Best fighter of WWII? (oldtimers poll)

[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?

[EGPWS]

Damn fine airplane.

I wouldn't dispute that ever.

Me thinks that perhaps the thread to a bit of a twist via it's length however....

[Oztrich Boy]

The Messerschmitt Me 262 has to be at the top of the list. Its a hundred miles per hour faster than the nearest competitor, has 4 x 30mm cannon

Good bomber destroyer but as a fighter it would have been eaten alive by the not as cool looking Gloster Meteor

Those 30mm cannon have also been described as 30mm grenade launchers - low velocity. slow firing. The Meteor is going to have an advantage in a long range qun duel.

If the Schwalbe closes for a knife fight, that long narrow sailplane wing isn't the bestest dogfight wing (also loaded 25% more than the Meteor short broad chord fighter wing). Also the Me-262 cannon had a tendency to jam under hard manouvering.

Higher speed is only useful to dictate the terms of a fight into a type you can win. But if there is no way you have an advantage, it's ony use is get out of Dodge.

[EGPWS]

to = took...

[Plutarch]

The Hellcat never squared off with the Luftwaffe.

Actually, Hellcats were used in Operation Dragoon, the invasion of Southern France, from carriers such as the USS Tulagi and there saw action against the Luftwaffe .

F6F-5 8 flown by Ens Alred R. Wood & Ens Edward W. Olszewski of VOF-1, USS Tulagi, August 1944

[alfa6]

A brief word on the Mustang. It was designed by North American Aviation in less than 120 days for the British. A big assist for the design of the Mustang goes to Curtis for NAA had bough a bunch of design data from Curtis.

As part of the deal the USAAF was to get a small number of the British order for test and evaluation purposes. The great drawback to the original P-51 design was thew original Allison engine. If you look in the dictionary under dog there is a pic of an Allison V-12:-).

The USAAF did not have any funds in 1940 for fighters as the P-38, P-39 and P-40 had the bulk of the money tied up. They did have funds for dive bombers so to keep the P-51 going it became the A-36 Apache and as a dive bomber the A-36 was not.

Much has been made of the British deciding to see what would happen to the Mustang airframe if a Merlin was added. I have seen some artivles that the USAAF/NAA was also looking at the Merlin in about the same time frame. Any ways with the Merlin engine the P-51 became the best fighter of the second half of WW-II IMHO.

A few Mustang pics for the P-51 fans, yee haw!!!

And an A-36 pic, showing the dive brakes fitted to the P-51.

Regards

alfa6

[Goldsborough]

I am familiar with that account of Hellcats in Southern Europe, but I guess I should have clarified, I am not aware of any dogfighting between the F6F and Luftwaffe front line fighters.

[DMZFrank]

Don’t forget the 20MM cannon.

[AFreeBird]

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?

Yea, but she was a bit late to the game. And don't get me wrong; I love the Stang. Sleek, curvy, sexy, high performance. But you gotta show proper respect to the ones that did most the heavy lifting. And those were the flying tanks. Sure the Forts loved the Stangs for their endurance, but a lot of guys loved their T-Bolts, Hellcats, and Corsairs' for their durability.

No one force, machine or man, won that war. It was a joint effort across the board, at home and abroad.

[Eye of Unk]

I seem to recall some pilots in the pacific swapped out the 20mm for two extra .50 Brownings. As some people are aware we had to constantly adapt our weapons platforms to be effective.

I remember one experiment was done and correct me if I am wrong was a B-25 that had a 105mm ships gun that was skeletonized and mounted to fire directly forward, the pilots thought that when it fired it actually stopped forward momentum of the plane! It was used as an anti ship platform.

[Zman516]

I think you’re referring to Nishizawa, according to Sakai, the most talented Zero fighter pilot he’d ever seen.

[Zman516]

"...Mustangs were frail-- one bullet in the aluminum cowling and they went down."

That's a little misleading. Only if that "one bullet" happened to hit a coolant line or the radiator, then it was true.

One of the reasons P51 pilots were reluctant to strafe ground targets.

[Eye of Unk]

I remember going to the Reno Air Races back around 1990 or so, the most distinctive sound was the one coming from the P-51 as it flew by on the deck with full boost and injection at I think something like 470mph. Full race configuration was a bit faster than its war attire naturally. After that was the Bearcats.

[Tallguy]

I remember one experiment was done and correct me if I am wrong was a B-25 that had a 105mm ships gun that was skeletonized and mounted to fire directly forward, the pilots thought that when it fired it actually stopped forward momentum of the plane! It was used as an anti ship platform.

That was a 75mm M4 cannon, and it did indeed virtually stop the aircraft. They'd aim the thing using the machine guns. When the tracer rounds converged on the target -- WHAM! -- the 75 would let loose. This was a field-fix (B-25G) that later became a factory model B25H with a lighter weight version of the 75mm.

A restauranteur in my neighborhood growing up was a radio operator on a B-25G. They were He77 on troop ships & landing barges.

[AppyPappy]

A p-38 had 4 50’s and 1 20mm

B-25 had a 75mm in the nose

Best overall WW2 plane: Spitfire/Seafire
From 1939-1945, it got the job done in all areas. Nothing fantastic but all good.

[Zman516]

“That was a 75mm M4 cannon, and it did indeed virtually stop the aircraft”

I’m certain that’s what the jolt of the recoil felt like to the pilot and crew, but seriously, if it virtually stopped the aircraft, the B25 would have dropped like a stone.

[alfa6]

Ah, the sound of a Merlin flying past

(MUSTANG FLYBY)

It was a really tricked out Bearcat flown by Daryl Greenemeyer, I think I spelled that right, that used to hold the Prop speed record, somewhere over 480mph. I think his old record has been bested but not by much.

Vrooom Vroooom

As far as the Allies were concerned in my opinion there were two aero engines responsible for the success of the Allied air war. The Rolls Royce/Packard Merlin and the Pratt and Whitney R-2800. These two engines probably powered close to 50 percent of the Allied aircraft. In the Merlins case it would have been more except that they could not make em fast enough.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[calex59]

The long nosed FW190 did NOT have a radial engine. It was a round water cooled engine and solved the problem of making the cowling more streamlined. The P51 and the FW190D(the last model made I believe)were the premier fighters of WWII, with the P47, the spitfire and the 109 hanging in there.

You have to realize that the early aircraft underwent many changes during the course of the war and by the end were much different machines than when they started.

The P47 was the best ground attack fighter of the war, with the Russian Sturmovick(spelling?)sharing that title. The P51 was to fragile on the belly to be a good ground attack aircraft but then again its main role was long range fighter escort which it did extremely well. The only plane that could really maneuver with it was the FW190D.

One plane worth mentioning because of its versatility was the British Mosquito, it was a good fighter, an excellent ground and ship attack plane and a light bomber. At the start of the war it could outrun any fighter made.

[calex59]

In post 157 I left off the planes of the Pacific war because the poster was asking about German VS American, not about the Planes used against the Japanese. We would have to consider the Corsair as a great plane and the P38 also, but the P38 failed as a fighter in Germany because of its propensity to freeze up its carburetors at high altitudes in the cold Euro air.

[Eye of Unk]

When the need arose for an engine or engines for extreme performance in current sporting events like the truck pulls the venerable P-51 engine was the most sought after powerplant. Being a machinists I would dearly love to build a modern day version with the latest electronic fuel injection and variable timing and with stronger modern alloys and ceramics. I could care less about a market, just to improve on the design. Here is one used at the Reno Air races that threw a connecting rod..

[Cheetahcat]

“The Japs gave that name to the Corsair (Navy pilots referred to it as an Ensign Eliminator), because of the sound of air going through the wing root oil coolers.”

Hey thanks Cool stuff here!