WWII Luftwaffe gun camera footage
- Thread starter MikeD
- Start date
Vector4Food
This job would be easier without all the airplanes
bunk22
Well-Known Member
Best is often based off what impact it had and there is no doubt the P-51 probably had the most impact on the war of any allied aircraft in Europe. In the Pacific, it would be the Hellcat as far as allied aircraft go. The Zero had a huge impact for the Japanese and on the need for the US to get superior aircraft to the front....the Hellcat, Corsair and FM-2. I know when I read about pilots who have flown the P-51 and others, including some of those aces, many say the P-51 was the pilot's machine.
bunk22
Well-Known Member
Concur with Hacker, racking up of kills against a numerically superior but inferior quality enemy doesn't always mean those aces were the best. Several high scoring German aces racked up high scores on the eastern front but couldn't do the same on the western front. BTW, only two German aces were credited with over 300 kills, Barkhorn with 301 and Hartmann with 352 claims. I read a story by a high scoring German Ace, I believe it was Walter Krupinski who was credited with 197 kills or so. Most of those over the eastern front but scored some over American and British aircraft. He claimed he never fought a bad American pilot but had faced many poorly flown Russian fighters.
Yeah, I'm a history geek.
It's not all fighters and air-air crap. The TBM and SB2C probably did more actual work in the Pacific than F6Fs ever did, with regards to Naval Aviation, but get nary a mention.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Just as an aside, most of the warbird guys prefer the Bearcat and Wildcat in terms of flying over any of the other fighters, including the Mustang and Spit.
Now, the obvious difference here is that one group of folks use the airplanes as a weapon in combat, and the other group flies them around from Pt A to Pt B for fun and does some aerobatics with 'em, so we're talking about a fundamentally different set of evaluation criteria they're using.
Brian29
Well-Known Member
The book A Dawn Like Thunder comes to mind. Also, what was accomplished with our submarine force in that theater was astonishing and without any mainstream recognition.
Boris Badenov
Fortis Leader
Surprised that the FW190-a7 was able to continue to pull lead on the Thunderbolt around 7 minutes...all the data I've read suggests that even the 47 had a superior sustained turn (although not instantaneous) to the "machine gun in a shopping cart" later FWs. The Mustang immediately thereafter was more what I would have expected...tries to turn with the Stang, spins, and winds up in a brief head on encounter. Interesting stuff, for sure.
bunk22
Well-Known Member
Maybe but they didn't clear the skies of Zeroe's, that was the duty Hellcat, Corsair and Wildcat/FM2. I think you read a lot about Naval Aviation, those aircraft will get their due but the air to air mission always holds the fascination. Of course those bombers couldn't do their job without their cover, at least how it was back then.
bunk22
Well-Known Member
I've read the Hellcat was so easy to fly, especially around the boat and it could turn with just about anything above 200mph, that is was just an absolute pleasure the fly. The FM-2 Wildcat that was something like 700lb lighter, had 250 or so more hp than the original Wildcat was said to have been a pleasure to fly and fight as well. Little known fact, the US fighter with the highest official kill ratio in WWII was the FM2 version of the Wildcat. It's overall kill ratio was around 44:1 and fighter to fighter, something like 32:1. It had 44X kills versus 11 losses in air to air.
I read the Bearcat was the tits machine but being it didn't see combat and jets were coming on scene, it falls into the history books as a could have been.
Vyse
BirchJet CA
The major factor IMO was a matter of deployment. The Germans kept their Aces on combat duty the entire war, so they had the opportunity to rack up large totals. When an Allied pilot got 15-20 victories, he was typically rotated home to train the next group of pilots. Over time, this difference led to a large disparity in the average skill levels on the two sides. The Germans had the very best at the top of the bell curve, but the tradeoff was that there was nobody to train the replacements and so the replacements were not all that great. Whereas the Allies built up a large number of pilots in the competent-to-good range.
The Germans did this in other areas too. They had an entire Panzer division made up of instructors! Pretty formidable until they were killed off.
bunk22
Well-Known Member
Yes, what I said on page one, more or less.
///AMG
Well-Known Member
Fighter pilots make movies Bunk. Attack pilots make history.
Long live VA squadrons
Had a pretty cool lecture on Friday afternoon from an old VA hand. Bottom line, as well as the first and last slides of his ppt were that putting warheads on the target is the only thing that matters, and things like fighters, landing on the boat, duty, the ready room, ground jobs are all basically a waste of time unless they directly support the strike. He said that he "tolerated fighter pilots, but thought they were jack**** and were full of BS"........had an A-6 pilot for a dad, and he checked into his own A-6 squadron 2 weeks before the Gulf War kicked off. Flew his first combat flight several days into the war. Really great commentary on that, telling it from the perspective of a nugget just trying to hit the target and not die, in all the confusion. Guy went on to fly F-14's for several tours, and then commanded an F/A-18F squadron prior to major command. Flew combat in the Gulf War, Bosnia, OSW, Kosovo, OEF, and OIF. DFC + mult air medals. Pretty legit to hear his story.
Very legit stuff. Definitely. Of course, all the various functions are important to the big picture......VF, VA, VS, VFA, VAQ, VAW, HSL, HS, VRC, the USMC equivilents.....and yes, even VR squadrons, lazy as they are. It's just that VF gets all the attention usually, like in TopGun.
///AMG
Well-Known Member
Very legit stuff. Definitely. Of course, all the various functions are important to the big picture......VF, VA, VS, VFA, VAQ, VAW, HSL, HS, VRC, the USMC equivilents.....and yes, even VR squadrons, lazy as they are. It's just that VF gets all the attention usually, like in TopGun.
Absolutely......though VS ain't doin too much these days. Actually, he said that all the airwings massing in theater basically dumped the majority of the S-3's off ashore to facilitate bringing more "war fighters" aboard. Sadly our 2 former S-3 DH's weren't in attendance when he told that story.......then again, they put up with a rash of trash talk on a very regular basis so I don't think they would have been offended.
I don't know if I'd be doing that like he is regards the S-3s.
I'd hate to have been put on their secret "no refuel" list.
"Oh....302 needs to come up for fuel? Hmm. That's LCDR Dimwit isn't it? Tell him we can't get a green light on our hose reel."
///AMG
Well-Known Member
I don't know if I'd be doing that like he is regards the S-3s.
I'd hate to have been put on their secret "no refuel" list.
"Oh....302 needs to come up for fuel? Hmm. That's LCDR Dimwit isn't it? Tell him we can't get a green light on our hose reel."
haha yeah, no kidding. The S-3 always sounded like a cool platform to me, and both said DH's have been my boss in the Safety Dept (I'm the NATOPS O), where their stories have only confirmed what a good deal it must have been. I mean, it isn't the cool kind of flying we do in VFA, but that thing had legs and spare room for any luggage you want, and could land with a tailwind.
Not only that, but when VS went from "fixed wing anti-submarine" to "fixed wing, sea control" mission definition; they started dropping more than just torpedoes, mines and sonobuoys and started dropping more Mk82s and Mk20s and the like.