FWIW, I know of one ex-Mosquito pilot who gets positively irate that the Mossie is virtually forgotten by so many.
The Mosquito got Hitler and Goering's attention!
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?
Yeah. Often forgotten by many after the war.
The Lightning was an awesome aircraft by all accounts. The only negative comments I ever heard revolved around the counter-rotation of the props and the recommended bail-out procedure, which involved climbing out over the fuselage and diving over the boom, making broken legs a virtual certainty.
40 kills.
Tommy McGuire 38 kills in second and flying a P-38 also.
Keep in mind both pilots were, first of all, excellent aviators, but flew against the Zero in the Pacific theater.
That is different then flying against a 190 or a 109.
Frankly, the two theaters are apples and oranges when it comes to aircraft operations or performance.
"Whistling Death" was what the Japanese called the F4U Corsair.
I honestly don't know what the Japanese nickname was for the P-38
The world's leading jet ace -- Colonel Giora Epstein, an Israeli -- had to wangle his way into jets after doing a stint with the paratroopers & then applying to helicopter school because he wasn't considered physically fit enough for fighter training.
Hartmann, Epstein -- gotta be a lesson in there on sheer determination!
I just watched recently a special about comparing warriors of different ages, they compared an Apache to a Roman warrior.
For the cumulative advance in wing design, performance, firepower and armaments I would say for at least in the European theater the P51 would be my vote, it was also the first propeller plane to shoot down the much faster ME262.
If it were not for the P51 as a long range fighter escort for the RAF and Army Air Corps we would have lost a much larger amount of bombers probably affecting the wars outcome.
I have no doubts about that.
From what I’ve seen on the history channel, the Mustang was designed just before the outbreak of the war in conjunction with the British. It became a great plane when they put the Rolls Royce Merlin engine in it with a supercharger in it.
Pilots? (if that is an aside discussion on this thread) Absolutely!
Frankly speaking, an Israeli pilot would be the greatest demise to an American pilot in real time IMO.
Epstein has shown and blown and proved himself to be one of the greatest.
You’re correct about speed, I should have said climb rate. I was trying to be concise. My impression is that pilots preferred the P-51 for air combat, but the P-47 could take more punishment, which comes in handy near the ground. The A-10 borrowed the nickname Thunderbolt from the P-47 in celebration of its fantastic ground support role.
FWIW, I know of one ex-Mosquito pilot who gets positively irate that the Mossie is virtually forgotten by so many.
The Mosquito got Hitler and Goering's attention!
Wow!
It was the A-36 (I wish I owned one, $$$$$$$) with an Allison engine and it was the Brit's who pushed for the Merlin to replace the Allison in the superb airframe of the mustang.
On an aside note, many companies inputted for the war effort and a P-51D that I worked on refurbishing back in the '80's actually had "MayTag" stamped on the valve covers of the Merlin and I had a coworker take a picture of me pointing at the name.
Everyone got involved in the war effort.
I’m partial to the Jug myself. Just something about a big monster of a plane that can tear air targets and ground targets equally to shreds.
This should be "research-able" since there were quite a few US fighter groups in the ETO that converted from P-47's to P-51's -- hence there should be more than a few pilots who flew both types in aerial combat. Francis Gabreski got most of his kills in the Jug, and he was the top scorer in the ETO with 28.
Interestingly, Gabreski also flew Spitfire Mk IX's with an RAF Polish Squadron though he recorded no kills in a brief tour in that type.
The "officers club" at the training center had been left just as it was when the Germans pulled out. It looked like any officers club bar I'd ever been in, except that the pictures on the walls were of German Aces, and there was a big poster touting the performance of the FW190D. It was a late development in the War, but it was a very impressive airplane.
How many of the other fighters could escort bombers at high altitude over 1000 miles, then have the endurance to fight and win their dogfights, then raise hell all the way back to base? Ask anyone who flew B17’s or B24’s and had P 51’a on their wing all the way to the drop and out of hostile airspace what the best fighter of the war was?
The Fork tailed Devil!
Miss the old man....
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