I don’t know, I think a battery of 12 .50s is pretty damn cool.
Of course, the Mosquito XVIII “Tsetse” was a slightly more successful approach to putting a BFG in a light bomber, if only a mere 57mm Molins cannon. I heard where this caused the Kriegsmarine to order submariners to run the English Channel only at periscope depth. But as to ground attack planes, for my money the Typhoon was an excellent rework of a less than successful fighter - with four 20mms and either eight rockets or a thousand pounds of bombs. If it was less influential than the Sturmovik[sup]*[/sup], that was largely because it was on the Eastern Front that the Wehrmacht got pulped - and the assertion was “easily the best”, not “most influential”.
Meanwhile, in the Burmese theatre we had the Beaufighter: six .303s, four 20mms, and some ordnance besides - also, by the time you heard it coming, it was generally too late.
Il-2 carried 2 37mm cannons and was significantly less vulnerable to ground fire than the Typhoon due to its armor. The Typhoon did perform quite well for the RAF, but I just don’t see how you can compare it to the Il-2 in a dedicated ground attack role, particularly anti-tank.
Various Allison engines (installed in the P-38 Lightning with turbocharging as well as the earliest A-35/P-51 minus supercharging) was clearly not as successful as the Rolls Royce and Daimler Benz in-line engines.
The P-47 was not using an Allison, but a Pratt and Whitney 28 cylinder radial; the Chance Vought F4U and the Grumman F6F used the same basic power plant, as did the Douglas A-26 twin engine attack plane.
The fight over in-line vs radial will probably go on forever, but the primary advantage to the in-line was not horsepower but narrow cross-section, making it easier to design a plane that did not have to bulldoze itself through the air past its own wind resistance. Of course, that advantage of the in-line was offset by the extra weight that it had to carry around just to keep from overheating and the fact that an in-line could be put out of service just by rupturing its coolant system or engine casing while a radial could fly home with an entire cylinder or two shot right off.
Little-appreciated fact: at high altitudes, the P-47 was more manueverable than a lot of smaller, otherwise more agile fighters. I don’t know why – possibly power was more important there or wind resistance less of a damper on the Jug – but it’s apparently true.
Nitpick: 37mm cannons were used only by Type 3M version, which was produced in very limited numbers. Most of Il-2 were equipped with two 20 or 23mm cannons.
Thank 'ee. Although I should have thought the rockets were more to the point for tankbusting anyway. As to this:
I compare it because that was what it was mainly used for, once its limitations as a pure fighter became apparent. I’m open to correction with facts about, say, kill/loss ratio and so on, but not “proof by I Just Don’t See”.
