Interesting how the radial engine type cowl was retained with the inline engine. Was the radiator right upfront?
Posted on 04/09/2009 2:29:15 PM PDT by mikeus_maximus
I know there are "seasoned" ex-military types on this board. I'd like your and anyone else's opinion on this topic. Every year of WWII saw improvements in aircraft development and performance-- so much so that what was state of the art at the beginning of the war, such as the Me 109 and Supermarine Spitfire, would have been death traps by the end, 6 years later.
For years I'd heard the P-51 Mustang was the ultimate WWII fighter. Then I read a quote from a former FockWulfe 190 pilot who said Mustangs were frail-- one bullet in the aluminum cowling and they went down. No one can deny their service record, though.
Other sources say the FW 190D was the best plane to come out of WWII. It was built on the same concept as the P-51-- take a good fighter, shoehorn in a huge bomber engine, and now you've got a great fighter. Except in this case it was a radial engine, which could lose one or two cyl. and keep on ticking (as opposed to the Mustang's inline engine).
Some say the Japanese "Frank" fighter produced near the end of the war was tops. Other have said the Russian YAK3 was.
Recently I heard that the F8F Bearcat was undoubtedly the best plane. Grumman took apart a captured FW 190 and made it better. The Bearcat was a plane deisgned from scratch around a huge radial engine, rather than vice versa. It was smaller, faster and more agile than any of the above. It had a production speed of 455 mph, a rate of climb twice that of a Mustang, and a ceiling almost as high. Is was delviered to the Navy in the Pacific theatre, but the war ended before it saw action, or it would have made its own legend. A few years later a modifed version set the airspeed record for piston planes at 528+ mph.
It gets my vote. Anyone else have an opinion?
Thanks Tallguy!
I’ll look them up-thanks
Because the Mosquito was made primarily of wood, it was a lousy radar reflector as well, with radar being more primitive than what we now know.
The Fairey Swordfish that torpedoed the Bismark's rudder was a game changer.
Assuming common use in Europe.
The best Brit plane was probably the Typhoon/Tempest
The best German plane was the FW-190
Best American plane was the P-47
The best Russian plane was an IL-2.
The mosquito was a great success and was used by several nations for years after WWII ended.
Zman516 gave me the correct name for the Japanese Ace. It’s Nishizawa.
always loved the P-38
don’t forget a dozen and a half P-38s ambushed and killed Yamamoto in 1943
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Isoroku_Yamamoto
Interesting how the radial engine type cowl was retained with the inline engine. Was the radiator right upfront?
My Dad was killed in Vietnam, so I can’t ask him. He flew both the P-47 & P-51.
I’ll toss in a vote for the P-47, based on one of my Dad’s first sorties. He was Blue 4, and was shot up by a German. He lost control, went into a spin into the clouds. He recovered below the clouds, found the target area and dropped his bomb. He joined up with the other wingman, who had also become separated.
On the way home, they were jumped by Germans again. He never talked about it, but in the paperwork I found after he died, he said, ‘I’m not sure what happened. Suddenly one of the Germans was in front of me, and I fired. His wing came off. Moments later, another German flew right in front of me. It was only a couple hundred feet. I pulled the trigger, his plane exploded and I flew thru the fireball.’
He noted in a letter at the time, ‘When the crew chief saw how badly the rear was shot up, he was angry. Then he saw all the burn marks on the front, he really got mad. Then I told him I had shot down 2 Germans after first nearly getting shot down myself. He looked at me and said, I’ll have her ready to fly tomorrow...’
When I posted the pics I wondered about that one, but we have all seen so many T-6 Zeros that most of us think that that is what a real Zero looks like:-)
Have great weekend
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
I'm beginning to see it your way: http://home.att.net/~historyzone/F4U-4.html
Faster and more nimble than a P-51 D; tougher than a P-47; almost as maneuverable as the Sitpfire and P-38 (which were great planes for what they did).
My dad tells the story of one of his Corsair-flying buds being up in the air one day towards the end of the war, and he encountered a couple AAC hotshots in their P-51-Ds. They went zooming past him like a high speed firing pass, high to low. Then they parked themselves alongside him to ‘communicate.’
Being in level flight at fairly high altitude, my Dad’s bud hit the water injection and proceeded to rapidly leave the Mustangs behind.
Point made. So the story goes.
I love the Mustang, but the Corsair persisted well into the next war, and as you say, it was a freaking DURABLE beast.
Best fighter of WWII?
This debate will never end.
In my opinion there is no one best design, since all aircraft designs are compromises of competing/contradicting design parameters. And then you must add in the times and environments they flew and were manufactured in.
As far as the US goes, in WW2 we had a ‘Big Three’ and that was the P38, P47 and the P51.
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