Aircraft and Vehicle Service Dates - get ur pencils out

[thorsim]

 ... Welcome to my Ignore List ...

ahh it's the little miracles that make life worth living 

[Mister Fork]

Guys - awesome discussion on the aircraft.  It's like watch a bunch of college professors discuss history - which is a very interesting, and eye opening experience.

This thread was not intended as a arguement or an attempt to prove the other wrong.  Part of the challenge for us SEA/AvA/FSO admins, is trying to use the aircraft we have to the best match we can substitute. For example, the general P51D first appeared in Europe in May 1944. And in the pacific and china regions the beginning of 1945.  It's why we list it as such.  So when coming up with dates, we need to be reasonable and think "when did the general model P-51D enter service" - not, when did this particular variant with this particular supercharger/turbo, with this particular hard points enter service.  Otherwise, we'd have to scrap most of our events because we wouldn't have the right/exact airacraft.

In this case, close enough is good enough.  If the P-51D (general model) saw action in May 1944, then as admins, we'll use them in our setups for that date.  I'm not going to park the P-51D and use the B variant if my setup is based on September 1944.

I'm going to shift throught the many posts and start a new topic with all the information listed here (there's a lot!).  Again, thanks guys!  You've been really helpful with this.  

[maus92]

The Ki-61 in the Spring of 1942, Lt. Umekawa was on a test flight and stumbled onto the Doolittle Raiders Mission.   He pursued one of the 25's and had to break off because of lack of fuel and the Machine Guns were acting up and not yet finalized.     

Wow, interesting tidbit.  I have never heard this before.

[Masherbrum]

Wow, interesting tidbit.  I have never heard this before.

I was trying to point out to Thorsim about "grasping at straws".   Should it count?  No, however that is "combat".  But yeah Maus, it did happen and the significance of the event is amazing.   

[thorsim]

well call me crazy but there seems to me to be a difference in one airframe operating on pilot initiative resulting in zero results either way ...

and ...

the engagements that resulted in a number of claims between squad size elements ...

the 262 is even more able to be argued as in combat before finishing it's operational testing, i remember an account of some 20 bombers shot down on one sortie during it's operational testing phase ...

the other nice thing is most of these engagements are confirmed by both sides, and it is pretty irrefutable when that happens.

it is just a fact that the situations and policies of the different combatant countries created differences in how planes reached what they each called operational status.
the most specific, most confirmed, and most relevant dates are the first combat, or first kill or death dates as those are the dates that determine when the opposing Air Forces had to start contending with the respective types in combat.