Posted on 05/09/2002 8:42:27 PM PDT by PsyOp
Sure, at the start it was. The French were best-equipped.
Yes, Wildcat was technically overmatched. But they could take punishment. The Zero could out-dogfight it any day, but would fold up like a cheap lawn chair if it took a few hits. Japanese didn't see the value of protecting the pilot until later in the war, when it was already too late. Read a book called "Samurai!" By Martin Caidin. Our adversaries were extremely tough. They lost because they had bigger idiots in charge than we did, and also I believe we had the Hand of God on our side.
No doubt, it pushed the envelope, just as F-117, SR-71, B-2, Aurora (?) have done. B-17 was at one time considered far too expensive and a waste of tax dollars. Imagine that.
Don't bother. I had it wrong. The ace I was thinking of was Francis "Gabby" Gabreski who racked up 28 kills in a Thunderbolt - the ranking ace in the European theater, third overall.
Richard I. Bong was first with 40 kills. Thomas McGuire was second with 38 kills. Both flew P38's in the Pacific.
I can't for the life of me figure out where I came up with the name Ball. Wasn't on any of the lists. Alzheimer's is a bitch! Argh!
Its an interesting footnote that none of the three highest U.S. Aces flew the lauded Mustang. The top five Aces of the war flew 38's or 47's. The Mustang doesn't show up till 7th in the ranking.
Here's where I found the info.
Ace Pilots
Your research is quite interesting. As I always say, I only know what I read. I wonder if the 38's and 47's just had more targets available, in context. I can't believe either one of them was a better air-to-air killing machine than was the Mustang, since neither one was a great dogfighter, except maybe at very high altitudes. Mustang did have that one weak spot, though, the water cooling. A bullet in the radiator, and it was done. And, supposedly the bomber pilots loved to see the Tuskeegee Airmen alongside, in their 51's. So legend says, those Black Guys never lost a bomber.
The Krauts sure loved those Starfighers - they're the only ones that did. Those guys would fly lower than our chopper pilots and always at full throttle.
Two days after I arrived at my duty-station in Germany, Giebelstadt Army Airfield (which had been a super-secret base for ME-163's during WWII), a pair of 104's buzed our base at full burner about 100 feet off the deck. They flew right over the barracks as I was walking out the front door.
I found myself lying on my back (knocked down by the shock wave), looking up at a pair of bright silver flaming streaks. For a second I thought the Commies had hit us with missles! Broke several double paned windows in the barracks and my ears rang for a week.
Betcha they did that on purpose :) Too bad everything is so politically-correct now.
From what I have read, that was their strength. Because they could not turn with the German fighters, they did not try. They used hit-and-run tactics which made use of their power and speed, especially in the zoom climb after the first pass.
Many German and presumably Japanese pilots (especially if they were inexperienced), would try to follow them into these climbs, which was a big mistake. Both planes could climb farther faster before bleeding off so much speed they would stall. What usually happened was that an enemy pilot would commit to the chase only to find he couldn't keep up, and would stall or bleed off so much airspeed that he had to break off and point his nose to the ground. As soon as they did the 47 or 38 pilot would do a wing-over which reversed their positions headed for the ground. This, of course, usually resulted in a kill for the 38 or 47.
Lastly, both aircraft were extremely rugged and could take tons of punishment - especially the 47. That site I directed you to has some accounts of just how much damage the "7 Ton Milk Jug" could take. As you say, the Mustang often had to retreat if the coolant system was damaged.
That's who I was thinking of, McGuire, not Bong. His 38 is on display at McGuire (sp?) AFB in Jersey, right in the middle of one of those annoying European-like traffic circles. Lots and lots of Rising Sun flags on the side of that fuselage.
Yeah they did. Our airbase was home to a TACAN navigational beacon that guided combat aircraft off the border and down one of the several designated exit corridors. Fast movers coming off the border who were not in this navigational slot and IFF'ing the proper code would get a Hawk missle launched in his face (we had a battery of those on base as well).
We got buzzed on a daily basis because part of the training for these pilots was to play cat & mouse with the Hawk battery once cleared and identified. They would come in hot and low (burners were vorbotten, but the krauts "forgot" now and then), to see if the could bag the Hawk site before getting locked up. A-10's and Kraut 104's were the only one I heard were ever able to do it (I had a friend that was in the battery and a bunch of us got to go inside the fire-control center - awsome). All this happened back in '81-'83.
Those who could collect tree limbs in their wing roots and live to tell about it.
Not sure why your post was removed, but your understanding is fairly correct. The B-26 was able to take inordinate amounts of punishment and battle damage. However, for a novice pilot it was a handful to fly in perfect conditions. It had a high landing speed (125 mph?) as piston jobs go, nasty stall characteristics and was a beast to handle initially. I've only been lucky enough to meet one B-26 pilot over the years, and he said it did kill a lot of his compadres in training, called it a quirky devil to the newbie. But after successful education/training pilots learned to love the airplane because they discovered it was very nimble, very fast, and extremely rugged. In his words, once properly trained it became a joy to fly. You just had to make it through initial training. They'd know better than we I guess.
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