Inspired by this thread:
where carnivorousplant asks the pretty reasonable question: “What made the United States superior to other countries in aircraft?”
And i said it was really in heavy, long range bombers.
But did other Airforces have a Fighter up there with the Americans? Mustang beats them all? Or was it the P47? FW190? Me109?
Your Opinion?
(maybe I’ll start one on best Ground attack, best light bomber, best medium, etc)
I’m going to go with the P-51. I think if we could make an updated version of it today, it would be very useful as a cheaper close support and interdiction fighter and sell well to many less prosperous nations who need some kind of air force.
I’m pretty sure that the P-51 was the only one that shot down a jet.
If you’re going to talk about the P-51, you have to give credit to the British for developing the Merlin engine.
Nope,. Spitfire Mk IXs of 401 Sqn RCAF, brought down the first ME262 by gunfire and P-47s did it before them (I think with rockets).
Based on pure numbers and kills I think the P-51 was likely No.1, but I’d be really curious to see how a P51D would have fared against a Dornier Arrow, or the Japanese Shiden, or the Kyushu J7W Shinden, which probably would have wiped the walls with pretty much any Allied fighter.
Personally, I believe the best overall fighter was the Spitfire Mk.24, based on armament, speed, and maneuverability. As pretty as the Mustang is, the 24 is downright gorgeous!
I believe a Corsair shot down a Mig-15 in Korea.
Really tough (but fun!) question and you’ll never get down to a single answer. I kinda’ lean towards the F4U Corsair because it had the longest career after WW II (as a fighter). However the F4U didn’t have the long range required to escort bombers over Europe like the P-51 so you might give the P-51 the nod. The Spitfire was a dominant fighter from the beginning of the war to the end so that’s gotta count. There are just a too many parameters to work out an answer that most will agree with.
The Japanese really didn’t have the metallurgy tech to build engines that could compete with the Allies. To my knowledge the Japanese never had a production engine capable of 2000HP and the US built 125k with the Double Wasp alone.
In what theater of operations?
For example, the P-38 Lightning did poorly in UK hand (bad engines, our fault), well in US hands, never appeared on the Eastern Front, & was outstanding over the Pacific, due to Engine #2 getting the pilots home, if #1 was damaged.
But Spitfire outclassed it in Western Europe.
And Corsairs were the best (Carrier Division).
P-39 Airacobra was a loser–except in the Soviet Theater, where it was ideal.
Good points, but the P39 was mainly good as ground attack with the Soviets- they liked that ridiculous 37mm cannon.
P-51 was by far the best prop fighter of the war. It was the best tech from both the Brits and the Americans (engine from the Brits, air frame and production from the US, along with those nice .50 cal machine guns). Add drop tanks and it was a war winner for the allies.
I’d counter that the Spit 24 was better armed, faster, better climb and turn rate, and while it didn’t have quite the legs that the P-51 had, it was much better than the earlier Mk.V and IX.
Likewise for the later versions of the FW190Ds; they were a fantastic fighter.
I would concede that the P-51 is the best all-rounder (bomber escort, ground attack, air superiority) but if you’re talking strictly air to air combat there are a bunch of planes that would make mincemeat of a P-51 with equivalent pilots at the helm.
The Mark 24 wasn’t operationally introduced until 1946, so you can’t count it.
P-51 in a walk.
My vote is the Me109, based on its long platform life through its variants remaining a prominent and successful front line fighter. From the pre-WW2 Spanish Civil war, through to the end with its bomber-destroyer K variant at wars end. In comparison, the P-51 is a flash-in-the pan upstart. Only the Spitfire comes close to that platform longevity.
Additionally, in most PvP flight sims, it’s my preferred plane due to its insane rate of climb. It’s so much fun playing vertical rope-a-dope games against opposing planes that can’t climb so well.
It strikes me that the USA built more variety of aircraft than other countries. The Japanese had the Zero, excellent at the beginning of the war, the British the Spitfire and Typhoon, but the US had P-51, P-39, P-40, P-38, Corsair, P-61 and probably more than I know of. With a high variety, there are more chances of dogs, and of aircraft that are excellent for a particular use. Convoy escort, taking out tanks, dog fighting would have an aircraft best for each. Is the difference that American Companies try to sell their aircraft to the military, and other militaries order aircraft? Was it high industrialization, there were just more people designing and building aircraft?
What made the (Anglo-American) Allied air forces eventually dominant was numbers of fighters and pilots, and especially maintaining and improving training of pilots which the Axis finally could not. This doesn’t mean a single best a/c didn’t happen to Anglo-American, but has to be taken into consideration if combat success is the measure.
I would say two situations stand out where a fighter a/c had strategic importance, and wasn’t fully replaceable by another fighter then available. The first would be the Zero’s role in the early vast territorial conquests of the Japanese up to the middle of 1942, especially its operations from land bases. Its radius of action was so far superior to that any Allied single engine fighter that it consistently surprised the Allies when large formations of Zeroes showed up 500+ miles from their bases usually meeting smaller contingents of Allied fighters which had to be spread around more. The number of Zeroes (not including Japanese Army fighters, nor obsolescent Navy fighters which saw little action) was inferior to the total of modern Allies ones, but the range advantage allowed the Japanese to concentrate at key points, and their pilots were superb. No other a/c operational at the time could have done this. Some twins might have had the range but not same ability to cope with single engines fighters. The Japanese Army’s Type 1 (later known to the Allies by codename ‘Oscar’, often now referred to by the procurement designation Ki-43, but the Japanese operating units never called it that) was the second longest range single engine fighter then, and its range came in handy too, but there weren’t many of them.
And the P-51 later had a somewhat similar position in the European theater supporting the US strategic bombing campaign against Germany. It wasn’t the only capable long range fighter, but had the best combination of range and effectiveness in fighter combat by a considerable margin (over P-38 and P-47) by most opinion.
It was very important that the F6F and F4U were highly effective carrier fighters for the USN in 1944-45, but the lack of substitute aspect doesn’t enter in as much. The F6F was the sole carrier fighter in 1944, speaking only of USN carrier operations, but from not long after (from January 1945) the two proved more or less interchangeable substitutes. The F4U performed well against Japanese fighters also from land bases, but not that P-38’s and other a/c didn’t also.
P-51’s didn’t down ‘a’ jet, they downed more than 100 Me-262’s in air combat as confirmed by German accounts, with few claims of P-51’s shot down by Me-262’s corroborated by US records (German day fighter over claiming had inflated a lot by then). Spitfires, Tempests, Typhoons, P-47’s, Soviet La-7 and Yak-9 all made claims v Me-262’s but the bulk were by P-51’s, since they were the main a/c ranging all over Germany. A North Korean Yak-9P shot down a USAF F-80 in the opening weeks of the Korean War. Later on an F4U shot down a MiG-15, corroborated by a NK defector account. A Sea Fury was credited with a MiG-15 but a published Chinese account indicating their units were involved in that combat doesn’t mention any losses.
It was a consequence of high industrialization, as you surmise. Aircraft performance was improving so rapidly throughout the war that designing new aircraft (and upgrading existing designs) was critical. The US (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Britain) was able to do this because of the capacity to make many airplanes (over 90,000 aircraft in 1944 alone) while still retaining unused plant that could be retooled for new designs without stopping production of currently-needed-at-the-front aircraft.
The Axis countries also would have liked to do that, but they had smaller industrial bases, more limited resources, and in some cases, other pressing priorities with a claim on those resources.
Here is a really detailed site for fans of WWII military aircraft (among other things), which addresses exactly the question in the OP.
While the P-51 Mustang deserves its fantastic reputation, I will note in defense of the P-38 Lightning that it was not used properly in the European Theater of Operations during the period its reputation suffered at the hands of the Luftwaffe. The P-38s were tied to the bombers in “close escort” doctrine, ordered to remain near the bomber force and fly at bomber speeds. The '38s were excellent “energy fighters” with higher ceiling than any German interceptors, but starting out in a level fight at low speed was not to their advantage. Had they been permitted (as some of their leaders asked) to fly high above the bombers and dive onto approaching interceptors, their excellence at boom-and-zoom tactics would have made them most formidable.
The P-51 was wonderful, but also spent most of its career after “close escort” tactics had been discarded as inferior.
It’s worth noting that German pilots allegedly feared the Spitfire most among planes in the ETO. In the Pacific, Japanese pilots reportedly regarded the Corsair as their most dangerous foe.
And since the Japanese had more seat time and more experience, pilot skill was initially more advanced, so that a direct comparison of planes is somewhat off, so early success must be weighted to give props to the pilot and skewing the plane v. plane comparison, so maybe early Zeros weren’t as hot.
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That might apply to the Zero’s effectiveness in fighter combat once it go to the fight, but it could still reach fights far beyond the range of any other fighter available. The whole Japanese plan of conquest, especially along the eastern corridor from Taiwan to Philippines to eastern part of Dutch East Indies would have required significantly more steps, more naval operations, more landings, more time for the Allies to regain their footing, if they’d had fighters with only the same range as Allied ones at the time. P-40 units eventually found a way to fight on more or less even terms with Zero units in fights both a/c could reach, but P-40’s couldn’t have come close to substituting for Zero’s in the missions the Japanese needed them to perform to carry out their overall operations, nor could any other single engine fighter of that time.
Same general idea applies to comparing the P-51 to the Me-109. The P-51 was arguably inferior to late Bf109G or K series a/c as a point defense interceptor. But the P-51 could operate freely deep inside Germany from bases in England greatly facilitating the USAAF strategic bombing campaign, ie there was a strategic impact from the P-51’s blend of very long range but still competitive fighter combat effectiveness. The Bf109 OTOH could simply not have performed the P-51’s key mission.
Fine, then the Mk.14 which was introduced and operational and would still spank a P-51. An exerpt from Wikia Military:
“During this engagement Walmsley scored the third of his future total of 12 kills.[120] On a number of missions, Spitfires were attacked in error by USAAF P-51s. One such incident came about on 31 December 1944, when 610 Squadron RAF was attacked. Using the Spitfire’s “stunning” climb performance, pilots were “easily” able to escape and evade the Mustangs.”