American rides under modeled? LW rides broken?

[Bruno]

Originally posted by Glasses
Yeah well it doesn't help much when you're out numbered 10 to 1 :-D

Die Amerikaner kamen immer in die Masse.

[Angus]

Hehe, Marseilles sure knew how to set up a shot. Nail them dead on at no range.
A little bird told me that Rall is considered to have been the crack deflection shooter.
(The little bird being Willy Göbel, the historian of the Fliegergemeinshaft and a former Wingco who had flown with Rall - F104's I belive)
Rall considers Marseille to have been the best pilot and shot.
Still tough to beat "Screwball" Beurling though, - what he could do with a few bullets was amazing.

[ChopSaw]

Originally posted by Bruno
Marseille's Claims:

That is the longest post I've ever seen.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Glasses
hardly the experten that were flying  in 43 and below.

Say, what ever happened to all those "expertent" from '43 and below?

[Squire]

"Well I do think the B is different from the D. I think it's a whole lot different."

Well, you would be the only one here who thinks that, and your just back peddaling from your claim that he had all this combat experience in WW2 in all these different types, when he just flew P-51s in action, and only in NW Europe.

There were many more US pilots who had experience from 1942-45 with P-40s, P-38s, P-47s and P-51s, and Spitfires and Hurricanes (Eagle squadrons) who were much more well versed in comparing the various types involved, and who flew in multiple Theaters of War as well.

Your taking Yeagers career as a test pilot and projecting it back on to his WW2 career, and making him out to be something he was not, at the time.

[Glasses]

Originally posted by Toad
Say, what ever happened to all those "expertent" from '43 and below?

They got picked while trying to Kill the waves of B-17s and B-24s and B-25s and B-26s and Lancasters and P-47s and P-51s and P-38s and Spitfires and Mosquitoes and......

[storch]

Originally posted by Toad
Say, what ever happened to all those "expertent" from '43 and below?

they were killed in combat for the most part. the Germans flew their pilots until they became statistics.  unlike the Americans which kept their pilots in combat for a limited number of missions then rotated them home to train the next wave.

[Bruno]

they were killed in combat for the most part. the Germans flew their pilots until they became statistics.

They weren't all killed, many survived.

No doubt many LW veteran pilots were lost over the course of the war but the decline of the LW was not due to the loss of these LW 'super-aces'. As the LW was forced to expand it was unable to train replacement pilots to same level as those early war veterans. The need to get as many pilots / aircraft into the air led to reduced training times, coupled with the lack of fuel and resources for training and the lack of space to safely train replacement pilots, had a greater impact on the fighting ability of the LW.  Not only did allied numerical superiority grow as the war progressed, the quality of allied pilots and equipment (especially in the west) increased.

Also, its a myth that LW pilots flew endlessly until the war ended or they were killed. The LW had no rotation system like the Ami's but many a pilot rotated out from front line service, many were offered or ordered to discontinue flying but chose to keep in the fight etc...

When LW pilots, like Hartmann, talk about 'either the white cross, or the Iron Cross' they are referring to the obligation and duty they felt to stay in the fight defending their homeland and families. They were not chained to their Bf 109s and Fw 190s.

Pilots like Wick, Mölders, Gollob, Nowotny, Rudel and even Galland were ordered not to fly combat missions. They did so out of their sense of duty.

Hartmann was sent on furlough in May '43 after it was determined that he was becoming burnt out. Schuck went on furlough four times between April '42 - Feb '45.

Many Allied pilots continued to fly when they didn't need to as well. Yeager, for instance.

[Toad]

So a lot of the superhuman experts were killed by pilots without any skill and about 200 flight hours?

[Pooface]

personally, i always thought that another factor in the demise of the LW is that, with the falling skill level within the ranks due to the aces getting shot down, that Goering was assigning squadrons poorly, because he was used to the higher skill levels during the pre war and BoB years, where his elite pilots performed far better than in the latter days

so being used to having so and so no. of pilots doing this...    ...he was assigning to few of his pilots to certain tasks, and all the time the problem was getting worse due to the experience level




i dunno, just another theory

[ChopSaw]

Originally posted by Squire
"Well I do think the B is different from the D. I think it's a whole lot different."

Well, you would be the only one here who thinks that, and your just back peddaling from your claim that he had all this combat experience in WW2 in all these different types, when he just flew P-51s in action, and only in NW Europe.

There were many more US pilots who had experience from 1942-45 with P-40s, P-38s, P-47s and P-51s, and Spitfires and Hurricanes (Eagle squadrons) who were much more well versed in comparing the various types involved, and who flew in multiple Theaters of War as well.

Your taking Yeagers career as a test pilot and projecting it back on to his WW2 career, and making him out to be something he was not, at the time.

Okay.  You're right.  I was wrong.  WideWings post of 3/10/06 08:36 PM made that clear.  Yeager did not fly "other planes" in WWII.  The wording of my statement made it sound as if Yeager had flown a wide variety of planes in combat during WWII.  I was under the mistaken impression that he had when in fact I was only sure that he had flown at least two different types.

I may be "the only one here who thinks so", but I still consider the P51B and the P51D to be two significantly different beasts.

Setting aside his pre-combat experience with the P-39 as training and warm up and his post combat testing of captured enemy aircraft, that still leaves his combat experiences.  Flying 64 combat missions and downing 13 enemy aircraft have to have given him an idea of the relative performances of the aircraft.  In addition, I will point out that pilots talk to each other.  They talk a lot and compare aircraft.  Both combat and post combat experience give Chuck Yeager a credible voice when it comes to making an assessment of combat aircraft of the time.

Even proponents of the P38 admitted the P51 was better at air superiority, though they correctly note the P38 was a better multi role aircraft.  I don't know how the P47 crowd feels, but I have suspicions.

There are indeed other pilots of the time with, I'm sure, different thoughts regarding the superiority of one design or the other.  It would be somewhat shocking if their opinions were unanimous on the subject.  Just as shocking as it would be for the same to happen in AH.  I simply state Yeager's voice has validity.  He loved the P51D and felt it outperformed the German rides.  Yes, before some take this as a clarion call to defend their aircraft, I'm fully aware there are many here who feel aircraft other than the P51D were superior.  I am also aware there were/are other experts who feel the P51D was not the most wonderful plane in combat during WWII.  I'm not going to argue the issue.  As stated in the post which started this thread I don't have the credentials to do so and I am aware that there are a good many experts posting to this bulletin board.

[Angus]

Ohhh, from Bruno:
"They weren't all killed, many survived."

The fall of the LW is largely due to the fact that they screwed up in pilot training. (Of course we see or saw people on the BB that haven't found out that the LW fell at all). More factors also play a part.
Some of the top guns survived, some were wounded (Galland, Steinhoff, (Rall)) Some unscathed (Hartmann, Barkhorn etc), but many were dead, some in action or by accidents (Marseille, Nowotny, Mölders etc), - anyway, for whatever cause, the LW had no bulk of well trained pilots compareable to just the RAF for instance at the end of the war, while promoting the finest and best trained airforce in the world a few years earlier.

[Angus]

Then this:
"As the LW was forced to expand it was unable to train replacement pilots to same level as those early war veterans. The need to get as many pilots / aircraft into the air led to reduced training times, coupled with the lack of fuel and resources for training and the lack of space to safely train replacement pilots"

The LW had the whole mainland and resources of EUROPE (more or less) from 1940 for som years on. So did Germany. Pilots could be trained hundreds of miles away from hostile aircraft until 1944 or so. So  your first statement there Bruno, is basically wrong.
The fuel and resource problem hit in in 1944, - but amazingly the Reichs production of aircraft topped that year. Plenty of aircraft, not much fuel, newbie pilots.
The LW fell....fighting with a foe, which in terms of fue, numbersl and well trained pilots was vastly superior, while the airframe development is totally another issue.

Ohh, Izzy has gone  

[Bruno]

So your first statement there Bruno, is basically wrong.

Training didn't began to break down until mid / late '43. The rapid accelleration and expansion of the LW began in late'43.

Toad wrote:

Say, what ever happened to all those "expertent" from '43 and below?

Glasses replied:

They got picked while trying to Kill the waves of B-17s and B-24s and B-25s and B-26s and Lancasters and P-47s and P-51s and P-38s and Spitfires and Mosquitoes and.....

and Storch wrote:

they were killed in combat for the most part. the Germans flew their pilots until they became statistics. unlike the Americans which kept their pilots in combat for a limited number of missions then rotated them home to train the next wave.

The implication in these posts are that the the LW suffered attrition of its 'super-aces' and as such couldn't compete. Thus my reply...

Nachwuchs coming into squadrons in late '43 and early '44 faced a situation that they were not entirely trained for. An Allied enemy with a clear numerical advantage, an enemy with pilots who had plenty of time on the job training. Remember the LW were ordered not to engage allied fighters and that they should focus on allied bombers exclusively.  The allies also had superior equipment overall in terms of quality (not necessarily on pure bench test performance but in overall production quality). With the LW's expansion core groups of experienced pilots were split up and moved about to lead them. 1 vet with 11 nubs vs an enemy with numerical strength won't put up the same quality of fight as 4 well trained experten. Its been written that most of these Nachwuchs rarely lasted  5 combat sorties.

For example the Jagdwaffe in the west was re-stocked and replenished with new pilots and aircraft just prior to Bodenplatte. Some of these squadrons were never stronger, on paper, then at any time during the war. Yet in overall quality they were far weaker then the Jagdwaffe at say the start of BoB or the invasion of the Soviet Union.

The discussion has nothing to do with 'Izzy' and instead of worrying about him maybe you ought to try a little harder to follow along.

[MiloMorai]

Something like 2/3rds of the LW aces with 50 or more 'kills' survived the war.