"P51H never saw combat"
That's not a qualifier. It's pure LWwannabee roadkill intended to stack the odds in favour of the LW aircraft because the late war Allies planes were as good, if not all around better, than the German aircraft. To top it off the Allies didn't have the pressure of desperately needing to stop fleets of bombers with escort from ravaging thier country. Nor did the Allies have to push back the enemies rolling up thier ground forces left and right after they botched the war that they started. What you see in 1943-45 from Germany was born of pure desperation and self preservation. They tried literally everything with wings for a winning combination. Sure they had some great engineers. Not enough though. And they had imbeciles for policy and strategy makers. They Allies were not under this same pressure. And yet they still had over all more and better aircraft at the same time. In mid 44 to May 1945 the very air outside a prototypes hangar door was hostile and if it took to the air, worthy or not, it could literally find itself in combat. If a plane took off at Norfolk, Va. in 1944 it was not. It was thousandsof miles away from any hostile enemy aircraft. What few were left at that.
You can bet your bellybutton if NewYork city was being bombed in March of 1945 that not only would the P-51H been up there defending the air over that ciry but that circumstances leading to said happening we would have seen even BETTER aircraft from the US factories.
The P-51H, the F7F, the F8F, the P-47M and N as well as the P-80 were PRODUCTION aircraft during WWII. Not "one off" or small batch prototype jobbers.
If you want the Horton? Fine with me. I've got a bigger and badder list of US prototypes to bring to the table. Give me a P-47"J." It'll eat your list of German planes in the first post for lunch.
Of course you can go to Luft'46 and day dream about aircraft that never left the sketching phase.
-Westy
[This message has been edited by Westy (edited 10-26-2000).]
