Best Fighter aircraft of WW2

[eots]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjz8pAGRvsg]Battle of Britain - "A squadron of spitfires" - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Firehorse]

The US was extremely isolationalist prior to WW2. There was those called 'Hawk' that saw the trouble coming, but it was the isolation policies that kept us blind to what was going on.

All out war broke out in Europe in late '39. France didn't exist in late '40, England was almost bombed into submittion '40, the Eastern have of Russa was in German hands. To say that the state of affairs in Europe was 'not so bad' was a complete and utter lie in '41

Yet it wasn't till Dec of '41 that we were FORCED into the game. The US Government actually believed that what happens over there didn't matter ... What did we care what the Germans were doing, it didn't effect us

 

[Old Rocks]

You are quite wrong there, Hose. We were doing LendLease, which was really quite outside neutrality. Not only that, one of my uncles worked at a box plant near Roseburg, Oregon. After Pearl Harbor, the plant shut down for a couple of days, and, when it started back up, they were making boxes for ammo and weopons, not for fruit. Someone had to have issued the plans and orders for that. Didn't make much differance to my uncle. He got to use a lot of those boxes all the way across North Africa, Sicily, and halfway up Italy.

 

[Ringel05]

I know it was a multipurpose plane but it was the one that scared the Germans the most as a fighter and fighter bomber:
the de Havilland Mosquito.
The Luftwaffe would credit their pilots with two kills for shooting one down.

 

[aplcr0331]

ETO:
1. Mustang
2. FW-190
3. Yakovlev Yak-3

PTO:
1. Hellcat
2. Corsair
3. Zero

 

[Oddball]

The US was extremely isolationalist prior to WW2. There was those called 'Hawk' that saw the trouble coming, but it was the isolation policies that kept us blind to what was going on.

All out war broke out in Europe in late '39. France didn't exist in late '40, England was almost bombed into submittion '40, the Eastern have of Russa was in German hands. To say that the state of affairs in Europe was 'not so bad' was a complete and utter lie in '41

Yet it wasn't till Dec of '41 that we were FORCED into the game. The US Government actually believed that what happens over there didn't matter ... What did we care what the Germans were doing, it didn't effect us

Even though that was the official policy, FDR was sending both secret and not-so-secret (Eagle Squadrons) aid to Churchill, and the AVG (aka Flying Tigers) were deployed in China far in advance of 7 December.

We weren't forced...FDR provoked both Japan and Germany.

 

[Firehorse]

Go look at a Europian map at the start of Dec '41. We had not declared war yet dispite the following countries not exsisting at the time

France
Austria
Czech
Poland
Finland
Denmark
Norway
Belgium
Neherlands
Hungry
Romania
Yugoslavia
Albania
Greece
Lithuania
Latvia
Estonia
and a very large part of Eastern Russia

That list doesn't include what the Japanese were doing.

Do you really think we were not isolationalist in ignoring the state of affairs at the time because of lend lease?

All those countries were either completely swallowed up of anexed in some way and Brittian had been under constant bombing for more then a year ... And yet no declartion of wR from the white house or congress?

What, otger then isolationism would you call it that we was following?

 

[Oddball]

"Isolationist" is a pejorative cooked up by progressive warmongers.

Nonetheless, FDR was still supplying Britain on the sly and the AVG was deployed and flying in China prior to Pearl Harbor...These are historical fact that cannot be denied.

"Isolationist" my foot.

 

[Firehorse]

So you don't like word ... Fine ... What word would you use to discribe a country that sits on it's hands as a tyrant proceeds to concure Europe?

Lend lease is our way of attempting to say (after the fact) that we cared. What an empty statement that must have been to the poles and French

 

[Firehorse]

You said it yourself ... It was on the sly .... Why didn't we as a nation stand the fuck up insteading doing things on the sly

 

[Dot Com]

The Gloster Meteor - early development of the first British Jet Fighter
Gloster Meteor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Just like the ME262, too late and not enough produced.

 

[Firehorse]

Provoking is parking a battle fleet off their coast and saying "What? Bitch" ... It's not slowing oil amd steel shipments
We were pussys, plain and simple. I'm not proud of it, I'm all American, but that don't mean I sweep things under the rug

 

[Oddball]

So you don't like word ... Fine ... What word would you use to discribe a country that sits on it's hands as a tyrant proceeds to concure Europe?

Lend lease is our way of attempting to say (after the fact) that we cared. What an empty statement that must have been to the poles and French

Sending aid behind the scenes while publicly proclaiming neutrality isn't "sitting on your hands".

Provoking is parking a battle fleet off their coast and saying "What? Bitch" ...

What do you call American aircraft, flown by American pilots under the Nationalist Chinese flag, deployed and engaging Japanese aircraft prior to any declaration of war?

 

[Firehorse]

By "we were pussys" I meant "our leaders at the time were pussys" I won't ever question the American militarys fighting spirit

 

[Firehorse]

Lend Lease to Brittian started Oct '41 ... Month and a half before the chair was kicked out from under us and we were forced to stand up

 

[Firehorse]

I bet the Brits were glad to see those American fighters ... A year and a half after they beat back the NAZI assult

 

[JakeStarkey]

Well, we had a bunch of military conservatives that thought that Goddard was nuts.

You need to do better than that rocky. There were few conservatives in the FDR administration. As a mater of fact the Brits were also shocked about the communist infiltration in the FDR administration. The dying (probably mentally impared due to strokes) president used to call the monster of Russia "uncle Joe" with cheap jokes at the expense of Churchill.

Stimson and Hull would have had you imprisoned for such comments, and no conservatives were they, or many other true Americans trying to overthrow Nazisim at the time. Churchill's propaganda folks were making Uncle Joe look good at that time, and Churchill hated communism and Uncle Joe. MacArthur, Spruance, Patton, Bradley, Nimitz, Arnold, Marshall, etc., were not any sort of lefties or liberals.

whitehall, you need to learn balance and clarity in what you write, and just stop being a very poor, unskilled propagandist for your wingnut views.

 

[westwall]

The Mustang was a game changer because of its extraordinary legs. The P-47 enjoyed a better kill rate however. The 56th FG shot down more Germans in air combat then any other group and did it exclusively in the P-47 which they used throughout the war. A lot of that credit belongs to the groups legendary first commander Hub Zemke who trained his men to be the best out there.

The Soviet La-7 was the equal of and better then most German aircraft and was also credited with shooting down an Me 262 at the end of the war. And that brings us to the 262 which was a harbinger of things to come. Super fast for the era but unable to turn with the piston engined fighters it flew against. It was a good bomber killer with it's 4 Mk 108 cannon but limited to that arena.

The Mosquito FB was a truly OUTSTANDING aircraft and Mosquitos suffered the lowest loss rate of any aircraft in the war.

In short it is impossible to truly choose the best fighter, they all enjoyed advantages and dis-advantages that were exploited by the best pilots to do extraordinary things. Erich Hartmann, Gunther Rall and Gerd Barkhorn used the Me -109 exclusivly (as did most of the German "Experten") and between the three of them they shot down 928 aircraft so logically the choice would be the Me 109 based on those guys alone, but in point of fact the 109 by the middle of the war was a near obsolete airframe but in the hands of a exceptional pilot could still wreak havoc, which is what they did.

 

[Swagger]

If we could possibly regain formation, gentlemen.

For me it'll always be the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane (the latter of which was the workhorse of the Battle of Britain, while the former's lasting elegance and legend stole the show). But it would be wrong not to give credit where credit's due. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 was the Spitfire's equal and superior in so many ways, and it duly struck terror into the hearts of RAF pilots. A match made in heaven and hell, if you will. The P-51 debuted later, but she swooped into the fray in the nick of time.

But let's not focus too much of our attention on the machines themselves, but rather the heroes (on both sides) who had the honour of flying them.

My grandfather flew the de-Havilland Mosquito in the Mediterranean theatre. His old flying boots and escape & evasion equipment were donated to the Imperial War Museum, where they still rest.

 

[Firehorse]

(takes deep breath)

Spitfire, as I said is my pick.

As for sheer looks ... It gets a little more complecated

The spitfire is without doubt a classic beauty, the sleek sexy lines are hard to match thoughtout the age of flight. The Mustang is classic for America but (to me) the vertical thickness just behind the cockpit tapers too quickly to the tail ... Almost like the tail structure was a sort of "snap on"

for the Germans, they had three different looks to me ...

The 109 looked more like a war machine to me, the box canopy making it look more "business" then the spitfire. The 190 was a beautful craft, classic for a rotory look, sleek as well ... The 262 ... The sleek, sharklike lines ... It was the first and a truely beautiful craft even in today's world, it almost qualifies a work of art