Wow, the Germans had damn good pilots in WW2

[Gibsons]

And by then the Germans had lost most of their best pilots. The later ME-109 models were probably superior dogfighters compared to the P-51. We just sent them in numbers the Germans couldn't match flown by pilots that the Germans couldn't match by that point in the war. The Battle of Britain did a number on the Luftwaffe, they lost a lot of equipment and a huge number of their A-list fighter pilots.

The later 109s could climb, but they had pretty high wing loading, so turning wasn't always in the 109s favor, iirc (the higher the alt the better the 51 did). The 51 was better in a dive. Also, the 109 was noted for having really poor sight lines for the pilot, vs. a D's bubble canopy, hard to put a number on that. I'd guess this matters more for inexperienced pilots.

Then of course, some lw pilots were stuck in the 2 engined Me's, pretty hopelessly outmatched. And of course a million different versions of the fw 190, some of which were very good.

 

[Leymenaide]

Polish RAF had thed highest kill to loss record in the European War. They new what they were fighting. Take some time and read through this:
http://www.polishsquadronsremembered.com/

This is the best untold story of the war.

 

[Merad]

So what was the allied fighter of choice? I know the P-51's not the magic plane the movies make it out to be, I just thought it was generally considered the most balanced (albeit still big and heavy).

The F4U was shorter range but IIRC reportedly shit for carrier-based ops. I'm guessing that was the US's best dogfighter, though?

Perhaps the Hellcat would be the better comparison to the German 109.

And I have no idea where the P-38 fits in.

Point being: we made a shitload of planes. The Germans more or less had...two? The 109 and 190? Not counting the Me-262 or the strange rocket stuff they tried.

It's very hard to coin a "best" fighter from WW2. The air war in the ETO was vastly different animal from the air war in the Pacific. The P-38 for example was usually considered mediocre to inferior for air to air work in Europe, but had excellent performance in the Pacific.

It also depends a lot on the individual aircraft and their condition. I remember reading about a P-51 pilot who spent most nights with his ground crew helping finely tune the aircraft and waxing it (because the wax would add 5-10 mph to the top speed). Compare that to a Mustang crew who only did the bare minimum maintenance to keep the bird in the air.

Pilots are by far the most important factor. I read the biography of a P-47 pilot (wish I could remember who), who engaged in a friendly dogfight with a prominent Spitfire pilot late in 1943 or so. The P-47 was generally regarded as a piss-poor dogfighter while the Spitfire was excellent in that area, but this guy wiped the floor with the Spit, because he was an excellent pilot who knew his aircraft and how to use it.

And of course, teamwork/tactics are huge in how overall battles and wars turn out. In the Pacific for example the US started the war with the F4F Wildcat which was significantly inferior to the Japanese A6M Zero. Yet in 1942 alone US pilots had almost a 6 to 1 kill:loss ratio in the Wildcat.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I like to compare Tiger tanks to German cars. And it's very clear Germans have not learned from the war.

Over engineering = overly complex for no apparent reason, not reliable, expensive to purchase and replace and PITA to work on/fix.

Tiger tanks were NOT overengineered. Sure Tiger 1's had issues, but Tiger 2's were actually very reliable tanks that could easily one shot western tanks while taking multiple hits. Hell even the Tiger 1's could do that.

 

[Leymenaide]

The later 109s could climb, but they had pretty high wing loading, so turning wasn't always in the 109s favor, iirc (the higher the alt the better the 51 did). The 51 was better in a dive. Also, the 109 was noted for having really poor sight lines for the pilot, vs. a D's bubble canopy, hard to put a number on that. I'd guess this matters more for inexperienced pilots.

Then of course, some lw pilots were stuck in the 2 engined Me's, pretty hopelessly outmatched. And of course a million different versions of the fw 190, some of which were very good.

Average life expectancy of a Brit pilot in the Battle of Britten was 9 days. Experience and tactics mattered. But this was a war of attrition.

 

[Gibsons]

Heh - The F4U was called "The Ensign Eliminator" by the Navy because it was a tail~dragger with a long, fat nose {necessary because of the aircraft's air cooled Radial engine}. Made it kind of hard to see the carrier's flight deck while on approach. :ninja:

It was fast, though - IIRC, for single engined fighters only the Thunderbolt was faster, and then really only at high altitudes because the Tbolt had a different Supercharger design.

The famously bent wing was in order to put a larger propeller on the Corsair without chewing up the pavement... much... :biggrin:

It had essentially the same engine as the Hellcat and P-47, neither of which required the the extra long nose. The prop was about only an inch or three longer than the Hellcats. So the inverted wing story is a little more subtle than that.

 

[Red Storm]

I guess KDR tracking is realistic. 😉

 

[Leymenaide]

Tiger tanks were NOT overengineered. Sure Tiger 1's had issues, but Tiger 2's were actually very reliable tanks that could easily one shot western tanks while taking multiple hits. Hell even the Tiger 1's could do that.

The T-34 won the war in the east. It could take on the dwindling stock of Panzers and way outperformed anything the US produced.

The Germans also had the best hand held anti tank weapon the panzerfaust. Our troops did use captured panzerfausts.

 

[iamwiz82]

I guess KDR tracking is realistic. 😉

Anything other than divide by zero would be a bad thing for the individual pilot 😉.

 

[ichy]

You are missing the point. The tiger tank was the best tank of the war, but it was too complex to produce and as such it was a waste of resources...

From the engineering/scientific stand point though, ze Krauts were truly a breed of "Übermensch" - nothing came close. Case and point - the rocket program.

This is actually something I read on another forum, I'm copying and pasting it verbatim because I couldn't say it any better.

"In World War II, the Germans had a clear lead in completely impractical science projects that had not the slightest hope of becoming actual weapons capable of being manufactured and deployed in operationally significant quantities. In fairness, the wonderwaffe did achieve one of their objectives, which was as an excuse to keep bright young engineers from becoming cannon fodder in the last hopeless, desperate year of the war."

 

[pauldun170]

already did

I specifically said European Theater.
I don't see see anything in the link that specifies destination.

Soviet equipment went to frontlines in Europe
US equipment was being sent to two fronts.

Can you please supply the link indicating the flow of production\munitions between the two fronts as well as the year by year break down?

As for Germany invasion of the Soviet Unions,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

That operation went really well until Stalin unzipped his pant and slapped the Germans with his Russian Winter (as he like to call it)

There are many factors that went into Germany losing the war.
The Soviets decimated the Germans over the course of the war, a lot of that with Soviets equipment.
The British\Americans\Australians ....etc etc cut off supply lines, hit manufacturing etc etc

The United States beat Japan all by itself. Japan's pretty much sucked at being a modern military. Its no suprise we were able to beat the piss out of them with a lot of relatively "meh" aircraft and equipment.

As for the Germans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_casualties_of_World_War_II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Air_Forces

Lend-Lease aircraft from the US and UK accounted for nearly 12% of total Soviet air power

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

I hate leaving it to wiki nonsense..but a lot of the info up there is close enough.

 

[ichy]

Sure the Sherman might have been a shitty tank, but when you have a 4:1 advantage and can keep them coming....

The Sherman was not as shitty as some people make it out to be.

There was an interesting book I read many years ago called With Rommel in the Desert written by a German officer who'd served in North Africa. One thing I remember clearly is that the author said the Germans were terrified of Shermans when they first entered combat. It was very competitive with vehicles like the Panzer III and IV.

Later German tanks like the Tiger & Panther completely outclasses the Sherman but what people need to remember is that Europe was not swarming with German super-tanks. Most of the time American troops were in combat they were blasting away at German bunkers & pillboxes. In situations like that having lots of tanks is more important than having the best tanks because any armor support at all is invaluable. The Sherman's weakness cost some American tankers their lives when they were fighting heavy German armor. The fact that it could be produced in enormous numbers saved the lives of a lot of US infantrymen because it meant they were much more likely to have tanks to support them.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Tiger tanks were NOT overengineered. Sure Tiger 1's had issues, but Tiger 2's were actually very reliable tanks that could easily one shot western tanks while taking multiple hits. Hell even the Tiger 1's could do that.

You are wrong

They were heavy, hard to produce, hard to fix and VERY expensive to fix/maintain. Read about battle of the bulge and how pathetic Tiger tanks ended up being (couldn't go thru mud, too heavy, broke down a lot etc)

Heck Tigers might the actual reason (or a big part of the reason) why Germans lost the war. They just weren't able to get them to places, produce them fast enough or maintain them/fix them.

They were overly complicated for NO reason. Heck look at the weld marks on Russian tanks and Tigers. Germans took their time to make it perfect when it didn't need to be. Russian tanks had weld marks all over the place and were probably an eye sore, guess what, Tanks are ALL about function not show.

Just like german cars, overly complex for NO apparent reason. Heck Germans are STILL struggling to get the basics right (Electronics for example, they always had trouble in this area) YET they put more electronic crap into these cars then EVER before.

 

[ichy]

Allies rotated their pilots out and sent them to train others. Germans kept their guys in.

Yep. Compare Richard Bong's career to Erich Hartmann's and you see how the Americans and Germans did things differently. Also, Hartmann flew against some pretty low-quality opponents. Earlier on in the war some Soviet fighters didn't even have gun sights. It's much easier to wrack up kills against guys like that than it is to nail well trained and equipped Japanese pilots.

 

[ichy]

Tiger tanks were NOT overengineered. Sure Tiger 1's had issues, but Tiger 2's were actually very reliable tanks that could easily one shot western tanks while taking multiple hits. Hell even the Tiger 1's could do that.

The Germans built slightly fewer than 500 Tiger IIs. When you're fighting a conflict on the scale of WW2 a weapon that's produced in such small numbers might as well not exist.

 

[unokitty]

"... the war for the German Luftwaffe had essentially been lost before the advent of American long range fighter into the war... Simply stated, the Germans lost in a war of attrition...

By the time the long-range fighter arrived in theater, it had basicly been lost by the Germans, not won by the Western Allies."

From "The Luftwaffe and its War of Attrition... PDF fromat

Interesting research paper from the Air War College.

Early in the war, the Luftwaffe had excellent pilots. However, according to the above paper, they committed their operational pilots and their training units to combat so often that they lost the ability to train replacement pilots. Until by the end of the war, many of their single engine pilots were barely capable of taking off and landing...

Uno

 

[pauldun170]

It had essentially the same engine as the Hellcat and P-47, neither of which required the the extra long nose. The prop was about only an inch or three longer than the Hellcats. So the inverted wing story is a little more subtle than that.

Correct..
Its interesting how the design choices led each one to be very theater specific.

Hellcats decimated Japanese Aircraft but would get eaten alive in the Eurpean theater against at the altitudes typical of the western front.

In the hands of the Soviets at the lower altitudes it would probably do well (NOt saying much considering the Soviets were able to turn lesser fighters into absolute killing machines)

The P47 is one of those aircraft that only truly shines when a) you are WAY WAY up there at altitude b) You are using the aircraft to shield your self from canon\machine gun shells. Down low and at medium altitudes it's performance sucked compared to german aircraft. Tactics were extremely important flying that thing.

F4U had some tricky low speed characteristics.
Cant remember the assessment of the F4u vs German fighters but I believe that the FW-190 had the overall advantage in that the 190 pilot could dictate the fight.
In the Pacific theater, Japanese army fielded some plane that came close but by the time their more modern planes were fielded by the army the pilot quality sucked balls.

 

[ichy]

Both the Germans and the Japanese suffered from terrible fuel shortages later on in the war which crippled their ability to train new pilots. The USAAF and USN may not have had anyone with truly spectacular kill totals like the Germans had but their average newly trained pilot had far more training hours than any other country's.

New US Navy carrier pilots finished training with around 600 hours under their belts. The USAAF wasn't as rigorous since they didn't have to teach people to land on carriers but they still provided about 300 hours of flight time before entering combat which is more than any other country could dream of providing to their pilots.

 

[BlitzPuppet]

And by then the Germans had lost most of their best pilots. The later ME-109 models were probably superior dogfighters compared to the P-51. We just sent them in numbers the Germans couldn't match flown by pilots that the Germans couldn't match by that point in the war. The Battle of Britain did a number on the Luftwaffe, they lost a lot of equipment and a huge number of their A-list fighter pilots.

Not Exactly. BF-109s (my favorite WW2 Plane) suffered in dogfighting after the F models, the G-K models didn't turn as well, wer heavier, but were faster and had a heavier armament. But that MW-50 made them FAST climbers.

They basically turned all of their fighters into interceptors towards the end of the war in order to fight off the bomber formations. BF-109s and FW-190s turned into Boom n Zoom fighters, and shyed away from Turn and Burning.

P51s were very fast, very agile, but very fragile. A single shot could cripple their engines very easily.

 

[ichy]

One huge advantage the P-51 had was that it was easy to mass produce. A P-51 cost about $50k in 1945 dollars. By comparison a P-47 was $85,000.

 

[tboo]

Side note on Dick Bong: He is from Wisconsin so they named a recreational area after him south of Milwaukee. Back in the 90s there used to be a sign on Hwy 41 saying "Bong Rec Area". That sign used to get stolen a lot. Im not sure if its still up or if the state pulled it.

 

[pauldun170]

One huge advantage the P-51 had was that it was easy to mass produce. A P-51 cost about $50k in 1945 dollars. By comparison a P-47 was $85,000.

Have you ever seen a P-47 side by side with a P51?

You can just picture the P-47 saying "Get in mah belly" to the P51

 

[jagec]

Are the kills all fighters or do bombers count for it too? Though something like the B-17 was hard to bring down.

The top scoring British ace on that list shot down 6 planes and 44 V1 buzz bombs, LOL.

So no, the kills AREN'T all fighters.

 

[pauldun170]

Not Exactly. BF-109s (my favorite WW2 Plane) suffered in dogfighting after the F models, the G-K models didn't turn as well, wer heavier, but were faster and had a heavier armament. But that MW-50 made them FAST climbers.

They basically turned all of their fighters into interceptors towards the end of the war in order to fight off the bomber formations. BF-109s and FW-190s turned into Boom n Zoom fighters, and shyed away from Turn and Burning.

P51s were very fast, very agile, but very fragile. A single shot could cripple their engines very easily.

Didn't Hartman fly a 109G6?

 

[BlitzPuppet]

Have you ever seen a P-47 side by side with a P51?

You can just picture the P-47 saying "Get in mah belly" to the P51

crappy video from my droid but you get the idea 😛 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIqxVWFTFqg