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To: Pelham

Only because of the bombload. The P-47 wallowed badly when low and slow, especially with early models. It wasn’t very good at climbing either until late in the war. It was very good at diving on an enemy and sucking up enemy munitions, which, as one pilot famously put it, “Well it damn well ought to be able to dive - it sure as hell can’t climb!”

Best attack/ground support plane of the war was the Russian IL-2 Sturmovik, hands down.


32 posted on 02/07/2017 7:07:26 PM PST by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: Spktyr

Depends on how you score it. You point to the climbing weakness in the early P-47s but that ended with the paddle propeller. I don’t know of the Ilyushin being used in a fighter role like the P-47 could be. The Il-2 was primarily a ground attack plane similar to what the Warthog is.

War is Boring provides a comparison of the two aircraft, I don’t know that you can conclude which is better:

The Sturmovik was not heavily armed. Two forward-firing 23-millimeter cannons and two 7.62-millimeter machine guns, as well as 1,300 pounds of bombs or eight air-to-ground rockets, sounds like a potent punch. But it is actually less firepower than a late-war fighter-bomber like the P-47 Thunderbolt, with eight .50-caliber machine guns and 2,500 pounds of bombs, or the devastating Hawker Typhoon with four 20-millimeter cannons, two tons of bombs and eight rockets.

https://tinyurl.com/j69oe4b


34 posted on 02/07/2017 7:27:08 PM PST by Pelham (liberate Occupied California)
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