Originally posted by Crumpp
That's is a nice opinion Humble.
Problem is that piston engine fighters had a performance cap based simply on the physics of having a propeller.
The FW-190 is one of the designs considered to be at that pinacle of piston engine development.
While the Bearcat is a newer design it was not capable of bending the natural laws of physics.
Nor is it in the same catagory IMHO as the Sea Fury, which dumped considerable power into tiny gains that were the nature of post war piston engine aircraft development.
All the best,
Crumpp
I'm simply viewing it from the perspective of envelope of performance. When the 190-A3 entered service it literally changed the course of plane development in England. The spit IX was cobbled togeather and rushed into service in order to avoid the total decimation of the RAF over france....no further accolade needs to be given to the 190.....few planes have ever had such a tangible effect on another nations war planning.....not even the 262. However, the 190 was simply a significant leap in "total E" combined with a reasonable total handling capability.....as the 190 changed no later model came close to the raw handling of the A3.
A similiar pattern can be seen in the spitty....its increase in speed is offset by higher and higher wingloading.....same for the 109 series. The F8 (and F7) provided a previously unreachable combination of power and handing not found in any other plane of the era. The fact that both planes were not only carrier capable but also had significant tactical flexibility is extraordinary. I give the nod to the F7F because it had a much greater total capability then the F8 (or any piston engined plane of WW2). Basically it could by itself have dominated any theater of the war at the tactical level....
As for the F8 the fact that it held speed to altitude records that held up over 20 years into the jet age tells you what a feat of engineering it was. The original comparision of the 190 to F8 is nor more accurate then comparing the F8 to the 262...looking at the chronological "step ladder" the 109 set the 1st rung, the spitty clearly surpassed it, the 190 eclipsed the spitty and the pony superseded the 190....the US never even bothered to deploy the F7/F8 but they supersed the pony in many ways...and the 262 opened the door to the jet as a operationally deployable weapon.
If you look at the british the Tempest/Seafury have the same basic limitations as the later spitties. Simply not offering the tactical flexibility required to function as a multirole airframe....same basic issue the russians and germans had. Basically the US had the only truely functional airforce in the world as of 1944....which is why they could have "won" the airwar vs any other aviation force in the world. The most telling quote of WW2 aviation was a Q and A regarding the mustang....when asked what aspect of the mustangs performace made it so special the reply was nothing....except the fact that it could do it over Berlin. This is the fundemental issue so often missing from debates here about the relative merits of various airframes. War is all about killing folks....and weapons that acomplish that task better in more ways make the differance. The AK-47 isnt the "best" combat rifle in the world because its a better weapon....the M-16 (and many other weapons shoot circles around it)....but you can drag it thru a swamp and it'll still work to spec....it was a quantum leap in the deployment of basic firepower to a marginally provisioned/trained force.
One of the Clint Eastood "spagetti westerns (sp?) summed it all up....when a man with a rifle meets a man with a pistol the man with the pistol dies (unless your Clint of course). The same can be said about two airforces meeting....when the airforce with the 400 mile combat range plane meets the airforce with the 1000 combat range plane....the 400 mile airforce dies....
