If I had to guess, it’s because the M2 50 cal had already been in use in the US military for roughly 10 years by the time the war broke out, and was fairly ubiquitous- tanks, planes, boats, ships, infantry all used it.
The Europeans never really got into the heavy machine gun game as much as the US did- there were a small handful of models, but they tended to be single-purpose- aircraft, or infantry, and weren’t mounted on multiple vehicles like the M2 was.
The flip side though is that it took the US a lot longer to get into aircraft cannon- the early-mid 1950s was when the US started mounting 20mm cannons on fighters.
The early Mustang, P-51A or Mk I, was outstanding at low level. It’s performance is actually pretty good at mid altitude, too. The UK did the first conversion of a Mustang to a Merlin engine, to take advantage of the extremely well-designed airframe.
The USN wanted to go to cannon during WWII, but the US had all sorts of problems with their 20mm cannon variants.
Why some planes are iconic and other are not probably has more to do with looks, as mentioned with the Spitfire and the Mustang. Consider the P-40–the shark nosed P-40 is a hugely popular, iconic fighter, and though it was an important and serviceable aircraft, it wasn’t a game changer like the P-51.
The principle of a common (rifle-calibre) cartridge with the Army was something the chiefs of staff had absolutely insisted in the Thirties when a replacement for the Vickers and Lewis aircraft guns was being sort. Which meant sticking with the rimmed .303 cartridge and reworking the Colt design for it.
In the end we ended up using the .30 MG on US-supplied a/c anyway.
The P-82 didn’t make it into the war. During WWII, the P-38 Lightning was the only U.S. fighter that could return home with one engine dead. (Incidentally, last time I checked there was a P-82 for sale at controller.com for 12 megabucks.)
Don’t get me wrong, It was never a bad plane but it was transformed by the Merlin into something very special indeed. It was a great plane limited by the original Allison engine.
Some in the USN wanted to go to 20mm, some didn’t. Generally, the more stoutly-built your targets are, the more you want a larger gun. Against the lightly-built IJN & IJA planes, the 20mm was kind of overkill, as the .50 could penetrate anything it hit.
The memoirs basically just mention Spitfires and Hurricanes (at least up to the Casablanca Conference).
So, was the Adapt book wrong? Granted, it seems to ignore the evolution of various modifications of the Spitfire prototype between 1931 and 1938. The Messerschmidt also underwent significant modifications during the war. So did the Spitfire with different versions for different tasks.
My questions:
The prototype seems very fast for 1931. Granted that different planes have pros and cons. Was the speed as impressive as described?
Pilots say they loved the feeling of flying it. This implies it was not just aesthetics. What was it?
How important is the ability to shoot forward? To make tight turns?
Absolutely minor nitpick but the Hurricane could take more punishment than the Spitfire, not less due to it being built semi monocoque and frame construction. This hybrid design was over engineered and could handle more abuse than the monocoque Spitfire.
A point on the Mustang as well. It was originally designed for the British and was adopted by the USAAF after seeing its performance. It served as the A-36 Apache as a ground attack with an Allison engine and only later became the Mustang.
My understanding is that the 1931 design was a disappointment; what we now know as the Spitfire was a later design from 1935.
Yes, pilots loved it. It was fast, maneuverable, sensitive to the controls. Only vice was short legs. What’s not to love?
Tight turns are important in dogfighting, as the pilot can turn inside an opponent, then get behind him. Then, shooting forward, shoot him down.
From the early days of fighters in WWI, pilots wanted to point the plane at what they wanted to shoot, rather than moving the gun around. The RAF experimented with a fighter plane with a turret, the Bolton-Paul Defiant. It regularly makes the list of “worst fighter.”
The Mustang was designed for the British, but impressed many officers in the USAAF. The Apache was an end run around limits to purchasing more fighters, to keep North American building planes.
The Mustang’s origin is actually almost ridiculous. North American were supposed to build Curtis P-40’s for lend-lease, but they said, “Give us a couple months. We think we can do better.” This was agreed upon in April '40, and the Mustang was flying in October.
North American had never built or designed a fighter before.
There are bolts on the F-35 that were in design longer than the Mustang.
The B-17 may not look beautiful, but it does look badass. It’s wings, engines and cockpit give it hunched shoulders and a furrowed brow, and when you add all the turrets to that, you can’t help but look at and think, “This plane means business”.
It’s a huge stretch IMO, to call the P-70 a fighter. It was a night-fighting variant of the A-20 Havoc medium bomber, which was NOT a fighter by any stretch of the imagination. Most night fighters of WWII weren’t fighters in the classical sense, but rather light/medium bombers mounting radar and other heavy avionics that couldn’t be mounted on fighters of the time.
As far as actual fighters go, @Johnny_L.A is right- the P-38 was the only twin-engined US fighter.
True fact; the nickname “Flying Fortress” wasn’t Boeing’s idea. The name was coined by a journalist who took one look at the badass appearance of the plane and the name popped into his head. It is, one must admit, about as appropriate a nickname as any aircraft has ever been given.
The plane was definitely very fast for its time - it set records - and pilots definitely loved to fly it. I think one will find most really successful fighters were loved by its pilots; ease of use is naturally a big part of a successful design. If you found a plane confusing to fly (the P-38 was notorious for that, for instance) or frustrating to fly (early Typhoons) then you’re distracted from the job at hand.
As to shooting forward, well, if you can’t shoot forward how do you shoot down other planes?
As to making tight turns, obviously it’s helpful, but I have to point out that one of the most important lessons learned during the war is that as helpful as turning radius is, SPEED was the most important feature of a fighter. Faster planes beat slower planes. That is absolutely, unambiguously clear.
In the Pacific War, the Allies never developed a plane more maneuverable than the Zero, but their planes eventually crushed Zeroes because they were so much faster. A faster plane doesn’t have to dogfight; it can dive in, spray the enemy with gunfire, and dive away. If you have a number of planes in the fight and you know how to work as a team, the slower enemy can be under perpetual attack. No matter how fast you can turn, a much faster plane will be immensely difficult to fight. A plane that’s 100km/h faster than you is out of effective gun range in seconds.
Most aerial kills were not the product of crazy turning battles. A typical aerial battle was Plane A attacking for above, with a significant energy advantage, and shooting Plane B to pieces before B had a chance to do anything about it. Speed enabled a plane to be in Plane A’s position more often, and to prevent Plane B from effective counterattack if it survived the first assault.
Yeah it’s generally a dynamic of turn fighting vs energy fighting. Lower wing loading for the former vs higher wing loading for the latter. A faster fighter may have a good rate of turn, but is more useful as an energy fighter. A turn fighter generally has to rely on it’s turn rate because they are ( generally ) date from a pre-war or early war time when, while its speed was good at the time, becomes more outclasses as the war goes on. ( think of the Zero, the Poliparkov I-16 )
Another mistake some fall into is the concept of “maneuverability” encompasses much more than the ability to have a tight(er) turn radius. Good control harmonization and especially rate of roll also is a great trait of maneuverability to have.
Aircraft like the Fw-190 and the P-47 have unremarkable turn rates, but great rate of roll, which allows them to change direction quickly, and speed, were formidable fighters.
Another point: these early light turn fighters like the Zero became much less able to turn tightly as their speed increased, the aerodynamic forces on their primary flight controls ( rudder, ailerons, elevators ) become to high for the pilot to manipulate. So while it may, especially by early war standards have a decent top speed ( 331 to 354 mph depending on the variant ), they had to rely on a good rate of climb and tightness of turn at slower speeds to vanquish earlier, slower, heavier A/C, or those A/C and other’s whose pilots were foolish enough to slow down and try to out turn them. One of the reports I’ve read indicated that at anything above 225 mph, the Zero actually had a wider turn radius than the F6F Hellcat that increased further as speeds increased.