. Head down in the Cockpit disease was the cause. The Yak was simpler to fly. 

The La-5 was a DEATHTRAP.  I don't know that much about the La-7 improvements to correct the La-5 faults, so I don't know if the pilot management load was ever corrected enough. The La-9 postwar certainly addressed those issues and was the fighter the Russians really wanted in 1942.    

H. 
 
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phrank       7/13/2011 12:58:40 AM
No one talks about the ME-262. The thing I wonder is if Germany had a leader that wasn't nuts could they have gotten them into the fight maybe even years before.
 
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Hamilcar21       7/13/2011 6:25:13 AM

Nope. Pretty Boy Willy's witless crew  FUed the design  so badly that even with the fighter go-ahead and without Hitler's meddling, the defective tail *never really fixed , the fouled  up gun pack (also never really fixed) and the screwed up landing gear would still see a service entry date of late 1944, and with ALL of those critical defects still present.  

Heinkel 280

Heinkel was a better engineer and a better PILOT. That would have made a decent mid 1943 entry and proved effective from the first as a strike fighter and a bomber killer as well as a general interceptot  It could be considered a jet powered replacement for the FW-190. In a panic, it could have been rushed into service mid 1942. 

No one talks about the ME-262. The thing I wonder is if Germany had a leader that wasn't nuts could they have gotten them into the fight maybe even years before.
H.
 
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guns0331    guns0331   12/21/2012 11:50:17 PM

Heh Heh, I'll submit the F4U Corsair. To prove my point, I'll refer to the book 'Allied Fighters of World War II' by Bill Gunston. On page 97, in reference to the F4U, Gunston writes "the bent-wing F4U, at first judged tricky and unfit for carrier operation (a belief disproved by the British fleet air arm even with baby carriers), was finally recognized as possibly the greatest fighter of the entire war. It outflew such doughty opponents as the P-47M, P-51H and Japan's KI-84!"  How 'bout them apples? 
 
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guns0331    guns0331   12/21/2012 11:54:52 PM

Heh Heh, I'll submit the F4U Corsair. To prove my point, I'll refer to the book 'Allied Fighters of World War II' by Bill Gunston. On page 97, in reference to the F4U, Gunston writes "the bent-wing F4U, at first judged tricky and unfit for carrier operation (a belief disproved by the British fleet air arm even with baby carriers), was finally recognized as possibly the greatest fighter of the entire war. It outflew such doughty opponents as the P-47M, P-51H and Japan's KI-84!"  How 'bout them apples? 
 
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45-Shooter    By all reasonable criteria, you are right!   12/22/2012 11:32:30 AM
The Me-109 had a lot going for it. CL mounted guns with OK fire powert in most variants. LE Slats that gave it a much higher AoA than all of it's competiters and ALL of the advantages that came with them. It was small and harder to see coming, thus was more likely to be able to sneak up and kill you while you were not looking. It was fast and had a good rate of climb, but was short ranged and lacked endurance and persistance. ( It lacked fuel and ammo to hang around longer.) Finnaly, it also had excellent Transient Responce flight charicteristics.
On the other hand it it was a handful to fly and required an "Expert's touch" to get the most out of it. Ergonomic defects abounded, such as the lack of an in flight adjustable rudder trim tab that caused pilots to get "Chrysler Leg" before there were hemi Chrysler clutches to give them to Americans. It lacked view over the nose at those high Angle of Attack moments provided by those LE Slats. The narrow track landing gear killed more pilots and destroyed more planes than combat?
Lastly, in spite of all this, it was not the best fighter of WW-II because there were other planes that had superior traits and equipment, such as the P-38.
 
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45-Shooter       12/22/2012 11:46:28 AM

I think you have to say that the P-51 is if not the best has to be number 2. It changed the war in that it could escort the bombers all the way to their targets and back. With that said I think maybe had they just let the long range fighters roam free hitting what they found without the bombers the outcome most likely would have been the same. The bombers missed so much and intel was so bad that they may have been better off not building them.
I would counter that except for the Me-109, American bombers destroyed more AC in A2A combat than any other type!
Furthermore, they were a lure to force the Luftwaffe to come up and fight where it could be destroyed en mass. Then there is the actual damage done to German and Allied infrastructure by day light bombing. ( Aside from killing and de-housing some civilian defence industry workers, night time bombing was useless.)

 
 
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45-Shooter       12/22/2012 11:54:22 AM

Nope. Pretty Boy Willy's witless crew  FUed the design  so badly that even with the fighter go-ahead and without Hitler's meddling, the defective tail *never really fixed , the fouled  up gun pack (also never really fixed) and the screwed up landing gear would still see a service entry date of late 1944, and with ALL of those critical defects still present.  

Heinkel 280...
Heinkel was a better engineer and a better PILOT. That would have made a decent mid 1943 entry and proved effective from the first as a strike fighter and a bomber killer as well as a general interceptot  It could be considered a jet powered replacement for the FW-190. In a panic, it could have been rushed into service mid 1942. 

No one talks about the ME-262. The thing I wonder is if Germany had a leader that wasn't nuts could they have gotten them into the fight maybe even years before.
H.
While I do not know the significance of the defects you nemtiones as they relate to actual combat, I do know for an absolute fact that niether German jet, of the to you mentioned and those that you did not could have seen service much before it did! The hold up was the engines! Not that hand made prototypes were not there and flying, more or less, but actual production engines were not availible one day before they were actually delivered.
That is all there was to that.
PS, you fail to mention the two largest defects of the Nazi jet program;
1. The short TBO of those early engines and;
2. The extreamly poor balistics of it's weapons and most specifically it's guns!

 
 
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45-Shooter       12/22/2012 12:07:12 PM
1) For its era the I-16 carried the heaviest firepower of any fighter, period.True!
2) Soviet Aircraft used turbo/super-charging and fuel injection, IIRC.Wrong! On both counts.
3) The Soviets had the best 12.7mm HMG.True again!
The problem is that:
1) We interviewed more Germans than Soviets post-WWII and so Soviet victories and achievements were over-looked.  The Germans tended to down-play Soviet success and attribute it to "Hitler" and "Vast numbers".
2) The Soviets were more secretive and so didn't play up their successes.
3) The "average" Soviet pilot may not have been that good, but they had very decent aircraft and some very decent pilots.Like ALL AFs, the Soviet AF had 1% super aces, 4% better Aces, 10% Aces, 35% fractional killers who managed to down less than 5 planes each and thus were NOT ACES and the other 50% who never shot down or destroyed anything!
Overall the Soviet Frontal Aviation and the like is probably under-rated.  People think "Bubi" Hartmann, but Hartmann was an outlier.No, he was just lucky enough to survive longer, there were IIRC, over 150 Nazi Aces who shot down over 100 AC each! Hardly the outlier given those stats!  The average 1944 Luftwaffe pilot was probably no great shakes and his Soviet counter-part had an airplane and skills set equal, at least to this putative average Luftwaffe pilot.The "Average pilot in ALL AFs was no great shakes as the botom 50% never shot down anything!
See replys in red above!
 
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