An interceptor with no capability for firing forward. Brilliant.
Amusingly, the story has a caption on one of the images that the aircraft had a crew of two “people”.
AHEM!!!! Bf109, thank you very much.
And the Bf109 wasn’t without flaws either - in particular it barely had enough range to reach Great Britain. As such, whatever bombers it was escorting to British airspace were vulnerable once the Bf109’s had to turn back.
bfl
Knew a Polish POW who was in Stalag 13 (yeah, I know) in Nuremberg. He told me the Spitfires would take out an entire city block in one run.
Woke up one morning soon afterward, and all the guards had left.
Historical revisionism is regularly attacked, but often it helps us discover new truths. In WW2 aviation, for example, recent research has helped upgrade the value delivered by the p-40 Warhawk and the B-24.
It killed a lot of planes. Especially as a night fighter. The leading Japanese ace Saburo Sakai was nearly killed by some Grumman Avengers. He rolled in on them from the rear thinking they were Wildcats, when his windshield exploded. A ball turret gunner shot him in the head.
There was a learning curve at the beginning of the war. The Germans thought the Stuka was badass, they terror of Europe, until they tried to use them over England one day.
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“That plane was a sitting duck for ME-109s. Waste of Merlin engines on that air frame.”
The Defiant holds the record for shooting down the most enemy aircraft in one day when on May 29, 1940, 264 Squadron shot down two Me 109s, 15 Me 110s and a Junkers Ju 87 Stutka dive bomber on their first mission of the day.
After refuelling and rearming, the squadron finished the day with a total of 38 aircraft kills.
Although, one of the squadron’s aces - having killed five aircraft in one day - was later shot down and killed.
Pilot Nicholas Cooke and his gunner Albert Lippett scored five kills in one day, making them instant Aces.
The USA had a lot of .50 cal Brownings flying around. B-24s had ten each. Japanese pilots considered it suicide to attack even small formations. They’d attack the bombers to bring in the cover, then fight them. Often, a US fighter would fly past the formation to have a tailing Zero removed.