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Subject: First critical element of WW-II fighter plane effectivness?
45-Shooter    1/18/2013 9:22:46 PM
Given that the "typical" WW-II Single engine fighter could be spotted at 1-2 miles, depending on aspect, about half the time, I propose that the smaller the plane, the more effective it will be! Sort of a semi-stealth solution to the "Spotting" problem?
 
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Belisarius1234    JFKY    1/24/2013 3:14:57 PM
Argue all you want. It's USERS report exactly what I told you. That is the history of the plane.
 
"Not to be used in the presence of enemy jet-fighters."  Korean War. An example.  
 
Operationally it was done as a bomber in 1952. Kaput.
 
B.
 
 
 
 
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45-Shooter       1/24/2013 4:40:53 PM


   harse as the huricane was of the same vintage as the P36, the P40 was 4 years later Really?
 god cant you even do a minimum of reasearch, the Hurricane entered serive in 38 the P40 in 41 so I was a year out 3 years not 4 Bill Gunston states on page 42 that the first production Hurry left the factory on 12 Oct-1937. On page 110 of the same book he states "October 1939" with large scale production starting in January 1940. By my recconning that is two years and less than four months. From Wiki; The Curtiss... P-40 Warhawk was an American single-engine, single-seat, all-metal fighter... and ground attack aircraft... that first flew in 1938. The P-40 design was a modification of the previous Curtiss P-36 Hawk... which reduced development time and enabled a rapid entry into production and operational service. Also from Wiki; Several fabric-wing Hurricanes were still in service during the Battle of Britain, although a good number had had their wings replaced during servicing or after repair. Changing the wings only required three hours' work per aircraft.[14]... An all-metal, stressed-skin wing of duraluminium... (a DERD specification similar to AA2024) was introduced in April 1939 and was used for all of the later marks.[7]... "The metal skinned wings allowed a diving speed that was 80 mph (130 km/h) higher than the fabric-covered ones. So you missed by two years if you round off and 1 year eight months if not.
by which time the Hurricane was pretty much regarded as obsolete, it aslo had a worse reputation for landing crashes than the spit suposedly weak legsWorse than the Spit? By who's account? What is your source? The Spit's legs were as far as I know, NOT WAEK! They WERE to narrow by ALL accounts and many people say either that it "Killed more of it's pilots than the Luftwaffe." OR that it "Destroyed more planes than the Luftwaffe"!
weak in the sense i was meaning was that it caused a lot of incidents (although not nearly as many as the 109). as for source read the reports from the Desert airforce and how many P40s they lost to the legs folding I was not comp'ing the Hurry with the P-40. Why did you bring it up?
The P40 was a 1938 fighter that arrived in 1941! and then was made in stupid numbers many late models were flown directly from the facory to the scrapyard. Lets see, it replaced the Hurricane in many units, was made in roughly the same numbers, had a better K/L Ratio and many other superior traits. Does that about state the facts?
     
The Russians who were given both the Hurricane and the P-40, used both. The Russians screamed for P-40s and  P-39s, but rejected Hurricanes when Churchill offered additional planes. THAT was how bad the Hurricane was. The Russians preferred the better-made American JUNK.
B.
Actually the Russians accepted a lot of Huricanes and used them even when the RAF had stopped, and as pointed out the P40 was a later development (the P39 was ot regarded as a fighter??? Did you know that at least one Russian Ace destroyed more German planes than ANY ALLIED ACE while using a P-39? In fact the P-39 was well regarded by the Ruskies for it's LOW ALTITUDE performance where they fought and thus FORCED the Nazis to come down and play. PS. I can not remember right now, but there were several Ruskies who topped all other Allied Aces from the P-39? but as a Ground attack which is one of the reasons they often kept the 37mm)




While ALL aircraft had Good points and Bad points, I find it very hard to find one that is ALL GOOD or ALL BAD!

 
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45-Shooter       1/24/2013 4:42:07 PM

 "Far more than yours!"   Really? Can you please elaborate?
 
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45-Shooter       1/24/2013 4:46:09 PM

Just in case any poor soul should find himself trying to pick his lonely way through the jungle of this thread.
May I suggest:
a) Not using the quote boxes (OBNY) it makes it virtually impossible to decipher new content from that you've quoted.
b) Not all using the same red colour. May I suggest that when replying directly underneath or in line with previous content B uses red 45 uses blue, and OBNW uses this rather attractive lilac. 
That way it might be a bit clearer. 

blue? Nuts! I love this idea and think it is one of the best ideas I have heard recently! However, I can not seem to change the font collor as you can see from the first word of the above line! HELP!


 
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JFKY    OMG Velasarius   1/24/2013 4:57:46 PM
want. It's USERS report exactly what I told you. That is the history of the plane.
 
 The users also reported that they destroyed most of Japan's ability to wage war or even feed itself, because of this plane.  And had done so long before any other a/c could have done so.
 
"Not to be used in the presence of enemy jet-fighters."  Korean War. An example.  
 
That doesn't speak to the plane, so much as technology.  The same thing could havve been said of the B-17 or Lancaster. 
 
Operationally it was done as a bomber in 1952. Kaput.
 Except as a NIGHT BOMBER, over Korea, where it continued to operate, IIRC.
 
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45-Shooter       1/24/2013 5:03:07 PM

The problems were. It WAS a failure (China campaign), until the right bombs, tactics and doctrine was employed. It's useful operational lifespan was six years. The plane ate up more dollars, energy, manpower, and production time than the MANHATTAN project.     
Compared to the B-36 successor (another botched bomber program) the B-29 did not last as long operationally. It managed to accomplish the WW II mission for which it was designed, but just barely (my opinion of what the facts show.).
Unlike many other World War II-era bombers, the B-29 remained in service long after the war ended, with a few even being employed as flying television transmitters for the Stratovision company. The B-29 served in various roles throughout the 1950s. The Royal Air Force flew the B-29 and used the name Washington for the type, replacing them in 1953 with the Canberra jet bomber..., and the Soviet Union produced an unlicensed reverse-engineered... copy as the Tupolev Tu-4.... The B-29 was the progenitor of a series of Boeing-built bombers, transports, tankers, reconnaissance aircraft and trainers including the B-50 Superfortress... (the first aircraft to fly arou...) which was essentially a re-engined B-29. The type was finally retired in the early 1960s, with 3,970 aircraft in all built. While dozens of B-29s have survived through today as static displays, only one, Fifi, remains on active flying status.

 
Let me point out a few critical things, he notes in the numbers. 380 missions, 500 aircraft lost. Not a bad loss rate you say?
From your own source below 494 AC including 80 fighters, that leaves 414 bombers, of which over 300 were non-combat losses as you state, leaves about 100 from ALL types of enemy action over 31,000 sorties. That is a loss rate of <0.003226! Correct me if I am wrong, but no other plane has a lower Loss rate in WW-II!
 Almost half of those losses were not enemy induced. Those were crashes into the sea from takeoffs, engine failures, or just "unknown". Actually, it was 80 out of 494 to combat and 414 to all other causes1 I would point out that it is like that with most planes in WW-II. Not quite as bad as that, but both the Spit and -109 had horiffic "Non-Combat" loss rates!

 

Note the first PP I posted from Wiki. In it it states that the B-29 served longer than the Spit, which is widely regarded as one of the longest and thus most effective aircraft of WW-II? Even in British service!

 
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Belisarius1234    Why bother with you?    1/24/2013 5:08:04 PM
I KNOW you from the Delphi boards, Shooter.  BANNED weren't you? 
 
You are almost as misinformed as Mustang, Aus and Kuroc on aviation matters and know less than almost anyone I've ever seen; who's posted complete NONSENSE about guns, military affairs, aviation, and general TECHNOLOGY.
 
Do we understand each other NOW?
 
B.
 
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45-Shooter       1/24/2013 5:08:07 PM

The plane ate up more dollars, energy, manpower, and production time than the MANHATTAN project.     

No, simply, NO...the Manhattan Project consumed about 1% of the US GNP for that time frame, absolutely untrue that the B-29 used so many resources. I hate to say this, but B. is right about this! It was easily TWICE as expencive as the Manhatten Project! More than 4 Billions of $, to a hair under 2 Billions of $ for the Manhatten Project. Serriously!

Compared to the B-36 successor (another botched bomber program) the B-29 did not last as long operationally. It managed to accomplish the WW II mission for which it was designed, but just barely (my opinion of what the facts show.).
Is there an UN-botched bomber project, let's see B-17/24/29/36 all "botched"...as Inago Montoya says, "I doan tink that word means what you tink it does."

So it achieved what it was designed to do...that makes it a SUCCESS, dood....and if by "barely" you mean it destroyed every major urban conurbation in Japan, EXCEPT Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kyoto (spared for strategic reasons), then I guess you're right it barely managed to succeed. 

 

Bottom-line: I'm afraid your definition of botched program is so skewed as to be meaningless, and your analysis of the B-29 so poor as to be laughable.

What more can I say?

 
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Belisarius1234    Why bother with you?    1/24/2013 5:15:33 PM



 

 The users also reported that they destroyed most of Japan's ability to wage war or even feed itself, because of this plane.  And had done so long before any other a/c could have done so.

 


"Not to be used in the presence of enemy jet-fighters."  Korean War. An example.  

 

That doesn't speak to the plane, so much as technology.  The same thing could havve been said of the B-17 or Lancaster. 

 


Operationally it was done as a bomber in 1952. Kaput.

 Except as a NIGHT BOMBER, over Korea, where it continued to operate, IIRC.

1. As a night-bomber with little or no guarantee of success.
 
History IS there, if you are objective, JFKY. But the key word is "OBJECTIVE."
 
B.
 
 
 
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45-Shooter       1/24/2013 5:22:55 PM

First let me say how much I like you line of thought below! My replies highlighted in yellow.
 
My main point is that you focus one 1 element in your critical element lists which does not reflect on the real world.
This is true, but not because of what you think. I was trying to reduce the clutter and dispersion of the topic into small, managable bites that could be more easily digested by the group.
 
As a side note spotting distance is not as important as response time.I think that responce time is critical because if you do not respond at all, you become one of the 80-93% (Depending on who you read and like!) that is shot down WO even attempting to fight back! How much time does one have to respond the other aircraft. Therefore relative speed is just as important. I think that "Realitive Speed is much more important than size, but after all of my arguments, no one here believes that except maybe you? You might see a ME-262 at a longer distance but if it has a much greater rate of closure your response time will be less. This is true, but in the whole scope of things less realivant, because it only takes ABOUT 4-5 seconds to spoil the attack with a basic turn into the shooter.

Now Belisarius1234 gave us a few great posts explaining what was or was not available to the axis and allies.
This is your first benchmark. You can't deploy what you do not have.
I agree entirely! That is why the RAF sent a guy to America to buy what they could not build in time. It is part of a posit on another board some time ago that some here refer to as "My Bat Plane".
 
For the Battle of Britain the Hurricane despite being out dated shot down more aircraft then the Spitfire.
Despite it's flaws it was good enough to have that big an impact and remained useable thoughout the war.
It became a carrier based aircraft, ground attack aircraft ect.
ALL TRUE! and realivant too. This is just one more expression of the "Good is the Enemy of the Best!" agument. Paraphrasing, IIRC?
 
Now the ME-262 is the opposite, high performance and ahead of its time. Yet it had no impact at all.
I've read somewhere 1600 were built but only 200 became operational the others never had all the parts.
Sounds about right to me, at least from the old Germans I talked to when I was stationed in Germany. Twice.
 
So which is more effective, the outdated plane thats available in sufficient numbers  or the new one thats not?

 

All in all, a great post!

 
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