Re: Single Engine Fighter/Damage
Air cooled radial engines like the Republic Thunderbolt’s did not have this severe damage problem. Nor were they as large. And needed less maintainence. And used less fuel. But weren’t as fast, & had problems at altitude.
Hence, most naval aircraft used one of them.
I know diddly about planes, but the hubby builds and flies RC aircraft, and I host the club meetings. So I’ve only seen these planes in pictures and in miniature, but when the guys made me an honorary member of the RC club, they asked me what kind of plane I wanted embroidered on my club shirt and I selected the P-51 Mustang - and my second choice was the Corsair.
Very pretty planes, both.
I used to work with a woman who was a specialist in aircraft survivability for the Navy. In fact, she was sort of “a navy expert” in the subject.
When she was asked by pilots in meeting what was the most vulnerable equipment on an airplane, she always got their attention by answering, “The pilot.”
Too true. If I was flying back then- give me a P-47 Thunderbolt please- armored cockpit, air cooled engine and robust design. Plus they got many of the ground sweep missions and were highly feared by the Germans.
The opposite was the highly nimble Zero- a joy to fly and fight, but zero protection of the pilot and fuel tanks. Gulp . . .
I used to work at a place with an operational Spitfire, Mustang, and Kittyhawk (among others). Of those three I’d drool most over the spitfire, especially to see it flying. The P51 used to come second but the P40 has grown on me and would be my preference for second sexiest fighter behind the Spitfire.
I’ve heard that pilots say that you ride in any plane but you wear a Spitfire. It was not only a tight fit but it just felt like an extension of your body.
That sounds sexy to me.
I also remember reading about a p-47 that came home with 200+ bullet holes. His guns locked and as he returned to base a German fighter followed the guy back and emptied his guns at him.
Still that’s not sexy. Tough? yes Sexy? no
I’ve been reading this and agreeing with every choice! I can’t decide!!
Well, if forced to, I’ll say (purely “sexiest” or “coolest”) the P-38 and the Me262. Always had a soft-spot for that Me and the twin-boom.
I prefer the 51B to the 51D (soley on looks)
By the way, Ringo, Adolf gave the world the VW and the Autobahn. But he’s still an asshole!
Hey, Johnny LA! I have a copy of Oscar Brand’s collection of Army Air Corp songs. You might like a copy if you don’t have one already.
She said she loved me like a brother. She’s from Arkansas, hence the Joy!
The Spitfire is sexy, the Mustang is sexy, the 262 is sexy, but despite its fragility, I’m voting for the A6M “Zero”. Nimble, fast, a pilots airplane, and deadly, too. Sure, it was fragile, but sexy. The Mosquito deserves special mention, too. Again, fairly fragile, what with it’s wooden construction, but reliable, fast, versitile, and deadly. In order to kill a fighter, you’ve got to hit it, and in the hands of skilled pilots, the Zero and the Mosquito were hard to hit and kill (for differing reasons).
That said, almost all of the fighters were sexy in one way or an other. I have one quible, though… Who said the P-47 was small? It’s no such thing! One of the jokes about the “Jug” was that if a German got on your tail, you could simply dodge the bullets by jumping around in the fuselage. In one documented case, an FW-190 caught an out-of-ammunition, damaged Thunderbolt alone as it tried to get home. The German pilot lit the Jug up, and it didn’t fall. In fact, he pumped all his remaining amunition into the aircraft, and it didn’t fall. He flew up alongside the bemused American pilot, saluted him, and flew off, leaving the badly-chewed Jug to fly home (successfully).
Um…nobody, as far as I can see…
Oh, I think I see what you mean. Bosda said…
He was talking about relative sizes of the engines, not the plane itself.
Ah! Right.
Well, the engine in the P-47 had a huge frontal area (as did most radials, relatively speaking), but I can see where you might call it “smaller” if you take length and mass into the equation…
I can’t decide which one is the sexiest, but I know which one was the weirdest. Dopers and Doperettes, I present to you the Blohm und Voss Bv141 .
Rabid flight simmer ( Microsoft FS 98,FS 2000,CFS1,CFS2 ) and all around airplane nut checking in.
The very first aircraft that I download and install in any game I own is the Lockheed P-38, it also the plane I fly in multiplayer games.
It blows the minds of BF-109 and Zero jockeys who want to play turn and burn when I hit them with boom and zoom tactics and center mounted weaponry with twice the effective range of their wing mounted guns ( no convergence(sp?) to deal with )
Peace
LIONsob
Good for you LionSOB. I own a Windows 2000 Professional IBM Netvista as my home ‘development’ play box. Which flight sim package would you recommend?
Sexy? Aircraft? Gotta be the Macchi MC.202 Folgore. Italian desert camuflage… nnnnnice.
http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/Italy/Air5.html
Hey Boo Boo Foo sorry to be getting back to you so late about your request. Do you want the long version or the short?
Boo Boo Foo, Right now Microsoft is selling FS98 and CFS1 bundled together as “Classic Flight Sim Pack” for about $30 U.S.
Both are a couple of years old and will run very well on just about any computer made in the last 5 years.
Flight Sim 2000,FS 2002 and CFS2 are going to need to be run on a fairly new computer with a fast processer and a strong 3D video adapter or the frame rates of the display are going to be too slow to be enjoyable unless you like slideshows.
Good sites for info and downloads are
www.flightsim.com
www.simviation.com
Also take a look at Terminal Reality’s FLY 1 and 2 games,not as many download avaleable but very detailed and lifelike cockpit instraments(all the switches and knobs work),aircraft and weather.
Peace, Blue Skys And Check Your 6
LIONsob
Oh, the long version please! I regularly visit www.p51.mustangsmustangs.com to read about people restoring or building P51’s. Are you using a real Merlin? Or a Griffon?
There were so many machines, and not just aircraft, from WW2 that could make one’s pulse pound that it’s almost an unfair question. The broader question might be why today’s machines don’t evoke the same emotional reaction outside the technical community.
Perhaps that’s because the WW2-era machines were still basically fully understandable to anyone who had opened the hood of a Model A. All the parts did things that were clear from their basic appearance, or perhaps with a quick explanation. It was simply easier to make an emotional connection with the machine and the people who had designed and built it. Airplanes were sexy then because they were still the fastest, most advanced things yet created. The pace of advancement during the war, too, was probably the most rapid in history - the RAF, for instance, still had fabric-covered biplane fighters in service in 1940, and jets in 1945.
That bond continued through the Space Race era, but is much harder to maintain now - the technological leading edge is stuck inside electronics black-boxes, and even the most knowledgable layman can only describe what it does, not how. Meanwhile, the understandable parts, the airframes etc., are almost static in their visible development. There just isn’t that much to get excited about now - the thrill of novelty and advancement just isn’t available to those not directly working on it. That’s really too bad.
Anyway, since you’re holding a gun to my head, the answer is the Me-262, and it would be even sexier if modern engines half the size of those Jumo 004’s had been installed.
All the WW2 Army Air Force vets I know of, though, have as their favorite airplane of the war the one that brought them back alive.