Be that as it may, prior to the introduction of the P-51 the bombers were not escorted all the way to their targets. After the introduction of the P-51 they were. The significance of the Mustang was that the Luftwaffe couldn’t wait for the escorts to turn for home before attacking the bomber stream, and had very little to do with any combat superiority over the P-47 or Spitfire. My “over Berlin” thing was just a turn of phrase.
At least according to the Military Channels best of fighters, the Mustang was one of the best, if not THE best prop driven fighter of the war. Thats why I picked it. Certainly it would have been orders of magnitude better than the ME 109’s they were using early in the war.
-XT
The story was “Hawk Among the Sparrows” in Analog in the 1960’s. I remember it like it was yesterday, not mumble mumble years ago. My Google-fu is good tonight, I found a reference to it. It was Analog 1968, by Dean McLaughlin. Also collected here.
AFAIR, the cover of that issue of Analog had the future airplane look suspiciously like the SR-71 Blackbird. Wasn’t the Blackbird still classified then?
When I looked at the tread title, I also had the image of Velociraptors from Jurassic Park with “Tommies” riding on their backs chasing the T Rex riding Nazis from Drawn Together …
Yeah, when I was a kid shelving books at the Library, we had ancient copies of F&SF and Analog. Reading was an occupational hazard. 
My copy of Air Progress magazine from October, 1965 has painting of the YF-12A streaking across the cover and I seem to recall that the A-11 was unveiled for the news media in May or June of that year.
I have only seen the cover of the edition of Analog that carried the story, (I never got to read it), but the plane depicted was definitely an A-11/A-12/YF-12A/SR-71. (Interesting about the plot having it use its speed to blow apart its targets, I recall wondering, at the time, whether the story really used a YF-12A, which could only get one pass at its foes before they landed, since it was reputed to need 300 miles to turn around when at speed.)
Wasn’t he flying as slowly as he could, and still couldn’t see them long enough to shoot? As I recall, he couldn’t see the wood and fabric on radar.
While it was an excellent fighter it certainly was not a hundred times better than a Bf-109. Planes did not advance THAt much between 1940 and 1942.
[Totally off-topic anecdote]One time when I was at Edwards AFB to watch the landing of the Discovery, they had a Blackbird on the tarmac outside a hanger. I snuck around, trying to get a decent spot to photograph it when I was spotted by an AP. He marched over, stood in front of my camera, and said “You can get a better shot from over there, next to the fence.” As I blushed, he asked “Forgot that it’s been declassified?” When I nodded, he laughed. “We get that a lot around here.”[/TOTA]
I’d like to point out that the Mustang Mk I was a good, but not outstanding, fighter aircraft.
However, when someone had the idea of putting a Spitfire engine (the Rolls-Royce Merlin) into it, the end result was the P-51 Mustang, star of Screen and Game.
The turn radius required is related only to the bank angle and the true airspeed.
To see if the YF-12A really would require 300nm to turn around I had a look at its specifications and used them in this turn radius calculator.
Using a speed of Mach 3.2 and a temperature of -56 C (ISA at the tropopause), I came up with a true airspeed of 1838 kts. At this speed, using a bank angle of 18 degrees, it would have a turn diameter of 304 nm.
18 degrees is pretty shallow though, if it was limited to 18 degrees then it must be right on the edge of the stall as a bank angle that small has a very minor effect on the stall speed. If we use a bank angle of 30, the diameter is reduced to 170 nm. Then, if we reduce the speed to Mach 1.5 (still very fast), the turn diameter comes down to about 40 nm at 30 degrees bank.
So, if it really did have a turn radius of 300 miles, it would have to have been while flying at its max speed (to maximise turning radius), and its max altitude (to minimise the margin above the stall and therefore limit bank angle.)
Nitpick: They actually put a Packard Merlin in it. This was a Merlin made under licence by the American company Packard. Several models of Spitfire also had Packard built Merlins. The Mk XVI, for example, is just a Mk IX with a Packard engine.
I believe the Allison V12 that was in the early Mustangs was fitted only with a single stage supercharger that didn’t have the same high altitude performance as the Merlin.
The standard joke goes that you can tell the Packard Merlin from the Rolls-Royce because the Packard’s got the engine oil on the inside ;).
yes.
probably.
I don’t think the Raptor is really the right choice here. It’s more of an AWACS platform; I’m not even sure if they routinely carry weapons. For an interceptor role, you’d definitely want to go with Vipers. Of course, having a few Raptors to provide DRADIS support to the Vipers would be a help; in fact, even without the Vipers, as was pointed out earlier in the thread, giving the RAF advanced DRADIS capability from the get-go could have given their Hurricanes and Spitfires a huge advantage.
…What? 
I don’t know if this is rue, but I have read somewhere that many piston engines do not generate a sufficient heat signature for IR missiles to lock onto.
The A10 is not fast enough. max speed is just over 40o mph, and has no capacity for radar guided AAMs
So I would go with whatevr Mach 1 capabable fighter can carry the most radar guided AAMs. AFAIK, that would be the F-14 Tomcat, which can carry 6 Phoenix missiles.
I would guess that a squadron of 24 Tomcats, which could take out 100-150 German aircraft per raid, without even coming into visual range of the Germans, would stop the attacks in less than a week.
If I were Air Marshall Dowding with Tomcats, I wouldn’t risk even one of them by closing to cannon range. Knocking out 20 percent of the bombers per attack would be sufficient.
Oh, yeah, as to the OP question, 24 Raptors (which I think can carry 4 AAMRAMs each), could easily do the same job. It would just take a few more days.
If you grant them enough time as the actual battle took. I’d say a dozen could do the job. Again without ever coming into sight range of the Germans.
<aybe, they would be so fast, and the Germans so slow, that the Raptors could land and rearm, and re-emgage more than once in the same attack.
I am not an expert, and this information is second-hand. My dad told me that he was in the Navy he saw a demonstration of the Sidewinder missile. The missile was set up on a stand, and someone at the other end of the room waved a lit cigarette around. The fins on the missile moved to follow it.
I have no idea how big this ‘room’ was. I don’t know what the relative heat signature of a lit cigarette is near a bulkhead vs. the heat signature of any kind of engine against the sky. But it showed that even in the '50s (I’m assuming it was in the '50s, since that was when dad was in carriers – after his commission he went to Communications on CLG-5 and then into ASW) the IR unit was fairly sensitive.
I don’t know how hot CHT is on liquid-cooled IC engines. But their exhaust stacks were hot and often had flames coming out of them. (I remember reading a WWII pilot’s article in Flying called ‘My Blue Flame’, the title referring to his P-51’s exhaust stacks at night.)
Wikipedia gives the A-10’s top speed in level flight as 438mph. That’s as fast as the fastest of the late war piston-engined fighters. The Bf109E, which was the fastest Luftwaffe plane in the sky during the Battle of Britain, topped out at 348mph and the Ju88, Do17, and He111 were substantially sub-300mph planes. The A-10 is lots fast enough.
Assuming refueling and rearming capabilities, wouldn’t you do pretty much what someone else here said? You precision bomb their radar and traffic control towers, then put craters in their runways, then bomblet/strafe the planes on the ground.
Victorrrryyyy!!!
“Runways”?
Most German planes involved in the Battle of Britain could take off from a reasonably smooth grass field.
The Air Force says the A10’s top speed is 420. At what altitude, it doesn’t say. IMO a 70 mph speed difference is not enough. A diving ME-109 could likely catch an A-10 going flat out. That is less of a differential than vetween say, a P-51 and an ME-262. P-51s shot down a number of ME-262s. Most, admittedly, while taking off or landing, but some in open air combat.
An A-10, IMO, would not have such an overwhelming advantage that a handful could handily win the battle, though they would certainly be an improvement over Spitfires.