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While powered by essentially the same engine, comparing the Spitfire and the Mustang is, to me, an apples-and-oranges comparison. The Spitfire always was, basically, a point defense interceptor and, like most fighters of the thirties, short-legged. The Mustang seemed to lend itself more to adaptation as a long-range fighter, after the Merlin engine became the standard.
Both of these aircraft excelled at what they were designed for.
All my reading leads me to believe that the best all-around fighter aircraft of WW II was likely the P-47. While the Spitfire and P-51 both look beautiful in their own way and had their strengths, I'm guessing the P-47's 8 .50 caliber machine guns, rugged build and Wasp engine made it superb at both dog fighting and ground support. I'd pick the F4U Corsair next, as it too had stellar success in the air-to-air and ground support roles.
The ME-262 might even be better than the P-47 and F4U, but questions of reliability leave it off my list for now.
Your an idiot! The spitfire is better than a P-47! I can belive you put the Corsair in number two in you list! Hit the books buddy
True, spitfires shoot three bullets for than a P-47, that's why their called spirfires. Also, Their lighter, so faster.
When you're going to call someone an idiot, it's best not to use "your" when it should be "You are…"
The Mk. II SPitfire was armed with two 20mm cannon and four .303 m/guns, while later versions sported four cannon. While the .5 machine guns used on US fighters was a powerful weapon, the cannon fired explosive shells that caused much greater damage. One 20mm in the right place would bring down a fighter, while half a dozen would destroy any bomber. In addition, armor-piercing cannon shells would destroy many armored vehicles that the .5 m/g bullets would bounce off.
The P-47 was no dogfighter, and a well-handled Me-109 or Fw-190 would be on its tail in an instant in a turning match. Its greatest virtue, other than riggesness, was its weigh, so that it dived like a grand piano. The best tactic for a P-47 was to dive, fire and keep diving, the same tactics used by P-40s and P-38s against the Jap Zero.
The comparison between .303, 50 cal and 20 mm cannons failed to state a most important fact. In addition to the much greater hitting power of a 50 cal over the .303 and the 20mm over the 50 cal, the range was equally important. A 20mm cannon had a range significantly greater than a 50 cal so it was theoretically possible for a German fighter to hit a B17 or B24 while still out of range of the bomber's 50 cal MGs
I am biased because my Dad worked on P-51 Mustangs at Wright Field, Ohio during World War 2; therefore I must say that
the P-51 Mustang is in my openion (sp.) the best fighter in the war.
Having seen both up close I would say that the P-51 is a sleeker,
more deadly looking fighter plane. I know that looks don't have
anything to do with it but the Mustang is just the better looking
plane period. Beside that it had a much better war record.
Arthur M. Hodge, Jr.
See http://www.chuckhawks.com/p47.htm for a nice comparison between P51 versus P47 by a WW2 veteran who flew both types.
This ex-pilot claims Thunderbolts destroyed 11,874 aircraft in combat.
Sorry, don't beleive this!
8th Airforce Fighter Command total confirmed claims on all types are 5,276.
8th Airforce Fighter Command losses during this period are 2,016.
The Thunderbolt was used in other theatres but did not destroy the numbers of enemy aircraft claimed in this piece.
We solute him
A solute is something dissolved in a solvent.
Shortly after the end of WW II the U S military tested many different fighter aircraft, flying captured fighters against Army and Navy fighters. The fighter that performed best was the F4U Corsair. There were faster fighters (P-51) and more robust fighters (P-47). The F4U was not rated as the top fighter in any single catetory. What made the F4U the outstanding fighter was the fact it was highly rated in many different categories. The US military flew F4Usand P-51s well into the 1950s. When I went through the Navy Aviation orientation course at Norman, OK, in 1958, we were trained how to start and run up an F4U.
Have to go with the P-51 over the skies of europe; many acft matched the P-519 ala the griffon engine powered spitfires, the BF109Ks, the FW190Ds) BUT one had the overall performance of speed( P-51B/C 440mph,P-51D,437mph@ 30K ft), range and suitable firepower. also the fact that the P-51, though outmatched knocked down at least a dozen Me-262 jets- name a P-47 jock or spitfire driver that did that:?!!!)
The only other piston powered ACFT to match for late WWII and post war was the F4U corsair, with even a record of taking down a MiG 15 in Korea( not to be repeated until the vietnam war with a prop driven navy bomber did this) corsairs could run up to 430 to 445 mph had range and tougher armor than the more lightweight Mustang.
bottom line, each fighter has its pluses or minuses- many British, UK Commonwealth and allied pilots who flew the P-47, spitfire, and mustang liked each acft for its particular characteristics. If i were to fly a point defens, shortrange fight? spitfire. Long range high altitude high speed fight? Mustang. ground/pound and possible mix up with enemy fighters? P-47.
Don't know if the F4U corsair would have faired very well in the high altitude fighting of europe, but in the mid altitude sea battles over the pacific it did its job. what next, are folks here gonna claim how tough the F6F hellcat would be against a BF109? or how the Russian LAVs could have handled the zeroes????
In my opinion the Spitfire is the best fighter of WWII. I understand that the Mustang had a longer range, but it still had to use drop-tanks. The spitfire also had drop-tanks, but these were only used on PR-versions. And the Spit didn't even have to fly to germany, because the germans went to england! Also the only reason to send fighters to germany, was as bomberescort, and the british frankly didn't have very good bombers. But even I must say that they're two different fighters based on different purposes. It's very hard to compare them.
I am quite partial to the Spitfire — and nothing was better looking — but the P51 was a better all around fighter. The P51 was a much newer design and took advantage of what had been learned. Given similar engines, it was much faster due to its laminar wing design and had much better range due to greater efficiency, larger gas tanks and drop tanks. Without the drop tanks, the P51 had twice the range of the Spitfire. It is astounding that you would say that the British lacked good bombers. The Lancaster was the best heavy bomber of the war even though the B17 has more visual appeal and fans. The Lancaster could carry a much large bomb load than either the B17 or B24 — and it was powered by four merlin engines so it has to be better :-) And no need to send fighters into Germany??? The whole point of the air campaign between mid Jan'44 and late Apr'44 was to use the bombers to lure the Luftwafffe into the air so P51s could shoot them down. That way air superiority over the channel during Overlord was assured.
The P-51 was not "much faster." The later marks of Spitfire could bat along at over 450mph, about the same as the P-51. And the Spit could dive at speeds that would pull those wings off a '51. Twice test pilots dove Spits to Mach 0.9 – over 600mph – without any problem with the wings; in fact, the Spitfire wing was superior in trans-sonic speeds than those of early jets.
my dear Asmund
two of the finest bombers of world war two were the DH Mosquito as fas as the p51 that were sent escort them and the Avro Lancaster that carried the 22 thousand pound grand-slam bombs they were also powered by the merlin engine. The Lancasters flew night bombing raids and did not need fighter cover.
The Mosquito (two RR Merlins) was never escorted, by P-51s or any other fighter! For the first two years of its existence it was faster than any German fighter, and the only way the Luftwaffe could shoot them down was by having standing patrols waiting at 40,000 ft ready to dive, and they only got a handful this way.
I agree that the Mossie was the most outstanding airplane of the war, being built in bomber, photorecce, fighter, night fighter and anti-shipping versions (one of them, armed with an experimental 47mm cannon, caught a German light cruiser in the Skaggerak and, flying out of antiaircraft range, drilled the ship and stopped its engines until torpedo Beauforts sank it.)
They were the best night-fighter of the war, and carried out the most spectacular raids, including Operation Jehrico – attacking a prison where French Resistance men were being tortured and killed, freeing many of them.
The bomber version could carry the 4,000lb "Cookie" all the way to Berlin. The B-17, B-24 and even B-29 could not fit the Cookie. The Mossie could carry more bombs, faster and farther than the '17 and '24, and their speed was such that they had one of the lowest loss ratios of all.
the bombers that bitain used in world war 2 where covered by p51 mustangs becouse the spitfire was adapted to be best at dog fights over england so thay did not need the fual for long range becouse it would wigh them down and there base's where close to where thay where fighting. another reason the spitfire had a low range was that the british, americans and russians had never planed of bombing germany when the spitfire was created so there was no need of a bigger fuel tank. The p51 on over hands was created for the idear that thay would protect the bombers in world war 2 so its has a longer range to get to berlin, but the usaf needed air base's in britain to reach over to germany so if it wasint for the spitfire and the hurracane britain would of lost the battle of britain and the p51 would be rended useless.
"NO NEED TO SEND FIGHTERS INTO GERMANY"???????? How about, destroying targets of oppurnity like,supply trains, resupply convoys,close air support for our troops, tearing up German air fields,their planes, flak towers,radar sites, enemy troops……… The list goes on & on & on
Mosquitoes were doing this before Mustangs were around.
Ground attack (British 'Rhubarb' missions) was not done by 'fighters' – it was done by ground attack aircraft – often modified fighter aircraft, but they were not sent in on 'fighter' missions.
A good friend of mine flew both P-47's & P-51's over Germany,he simply stated when asked which of the two he prefered; " If you want to impress your girl back home you fly a P-51; If you want to go back to your girl back home fly a P-47 " Say's alot !
Here is a couple of interesting facts for you from Tumult in the Skies.
The eagle squadrons of the USAAF started life as expat Americians flying for the British BEFORE AMERICA ENTERED THE WAR.
They were forced out of their spitfires into P47s and their kill ratios fell below their less experienced country men also flying P47s. This was because of the way these pilots fought, ie you didn't let the other guy draw a bead on you, this is not the way to fight in a P47, as you'll never draw a bead on the other guy either.
When the P51 turned up the eagle squadrons changed over to them with only a 24 hour window for each pilot as the powers that be couldn't spare them any more time, but the eagle squadron pilots still wanted to take them even under those conditions, why, they were much more like the spit which these pilots held as the benchmark than the P47.
And guess what, the kill ratio's again left the other USAAF fighter units standing.
And after all that, they still wanted their spits back.
Oh, and if you want to know who the krauts were more scared of, ask them if you want an unbiased view, not some P47 pilot who didn't know the way to get home was to not let the other guy put holes in you at all, even if you were putting holes in one of him.
The RAF Eagle Squadrons loved their Spits and didn't like the idea of giving them up for the P-47 and P-51s. Early on, some USAAF units also flew Spits. Reading memoirs of these vets who flew all three types many preferred the Spitfire as it was easier to handle and a good gun platform.
I think you are confusing the Spitfire with the Hurricane. The Spitfire was an excellent handling plane, but the Hurricane was the "good gun platform" It was the Hurricane, not the Spitfire that won the Battle of Britain. But both planes were inadequately armed when they initially had just machine guns. The guns were good — US Brownings — but they were rechambered for .303 British ammunition and you needed to be either lucky or have a hundred hits to bring down an enemy aircraft.
The spitfire and hurricane both helped in the battle of britain, the spitfire get more credit becouse its a better looking plane then the hurricane. so saying that the hurricane won the battle of britain is a very big miss understanding, every plane is good it what it does.
With .303's harmonised at 250 yards a three second burst from eight of these weapons would saturate a 12' square area with 480 rounds. A one second burst which would be more normal, provided the same area with 160 strikes. I think this says it all, bearing in mind most targets would sport inline/liquid cooled engines. These are figures provided by Air Ministry tests which are generally unavailable.
All of you are wet towels! in the bottom analysis if you are talking pure fighter/ air superiority? P-51C-P51D! Spitfire is great in short term engagements( once it got a high HP rating, and 20mm guns) P-47 great as it actually has higher altitude and ground attack capability, but is NOT a great dogfighter!!! The F4U NEVER flew against A FW 90 A/D at 25-30K "in the blue"( would have gotten a true lesson against a TOUGHER,Better armed/armored opponent),BUT the Mustang did fly and BEAT the the Zero, and the Oscar, and WON in the pacific! When the U.S. and allies set up for the battles over okinawa,B-29 bombing raids over tokyo ,and the potential invasion of Japan-The U.S. REACHED for their "best" all around fighter- the P-51Mustang
And the F4U corsair? the "ensign eliminator?? Good fighter/ ground attacker, good speed( from 422mph to max,446mph)-BUT the NAVY had the "better killer"( the F6F Hellcat.@ 380mph max, Had a higher Kill to loss ratio than the F4U Corsair). For all around fighting ability-The Mustang had the speed ,the altitude,adequate enough ground attack,,the range( the FASTER American fighter was NOT the F4U corsair, BUT the P-51K @ 480mph and between 1,600- 1,800 mile range)..To add to the old addage", the Mustang can't do what a spit, a jug, a Bent wing bird can do,BUT IT CAN DO IT ALL OVER NAZI GERMANY, and IMPERIAL JAPAN……
There were some P51s shot down by KI43 Oscar such as flown by Japan aces Yohei Hinoki (one legged aces). KI43 is 1940-41 plane. P51 can't out turn Japanese plane such as KI-43 Oscar and Zero. P51s also suffer some losses against newer Japanese plane like KI-84 Frank and KI100.Some Mitsubishi J2m3 kill P51. Actually 200 P51 loss in Japan. P51s only can rely on boom and zoom tactics. It cannot dog fight. Spitfire had no problem with the Japaness planes. Conclusion, P51 win because its mass production, good pilot. Not good plane.
Speaking of one-legged aces, did you know that Britain had TWO Spitfire pilots with NO legs? Douglas Bader, an ace with 23 kills (in 16 months) was a wing leader (shot down over France, and still escaped twice). The other legless guy was Colin Hodgkinson.
Unfortunately, you are wrong about the Spit having no problem with the Japanes planes. The RAF, just like the Americans, was slow to believe that the Zero could out-turn any other plane in the theater,and flown by some of the best pilots in WWII. Both Britain and the US believed their own propaganda (the Japs are lousy pilots, can't see in the dark, their planes are made from bamboo and paper like their houses, etc.) These Battle of Britain veterans ignored the advice of the pilots who had already tangled with the Zero (those that survived!) and tried to out-turn them, and got shot down. It took several painful lessons to teach, once more, that the only way to attack a Zero was dive, fire and continue diving.
I think people forget that the Mustang came at the last year of the war. My dad's group…the 4th…didn't get Mustangs until the end of Feb. 1944, whereas the Spit was a design of the 30's and was in combat 4 years prior to the Mustang's debut.
The Spit was also made in a vast number of configurations from the Spit Mark 1 to the Spit Mark 24 with Griffon powered Rolls Royce at over 2300 horsepower.
From a purely pilot's point of view, the Spit was a delight to fly, far more sensitive at the controls than a Mustang…just a beautiful plane…but unfortunately no range. Dad's favorite was the Spit 9 with the Merlin 61.
Goodson- I also love the Spitfire fighters( although their "uglier" brother in the stable, the Hawker Hurricane actually GOT MORE Kills in air combat,ala the Battle of Britian and the ETO), but the reality is that the P-51 had less upgrades and did a superiror job. Alot of people will tout that the P-51 wasn't readily available in combat like the Spitfire,or the P-38,or the P-47 in the early part of the war in Europe, and from aerial combat against the Luftwaffe- it SHOWS.
In the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire had "home field" advantage- shot down and surviving pilots could return to duty faster, emergency landed Spits could be repaired and put back into action, and there was less pilot fatigue compared to german attacking pilots who were constantly in enemy territory.At the end of the Battle of Britain, it was obvious that the Spitfire was OUTCLASSED by the FW 190s and the BF109s,hence the constant upgrades that never gave the Spitfires superiority( they were still just trying to "match" German fighters by the waning days of the war).
While skilled pilots could hold their own, even prove dangerous in the acft they were assigned( i.e.Johnny Johnson of the RAF in his Spitfire and Gabby Gabresky of the 8th USAAF in a P-47), the reality is that when pilots transititioned to the P-51 airframe, they were actually in a BETTER fighter plane- air to air combat resulted in less pilot losses.
When The Los Angeles Airport had a ceremony some yrs back to celebrate the achievements of the Tuskegee airmen( including a dedication ceremony of a static P-51 D mustang replica of "lucifer Jr" at the Proud bird restuarant) I got a chance to meet Lt. Col.Lee Archer, and asked what he thought about the P-51."Simply the "Best" he said, and thats from flying the sturdier P-47, the "journeyman" P-39 aircobra, and the obsolete P-40 Warhawk.U.S. and other Allied Pilots who transitioned to the P-51 were simply made better by their skills, and with the benefit of a superior plane……
While the glory goes to the prettier fighters like the Spitfire or Mustang, it should be noted that the highest scoring fighter group (air to air victories) in the ETO flew the Thunderbolt exclusively, in fact when asked to turn in their P-47s for the newer P-51 Mustangs, the CO of the 56th FG (then Col. David Shilling) flatly but politely refused, preferring to stay with what the group knew best, and perhaps pay some homage to the fighter that got them home time and again.
Without in any way trying to diminish the gallantry of USAAF aces, it must be remembered that by 1943 many, and by 1944 most, of the Luftwaffe "Expertien" had been killed. The RAF in 1939-41 were facing these aces, who had already experienced combat in the Spanish Civil War and had refined their tactics, while the RAF were novices. Many RAF fighter pilots in the Battle of Britain had only a few hours on the Spit, and were preoccupied with trying to fly the plane, so many were easy meat – rather like the LUftwaffe pilots in late '44 and 45.
The statement although their "uglier" brother in the stable, the Hawker Hurricane is untrue, the hawker hurricane was a beautiful aircraft and it looks why much better then the p51 mustang. with out the hurricane there wouldnt be a free world, couse britain would of fell to the nazi's and the world would be run be raceist gits.
Er, Los Angeles Airport, was that a great Fighter base in the thick of the action!
As a dog fighter there no question the spit would win, even later mark spits had a better turning circle and rate of roll compared to the 51, overall package would have to be the 51 as it was more versatile.
pezza, are totally clueless? first off the Sptifire could barely out turn the P-51, and the even the mark IX to XI models couldn't keep up with a P-51 B/C models in terms of speed,dive ability ( the spitfires would simply stall in a steep dive,leaving the Mustang to "walk away" from the fight) The Brits were still using their "feeble" 8 gun .303 configuration,despite having 20mm hispano guns( which often jammed). In equal 1:1 fight, a better gunned( 6) .50 cal mgs and ,with 60 mph faster, P-51 ( with pilots of like training) would OWN a spitfire.
Folks here keep confusing the early war record of the SPIT IV and V models as somehow meaning that the Spitfire was somehow able to dominate BETTER, more advanced fighter models. After the appearance of THE BEST German fighter of the war- the FW 190, Supermarine spent its time basically trying to "catch up" to the performance of the Focke Wulf equipped luftwaffe, and ME 109E-K models.
All you need to do is look at HOW MANY UPGRADES were done to the spitfire ,just to see that it was an obsolete airframe that quicklky lagged behind other allied and axis acft.The P-51,from B -D models was the "real deal" in high altitude, air superiority,long range fighters.Still the Spitfire looks pretty, and has a decent service record
That is a collection of uninformed rubbish. The Mk. IV was an unarmed photo-recce plane with extra range, not a fighter. The later marks of Spitfire could bat along at over 450mph, about the same as the P-51. And the Spit could dive at speeds that would pull those wings off a '51. Twice test pilots dove Spits to Mach 0.9 – over 600mph – without any problem with the wings; in fact, the Spitfire wing was superior in trans-sonic speeds than those of early jets.
The Hispano cannon's early problems (it was originally an antiaircraft ground weapon adapted to air use) were fixed by the time of the Mk. V Spitfire, and later ones used four 20mm cannons, much heavier armament than the P-51s.
The Mk. IX Spit, with the two-stage supecharged Merlin 60 was superior to the Fw-190, and the later, Griffon-engine, ones were far superior to any mark of 109 or 190. And the Me-109K is irrelevant; it came right at the end of the war, was made in only a handful of numbers, and had no effect.
"Obsolete airframe"? I repeat, uninformed and ignorant rubbish. The airframe was so sound and rugged that it was able to take engines more than double the original horsepower (2,200 vs 950), and was still being manufactured in 1949 and in front-line service in 1957.
There was a carrier version (the Seafire), float versions, extreme altitude versions (54,000 ft.) of the Spitfire – no such P-51 variants ever existed. As for range, the '51s great virtue, in 1945 Supermarine were testing a 1400-mile range version of the Spitfire, but it was discontinued as the war was winding down.
Here here, well said. Another issue frequently forgotten by Spit bashers is that the top speeds quoted between the Spit IX and the P51 was not as important as it appears as the SpitIX could beat the Mustangs rather pedestrian acceleration. This would be made worse depending upon fuel load carried together with overall handling.
In addition rate of climb for the P51 was not much better than a P47, and was never improved across the marks. The Spitfires rate of climb doubled and forever eclipsed all US fighters.
also, hate to beat a dead horse, BUT, the P-51 was in the ETO in 1943( not at the end of the War,as James Goodson posted) before that, the early version- the A-36 was in action and apparently well liked by British and U.S. forces for it low to med. low flight abilities( fast recon, fighter -bomber) as well as in the China-India -Burma theater, where it got decent combat kill ratios against the Japanese.The A-36"invader"( proto Mustang) served during the invasion of sicily and Italy and took on the Macchi Italian fighters as well as the BF109s.
The only reason the "A-36" didn't replace SPITS were because of the weakness of the allison engine( no supercharger for high altitude work), and despite shortages, the British didn't want to solely depend on U.S. assets for its fighters,plus the Spitfire was already tooled up for in British factories! I love how people try to diminish the P-51 as an "air superiority" fighter for its time. Each fighter design was capable for its particular use, and "Yes" the P-51 is moderate in some categories( ground attack is one) ,but for ALL around fighter-Altitude,Speed,firepower,range, ability to be tasked at strike and tacticial bombing? NONE have it all like the P-51
have you ever read any history?
Just a few thoughts on the above discussion. All the aircraft mentioned were great each in their own way. However one needs to look at the context as well as the achievements of the aircraft themselves. Firstly, the Spitfire and Hurricane flew against overwhelming odds in the Battle of Britain and yet prevailed. Thus, both were superior to the Bf 109. The P47, P51 and F4U flew much later in the war when the numerical odds were in their favour. Thus it is very difficult to say on the basis of "kill" ratio which aircraft was superior. However, I am persuaded by the comment above, that the Spitfire was the best pilots plane and this perhaps tilts the verdict.
Why don't we just ask the Luftwaffe pilots? I bet the old aces would say the Spitfire after getting bounced over England, but the younger pilots would say the Mustang after getting swarmed from take-off to landing over the continent. Therefore, I would assume that the opinion of the older aces who flew against the allies in both scenarios would have to trump the younger ones and leave us with an answer.
With comparable speed and maneuverability, they both do well, but the Spitfire had the first laminar flow airfoil allowing for high speed combat. It would have been the most dangerous opponent to the Luftwaffe for almost 4 years regardless of range or armament. The Mustang only had serious impacts for the last year of the war in the ETO and had to prove itself after the allies had already won the war logistically through aircraft production and pilot training. The Spitfire survived from the beginning. Therefore…the Spitfire gets my vote.
the Mustang not the Spitfire had the first laminar flow wing. It really does not matter when either plane flew; the question is which was better. The war was far from over when the Mustang appeared; in fact, without the Mustang, the air war would not have ended as it did. Without the Mustang, the bomber raids into Germany would have failed (as they did before the Mustang appeared). No allied aircraft with or without drop tanks had the range to escort bombers into the heart of Germany except the P51. That is what won the air war.
The war was over for the Axis powers as early as 1943, once there was victory in North Africa, they had been stopped in Russia, the U-Boat threat was under control in the North Atlantic, and the Japanese were in retreat in the South Pacific. The P-51 didn't appear until '44! The Spit came in 24 different Mk classes, and stopped the Axis on every front from the start until the end. The Spit was the best allied fighter in 1939, and the best Allied fighter in 1945, just a different class grade. It also won the most important battle of the war The Battle of Britain.
The P-38L could do anything a P-51D could do and had longer range than a P-51. A P-38 was the first american fighter over Berlin.
Many say that the F4U-4 was the best fighter of WWII, but this post looks at the Spit vs P51. Facts are as follows. Comparable aircraft were the MkXIV and P51D. Top sppeds were 721 and 703km/h respectively, whilst initial climb rates were 5,200 ft/min and 3,475ft/min.
Post war trials were conducted todetermine the best "dogfighter" and the Spitfire of course won this contest. It was the best! The P51 dived better and had the higher service ceiling.
German ace pilots and allied pilots I believe are the ones that know best and they agree that the Spitfire was the more difficult oponent. It must be remembered that the Spitfire suceeded against incredible odds whereas the P51 suceeded when the odds were in its favour.
Thus I believe that the Spitfire was the best fighter aircraft of WWII. It was faster, climbed faster, turned and rolled better and was considered by pilots on both sides to be the best.
The point that there were so many variants and that it was in "catch up mode" are not accurate. There were many Bf 109 upgrades as well and this is called progress. The Spitfire airframe was excellent and accomodated the many chages over the war years. This is not a disadvantage or a negative, but a very significant positive factor.
Late model Spitfires flew at 475mph which is 125mph faster than the Mk1s of 1939. No ordinary airframe could assimilate such large increments of power, torque, force and friction. Thus all in all the Spitfire was the premier fighter of WWII.
The Corsair was a fantastic aircraft! No doubt!
Not at 30,000 feet!
Correct, except the dive part. The Spit could dive at speeds that would pull those wings off a '51. Twice test pilots dove Spits to Mach 0.9 – over 600mph – without any problem with the wings; in fact, the Spitfire wing was superior in trans-sonic speeds than those of early jets.
No questions and no doubts. P51D Mustang was the all around best of the best premier fighter of WWII. Just for the rememberance; the famous Luftwaffe General Goering sided that when he first saw Mustang over Germany, he knew that war was over. And he seriously warned his pilot not to engage direct dogfight with Mustangs.
I still can remember that a lone Mustang in a bomber escort mission while waiting for his other squadron mates to join up, shot down
4 109s and a possible ME-262 after sent him off with black smoke.
The pilot accomplished this in single handed and he said that he had the faith in God and Mustang. P51 Mustang was the greatest.
This is quite a hard choice,but it does come down to the spitfire and
mustang as to which was best,the spitfire was more maneuverable
and the better dog fighter,but the mustang had the better range with
or without drop tanks and was a lot easier to mass produce and was
better suited to grass makeshift runways.
I think the allies should had standardized aircraft production with the
mustang as the single engine fighter and the mosquito as the other type, as both had the same engine they could produce more of each
for any use they wanted.
The skills required to build Aircraft such as the D.H. Mosquito were only available in the UK. The Germans tried (Ta 154) and never succeeded.
DH Mosquitos were also built in Canada and Australia
I stand corrected, they were indeed built in Australia and Canada, however what I should have said was that the Germans were unable to replicate the technology employed in the Mosquito's construction.
Let's see, the Mustang used the Spitfire engine and the final Spitfire varients used a Mustang type wing. the 10,000 '51s fought 1,500 fighters while the "pre quantity war" Spit's fought on a roughly 1 to 1 basis with the krauts. You dont fight the "quantity war" without first getting through the "quality war". Also, attempts to make a carrier version of the '51 failed whereas the Spit spawned the Seafire. Seems the Spit was more adaptabled. In the end though, the "Stang was nothing but a ground attack aircraft till it got the Merlin whilst the Griffin engined Spit was by far a superior fighter verses the the P-51h which is the ultimate war development of eachtype.
Goerings statement carries little weight as the Spitfire wasn't over Berlin for lack of range, yet (along with the Hurricane) decimated the Luftwaffe over Britain. The point is, Bader would've blown any Mustang jockey out of the sky. Winner: Spitfire!!!
I love the Corsair, the low dipped wing allowed for quick turns.. This is the ONLY advantage it had on the P51.. The spitfire had so many fuel problems, it doesn't even fit into the reliability class, plus one shot to the inner wing with a .50 and the whole wing would come off.. (that's why they changed the design). The P51, routinely, flew at over 500mph, routinely.. I don't think the Corsair EVER broke the 500mph barrier, unless it was in a fall, not a dive.. The Corsair didn't have great dive capability either, it wanted to "topple over" as most pilots HAD to initiate flaps to prevent that.. Low speed maneuverability goes to the Corsair the low wing attachment allowed for a quick "body over" roll.. Speed, endurance, ceiling, bomb payload, distance all go to the Mustang.. p&s.
The only aircraft in WWII that topped 500 mph were the German 262 jet in level flight!
The Corsair's inverted gull wing was designed so that the propeller could be kept clear of the deck without making the undercarriage too long, and had no effect on turning radius. What Spitfire fuel problems? What on earth are you talking about? It used the same engine as many other planes, initially with a carburetor and later with Bendix or Rolls Royce fuel injection, and was utterly reliable. One .5 in the wing would take the wing off? Total bull. The Spitfire wing was constructed of hollow sections interlocking inside each other like the leaf springs of a car, and immensely strong. Twice test pilots dove Spits to Mach .9 – over 600 mph. And the P-51 never flew "routinely" at over 500 mph. The P-51D maxed out at around 470 – the same as the Griffon-engined Spits. Your last sentence is nonsense. There were ultra high altitude Spits that had 8-9,000ft altitude advantage over the 51. The 4-cannon Spits were much better armed.
The Spit/Seafire became a carrier plane because the Brits had no other candidate, The US had no need to use the P51 for carriers, why would you when you had Grumman products, besides no American carrier plane used narrow-stance fuselage mounted main gear since the F4F – it was just unnessarily unstable.
The Hawker Tempest was also used as a carrier based fighter.
???? I presume you mean the Tempest II as the Sea Fury, which was post-war anyway.
The Fleet Air Arm always went with their own design specifications which invariably ended up with such *camels* (committee-designed horses) as the Fairey and Blackburn aircraft (the Skua and Fulmar were supposed to be fighters!). Fighters on carriers were a bit of a novelty for too long in the RN. When the FAA/RN eventually relented and wanted British single-seat fighters from carrier decks (having already used Grumman aircraft) what could Britain produce enough of easily? Spitfire airframes.
Why was there never a Sea Mustang???
I was just at Camarillo airport and met a WWII pilot that trained in the P-39 then flew 40 combat missions in Italy in a Mark V then 40 more in a P-51b. I asked him "The Question" and he looked me in the eye and laughed. The Mustang, hands down. He loved his Spit and actually liked the P-39 "once you got used to it" in fact he had to bail out of a flat spin in training. He said that anyone that picked any plane over a P-51 never flew one. 3 confirmed.
I think that answers the question pretty well.
The P-51 was a great plane, but it was "Johnny come lately"! By the time it came to the ETO the war was over! Many Americans say it saved the Eighth Air force Bombers, and it did save many, but really even without it the war was over. The Germans were in mass retreat in Russia, Italy, etc. The allies also had many aircraft which could fill much of it's roll. Many, such as the Corsair, or P-38 were fighting in Asia and the Pacific, but could have been moved to the ETO.
I was fortunate enough to talk to a German BF109 fighter pilot many years ago.
He had a great respect for the P51 Mustangs but had no hesitation in fighting them. The Spitfire on the other hand, was the one that they all tried to avoid a dog fight with. Different fighter aircraft designed in different era's, both capable and both deadly.
Number one. You folks need to understand that both of the planes were COMPLETELY different in the concept of their use. Spitfire was a front line fighter, a pure air superiority machine. It had not much range, didn't carry much air to ground ordinance. This machine was made to kill other planes over the immediate battlefield or over its own cities. It was the same class as Me-109. P-51 was a LONG range fighter. Remember, that Brits used Mustang Fighters too. Mustang 3 – they called them, with a distinct style capory, but same Merlin Engine and Same 12.7mm guns.
However, they used the Mustang 3 as an escort fighter and a fighter bomber.
Remember that Soviets were supplied with many types of Land Lease planes. They declined P-51 as it was not maneuverable enough at medium and low altitudes and was too heavy for them.
Same was as with ANY weapons. The question that you need to ask is "WHAT IS THE MISSION?"
If your mission is intercept, or battlefield air superiority, the superior maneuverability and climb rate of Spitfire will be needed here.
If your mission is a long range escort and sweep away enemy fighters over long range – P-51 will be a better choice.
Spitfire also has an edge in firepower, having 2x20mm and 2×12.7mm over 6×12.7mm. Both fighters have the disadvantage of having guns in the wings, rather then centrally mounted above engine and in the engine.
As far as Germans "not willing to engage". There is famous order that Luftwaffe is to "Avoid Engagement with any Yakovlev fighters lacking oil cooler under the engine" (This is spoken about Yak-3).
Now, it is easy to win air war when most of Luftwaffe was engaged in eastern front and the rest took a beating in Battle of Britain.
When you have 10:1 air superiority, you will easily win any war. Quantity is a quality of its own. Mustang was NOT a bad plane. However, for it the battlefield air superiority – dogfighting was a SECONDARY mission. For Spitfire and Yaks it was PRIMARY mission.
Also, remember something as Heavy as P-51 or especially P47, due to sheer inertial forces and higher wing loading then Spit or Yak will NEVER be able to compete with them in Turn/Roll rate. Power to weight ratios also count. Empty Spit IX weighted in at 2400kg, With wing loading of 142 kg/m². Empty P51D was 3400 with Wing loading: 192 kg/m²
Lower the wing loading – higher the turn and climb rate, especially since both planes had the same engine. Both planes could be made better with a centrally mounted armament, but with Merlin it was impossible.
P47 is a ground attacker, it has good speed, but crap for turn and roll rate, climb rate is also not too spectacular. Yes, it could take a beating, but that doesn't make it a good fighter. IL-2 also could take a beating, however it isn't a fighter.
P-47 should be compared to a fighter in its own class – Single Engine, high speed fighter bomber – Hawker Tempest, which outgunned, outmaneuvered and outclimbed it.
Therefore, my vote goes to SPITFIRE IX
The P-47 actually had a very good roll rate! The 56th FG had a kill rate against the luftwaffe of 8 to 1, most FW190 anf M109, and that was while the luftwaffe still had their most experienced aces flying. The P47 had very good high altitude perfomance and was faster in a dive than any other fighter. Also later on with the newer paddle blades the climb rate was acceptable. It had 33% more fire power than the P51 (8 instead of 6 0,5 caliber guns) and could also absorbe damage while a single bullet in the radiater of a P51 would mean the end of it. This is also the reason why the P47 was used as a ground attacker. The P47 broke the back of the luftwaffe, when the P51 came into action the luftwaffe was already in decline.
So to say the p51 was the best fighter is very arguable…. it depends on many factors.
The Spitfire and Hurricane broke the back of the Luftwaffe in 1940/41.
Wrong about "air to ground armament." The Mk. II Spitfire was armed with two 20mm cannon and four .303 m/guns, while later versions sported four cannon. While the .5 machine gun used on US fighters was a powerful weapon, the cannon fired explosive shells that caused much greater damage. One 20mm in the right place would bring down a fighter, while half a dozen would destroy any bomber. In addition, armor-piercing cannon shells would destroy many armored vehicles that the .5 m/g bullets would bounce off.
As an av id airwar historian, I would question the statement "the P51 always had a 10-1 quantitive advantage. This ws definetly not true in most localized airbattles. The Germans had a great knack for concentrating their fighters locally for mass attacks on allied bombers and fighters. It was often the case where a squadran of 24 Mustangs ended up taking on a whole gruppen of ME109's and FW190's. Even still, over 600 miles from base P51's wracked up an average of 7 to 1 kill ratios over the best german aircraft (including FW190D-9). By 1944 most "dogfights" did not consist of indavidual aircraft turning hard into each other at slow speeds. the vertical fight was more prevelant than the horizontal fight and no aircraft could fight as well as the P51 at any altitude over 300MPH.That being said, If I was any pilot flying 4+ hour missions I know what aircraft I'd want to be in.
Once again, Doug M, we are talking about DIFFERENT MISSIONS.
Escort vs Air Superiority. Still, with fuel tanks, Spit had long range, doubt it was as long as P-51. You do not send SPitfire for long range escorts. IT WAS NOT BUILT FOR THAT. Yeah "If I was pilot flying 4+ hour missions I would choose P-51", DUH!!! yeah, and if I was pilot flying close air support or a torpedo attack, I would not choose Spitfire either.
Question is this: Altitude 6500m one on one, head on approach, distance 5 km , what do you choose: SPIT or P-51?
The usual emotional opinion vs. fact it seems. P-51 was the better all-rounder. The Merlin did not "rescue" the Mustang from mediocre performance as is often claimed at Duxford Airshows. Early Allison Mustangs and Apaches had phenomenal low level performance and claimed some of the earliest FW190 kills, when the Spitfire V was struggling. Using similar late model Merlins, the P-51Bs, Cs, and Ds were quicker (despite being heavier) than the Spitfire Mk IX. This speaks to better aerodynamic efficiency. Spitfires had poor roll performance at high speeds, but weight was more concentrated on the C of G (fuel between engine and cockpit) vs. in the wings and behind the cockpit in the P-51. As any aerobatic pilot will know, mass concentrated on or close to the C of G vs. distributed makes for a reduced mass moment of inertia (better maneuverability), but this is also dependent on control effectiveness. As stated, the Spitfire (especially earlier models with fabric covered ailerons) had reduced roll rates at high speeds.
Don't disrespect the 109 either. Erich Hartmann got 352 kills in the 109 in just two years. The best Spitfire or Mustang guys got around ten percent of that. It's tempting to point out that he scored his kills on the Eastern Front, but the best Luftwaffe Battle of Britain individual scores also blew the RAF best away. It is often stated that the Luftwaffe outnumbered the RAF 2:1 in the Battle of Britain. Only true for total (bombers plus fighters) vs. Fighter Command. Fighters were even Stevens. And the Luftwaffe was fighting at the limit of their fighters' range, over enemy territory.
You need to check your history! The Spitfire came in 24 MK classes. The versatility of the design made it outstanding throughout the war from beginning to end. It's performance has been objectively tested versus other fighters, by the USAF, and for the period it has finished on top consistently. As for scores of German fighter pilots, this is the subject of much debate, especially on the Russian Front. The one thing that can be said of German fighter pilots who survived is that they flew far more combat missions then allied pilots. Hartmann for example flew over 600 missions in two years and saw the enemy every flight. The average allied pilot flew a tour of 50 missions and only saw the enemy occasionally. Accept in Russia of course! The Russians flew like the Germans.
If a German fighter pilot survived the war from beginning till the end he would have flown in combat from 1939 until 1945. Thus, by 1944 most of their best were dead. The rest of their best were in Russia dealing with the numerical on slot!
As you might guess fatigue and poor moral were problems for both sides on the Russian Front. Kurst in Russia in 1943 for example was the largest tank battle in history involving 2 million men and 4000 tanks, and a similar number of aircraft all within a relatively small area. At Stalingrad in Russia things were so bad German soldiers resorted to cannibalism. The entire 6th Army was lost, again in 1943. Thus the conditions and experience of German pilots was much different then those of the Allies.
Back to the issue at hand. The P-51 was a great long range fighter, but the Spitfire was a great dog fighter, however the Spitfire was there from start to finish!
Rot. The Allison-engined Mustangs gave good low-altitude performance (not "phenominal"), which was pointless as the action wa all at high altitude for the first 3/4 of the war. No Allison-engined Mustang ever even encountered a 190, far less shot one down. By the time the 190 appeared, all Mustangs were Merlin-powered. My dad, a WWII RAF vet, said that when the first versions of the Mustang (a name, incidentally, given to it by the British) were evaluated, the comment from Spitfire pilots was "good at low, slow turns." It was relegated to photo-recce work.
The Spit V was certainly outclassed by the 190, but within a couple of weeks was replaced by the Mk. IX with a 2-stage supercharged Merlin 60-series, and outperformed the 190 easily, especially at altitude. As successive marks of Merlin appeared, the 190 never regained superiority. The 70-series Merlin gave over 1,700hp when the 190's BMW (at 60% greater capacity) was pushed to deliver 1,600 (and that only at low altitude) and the 109s also lagged in the hp race, despite having 150-grade fuel.
The last Merlin gave 2,240hp continuous, with 2,470 available for short bursts, and the Germans never came even close to matching this with their BMW and D-Benz engines.
The rear fuselage fuel tank in the '51, although (with the drop tanks) giving phenomenal range, were a control liability, due to the aft weight load upsetting balance and trim. Only when their fuel was burned off was control and manoeuverability regained.
Chuck Yeager, during an interview was asked which aircraft was superior. His answer: "the P-51 could do for six hours what the Spitfire could do for forty-five minutes."
William Dunn (US fighter ace who flew Spitfires, P-51s, Hurricanes, and P-47s): "Now, if I had to make the choice of one fighter aircraft above all the others – one that I'd rather have tied to the seat of my pants in any tactical situation – it would be, without any doubt, the world's greatest propeller driven flying machine – the magnificent and immortal Spitfire."
Eric Brown (RN test pilot and holder of the world record for number of types of aircraft flown): "I have flown both for many hours, and would choose the Spitfire [over the Mustang] if given a choice in a fight to the death."
Writer Jerry Scutts, quoting German pilots in his book JG 54: "The Jagflieger had to keep a wary eye out for enemy fighters, particularly Spitfires, a type JG 54's pilots had developed a particular aversion to…Pilot reflections do not, surprisingly enough, reflect over-much respect for the Mustang or Lightning, both of which the Germans reckoned their Fockes were equal to – unless they were met in substantial numbers."
Gordon Levitt, Israeli fighter pilot, comparing the Spitfire, Mustang, and Avia S-199 (Jumo-engined Bf 109), all of which the Israelis flew: "Despite the pros and cons, the Spitfire was everyone's first choice."
Karl Stein, Luftwaffe Fw 190 pilot (who served mainly on the Eastern front): "English and American aircraft appeared on the scene in those closing days of the European war. Spitfires were the most feared, then Mustangs…"
USAAF 31st FG War Diary (when transferring from Spitfires to P-51s): "Although pilots think that the P-51 is the best American fighter, they think the Spitfire VIII is the best fighter in the air."
USAAF pilot Charles McCorkle (who flew both in combat), reporting on a mock combat between a Spitfire and Mustang in 1944: "Now we could see which was the better aircraft…a Mustang and a Spit took off for a scheduled 'combat', flown by two top young flight commanders. When the fighters returned, the pilots had to agree that the Spitfire had won the joust. The Spit could easily outclimb, outaccelerate, and outmaneuver its opponent…"
”The Mustang was a great fighter, but it was great because it had the range the Spitfire lacked, enabling it to take the fight to the enemy.
But in a one-on-one dogfight, there's absolutely no comparison. The Spitfire would win decisively, 99 times out of 100…”
Why was the Spitfire faster than the Mustang?Flying at same Altitude with the same engine?Was it the wing design???
Actually the spitfire was never faster than the mustang
spitfire more fire power
mustang better range not speed
I was always under the impression that, with comparable engine power,the mustang was slightly the faster.
Although the mustang has a very thin (for its time) laminar flow wing, amazingly the spitfire was actually thinner (14% / 13.6%) Which is mainly why it had to be so wide.
Mitchell was aware of laminar flow (he did design total racers) but experience indicated that even a tiny amount of leading edge damage ruined the flow.
I am not an expert and certainly not qualified to say which is "best" yet am sensible enough to pick out the common thread that you must be very specific when you ask the question and state "Which type of mission".
The much maligned Hurricane destroyed more aircraft during The Battle of Britain. Tempest pilots dismissed Spitfire pilots with a " our landing speed is ppractically your top speed". P51s were deadly and long range, P47s bought you home safely.
I din't know that there is one answer and as even pilots are biased I would not take their views for granted.
Answer possibly; they were both the best in their own rights
The later marks of spitfires did have performance advantages over the mustang, The goal of both is to destroy the enemy. The mustang could go to the enemys field and compete evenly. In so many posts I hear the mustang getting clobbered because of it falling a little short in performance. The spitfire is not being hammered for its short range. We need to realize without the mustang ranging over Euroupe, the war would have been more costly and lasted longer. For differnt reasons, both should be considered legends.
Both are legends!!!
This is a harder question. Both of these planes were used for different reasons. Mustangs are for long range missions, Spitfires aren't. If there was a dogfight the spitfire would probably win since the spitfire has much greater firepower than the mustang and it could easily outturn the mustang. The spitfire also made a greater impact on WWII than the Mustang ever did.
So the Spitfire is the winner
I can't believe some of the ridiculous replies left on here in regard to this.
Even US pilots who had flown both remark that the late model Spitfires from the Mark IV onwards were superior to the P-51D … as dogfighters. Even the early models could turn inside just about anything.
However, the answer mentioning apples and oranges is pretty accurate: The Spitfire was the supreme allied interceptor of WWII, but didn't have the range to take the fight to Germany, which the P-51 did.
It's worth mentioning in this debate too that the P-51 was designed by North American to RAF specifications, but was a dud over 20,000ft and restricted to PR and ground-attack duties until a bright spark in the RAF thought it might go better with a Rolls Royce Merlin engine. It did, and how. Quite possibly, the P-51 wouldn't have existed in the form we know it had it not been for our cousins on the European side of the pond.
Here are the facts: German pilots – read the bio of JG54 – feared dogfighting Spitfires right to the end of the war, but were less wary of Mustangs unless they were met in greater numbers (which they inevitably were, whether Spitfires, Mustangs or anything else in 1944). The Germans considered the Spitfire the best, and the Mustang the second best – but only as dogfighters.
The Spitfire late marks which best compare to the P51D had a better rate of climb and could turn inside the Mustang every time. Speed was about equal but the Spitfire had better armement (including two 20mm cannon). They were about equal in the dive, at first, but the Spitfire ran away on the Mustang eventually. The Spitfire Mark XIV had a similar rate of roll, which was the Mustang's only advantage prior to that.
In all these cases, the pilots – as was true at the time of highly trained RAF and USAAF pilots – were expected to be of equal ability. These findings were all borne out by USAAF tests, and backed up by the opinions of their opponents. The tight turn of the Spitfire was what most worried the Germans. In combats with them, they found the late marks of Spitfire could initiate and break off the dogfight at the will of the British pilots. That was also found to be the case in the USAAF comparison tests.
However, and it's a very big however, the Germans also found the Mustang a handful, if not quite as manoeuvrable, and were unable to compete with the large formations escorting daylight raids over Germany. They considered the Mustang about equal to the late model 109s and 190s but by then, stocks of experienced German pilots were just about out, and the USAAF fighter pilots, mostly veterans by then, had a big edge unless they came up against one of the few still-breathi German aces in the west.
Both aircraft had beautiful airframes that could be adapted through different marks over a long period of time, which is the sign of a great aircraft.
But In a one-on-one dogfight, most pilots – and yes, including Americans who'd flown Spitfires – thought the Spitfire better.
Its major flaw: the Spitfire didn't have the range for long escort duties. It was the best dogfighter in the ETO, and probably the best interceptor right from the outset in 1939, when the first Mark 1s and IIs gave the Germans a huge shock over Dunkirk and then England.
And it was still the best in 1945.
But given the range of the Mustang, and the fact that the performance of the Spitfire and the Mustang were very close, you would have to say that overall – OVERALL – the Mustang was the better of the two aircraft.
Just not in a dogfight from about 1943 onwards. The later Spitfires had no peers in that respect. But as has been pointed out, they were unable to take their fight long-distance – which was where the Mustang was superlative.
Both deserve to be remembered and immortalised for different reasons … all of them good.
The Mustang comes out tops overall, especially in terms of usefulness. But it really IS apples and oranges.
Agree except later Spits had four, not two, 20mm cannon
Sorry, "dive" in the above analysis should read dive-and-zoom. The Mustang dropped faster initially but the advantage didn't last long. Also, most of the combats recorded for ideal operational comparison were at altitudes of 18,000-30,000ft. At sea level and at very low altutides, the Mustang was slightly faster than the late Mark Spitfires, At 30,000ft and at some altitudes between 20-30, the Sptfire XIV was 10mph faster.
Aside from a little actual knowledge of the subject scattered here and there, this exchange mostly appears as uninformed as it is opinionated.
Are there any actual pilots in this group? Thought not. Anybody here flown (or at least flown in) a Mustang or Spitfire? Nope, again, I'd wager. Any aeronautical engineers to be found? I doubt it.
Truth be told, those who see the argument as moot because of its"apples and oranges" nature are probably nudging closest to reality. Engineering of any kind is a sea of compromises; Thepoor engneer is forever giving up something in order to get something else he/she wants. Thus, speed and maneuverability tend to be mutually exclusive; stability as a gun platform often gets sacrificed for maeuverability; rate of climb and diving speed fight each other; heavy armament obviates agility, etc. So one has to ask the simple question: which airplane did the best job at fulfilling the expectations of those who crafted it?
When that question is put to the Mustang v. Spitfire comparison, the answer comes out a wash. Yes, the Spitfire was more maneuverable and could probably win a "knife fight in a phone booth" type of dogfight against a Mustang, given co-equal pilots and similar luck. No, the Spitfire didn't have the legs of the Mustang, although you can bet that every RAF pilot in the business longed for one that did. Yes, the Spitfire easily outclimbed the Mustang. But then why not? The Mustang was an elephant if ever there were. What with an empty weight of 7,635 pounds, it came in just slightly north of the higher mark Spits' absolute gross weights! The Mustang was always, always faster than any Spitfire, even the last marks to appear after the war. The B and C 'Stangs, while officially rated at 440 mph, were easily capable of hitting the mid-450s at 25,000 feet without breaking a sweat. And if you count the very last production edition, the H model with its approximately 490 mph top end, the Mustang simply galloped away from any Spitfire — to the eternal consternation of Brits young and old.
An old, late acquaintence of mine, Gunther Rall, put it very succinctly when he decared that, if you run across a P-51 you've got a fighting chance; Just stay sharp and try not to engage in a game of chase. But if you encounter a high-mark Spitfire, get the hell out of there! The good news was, the chances of running afoul of a Spitfire over the conntinent in mid-war were just about nil. They simply couldn't reach the front very often due to their limited range, and until post-Normandy times when Allied airbases began to appear on the continent bringing Spitfires closer to the conflict, they became almost irrelevant over the scenes of battle.
Finally, in small defense of the Mustang: With the introduction of the Griffon engine, the Spitfire remained such in name only. Truly, the Mk IX was the last true Spitfire of the original design. After that, it was a new airframe and, generally, a whole new engineering ballgame in the basrgain By comparison, one might just as well have called the P47 Thunderbolt the P-43B Lancer! Of course, one might also argue that the Mustang evolved considerably as well. (Never try to fit a P-51B or C wing to a P-51D! I can tell you from first-hand experience, it don't work!) At the end of the day, though. the Mustang was still true to its original design, whereas the Spitfire had gone through such extraordinarily extensive modifications that there were virtually no structural parts from the Spit IX that would interchange with anything on a Mk. 24, for example. I suspect (although can't prove it) that the Spitfire name was carried on through successive changes primarily for nationalistic, patriotic and morale purposes as much as anything else. One wonders if Supermarine's last piston-engined fighter effort, the laminar-flow winged "Spiteful," had appeared in, say, 1944 rather than just after the war, it might not have been christened the Spitfire 25…
PS Just a couple of quick notes to contributers here: Contrary to one contributer's remarks, The P-47 Thunderbolt was, arguably, the fastest rolling fighter plane in any theater of action! Throughout the war, arguments and wagers flew thick and fast over which could complete a 360 degree aileron roll the fastest, the P-47 or the BMW-powered FW 190. Fly in one sometime if you get a chance; its roll-rate definitely tends to separate skull from atlas vertabra!
And finally, for the semi-literate in the crowd: there's no such word as "alot."
During The Second World War there were dramatic technical improvements made in all types of military equipment including of course aircraft. The most advanced of the war being, of course the ME 262, which was a jet. The most advanced bomber by the end of the war was the B-29. But during the crucial period of 1939 until 1943, when the Germans were in a position where victory was still possible, it was the Spitfire that held the line in the air.
Once the German war machine had been stopped in North Africa, and in Russia, and the Allies were able to fully retool, it was the beginning of the end for the Axis. Even with the technical advances of German engineers they could not deal with the industrial might of the USA, as well as that of Russia, Canada, Britain , and alike.
A F-16 was a much superior aircraft to a Spitfire Mk V, or Mk IX, but they weren't available at the time, neither was the Mustang or Corsair, it was up to the Hurricane, the P-40, and the Spitfire. The key battles were The Battle of Britain, and at Malta, aka for North Africa.
In the Pacific there was The Battle of Midway, and in Russia, we had Stalingrad, Moscow, and Leningrad.
Once these battles had been won Germany, although still very powerful was all but spent and in retreat. Italy after North Africa was finished. Japan was still a threat in the East but never really could compete technically. The Zero, although a great dog fighter was to lightly armored and to slow a fighter as compared to those of the Allies. They needed an up grade which never really developed. The Zero could not even defend against the B-29 bombing campaign since it few to high, and to fast. The Japanese also had inferior infantry weapons such as tanks which were greatly inferior to the American Sherman. Although, the Japanese fighting man was inferior to nobody!!!
Concerning roll rate………….the P-39 Airacobra beats 'em all. You have someone on your tail you don't want there. You do a quick roll with a pitchout at random followed by the same thing again with another pitchout at random. NO other aircraft (WWII) can follow this maneuver. (A Harrier can sit there and watch you do this and THEN clobber you.)
Squadron Leader T.S. Wade of the Air Fighter Development Unit had some interesting figures at the end of the war regarding comparitive performances. Although they are RAF figures, since they were flying all the types tested operationally, I can't see why they'd be making any of it up. As with the US military, it's really not their style, even though many of our Brit and American cousins – generally the ones not armed with any facts, nor even much half-right empirical data, and usually in about equal numbers (which makes for some great circular arguments) – are want to brag up their own side depending on who invented what.
Most of the Mustang-Spitfire comparisons that come out in favour of the British machine in the fighter development tests do, however, seem to listed be Spitfire 14s. My understanding is the really major engineering changes came from the 14 on, not the 9 … but I'll give a nod to someone who might know better on that score and defer to Mr McCrath.
These comparisons are now available on the internet (do your own homework, though, guys, it's not that hard) and contain graphs and drawings as well that give a pretty good breakdown between the performances of a number of allied fighter aircraft.
While they don't completely support Mr McCrath's view on the speed difference between the Mustang and the Spirfire, they don't completely shoot it down, either. They do a range comparison too, and of course the Mustang comes out way ahead of everything, with performances in every other aspect so close it does lend weight to the view that it was the best AND most useful allied fighter of WWII, if not the best dogfighter.
The RAF studies were not done as mock combats but as comparisons, similar to the documented comparisons done by the USAAF with other allied and captured enemy aircraft. The speed difference between the two – Mustang and Spitfire – looks marginal and varies, mostly in favour of the P-51, especially at heights you'd expect most combats to have taken place. And would it have made that much difference at 30,000ft?
As for the P 47, it might have runaway bragging rights regarding rate of roll. Unlike Mr McCrath I can't tell you personally because I haven't been lucky enough to try it – but according to the comparisons, the P-47 also does pretty well – exceptionally well in fact – in a dive. Straight down like a stone, you'd expect, and at uncatchable, breakneck speed.
Well said STM… The first real departure ferom the original Spitfire design came with the Spitfire IV (type 337) in late 1940. The Brits wanted to take advantaqge of the available single-stage R-R Griffon II engine with all its additional power, but the trouble was the engine was simply too big and too heavy to incorporate within the design limits of the original Spitfire airframe, So, enter the reconfigured and quite different Mk IV.
It was at this point in the Sptfire series that things begin to get a bit strange, because before the prototype Griffon-powered IV could get into the air, the Spitfire P.R. IV, a development of the "original" Spitfire design, had already entered production. Thus, the Griffon model was redesignated Spitfire XX. This shift has resulted in mass confusion in type designations aqnd has resulted in numerous repeated errors in subsequent articles and books about the Spitfire series. Indeed, tryijg to follow the convoluted twists and turns of Spitfire development is a task best avoided by the squeamish or faint of heart! All told, it's been said there were over 100 variants of the machine, and a research project I was once involved with as Associate Curator of Seattle's Museum of Flight persasded me that such was merely the tip of the iceberg!
The Spitfire IX, the last model of the original Spitfire design to see extensive production and service, was pushed into the fight as an interim solution to the Fw 190 problem. Among other things, it introduced the so-called "E" wing that retained the 20 mm cannon in the outer gun bay, but replaced the two .303 Brownings of the inner bay with a single .50 cal M2. Onee might declare this machine to be the capstone of the Spitfire era and the last real, R.J. Mitchell Spitfire, to fly. Goup Captain Johnnie Johnson declared it the "bvest Spitfire of them all,"
The Mk XIV (type 372), which seemed to receive a lot of noteriety in this forum, was originally produced as a standad Mk VIII, but strengthened and redesigned to take the two-stage Griffon 65 with a five-bladed Rotol prop. Of note, Mk XIV from 401 Squadron was the first fighter to draw blood against the Me 262. This plane was margainally faster than the P-51D at 30,000 feet, but couldn't quite stay with the earlier -51B. or C models.
(I got bounced out of my previous entry before I could finish.)
About absolute speed at a qualitative indicator of a fighter's worth:
As the war proceeded, it became clear to aircraft manufacturers and designers of all nations that sheer maneuverability was not the be-all, end-all of fighter excellence. In fact, the vast majority of kills were made from ambush, with few aerial acrobatics involved. You simply snuck up behind some unwary opponent who had failed to heed his instructor's advice about checking his six frequently. You then line up, pull the trigger, and watch the poor fellow melt to slag. As the Brits would say "Bob's your uncle."
What did seem to count most was sheer speed. If you had that, you could engage or disengage at will and thus control the process of battle. However, even that can't be pushed too far. A speed differential between two planes of, say, 5, 10, or even 20 mph made little difference. Bf 109G pilots flying their 389 – 415 mph mounts against 437 mph Mustang Ds considered their speed to be quite adequate. Most air combat of the day was being done at speeds between 200 and 300 mph anyway, so the only time absolute top speed entered the equation was in pursuit of, or in flight from, the enemy. But even then you'd need a speed differential in excess of 30 mph to have a telling effect. If someone is in range and he firewalls it and manages a speed 30 mph in excess of yours, he'll be a smoking hole in the ground long before he clears your guns. Conversely, if he's two miles away from you and you have a 30 mph speed advantage, it'll take you four minutes at full throttle to reach him. Four minutes at full throttle with an Allison, a Merlin, A Griffon or a Diamler Benz, is pretty much sufficient to cook your engine. Besides, your opponent's probably leading you back deep into his own territory anyway, so even if you get him you end with a wrung-out engine and probably a dwindling fuel supply, and all that deep in enemy territory. Not a good situation. In sum, even the vaunted and all-important speed advantage seems to disappear occasionally. I've gone up against 200 mph RV4s in mock combat with a little 130 mph Mooney Mite and come out on top in the majority of encounters. A good friend of mine, Mike Edwards, blew a MiG-15 out of the sky during the Hungarian revolt using a Bf 109 (the previously-mentioned Jumo-powered Avia variant.), an F4U-5 Cosair knocked down a Mig in Korea, and Hawker Sea Furies got a couple in the same conflict. P-51s claimed any number of Mig probables, and had they been equipped with anything more potent than their sextette of ma-duces, there likely would have been a few Mig aces among P-51 jockies in korea.
Finally, as a response to "geemoney's earlier post: The P-51K did not have a 480 mph top speed. The K model was simply a P-51D with a canopy that bulged out a bit more in the back for better rearward visibility, a General Motors Aeroproducts prop in place of the Hamilton-Standard model, and slightly different pressure relief grills up front in the cheek positions. Its performance was otherwise idential to that of the P-51D. "Eemoney" might be thinking of the P-51H, which, by the way, reached the front in the Pacific literally a couple of days too late to see combat.
Again, who's the best, the Spitfire or the Mustang? The best answer has to be: it depends.
On pure speed and other factors:
I was lucky enough to have a nice, long, one-on-one lunch with Douglas Bader (what a character and an inspiration he really was) many, many years ago, during which he told me that while he thought the early-model Spitfires (I and II) the better aircraft (obviously), the Hurricane – nearing obsolescence as an interceptor even in 1940 – was perfect for the job required during the air battles over south-east England because at that point, the differences in speed were in reality marginal (mostly) against both the single- and twin-engined German fighters at the height they took place and with everyone milling about the sky often at speeds far less than the maximum they could do … and boost was there if absolutely needed.
If I remember correctly, he said the Hurricane could turn inside the 109 AND the Spitfire, and outclassed the 110 in every area … except speed and armament. He and Pete Brothers, who I never knew, have said that many pilots during the battle preferred the Hurricane because the grouping of the eight .303s was much tighter and set to converge at a range of 200-250 yards or so, which gave much greater hitting power, especially against the German bombers.
The fabric covering the aft section of the fuselage meant cannon shells and machinegun bullets would simply pass straight through much of the time if they hit in that area. Bader (and Brothers) said it skidded and slipped around at altitude and was hard to fly at height, with much effort required, but said they weren't that high most of the time so it wasn't that relevent.
It was close enough, in other words, especially in terms of speed – but what it lacked in that department, it made up for with other advantages and at that point in history, close enough was good enough.
The other great example I can think of off the top of my head is RAAF Group Captain the late Clive Caldwell, who is claimed to be the highest scoring P-40 ace (22 in that aircraft) of any of the allied air forces. Most of his victories were German aircraft in the northern African desert … including 109Es and Fs flown by aces.
As Mr McCrath explains above, it was a case of sneaking up and boom. He later went on to head up the Spitfire wing in Darwin, which had mixed results, although Caldwell's weren't and he extended his tally both there and in New Guinea.
The P-40 was hardly in the same class as the 109, especially the F, although he said it was pretty rugged, well armed and served his purpose. On one occasion, he was attacked flying alone in his P-40 by two 109Es, an ace and his wingman, and shot down one and damaged the other.
Caldwell probably had above-average ability, and was a good shot even for a good shot, but it's a classic example again of how certain conditions dictate the battle while others can be less important … depending. Other aspects such as height, pilot ability and good eyesight, armament, the ruggedness of an aircraft or ambush can be decisive over speed or manoeuvrability (witness the AVG in China as well). He was also a bit of a maverick, even into old age and before his death!!, and being more of a maverick than the next guy probably helps quite considerably in the circumstances these men found themselves in.
Despite that, he never really bragged about his experiences, and disliked his nickname of "killer", although once he warmed to the theme he could recount much of it quite technically.
Your (or Bader's) evaluation of the Hurricane was spot-on. It was a slower machine by a significant amount — the 2c model barely reaching 300 mph — but it was a perfect bomber-getter, and that's exactly how the Brits used it. They sent their Spits after the 109s while the Hurricanes polished off the bombers. A perfect one-two punch! However, it fell short in performance when compared to the 109E. If there were no Spitfires and the Hurricane had been obliged to go it alone, Lord Haw-Haw might have become Britain;s new Prime Minister!
I once in the early 80s had an opportunity to meet Dolphy Galland through a mutual friend, and I questioned him about his famous tribute to the Spitifre. (When asked by Goering what, as General of Fighters, he needed to defeat the RAF, he replied "Spitfires.") Galland told me that by no means did he mean to praise the Spitfire per se; he was only trying to goad Goering into pressuring Herr Messerschmitt to jack up the performance of the 109 at his earliest convenience, which he subsequently did with the 109F.
As to the P-40: an extraodinarily underated aircraft in its later iterations! The earlier Tomahawks were unquestionably sub-par, and their designer, Don Berlin, knew it. The P-40E, however, was another matter. While it was held back by its single-stage, single-speed blower Allison, the airframe did have possibilities (note the too-lilttle, too-late P-40Q…). However, once equipped with the Spit V's Merline 21 engine in the "F model, it became quite the little performer. Unfortunately, that variant was short-lived, due to the scacity of Merlins at the time. In that configuration, though, it had a top speed nearing 380; a rate of climb just over 3,000 fpm with half-a-tank of gas; a lively roll rate of about 200 degrees per second, could cut a turning radius equal to that of the Spit IX, and of course could dive like a rock. .All-in-all, contrary to your statement above, it was every bit the equivalent of the Bf 109F, and in some areas superior, and it proved so over and over again in the African campaign. I can tell you for sure that no Spitfire IX pilot in his right jmind would try to stay with any P-0 in a Split-S or Immelman! The original Spitfires were horrific in the aileron roll department, and in fact, the Martin B-26 marauder could actually outroll a Spitfrire IX!
That's something you never hear about, though, which brings up another matter. "Great" planes are made so by a number of factors, not the least of which is publicity. Thus, a superb machine that rarely sees combat will not be hailed as a "great" plane, and the Macchi 202-205 series Italian fighters stand as a perfect example of that. Technically and performance-wise, they were among the best in the war in nearly every category. But, they appeared in such small numbers, and made so little impact on the outcome of the conflict, that they are now relegated to no more than an interesting footnote in history. One hangs in the Smithsonian air museum in Wash D.C. A curator there once told me that their visitors' typical response to its presence is, "what's that?" You don't get that around the Thunderbolt, Spitfire,and Mustang exhibits!
And once the publicity train gets rolling, it's pretty hard to stop. The P-40's reputation was built on the premist that it was an inferior machine that was being made to do the impossible via good old Yankee Inginuity plus a dollup of clever and talented leadership in the person of Claire Chennault. It made a great story at the beginning of the war, and was, all-in-all, a terrific morale-builder. Just imagine, implied the stories, what we'll soon be able to do with really great equipment if we're able to smack em around so badly with the inferior stuff! Sadly, that became the P-40's legacy, and its lot in life, so that its later accomplishments, such as those in the hands of such luminaries as Klller Caldwell, tended to get overlooked.
I also had the great privilege of meeting Bader during my RAF career, when he visited our mess at RAF Biggin Hill, a station very familiar to him from WWII.
Did you know that Bader was not the only legless Spitfire/Seafire pilot? The other was Fleet Air Arm pilot Colin Hodgkinson. As he flew mostly over water, he was concerned that his aluminum legs would pull him down in the event of a ditching, so he filled them with table tennis balls. When testing a new mark of Seafire with the 60-series two-stage Merlin, climbing rapidly, he suddenly heard loud explosions and threw the plane into violent manoeuvers to escape the "cannon shells." Then he realized that the explosions were the balls were exploding in the rarified altitude.
Michael: Much has been written about this, even more said, but … Bader expressed in quite certain and eloquent terms (well, OK, some of the other type of expression crept in too especially when he was talking about his German opponents) that the speed advantage of the two German fighters was negligable in most combat situations experienced during the battle, and the Hurricane could easily out turn them both … his contention, and he was Johnny on the spot at the time so he must be given some credit, was that the Hurricane could go against a 109 and even with pilots of equal ability, the Hurricane would not generally be at a disadvantage. He said the only real worry from the 110 was its heavy forward-firing armament and that once they were cornered, their only hope of escaping was to set up a wagon-train kind of circle, or dive.
While that perespective on the 109 and the Hurricane might be a contentious argument among Spitfire and 109 pilots, those who never flew the aircraft or are now debating it 70 years later with the beneft of 20/20 hindsight, I've read and heard plenty of well-documented views from those who flew it in combat that also support Bader's view.
Evaluations by the RAF using a captured 109E (flown by George Stainforth) in mock combats against both Hurricane and Spitfire appear to support the view as well. I get the feeling from reading it that the RAF were quite surprised by their findings and by Stainforth's opinion (remember, it was for pilots' consumption, not public's, and aimed at winning a war and staying alive, so we can discount jingoism as a factor). Without guys like Bader still around to tell us all this, and how it actually worked when push came to shove, Stainforth's account is probably one of the few remaining and makes for fascinating reading: Generally, he found the 109 struggled to shake the Hurricane after the initial turn, even in a climb aimed at setting up another attack, and wasn't particularly manoeuvrable. He also found it very heavy on the ailerons at high speed. When the 109 went up against the Spitfire II in the mock combats, the result was very similar … except the Spitfire took a little longer than the Hurricane to get on the 109's tail in the turning contest. I believe Bob Tuck flew the RAF fighters. I imagine the 109 could escape and evade both in a dive, but then it was leaving the fight. Those evaluations can now be found quite readily on the internet, along with the other posted above from the end of the war. They are two quite interesting bookends.
As for the P-40 not being up to the standard of the 109F overall (that word again), it's also from Caldwell's own mouth. Again, it had that problem: wasn't much good at altitude, but then in the desert (and in China and the south-west Pacific, in New Guinea etc) most combats took place lower down, which completely negated the advantage of the German fighter (and the Japanese) and gave the P-40 some of its own. However, he said he really liked the P-40 (he flew Tomahawks and Kittyhawks) and I think he learned to make the most of whatever advantages it did have. In fact, again in his words, he thought it had plenty going for it and very little going against it. He did say it had a very tight turn and could evade or stay on the 109 in that scenario. He had a good oinion of SOME Italian fighters, and said their pilots were very skilful.
We've moved way off topic here, haven't we … still, it's interesting stuff for those who like it.
To be sure, these posts have experienced a bit of what we call in educational circles "curriculum drift." But that's okay, because it all comes full circle anyway. And at the close of the circle it finally comes down to the pilot him/herself. I can tell you from first-hand experience, a seasoned pilot in a mediocre airplane can trump a novice in a superb machine any day of the week. And as to the contentions of those who were there: they're certainly not to be marginalized by any stretch, but I've sat in on numerous air ace conventions featuring pilots both Axis and Allied (many of whom have become life-long friends with one another, by the way), and opinions differ and often heated words get exchanged about the virtues of this or that airplane. An Allied pilot who flew in a squadron whose run-out time-builder was a Bf 109G6 can't see how the Germans could stand to fly it, and that narrow undercarriage, by the way, was "just plain scary;" a Focke Wulf test pilot who was used to the "automatic" Fw 190 flew a P-47 at Rechlin-Roggenthin and declared that the machine kept one so busy in the cockpit minding this or that instrument or switch, or rollng elevator trim in and out, or keeping the engine temp in the zone with cowl flaps, or watching the mixture, or keeping an eye out for carb ice, or monitoring the flashing red "turbo" light, that there simply was no time to concentrate on the fight. In sum, it's all what you get used to, I suppose.
Then the post-war authors get into the fray and add fiction to the contention. William Green, writing in Famous Fighters of the Second World War (First Series), states flatly that: "The Bf 109G could not be flown in a landing ciircuit with flaps and undercarriage down other than at full throttle…" (P 14). Although a great fact gatherer generally, absurd statements of such nature mark Green as a non-pilot clearly out of his element, (Logic should intervene here, even for the non-pilot. How does a plane with such flight characteristics get off the ground in the first place?) The trouble is, these fables get digested and retold by persons interested in aviation history, and at length they become "facts." This is the very means by which we hear that the latter P-80 models had a thinner wing; that the Spitfire had a habit of losing ailerons in a dive; that the early Martin B-26 really was a dangerous airplane (as opposed to being a really good one subjected to the machinations of the era's indifferently-trained pilots); that the A6M5-series Zeros could climb at over 4,000 fpm and Grumman FM-2s could never best them in such a contest (it couldn't and they could), and finally, that P-40s were a waste of perfectly good aluminium and deserved to get bulldozed ASAP onto the scrap heap of history.
Fortunately, as time has passed the scholarship has improved immeasurably. One of the first monthly magazines to do uncompromising, propoganda-free research and set many records straight was the late, lamented "Wings/ Airpower" series. Although its writing was atrocious and editors were seemingly banned from the building, its facts were spot-on, and much was added to the corpus of aviation history by its mere presence. Its pages often featured the minutiae of old friend and pioneer fact detailer Pete Bowers, who couldn't tell a story for beans, but made up for it by being a master encylopediast and a consumate pilot who "walked the walk."
"Aviation History" magazine has in part stepped in to fill the "Wings/ Airpower" vacuum, although AH is somewhat shorter on detail than on stories. Time will tell here…
Meanwhile, the many good titles that continue to emanate from reliable sources, both in the U.S. and abroad, hone detail and add accuracy to the mountains of data already available. At the end of WW II my dad insisted that it would take 100 years to tell all the personal stories the war held. I scoffed at the time, but now I bellieve he was probably short by about two-thirds.
Finally, a note about jingoism and propganda seeping into official reports: Don't be fooled by mere logic! One would assume such reports would be value-free, because how else would they be of assistance in getting to the truth? Trouble was, they weren't, not by a long shot! One of the great weaknesses of warfare is underestimating one's enemy, and both sides did that to the extreme during WW II. Of course, in the process trhey sabotaged their own cause. One becomes a product of one's own times and culture, after all, and few are the folk who can escape that reality.
Long after Koga's famous Alaskan Zero was discovered and its secrets unvailed, the War Dept. continued to publish obsolete information about the plane's actual capability. Why? Because it was what we chose to believe, facts be damned.
And in another war domain altogether, regard the Mk 42 situation. In numerous trainilng films the narrator insisted that this German 1,200 rpm, 7.9mm fireball's "bark was worse than its bite." In truth, it was the other way around, And how many Allied troops died for that bit if bravado?
In 1942 anthropologist Geoffery Gorer was asked to do a "national character" study on the Japanese, so that we would better know how to deal with them in warfare as well as later in peace. His study, finally released in late 1944, indicated that they were "sneaky, oily, untrustworthy, back-biting, suicidal, robotic," etc. In other words, the only data Gorer had to work with (being unable to journey to Japan just then to do proper participant observation) was Allied propaganda. Thus, essentially he fed the War Department back its own leaflets and called it a study. So much for jingoism-free official reports!
(By the way, if you're interested in seeing pictures of my current "fun" machine {as opposed to my 182}, go to the Mooney Mite web site. Just Google "Mooney Mite Web Site," and look under "Mite of the Month" for — if memory serves — the year 2000. Otherwise, search the site under N283DE.)
Nice one that, mate!! Love the paint job too. That is a beautiful-looking aircraft.
I was sceptical too, regarding the RAF reports, but they look like they're properly done. Like I say, I got the feeling from reading Stainforth's evaluation that they were all, well, a bit surprised. It was sent off to someone in the Air Ministry by Halahan in expanded form, where it did appear to have been jazzed up a tad. The other end of the spectrum is Pete Brothers, who said he was quite fearful of 109s … as you would be.
One of the more fascinating aspects of doing research as a curator for Seattle's Museum of Flight was in the myriad of ways various cultures deal with their conclusions about enemy equipment. The Americans seem to get very defensive about it all, insisting that, while differences exist between their stuff and that of the foes, those differences always add up to: advantage U.S.
The Germans, on the other hand, seem almost self-effacing in their conclusions, assuming that any dfferences in equipment were to their ultimate detriment. Edgar Shmued, who had been project manager on the original Bf.109 and later emigtrated to the U.S. and worked for North American Aviation to help design the P. 51, contacted some of his old German colleagues after the war. After a long chat, it was deteremined that the German engineers had actually wind tunnel tested captured P. 51s for even more hours than did North American during its original design phase of the aircraft! They wer determined to find out how the damn thing went so fast and assumed from the get-go that the Americans were right and they were wrong. That was the Germans.
Thje Japanese quietly learned from enemy equipment, took its designs, revamped them, and turned out superior products. (And they're still at it!) When Admiral Perry hove his Black Shiips into Tokyo Bay in 1
Sorry Michael, left the comment reply at the end of the thread on the next page. I've done this one twice too. Cheers. I had another bit of a look at the Mighty Mite site today … really good stuff. I assume they're also pretty rare these days. I like the story about the dad and the son (previous owner of yours) painting their aeroplanes up in camo. The story of the design is great too.
As for the Spitfire-Hurricane one-two punch, that is part myth, part reality. It's part reality because individuals engaged in the battle realised it might be the best way to do things and might do it wherever it was possible, and part myth because it wasn't official policy and there was very little time to organise anything like a split attack except to get squadrons up when a raid was coming in.
In reality, the controllers on the ground put up whatever was available at the time; whatever got there first, Spitfires or Hurricanes, played, to use a popular rugby coaching term, whatever was in front of them … bombers, fighters or combinations of both.
As a result, Hurricanes shot down an awful lot of 109s and 110s during the battle, and Spitfires shot down a lot of bombers. Ideally, it was recognised the one-two punch you describe would work best, but in practice it generally didn't work out that way.
And no doubt you also discovered that the British nearly always muddled through, somehow developing great designs and rescuing good strategy from near disaster, all in the face of official interference driven by old boys' networks and nasty, personal internal political agendas.
Sorry Michael, left the comment reply at the end of the thread on the next page. Cheers. I had another look at the Mighty Mite site today … really good stuff. I assume they're also pretty rare these days.
Nice thread. Nice, but full of data that is just flat-out wrong.
First, the P-51 smoked the Spitfire in a dive, both in acceleration and top end. The Mustang stayed controllable up to mach .80, faster than any other plane mentioned in the above discussion. Just remove any idea the Spit could even compete with it in a dive, it couldn't. The Mustang was probably the best airplane in a dive in the entire war.
The Mustang owned the Spitfire in a zoom climb. The thing that bedeviled it in sustained climb (the fact it was the typical fat piggish and heavy US design) gave it an inertia that the Spit couldn't hope to compete with.
Roll rate was a wash. If you were puttering around at low speeds, the Spit was better. At high speeds, the Mustang was better, and in fact was the best rolling platform at high speeds in the entire war. You can look it up.
Turn radius, once indicated airspeed dropped, favored the Spitfire. At higher speeds, the Mustang could pull 9 G's, the models were stressed for that. It is one reason they were so freaking heavy. The Spitfire could pull more G's at slower speeds, as we all know. One way the H shed weight was the decision to stress it for lower G's.
Range? Please don't even pretend. You can't hang but so much fuel on a bird, you know. You are risking sending the plane out farther than it can return if the range in externals exceeds the range on internal. The Pony wins this in a landslide.
Sustained climb favored the Spitfire. Not as much as you might think, however. It all depended on boost or inches of mercury the plane was capable of. A Mustang could be a B or C or D model, pulling 67, 70, 72, 75, 80, or even 81 inches of manifold pressure. Climb rates went up accordingly.
The Spitfire did not out-accelerate the Mustang. The Pony was the best accelerating allied bird in the ETO. At higher boosts, it wasn't even close. This includes the P-38, unless you use the fastest Lightnings versus the heaviest and lowest powered Mustangs (P-38L vs early P-51D).
4 x 20 mm beats 6 x 50, no question. Anything else is either a wash, or favors the Mustang.
Ground attack? Pony was, despite its detractors, a superb ground attack bird. It carried a big load a long way at a high cruise speed, got in, hit the target and got out. More E/A were destroyed on the ground in the ETO by Mustangs than any other type. You can look it up.
Speed? The top speeds for the Spit 14 were extrapolated for a boost the Griffon was never cleared for. The B and C models were tested at over 450 mph BY THE BRITS. The classic 437 listed for the D is at the bottom end….with a full load of fuel. Don Gentile tested a D model with drop tank racks at 445 mph, 67 inches HG. This would be the condition a Mustang would be in for many, many of its combats.
This brings up another point, by summer of 1944 Mustangs, many US and nearly all British Mustangs, were flying with higher boost settings. British Mustang 3's could exceede 400 mph on the deck at 25 pounds/67 inches hg. This gave the bird 2000 horsepower, and MUCH better climb and speed performance up to 22-24K. You do not see comparisons using anything other than 67 inches of mercury, the 72, 75, 80 and 81 inches Mustangs routinely pulled with 145 or 150 octane fuel are ignored, as far as performance….the "stock" 67 inches is always used, even when comparing Mustangs to late marks of other types. And, over half the Mustangs in the ETO at VE day were other than D models….the B, C and even Allison Mustangs served in numbers until the end of the war in Europe. The 67 inch D models performance, easily the worst of the Mustang family, is nevertheless used routinely for comparisons, and it is not really representative of what a huge number of P-51s were capable of at War's end.
80 percent of all aerial kills, from the beginning of aerial combat to the present day, are of the unobserved "bounce" type. Hard turning dogfights are the exception, not the norm. The Mustang was perhaps the best plane ever built, comparatively, for that. Combine great visibility, range, great high altitude performance and superb diving with a superb zoom back up to altitude, AND good to great performance at all altitudes, deck to 35,000 feet, and you had a tremendous boom and zoom platform. And, the numbers bear this out. If you outdive and outrun the other guy, nothing says you have to turn with him.
So, I guess if you artificially constrain a combat to a one on one head on approach at moderate speed, basically forcing a slower and slower turning fight, the Spit had an advantage. However…NO airforce built planes to do that by wars end….the powers that be knew what the winning combination was….performance and speed. The Mustang was just absolutely superb at that…taking the fight to the enemy. Just as the Spit had the advantage at low speeds, the Pony was fantastic at high speeds.
BTW, the Mustang was cleared for aircraft carrier landings. It just was never needed.
US pilots flew Spitfires rather extensively in the Med. In Group after Group, as soon as the switch was made to the Mustang, the kills exploded. Losses went up too. All to be expected once range lets you go look for the other guy, WAY out there, rather than fly orbits around the airfield for 45 minutes.
For every German you can find that feared the Spitfire, I'll find you one that feared the Pony. Hartmann talks about the great respect he had for the p-51, as they were faster and newer than his G model 109. I'll tell you this, a lot more Pilots didn't come home after not seeing a P-51 than any other type in the ETO, regardless of which they feared more.
I could go on and on….there was a Joint Fighter Conference, staffed by pilots from the Army, navy, civilian….they picked the Mustang as the best plane overall below 25,000 feet. The P-47 was chosen over 25,000 feet. For every pilot youcan find that like plane "X" best, I'll name you one that like plane "Y" better.
Mustangs were outnumbered routinely in the decisive air battles of Jan-Apr 1944. As has been noted, one Group would guard an entire bomber stream, 16 planes in front and 16 on each side. The Germans easily focused more planes in an attack than there were Mustangs to defend. Period. Looking at stats that say 400 allied planes escorted the bombers….sure, and all but a Group had turned back by the time the Germans attacked.
My Dad flew both types extensively. He loved his P-47N, and went to war in it. When pressed, however, he readily admitted the Mustang did everything better except top end at about 27000 feet, with a couple of exceptions. The Jug had more firepower, and was tougher. It got pilots back home when other types would have given up the ghost long ago. No wonder its pilots loved it.
Rant over. Like whatever plane you wish, but lets keep the facts straight.
I'm all for keeping the facts straight. The Spitfire wing was one of the outstanding ones in aviation history, being both light, strong and able to house massive firepower, while maintaining both relatively low landing speed and mild stall characteritics, a combination that the P-51 could never match, and neither could the brilliant Kurt Tank (Fw-190) or Willy Messerschmitt (Bf/Me-109.)
Your statement on diving speeds is nonsense. Twice, Supermarine test pilots dived Spitfires to Mach .9 – over 600mph – without problems (the propeller and reduction gear on one departed the aircraft, which was landed safely, but that had nothing to do with the wings.) In fact, the Spitfire wing was superior in transsonic speeds than those of early jets.
Just diving fast itself is not enough. The ability to manoeuver during, and pull out of, high-speed dives is also paramount. The 109's controls froze in fast dives, and the notoriously weak wing was apt to come off if a pilot was too forceful in recovering from a dive by means of elevator trim.
As for climb rate, once the 60-series double-supercharged, intercooled and aftercooled engines were installed (Mk. IX et seq) the Spit could outclimb virtually any contemporary. There are several accounts of pilots climbing past 190s and telling about the astonished look on their pilots' faces as the Spits blasted past.
The later marks of Spit could out-dive, out-climb and out-turn the '51. In the end, the most telling factors are these: 1) Most Luftwaffe pilots feared the Spit more than the '51; 2) Most USAAF fighter pilots (those not biased by patriotic loyalty) preferred the Spit to the '51.
If you would like to read about the Merlin engine, try to get a back-issue of the Sept. 2009 Aviation History and read my article "The Magnificent Merlin" in it. I give due credit to both Spit and P-51.
Which spitfire and which Mustang? At what altitude and performing what task? The most numerous and histically significant P-51 was the D model, which would have been contemporaneous with the Griffin powered Spitfire IXV. The Spit IXV outclimed, out-turned and, to a lesser extent, outran the P-51D. So it should have – it had several hundred more ponies on tap. The Spit two cannon and two .50 cal machine-guns against the 51s six fifties – the USAAF calculated the one 20 mm cannon was worth three .50 cal mgs so the Spit gets the nod for firepower too. And while its pilots praised the P-51s handling it is doubtful it could match the Spitfires reputation as an intuitive, almost viceless aircraft.
But, and it is a huge but, the P51 was within a whisker of being as good as a Spit, and it was incomporable as an escort fighter. Here was a plane that could fly hallf way across Europe and compete with the best when it got there. Brilliant.
I read an article by one of the RAFs top test pilots (sorry can't remember his name) who got to fly just about every allied and axis aircraft after the war. His pick as best dogfighter? Spit IVX, followed by FW190D and then the P51D, with the proviso that you could throw a postage stamp over the three of them. His American couterpart, one of Grummans top pilots described the Hellcat and Corsair as plodding workhorses to the Seafires dashing Arabian stallion (he flew the P51 at the same meeting). And one of the Luftwaffe guys in charge of evaluating captured aicraft said the Spitfire V was "..a dream…my real baby…I had never flown an aircraft like this"
So, best dogfighter? Spit by a long nose. Best escort fighter? P51 by about a thousand miles.
Geoff, sorry, the test pilot I believe was Captain Eric Brown, not Alex Henshaw. I always get them mixed up as they were involved in similar work. His well-known quote is he'd preferred to have been fighting the Luftwaffe in a Spitfire, just not over Berlin as he'd never have got home. He thought the two aircraft, all things considered, about equal – but, as many of us have all said on here, quite different relative to their advantages and disadvantages.
Perhaps that's why this argument is ultimately moot.
Geoff: The test pilot was Alex Henshaw, who liked all three you mentioned, but preferred the Spitfire. He flew just about every fighter aircraft used in WWII, minus some of the Japanese ones. During the Battle of Britain, he crash-landed a Spitfire in a row of backyards in London and somehow survived with a few bumps and scratches. He also tested captured German jets.
And come on Snorts, don't just present a whole bunch of empirical data and dodgy hearsay evidence and present it as fact. Sweeping statements are great but they mean diddly-squat unless they're sourced and attributed and based on evidence that actually exists. You've only atttributed a small amount of this to any sources, and they don't tally with info I have that does carry attributions.
Perhaps you are confusing Spit marks, perhaps not, but 90 per cent of what you've written regarding performance is not backed up by comparative data: the Air Fighting Development Unit comparative tests conducted at the end of the war.
The Mustang wasn't the best diving platform either … the Thunderbolt was. The roll rate and firepower of the P47 was one of the best of any fighter of WWII too. It just couldn't climb. This is not only fascinating stuff, but illuminating. I discount any nationalistic bias too because a) In my experience, the RAF is a highly professional orgainsation and b) the RAF loved the Mustang III and the comparisons made their own British Hawker Tempest look pretty ordinary in many ways.
But the way you've presented your case, with respect, you just sound like one of those Americans who can't stand to come second at anything – and of the if we didn't invent it, then it can't be any good school.
The Spit 19 and 21, according to the AFDU and Air Ministry data, pulled away from the Mustang III in initial acceleration, and it was only marginally faster than the 9. The 21 looked to open a considerable gap. By the late marks, the rate of roll was about the same … and not just at lower speeds.
The Mustang pulled away markedly from the 9 in a dive, but could be caught in the climb if that was how it panned out. It also pulled away from the 14 and 21 but not as much and the advantage was negated after the dive, especially against the 21.
The truth is, the later marks of Spitfire were superior to the Mustang III, according to the data, in almost EVERY respect.
However, they were close enough (as Geoff, says, you could throw a postage stamp over them) to make the Mustang still the best fighter of WWII, overall, especially given its usefulness. However, that fact still doesn't alter the truths of this argument.
In the period between late 1943 and the liberation of the low countries in 1944 (when the Spitfire for the first time had the range to get over Germany), the Mustang's value as a force multiplier is undoubted. It's doubtful the USAAF without it would have been able to continue the daylight raids that helped smash German capacity to wage war in that period.
I give it the nod purely for that … usefulness. Force projection and multiplication are key in strategic terms and given how good it was overall, that was where it was superlative and had no peer.
As for your contention regarding Mustangs being outnumbered over Europe, it's a nonsense. But when they might have been, the US pilots had the edge anyway. Most were veterans by then, and were ranged largely against inexperienced pilots. Very few German experten were still warm and vertical in 1944.
But in any argument as to which was the better dogfighter and which was the most feard of the two opponents, their actual opponents – the abovementioned German aces – are unequivocal (read JG54): The Spitfire wins hands down.
They'd really be the guys who'd know, too, having faced them both, rather than a bunch of folk like us pontificating about it 65 years down the track or arguing that we knew guys who flew Spitfires, or Mustangs, or dreamt about them.
I disagree with your view too about bounce attacks. Certainly it was true in the Pacific, where no American fighter could keep turning with some of the better-known and more manoeuvrable Japanese fighters, so they (cleverly) used their advantages in other areas such as dive, speed and firepower in slashing attacks.
That was less the case in Europe. While eveyone got bounced, veterans of the air battles over south-east England and the channel in 1940 will tell you the other side of the story. Even slashing attacks turned into hectic, turning melees. So it was bounce, frantic turning fight, then clear air.
US pilots who swapped Spits for P51s in the Med would have been handing in Mark Vs, which had been consigned mainly to that theatre and were really obsolete in 1941 and well past their use-by date in 1942 and 1943 – in 1941, they were just holding their own against the 109F and were outclassed by the 190.
And whatever you say, no Mustang could turn with a Spitfire. It couldn't even turn with a Mark I, even if it could leave it for dead in a chase.
But don't take my word for it. Very little comparitive data seems to exist, but what little remains is now easily found on the internet. The ADFU stuff is a godsend, because it appears to shoot down any of these let's believe our own nationalistic bullsh.t arguments (on both sides of the big pond, that is) about performance, and once and for all. It was probably under lock and key for decades, but can now be viewed. The analysis is accompanied by charts and graphs and is quite telling.
The truth is, based on real information gleaned the hard way at the time and through genuine, against-each-other testing, with most aspects of the late-mark Spitfire and later Mustang performance so close one way or the other, given pilots of equal ability and the unlikely event they'd ever have met in combat, the Spitfire's turn and firepower gave it a siginificant edge.
That most of the allies' opponents, if their own documented accounts are to be believed and I can see no reason why that's not the case, also believe the same thing is telling too.
For the record, I'm not British, nor do I have a great love for them, although they're mostly decent folk in my experience and I think it's fair to respect them as a great people. On the other hand, I'm a lover of most things American … and especially of the American people, who've mostly show me great hospitality on my visits to the US.
So, I don't have a dog in this fight, nor an axe to grind.
In fact I couldn't care less one way or the other. If the Americans had invented the Spitfire and the British the Mustang, I'd still be of the same view, although I'm certain many of the commentators here would be expressing opinions diametrically opposite to those they've expressed on this thread if that were the case.
I AM, however, a great lover of truth, as opposed to a believer in myth, as entertaining as it is to believe, as comfortable as it is to believe, or as much we'd often love it to be so.
So, please, at least go away and have a look at the figures and documented accounts, or any other genuine set of comparative figures you can find, sourced and attributed, then come back armed with the REAL facts if you want to have a second pass.
Allied and Axis fighters had roughly equal performance. The difference came down to pilot skill. What made the Mustang so dangerous was its range and numbers. By early 1944 the Germans had started pulling their fighter bases deeper into Germany to avoid the increased range of the P-47's due to drop tanks. New tactics freed the P-47's from close bomber support allowing them to follow German fighters away from the bomber formations and run them to ground. The Mustang's range robbed the Germans of any safe haven, keeping them under threat of attack from take-off to landing.
Both lengenary great planes with great looks, names,firepower and engine. the mustang eats zero's the spitfire humiliates messismits (mind the spelling) the best mustang was the p-51 d the best spitfire mark v. The only loser here is the nazis not these great planes!
I'll add my two cents. In my opinion the Spitfire was the most important allied fighter of the war for one simple reason. The Battle of Britain! Although Hurricanes actually shot down more German aircraft during that summer in 1940, the Spitfire allowed The RAF to maintain air superiority thus defeating the German operation -Sea Lion, the invasion of the UK, before it began. At that time the British were completely unprepared to stop or defend against invasion. If the Germans would have gained air superiority over Britain they would have invaded and Britain would have fallen.
If Britain had fallen the British forces would have been taken out of the war. Thus, North Africa and its resources would have fallen to the Germans and Italians, China and Asia, including India to the Japanese, and there would not have been an allied air campaign against Germany in 1943-45.
Without the bombing of German industry by both the RAF and Eighth Air Force in 1943-45, as well as all the other operations conducted though Britain in that period the Germans would have been overwhelming on land and in the air and could have won the war.
They were the first nation with cruise missiles, the V-2, the first with ballistic missiles, the V-1, they had the best tanks, the King Tiger II, and the Panther. They also were ahead in nuclear weapons technology, and were the first nation to develop jet aircraft. Without the use of Britain as a massive aircraft carrier, or forward operating base from which to bomb and harass German industry, and lets not forget all the British airmen, sailors, and soldiers, and their contributions, Germany could have certainly won the war.
The Spitfire was the right aircraft, at the right place, at the right time to change history for the better!
Thus: The Spitfire was the most important aircraft of WW2,…. NO QUESTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think the Royal Navy operating close to eastern coast would have made Sea Lion very difficult even with a different result in the Battle of Britain. There would still be some RAF planes being built and even if few in number would have helped defend the RN. The RN was an excellent fighting force and I think could have survived in spite of what happened to force Z if it was operating very close to shore with the support of small numbers of the RAF. The RN was simply too good for Sea Lion to be easy. Germany simply didn't have the sea lift ability nor the ability to protect a large landing on the Isles.
Well spoken. The Battle of Britain was THE crucial campaign of WWII. With Britain occupied there would have been no D-Day because there would have been nowhere to launch it from. The forced capitulation of all British air, land and sea forces across the globe would have meant that the AFrika Corps would have continued its advance eastward, taking the Suez canal and occupying the Middle East oil fields (removing the Axis' great Achilles Heel) and linking up with the southern part of the German advance into Russia.
Although the Pacific war was 95% American, stopping the Jap advance toward India (and linking with the Germans) was a British affair, with their army, plus the gallant Indian army with mainly British commanders, stopping the Japs, who had raced through Malaya and Burma, at the gateway to India. The pivotal battle, on the Imphal-Kohima road, was the Japs' farthest advance, from which they began a retreat that never reversed.
With Britain out of the war, all its armament and aircraft factories would have been producing for Germany, the same as the French and other European ones (like Skoda, e.g.) did, there would have been no D-Day or convoys to Russia, the entire German army – other than a token garrison force in Britain – would have been freed up to attack Russia, and Operation Barbarossa would probably have succeeded. America would have signed an armistice with germany and concentrated on the only country to have attacked it or that posed any threat of a future attack, Japan. If the Russians had prevailed, which is highly unlikely, they, instead, would have occupied all of Europe up to the Atlantic and Channel coasts.
And the "Channel Dash," where a fleet of two battle cruisers (Scharnhorst and Gneisnau ), plus several destroyers, were able to transit the entire length of the channel – at one point being just 14 miles from England – disproved the revisionist theory that the Royal Navy, most of its heavy units scattered around the globe or in its anchorage in far-away Rosyth and northern Scotland, could have prevented an invasion.
I'm not so sure that the British Navy would have capitulated even if Britain had been occupied. My guess is that in a best case scenario they would have made a hasty run to Canada or the US…Maybe even Austraila…worst case, they would have been scuttled to prevent Germany from being able to use them…That's the mistake the French navy made, not scuttling their fleet, which resulted in the British having to sink much of the fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, a port near Oran in Algeria, to prevent their possible use by the Germans. As difficult as that must have been…it had to be done.
I also think that the British factories would not have been all that effective producing for the Germans…something tells me the Brits would not have been all that co-operative in that regard…I'd suspect that most of those factories would have been blown up to prevent Germany from using them.
Even so, had Britain been occupied…defeating Germany would have been very costly and much more difficult…and we all can thank two things for that…The English Channel and the RAF…
I'd suppect that the US would have allied more heavily with Russia had Britain been occupied and been able to transport men and material thru the vastness of the Russian interior and take on Germany from the East.
Can't really argue that point…had the RAF not withstood the onslaught, things would have been much more difficult. Just one point of correction…the V-1 was the cruise missile…the V2 was the ballistic missile.
I am going to throw my "two-cents" behind Ess-Tee-Emm
My favorite aircraft is the Spitfire they look great they are wonderful to fly, etc.
But lets compare apples to apples. Mk1 to IX were easy to fly beautiful aircraft MKIV and onwards lost that beautiful to fly label The large engine and heavier airframe changed the fly characteristics drastically.
The Germans had great respect for the Spitfire and the pilots who flew it no doubt. The Germans preferred to Split-S and dive away they new the Spitfire would out turn them and they could out dive the Spitfires.
The American Pilots who flew the 109 after the war said it was an excellent aircraft its weak point was "heavy elevators at high speed" So it was not a good fighter in a turning battle. IT was meant for speed, dive and zoom. The German Aces called the FW-190 the "Down stairs maid" It's performance fell off rapidly above 20K feet
The D-9 was not well liked by the pilots who flew it. It was an stop gap design and it had issues. IT was superior to the standard 190 at high altitude but the experienced German still preferred the 109.
From 30K to the deck the mustang had them all beat with range to boot. Dave Schilling ex commander of the 56th Fighter group flew both and rates the P-51 head and shoulders above the P-47.
The 4th Fighter group personnel who started with the Spitfire have nothing bad to say about it, however they prefer the P-51.
Mission has allot to do with success, I had a P-47 Pilot who flew with the 9th Air Force in WWII and later flew ground support in Korea with the P-51 tell me hands down the Mustang was the better of the two however for close air support "Give me a P-47" I had an 8th Air Force Pilot that flew escort missions in both tell me he missed the ruggedness of the Thunderbolt but the superior performance of the P-51 allowed them to engage or avoid combat at will. I asked him the big question which is the better He said whats my mission?
What were the factors that would make the P-51 performance superior to the Spitfire the MK IX and the P-51 had the same engine.
It comes down to 10 years of Aerodynamic progress. The Laminar flow wing, the P-51 was a very low drag Aircraft and that Airframe mated with the best liquid cooled engine of the war and you have the best piston engine fighter of WWII.
The canon Vs. machine gun battle has been going on since WWII. Machine guns have more ammo fire faster with a higher muzzle velocity which gives better range. Canon has less rounds and a slower rate of fire but one round of a 20mm will down or seriously damage your foe.
I know in the Pacific .50 Cal fire would sink a destroyer and the P-47 destroyed many targets in the ETO with 8 .50 cals. The Spit IX had two 20mm and two .50 Cals.
This comes down to allot of opinion the Mustang had a few vices and they tend to be overlooked due to it's success. But all things being equal success is the factor so I would rate the P-51 # 1 and the Spifire # 2 That being said the Spitfire the more famous of the two and we are debating this 75 years after it's first flight. I give credit where it's due that proves what a outstanding aircraft it was.
Muzzle velocity and firing rate are not as important as projectile weight and kinetic energy, where the cannon wins very time. Add the ability of cannon fire to destroy by exploding, rather than bashing away until something breaks. Late in the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe bombers carried armor to protect the engines and flight crew, and m/gs were useless. As one BoB pilot remarked, on being congratulated on downing a Ju-88 with his Spit 1 (8 .303 m/gs), albeit by using his entire ammunitioon: "I just kept sawing away at it until it more or less gave up."
Later Spits had four 20mm cannon. And your account of sinking a destroyer with .5 cal m/gs is pure fantasy. Number of rounds is also unimportant. It was found that, on average, two 20mm cannon hits would down any fighter, and five any medium bomber (which is all the Germans had.) In attacking heavy bombers, like the B-17 and -24, the Germans found that m/gs were close to useless, and used 20mm and 30mm cannon.
As for fire power, the fighter version of the DeHavilland Mosquito had four 20mm cannon and four .303 m/gs, and one, with a 47mm cannon, riddled a light cruiser in the Skaggerack until, turbines destroyed, it wallowed until sunk by torpedo Beauforts ("Torbeaus."). But for the ultimate, look to the Bristol Beaufighter, with four cannon and six m/gs. Not a plane you would turn into.
The brits loved their spits we all know that but the spit went for more difficult planes and left the bomers and less difficult planes to the hurricanes
We know the yanks loved their mustangs the loved them so much they sometimes personolised them, they aslo went for difficult planes like the zero.
they both helped win the war
but who wins well it depends
The Hurricane was inferior to the BF-109. Bombers were less maneuverable and slower then fighters. Whether the Brits used Spits or Hurricanes to shoot at bombers was irrelevant. Both could do the job just fine. The major concern was the fighters and air superiority. That is why the Spitfire was assigned to deal with the fighters. Spitfires were superior to BF-109. German pilots were by the way superior to all Allied pilots due to experience. The fact that the Spitfire could, while out numbered, and with much less experienced pilots maintain air superiority so Hurricanes could shoot at the bombers says allot about the Spitfire!
PS The Hurricane is also a British built and designed aircraft! GO READ A BOOK!!!
Great planes all. I have tryed to read everything i can find about them over the years. Hard to compare as they were built with different purposes in mind. Joe
It iis very difficult to compare these great fighters as they are so close in their capabilities. One point I would like to mention is that Richard Bong, our top Ace made all of his kills with the P-38 Lightning. A highly trained and superbly skilled pilot will bring any of these fighters to the fore.A hell of alot of luck must be along for the ride. Bill
Yeah…Chuck Yeager also said the same thing…it's more the pilot than the airplane. In his biography there is a story where he proved that point when testing a captured (actually gift) Mig 15 against the F86 Sabre. He went up in the Sabre and a fellow pilot went up in the Mig for a mock dogfight…Yeager waxed his tail. Then they switched planes…and Yeager still waxed his tail…
Spitfires shoot more bullets than P-47, lighter and faster, cool aperance, and more comfertible seats!
Shoots more bullets, ummm, no.
Maybe shoots more effective ammo, I might buy that but not more.
Lighter, yes.
Faster, I think that depends on altitude, climbing, diving, and what versions.
Is cool appearance a real factor?
More comfortable seats? Your kidding right, I imagine the difference in seat comfort is not a big factor.
we perfer the tempest and corsair,p81 twin mustang and the v
It is quite clear that a lot of the people posting here have very little knowledge of what they are talking about . . .
It seems the controversy of p-51 vs the spitfire will go on forever. Both planes were some of the most beautifully built planes to ever fly and are still pursued to be seen at air shows all over. I have to admit though I still have a great deal of respect for the f4u corsair. I think its got something to do with the unique wing design or watching too many Black Sheep episodes.
the corsair was a great plane!
I love the Spitfire… I love the Mustang (feral horse?). Roi Rich loved to ride horses, eh? Without our fire spitting aero-machine, we have become Germans. Windsors are. For the Mustang, it really was a flying long-range kind of horse. I would ride on it to hit those Allemands in their Castels or Festung (fortress). J'aime les deux (Spitfire and Mustang). Both wicked!
(Taking the mick out of this thread. HEHEHHE)
CHEERIO!
BOB's your uncle…
p51 spit fire fw190 me109 all very good, a slight disadvantage or advantage could be used to good results. me109 was usually the best climb or dive , fw 190 and even p40 best high speed roll, high speed roll you can evade, , maybe not turn great but evade, spitfire and mustang best all around. me109 lost out on good roll at high speed, but climb like crazy , allways upgrading the spit fire to catch me109 so to up grade these aircraft was on going . me 109 had a rather small engine in 1939 but was a very adaptable design. often commented was., spitfire had trouble against with the fw190 , but was there a very clear advantage, not much, the 190 was a good all around performer, zoom and boom became so important and what made me109 so deadly, not so manuverable at new high speed but catch me if you can,if tight turns were so important you would still fly hurricanes and zeros . some of these new models didnt have much better climb then some of the older slower aircraft , usually hurricane climb rate refers to mk 1 or 2 with small engine, mk5 with 1600 hp extra armour, over 3000 fpm, slow to me109, hurricane could not zoom climb well as could not maintain good momentum . so all interesting spitfire wieght up 2000 lbs by 1945 not the same aircraft
Ignoring the weird staccato language and lack of punctuation and upper-case letters (is it that hard to press the SHIFT key?) and strange things like "spit fire," much of this is nonsense. The Fw-190 had the fastest roll rate of any WWII monoplane fighter, but that didn't stop its being shot down in great numbers by the Spit. and the later Typhoons and Tempests. And when the Spit. IX, with the 60-series two-stage supercharged Merlin appeared, the 190's initial speed and climb advantage over the Spit. V was reversed.
The Bf/Me-109 did not have a "small engine." It started WWII with a 35-liter one (compared with the Spit's 27-liter.) And the Hurricane Mks. I and II used the same 27-liter Merlin. The Merlin output was steadily increased – without changing its size – from 950 at the beginning of WWII to 2,250 (with 2,650 available for short periods) at the end. Unlike the Spitfire, the Hurricane was never fitted with the 35-liter R-R Griffon. What "3000 fpm"?
The Mustang engineers benefited from all the research (and mistakes) and combat of other fighters/nations. It's high speed was more related to aerodynamics of the scoop and the British invention – "Meredith effect" with it's buried radiator than to the laminar wings, which rendered it susceptible to high speed stalls. The USAF pilots also benefited from lengthy trg programs, giving them the edge over the enemy pilots who were increasingly inexperienced thanks to the commonwealth pilots. In the end, comparing machines only from 1944, flying from forward airbases in Europe, the Spit X & XIV was more maneuverable and deadly.
The abbreviation "it's" means IT IS,so what you wrote, in effect, was "It is high speed … " and "with it is buried radiator." The possessive pronoun is, simply, its, with no apostrophe.
The 1940 Battle of Britain Spitfire was inferior to the 1944 P51 Mustang. Later models closed that gap, but the P51 was the best overall fighter in the war due to its combination of range, maneuverability, and fire power. The original Spitfire was a product of 1930's technology where as the P51 benefited from advancements in aircraft and engine design. Comparing the two based on the impact they had at the time they were used…then you get a dead heat…both proved vital to the task at hand…one being no less important than the other. The Spitfire along with the Hurricane won the Battle of Britain when Britain was all but on their knees…had Germany occupied Britain…Winning the war would have become extremely complex and more difficult above and beyond what it already was. The P51 on the other hand provided fighter cover for the bomber mission deep into Germany. Without that fighter cover…the bombing campaign would have been all but too costly to continue…and the war would have been prolonged for several years. As a result, Germany would probably have felt the impact of the Atomic Bomb as that would have been the only real effective way to bring them to their knees.
Your statement that the 51 "benefited from advancements in aircraft and engine design" is erroneous. The later Spitfires not only "closed that gap," in many respects they were superior to the P-51. The later Griffon-engined Spits were almost totally redesigned and were state of the art for the latter two years of the war, were every bit as fast in level flight as the 51 and they could dive faster (two test pilots dived Spits to Mach .9)
The 51 was not superior in "manoeuverability and firepower." The Spit could out-turn the 51 and its 20mm cannon had far greater destructive power than the 51's .5" m/guns [it is a total mystery why, when every other combabtant nation had switched to cannon, the US persisted with the .5 m/g through the Korean war, with planes like the F-86 Saber, putting our pilots at a disadvantage. Dumb.] Yes, the P-51 had the greater range and made daylight bombing and the progressive destruction of the Luftwaffe possible, but that was it.
Hey Nick…you make some good points, thanx for responding, but please read my original post carefully…I said the "1940 Battle of Britian" Spit was inferior to the "1944 P51" and that later models closed that gap. I also said that "overall" the P51 was the best fighter of the war…Certainly the Spit was a great fighter plane, personally one of my all time favorites, and later models in many ways, on certain performance criteria, did surpass what the P51 was able to do…even so, in my opinion and I do believe most historians agree, the P51 was able to accomplish what the Spit was unable to do, and that was to primarily protect the bombers on deep pentration missions into Germany, and the 1944 P51's ( basically the P51D ) overall performance was second to none. Of course the P51D would never have been the fighter plane that it was without that great British engine…
Fans of that era's history have their favorites and opinions…it's an ongoing discussion that really has no right or wrong answers…mostly just personal preferances based on an educated understanding of the capabilities of the aircraft involved.
I missed this part. Your statement that "the P-51 benefited from advancements in … engine design" makes no sense. Both the 51 and earlier Spits used the same engine, the R-R Merlin.
Of course they used the same engine…what i was implying was that by the time the P51D came on line, the engine designs had advanced well beyond what the 1940 Battle of Britain engine design offered and because of that, it benefited from those advancements. The whole point of the post was to put into perspective how much technology advanced in the few short years from the Battle of Britain until 1945. My overall comparison of the two aircraft were favorable…(Comparing the two based on the impact they had at the time they were used…then you get a dead heat…both proved vital to the task at hand…one being no less important than the other…) I could talk about this stuff all day long…but some of you guys take it way too seriously…it's a great subject…and everyone has opinions and preferences…most of them based on historical precidents and informed knowledge…but they are after all…simply opinions…so chill out guys and enjoy this forum and don't get so wrapped up in putting someone else's opinion down…
Having said all that…I'd like to address one of the most unsung aircraft of WWII…the P40. For some reason historians have relgated the P40 to the trash heap of one of the worst aircraft of WWII, and the Zero as one of the all time greats…why I have no idea. Let's look at the facts. It was faster than its principle opponent the Japanese Zero, it could dive faster, it's roll rate was quicker, it had excellant firepower, it was more durable, and ended the war with a superior kill to loss ratio over the Zero. Where it fell short was rate of climb, and in a slow speed dogfight where the Zero excelled, it could be out performed. Keep the speed above 250 mph, and the P40 could and often did defeat the Zero. It was actually more maneuverable than many later fighter planes that came along. Also keep in mind the Zero was the most maneuverable aircraft of the War in slow speed dogfight situations…no other fighter could stay with. Where its performance began to fall off is when the fight occurred above 250 MPH…the Zero had problems turning and maneuvering at high speeds, and its skin would buckle in a high speed dive above 350 mph that could cause its wings to fall off. The P40 could dive at close to 500mph. Once the Allies figured that out…the curtain came down on the Zero. The Zero gained its reputation early in the war when the allies were still using outdated dogfighting techniques that played into the strengths of the Zero. The one stupid thing that the allies did, especially the British when they went up against the Zero is that they would court martial a pilot caught diving away from a fight. That single thing cost a lot of pilots their lives. The FlyingTigers proved just how effective the P40 could be when fighting it using its strengths such as superior straight line and diving speed, and maintaining their airspeed during combat. The P40 in my opinion should be raised tothe level of one of the greates fighters of the war.
As an RAF vet, and son of an RAF WWII (Burma, Malaya) vetI can find no evidence at all that any RAF pilots were court-martialled for "diving away from a fight" in any war theater. That is nonsense. In fact, after a few painfully-learned lessons where Battle of Britain veterans, who would not listen to the experience of survivors of fights with Zeros, were shot down when they tried to dogfight with them, OFFICIAL RAF fighter directions were to dive, shoot and continue diving, then zoom back to the fight.
I stand corrected…my resource was obvious flawed…and I meant no disrespect to the brave pilots of the RAF…
I'm trying to remember the resource I used in reference to the RAF pilots being court martialed…It was an article I read about the P40…I'm sorry i do not remember the authors name…that spoke of some of the early encounters the RAF had against the Zero. His remarks indicated that those early encounters often resulted in some good pilots being shot down because it was incorrectly considered…let me say 'Bad Taste' for a combat pilot to do so. He did indicate the court martial thing was part of the problem. As you indicated…I seriously doubt that ever happened, and I'm not sure where he came up with that idea. I do believe that once the RAF pilots learned about the capabilities of the Zero, and other aircraft, they used to great advantage their own planes strengths. I do appoligize if I mis-spoke and suggested anything other than the greatest respect for the RAF.
Hey Nick…I found the article that referenced the court martial thing…
http://www.chuckhawks.com/p-40_vs_zero.htm. It is reference to the air war against the Japanese in the China/Burma theater where the Flying Tigers tactics of diving from altitude and thru a swarm of bombers / fighters then diving away seemed to be very effective. Still…I doubt that any court martials ever happened…
Here is the specific paragraph from the article
The P-40 Warhawk and the A6M Zero
By Patrick Masell
…This method of fighting did not go over well with the Chinese and British flyers in the area, either. Initially, British pilots seen diving away from combat would be court-martialed; Chinese pilots seen doing the same would be shot. However, as the Flying Tigers' success mounted other units adopted their tactics.
One of the top-scoring aces of WWII, Clive Caldwell of the Royal Australian Air Force, racked up his score on P40s (Kittyhaws) in the middle-east battles against the Germans and Italians. He added to his tally flying Spitfires against the Japanese in the South-West Pacific and northern Australia from – yet despite this, his campaign in the mid-east saw him remain the top-scoring P40 ace of any air force during WWII. In one lone engagement, he was attacked by German ace Werner Schroer and his wingman in 109Es. Caldwell shot down the wingman and heavily damaged Schroer's aircat. Caldwell liked his P40s, claiming the aircraft had few vices. In the desert (and south-west Pacific), where engagements more often than not tended to take place lower down, it proved to be a good aircaft. For someone of Caldwell's calibre to sing its praises meant that it really was good, and as has been pointed out here, hugely underrated.
I'll say one thing here. Ask the krauts (their aces not the inexperienced ones) who they preferred NOT to go up against as their only bias comes from the fact their lives depended on it. Their only problem with the mustang was that there were too many of them.
Interesting bit of nonsense all round from KRB. Give yourself an upper cut, man! He does realise the Spitfire and the P51 were powered by the same engine … eventually, and that this engine was a Rolls-Royce (British)??
Here's the real story of the P51 KRB:
It was designed to British specifications at the request of the Royal Air Force before US entry to the war, and steadfastly ignored by the USAAC/F, which had put its best eggs in other baskets – mainly the P47 – for a single-seater interceptor.
The British purchasing commission asked North American Aviation in 1941 to design them a single-seat interceptor that could be manufactured in the US, thus boosting British output, which was mainly centred on the Spitfire. The design for the Mustang was done in 114 days, and the prototype flew about six weeks later, from memory.
The RAF ordered some 650 of the early Mustangs (their original name for the P51). North American engineers had used the laminar flow wing design and also gave it huge fuel capacity for a single-set fighter, thus much greater range than the Spitfire.
It was faster at lower altitude than the corresponding Spitfires of that era (Mark II and later V) but less manoeuvrable at most heights, and performance tailed right off at altitude … over 15,000ft the Mustang's powerplant lost power and the aircraft couldn't fight on equal terms with the two deadly German machines encountered at the time: the 109F and the FW 190.
However, the British used their early Mustang Is in a ground attack role, sending them over to occupied France to hit and strafe German airfields at low level, where they had an advantage if any German fighters made it into the air.
Generally, if that were the case, they would leave them eating dust as they did their business and went back across the channel. The British also used them for high-speed low-level recon flights, often to recce locations for bomber attacks or commando raids on the coast of occupied Europe. No German machines could catch them at low level, even though they were still powered by the Allison.
The US, up to that point, showed no interest in the Mustang. But In 1943, a RAF officer decided to stick a Merlin engine (the Spitfire engine) into a Mustang and see what happened.
The rest is history. It was the immediate solution to an American dilemma: how do we escort our bombers all the way into Germany at a time when daylight raids were proving too costly to continue unaccompanied.
It was ONLY at that point that the USAAF picked up the Mustang (which they renamed the P51).
Yes, it was a US design, but not a US design asked for by the USAAF. It was designed to requested British specs, and later given a British engine that eventually was made in the US under licence by Packard (and somewhat improved in some areas, mainly parts quality).
It was only the marriage of the US airframe and the British engine that put it on a par with the Spitfire. Indeed, had the British not ordered the aircaft initially from North Ameerican Aviation, the Mustang might not have existed at all in the way we know it.
However, in my view (for what it's worth), it was still the best allied fighter of WWII, despite not being able to match the equivalent marlks of Spitfire in a digfight, simply because it was the most useful. They were very close, though, in performance stats so having lots of 'em and having them go so far on a single mission wins the Mustang the gold medal. But NOT as a dogfighter/interceptor. The two weren't that close in that respect … the Spitfire wiped the dial of the Mustang after the Mark IX.
These are the facts, they are well documented and well known by those who've done their homework, not simply a bit of patriotic nonsense we might have heard from a guy who knew a guy who knew Uncle Don's friend who was a WWII fighter ace and might have lived in Des Moines (that's if he existed at all) about four streets away from someone my mother also met at contrapuntal flower arranging classes..
Let's get real with this stuff if we're going to have a proper debate about history.
Arming yourself with at least some of the facts might be helpful at the outset.
Cheers …
"British specifications" were what? I was under the impression that the BPC wanted Curtiss to build them a new fighter but they couldn't deliver soon enough so they approached North American (NAA) with the request that they build for them the P-40 under Curtiss license. NAA told them they could design and build a whole new fighter in the time it would take them to tool up for the "dated" P-40.
Also, when directed by NAA pres, Dutch Kindelberger to design the new fighter, Edgar Schmued was told to "design a plane that is as fast as you can and build around a man that is 5 foot 10 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds. It should have two 20 mm cannons on each wing and should meet all the design requirements of the United States Air Force."
And I am sure you meant that the BPC and NAA agreed in the spring of 1940 get the p-51 design started, because it first flew on Oct 26th, 1940.
Also, fwiw, someone mentioned that an Allison p-51 never faced an FW-190. An Allison Mustang shot down an FW-190 (the 1st recorded kill by a Mustang in Europe) on August 19th, 1942 over Dieppe. Ironically it as an American pilot (Hollis Hills) in the RCAF who got the kill.
REX: Yeah, OK, I got the year of the order wrong. It entered RAF service in 1941, before the US entered the war. I'm working from memory. But the story is right. Yes, you are right about the initial P40 connection and Kindelburger's response, although it's not that relevant really. Fact is, they designed a new airacraft.
However, nothing changes the fact that it was designed for the British, to their specifications, not the US military, which didn't order it at that time.
NAA told the purchasing commission they could design the RAF a new fighter, but it was the PC that issued the specifications to NAA outlining exactly what they needed. The NAA design was superlative, really.
It is well documented that the US military was largely uninterested in the Mustang as a pure fighter virtually until the time the RAF whacked a Merlin into it to see what it would do. I do believe I'm right about how that came about.
NICK: Ronnie Harker, a New Zealander test flying for Rolls Royce, had been flying the Mustang as well. He was impressed with the aircraft but not the Allison engine and was convinced it would go better with a Merlin. In the face of a good deal of reluctance from the RAF, he got his way. Performance was dramatically improved (top speed immediately leapt by around 50mph) and it was only at that point that the USAAF ordered the Mustang into large-scale production to counter the 8th air force bomber losses.
I stick by my original points: 1) Had the BPC not ordered the new fighter from NAA, it's more than likely it would never have been built as the US military had no interest. 2) If the US somehow HAD ordered the Mustang and NAA had somehow built it for them without being asked, had it not been in British service and through that connection eventually given a Merlin, it might never have fulfilled its true potential.
I don't see how that notion can be argued with.
ESS TEE EMM, you've been doing yeoman's work here. I have been looking for some time now for just what the specifications were. Did the BPC dictate the length, wingspan, weight limit, cockpit layout etc. The closest specs I've found, which is what I quoted, came from Ray Wagner's biography of Edgar Schmued- "Mustang Designer, Edgar Schmued and the P-51". Edgar may have meant "RAF requirements", but it is there word for word. Kindelberger is quoted by Schmued as saying USAF req's. I believe the quote from Schmued was taken when he was getting on in years. I think he passed before it was published. But I would just like to get to the bottom of the whole "specs" and thought you might be able to help me more as to what they were. So thanks in advance.
I personally couldn't/wouldn't choose which is better. So many great planes were working in different parts of the globe to destroy the Axis powers back then. From a historical perspective there is nothing better than Reggie's Spit. It (and the Hurricane) were the ounce of prevention.
As I said "I am sure you meant 1940". Not trying to nitpick, but a year is a big difference. Even before the Battle for France, some Brits were on the ball and procuring as many available fighters as possible.
I would however like to determine how much credit should go to this German immigrant that first came to America in 1929 (before the 109 was even a spark in Willy Messerschmitt's mind) and who designed this plane that shortened the war in Europe enough so that we didn't have to "demonstrate" to Japan a new weapon the Allies had.
REX, from memory, the RAF only ordered about 650 Mustangs from NAA … hardly enought to keep the company in the black (they got more later of course).
I suspect Dutch was a great businessman who had an eye to the future and hoped that the US military would eventually work out how good the design was and put in its own orders.
The specifications at that time for single-seat fighters wouldn't have been that different, but the British wanted inline engines and a certain level of performance. Good aeronautical engineers in the US also had an understanding at that time that the British and Germans might have a better idea of what was needed because they'd been going hammer and tongs at each other for a while.
The fact remains, at the time the Mustang was designed and built, it was done so as a result of an order from the RAFand would not have been built at that time unless that were the case, and that the US military studiously ignored its qualities and placed no mass production order for it as a fighter until the moment it got a Merlin.
RAF pilots who got to fly it in their squadrons even with the Allison actually loved it and considered themselves lucky. They'd be even luckier later. One thing it always was was fast.
I suspect Dutch was a bit like Reginald Mitchell (fittingly) and really had a belief in his company's aircraft, which was as ground-breaking as the Spitfire (which is probably why we're arguing the toss here). Both men turned out to be more right on that score than anyone originally gave them credit for.
Lucky for all of us, I reckon. Imagine the German defeat of Britain in 1940, or if that somehow hadn't been the case, the war against Nazi Germany continuing on for another year or so at least because the 8th air force couldn't bomb German factories because of the unacceptable losses.
History is a wonderful thing, especially when you start to consider the what ifs and alternative scenarios.
But what happened, happened.
REX, also mate, for once Wikipedia has a decent history of how the Mustang design came about, detailing the British specifications. It quite clearly details too that the original design was done by NAA at the instigation of the British.
However, Dutch Kindelberger approached them first through the US-based British purchasing commission, and after they asked if he could give them licence-built P40s, he told them he could have a better fighter than the P40, using the same engine, in less time than the tooling up would take to make the Tomahawk (the Brit name for early P40s) under licence from Curtiss.
I'm surprised the book you read, if it bills itself as a definitive history of the Mustang, doesn't detail any of this stuff.
STM, that wiki page doesn't give much more as to the precise specifications. And it mentions that Kindelberger was shopping B-25 Mitchell's, not fighters to BPC. My hunch is he had them half sold on a new fighter and they followed up for more details perhaps out in California.
I think we all, even Germans, should be most grateful to the Brits for contracting with NAA for the new fighter and the Merlin swap. And yes, the US for the most part treated the Mustang as a Brit fighter, held deeper interest in its own a/c. Neglected the Mustang to its own detriment. (Failed to detect attacking waves of Japanese planes, etc etc.)
But this whole "British specifications" line is ambiguous as hell. You can understand how it can become a blanket statement concerning all aspects of the fighter's development?
Anyways, the author is Ray Wagner. He is an archivist at the San Diego Aerospace Museum, a history teacher and has also written two or three other a/c books.
Edgar Schmued lived in Oceanside CA, not far from S.D. In 1985 Schmued's widow handed the personal papers of the late Edgar to the museum. An Air Force grant was offered to make a book, some of Schmued's co-workers were also contributors. Smithsonian Books is publisher.
Not a super thick book but it does have a factual timeline. Most of the drawings which Edgar made as well as the wind tunnel tests of models based on those drawings were done around the end of the Battle for France or at least prior to the start of the Battle of Britain.
Also acknowledges some of the Brits who contributed to the design, including Beverly Shenstone. The Air Ministry sent him over to help improve the Radiator design in Feb 1941.
Nick writes: "But this whole "British specifications" line is ambiguous as hell."
What is ambiguous about it, mate? The USAAF never ordered it, the British did. And they told NAA what they wanted.
Since it was designed by NAA specially for them, and they were the ones doing the ordering and paying for it, you wouldn't need to be a rocket surgeon to work out that the specifications for the new aircraft would have been theirs, would ya?
Do you go into a store and order custom furniture, pay for it, only to be told that what you're paying for isn't for you at all but for the guy down the street.
Seriously, I can't for the life of me understand why we are even arguing the toss on this. It's all pretty well documented.
It's a ground-breaking hot American aircraft designed for the British, which became an American icon when it got a hot new engine from the British. A perfect marriage of skill and know-how at both ends. What's the problem with that scenario, especially since it's the accurate one.
*Typo*
And make that Rex, not Nick.
From the introduction, Schmued's own words: "Many stories about the P-51 Mustang have been told, most of them out-and-out fabrications, or not really reflecting the actual history. This has prompted me to tell the real story as it happened, and here it is." So, he died before he could ever complete it.
Look, the design didn't start with the BPC. A lot of other nations were looking for good fighter a/c at that time. Dutch and NAA weren't ignorant of that fact. It wasn't good business sense not to be. France had also been looking for fighters and Schmued had always been contemplating and drawing what he thought would be the best designs. He'd been hoping to get the chance and thank God the Brits gave it to him.
But again the British "specifications" can lead one to think that NAA were merely like a police sketch artist clued in solely by this body of "hammer and tong" information based on what was happening in the skies already in Europe- before the US entered the war. Nothing significant had happened yet. Kindelberger had been asked as early as February 25, 1940 to build P-40s. On April 11, the agreement as made that launched the Mustang. Preliminary drawings accepted by the BPC in May, around the time Battle for France starts. Before Battle of Britain is over, the finished airframe, minus engine, rolls out on September 9th.
I have recognized Britain's great Merlin and the RAF adaptation. The BPC also liked NAA's quality and it is to their credit they gave them the chance and took great risk on this young company which hadn't designed a high performance fighter yet. But this engineer who should be ranked with Reggie Mitchell is about heralded as Joe Smith it appears.
Rex, with respect, I am starting to wonder whether there is something seriously flawed with your thought process and why you can't accept this as fact when it is extremely well documented. It's not based on half truths or myths, either.
Is it that bizarre American thing of not wanting to come second at anything, or at least appearing to come second, or not wanting to acknowledge that sometimes people have better ideas than others? It's just weird to the rest of us, most of whom couldn't give a rat's one way or the other when it comes to this stuff.
The Mustang design DID start with the BPC in terms of a whole aircraft coming together, although I'd think you'd be right to suggest that the NAA might have been working on various aspects of it prior to that (getting the laminar flow wing to work as desired being the main one because beyond that, it was only as cutting edge as the fighters flying in Europe at the time … then its engine let it down).
I think it's fair to say that nothing being built in the US FOR the US military at that time matched the German or British fighters.
But the Mustang did break new ground. Only problem was, the USAAF didn't want it until 1943. After coming into the war, they bought even less of the early models than the British, in similar roles, and then only as an afterthought. They even tried a few out as dive-bombers.
I honestly find it bizarre that Americans need to argue the toss on this for what seems almost a matter of national pride, a desire for a national icon to be all-American from go to whoa … which it plainly wasn't.
What is all-American anyway??? Is there even such a thing, and if there is, should anyone really care?
In this case, no amount of attempted American-style myth-making or twisting of obvious truths will change that.
I'm not American (or British, or Canadian) so I really couldn't care less one way or the other but I CAN see very obviously the timeline of truth as to how the Mustang came about. I'm genuinely curious about this: Why is it that some Americans seem unable to accept that?
Truly bizarre … and circular arguments can be frustrating.
I wouldn't expect you to agree with me Rex, if we were arguing about politics, say. I'm up for healthy and robust differences of opinion any time on any subject, including this one … just not when its main function seems to be about changing the historical facts, or making suggestions about myths from somone who died before he told his story, to suit some weird patriotic agenda.
The thing about history: If it's not documented and confirmed by many sources, it's myth, not fact. All those may-or-may-not apocryphal stories really count for diddly squat.
You seem to need me in this debate for some reason to acknowledge the great contribution of NAA's two main designers on the Mustang.
I do, and have. I also believe their boss was a man of great vision, as you'd expect of a clever American businessman. The big problem they have in the retelling of history is that story isn't quite so romantic as Reginald Mitchell's … you know, an inspired ground-breaking design by a dying man that saved freedom by staved off the filthy Nazi horde and in the process giving them a damn good thrashing.
The NAA guys just don't have that on their side, I guess. But there's no doubt they designed a brilliant aircraft. There's also no doubt that it's an American design with much input by the British, especially in its later iteration.
Why don't we just agree to disagree, champ, and leave it at that?
STM, sir, I've given you a more accurate timeline, and one that calls into question your post at 63.1.3, than you have given me even a reference/lynk to the "British specifications" that often get bandied about. Yeah, it is getting stale, now we've both documented that fact.
Whether I'm American, British, Irish, French, German, Native American or all the above, how is it an American trait to assert recognition of a foreign designer like Mr Schmued whose name you can't even bring yourself to mention in any of the last few posts? Funny you can put Kindelberger's name on par with Mr. Mitchell's though.
That book was never finished. But his notes and American friends that knew him help to tell his story. I've pointed to one of the myths already that it discusses: that Edgar had been on the Messerschmitt Bf109 design team. It traces that to a Ronnie Harker ill-conceived statement and the Brit press more importantly for generating that one.
I'm done. My British specifications are leading me onward.
The timeline … I think in the first line of one of my early posts (a reply to you) I admitted I got the year wrong for the order, because I'm working from memory. Do you only read the bits you want to read, champ? Apart from that, the rest of it is well documented. Good luck hunting down the specs.
As to Schmued, he was only one of the design team. That's why I've referred to "the design team". To have Schmued, even if he was the brilliant mind latrgely behind it, as the only designer would be an insult to the others, wouldn't you think?
Kindelberger truly was the driving force. And yes, I do put him in the same category as Mitchell, although history gives Mitchell the more romance because of the circumstances. Let's quite at theis point, Rex.
Cheers
Well…first of all I do appreciate your feedback about my Spit / P51 comments…however…what I wrote was not non-sense as you put it…It was a complimentary generalization about two great fighter aircraft and the men who flew them…I am well aware of the history of the P51 and Spitfire…many factors went into the design of both. If you read the post carefully I did qualify it by saying the "1940" Battle of Britain Spitfire was a product of 1930's technology…which it was. It was a great aircraft for the time it was used and the impact it had on the battle in which it fought. The designers of the P51 took full advantage of what was learned from previous designs to create a tremendous airframe, as did other later designs. The original Allison engine used in the P51 did lack in high altitude performance, anyone who knows anything about fighter aircraft in WWII knows that…and yes the marraige of the Merlin with the airframe created what most would consider the greatest fighter of the war.
My point being…my post was a complimentary remark about the merits of both aircraft based on many years of reading history and other various video documentaries about the subject. It was never intended to be a definitive disertation about WWII fighter design. So take it for what it's worth…and maybe next time reconsider making comments that really do not contribute to the discussion…
Slight correction. It was not "an RAF officer" who decided to retrofit a P-51 with the Merlin, it was a joint decision between RAF Fighter Command, the British government any Rolls-Royce. Five 51s were fitted with Merlins at the R-R experimental airfield at Hucknall (the same place Luftwaffe pilot von Werra, shot down in the Battle of Britain, almost escaped captivity by flying a new Hurricane Mk. II back to Germany, only being stopped at the last moment as he was starting the engine. He did eventually esxcape from a train taking him to a POW camp in Canada, made it to the then neutral US and back to fly with the Luftwaffe again. Great book and movie: The One That Got Away.)
Nick, left a reply above. Cheers
And Ronnie Harker was an RAF officer on liaison at Rolls Royce. The initial test after Harker's campaign for the Merlin was done on one aircraft only after reluctant agreement from the Air Ministry, then, as you point out, full-scale testing began on a number of Mustangs at Hucknall.
Something never mentioned is the misplaced patriotism and commercial pressure that prevented the Merlin's being used in other US aircraft. The Brits obtained a couple of Lockheed P-38s and were about to do the same retrofit by replacing the Allisons with Merlins, promising a 50mph speed and 5,000ft altitude improvement. When word of this leaked back to the US, all hell broke loose, and the British government immediately ordered the borrowed 38s to be returned at once!
Late in WWII the RAF wanted to try the 2,400hp R-R Griffon in the Mustang, promising the same performance gain as in later Spitfire versions, but nothing came of it. THAT would have settled, once and for all, the endless "which was faster" dispute. It was estimated tha the Griffon Mustang would have easily topped 500mph.
The P-38 was a revolutionary design and, I believe, the first production fighter to exceed 400mph (the prototype of the Hawker Tempest did it some months earlier, but was in production later than the 38), and the turbocharged Allison performed well. But one dreams of what it could have done with one of the later Merlin 70 that produced 1700hp, or a couple of Griffons!
Another instance was the P-82 "Twin Mustang," the first of which were also Merlin-powered. Political/commercial pressure forced a reluctant USAF to replace these with Allisons in the P-82s that flew in the Korean war, while the training versions retained their Merlins, with the bizarre and unique result of a war plane where the combat aircraft were slower than the training ones.
My article, The Magnificent Merlin, in the September 2009 issue of Aviation History covers a lot of the subject.
Nick, I have a slightly different understanding of the P38 issue. I saw a great doco recently that quoted a former USAAF Lightning pilot who said there was some consternation among American pilots when they learned the British had knocked back the P38. His quote was: "They'd been doing this for a while now (flying fighters in combat) and they didn't want the P38 because they didn't think it was good enough. That bothered us". In truth, probably just wasn't the right aircraft for the job the RAF wanted it for. It had very mixed results with the USAAF in the ETO (although it served its purpose early in the piece), but of course excelled in the Pacific where it entered and broke off combat at will against the slower Japanese.
The truth is, the British DID want the Lightning … but the US government wouldn't let them have the superchargers that made the American version a good aircraft because they thought the Germans might get their hands on the tecnology. A moot point, because at that stage, Germany and Britain both had supercharger tecnology. So for the P38, no superchargher, no RAF service. I didn't know about the Merlins, though.
I would have liked to have seen a Griffon in a Mustang. But would the air frame have held up to all that extra stress?? Mustangs occasionally broke up under high stress.
And I must admit, while an admirer of the Spitfire, I admire the Mustang equally. The Mustang is a classic example of two peoples putting aside their minor political differences and styles to put their heads together for a common cause.
That cause, of course, no matter how hokey it sounds today, being a belief in rule of law underpinning democracy and personal freedoms and the courage of both nations to stand up against against barbarous, murderous and hateful ideologies in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japanese militarism. However flawed our democracy might be, what better cause could there be??
Those of you on both sides of the big pond should remember that when you're all arguing about which or who was better, especially today (my time down here in this beautiful paradise on the edge of the South Pacific, almost 7pm on 11/11/11). Cheers.
Seems to be a common phscological inferiority problem on the part of the US if they couldn't make the scientist/inventor a US citizen. Wernher von Braun, a german, who was responsible for the apollo space missions being an example. Same thing was happening with the development of the Sherman firefly tank, where they resisted the introduction of the british 17 pounder anti tank gun into the tank. This gun allowed the firefly to take on the tiger, panthers etc head on at range as opposed to the standard sherman which needed to fire from 5 feet from behind to have a chance.
Merlins in the P-40F's and L's didn't seem to make a ha'peth of difference (isn't that why they were sent to the desert and SW Pacific – and Russia). They needed the P-38's supercharger to make them worth anything as they were a tad on the heavy side. Retro fitting Merlins didn't always work (so why make so may P-40s with them? Packard were churning out so many of Merlins it may have seemed like a good idea at the time?)
Low altitude…………….Lavochkin LA7 was supreme and also possibly the Yak3.
In general utility, the mustang and the F4U4 were two best all around planes with the F4U being able to outturn the mustang with it's flaps at slow speeds by a considerable margine while the mustang turned better at high speeds and altitude.
The attrition of the war and differences in tactics makes it impossible to pick the "best plane" based on kills/deaths.
We have some good flight modeling at Aces High 2 so……if anybody wants to show up and try to use thier perceptions of performance to what they feel would be an advantage, I will gladly deliver pepperidge to your airframes.
Es Tee Em: The P-38 had a host of technical problems in Europe. What had worked well in balmy Burbank, CA (Lockheed works) didn't in the cold, damp of a northern European winter. Things never encountered in CA, or the Pacific, like tetraethyl lead anti-knock compound separating out of the fuel, led to many engine failures and losses. There were also many other technical problems.
But the main reason the P-38 didn't fit RAF needs (or to tell the truth, USAAF's) in Europe was that the P-51 filled the long range escort role and there were no long overwater flights where a second engine gives some added security. Also – as shown by the failure of the Luftwaffe's Me-110 over England – twin-engined fighters cannot duke it out with well handled single-engine ones.
Your account of the US refusing to let the British or Soviets have planes with turbochargers reminds me of the same saga with the P-39 Airacobra. This was also delivered to the RAF before the US's entry into the war minus the turbocharger, and with the normally-aspirrated Allison was described by RAF pilots as "good for making low, slow turns."
To: 65.1.1. Very true. Ask 1,000 Americans who first flew the Atlantic nonstop, and 999 will say "Lindbergh, of course," and some will offer to punch the nose of anyone who says otherwise. Problem: Lindy wasn't the first. Or the second, tenth, or even 50th. He was in fact the 96th. By the time of his 1927 flight, dozens had made the trip both ways. The first to do this were two ex-RAF officers, John Alcock and Alan Whitten Brown, in a converted WWI biplane, eight years before Lindbergh whose main achievement was to do it solo.
Ask "knowledgeable" Americans what was the first programmable electronic computer, and they will say ENIAC, built at the U. of Penn. Wrong. The year before, the British had built Colossus, used to decode the German Lorenz code (even tougher to break than Enigma), allowing the Brits to decode and read top secret signals to the Geman generals and admirals before they themselves got them. How come nobody in the US has heard of Colossus? Because after WWII the Brit. government, afraid of the Soviets discovering the secret, ordered them and their plans destroyed. Many of the components were used in telephone exchanges. It also ordered that nobody, on pain of imprisonment, could speak about the machine, a ban that was only lifted in the 1970s, decades after an enemy could have gleaned anything useful from the equipment. A guy just completed a 5-year effort, building a nut-and-bolt replica of a Colossus, even using the original vacuum tubes and paper tape media. The U. of Penn still includes "Builder of the World's First Electronic Computer" in its literature.
The first jet fighter to enter squadron service? No, not the Me-262, but the Gloster Meteor, in July 1944, a month before the 262.
Radar? British invention without which the Battle of Britain would have been lost. Ditto centrimetric radar, using such a short wavelength (high frequency) that the Germans couldn't detect it and never duplicated it, made possible by the magnetron, invented at Birmingham University (UK) and given to the US (you use it today in your microwave oven.)
The first purpose-built aircraft carrier? British, not the USS Langley, which was a merchantman with a deck on top. Three of the four key components of modern aircraft carriers, the angled flight deck, optical landing system and steam catapult? British inventions (the fourth, nuclear power, was American.)
The turbojet engine? Invented by RAF officer Frank Whittle. The first Whittle jets, plus drawings and British jet engineers, flew to the US in 1943 to help start America's jet engine scheme. The F-80 used a modified Whittle jet, as did the Mig-15 and the Gloster Meteor, with the bizarre result that in 1950 all the combatant nations in Korea flew jets with developments of Whittle's original.\
Who first split the atom, Fermi? No, Englishman Earnest Rutherford, in 1918! By 1941 British research had confirmed the practicality of an atom bomb, and later the research team took the entire research data, that had cost several billion $, was given to the Americans and probably helped bring the atom bomb to fruition six months earlier. A grateful America then placed the whole thing under total secrecy and refused to divulge to Britain any of its new data on the bomb.
Penicillin? British discovery, of course. In 1941 Howard Florey, who headed the team that had produced the first penicillin to treat patients, went to America with his team and a sample of the penicillium mold. Britain did not patent the discovery, but America rapidly did, with the result that for years Britain had to pay millions of $ in royalty fees to make its own discovery.
I'm neither American nor British (but still an English-speaker, kind of!). I don't have a dog in the fight here but yes, I've noticed that about some Americans too. You will find a lot of young Americans arguing on here about history but it will only about America in history because any other history isn't really taught at school.
There is also quite a skewed view of American history … for instance, the defeat of the US in the War of 1812. Everywhere else, it's regarded as a dismal failure by the US that resulted in the near bankruptcy of the new republic, a long and successful blockade, sedition in New England, and the burning of Washington, and a plea for peace by the US to Britain through an intermediary, but in the US it's taught as the "second war of independence". One of the main war aims of the US was to drive the British out of Canada and thus out of North America once and for all … probably the main war aim. The fact that Canada exists today as a sovereign nation and not a half dozen states of the US should be the clue to the truth of it. This is something that IS acknowledged by the leading US historian specialising in that era. However, his book dispelling the myths was not, for obvious reasons, a best-seller in America. I sometimes get the feeling Americans can't stand to come second at anything. Considering they come first a lot, the odd second can't be that bad. On these threads, you will witness young Americans arguing about the best planes of WWII and only mentioning American aircraft. I blame the History Channel for that … there are countless shows that focus solely on US involvement in say, WWII, which to a young viewer might give the impression that that was all there was and the US won the war singlehanded.
Quite a lot of Americans are also surprised to learn that Britain was the first of the modern English-speaking democratic nations, not the US, and that it became so 100 years before America did and that they have actually never been that different in their exercise of that democracy. It can come as quite a shock to learn that the same rule of law underpinning democratic freedoms in places like the US, Australia and Canada actually comes from English/British law, not US law.
Apart from that mostly tedious rant, which obviously doesn't apply to all Americans, I do really love our American cousins. I can overlook a bit of jingoism and patriotic fervour and historical/geographical ignorance and the tendency to blurt out the first thing that comes into their heads :) in favour of their many wonderful qualities – especially their warm generosity of spirit and their amazing hospitality. I've learned to shut my gob and to enjoy the legion of good bits. I can't think of another nation that my nation should be so close to. I can't think of a place either where I've been treated better as a visitor.
The ledger in all this certainly comes out in the black, fellas, in favour of Americans, not the red. Take the time to understand the reasons why this happens (the US school education system) and you will see things in a different light. When you are told one thing for a long time, there might not be any reason to go searching for the truth.
I apply that also to the history of my own country. Not everything is as it was presented to me at school.
I have an American friend who suggests that young Americans really seeking to understand their own history should go back to at least the Roman invasion of Britain and follow that line all the way through, and include as a parallel study the history of the other English-speaking nations. That certainly is how we did it as school. I learned a lot about Britain and its empire AND the US, including the War of Independence and the American Civil War in some detail. When tied to everything else going back to Roman Britain, highly recommended as a mind broadener.
Cheers
And, hate to say it Nick, but you Brit guys can be just as one-eyed with this stuff as can your American cousins on the other side of the big pond.
I'd like to think I can make objective comments on this. The main one being: As ever, the apple never falls far from the tree. Luckily, though.
And that American friend of mine tongue-in-cheek describes the US as the most loyal of the British colonies in the modern era. Of course, he's pretty close to being right. Winston Churchill might have agreed with that assessment too.
Which Brit? I'm an American citizen, albeit of British extraction; my grandfather was a London dentist. (That's a pun.)
And I agree; every country has its own chauvinists, and Britain was no exception. Few Britons appreciated util well into the 1950s the huge share of the war effort, in blood, treasure, food and armaments that the US gave after early 1943. "Why didn't they come in in 1939?" was a popular refrain. (Why should they? They'd already helped defeat Germany in 1917-18, and to the great majority of Americans it was "here they go again," just another of the endless wars that had soaked the soil of Europe for thousands of years.)
The Russians don't even call it World War Two; to them it's The Great Patriotic War, and the other Allies' contributions are largely ignored or minimized in their history books. (I suppose you can excuse this, since 17 of every 20 divisions in the war were Soviet, and they had over 90% of all militiary and civilian casualties.)
The French, likewise, don't say much at all about their surrender and collaboration with the Nazis. I went to school there in 11th Grade, and their history books are empty of descriptions of how the Gendarmes rounded up Jews with such bloodthirsty ferocity that it even made the Gemans blink, or how their army and air force killed scores of British, Canadian and American troops in N. Africa before surrendering. Their books of the war are full of Gen. LeClerk's small army and its exploits. One night, the uncle of my exchange student lit into me about the RN blasting the French fleet in Mers-el-Kebir Harbor, sinking a couple of battleships and killing hundreds of their sailors. In vain did I attempt to explain that, since the French fleet's falling intact into German hands would have turned the entire course of the Mediterranean war (an almost totally British affair) and almost guaranteed Gen. Rommel's victory, the seizure of the Suez Canal and the Middle East oil fields, Churchill had given the Vichy French government three options about their fleets in Oran and Mers-el-Kebir: Join the Royal Navy; Scuttle the fleet; Sail to a neutral port for internment.
The French admiral insolently kept a delegation of senior officers from Admiral Somerville (tragically, a long-time friend of his) sitting in an open boat in the harbor, in the equitorial sun at midday, for hours, and then imperiously refused the offer. Somervill had no option, as he was under orders from the Admiralty.
Charles DeGaul, a colonel in the French Army, was saved from the Nazis and brought to London, put up in a luxury hotel, and given BBC facilities to broadcast to the Free French. Then, promoting himself to general although having taken no part in the war, he was flown to Paris in time to lead the victory procession down the Champs Elisee, at the head of LeClerk's soldiers. The Americans, who had expended thousands of lives liberating Paris, should never have fed this stiff's ego. Eisenhower's mistake.
DeGaul considered himself one of the top statesmen in the world during the war, irrespective of the fact that he didn't lead a nation, and expected to be invited to the tripartite meetings in Teheran, etc., along with FDR, Churchill and Stalin. Outraged at not being accomodated, he showed his gratitude for the munificent treatment he had received otherwise by – after becoming President of France – vetoing Britain's entry into the new European Common Market.
Hello guys.
If you really want to put the knife into our miss guided Americian cousins you might like to check out the name of Richard Pearse with regards to a couple of chaps known as the Wright brothers.
The site http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/pearse1.html may shine some light on the subject.
Rutherford was a New Zealander. Florey was Australian (Fleming was Scottish and headed the original team). Whittle patented the turbojet in 1930 but Hans von Ohain made the first workable and flyable one.
Radar was a Great British achievement by the most oddly-named of heroes: Robert Watson-Watt.
The US demanded British jet engine technology, the British demand nuclear technology in return. Only one side of the bargain was kept.
By the way, I live in southeast Pennsylvania.
Ah, I do love an American who's taken the time to find things out. It's not easy when you're taught one thing and in the looking, you find out it wasn't always the case. I'm in Australia, and we've been taught a fairly skewed view of history over the years too. The Australian view of the Gallipoli campaign, while it might have a grain of truth, is pretty unfair to the Brits. The whole thing was a debacle from go to whoa. I saw a great show recently in which an Australian historian was travelling around the WWI battle fields of France, visiting the Australian cemeteries tended by the Commonwealth War Graves commission. He made a big deal of it … all the while, passing scores more cemtereries containing the remains of the British fallen. The Brit historian pointed it out to him in a very quiet way but I got the feeling the Aussie wasn't that keen on listening but later begrudgingly acknowledged the obvious. In Australia, there's almost a view that the fighting qualities of Australian soldiers won the war singlehanded. While they did doubtless do remarkable things, all volunteers and so far from home on the other side of the world, the picture isn't quite as it's painted. Not to dminish their sacrifice, but it wasn't on the scale of Britain's sacrifice. The Canadians have a tendency to do the same thing. Maybe it's just a determination not to be written out of the histories and to have that sacrifice overlooked. Who knows?
I love the Ozzies, having met many of them in my RAF career, but many of their films are uniformly anti-British – e.g. Breaker Morant and Gallipoli.
It surprises Ozzies very much to be informed that the order to charge with just bayonets, against entrenched Turks with machine guns, was made by an Australian general, not a British one. Contemporary accounts cite the undoubted gallantry of the Australian soldier, NCO and junior officer, and the ineptitude of their own senior officers and politicians.
Ess-Tee-Emm I liked that comment and being a Aussie myself must admitt some of the ideas put forward in our country make me cringe with embarrassment. One person in particular who I believe is portrayed in a particularly bad light is Churchill. On reading into that man a little found that he took command of a battallion(I think) on the western front for a period of time after the debarkle of Gallipolli. A comment found in a personal diary was something like "that I wouldn't be able to look a veteran in the eye if I didn't". Those same diaries also revealed that he still had the gallipolli nightmare in mind while he was planning D-day, resulting in a leave no stone unturned attitude when looking for ways to make it easier for those who were to hit the beaches. But also like you said, we did have our virtues where we seemed to do better than most.
The Kiwis always like to think they punch above their weight too. Aussies tend to forget there is an NZ in ANZAC. Aussies seem to totally ignore the Kiwi contribution to Britain's wars, yet many of the early successful fighter pilots in the RAF during WWII were Kiwis. All Aussie really had then was 'Cobber' Kain , who killed himself showing off, whilst the Kiwis had Alan Deere, Brian Carbury, Colin Gray (as well as AVM Keith Park looking after 11 Group).
Just a thought.
Sorry Robbin, Cobber Kain, victor over at least 16 enemy aircraft, was a Kiwi.
He was born in Hastings and educated at Christ College, Christchurch.
And the less said about our French friends in these kinds of debates, the better. Although, given the millions of casualties in the Great War, you can kind of understand their reluctance to want to go through it all again barely 20 years later. That's one of the things I can nver understand: How the Germans, who suffered horrific losses in WWI, decided to give the world another hot foot and almost forgot the tragedy of the previous war. I do understand the circumstances, but still … misguided patriotism can be a terrible thing, especially when allied to a murderous ideology.
It's a national characteristic, a mixture of rabid patriotism, inbuilt militarism and reverence of senior military persons, and the willingness like sheep to follow them, and top national leaders, into hell. With their cities and infrastructure being destroyed and their fellow-citizens killed by the thousands, and their soldiers by the hundreds of thousands, the war clearly lost, in early 1945 propaganda minister Goebbels was still able to scream at them in a mass-rally: "Wollen-ze totallen krieg?" (do you want total war?) and be greated by a mass JA!
The paradox is that I met many during my service in Europe, and in vacations in the 80s and 90s, and they were almost unfailingly polite and helpful.
Churchill summed it up: "They are always either at your feet or at your throat."
Nonetheless the Australian officers in command, the Generals, were pretty ordinary if not woeful in both wars. Monash might be legitimately revered, but Blamey was an embarrassment.
Anyway, neither the Spit or P-51 was the outstanding aircraft of WWII.
What was? Glad you asked! The DeHavilland Mosquito. Designed as a private venture because the Air Ministry sneered at a plane made almost entirely of wood – fuselage, wings, main spar, tail – informing Geoffrey DeHavilland that this is the 1940s, and combat aircraft are made of metal, you dope. Undeterred, DeH made a prototype, equipped with two R-R Merlins, and his son demonstrated it to Air M. officials, almost blowing their hats off in a 400mph beat-up, and then returning to perform aerobatics on one engine.
The Air. M. changed its mind and ordered the Mossie to be made as fast as possible. Cabinet makers, piano factories, furniture shops and even small cottage-industry sites with retirees putting bits together, plus the main plants at Hatfield, Totonto and in Australia, turned them out. Construction was of multi-layer plywood and spruce, steam-formed and fastened with the first epoxy cement.
It appeared in fighter, night-fighter, bomber, fighter-bomber and photorecce. versions. The fighter versions mounted four 20mm cannon, plus 4 machine guns, and became the greatest night fighter of WWII. The bomber version could carry the 4,000lb "Cookie" bomb to Berlin (no USAAF bomber, even the Fortress, Liberator or mighty B-29, could carry the Cookie at all.). One version was fitted with a 47mm cannon, and one caught a German cruiser in the Skaggerak, staying out of a.a. range and drilling its hull, turbines etc., leaving it wallowing for torpedo-carrying Beaufighters ("Torbeaus") to sink it.
The Mossie was the ideal Pathfinder aircraft, flying well ahead of the main force of Lancasters and dropping target markers, using the new Oboe navigation system. A Master Bomber would then fly round the target, directing the bombers and correcting if the aiming point strayed. It was after completing this function. and radioing "that's fine, chaps. Now beat it back home" that Guy Gibson, who had led the Dam Busters raid, was killed.
The Air. M. tried to insist on the Mossie carrying a gun turret, not being able to understand that this would rob it of its great advantage – speed. For the first year and a half after it went into service it was faster than Luftwaffe fighters. The Mossie made regular flights between Stockholm and Scotland, carrying clandestine passengers and strategic materiel like ball bearings, only two ever being shot down by German fighters patrolling he North Sea. One carried nuclear scientist Nils Bohr to safety. Bohr's mother was Jewish, and he was about to be arrested in Denmark and forced either to work on Hitler's atom bomb project or go, with his wife and son, into a concentration camp.
Together with the Danish underground, British agents spirited him to Sweden, and the Mossie brought him to Scotland, from where he was flown to the States and joined the Manhattan Project.
Mosquito bombers made the most spectacular pinpoint raids of the war, including Operation Jehrico, where they bombed the outer wall and corner of the prison building where the Gestapo were torturing and executing French resistance members, allowing over 100 to escape. They hit the Gestapo HQ in Holland, killing scores of them. And in one of the best tweaks of Hitler's and Goering's noses, on the 10th anniversary of the Nazi Putsch, in 1943, just as Fat Herman Goering was about to speak at a huge Nuremburg rally, Mossies appeared at low level, dropped some bombs and disrupted the occasion.
Goering was mad as hell, complaining that whereas he had to scramble to obtain strategic war materials for his Luftwaffe, "every piano maker in Britain is turning out Mosquitos."
While I will agree that the Mosquito was a VERY good aircraft there is one thing it couldn't do as well as the spit or for that matter probably the P51 either. This was to deny the germans air superiority. It could look after itself with its speed and guns okay and the germans couldn't stop them doing what they wanted to do, but it couldn't go after enemy aircraft with the object of destroying them. A very good example of this is for that Gestapo raid you mentioned they had an escort that were not Mosquitos, and probably the greatest Mosquito pilot/navigator team were killed during that raid. Why, they hung around too long, allowing the germans to establish their air superiority and bingo, two dead poms.
Another point is that the spitfires biggest asset was its strong airframe, and its ability to be developed to keep up with its enemies, something that the mustang also lacked though to a lesser extent than the Mosquito.
I'll end this little comment with the interesting point that the spitfire works were actually working on their own multi engined spitfire type bomber, that looked like it was going to be incredibly quick, when the germans managed to bomb the factory destorying all the blue prints, development work and data they were using and seeing that the original genius was already dead they lost the whole project.
Alex, I knew it … I guessed you were from God's Zone. Although the term "Poms" seems to be gaining a little bit of currency in North America, too. Probably from all the Antipodeans invading. Any Pom who thinks it's bad to be called a Pom doesn't understand Aussies or know that it's better to have a nickname, no matter how bad, in Oz than to have none at all … because if you don't have one, it means no one gives a rat's. Been an interesting discussion here in which we, sadly, seem to have driven everyone else off. Note to self: Must be nicer to our cousins with the funny accents living in the large strip of land north of Mexico and south of Canada. Cheers fellas.
The Mossie could go to Berlin with a 'Cookie' at greater speed than a B17 and unarmed at that and more importantly without an escort!
Why put ten men in a four engined supposedly 'Heavy' bomber and cruise there at 180mph to drop a bomb load equivelent to a British 'Cookie'!
I'm inclined to agree with thjat opinion :) It was the most versatile of any aircraft employed during the war. Many of its pilots say they've refused to fly anything sense, because what would be the point? How did a Yank end up on the wrong side of the pond in the RAF?
Operation Jericho was a success but the leader, Wing Cdr. Percy Pickard, together with his Navigator, Flight Lt. Bill Broadley, were killed when their de Havilland Mosquito was shot down by a Fw 190 flown by Feldwebel Mayer of Jagdgeschwader 26 in the closing stages of the operation. Unlike Americans, the British did not bring remains of their fallen back home, so they are still buried at the St. Pierre Cemetery near Amiens, France. Many of the surviving resistance members would make annual visits to the grave.
The Mossie, together with the Bristol Beaufighter and the Spitfire, were the only British planes used by the Americans, in a kind of reverse lend-lease.The Supermarine bomber referred to above was designed by the same R.J. Mitchell, who was aiming for "a bomber as fast as the Spitfire."
This Yank was born in England, served in RAF Bomber Command on Handley Page Victor nuclear bombers 1958-62, and emigrated to the States in 1969. In 1959 I was taking a bombing and navigation course at RAF Yatesbury (among whose earlier alumni were Guy Gibson and Arthur T. Clark of 2001,a Space Odyssey). There were two Mossies that were still in use for getting weather data in the upper atmosphere. One day they were struck off charge, and, tragically, after the engines and a few other bit were removed, simply bulldozed into firewood. It was a very windy day, and I can still remember bits of spruce and balsa wood blowing around the station.
Just watched "633 Squadron" on TV again. Dopey story and sugary love affair, but some of the most spectacular low-level flying, so it's worth watching just to see that. As with so many British films, it was, of course, mandatory to place a mythical American in the lead so as to be able to sell it in the States, so Cliff Robertson was cast as the squadron commander (other examples that come to mind are Bridge on the River Kwai, The Man Who Never Was, and The Great Escape [with two Yanks in lead roles, although no Americans were involved in the escape]).
Things you didn't know about Cliff Robertson, who died a few weeks ago:
In his early film career he was audited by the IRS for unpaid taxes on $10,000 in salary. At the audit, protesting that he had never received any such amount, he was shown a salary check with his name forged on the back. Unbelievably, it had been cashed by the head of the studio. Robertson was advised by studio staff to suck it up, as the head was a powerful man, but he insisted on taking it to trial.
The studio head, it was found, had done the same with other actors to the tune of $60,000, and they had kept quiet to protect their careers. He was fined and imprisoned (on his release, he was immediately given a top position at Metro Goldwyn.) The studio heads closed ranks and Robertson was blacklisted, making no movies for 7 years.
Cliff Robertson was an accomplished pilot, and after finishing 633 Squadron asked to buy one of the three airworthy Mosquitos, but the owner wouldn't part with it. Instead, he bought a Spitfire, which he flew for many years.
One of the Mossies used in 633 Squadron was from the old Skyfame Museum at Staverton Airport (now Gloucestershire Airport). I used to clamber over it and in it a kid most weekends. It had all the instruments and controls and was close to airworthy. They wrote it off in the movie. Never forgave them for that!
You are, Nick, to say the very least, a pretty interesting sounding fellow. In the process of getting to this point, we seem to have killed off all other commentators on this thread except for Alex, who I suspect might be one of my countrymen (G'day Alex! :).
I lived in England for some years as a boy, where my interest in the Spitfire and the events of summer 1940 was sparked by some detritus of the battle found not far from where I lived. I miss England as a place to visit but I'm glad these days I don't live there, although I did work in the UK for a short while in the 1980s.
I intended to join the RAAF when I was a young bloke but didn't, as I really didn't want to risk being sent to Vietnam, which by that stage had turned into an absolute debacle. I've had to pursue my interest in aviation, which doesn't stop at old warbirds, in other ways. Were the Victors the ones that suffered metal fatigue? I know they had problems with one of the three V bombers. Not sure if it was actually that problem, but there was something wrong with one of them that resulted in them being pulled out of service before their use-by date.
Forgot to mention: Also unearthed a small unexploded or dud bomb while on a picnic with a family we were friendly with. Not sure what it was but it was quite corroded. May even have been a dud mortar.
This was in Kent, near Maidstone, where we lived. We were looking for hazelnuts and the thing was quite small and hidden in the bushes and I picked it up by the tail and took it to my friend's dad. It was quite heavy, I remember.What I do also remember is his face going white.
He told me not to move and very gently took it and laid it down then cleared the area and told someone else to drive off to get the local police (no mobile/cell phones in those days). Eventually, they arrived and we were all shooed off.
Probably the most exciting thing to happen on a Kent family picnic in decades. But we were forever finding bits of metal and bullet casings in the fields that had fallen from the sky 20 years earlier.
If you ever saw the movie "Hope and Glory," of a kid's experience in WWII during the Blitz, you will see me, in essence. There were always lots of "interesting" things to pick up after a night raid, including bomb and a.a. shell splinters and live ordnance like "dud" cannon and m/g rounds. One favorite occupation was to pull the bullet out of a dud .303 m/g round, put it in the vice in my dad's shed, and bang the percussion cap with a nail hit with his hammer (he being in the RAF in Burma at the time.) A very satifying bang would usually result, the reason it hadn't fired in the aircraft's gun usually having been caused by a broken firing pin. In the movie, the kids do it without removing the bullet, which riccochets all round. Even we were not dumb enough to try this with a 20mm round. I highly recommend the film.
If available in Oz, I also highly recommend a BBC TV series that came out on DVD some years ago, "Danger, UXB," showing the adventures of a new 2nd. Lt. assigned to a bomb disposal unit (UXB=UnExploded Bomb). That also brought back memories.
The Victor, like the other two "V Bombers," the Valiant and the Vulcan, was designed as a high-altitude nuke bomber. By the time it went into service, ICBMs had largely taken over the role as M.A.D. deterrence, so the role of the Victor and Vulcan (the Valiant, the oldest, being scrapped) was changed to low-level. This imposed vibration loads on the airframe they were never intended to bear, resulting in hair-line cracks in spars.
With the closing of RAF bases outside of Europe, the service began a winding-down that resulted in many officers being "bowler-hatted," in the British lingo – i.e. let go, including me. (I was placed on the Emergency Reserve for 5 years, and was recalled during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but that's another story.) Aircrew were told that when they separated from the service they would walk into airline jobs. Those who had been navigators (there were always many times more who wanted to be pilots than available slots), however, found that during their hitch airlines had done away with navigators (along with radio operators and, in smaller jets, engineers), so they found themselves looking for jobs in other spheres.
The government had to choose between the Victor and Valiant for the small number of nuclear bombers they would retain. It had earlier compelled all British aircraft manufacturers into two conglomerates, so all the famous names, like Short Brothers, Fairey Aviation, Blackburn, DeHavilland, Vickers, AVRO, etc. disappeared. Handley Page, a family-owned company dating back pre-WWI refused, so the government cancelled orders for any further Victors, and those that remained were relegated to tankers.
What alot of people do not realize is that the spit, p-38, p-47, p-51, f6f, f4u where all about even when it came down to it. each plane had something the other did not as a advantage. Pretty much the only reason why anybody would say one is better than the other is just opinon and opinion is not fact.
That is why, if you noticed, the question includes the phrase "all round fighter". Most poms, Aussies, Canadians, New Zealanders etc would all have some sense that their countries cannot possibly be better than all others especially at everything (us Aussies are better but we don't push the point:). The Americians however do, to the extent that they'll even put their own troops at a bigger dissadvantage by sticking to that point by either successfully or attempting to prevent the marry up various bits and pieces, for example the Sherman Firefly (gave allied armour a chance against the Tigers and Panthers) and the P51 Mustang being to attempted efforts at prevention. Look at the Russians (another superpowere) by contrast (I am NOT communist but that doesn't stop me seeing things that they do well) They weren't fussy and took all help offered even if it had "Made in the USA" plastered all over it. Incidentally if you noticed they (the Russians) fought a lot more of the war than we did, fought with a "burnt earth" policy (a particullarly vicious but legal form of war, fought on their own soil, out produced the yanks, and had more of their women raped by the Germans (and I do NOT hold that against the Germans as a nation as they have looked at their own faults probably more than any other nation in the world) What the argument here is really about is to tell the USA that the USA is not nesseccarily translatable to best or good, Most other countries know this about themselves, also know that they are the best at somethings (like the Kiwis THINK they can play union:) and try to be vigilent for their own faults and do something about them once they find them.
Hawker Tempest?
It turns, it burns much like the LA7 or LA5FN but will still perform well up to 36,000 feet.
A totally overlooked piston-engined fighter that entered service at the end of WWII was the de Havilland Hornet. This was a single-seat fighter developed from the Mosquito, and using special "slim line" Merlins of 2,080hp and laminar-flow wings. Like the Mossie, it was of mainly wooden construction.
The prototype batted along at 485mph, making it the second-fastest twin-piston engined plane of WWII (the strange fore-and-aft engined Dorneier 335 was just faster.) This lovely aircraft was so brilliantly designed that it could perform loops on one engine rivalling that of a single-engined fighter, was armed with 4 X 20mm cannon, and also could carry rockets and bombs. It was used mainly in the Pacific, where its long range and two-engine security were valuable. A carrier vesion, the Sea Hornet, also performed well.
Unfortunately, it arrived just as the Meteor and Vampire jets were coming into service, so its own service life was brief. It was used with good effect in the late 40s and early 50s against communist forces in Malaya.
Sadly, not a single example survives. There's a good write-uo on Wikipedia, including quotes from the assessment of Eric Brown, who holds the record for test-flying more aircraft types than anyone else.
guys i can get on il2 in either one of these buitiful planes and own the opponent ITS THE PILOT NOT THE PLANE!!!
Yes – and no. In planes with reasonably similar performance (speed, acceleration, maneuverability, armament etc.) the better pilot will usually prevail. Of course, luck always enters into the equation. The top RAF, and in fact Allied, ace was Marmaduke "Pat" Pattle, who was credited with over 50 victories, but inevitably was unlucky enough in a dogfight to come into the sights for a few seconds of a Me-110. The 110 was no match in a dogfight with Pattle's Hurricane (in the Battle of Britain they were so ineffective that they had to have their own escorts!) But he was trying to save a fellow pilot and his luck just ran out.
Where there is a wide disparity in machines' capability, even the best pilots usually lose. Ask any Brewster Buffalo, Boulton-Paul Defiant or Bristol Blenheim pilot lucky enough to survive.
Loki.
A computer game used as a quantitative standard. I'd like to see that in a peered reviewed paper:) Just as the Germans which one they generally preferred to have trying to kill them. Much more reality based with no interjections from the armchair warriors.
the spitfire and mustang are insanely close in performance. the spitfire could out turn a mustang but the spitfire could not fly as high or as fast as a mustang. the p-51D boasted a massive supercharger while the spitefire took a while to update and add their own super charger. The spitefire has a slight agility edge while the mustang had tradditional american brute power. the mustang is slightly better equipped for war but not by much. Give the spitefire the same horspower and longer range like the mustang and the spitfire wins but since the spitfire didn't have those capabilities the mustang edges it out barely.
and other fighters
corsair, too big, expensive, and came to late to help
helcat, excellent example of airframe sturdiness but lacks all performance
the spitfire and mustang are the best looking and best for the mission of destroying the luftwaffe and jap airforce
Sorry to be blunt, but that is a load of rubbish from start to finish.
The later marks of Spitfire, with the R-R Griffon, were slightly faster than the P-51D and could dive much faster. Two were dived at over Mach. 0.9 (606mph), because the Spit's wings were superior in high-Mach ability even to those of the early jets.
The service ceiling of the Mustang was around 42,000ft. Several models of Spit. could go higher, and in 1951 a Mk. XIV, on a meteorological flight from Hong Kong, reached over 51,550ft, a world record at the time for a piston-engined plane. When cabin pressure began to fail the pilot had to get down to a lower altitude fast, and in the ensuing dive his air speed indicator registered 690 mph (Mach. 0.94.)
The "massive supercharger" of the Mustang was idential to that of the Spitfires from the Mk. IX onward, because the two aircraft used the same engine, and saying that "the spitefire [sic.] took a while to update and add their own super charger" is nonsense. All Spitfires, from the prototype in 1935 to the Mk. 24 at the end of production, had superchargers. The main change was in the Mk. IX, which used the new 2-stage supercharged Merlin 61, adding 10,000 ft of altitude and 70mph over the Mk. V.
The Spitfire, especially the later models with four 20mm cannon was certainly "better equipped for war" in regard to firepower than the Mustang. Finally, the P-51D's Packard-built Merlin topped out at around 1,800hp, while the later models of Spitfire used the ultimate Merlin, boasting 2,250hp continuous, with 2,600 available for short bursts, or the Griffon, whose output grew from 2,200hp to some 2,550.
Well said Nick!
way to compare two different models. go check out the p51H and then look at the V tell me they aren't close in performance.
when the D and latestes spit were in service together they were close in performance Both in the 40's used the same engines produced the same horspower. the mustang had a bigger supercharger than the spit that's why the scoop on the bottom of the mustang was installed. regardless of the size the power was barely better then the spit. the D did not do very well at low altitude it did much better in higher altitude where it was meant to fly. when it was up there they almost matched the spit but not quite. however when a german plane was up with the mustang it was the mustangs game. The spitfires owned the lower atmosphere. the spits agility was always better than the mustang because of the wings mainly. the spit was a true dogfighting plane, the mustang had a more economic wing with as little drag as possible because it was an escort fighter.
it is extremly difficult to compare such different aircraft. the spitfire stopped the luftaffe and the mustang brought the fight to the germans doorstep.
both planes are excellent you can't deny one is actually weaker than the other and i admit my words saying the mustang was better is rubbish
both planes were needed without them we wouldn't have won. i wouldn't want a mustang at low altitude to dogfight and i wouldn't want a spitfire to escort bombers at high altitudes. both were mission driven machines that worked perfectly together to take over the skyes of europe.
I'm also gussing ur a brit because of you're huge spit knowledge and little mustang knowledge. it's fine most people here don't even know what a spitfire is sadly. most americans are idiots about history and it makes me sad to be affiliated with them sometimes.
also one last thing we americans built the mustang for the RAF they hated the A B and C but when the D came around they did like it but they no longer needed it because the american bombers needed them. Frankly if they got the D ready sooner it would be a american plane flown by brits
Thomas.
Some of your quotes are unadvised.
"Frankly if they got the D ready sooner it would be a american plane flown by brits"
I think the brits wouldn't have minded getting the spitfire 9 "sooner" either.
"way to compare two different models. go check out the p51H and then look at the V tell me they aren't close in performance"
The spit V fought the battle of brittian, (along with the historically underated hurricane), if we'd used the current P51 it would have been the A, B, or C models, and to be frank they wouldn't have even been able to get up to the hieghts required, let alone fight there.
Just go and check the following link.http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080724100046AAdRkuf
Who's bombers were the Mustangs protecting during 1944? They were not RAF, so as the US insisted on daylight bombing, against British advice why bother to increase range on British types.
Experiments were carried out to increase range on the Spit and according to J.E.Johnstone in 'Full Circle' Spits had flown the Atlantic. In addition Spits regularily flew as far as Berlin in the PR role, see the short film Spitfire 944. My research on the Mustang indicated there were many problems with flying them such long distances which have not been discussed here, one of which was the problem with fouled spark plugs.
Rate of climb has barely been touched on, the humple Spitfire VB had a rate of climb superior to the P51D, not by much, approximately 40' per minuite. The Spit IX left it standing. Lufftwaffe pilots routinely avoided combat with escorting US fighters by initiating a spiral climb which only a Spitfire could follow – Heinz Knoke 'I flew for the Fureher'.
Brute power is not much use if it cannot be translated into performance, yes the P51D could fly at 437mph in level flight, however this did not translate very well in anything but level flight. The Spitfire easily outclimbed all marks of Mustang and its acceleration negated any advantage in level speed.
The Spitfire holds a special place in the British psyche, to us it is 'probably the most important invention of all time' – Jermey Clarkson. It is a trully insperational fully British product, which was flown and loved by pilots of all nationalities. What place the Mustang holds in the US is irrelevant to us. I live in Dover, Kent. We frequently have Spits and Hurricanes flying overhead and on one memorable occasion twelve spits flew over Dover Harbour, truly living history and a real treat. To the me the Mustang did not have much influence in our history, the Spitfire did and it was in the very skies above our country.
i'm just gonna mention this real quick not trying to start stuff but all mustangs before the D were terrible they broke all the time were slow and bumbling and useless the B and C models suffered engine problems all the time. When the D came around it was finally reliable. there is no story or recording that a D model ever had mechanical issues from just flying. However due to the matrials used in the D and the altitude it could fly they did occasionally suffur ice issues that sometimes jammed guns and landing gear. later modifications fixed that and the pilots didn't fly as high for that long.
Hello guys.
The real people to ask this question of is the pilots who flew them, and who flew against them.
Check this link out.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080724100046AAdRkuf
If appears our German freinds had a decided aversion to spitfires and their only problem with the mustang was that there were too many of them. A fairly normal conditions when considering the USA and its people:)
it occurs to me that this website may be biased to spitfires just a little bit. it's all true that the spit could outmanuver a mustang but not by alot. people here make the p-51D sound useless. i'm sensing alot of her majesty's subjects here.
here's something interesting, america only built two great fighters the mustang and corsair. england built two great fighters the spitefire and hurricane.
the two also built the best bombers the flying fortress and lancaster. seen both fly together in an airshor last may pretty awesome. accompanying those two giants was a spit and a stang i serisouly had goose bumps the entire time.
A few points.
1) Nobody decribed the P-51D as "useless" – only a fool would. The question was: Which was superior? To which – other than range – most come down on the side of the Spitfire, irrespective of one's nationality;
2) America built more than two great fighters. The F6F Hellcat was the first carrier plane superior to the Jap Zero, which it was in every respect. The P-38 Lightning was a great long-range twin-engine fighter, designed for and almost exclusively used in the Pacific theater, where its range and the security of a second engine were decisive;
3) Many would say that the B-24 Liberator was superior to the Fortress. It flew higher, faster and farther. The Fort got the publicity because it looked more streamlined and fast, while the boxy-looking Lib was like the ugly sister. The Lib did exceptional work hunting down U-boats in the Atlantic, the only plane with the range able to do so;
4) A loaded Lancaster could fly faster than an empty Fortress, which was underpowered, using essentially four DC-3 (C-47) engines;
5) You also said that "there is no story or recording that a D model ever had mechanical issues from just flying." That's nonsense. Any machine, especially in the stress of wartime, is subject to mechanical problems, and many 51Ds came down this way.
6) May I suggest that you have someone proof-read your stuff? It gets wearying to read "alot" (there is no such word), "spitefire," "outmanuver," "airshor" etc. And is it too much trouble to press the "shift" key and correctly give proper nouns like "Lancaster" a first capital letter, ditto the first word of a sentence?
Alex: Those in glass house shouldn't throw stones. In an earlier post you said that the Spitfire Mk.V fought in the Battle of Britain. No it didn't. The B. of B. was fought by Spit. Mk.Is and a few Mk.IIs. The Mk.V didn't appear until much later.
My point was a few people here give the spifire due credit as i believe it stopped the luftwaffe in it's tracks but i haven't really read much about the mustangs being as important. some posts feel like we should have modified the spit to be long range and i think that's a great idea but i wonder if it would effect the performance at all. The great thing about the mustang was it was almost as good as a spit and better than some germans and equal to others. It was able to do all of this over germany and fly home to england. I realize this might uproot some 190 followers but the simple matter is we still won.
I also looked into the mechanical failues of mustangs and I did find a few suffured bad plugs or fuel lines stuff like that, however most of the failues I found were from fuel or radiator issues from hard manuvering. Once a radiator is shot that's it, overheats and down she goes most of the time.
also the hellcat was indeed a great fighter but i'm not entirely convinced it was great yet. it is however one of my absoloute favorite airplanes ever. The corsair served a little bit longer than the hellcat and was better in ever regard in performance. hellcats were smaller by a little and cheaper to make i think.
I also don't know that much about bombers I am only familiar with the Lancaster and Forttress and I've always thought the Lancaster was a better bomber but the Forttress was prettier to look at.
Also never thought many people cared about hardcore grammer, my internet writing have gotten lazy because it takes longer to write properly and most don't care if I do or not.
The reason why the Mustang had such great range was because of the two great big 108 gallon drop tanks. Also it had been designed to have a additional fuel tank behind the pilot. Most British aircraft did not have this feature, prefering fuel to be held forward of the centre of gravity. The Mustang had this and more but also this big rear fuselage tank.
This huge rear tank would be used first by most pilots as it greatly affected handling even when virtually empty, imagine what a couple of gallons of fuel would do sloshing about behind the centre of gravity!
The Mustang had difficulty taking off with a full fuel load and drop tanks.
Pilots in Fighter Command requested drop tanks when the US started deeper penetrations. These were held back despite compressed paper models being invented and made in Britain. It is thought they were held back as the 8th Bomber Command were suffering huge casualties and the British felt it was a US problem, there original advice had been ignored
so politics could have been involved.
Later in the war Spitfire IVX's routinely flew deep into the continent with 'slipper tanks' I know this as the appear frequently in combat reports.
The political statement made above I have largely assumed but it is hinted at in the writings of J.E. 'Johnny' Johnson in 'full circle'.
.
hey just a thought since i know of two other planes that killed more enemy than teh spit and mustang. the hurricane and hellcate. both honestly not the best planes but still had huge kd ratio's.
Also if alex reads this gonna mention another thing here. Britain hated the mustang A B C cause they sucked alot. the raf wanted a long range fighter for, correct me if i'm wrong, bomber escort and chasing germans with no ammo and little fuel across the channel. the onlyl reason i can find that england asked america is because we weren't under constant bomb threat and had vast supply of resources. I'm sure if someone in the raf wanted a better spitfire rather than a new plane the mustang would have never come around and america probably would have made a longe range spitfire instead.
I think they asked for a new plane cause it was easier to due than change a current plane. they needed a long range fighter that was designed to fight in high altitudes only. they got the mustang eventually the D came out and it had a bigger supercharger with a big ram air scoop and other little bits of high altitude parts. they had to take the merlin engine and cut some power out for more range and design wings that could fly at lower speed than the spitfire and not fall. That's why if you look at a mustangs wings they slope downward as you go back. americans built a long range fighter that was as good if not better than 109's and 190's and in that respect it's incredible. the spitfire was built as one spit equals tens of germans. America didn't bother with building something better because we can build thousands. germans hated that because now they had to worry about thousands of planes that were just as good as theirs comeing right at them and they dared not dogfight a spit because they lost everytime.
when herman goring the luftwaffe general saw a squadron of mustangs flying over berlin he knew the war was over. some other german pilot accounts hating the mustang because it would just turn so much sharper at high speeds in high altitudes that the german planes often couldn't match. mustang pilots knew if they climbed the germans lost considerable performance.
the spit is the aerial brick wall of defense never letting a german go. seeing one could be enough to fighten a formation away(i read that somewhere online about spitfires not sure if that's true but i believe it)
also it's been agreed by american and british pilots that the spitfire was the better dogfighter but if they needed to go far out for a mission every single one had no problems plopping down in a mustang. some pilots thought that both planes were both great planes and in some aspects equals.
1) One more time, so that maybe it'll finally sink in. The earlier marks of Spitfire and ALL Mustangs used the identical R-R Merlin engine (albeit the Mustang's were made under license by packard, in the USA.) The had the same supercharger. Let me repeat that: THEY HAD THE SAME SUPERCHARGER. The "big ram air scoop" under the Mustang's belly housed the radiator and oil cooler ONLY. The supercharger air intake was under the nose, just aft of the propeller spinner.
2) The Me-109F and G could climb to over 40,000 ft, equal to the Mustang.
3) The P-51B and C (the final letter simply means where they were assembled – P-51Bs at Inglewood CA., P-51Cs at Dallas, TX. They also used the Merlin, and did not "suck" and were not "hated" by the RAF, they were welcomed and used to great effect. The only diffence in the P-51D is that the armament was increased from the four .5 m/guns of the A, B and C to six, and a bubble canopy, like the Spitfire's, fitted.
3) There is still no such word as "alot," and Germans, Luftwaffe, Herman Goering and Spitfire still need a first capital letter, unless your intention is to demostrate illiteracy as well as chronic inaccuracy. Someone once said that it was better to stay silent and be suspected of being dumb, than to open your mouth and confirm it.
you are really a huge ass aren't you. Do you usually spend your nights insulting people on the internet. You have so many incorrect proof readings that i'm not going to bother with you.
Hello Guys
And hello Thomas as well.
This is going to take some doing so please stay with me as I'll be basically answering Thomas's latest.
It would be very difficult to say that web site was biased, if you look at the sources. There were quite a few amerians, some germans (and their only bias was which one would kill them). I will admitt there were some pommies also but they were coming with some fairly substantial credentials.
Let us now look at the "other planes that had a higher kill ratio than the spit and the mustang"
Let us start with the hurry vs spit question and the place/time we have to look at, namely the Battle of Brittian, and go through a few other facts that may have impacted on these statistics.
There were fewer spits than hurries, I think roughly a third were spits and two thirds were hurries.
The hurry was better armed than the spit, carrying a number of 20 mm cannons against the spits 0.303 machine guns, but the spit had much beter flying characteristics, rate of climb, turn, speed etc. Bombers being larger aircraft tend to take more punishment than a fighter to bring down. Because of these aspects the british tactics tried to pile the hurries onto the german bombers, while the spits were climbing like buggery (even at this stage a year or two before the mustang doing it better) to prevent the german fighters, mainly ME 109 from piling into the Hurries. Because of the situation preventing an earlier warning, the spits quite often met the ME 109's WHILE STILL CLIMBING. This statergy when it worked turned the ME 109s and spits into one be fur ball, with the english quite often out numbered ten to one, while the hurries were banging away with their artillery at the bombers. The spits main job was NOT to shoot down planes but more to get every ME 109 they could involved in that fur ball with them and to servive (actually they didn't really give a toss about the spits themselves if the pilot could bail out safely). Any german fighters shot down were more of a secondary aim.
Now for the hellcat vs the P51. I am tempted to say they were (the hell cats that is) only shooting down jap planes, but I will put a few more bits to that argument before someone claims I am racist. Jap planes, ALL jap planes could just about be represented as flying petrol (gas for our americian friends) bombs. The hellcat pilots would have had to be carefull not to fly too close if they were smoking in their cockpits(umm maybe a little bit sarcastic there). Also once the our side worked out that you did not dog fight a zero, and just used dived through the zero's and kept on going the zero was just about obsolete. Another factor is that the quality of jap pilot training was very poor, this does not mean that japs make poor pilots, and some of the pilots they had initially were extremely good, but they were not able to replace pilots lost with quality pilots.
Okay now for the story on how the mustang came to be designed, and I am amazed the Thomas doesn't know this one because it is the most amazing point of the mustang. The pommies wanted fighters, ANY fighters, fast, and they knew that North Americian had production capability that was not being used and asked them if they would produce the P40, I think, under license. North Americian, thought they could design something better, but the pommies could only give them some rediculously short development time, something like 50 days I think. North Americian, too their credit, took up the challenge and the mustang was born. Oh, and the spitfires DID chase the germans accross the channel if they were available to do so. There is a famous instance where a WAF who job was on the radio's actually heard her man go down fighting into the channel (a very emotional story actually).
Next thing was that the mustang did not have a bigger supercharger and the spit (maybe the V) could actually go higher than the mustang and some types were actually used for photo recon, going higher than the germans could. Incidently the germans could deny combat with the mustangs by out climbing them, and the main time the mustangs were able to engage was when the germans were attacking the bombers.
There never was an engine put in an aircraft during the war where they "cut back its power" to get more range, though they may have criused at a lower power setting . The reason the mustang did well in terms of range is to do with it's low drag and the fact that it could carry more fuel internally due to the way it was put together. I don't think you could put the mustang up against the FW190 one on one either Thomas. They were a hand full even for some of the earlier spits and it caused an acceleration of the next engine up of the spit when it appeared. I'd probably even argue about the mustang over the ME 109, but each had enough to give the other a head ache. Also, by the time the mustang appeared many of the better german pilots were out of the game.
I will agree with you on these points however, the mustang could take the fight to the enemy with the bombers, and with great enough numbers of aircraft and crew. That is what the spitfire could not do.
Okay that is enough for now.
Not only is it enough, it's too much, since much of it is wrong.
1) The nickname for the Hawker Hurricane was Hurrie, not hurry.
2) The Hurricane in the Battle of Britain had the same armament as the Spitfire at the time – eight .303 Colt/Browning machine guns, NOT 20mm cannon. The cannon-armed Hurricanes appeared much later, and some were even armed with 40mm ones specifically to kill armored vehicles like tanks in the Western Desert.
3) The idea of Spitfires going after German fighters while the Hurricanes attacked the bombers was great in theory, but in fact once combat was joined it turned into a whirling free-for-all, with Spits and Hurries attacking whatever came into their sights.
4) Saying that the Spitfires' job was not to shoot down planes is nonsense. That was their ONLY job.
5) The acronym for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force was WAAF, not WAF.
6) Jap pilot training was not "very poor." At the outbreak of WWII, and certainly until 1944, they were among the very best fighter and bomber pilots in the world. The selection was far more severe than for the RAF, Luftwaffe or USAAF, with maybe one of every 100 applicants being accepted for training, and half of these washed out before graduating.
The British and Americans believed their own propaganda – the Japs were poor pilots, couldn't see in the dark and their planes were made of bamboo and paper, like their houses – and paid the price. In fact they had some of the best and most advanced bombers and fighters early in the war, and the Mitsubishi A6M Type Zero was superior to anything British or American until the arrival of the F6F Hellcat (the Hurricane and Spitfire were better in strength, speed, armor, self-sealing tanks and dive, but the Zero had three times the range, could turn well inside and outclimb them.) For the first couple of years Spitrfires and Hurricanes were reserved for Europe, and useless junk like the Brewster Buffalo was considered "good enough" for fighting the Zeros, resulting in hundreds of brave young men going to their deaths. In many engagements, the Zeros shot down an entire squadron of Buffalos without a single loss.
7) The "main time the Mustangs were able to engage" was not "when the Germans were attacking the bombers." When Gen Doolittle took over the 8th Air Force fighter command he had the sign at HQ that read THE JOB OF THE FIGHTERS IS TO BRING THE BOMBERS HOME replace with THE JOB OF THE FIGHTERS IS TO SHOOT DOWN ENEMY FIGHTERS. The Mustangs were given freedom to range well ahead of the bombers, destroying Germans planes on the ground and as they were taking off. Radio stations in England monitored the Luftwaffe radio directions assembling their fighters, and the Mustangs knew where they would be.
And, Alex, I should suggest the same as I did for Thomas, that you get someone to proof-read your script before submitting it, and USE THE DARNED SHIFT KEY for proper nouns like Mustang so you don't give the appearance of a 3rd-grade illiterate.
I like how when this started it was an uneducated group of people bickering and now it's more intellectual. I recently, couple weeks ago, read about the luftwaffe's opinions on the mustang specififly kind've a biased reading to the mustang but i could pick some truth from it. the germans lost a good many of their best pilots to spits and as a result the mustang which was nearly as good as a spit was able to easily pick off all german planes until the jets arrived late in the war. a well flown 190 was invincible for a time being in a dogfight with a mustang. the problem was that mustangs were in bigger numbers and it wasn't long before a buddy teamed up and took out the 190's the mustang had more expirenced pilots and could push themselves farther than younger germans. few aces were left when the mustang entered the war thanks to the spit which destroyed them. (not so sure how accurate this is but i've heard similar things before).
also found out that the british carriers were dissatisfied to and extent with the seafire and wanted a better plane and brits flew wildcats, hellcats, and corsairs. not sure they were used for dogfighting more subhunting i would imagine.
and the merlin engine changed slightly when packard made the merlin,(old car company in america for the brits, made huge car engines for it's time) they tried changed the output of the same merlin design for less power only slightly and this was i believe for the A B and C, hence why they suffured sparkplug issures and wiring and all sorts of th things at first. when the D came around some squadrons modified there planes to be the exact engine the spitfire had because they wanted it, but those are officialy rumors from an old guy at the air museum i talked with.
Hi there Thomas.
Sounds about right. Most fighters of the period could just about survive through any odds if their pilots were experienced enough and were able to work the wingman systems where the "lead" fighter calls the shots and the "wingman" covers his arse. The trick to this system is when the "wingman" ends up doing the covering the system needs the "lead" to take over the "wingman" roll. Sounds like you got lucky finding that "old guy" as that is pretty much how things went.
Just a bit more to the story, the krauts originally came up with those tactics in the spanish civil war before WW2, and taught the pommies the tactics the hard way in the early days of the Battle of Brittian with the basic unit of aircraft being the VERY loose "four finger" (arranged simmilar to the tips of the four straight fingers of a hand) formation which could brake into two pairs as the smallest effective component. The pommies were trying to fly tight full squadron formations which left the leader as the only set of "eyes" while everyone else was trying to stay in formation on him. The result was that a lot of Pommies died before they got themselves sorted out. To give you an idea on how important the wingman concept was the highest scoring (note that I didn't say best) fighter ace of the war was a guy called (and you probably haven't heard of him before) Erich "Buba" Hartmann (I appologise if the name is spelt wrong), to him his greatest achievement during the war was not his 352 confirmed victories but the fact that he NEVER lost a wingman. And he didn't care what he had to do to achieve that either. One of his favourites was putting the green wingman in his own very recognisable plane so that any enemy who saw it wasn't game to have a go. Just some interesting sidelines.
This began as an exchange among historically KNOWLEDGEABLE and technically proficient writers, and has degenerated into a series of posts by totally ignorant and illiterate people like Alex and Thomas. I have tried to educate these two, but without success. Be happy in your ignorance, guys; I'm signing off. Trying to teach a pig to sing is pointless; it doesn't work and just confuses the pig.
If you really want to get yourself educated about the Spitfire, Mustang and Merlin engine, get a back-issue copy of my article "The Magnificent Merlin" in the September 2009 issue of Aviation History magazine. You can also learn about the origin of the jet engine in the upcoming March issue of the same magazine.
you sir a quite a grammer nazi. I don't feel like reading one mans article about the merlin. Read alot about it and the information I used is a little bit of everything, If there are mistakes in my information there are more polite ways to point them out. Also there is no need for complete and perfect grammer on an internet forum because no one other than a grammer nazi cares. Proper grammer is used when needed like in articles and published literacy, they need for proper grammer is not required.
also if we are so unkowledgeable then why did they have to install a scoop on a mustang if the spitfire and mustang had the same one, maybe because one was bigger and needed more room.
Why then was the horspower differenct on a Mustang if they had identical engines without modifications.
The mustang A B C were supposed to be dogfighters to help the Spitfire and Hurricane almost all sources say this and as a dogfighter those planes were not up to the job.
For someone who has a published article I would think they would have more courtesy and more idea of a polite debate. Instead you called to strangers ignorant and pigs.
good day sir
Hi there, the scoop under the fuselage of the Mustang was an improvement on the scoop found under the fuselage of the Hurricane. This was the engine radiator and on the Mustang produced foreward thrust via the forced exit of heated air, this was known as the 'Meredith Effect'.
This is off topic but i feel like this question of spit vs stang is done, i always wondered what was the difference between an american P40 and a british P40 the americans called them warhawks and the brits i believe called them tomahawks or something. i wondered if there was a real difference between them
I think the debate is 'done' if we are all agreed that the Spitfire was king of air combat! The Tomahawk was the name given to P40's B to C. Kittyhawk was the name given to P40D and later marks. Although with a very poor rate of climb (2000 ish fpm) otherwise was fast and and considered capable below 15000'.
Thank you for your dispassionate and accurate information, J. Edolls. I have been enjoying this 'debate' or forum for its opinions and information, but not for its childish bickering.
The P-40 naming is quite right, The Aussies in Port Moresby, New Guinea were waiting and waiting for their promised P-40sin early 1942 to augment their CAC Wirraways and Hudsons, and dubbed them 'tommorrowhawks'.
The Meredith effect belly radiator scoop was a feature of two most promising end-of-war aircraft, the Australian CAC 15, which was very promising, but too expensive and unnecessary, and the Martin-Baker (of ejection seats fame) MB5 (a sort-of contra-rotating prop Mustang). It's a pity they never made it into the fame and glory of production, which their designs deserved.
I am no expert. I will try to help.
I observe that in this stream there are repetitions and disagreeements about matters of fact that at first sight seem to be open to objective settlement. There is also some impatience and hectoring and a little interpersonal abuse.
I am sad but this should not surprise me. 'Best' usually exists on a bad, good, better, best grade. Such ethical and aesthetic arguments about matters of history could easily be hard to conclude.
I think such evaluations are often purposive. People will choose P51 or Spitfire to suit their purpose. In this day the purpose may be 'to look or sound cool', 'to justify the terrible loss of life', 'to validate my nation or my personal history…' all fine human purposes. Period witness testimony and documentation had more loaded consequences for the speaker/writer – the purpose in making the choice might be 'to extend my reputation for professionalism', 'to get the airframe revisions I need', 'to get a quick answer even if wrong and let me get back to operational flying with the minimum delay' and even 'because it sounded strong and made my most hated colleague/superior shut up, put it another way : a tool to get influence'. Also fine purposes, taken in war conditions or with respect to war memories. Get between an overevolved ape and a purpose they care about and don't be surprised if they are downright awkward about accepting any contrary true argument – that has to be ok.
Unless one actually wants to learn something.
For that you may need a different question.
I see that some commentators seem young and have a 'gaming' mindframe. ('What if the two planes fought each other, implying – which one would i rather pilot.'). They may prefer a question like 'Which plane would give me the greatest success against any credible Axis opponent on all mission scenarios?'. To which my answer is – whichever motivates you or your alter ego to perform to your best ability. National pride and familiarity or conceptual 'comfort' included. That's what comes of putting 'me' into a game or thought experiment about historical events.
Others seem older and more concerned with witness, objectivity, accuracy and respect. Rather than an objective idea and an 'apples and oranges' answer (cop out), how about an 'ankle and knee' question. Like 'How did each essential machine (P 51 and Spitfire) their procurement, pilots, formations and services and the missions they flew contribute to the success of the other? Best 'team player'?
My answer – whichever one your ally wants and you least want to concede.That's the advantage of putting the question so the answer can't depend on facts. Alliance is 'better' than truth. Victory is not permanent. Says an aged cynic….
Final thought for the concept mongers – try comparing a 1939 Polish BiPlane fighter against BF 109s, or consider how a Spitfire or P 51 would perform on a strafing mission of roads crowded with refugees, now what is the question that arises about the nature of 'good' or 'best' regarding war machines?
Personally I don't mind seeing here 'cool text', 'loose facts' and 'trash logic' which must defy all rules of grammar and construction, politeness and restraint, that's the point of it – a text rebellion. I also understand the comments of those who fought for or inherited respect for standards – of english grammar, truth and right conduct together.
So pretty please with a cherry on top Thomas – there were once real Nazis and what they were and what they did are not to be forgotten or discounted, your last post diminished all those who stood (and flew) against them in my opinion. Very uncool.
It all depends on what you mean by best and good. Better questions give better ideas of what is best. Indefinitely.
I'll stop there, sorry for the essay.
Oh, by the way Spitfire was better, by dint of presence rather than absence 1939 -1943. Just as Spit was absent over Germany 1944-5 and concedes those points, parallel argument P – 51 was absent for most of the war in ETO and must concede those points. Spit loses least points from a nominal maximum. Spit contribution to victory was therefore larger – Spit wins because a weapon is a tool of war and war is a tool of policy.
Just so you know I'm not actually a fence sitter or diplomat.
I have the uttermost respect for everyone who served in ww2 my grandfather did his part in the pacific in jungles. I have his dress uniform in my closet. I have learned quite a bit about the war and to me it is the most unbelievable thing ever to happen. millions of men plain shirts charging the undeniable machines the nazi's created.
my post was not meant to disrespect the actual men my post was out of anger to that individual who despite sounding like an adult acted so childish.
also everything you said about the two planes is agreed we would not be here today living like we are if both planes hadn't existed. both were needed and both came when they were needed most.
nazi's are extremly scary to me. There is a museum near my house and they have all sorts of war artifacts from the american independance from england to desert storm. there is one section for the nazi ss and it 100% gives me goose bumps looking at real uniforms and tools that were actually used. very very scary.
btw you are the person who hasn't come off as a bias person (myself included) and a pacifier to this heated moment.
personally i'll miss nicks bracing comments. i hope we dont loose STM and Mike too. How often does an open forum like this one attract comment from vetreran officers? I'm genuinelly sorry you fellas couldn't reconcile or understand your divergent styles of argument. Of course nick expects respect – he's been there. Also natural that you'd want your two cents worth without taking a degree in comparative engineeering, a PhD in modern history and a Nobel prize in grammar. Sad.
I'll mention two war films in tribute to Nick style. 'Life and Times of Colonel Blimp' Powelll and Pressberger, 1941 possibly, no Spitfire aircraft shown, pity but a nice sentimental line on 'old 'uns'. Also 'Empire of the Sun' Spielbberg 1987 i think, nice shots of P-51 and reflective rather than straight anti-war.
Of all the people who could have commented on the 'knee' and 'ankle' aspect of the combination of Spit and P 51 and the matters of keeping an alliance going around the disputes that arise as the two machines are deployed and operated – the transatlantic ex-raf nick would have been tops. Shame.
This is a very good and agreeable post. I agree with all your statements and the forum is better for it. Except for one thing. the 'cool text' rebellion is not cool. It is difficult and annoying to read and therefore it is far more easily dismissed. Typos, like accidents, happen: poor spelling and grammar, and lazy typing are disrespectful of your reader. If you want to be heard (i.e. your opinions read) please have the courtesy to write it in the best possible manner you can muster, no matter what time of night it is!)
By the way, I also agree with your summation, bbear, the Spitfire has it over the Mustang on most accounts which have been amply debated in many of the previous educated and knowledgeable posts.
I understand Robin. Personally I agree. But like it or not what is 'cool' is not for either of us to determine. Most youngsters think and write that way especially on computers. And if they can't be admitted then why should they read on? And if they don't read they can never learn. And if they don't learn … oh boy.
This space is not advertised as closed, just moderated and for history readers. If non-expert comment is really unwelcome pehaps someone could put in a 'reply' to an early posting or appeal to the site managers? Otherwise it is an interesting topic which is bound to draw crowd attention. Including from humble ignorant blunderers like me. Remember i only started this because I saw Nick leave.
So i hope i do provide some 'entertainment' for Tom and Alex etc. as I flounder around. I'm asking for some latitude on this. Thanks.
Just to stir things up again, my view is that the Allies could have fought and won the war without the Mustang. This would have occured through changing tactics and equipment, we have all heard how a Mosquito could carry the same bomb load as a B17 to Berlin, unarmed and much faster and safer. As after all the Mustang was only promoted to protect the daylight bombers. However the allies could not have fought and won the war without the Spitfire. The allies could not have fought and won the Second World War without the pilots who flew them.
The Spitfire was flown and fought by pilots from all corners of the globe including in RAF service, Germans! They fought against persons misguided by evil..
I have wondered if the mustang was actually needed really. If night time Bombing were to be the main bombing time rather than daylight bombing, then the A B and C mustangs might have never gotten the merlin engine and stayed with the low level allison and helped mosquitos in bombing and strafing. The D where known to dive down and strafe and bomb during daylight escort services so perhaps the mustang would have been a team mate for the mosquito. The mustang if it got the merlin and became a D could also be a support role for the mosquito bombing and strafing but at the same time occupying enemy fighters, at least until a longer range spitfire was created. Imagine the germans faces seeing thousands of spitfires, mosquitos and mustangs all headed right for them under the cover of night.
Also to stir things up I failed to bring up the mustangs excellent and advanced gunsight that hugely increased accuracy. Also lets not forget the spitfires access to radar, pinpointing enemy positions.
Actually the Gyro Gunsight was developed in Farnborough in England. The technology was given to the Americans, another piece of valuable kit given away, the hidden cost of 'Lend Lease'!
I can't manage expert comment, i don't think either machine ever had radar on board, the radar of the time was not capable of showing detail of positions either ground based or air bourne. Big formations could certainly… Oh i see, you mean the Cheyne Holm system (spelt right?) and the link to an Air Defence System of communication and dispersal set up by Dowding in time for Battle of Britain? Any craft in the sysem with RT wireless set had access to that. But it wouldn't help in Germany 1943-44-45. I don't think either ever had access to Oboe/Gee or other navigation aid. i may be quite wrong.
Bs and Cs had Merlin i believe. As were used by RAF as recce and possibly ground tactical support. I'd neeed to check.
The gunsight was changed for the D version only, maybe. I couldn't say how it was better than a spitfire site, i'd be surprised if it made a dogfighting difference. Few air to air kills were made at distance from my general reading?
I won't go into a ground attack discussion – trying to refine the 'fighter' question still. P 51s took 'targets of opportunity' after they'd finished escort duty and were home bound i think. Plus missions in Battle for Normandy onwards – very possibly.
I'm not sure the Mossies needed a faster single engine correlate, just bigger numbers of planes.
But your question is sound, is best fighter plane the essential necessary one to prevent loss of defensive air superiority or the one that establlished war winning air supremacy, bearing in mind that other planes would do it, more slowly and more painfully but it woould be done.
You see it's not just the plane, its the formation they belonged to and the missions they were flown on.
Refining the question 'best' for further learning. My last attempt, promise.
To restate the original question. Which of these famous World War two, piston powered, day, air superiority/intercept fighters is best (at day air superiority/intercept) of the two, and is there another, better than both?
To make sense the question has to refer to the whole 1939-45 period or otherwise it isn't World War two. You might as well ask which was better on August 18th 1945 – the war was over, so the question loses relevance. Did sitting bull or custer have the best horses the day after the Big Horn?
As previously stated that is a boring question as the answer has to be Spitfire as the P 51(in B, C, D air superiority versions) wasn't available for the whole period.
So, try which had the best impact on the conflict? Assuming that the war aims of defeating Axis powers was a good cause for humanity, the term best would have to addresss all relevant technical issues plus cost, crew factors, spares and logistics, maintenance and up-time including refits. It would alternately have to address actual operational availability and the negative value of any misdirected missions, loss rates, kill effectivess and value in consolidating the alliance,,,.
But that kind of thing is not what contributors to this thread are about.
Try, which platform sequence, during 1939-45 has historically done the most to progress humanity by dint of it's technical capacities?
Add that by Spitfire we mean versions 1 to 9? and by P 51 we mean versions B, C and D.
Has to be the spitfire, because the key air superiority missions of WWII were for Battle of Britain. The first time the Nazis were beaten. Hitler coould not move all forces East for Babarosssa. So Soviet losses were limited to 20million. And the soon to be victorious americans had a handy airstrip to launch Overlord from. Later 'attack' battles could be lost, BoBritain was war aims vital. In MTO/North Africa only the spitfire served i think? In PTO only P 51s. In Burma/India/China, some of both perhaps. I'v'e not heard that either made a critcial contribution. This paragraph is guesswork.
Checking …. Spitfire operations supported legitimate lawful plan, no hygiene factors like corruption in procurement, good professional leadership, protection of human rights, healthy concern for pilots and ground crew, no association with costly screw ups. Sets good example for later generations. No false heroics involved. So no reason to forbid the award.
Yup, Spitfire is 'best' of the two.
Part two, is there a better? Has to be No even though i'm tempted by american PTO planes (Corsair?) none served as consistently on critical make or break missions as did spits in 1940-41 – unless someone knows rather than me guessing. Contribution of the Hawker Hurricane to BoBritain is noted but not accepted, many Hurricanes shot down Axis fighters in the thick of the fray but the acknowledged top fighter was known to Germans to be spitfre, and air superiority/intercept is the question in hand, not general all aircraft kill ratios or any other measure as such. The spit + hurricane combo denied air superiority to the luftwaffe in BoBritain in a way Hurricanes alone could not. Because of performance, speed , climb rate etc. they were the target of preference for the 109 pilots. Refer to TV intervew with D Bader, and others. references to follow.
My untechnical best answer, sorry.
Probably P 51 D had better figures on exiting the war than any legitimate heir to the spitfire mantle – but as said the conflict was over then , just an academic question wrt WWII.
That would be 'Chain Home' radar. Something ACM Dowding insisted on in the pre-war period. He was also responsible for NOT sending Spitfires to the Battle of France. They were too few and too precious.
In the end, to answer which was 'better' doesn't relay on statistics and specifications, performance, mission style, and combat roles. It comes down to the intangibles of design style, aesthetics, cultural attachment, character, personality, sound, smell, and love.
The question is not which one would you fly against a FW190, but which one would you marry, for the rest of your life?
The Spitfire is the talented and beautiful girl-next-door, the Mustang (P-51D/K I'm referring to) is the well-engineered movie pin-up girl. I'd always go for the girl-next-door :)
Nicely put Robin!
Yes, a good thought.
Of course, to any red blooded American male the P 51 is the curvaceous, cheerleading cow-girl smelling of clean living, prospective motherhood and apple pie – needs flattery and continuous attention sure. But when it counts, she is even more reliable than your Peacemaker. Whereas the Spitfire is the icy, classy, expensive dame, nimble enough to lindy hop all night, but then you call a cab for her because she's certainly no fun to talk to. Which one of those do you marry?
Sorry bbear I can't help myself:)
Not many of the mustangs people, Americans, saw her in combat. Half of the English people saw the spitfire at work above them, if they were game to come out of the shelters. Seems to me the mustang was the one flitting around overseas while the spit was desperately, clawing, biting and slashing at her enemies defending her homeland, above her homeland.
I pass a certain memorial every morning on the way to work. This morning we had a fantastic sunrise. I had to stop and look around and absorb the atmosphere.
As the sun broke through the horizon I was standing next to a Spitfire and Hurricane on top of the Whie cliffs! Luckily I had my camera and recorded the moment to show to my Children and Grandchildren, and Facebook friends!
If only I knew how to upload these images!
As I walked around I past the 'Our Wall' dedicated to the few, then walking over to the statue of a seated pilot I noticed the French coast barely twenty miles across the Channel. Iooked to the NE and saw Manston very close on top of the hill at Thanet. Behind me was Hawkinge no more than two miles away.
Whats the point of all this emotional nonsense, well Europe, Northern Europe, is different to the US. Everything is much closer, Enemy occupied France was only 20 miles from our most forward airfields. In 1940 The front line was our community/city/town. What protected the UK was a few planes and even fewer pilots, from all over the world. Thats why the Spitfire is important and of course she looks darned fine too!
yes , quite a moment. Thank you. Worthy of a painting as well as a picture. I am gettting the remembrance and respect, the wonder and aesthetic appreciation. I also sense a certain 'dawn is the hope of man' about the encounter.
I've never been to that memorial but i've seen pictures. I seem to remember that seated pilot looking out with a certain sense of – what i couldn't say, mission, belief, even of 'deliverance' – but something.
The intangibles in some ways are the most important things. Who ever 'weighed' freedom or could put a scewdriver on justice?
And no doubt about it, the Spitfire looks great.
As i am a Brit i understand exactly what you mean. My only concern is that our American friends see things differently and to keep the alliance i want too see things that way aswell. Not instead of, but aswell as.
thanks again.
I know very little about the gunsight but that doesn't surprise me that much otherwise the hellcat and corsair would have similar gunsights and i don't think they did. navy liked different stuff anyways. This reminds me of other things americans "borrowed" from england.
The first Gyro Gunsights were developed at Farnborough in England, and were tenaitively available from early 1941. These were known as the Mk 1!
These early models were steadily improved and the Mk II appeared. This was manufactured by Ferranti in England.
The design was given to Sperry in America and exact copies of the British Mk II were produced for US fighters, these were called K14.
However the Germans captured a intact US P47 with a K-14 fitted. This resulted in the Germans developing the EZ42 which found it's way into the cockpits of Me262's and Fw190's.
The US Navy also had copies of the British MkII sight and called it the Mk18.
fascinating, at the air museum near where i live they have a hurricane a spitfire and a mustang and i noticed they all had similar looking gunsights but not quite the same. the kittyhawk they have has a old school stick and crosshair set up
Hi Thomas, your local museum sounds well stocked with great aircraft! We have the Battle of Britain memorial near us and frequently have fly pasts.
I think early US aircraft had basic 'Ring and Bead' sights. These would have been replaced or supplimented with British 'style' reflector sights. I beleive the P40 retained the ring and bead in case of bulb failure.
Reflector sights work on the same principle as modern day 'Red Dot' or 'Hollographic' sights in that the dot always remains on the target no matter what angle you view from. In the case of British reflector sights they had a number of additional rings for allowing deflection. These rings could be adjusted to correspond with wingspans of various aircraft, thus being an aid to evaluating range.
Gyro gunsights had to be continually adjusted via a turn knob positioned on or near the throttle to correspond with the enemies wingspan, their speed had to be input directly into the sight and was graduated to the type of aircraft whether Bomber or Bf109 or Fw190. Some pilots did not need the help given by this advanced sight and retained their trusted reflector sights, their ability to automaticly compute deflection by eye being faster than their ability to twiddle knobs!
I've just seen one engagement where several fighter types might be compared in combat conditions with real formations, actual commands and similar missions. The German Operationn Bodenplatte – Baseplate 1/1/45 attacked allied airfields in northern europe and at first glance it looks like there was some considerable intercept air engagements with p 51s, spits, p 47. Rather than obsess about spec sheets (which really only apply until real ground crew and operational conditions set in), theoretical availability and what do we mean by 'fast', or examining contemporary assessments and procurement and deployment decisions that are bound by wartime politics…
The factual reports on Baseplate would no doubt require considerable interpretation and authors will disagree – so that's good. Also at this stage luftwaffe opponents were not as they once were, but the same for all allied fighters and the operation was a large sample size. At least the term 'best' would be meaningful and we'd get back to the pilots eye view rather than my 'high command – what does it all mean' track which looked as though it would be disappointingly one sided, non-technical and facile. So Baseplate is what i'll look at next.
I'm determined to find a valid way to assert 'P 51 was best'.
According to my information, using Operation Bodenplatte as an example of fighter effectivness is not as smart as it may seem. All combats occured at low altitude, in addition USAF losses were not acurately admitted by the Americans, and finally USAF kill claims are known to have been exaggerated by at least 60% – in other words over claiming had occured, this was at Asch.
I am sure you are well informed. Besides which I can't find the right kind of precompiled encounter reports or other summary online. There seem to be good books, but the beest seem to come from the German perspective. So doing real research or buying books is beyond my wage range.
By overclaiming kills and underreporting losses we are, i hope just talking about 'fog of war' confusion etc.
I had hoped that such a circumstance would put the planes on some kind of even basis exactly because i think it was largely a low level surprise attack. So the defensive 'scramble, climb to height, intercept' that the spitfire was supposed to excel at and the range advantage of the Mustang would both be neutralised or minimised.
The 'Spec Sheets' cannot be ignored. P51D best climb rate 3200' per minute, the 'improved' P51H best climb rate 3300' per minute.
Compare -
Spit XII (Griffin VI) 4960' per minute
Spit IX (Merlin 66 ) 4700' per minute
Spit XIV (Prototype coverted from an VIII) 5110' per minute
The Spitfire VB much maligned and much mocked by FW190 fans climbed faster than the P51D. The Spitfire IX was still climbing at 2000' per minute at 30.000'.
Skilled pilots of Bf109G6 models whose best climb rate was 3345' per minute, could avoid combat with all US escort fighters by initiating a spiral climb – Heinz Knoke (I flew for the Fuhrer).. This was not an option against a Spitfire – truly the real 'Home-Sick Angel' using American qoutes for their P51!
I'm fine with spec sheets when they tell a clear and uncontested story. I just get weary and wary when it sets off claim/counter claim about who has/hasn't studied etc.
For example i see that in Dowding's dispatch of 1941, after his effecitive dismissal, he reports that the Hurricanes relevant top speed was closer to 305 than 335mph – that's from memory.But that
was a 'political' report…
Also i think US General Spaatz and set up a flyoff between P 61 and mosquito for a role as night fighter July 1944. Whereas the Americans 'tweaked' the P-61 the Brits flying the Mossie maybe played a good tactical game
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/AAF-Night/index.html, http://flgrube1.tripod.com/id337.html
Those are both examples of poorly referenced arguments, and i'm certainly not going to dispute your climb figures.
I guess i'm just familiar with manufacturers promises that under test turn out to be accurate, but only under special conditions. Low load, special preparation, operator must be standing on a quartz crystal with a copper spiked hat on etc.
Numbers can be as biased as any other account, even when collected in laboratory conditions. Just my caution, cynicism and diplomacy. Please ignore me if you wish.
Message understood bbbear! Climb figures are a nightmare as they vary according to altitude!
However a Spit IX would draw away from the Stang at a rate of 25' per second at most altitudes.
Interesting about the P61 and Mossie, I heard similar things, however it was to do with the Brits cheating! Perish the thought!
I hope I don't sound too loyal towards the Spit, its just that they have been so important to the UK.
I did some research on 'Baseplate' as Spit XIV's and Tempests were involved. I gave up in the end as there was a lot of confussion over claims, a lot of Luftwaffe aircraft were downend by ground fire. Also a major air battle occured at Asch airfield which has been the subject of a major TV documentry. Total US claims for air to air encouters were from memory 35, but Luftwaffe records showed 14 losses.
This is not suprising as all that smoke from burning aircraft on the ground etc would cause confusion, I got nowhere with British claims as the AAA units were very active and I think the Allies would have prefered to forget the whole thing. Few Allied pilots were lost and losses from straffing were soon made good.
My main interest is to keep the good name of the Spitfire prominent and defend its legend. I am not a gamer, and am lucky to have access to a lot of factual information. Which I hope is accurate! I might get out at the weekend!
The best English languge book about 'Baseplate' that I have seen is 'Battle of the Airfields' by Norman Franks. This is very expensive to buy now but I managed to obtain a copy from my local library some years ago.
The author is a Brit well known for aviation lit.
The book was exhaustive but I was still non the wiser!
Thank you.That's very interesting nonetheless. I'm sorry I didn't contribute anything. I did see a luftwaffe figure of their losses to their own ground fire of 87 i believe. I understand there was poor communication to their ground forces who didn't expect the attack which went in at low level.
The sources i briefly flashed through on the web seem to rate the Manrho/Putz book 'Bodenplatte: the luftwaffe's last hope'.So the figure above would be a third hand version of that.
The only way i can think of to make further progress would take a PhD student or two to go through the original data looking for 'Ranger' (right term?) mission reports… But if for late wartime conditions we can't even trust the loss reports then there's not even a theoretical hope of getting a comparative estimate of kill ratio or encounter survival or anything else to enhance or challenge the legend.
I am reminded that I did see a similar 'Battle of Britain' analysis of Hurricane + Spitfire against Bf109 (RAF Historical Society – it looked good to me). For which i'll try to submit a post later in the relevant stream above.
Perhaps after all it is in the nature of the business that the Spitfire needs to face a deadly opponent in order to prove her worth. I'll do my best. P 51s forever!
Was there anything better than the Spitfire/P-51 in WWII ? As an overall package of performance and character. If we stick to the ETO where these greats performed, I don't think so. Neither the FW190D nor the P-47D really come close do they, in all honesty? The Mosquito possibly, for performance undoubtedly the Me 262. But, sticking to Merlin engines, the debate now has to be with the Mossie.
I wonder how the Westland Whirlwind really would have fared if it could have had the Merlins that it so needed, instead of those incendiary Peregrines???
The Whirlwind was an interesting aircraft, I feel that with Merlins it would have been better than the P38 as a dogfighter. It's overall size, being a similar size to other single engined fighters of the day would have given it a significantly improved role rate over the P38. This being one of the main reasons for the P38's presumed poor showing over Europe when up against smaller fighters particularily at low altitude.
The range of the Whirlwind, approximately double the Spitfire, is interesting also, however rate of climb was poor and not as good as the P38L which was almost in the same league as British and German fighters.
However the Whirlwinds small airfrane would probably made the fitment of Merlins too difficult without major redesign and ultimately a completely different aircraft – something similar to a Mosquito!
Yes, it is very much a wot-if? but the Peregrines weren't a small engine by any means. Perhaps the fitment of Merlins with leading-edge radiators that it already had (like the Mosquito) would have been accommodated. Again, as you say, the rate of climb may have been a drawback but it was on a par with fighters of the day. It would have made a fine fighter-bomber at least (as it proved anyway), though perhaps not an air superiority fighter. Perhaps a good escort fighter too for the Blenheims and Whitleys and Wellingtons over closer continental targets, before the bombers went on to night missions.
The point is that is was there already and in service by the BoB in 1940 and who knows how it could have developed. Pity it was never given over to Bristol or some other manufacturer to develop, as Westland couldn't really handle it at Yeovil. As it was, Westland had their hands full building Spitfires (more than any other company apparently) and designing Seafires (with Merlin engines…) and the odd Lysander or two I suppose.
It's successor was the high-altitude Welkin, which had Merlins, and had a fine performance but by then the Mossie was fulfilling the roles.
One of the RAF's serious lost opportunities.
Sorry Robin, I had forgotten about the Welkin! The Whirlwind would have developed into a wonderful aircraft, I have seen that there is at least one claim for a Fw190 destroyed in the air, I will research this further and try and establish the types acomplishments.
Hi Robin, I have established the names and records of four pilots who had aerial success with the Whirlwind, one with 137 Squadron and three with 263 Squadron. I have also established three further pilots associated with 263 Squadron that had four confirmed aerial victories.
However these three including one Canadian may have had some of their successes whilst flying Typhoons – more research needed!
If anyone is interested I will put this info up
I know i'm not technically qualified to speak etc. But, in case you missed it rather than deliberately ignoring it as it probably deserves – I have a problem with putting any Axis power option Fw190 or other any where near the 'best' list. I know it is a long time ago and that objectivity is highly prized but I fear that to examine any question of quality without its historical context and value puts the analysis close to the 'gaming' world. The question of' which could best shoot up refugees' isn't far enough away.The Nazi fetishists, conspiracy theorists, word trivialisers, deniers and gamers worry me when considering this history. I think even true technology devotees who want accuracy and to bear true witness are wise to be cautious. That's twice now so i'll shut up.
Hurrah for the rugged and deadly P-47, the beautiful Spitfire, the cool looking gull-wing Corsair, but in my book it's the P-51. I have but one one reason for picking the Mustang as number one. My dad, who flew 35 missions from August '44 to January '45 as a radio operator/gunner in the 91st BG (H) said so. He loved his "little friends" and gave them all the credit for his safe return. Dad would comment that any P-51 pilot he should ever meet would never have to buy a drink. Although I don't think he ever met any Mustang jocks, he meant it.
I have one P-51 story of a personal nature I'd like to pass on. About 20 years ago while attending an air show in Pennsylvania I was video taping the start up of a P-51 to catch that wonderful sound. I stood by a chain-link fence next to one other person about 20 yards from the plane. As the P-51 began to taxi away I noticed the man, an older gentleman, appeared to be reacting emotionally to the scene. Just to be friendly, I said something like "Some plane huh?" He turned to me, with tears in his eyes, and told me he had been a mechanic on P-51s in England during the war, and this was the first he'd seen one since then. He really was quite moved by the whole experience. We quickly parted, wishing each other a good day, but I'll never forget his "love" for his P-51s.
My Father had close and intimate contact with PR Spitfires in the Far East, and later with Brigands and Mosquitoes. He tells a story about having to force land in a Brigand with 60lb Rockets onboard – why they wern't jettisoned he would never say!
When I was a child my Father always fascinated me by being able to identify aircraft by their engine note, he also had a fantastic stock of period pics which I would paw over!
Lovely story about the Veteran and the P51, in this country emotions are heightened whenever a Spitfire or two appear.
I'm interested! but perhaps not in this forum – as we are digressing somewhat from our spits and mustangs. Perhaps we can start another forum.
I've just thought of this and I am geniunly intrested in this thought. If both planes the spitfire and mustang were to be outfitted to do one thing shoot down planes. Basicly changing the D into a short range interceptor, different wings, bigger supercharger, less weight, etc. who would win that dogfight? I think the reason the Spitfire was so much better is it was a single mission fighter with some variants where as the mustangs where used for several things. Escort, Targets of oppoutunity, some ground attack/support, and dogfighting
I think if all these changes were made it might not be a Mustang any more! The Mustang was very clean aerodynamiclly. However it's wing was of a laminar flow design which whilst being very clean did not provide the same air pressure below the wing – in other words 'lift' as a normal aerofoil wing. Thus rate of climb would always be below those exerting the same forward power but sporting a regular aerofoil wing.
Stalling speed as well is higher and other issues too complicated to go into.
However later British Fighters sported 'Laminar' flow wings, however their rate of climb was not affected. The Tempest could 4700' per minute, almost as good as a Spitfire XIV!
ahhhh you said something I think some people don't realize. If those changes were made it wouldn't be a mustang. one of the reasons i think these two planes were so great was because they both had missions. they were purpose built, later they were used for other things but it was what they were created for that made them special and famous in their own way. Britain needed the fastest most agile fighter to take down as many germans possible. America needed a fighter that was able to help bring bombers home and not get killed themselves. the D was made as an offensive, bring the fight to the enemy, escort fighter and the spitfire was made as an aggressive interceptor that could kill multiple planes in one sortie for the defense of Great Britain.
WW2 in my opinion was the pinnicle of aviation, best designs, best pilots, best sounds, best everything. it was war i know and it was horrible i heard my own grandfathers stories about his days as an army captain in the jungles of the pacific. both planes are revered in their own respect. we imagine spitfires shooting down tons of planes and we imagine mustangs with bombers shooting down everything in it's way.
My understanding is that Spitfires were used for many missions in addition to air superiority. Many MkIX's were designated 'LF', their performance being optimised for low altitude work. Spitfires designated HF were optimised for high altitude combat.
Following D-Day many had bombs slung underneath them and assisted Typhoons with 'Cab Rank' work .
Long range PR (Photo Reconassance) was undertaken by Spits, these were flown by Americans from Mount Farm, Oxfordshire.
The type used for PR duties were the PR Mk XI, these were used in the ETO by the 8th because of problems with the F5. The Spit PR XI was the standard PR Spit during this period and was an adaption of the MKIX.
Sorry for hurried explanation am doing the dinner!
And the best PRU Spitfire was the Mk XIX. Long range, high flying, (Griffon engined tho) and pretty in pink (or in PRU Blue).
Blue for me, plus invasion stripes!
I also realized something about this discussion. Britains think of the spitfire as this savior to the world. some britains probably believe that if it wasn't for the spitfire there would be no world as we know it. Here in America most think that we saved the world single handedly. Not everyone thinks that but i know there are some people that do. I think that subconcious belief tends to bias some people without realizing it. war is a machine and there are components that are needed. the spitfire and mustang are two of the most important parts of the air war. a spitfire can't do a mustangs job and a spitfires job, likewise for the mustang. both were excellent teamates and teamwork will always win.
Hello Thomas.
Firstly just in case there is any doubt, I don't try to ruffle peoples feathers but do try to put my point forward in a well mannered way. If I can't be well mannered I don't answer at all. Okay just making sure people know that about me.
I'll make the point I am looking to make now.
I am not a pommie, but from what I can make out most people there realise they had a bit of help winning the war. I get the impression though there are a few more Americans who do think they could have won the war on their own.
My own impression though is thank god (and I'm an athiest, another group the USA has trouble excepting) for Stalin. The war on the eastern front sucked up German resources like nothing else. And yes, they were helped materially by other allied powers but the majority of resources, by a large margin, came from mother Russia herself.
By the way, I am not a communist, maybe a part time socialist, and believe democarcy is the best system we've worked out so far.
also lets remember the italian resistance that overthrew mussolini and made italy much easier to get through. and all the polish pilots that flew in the raf as well as the eagle squadron. everyone helped that's why it's called a world war.
Thank god for Russia. Hitler certaintly bit off more than he could chew there!
However Russia did have assistance from the 'Lucy' spy ring that fed Stalin with all of Hitlers plans in advance.
Perhaps we could say that if the US had not entered the conflict, all Europe would be speaking Russian!
Nice point J. Eddolls.
We're straying from the point a bit here, but you should do a little reading on Churchill. Among other things he wanted to roll right on into Russia after the war while the English speakers still had the atomic advantage. Maybe not the best idea he had but if FDR had lent a bit more his way the cold war may have been a little less intrusive on Europe. Churchill understood what Stalin was up to much more than FDR did. There is evidence that Stalin respected Churchill more but cultivated a "relationship" more with FDR as he percieved he could manipulate him more effectively. This is just a coment really. Too many "what ifs" for me really go into bat for it.
Intersting Alex, now if Operation Market Garden had succeeded, what if, what if!
Hello J. Eddolls.
I think we'd better let this one rest. The "what ifs" are already starting to make my head hurt:)
Okeydokey, Alex! But what if – - – –
Some years ago I was wathching a TV import that I am sure you will remember called 'Freinds'.. There was a scene where Ross was getting married to an English girl – can't remember her name! An argument occured between the parties and a charachter played by Elliot Gould turned to his wife and said 'if it wasn't for us that lot (meaning Brits) would be speaking German now'.
This comment although meant as a joke, did not go down too well!
I am sure that this one example is not an indication of the average US citizens views but does highlight our differing attitudes.
I guess that as peoples all the English speaking clans tend to be ultra compatative and this can only be healthy. But there is definately something very deep between us which makes us all pull together remarkably well when we have too.
nothing like super competitive people teaming up on one person. Americans and Brits still pull together swapping miltary tech and helping in conflicts. Brits like some of our guns and Americans like alot of vehicles Brits have. Some people don't realize that the british sniper is using an american made barret or remington and barely no americans realize alot of the big trucks the army uses are built by Man
hi sorry to have been absent.
I'll post the case for P 51s tonight hopefully.
I want to put forward something about spitfires that i think i got wrong last time. I need some attention so i will try to make this entertaining, but i'm actually seriously underneath this, asking a question about aviation here:
Is the ace/expert idea of 'superior skill of ace swats loads of rookies and wins the war' outmoded, incomplete or a plain flat out fraud?.
I see 10% of Bf 109s crashed on take off (narrow undercarrieage) and 4% of Spits and Hurries were lost to 'accidents', and i'm guessing many combat kills were assisted by unforced errors of the victim, I assume there were also 'out of fuel' and navigational errors that might be influenced in probability terms by the cockpit workload imposed by the machine…
But i don't see in the specs sheets anything like a number lablelled ‘tolerance of pilot error' or 'high marks for error tolerance’ or any other equivalent (nb tolerance not ‘Stability’).
Serious question When did 'human factors engineering etc' arrive, what is the impact on WW II of the absence of any such formal care, were early designers all brutes to expect so much from pilots?. Except perhaps for Mitchell….
To put my point with even more extreme humour:
Would there ever be a pilots report saying 'killed by my aircraft shedding its wings in protest at my utter folly' or 'killed by my aircraft bobbing up into the e/a's gunsights to punish my ineptitude'. ie any report on fatal unforced error – I suggest these unacknowledged 'intolerance kills' have been unjustly misattributed to skill of the attacking pilot or to 'pilot error on landing/take off' for example.
If the records were corrected, which marvellous machine might come out fully recognized as a 'super ace all on its own with 157 intolerance kills less than its rival' – the ever tolerant, forgiving, responsive Spitfire.
Please accept my humble apologies that this post is overexcited, overlong, uninterpretable or is stupid. If anyone is interested in this 'error tolerant airframes not pilots won the war' kind of idea i can explain later. The first question i have is – do i sound nuts?
I have been absent also! I remember my Father telling me that 10% of RAF aircrew were killed in training. Apparently these figures were witheld at the time.
They probably also with held the chances of a rookie pilot surviving at the time also. And they were considerably less then 90% in the BoB.
i've also looked around training issues. i saw one figure of 1/3rd casualties in training. That must be 1/3rd of each intake, but still.
Raf training at the time was arond 200flying hours, 40 of which were on the fighter itself
EFTS 50 hours
SFTS 100 hours
OTU 40 hours (fighters)
I think that compares with 400 hrs for USAAF equivalent
And the training schools were not supplied with aircraft, ie did'nt have the right ones to train on or enough of those – hmmm…..
Hi there.
Interesting concept to add comment to. I think the spitfire still comes out on top here having fought the BoB with many new raw pilots, and an initial poor understanding of current fighter concepts requiring looser (I apologise for any wrong spelling) formations etc, while the German pilots had come from a nice little training exercise in Spain. The P51 however was fighting over germany with many of those advantages on it side, well trained pilots, some of them especially the ones from the eagle squadrons had some very long standing veterans to lead the way. Some of them didn't even see an enemy plane once in the air. BoB pilots had no problems finding targets etc.
yes indeed, i'll still argue that the P 51formations won the air supremacy battle if any did, but you are right.
Truly in my journey on this forum so far: the more i write the more i read, the more i read the more i learn, the more I learn – oh boy…. The Spitfire walks on water.
And as far as the
" 'coat down first' + Spitfire Public Relations + affection of a gratefful nation accounts for the peculiar British regard for an undergunned beauty"
theory that one soon-to-be-shamed senior commentator from the USA gave us quite early in the forum? – no way.
That 1940s, dewey eyed, romantic propaganda and tub thumper movie "The First of the Few"? That last line "They can't take the spitfire's mitch"? Utter nonsense of course – and actually an understatement. Judging only from what i've read so far.
Good flying never killed [an enemy] yet. (bbear says – Wrong!)
— attributed to Major Edward 'Mick' Mannock, RAF, ranking British Empire fighter ace of W.W. I. 61 victories.
Nothing is true in tactics. (bbears comment – you bet!) — Commander Randy 'Duke' Cunningham, USN, first American ace in Vietnam.
The attacker should always have the initative, most BofB combats took place across a front about three English Counties broad, about 100 – 150 miles. To approach, Luftwaffe aircraft only had to cross 20 -50 miles of water, depending upon their target and entry point.
Whatever way you look at it, the Luftwaffe should have been all over Fighter Command like a rash. Radar although important would not have provided enough warning for raiders crossing at the Dover Straits (RAF Swingate). It has also been said that the Luftwaffe lacked a heavy Bomber. Well yes they were twin engined but they carried as many bombs as most US 'Heavies'.
I think that the British/Commonwealth pilots who faced the Luftwaffe first did a very fine job, later on in the battle pilots of other countries joined the fight, most famously in 12 Group. However that is a subject in it's own right and needs to be reviewed to finish a lot of misconceptions.
Yes the BofB was the most important battle of WW2 – in my opinion!
Oh and there was no American aircraft used, the Browning .303 was American. However the 'de wilde' ammunition used, developed in Britain (copied by the Americans as API) was extremely effective and devastating at short range against any air to air target.
The Spitfire was top of the pile in 1939 and was still there in 1945.
yes, and now i've calmed down even more. I've been checking a few testimonys about just how fatigued, shocked, overloaded, undertrained and hard pressed the pilots really were at that time. It was extreme. Every surrounding factor in the wider world for the pilots was in mayhem, chaos, insufficiency. The luftwaffe appearing at will, the need to deal with great numbers of bombers and simultaneously with great fighter formations of 109s led by the greatest figures of all.
The Germans should have been easily the victors. And the reason they did'nt win must partly lie in the handling and flight characteristics of the Spitfire. Even if no-one mentions it, not even the museum curator. I'll need to hit the books tomorrow.
I"ll be looking for testimony that Mitchell and his group really intended and understood their coup of handling and stability. It would make them excellent and human if they 'saw the next fight coming'. Perhaps the initial test flights might be a good clue. I'd also want to know why the Supermarine team designed for pilots and no-one else did. And the more i think about how narrow a notion a Kill-ratio is the more i'm looking for an alternative for that too.
Interesting stuff bbear, your next instalment will be eagerly awaited.
My research has taken me into the realms of statistics where 'Kill-ratio' has arisen. Ratio is in my experience a very American term used to measure performance, in a previous life I had to report on credit ratios to a Texan Vice President! Aerial victories interested me no end when I discovered exactly how many aircraft were shot down and crashed within just a few miles of my home – it was hundreds!
Americans love to qoute statistics, I tend to treat them with suspicion, particularily when the figures are quoted by the writers. For example a US P47 pilot is on record, in a web site, quoted by someone on this forum, claimed that the Thunderbolt was responsible for the aerial destruction of 11,000 enemy aircraft. Utter tosh! I know through my research that the entire 8th Fighter Commands aerial victories amounted to a little over 5000, this was on all types including Spitfires!
J. eddollls, "eagerly awaited"! – I am relieved and blushing slilghtly – compliment indeed from the last of the forum elders to stick with this.
I'll deal with the statisitcs question here and deal with handling and hluman history below in the main stream.
I don't think the term 'making a kill' is quite fitting for most wwii combat. In ww i contests of manoevre and countermanouvre well inside the human frame's tolerance i'd say it was like 'air born pig sticking', so a 'kill' and 'making' is ok. But in wwii it was more surprise or endurance or exploiting a momentary error. The speed differences were beyond the normal capacity to react except in close turning pursuit or unless you had planned the surprise or had it handed to you. Any clilmb or dive manouevre soon went to the machine with the best properties. Big sky, high speed, small planes.
So i have no qualms about treating kills and kill losses with contempt. It is conventional to award kills to pilots but just as valid to award them to designers and Group Commanders in WW 2. Dogfights in this era as i've heard them, are a matter of skilled set up of a squadron leader and Group calling the scramble orders at the right time. After that there was mayhem, reaction time, endurance, selecting turn, rolll, climb dive etc – but no completiion of high/lo yo yo etc.
And for each choice the 'boost' of spitfire handling favoured the brits.
So for publicity i'd say The difference between German and UK losses is the efffective number of kills made by RJ Mitchell, shared with Group commander K. Parks or whatever where appropriate. The Hurricane share is a different problem to work out.
I recommend: all pilots to get bravery awards, even those killled in training, and pilots to be well paid for technical achievement to and from combat zone and in set up of the attack. But in the thick of it – just respected for reflexes and tenacity – not skill as such. I'm thinking it is more like an infantry man in close quarters combat.
Where skill has degraded or other factors have reduced skill factors to zero – the last pilot to 'lose control' wins by virtue of his machine. And that is the battle of errors or contest of faults as i call it. In which the design that allows for human lilmits wins.
that is RJ Mitchell (supermarine spitfire Mk 1/II) scores 377 kills. More than any 'ace or expert' on the old scoring.
that should mix it up.
It is my lasting impressioin that fighter pilots are vain and petulant about their skills.
I have been following the twists and turns of this discourse with avid interest – but I haven't really felt the opportunity to 'plunge into the fray' as it were in case I get caught up in a dogfight without enough ammunition (always like to save a little for the flight home…)
I'm new to this Historical blogging business and I realise that it can take up all ones spare time. However, I am humbled by the time and effort taken by some of the players here, in putting the best possible information and argument out there. Particularly bbear, I don't know what you are on but I'd like to have a bit of whatever it is you're having: although there is an element of obsession there to get to the 'bottom' of things, you certainly find the time to express it to the readers – of which I hope there are more than just you, J.Edolls and myself!
I've been out of it for a while but coming back I saw your comment about why 'Supermarine designed for the pilot in handling and flight characteristics) and others didn't' – What has always struck me is that Supermarine came up with a fighter at all, let alone a champion one. Although Mitchell designed the Schneider trophy racers, and was therefore very aware of 'the competition' of rapidly changing aeronautical developments, he was also responsible for the Walrus, not long before the Spitfire. The only other experience Supermarine and Mitchell had with a fighter design was the Type 224 ( a sort-of Hawker Henly-Stuka marriage with a sporty open cockpit) The MOD went for the Gladiator to be safe.
My point is that Mitchell and Supermarine approached the fighter design with more originality and not constrained by being in the 'box' of British fighter design thinking. It was still an inspirational event in the mind of Mitchell (and inspired by his team). Did he perhaps have the feeling that he was aiming at his creative pinnacle and this was going to be his swan song? (Can't help thinking of the dreamy Leslie Howard movie and his romantic notions of his 'Spit-fire bird'! He wanted to design a the ultimate *flying* machine for pilots to fly and others to marvel at. I don't think Sidney Camm at Hawker, Geoffrey De Havilland, or HP Folland at Gloster were thinking quite the same way (or Dutch Kindleberger for that matter). They were not thinking of an aircraft to be the 'best flyer' but maybe moreso of the best gun platform, the best endurance, the best to suit the specifications laid down. The other fighter designs of the day were not of the 'inspirational' type (excepting maybe the Bf109) but certainly not the Hurricane, the P-40, the Gladiator, (or the Defiant!!!). Remember the Spitfire WAS the first of the (Allied) great fighter designs, the P51 came afterwards – after the experience of the Spitfire and the Bf109 – and all the lessons learned from them.
Mitchell was the right person in the right place at the right time in the right company with the right attitude, I don't think medals should be awarded, or 'kills' should be attributed to the designer. It is to be celebrated with humble admiration of serendipity and the convergence of luck with inspiration and perseverance.
As for 'seeing the next fight coming' I am positive that Mitchell and Vickers (Supermarine) did and they knew about the Messerschmidt designs even then. they knew it was going to be an air war but I can't see that they knew precisely what was required. They wanted to put the best of British flying design around the best of British engine design – the Merlin (wasn't that the original basis for this blog thread??!!).
The P-51 was the right design for the right engine also. and Kindleberger has to be admired for having the deign in his back-pocket, as it were, and force the issue of not making P-40s for Britain but push his own inspirational (?) design to them – albeit with that OTHER engine. However, I've always thought the P-51 init's early for to be a pregnant, Merlin-engined Messerschmidt anyway (a comment of praise by the way – but not to Kindleberger and co. I suppose).
o
Sorry to ramble on. I've been caught up in bbear's enthusiasm. I don't feel the need for statistics. Many of which, as you say, are spurious. Though they may be technically correct they are often contextually corrupt.
Nice going bbear, actually something different and interesting. I'd like to add comment to one of your statements as I think there is more to be said of it.
The statement in question is
"It is my lasting impressioin that fighter pilots are vain and petulant about their skills"
While I do in general agree with your statement, the interesting thing is I don't think it can be applied to them all, especially some of the greats who lead formations (someone above them apparently know what was going on), these men appeared to be much more effective in the fighting than their own "kills" reflected, some on the allied side actually didn't claim kills after a while to try and stay in an active position.
Names that come to mind are people like Erich Hartmann who is on record as saying his greatest achievement by far is to never to have lost a wingman, this is from the man who could easily make a claim as the greatest on kills alone. He was always trying to keep the new guys alive in an effort to improve the effectiveness of his formations as a whole.
Another one was Don Blakeslee, started on spitfires, then the P47 (first to get a kill in one a bit of a "humerous" story about that one, then mustangs, the spitfire was his bench mark by the way. Was another one who seemed to last.
I think the vain mindset was needed by most fighter pilots to survive, and it is only the special ones who saw though its failings.
Other people were some of the occupied nationalities like the poles, I think many of them just flew on hatred alone and weren't really interested in the lime light, just wanted to kill germans.
There was also the public relations people who must have been stoking them up also. Remember a lot of these guys were only in their late teens early twenties and highly impressionable if someone said they were good.
The whole mindset and how the fighter pilots at the time survived and somehow stayed sane I just find quite interesting.
Thanks all for the encouragement. I hope we can finish this soon.
I'll respond to you fellas here and develop the argument more in the mainstream.
J. Eddols : yes absolutely. But there's lots of americans. They like guns and numbers. They own guns, use endless stats on baseball eetc. So its important that we let them idolise guns and numbers – because they have large numbers of guns!
Both J. Eddols and Robin. Yes agreed. I'm obviously off on one with the numbers racket.
But that said, i'm afraid i have a mission. It is no longer enough for me to come to private, humble appreciatiions. If no-one dares to correct the record – RJ, Kinkead, Brinton, all the few who are listed as 'pilot error' They'd all be in the dark – if we're right – and if we're not right we should be put right.
The spitfire must have it's full merit, in public. If we cant do it with a number, we must try to do it by ensuring the public 'story' is correct. Any way we can.
Alex, agreed. Not vain and peevish, that was wrong, but perhaps vulnerable, rivalrous, volatile, scared. Rivalries i can understand. and no fighter pilot is going to be tremendously diplomatic. But for the likes of Brinton – the cold shoulder, as though they were quarantined, contaminated. Skill is a matter of prowess and status perhaps? They can't afford to be associated too much? They have to deny loss of skill and instead call it 'combat fatigue' or 'performance degradation'? The combat mind set is not easy for me to follow.
To continue — more calmly, from my 98 posting.
Using the insight that J Eddolls had around 92.2 posting. The specifications sheets (from Jane's or what have you) are never ignored in these deliberations.
Combined with Ron P one of the Mike's and a few others from 42 to about 49. When the aircraft performance is small then the variation of the pilot skills/aptitudes will determine which is the best air system.
From which I have taken the logically nessary corollary: When pilot skill is exactly equal whatever remains in the design of each kind (P 51 or Spitfire) determines absolutely which is the best.
I end part 1 of my explanation by selecting a test case that should illluminate my point. I believe that my next post will either convince everyone or loose the support of everyone. To make sure i keep you all on board i will apply the test case at first to performance specifications records (including Jane's). I'll propose a 'correction for circumstances' to the specs. I'll then go on to extend the same logic to the 'batttle-mechanics' of fatal unforced errors. Then to wider matters.
The test case in question will be the worst pilot in the world. Deadmeat.
From my last.
Considering the 'speed' specification.
Assume a pair of test verified speed figures for a Bf109 and a Spifire are chosen from the set of all such figures for every variant of either.Assume the choice has been made such that the maximum speed is equal between the machines.
Now remove the test pilot from the cockpit and replace them with our favourite 'Deadmeat' pilot. We have introduced unforced errors.
I'm asserting that pilot skill is identical at the moment in the action when they are both zero. By imagining the air path of the two fighters in 'straight and level flight' in one dimension, up/down, i can in my mind shift the time base of the 'strip graphs' thus created so that an error in one path matches the commitment of an error in the other. That is, by successive imagined reiterations of the 'alignment' process i will create a set of zero skill pairs of events. These pilot error pairs will coinicide in time but not nature or severity, by which i mean both large and small. Errors like overshoot on the small side and fatal miscorrection on the other.
Deadmeat is as inadequate in one as he is in the other. For the moment lets assume wrongly that the rate production of errors will be the same but not the degree.
The spitfire has fogiving, tolerant, light, graceful, perfect pilot characteristics.
For as long as Deadmeat can continue straight and level flight at high speed, the spitfire is affected less by his errors and the 109 (harder to pilot) more. The air path of the spitfire is thereby shorter, many drag effects, etc etc. So the spitfire top speed in the direction of travel is more.
In your imagination, apply the same concept to all other pilot controlled factors. These would include maximum roll, turn etc.
Now repeat the same process with the best 109 at any time for each criterion, matched with its chronolgical contemporary. That is pick the contest which most favours the 109.
The result shuld be that you are convinced that with Deadmeat at the controls the Spitfire wins every category at all periods of the war. Because of it's flying 'grace'.
I'll pause for comments. And in case i didn't mention it before i am no expert and i only state things this way for the sake of clarity. Please be sceptical.
I apologise for my long posts which may appear soon. No matter how i searched i couldn't find references.
Now i find lots of material under Handling characteristics (precision and effort) and Flying characteristics (mostly stability with controls in neutral position). Unfortunatley this does not say anything about 'tolerance of errors directly' but at least i don't have to try to explain how brilliant i think Mitchell and Shenstone (wing designer) were and why on my own.
Here's something about the effect of pilot limitation on nominal specs while in combat, its the section on manoeverability,
http://freespace.virgin.net/john.dell/spitcom.htm
it seems a good short summary, it doesn't seem quite right or perhaps not complete. But i think this and other references i have now
(http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin AD0689722 on pilot workload and precision :handling qualities
and
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin ADA484360 'The better the handling qualities (HQ) of an aircraft, the more likely a pilot will be able to accomplish the design mission.'
“Requirements for Satisfactory Flying Qualities of Airplanes,” NACA TR 755, 1943
performance and handling http://history.nasa.gov/SP-468/ch5-2.htm
spitfire performance testing: http://www.spitfireperformance.com
Together should show you that Handling and Flight Characteristics have been significant in the debate and not mentioned directly so far.
The reason i'm harking on is because these 'qualitative properties' are what the Spit is famous for but as theres no 'statistic' we'll have trouble convincing the USA that our lovely plane is worth any notice at all. If any american ever does start listenting – one look at the pop-gun armament – no sale.
I'm very impressed that human limits to performance were known in the 1920's (eg G-LOC), design criteria specified at the earlilest 1943, Shenstone had expeience from Germany, that Mitchell and Shenstone were practicing and preparing from about 1931 on this line, ie perhaps 7 years before the first definitions, that the Vickers Board backed supermarine to build the first prototype Spit – built on these pilot friendly lines – as a matter of commercial faith (ie A Plunge). I'm also impressed that the Government/RAF chose to commit to the project early on. … Such a great story.
Extra medals for Mitchell would be in order just for that for a start.
True style, effective result, possibly the single most influential object other than A bombs – and completely under appreciated even in the UK, even by me – thus my overexcitment.
And as Shenstone said '…and it looked nice too.". They both seem rather embarassed to have designed something beautiful. They were just being practical engineers really.
Once again, apologies for my 'born again Spitfire' ranting.
from T.Wades tests in 1946 Comparative Performance of Fighter Aircraft
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/sl-wade.html
"
The squadron pilot is sometimes the worst offender in this respect, as nothing delights him more than being able to prove that his squadron’s aircraft are superior in every respect to his rivals. In doing so, he commits a very forgivable sin and one, which only his unfamiliarity with another type can be blamed.
He is most naturally, far more concerned with what he can do with his own aircraft in the air, and his conviction that the Spitfire, for example is better than the Mustang is largely based on his own experiences. Moreover, his yardstick will be very different from a Mustang pilot, for example, who measures his aircrafts capabilities by its ability to carry out long range escort work, whereas a Spitfire pilot is more impressed by rate of climb and turning ability. "
he mentions rivalry and commercial interest and caution on quoting stats and general scepticism.
in short a good summmary of the forum so far – and 55 years ago.
and even at that time, he talks of turning circle but not handling or pilot performance limitiation, though he must have known both.
hmmmm…..
We are left with handling and flying characteristics as the only possible knock down Spit advantages.
1931:Schneider cup
Lt 'Gerry' Brinton RN (aged 26) dies on take off flying a Supermarine S6A in southhampton waters- 'pilot error', cough, cough, shuffle shuffle ..better forgotten
Several other pilots die or are injured
Britain wins the trophy outright.No more such races are run.
Mitchell awarded CBE aged only 36, gives speeches…
Shenstone (27?) joins the team (slide rule wielding wing specialist whose existence spelt the end for mitchells more 'freehand and hope' methods – i know i'm summarising wildly – just 'smell this')
Mitchell was singularly close to his pilots – how would you feel?
1935
The 224 prototype is not going well
The Vickers boss calls Mitchell : "build the best fast interceptor killing machine, no government order, no ministry interference, no limitations, you have a free hand, build the best"
B. Shenstone is your junior partner and very hep to the latest German design thoughts, knew what Germany was becoming?……
You are a race bred, successful, professional engineer. What is your motiviation to project from the idea that modern planes are 'too fast for mortal man to fly' to 'force protection by superior handling' and thus to coach the eqully impressed Shenstone to 'put one through for Brinton' and accept no compromise or 2nd best until you had the perfect pilots plane. You are aware of 'battle fatigue' from personal experience. You have colon cancer. You are now 41 and will be dead within two years – but you only know 'soon'.
There had to be some reason for the immaculate and exceptional Combat winning properties of the Mk 1. Is this a plausible one? I've knowinlgy 'skated' over the facts and dates to get this out early.
The first thourough references i can find on Handling and Fatigue come from around 1969. Are there any earlier sources? Were Shenstone and Mitchell that far beyond the curve?
I've read what i can but i need more criticism, if this fanciful speculation 'flies' for now I will have to 'call someone' to do proper research before the last witness dies. Any ideas who?
Guys,
This is the earliest reference i can find to a practice of 'bearing the human in mind' when designing. So it looks as though Mitchell was ahead of the game. Also the words related to this field would not have been fully defined. Unless anyone knows better i'll stop searching for contemporary examples of what we think Mitchell was up to.
Ergonomics 1940's: World War II marked the development of new and complex machines and weaponry, and these made new demands on operators' cognition. The decision-making, attention, situational awareness and hand-eye coordination of the machine's operator became key in the success or failure of a task. It was observed that fully functional aircraft, flown by the best-trained pilots, still crashed. In 1943, Alphonse Chapanis, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, showed that this so-called "pilot error" could be greatly reduced when more logical and differentiable controls replaced confusing designs in airplane cockpits.
I also found a handful of suggestive refernces in Gordon Mitchells biography of his father.
Brinton was told several times to hold the stick back on take off, but by the way he badly 'porpoised' it sounds as thought the rest of the team concluded he did not heed the order so it was pure pilot error. They reassured Mitchell just as the earlier team had done for Kinkead's death. According to Gordon 'RJ' put it behind him. But i don't buy it.
Although he put up a 'practical engineer', 'heart and soul' front, his wife tells a different story. Sensitive, always worried not exceited when a new plane was tried.
Later when he was being feted: He pullled out of one national speech and made a recording later instead. And at one speech in his hometown he didn't come on to the stage and was found elsewhere hiding.
And we know he was so good at 'brave face' that no one at Supermarine knew he was sick until very near the end. However i think it is likely that his boss Robert Mclean knew and if so that would fit with his supporting Mitchell so strongly to stop wasting time on the 224 type and go for what he believed in – what became the type 300.
That's enough on motive for now. Also for silence on the subject of making it handle to compensate/forgive/fail gracefully/inform/train/nurture pilots. There were several things his team didn't know, and the changes would be subtle and reasonable in other ways. I would think Shenstone and Smith would have guessed. And Quill the test pilot said he always wanted to talk about handling after a test.
But it doesn"t seem he gave it the 'big sell' either. Dowding was the key procurement officer for the air ministry. No mention of anything like 'pilot based design' in the records for them that i can see. Perhaps he was glad all pilots liked it and gave it their eager support without him having to explain.
And there is no such ambitiion mentioned in the Gordon Mitchell biography, which is the most detailed i"ve flipped through so far.
And not a hint in Mutt or Quills testimony that lets on that Mitch had such a specific objective.
Of course all the features could be accidental or purely mechanistic – but to get perfect balance of piloting factors doesn't come without effrort. and RJ was the last to waste time….
I have to say i'm still convinced, RJ designed a machine that took all the lessons from Schneider in mind, including the shortcomings of pilots with respect to speed and reaction, G-Loc and stiffness/ease of use. Many factors, including cockpit arrangements. But mostly handling.
I'll look back at testimony and see why the Few didn't credit RJ even more with design for fatigue/error/skill limitation as a combat tool.
Nearly there.
This should close off the root of the difference in handling question.
from a Messerschmidt Biography
Hans Hackman, a close friend of Milch was killed testing the prototype Messerschmitt M20 transport plane. Milch was incensed by Messerschmitt's lack of remorse for the death his friend,
…
His early aircraft were all prone to failure, often with tragic loss of human life. Indeed it is hard to think of any other aircraft designer with such a record of disaster!
and he was connected politically…
Mitchell despite my last post fantasies was famously careful about safety, friendly and jolly (and privately very sensitive) to the test pilots and Schnieder pilots. All his designs including the monster racers flew well in the air. So i think his use of all that care and experience would find a natural and conclusive expresssion in the Spitfire. His last gift as it were. and yes i choose to believe he did understand what such an advantage would mean facing his known deadly rival
W. Messerschmtt and the 109 (and his junior designer was a noted pilot – Lusser) were apparently not well liked by initial test pilots, and w know about the on the ground losses (1500 over the war period, 10% of airframes employed). Yes that makes sense,Lusser as a race/combat pilot would be aggressive regarding dangers to the less skilled? Not proven, but plausible perhaps? By reputaion the 109 was deadlly in the hands of an experienced pilot but a bit of work for a novice to handle.
I hadn't realised how parallel the biographies of the men and the advent of the designs were.
Now back to the more technical/combat stuff. But an interesting diversion?
I'm afraid i am just boring now but i'll continue to the end as promised. I'll try to wrap up and then summarise. Three posts and i hope to finish things today.
First – The P 51 mark B,C,D aka Mustang II,III, these were the best at the time of their deployment.That is they are the best piston powered day fighters (intercept and intruder) from WWII event though they did not serve throughout.
The best do i say? Let me count the ways:
1 Performance figures: ( RAF Wade direct post war analysis and by extension to the time of the first introduction of B,C types) . The Mustang was the only fighter to enjoy a significant advantage over its Axis adversaries (except Komet and Me 262). It was faster, not quite a high flyer but considering all withall, such a speed difference is decisive. From the first contact over Poland/Pearl Harbout to the last gasps the machine with height, speed and firepower wins over the 'aerobat'. Most kills without loss are suprise attacks.
Speed can be traded for height in a shallow climb. Any form of disengagement puts the victim at a disadvantage. That is all it takes to be supreme. At most times the Spit had a similar advantage, but the P 51 had it from day 1 of it's use in combat to the end and had more of that advantage over the Axis forces.
2 Quanitities, mass produced and flown by prolifically supplied pilots of the US. Secure resupply. It all goes together.
3. Range – i wanted this performance factor separate. Range enables supremacy contest and ground assault accross the whole of enemy territory pretty much. The first time any participant had managed this persistently. That is the 'area' war of air power rather than 'line' war of ground forces was fully completed for the first time ever in history- Theatre air supremacy without ground occupancy. It is a strategic matter, you see.
4. Unequalled: The spitfire and other like contestants don't figure in this, the range and number of the Mustang was such that 'standing patrols' for defensive purposes could if necessary beat any 'fast climbing, turning, interceptor'.And mostly it wasn't necessary. Manoevring is irrelevant as the Mustang can avoid it with speed/shallow climb. Good RT and sheer numbers of pilots 'Mk 1 eye ball air radar' means the enemy contact is rarely lost. Good RT equipment allow co-ordination sufficient to ensure that contact is predominantly finished at the Mustang's choice. So the Spit and others were redundant or nearly so.
5 Even allowing the logical chain of 'Fate of Europe' depends on BoB victory which depends on Sptifire (which is dubious to say the very least). You cannot win a war by retaining air superiority over your own territory! The P 51 specifically and the USAAF in general established air SUPREMACY in ETO western front and thus enabled victory by land manoeuvre/occupation. before Stalin/Soviet Russia dominated mainland Europe entirely. So the P 51 was the most vital tool to western allied war aims. The Pacific was different but parallel. It would be bizarre to have a machine from any other nation considered 'best'.
The Polish monoplanes, Hurricanes, French, Chinese, Russian and in particular the Spitfire might together be said to be the GREATEST fighters – I'm guesing that together they downed the most axis planes and pilots, lost by attrition gained by 'scorched earth' or 'another victory like this and we're finished' effect. They took the brunt of the early Axis attack often in extreme or untenable positions and inspired the general populations – in the case of the UK, possibly the world the Spit was a vital tool of propaganda – as the 'one that hit back', the worm that turned etc. Plus each of these 'target tugs with semi lethality' have particular advantages the P 51 doesn’t have. Turning, climbing, handling, cost etc. But this is war not an aerobatic contest or running a commercial airline.
Nobility is not victory, and fine looking wings and poetic words ‘butter no parsnips’. Supermarine ceased to be recognisable as an outfit around 1965, NAA as a division of other companies vanished around 2005. Spitfires did little service after the war. The P 51 served as fighters up until Korea. US aviation industry flourished, all UK industry dwindled. Commonwealth and new nations that left the crumbling European Empires stalled or imploded – a wide spectrum of fates, Poland was soviet until 1989 or so – 44 years, now they do have something to complain about.
What i'm saying is 'To the victor the spoils' – that’s how you tell who won.
The Brits must get this for their own good so I'll spell it out. You came second in the war. And second is just first place among the losers. Great nations have no friends, no enemies – only interests. Now quit whining and seize the future.
– of course i am a brit – I'm just seeing things from the other side of the pond…. for an exercise.
Hi bbear, I wrote a magnificent response to this last night but got timed out! Will try and do it justice tonight.
Hi J. Eddolls thanks. I look forward to a 'smash to the canvas' rebuttal in favour of the Spitfire.
Now the second part of the original question. Was there a better fighter?
I'll try to argue that there was – both in straight performance/combat terms as well as the ‘smart guy gets the loot’ post war considerations.
The DeHavilland Mosquito/Hornet series of aircraft was as good or better together at what the P 51 did individually and did it better and cheaply. The bomber didn't need an escort – at night. And even at night (by using pathfinder tecchniques) could drop more bomb weight on target than a B 17 with much lower crew and losses. So you could afford and crew far more of them. Nearly a squadron of Mossies (12 x 2 crew) for the crew of 2 B 17s.
By day the low level fast attack option available to a Mosquito would give lower losses than any medium altitude US type. B 17 flew always at altitude. Mosquito only some of the time – but still had the lowest loss rate of any allied bomber at 10%. What is so for the B 17 is also the case for all other allied bombers except the B 29 – which typically operated beyond P 51 range i believe. So much for the long range escort role of P 51.
The Mosquito bomber had no guns – it didn't need them. The only point of guns on a bomber is self protection. Speed was the armour of a Mosquito and it worked! If converted B 17 crew missed their armoury – they'd pretty quickly get used to the advantage of returning alive!
The fighter types up to Hornet were as fast or faster than any realistic P 51 development of equivalent period. Climbed faster, and had much more effective armament (nose located 4 x Hispano cannon at minimum). Pressurised cabins were easily possible for high altitude). The Hornet concept arrangement could carry more fuel and had potentially more range than any P 51.
The Mossie/Hornet general type might be summarised as Schnell bomber/heavy fast fighter. This breed got the ideas implented with the best combination of technologies of the time : monocoque wooden fuselage plus best wing form and structure plus two Merlins = speed, high climb, excellent weight carrier, low wing load, low radar profile?…. that combination. The type was suited to mass production (with the later Packard Merlin engine). It was available earlier in the war, at best with Ministry support from the beginning, it could have been deployed in late 1940. It was also nominally available in a carrier version.
I know the Hornet did'nt appear until after the war – but it so very easily could have done if the USA had taken up the concept. I'm quite certain that if US industry had gotten hold of the idea early, the lowly performance improvement curve from 1941-45 attained by the Brits would have been out done very quickly. For reference see the quick progress beyond the original specification of the Mustang. US industry led the general aviation field , that's why they were so vulnerable to 'not invented here' syndrome. But once they got onto something, they had the great capacity to run with it.
The two engines would make for higher survivability. Sometimes one engine would survive combat.
The Mosquito/Hornet concept was way more capable in multi-role terms. It could have served in the Pacific to replace Dauntless/Defiant/P 40 generation (once the ‘glue’ fault was cured!). The M/H type therefore outclasses Corsair/Thunderbolt also. By which i mean – what holds for the P 51 holds here – aerobatics is not relevant. What is relevant includes speed,height, weight and power of guns and range – about 3,000 miles for the Hornet F 3).
So the US fly boys could have dished the Axis forces in 1944 in all Theatres flying only in wooden crates. The Mossie/Hornet or reworked US development thereof could to this day be receiving the thanks of a grateful US nation.
Please note a Nick – esque point : The Packard/Merlin US/UK engine should absolutely by rights receive that acclaim now, but the Merlin is not an airframe and Joe Public looks at nice shapes of wings, not manifold pressures. And maybe as Joe pays the taxes and the military like to keep the (political) peace the US does not recognise any exotic power plant unless they have to?
But in any case in the event, the UK High Command were did not deign to sell the Wooden Wonder designs to the Americans. The UK cabinet, ie Winston, were obsessed with ‘heavy’ bombing. So Harris and Bomber Command of the RAF did not fully recognise the Mossies value (same bomb load as the B 17 but all the way to Berlin- in all it out performed even the RAF Avro Lancaster in terms of bomb weight per unit time per unit of blood and treasure). And because it was falsely decried as a strategic bomber the UK did not think to energetically promote its US manufacture to replace the B 17s. Parallel concept fighters and intruders similar to the Hornet were therefore not taken up successfully by the US. So the great advantage of low loss, flexible, accurate and effective bombing/intruder/ground attack misssions until Mustang II came on stream (say late 1941 to early 1943 in terms of bulk numbers at readiness) was lost.
I think any B 17 pilot would have eagerly gone with the swap once he'd flown a Mossie mission. Fast, high, no flak, few fighter attacks, accurate delivery, Berlin and back, home for breakfast, no crew to worry about… In a Fighter/Bomber version the pilot had pretty good (axis fired 4×303 mgs and 4 x hispano cannon) gunnery under his own thumb compared with the bedlam of shouting and off axis deflection shooting effect of all the guns on a Fortress. The USAAF boys would never have thought of swapping a heavily armoured and much gunned 'big 'un' for a 'tiddler' until the proof was in their eyes and hands of course, they loved the 'Fortress so much. I've only scattered ad hoc testimony for this – but i'm convinced.
So I'd say high allied bomber casualties continued unnecessarily. The UK lost one more commercial foothold in the post war world and the allilance was weakened. It looks to me like another wasteful, ruthless decision by Churchill. Curses.
And to my third post of today and possibly last ever.
From my wilder posts 99 to 101 and subsequent biographical detail on Mitchell and sports history of the Schneider cup, i don't hear anyone significantly at odds with the line of reasoning:
Mitchell based his practice in great care and concern, especially for test pilots and Schneider High Speed flight crews.
Mitchell in accordance with the specification F7/34 and F10/35 built the Spit to match the performance of the 'average' spitfire pilots.
By 'average' they seem to mean minimal pass mark in training or borderline readiness or 'scraping the bottom of the barrell in recruitment'. The kind of pilot that might predominate in the decisive stage of a battle of attrition. That is if both sides enter a 'maximum effort' mode the side with the Spit that also could hold out long enough would eventually win an advantage. Then a bigger advantage the next day etc.
I demonstrated (100 post) that in a contest between such 'average' performers the advantage in combat goes with the one in the 'perfect pilots aircraft' – Spitfire. The work on pilot fatigue provides some support for this. (http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin AD0689722 on pilot workload and precision :handling qualities
and
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin ADA484360 'The better the handling qualities (HQ) of an aircraft, the more likely a pilot will be able to accomplish the design mission)
This 'Spitfire effect' would apply to the jockeying this way and that of manouevre/counter manouevre, tactical choice and manual task during any engagement. Thus affecting the statistical chance in an engagment of kill or escape overall.
So it is as though when any opponent meets a Spitfire a downward correction to the specifications of his machine and his own skill rating must be made. The Spitfire will always be flown closer to its nominal 'test' condition than any other in combat conditions. Especially when the contest is between low performers.The tactical position has changed from the 'Skill vs skill' scenario. This new contest i call the 'contest of errors'. Who doesnt dare wins as you might say…
Now – speculating even further, as no-one has objected.
The 'Spitfire effect' might also appear in the 'single fatal unforced pilot error' category. For example the hazard of narrow undercarriage of the 109 on take off and landing would be multiplied for new or under trained or fatigued or other low performing pilots. As would mid air structural collapse from overstress in manouevres. Spitfires still suffered 4% errors and were not easy to move on the ground. But once airbourne the relevant loss statistic should be lower for the Spitfire than for other contemporary types. Thus the contest of errors persists from pilot deployment to relief not just during engagement and not even just while airbourne. Every facet of service life might have an impact.
I have not heard any similar argument in the public forums or read it in any of around 20 popular accounts. I have seen a statistic about relative survival from encounter rates for Spits and Hurries contacting 109s but no reason or conclusion that i can remember (i have now lost the reference)
We also noted that senior commentators in this forum and outside make no reference to this ' forgiveness' factor when explaining their ideas of what is 'best'.
I do see that Dowding was involved in the Spitfire procurement process and that his pattern of A, B, C Squadrons during Battle of Britain and selective rather than 'maximum effort' tactics he used played a brilliant hand as far as i can see to align the best forces in a Contest of Skills. That is, he tried to avoid sending new 'chicks' into battle. Or so it seems to me.
What I do not see mentioned much is tactics for the low performer. There is little or no 'Basic Fighter Manouvres' list for overstressed, under trained and low quality pilots – no acceptance of the 'Contest of Errors' under some other name that i can see.
I also wonder if sufficient attention is given in today's air forces of 'perfect handling perfects rookies'.
Which way should commercial development be tackled? Is there still a place for the RJ Mitchell 'band leader' role?
More than that I wonder if every pilot who is listed as 'died in training before becoming a pilot', 'death due to pilot error' or 'novice killed in action' are being given their proper appreciation by the public.
Post war – did we listen too much to the Aces? In between their glory, glamour and assertiveness – did we miss something?
That is, did we miss a motivational story of 'national survival derived from national character and common humanity and expressed in metal' because there is no number or statistic for it and no spokesman for the semi-competent dead flier?
I therefore propose to send a short letter to the Spitfire Society and RAF Historical Society asking these questions.
Now that the discussion has largely evolved into informed and intellectual posts by such as J.Eddolls and bbear, and less uninformed rubbish and illiteracy (although we still occasionally get the non-existent word "alot" and an apparent inability to depress the shift key to capitalize proper nouns – you know who you are), I've decided to reenter the fray, as it were, especially re. designing for the pilot, what today we call ergonomics. Here is an exerpt from an article of mine on the Spitfire, due to be published later this year. Comments are welcome:
The exhilarating years of races and records having ended, Supermarine concentrated on building flying boats. But the experience gained in designing every British Schneider Trophy winner since WWI resulted in a team that knew more about high-speed aircraft than anyone else. When, in the early 1930s, the Air Ministry issued specification F.7/30 for a new fighter, they were ready.
Mitchell’s team came up with several concepts that introduced features, such as retractable landing gear and an enclosed cockpit (against the insistence of some senior RAF officers that a pilot must be able to feel the wind in his face), but the Air Ministry specified a low landing speed, a holdover from the biplane era and influenced by the majority of RAF airfields being of grass, so the contract was won by a biplane design from Glosters, which entered RAF service in 1937 as the Gladiator and later gave valiant service against far more modern aircraft in the early part of the Malta campaign.
Mitchell persuaded Supermarine to ignore government specifications and funding and embark on a private venture, incorporating much of what had been learned from the Schneider Trophy planes – a plucky decision in view of the shortage of cash. The resulting Type 300 exceeded the 275mph requirement of the new Air Ministry Specification F.37/34 by 60mph. Supermarine was now part of the giant engineering, shipbuilding and armament company Vickers Ltd. Chairman Sir Robert McLean told the Air Ministry that as the new fighter was being developed at company expense, no official interference with the design would be tolerated.
Nothing anyone could do, however, could help with Mitchell’s own personal crisis. Two years earlier he had been operated on for colon cancer. With the grim prognosis for the disease, he might have been expected to take things easy, or even retire. During convalescence on the Continent he talked to some German pilots and returned to England convinced that war was inevitable. This, plus the knowledge that his time might be short galvanized him into even greater exertion. Together with the fighter project he was also designing a fast flying boat and a four-engined bomber.
Departing from the limits of the Ministry’s specification allowed him to concentrate on his specialty – speed. He designed the fighter around the new Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, also a private venture and at the time yielding a meager 790hp (a figure that was to triple in the future.) Its narrow-angle V12 arrangement allowed a slim, monocoque fuselage. Compared with it future adversaries, the pugnacious Messerschmitt Bf-109 and Focke-Wulf Fw-190, to some the Spitfire looked too delicate – too pretty – to be a combat aircraft, but for all its elegant lines it was a deadly and efficient killing machine.
Supermarine’s directors labored to name the new fighter; it had to begin with S and signify something small but ferocious, and they almost settled on the uninspiring Shrew. Sir Robert McLean suggested his daughter's nickname, Little Spitfire, later shortened to Spitfire. Mitchell was not impressed: “Just the kind of bloody silly name they would choose.”
[Annie Penrose, the original Little Spitfire, died last month at age 100. Celebrations for her 100th included a flypast by RAF aircraft, followed by a target tug towing the banner HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, SPITFIRE ANNIE.]
The new fighter combined structural strength, high speed, low wing loading and light weight – it wasn’t a great deal heavier than the legendary lightweight Japanese Zero, which had no armor or self-sealing tanks. He and his team designed the wings, the Spitfire’s most familiar silhouette, in a double-ellipse with the low wing loading, for a powerful fighter, of 26 pounds per square foot. The Messerschmitt Bf-109’s, in comparison, was closer to 40, allowing the Spit to out-turn its opponent, a critical factor when either pursuer or pursued.
The wing was exceptionally strong, with a central spar made up from hollow sections slotted into each other, acting like the leaf springs of an automobile. For all its deceptive thinness it easily accepted eight reliable and rapid-firing Colt/Browning machine guns and, later, four 20mm Hispano cannons, while still leaving room for undercarriage, flaps, ailerons, coolant and oil radiators and other essentials. It combined low drag, short takeoff run and mild stall characteristics, an achievement that even the brilliant Willy Messerchmitt never duplicated.
In any kind of wind a Spitfire could be off the ground in 50 yards. As a comparison, the P-47 Thunderbolt needed closer to 300. (On one airfield shared by the RAF and USAAF, Spitfire pilots would take off on a runway parallel with the P-47s, retract their wheels and perform rolls while the Thunderbolts labored to takeoff speed. This ended when orders came from high command to desist as being contrary to the spirit of comradeship.)
The design was so advanced that it had the capability of high Mach numbers. In 1943, Squadron Leader J.R. Tobin dived a Spitfire XI to Mach .9 – over 600 mph. When the feat was repeated in 1944 the overspeeding propeller and reduction gear departed the aircraft with a bang (the pilot landed safely.)
This superb amalgam of qualities made its maiden flight from Eastleigh Airport on March 5, 1936, with test pilot Capt. J. Summers at the controls. With a relatively light airplane and an engine of massive torque, he began the takeoff run 35 degrees from the intended direction when airborne – a legacy of the racing seaplanes, which would swing nearly 90 degrees until they finally emerged from the spray kicked up by the propeller and left the water. In fact Summers found it easy to counteract any swing with the rudder.
The watchers were impressed with how rapidly the fighter accelerated, becoming airborne in a few seconds and disappearing in the distance in less than a minute. After an uneventful flight, Summers directed “I don’t want anything touched,” since misinterpreted to signify that he thought that the aircraft was perfect. In reality he wanted things like rudder and aileron trim left as he had set them, ready for the next flight.
The new fighter had flown. It was such a departure from previous designs – even the contemporary Hawker Hurricane, which for all its qualities was essentially a monoplane development of the Hart and Fury biplanes – that the government issued a new specification, F.16/36. This so closely replicated Mitchell’s design that it was more a case of the specification being rewritten to meet it, rather than the other way round.
Nevertheless, Mitchell had to contend with the dead hand of officialdom, tradition and myopic thinking. Some, including Lord Trenchard, the “Father of the RAF,” rationalized that the only way to defeat an enemy was to bomb him. So, for much of the 1930s, more of the scarce resources were allocated to bomber than fighter production. The 1936 budget called for 68 bomber squadrons, but only 20 of fighters. Some in government even held that quantities of a radically-new single-engine fighter were not needed at all. High speed was less important. A few squadrons of Hurricanes would suffice; it was at least 100mph faster than German bombers, could be built more easily, quickly and cheaply than the Spitfire, and would be easier to service and repair in the field. It was inconceivable that France, with a bigger army and more and better tanks, could fall to Germany, so there would be no fighter versus fighter dogfights over Britain. The only aircraft that would have the range to reach the country from Germany were bombers, so preference should be given to twin-engine “bomber destroyers,” like the Westland Whirlwind, which also had the range to harass enemy aircraft over their own homeland. The Germans were to make the same error with the Me-110 Zerstorer (“destroyer.”)
Fortunately for the survival of the Spitfire and, indeed, Britain, there was one far-sighted senior officer, Air Vice Marshall Hugh Dowding (who would later head Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain) possessing both a keen interest in technology and a stubborn nature. He was now in charge of the RAF’s technical development, and pressed for the development of advanced fighters and another key weapon in the forthcoming battle: Radar. Mitchell wrote in his memoirs how close the decision had been: “A lot of people felt that the Spitfire, although it had a good performance, had been bought at too high a price. In terms of ease of production it was going to be a much more expensive and difficult aeroplane to mass produce [and] a much more complicated one to look after and service …”
As if this weren’t enough, the prototype Spitfire could only reach 330mph – slower than the Hurricane! If this could not be improved, the project was dead. A propeller of modified design was fitted, and as engineer E.H. Mansfield, supervising the prototype tests, wrote: “Jeffrey [Jeffrey Quill, Supermarine’s No. 2 test pilot] went off and did a set of level speeds with it. When he came down he handed me the test card with a big grin and said ‘I think we’ve got something here.’ And we had … we made the maximum speed 348mph, which we were very pleased with.” (Corrected for air density and other factors, probably a true speed closer to 355mph.)
Not that Mitchell was out of the woods yet. Some thought that the Spitfire, from its racing origins, would be too difficult for average pilots. In May 1936, the sole prototype was evaluated by the RAF Aircraft and Armament Establishment. The Ministry’s representative asked the commander, Flt. Lt. Edwards-Jones, whether the aircraft could be flown by ordinary squadron pilots. “Yes it can,” he was told; in fact “it was a delight to fly.” One can imagine the “whew!” exhaled by the design team when they heard the verdict. On this basis, a contract for 310 was awarded.
The Spitfire and Hurricane got their public début at the annual RAF pageant at Hendon. After some WWI aircraft, like the Sopwith Camel and S.E.5A, were demonstrated (some, not flyable, being towed across the airfield), the prototype Hurricane and Spitfire tore across the sky above an awed crowd. It was the first time the public had heard the glorious song of the Merlin engine, a sound that was soon to become familiar.
But these were the only Hurricane and Spitfire to fly for two more years, and Mitchell was not destined to see his creation go into production.
Many thanks for this Nick, really wonderful to read.
Sadly due to pressure of work I have been away from my 'trusty laptop' for a while, however some of the things you have said have reminded me of some incidents that I have witnessed and may be of interest to other readers.
During my last visit to Duxford during a non Airshow day I happened to witness the take off of a Spit IX also a P51D (Ferrocious Frankie) and also a Hurricane II.
The Spit was airborne and climbing away rapidly within 100 yards, the Hurricane was airborne after a slightly longer run. The Mustang was still struggling to rise half way down the runway, in fact it was so far along we did not see it take off!
On most weekends duing the summer months we are treated to Spitfires flying over my Kentish home. These flights are accompanied by Hellicopters carrying paying punters who pay vast sums to be so close to a Spit in the air.
Well whats the point of this? The Spit is flying in formation with the Choppers and so is probably just above stalling speed. This Spitfire which is a VB is manouvering all around, pulling the most amazing tight turns and barrel rolling around the Helicopters, suddenly accelerating away and then pulling up in a vertical climb without stalling, before joining the Helicopters in their sedate procession
If a Mustang tried to replicate these manuovers it would have fallen from the sky. This would have been for the same reason for its long take off run, it's Laminar flow wing does not provide as much lift as a Spits.
Nick first comments:
I found the early part of the story a bit of a puzzle. You seem to have seamlessly elided the stories of Type 224 and Type 300 development. I understand that this makes a better flow of reading, but does it also under dramatise the Supermarine/Mitchell experience :
Success, hubris, failure, convalescence and ‘motivation’, resilience, success-in-the-nick-of-time?
Or in date order :
Success: Schneider 1931,
Hubris: 1931/2 honours, CBE etc,
Failure: Type 224 prototype,
Convalescence: cancer 1933, followed by a spell in Vienna?
Resilience: Spec 425a 1934,
Success: Type 300 K5054 1934- 1936
I see an aviation engineers appreciation of the machine and its development. But I also wanted more about the war aims story. How did the Spitfire ideas fit into Dowding’s early plans for defence? I see that the relevant specs were influenced or written by Dowding. I wanted more about ‘war fitness’ and Dowding’s and Mitchells premonitions and procurement assumptions. I missed a sense of purpose rather than 'natural sequence' if you follow me.
Then you give us the ‘average pilot’ tests of 1936 to conclude the ‘first development’ which is a nice roundoff.
Nit picks:
Wasn’t retractable landing gear only introduced as a paper proposal for Type 224: Supermarine Spec 425a July 1934? Detailed design work was perhaps only done for retractable carriage on Type 300? Will not the cognoscenti among your readers remember the type 224 prototype and its fixed carriage and ‘trousers’?
Para 3 ‘Mitchell persuaded…’? In the popular account McLean willingly took on the ‘persuasion’ task himself. They made common cause against the Air Ministry. The period of the ‘open unfunded venture’ was only around a month (Price, The Spitfire Story p 17 attributed to Air Ministry contract AM 361140/34 Dec 1st 1934). F37/34 was then written around Mitchells design as a funded contract from the Ministry January 1935.This is part of 'resilience' i think : An example of ‘Excellence baffles Bull***t’? Or how to win an interminable argument with officialdom by beating them into dumbness?
By the way I see there is some matterin F7/30 about ‘…shewn that the aircraft is safe to be flown by pilots of the RAF’ but I can see nothing about suitability for an ‘average fighter pilot’ in any of these specifications or modifications.Where did that come from?
And let me say – i did enjoy the article. My comments, as always, are more a form of questions about how such accounts are written, the choices the writer must make, what to leave out, how to avoid giving a list of dates, enhancing pace, readability etc.
Please don't take these as serious criticism. They were not intended as such. I'm just inviting Nick to tell us more about his process.
Hi, bbear. Comments noted; thanks. My data come from multiple sources, so I'll stick with what I wrote.
Side notes to all readers:
1) The text reproduced above and below is copyrighted, has already been submitted to a magazine showing an origin date of December 2011, and any unauthorized use will be prosecuted.
2) Go and buy the March issue of Aviation History magazine, for my article "The Race for the Jet."
More on my Spitfire article:
The contract awarded was tiny, when compared with the more than 22,759 eventually built, but caused consternation at Supermarine. They were craftsmen, not large-scale manufacturers; their largest previous order had been for 79 flying boats for delivery at the rate of 10 per year. They had never made 310 of anything, let alone something as complex and difficult to produce as the Spitfire. Those lovely elliptical wings, for example, had virtually no straight lines and, with their multi-part main spar, were difficult to adapt to mass production. The fuselage required the creation of special and expensive tooling.
Although the company subcontracted as much as possible, the intricacies involved in making even minor parts resulted in manufacture remaining painfully slow for several years, even as war clouds gathered. At the outbreak of World War II, the RAF had only nine Spitfire squadrons, and when the aerial battles moved from France to England in 1940, preparatory to a German invasion, only eleven more. Luckily, there were many more Hurricanes.
Such delay in the face of massive German rearmament and an almost inevitable war now seems incredible. The major problem for a small company in building large quantities of what had started as a hand-built prototype was the need to farm out manufacture of even such large assemblies as wings and tail units.
Supermarine had no experience in large-scale subcontracting. With the company’s small staff, producing engineering drawing for parts took a year. At one point they had dozens of finished fuselages waiting for wings.
Despite the knowledge that he was living in the shadow of death, and hiding the encumbrance of a colostomy bag beneath his customary three-piece suit, Mitchell retained control of the project. Whenever a test flight took place he would be at the airfield, taking notes and discussing the flight with the pilot. He even learned to fly, and obtained his pilot’s license. In 1937 the cancer returned, and he met it with characteristic fortitude. On June 11, he died, with his affairs in order and secure in the knowledge that his creation was performing as he had hoped, and had been ordered into production for the RAF. He was only 42. The project was taken over by Chief Draughtsman Joe Smith.
On August 4, 1938, Jeffrey Quill delivered K9789 to 19 Squadron, the first operational Spitfire of what was to become the backbone of the RAF’s fighter force until the jet age. Squadron Leader Henry Cozens, the first pilot to fly it, had started his career on Sopwith Camels in 1917, and ended it at the controls of Gloster Meteor jets. Remarkably, K9789 survived the war, only to be scrapped in 1945.5