Also, the decision to not armor the pilots was devastating, as the pilot is the most valuable thing in the aircraft.
One of the reasons the Allies racked up massive kill ratios against the Axis in the later parts of the war is that most of the good, experienced pilots in the Axis nations were dead. The new pilots had to fight against battle-hardened Allied pilots.
A pilot with a broken airplane can bail out. If they are flying over their own territory there is a good chance they will survive to fly again. Without armor, many pilots were killed or maimed in their seats.
The German fighters did get some armor and upgraded firepower to attack heavily armed US Bombers, which hindered their performance when finally confronted with US escort fighters. The P-47 and P-51 really took the fight to the Luftwaffe in 1944.
Also, don’t sell short boring things like logistics and…gasoline. The US was supplying the USAAF and the RAF with 150 octane avgas, which significantly boosted performance, and we were shipping over thousands of planes that could be assembled by groundcrew with simple tools.
We made more of everything. So while Germany had better tanks, we had more of them. We supplied our allies with equipment which doesn’t make the headlines but wins wars–things like boots, and trucks, and locomotives, and we made ships to send it where it was needed. The Soviet advances in 1943 and 1944 would probably have stalled without US supplied equipment, and England was able to concentrate their industry in a few key areas, relying on US goods.
With the benefit of hindsight, WWII looks like a foregone conclusion–Germany beaten down and defeated, Japan ground to dust-- but it sure didn’t seem that way at the time.
There was some hard fighting early in the war. Many of the key victories–Midway, Guadacanal, Stalingrad, El Alamein–took place before the overwhelming supply of men and material was brought to bear.
I had a friend who recently passed who was a WWII veteran, and he said it sure seemed like a close-run thing at the time.
We’re getting far off course but I hope that’s ok…
I think it was in Stephen Ambrose’s book Citizen Soldiers where he interviewed a German officer after the war. The officer was somewhat condescending on American performance, saying they fought like a rich army. He had more regard for the Russians, who fought tooth and nail.
How does a rich army fight? They have much more material, including high explosives. The Americans would blow up anything if it allowed them to avoid fighting. Aachen was the first German city invaded by the US and their first exposure to terrible house-to-house fighting. At some point an American general ordered howitzers brought in and they blew holes in the walls rather than enter via doors and windows. A German officer at the time complained that it was unfair (or something like that).
Yes we are drifting far from F4Us. I hope that’s okay.
Making more of everything is what worries me about China. We may have better gear, but if we keep piling up debt and if China keeps going like they are, well…
FW-190 models by war’s end were really sluggish, with poor roll rate, because they had so many guns on them. A tactic the Luftwaffe tried to employ was having Bf-109s escort FW-190s, which were meant to attack bombers.
There was no solution to that problem; Allied bombers were huge and hard to shoot down, so either they added weapons or they weren’t effective, but then they were more easily shot down by Mustangs.
Later model Allied fighters generally stuck with established weapons configurations; American fighters largely had .50 calibre machine guns, while British fighters went with 4 20mm cannons in the big Hawker fighters and two 20mm and two .50 calibres in later model Spitfires. They didn’t need more guns, they were shooting down little German fighters.
The final version of Spitfire, with the E wing configuration, dropped the weaker .303s and had either two cannons and two Hispano 20mm cannons, or more rarely, just four Hispanos.
Typhoon and Tempest all had four 20mm cannons at that point.
Some of the late models had .303s with the cannon, but many had two .50s. They made so many models of the Spit it’s hard to keep up.
Coming back to the F4U, the Navy wanted cannon-armed fighters, but for some reason they had all sorts of trouble with 20mm cannons. Six .50s was the standard.
Most US fighters had .50s, and in most cases that was more than enough. A .50 is a big, powerful round.
FTR, the Dora was an even match for any Allied fighter (2 20 mm were deleted, note), and the Ta-152 was the fastest prop-driven fighter of the war, bar none. Yes, they often loaded the older A models with extra cannons tho.
I have to point out how fabulous Greg’s videos are—don’t overlook them! He’s a commercial pilot with a gift for both engineering and explication. I’ve often thought that his audience and the SDMB membership must overlap significantly.
Greg’s YouTube channel is an extraordinary technical resource, IMHO.
Yes, I really like the videos. Tons of original sources, technical data, real facts, not myths.
Unfortunately, I start watching them and 2 hours later I’ve got nothing done…
The Ta-152 was perhaps faster when it was using a nitrous oxide injection. Under normal circumstances it wasn’t as fast as a Tempest and I can’t even find evidence it was faster than a Mustang.
The Corsair was faster than any of those. Tempest: 435 mpg, Ta-152: 380 mph at sea level, Mustang: 437 mph, Corsair: 446 mph; except when the Ta-152 used nitrous oxide (472 mph).
Bumped, because today’s Warbird Digest email announced a book coming about behind the scenes of filming Baa Baa Black Sheep.
I’ll quote it here.
The BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP Book Is In The Works
Forty-five years ago, on September 21st, 1976, the famed TV-series Baa Baa Black Sheep first aired on television in the United States. But FLYING MISFITS, which was the two-hour pilot episode (actually known as Episode 0) premiered on Tuesday, September 21, 1976. The series’ first one-hour episode (Episode 1), BEST THREE OUT OF FIVE, appeared three days later on Thursday, September 23, 1976.
It was a seminal moment for many of us who follow vintage military aviation today, especially if we were kids at the time.
Today we are excited to announce the production of the in-depth, behind-the-scenes book about Baa Baa Black Sheep ! You can click HERE to be notified once the book will be released.
Presented here, on the 45th anniversary of the airing of Episode One, Best Three Out of Five , is a sneak peek of what will feature in this ultimate guide about Baa Baa Black Sheep . We can’t wait to share the rest!
You’re mixing top speeds at sea level with top speeds at rated altitude. I doubt the Corsair, Tempest, or Mustang could get anywhere near those speeds at sea level.
