Best Single Engine fighter-Bomber(Prop Driven)

[J.A.W.]

Has to be stated,- wee Winkle Brown is quite overt in his bias application..

As a Navy man, & little guy, ol' Eric gives highly opinionated views which
may not be supported by actual test data, or validated empirically by combat..

[Hajo]

For some reason around 15,000 P47s were manufactured.  I would assume there is a reason.

It's shortcoming was range.  And at altitude with bombers it did well. It also was devastating

in the ground attack role.  The amount or ord it carried and it's ruggedness made it the best

of all prop planes during the war in the FB role.  That's not by consensus on a games BBS but by consensus

of those who flew them and the enemy.  A sortie to loss ratio of less then 1%.....in well over

Half a million sorties.  That's a lot of sorties for an inferior aircraft eh?

[Widewing]

Brown didn't test "later P-47s" with dive recovery flaps. They were added exactly because of the P-47s shortcomings. Same with the 38. Recovery flaps did just that; allow the pilots to recover from an uncontrollable dive. The flaps didn't give the pilot more control in the dive. Nor did they allow the 47 to dive as fast as the 109s and 190s. Spits didn't need recovery flaps, 109s and 190s didn't need recovery flaps and could trim out of dives quite easily unlike the 47 or 38. P-51 didn't need recovery flaps.

At 30,000 feet Mach 0.75 is 508 mph TAS. That is about 60 mph faster than the max level speed of a 109K, or 85 mph more than that of a 109G-6/AS, and it is still quite maneuverable at those speeds. So I agree with Brown that the 109s tactical Mach number is about 0.75. Perhaps even a bit more if the pilot has above average upper body strength.



Not at 25-30,000+ feet against 109 AS versions. The AS 109s were faster than the 47D at all altitudes up to about 40,000 feet, and could dive faster. At the lower altitudes the 47 worked well, and Brown points this out. The 8th AF did realize that the 47 was "not adequate for killing the Luftwaffe". That's why the 47 ended the war in Europe relegated to secondary roles like ground attack. The 38 was all but withdrawn from the ETO.



And his detractors have never managed to do anything except "accuse" him of bias. Whenever I see "enthusiasts" accuse a professional test pilot of bias I go "riiiight". Yeah, there's bias alright, but it is not Brown's.

109 AS types were relatively rare...

Despite the best efforts of the Luftwaffe, it was crushed in the west by escort fighters. I recall that the P-47 shot down far more Expertan than the P-51 did. It was the P-47 to forced the Luftwaffe to withdraw most of the fighters into Germany, beyond the Jug's range.

The P-38 was not withdrawn from the ETO, they were transferred to the 9th AF, and were still numerous in the MTO until late in the war, escorting bombers into Germany and Austria. P-47s were flying escort right up until Germany surrendered. P-47s had the lowest loss to sortie ratio of any Allied fighter in the ETO.

The P-51 would have benefited from dive recovery flaps, because they frequently got into compressibility trouble too.

History often disagrees with Brown.

[J.A.W.]

Tempests were utilized in the tactical air-superiority role by the RAF 2nd TAF,
& shot down most every type of jet flown operationally by the LW..

How did the 9th AF '38's go against them LW turbine 'blow-jobs' ?

[MiloMorai]

There was almost 1400 Bf109G-14/AS built.

[Hajo]

There was almost 1400 Bf109G-14/AS built.

If they were built in 1944 they were having trouble finding someone qualified to fly them.

Experienced pilots were few.

[J.A.W.]

Yes, though - for sure -
- despite crushing odds & cruel attrition, the LW kept going up -
 - to the bitter end..

At wars end, "the RAF Disarmament Teams alone neutralised 4,180 different types of German aircraft" in the British sector..

[cited P.68, Tank Buster Vs Combat Vehicle]..

[MiloMorai]

If they were built in 1944 they were having trouble finding someone qualified to fly them.

Experienced pilots were few.

From Sept 44 to Mar 45.

[J.A.W.]

A fair few LW aces did survive the war too..

[Hajo]

From Sept 44 to Mar 45.

Yes Milo that about proves it.  The LW flew at that time of course, fighters were drawn back to Germany.

And at that time the 8th Air Force had trouble finding fighters to fight.  The LW rarely came up in number.

They did on some occasions, albeit with inexperienced pilots.  Cannon fodder except for the experienced

262 Pilots, and they were few in number.  FW190 D9s in most cases relegated to hovering over 262 fields

to protect the 262s on landing.  The bottom of the D9s were often painted in a red and white candy stripe

scheme so  that field ack could identify them when they were up over the field covering 262 landings.  I believe

we have a D9 or two in our skins with that camo on them in game

[J.A.W.]

I suggest Don Caldwell's 'JG 26 Top Guns of the LW'
as a reasonably well researched/accurate appraisal of the situation..

As he notes.

Resistance was put up by the LW & cost the Allies - right to the end..

& Clostermann wrote [P.166, The Big Show],

"All in all the average standard of German fighter pilots was much higher at the turn of the year '44-45 than at any other time since 1940"

"...the heroic band of 'the old stagers' of the LW, the real veterans, with 3 or 4,000 hours of flying.
These pilots trained in the school of the Spanish Civil War, survivors of the successive campaigns of the LW from 1940 onwards, knew their job inside & out, with all the refinements. Both prudent & sure of themselves, masters of their machines, they were very dangerous."

[Hajo]

Yes it cost....very little if and when the LW showed up after mid 1944.

LW Pilots after the war being interrogated (Heinz Barr, Galland, Priller etc. gave a different view then Caldwell)

Fuel short supply if any, Pilots that could actually get a 109 off the ground without ruining the plane, let alone landing it.

They had planes, just nobody to fly them, and also fuel was in such short supply at the end they rarely launched

unless there were few escorts and the target was of utmost importance.  Without fuel they simply couldn't fly.

And those that did usually got killed because of their inexperience.  The 8th taunted them and wanted them to come up.

fact is at that time....they rarely came up.  Look at 8th airforce records and 8th AF squadron figures late war and

8th AF fighter Pilot accounts.  It became very rare to see a LW fighter in a lot of instances.

[MiloMorai]

Yes Milo that about proves it.  The LW flew at that time of course, fighters were drawn back to Germany.

And at that time the 8th Air Force had trouble finding fighters to fight.  The LW rarely came up in number.

They did on some occasions, albeit with inexperienced pilots.  Cannon fodder except for the experienced

262 Pilots, and they were few in number.  FW190 D9s in most cases relegated to hovering over 262 fields

to protect the 262s on landing.  The bottom of the D9s were often painted in a red and white candy stripe

scheme so  that field ack could identify them when they were up over the field covering 262 landings.  I believe

we have a D9 or two in our skins with that camo on them in game

Where does that nonsense about the Dora come from?

[J.A.W.]

There is a new Caldwell book, wherein he reveals the LW response day by day to the 8th AF, & notes that the majority of JG efforts were directed against the tactical airforces of the enemy, on both fronts, east & west..

Check also the US Strategic Bombing Survey, which gives the figures for LW  av-gas stocks captured intact at the war's end, they were considerable too..

[earl1937]

Too slow even so, & that model pic posted of the Skyraider packing max ordnance on folded wings, I doubt they did that in full-scale..

Well, maybe the pic's below will give you a better appreciation of the capability of the load carry of the "Spad"





The "Sandy" could carry up to 8,000 lbs of ords, with a 5 hour range of fuel. Don't know of any other single engine aircraft which could come close to that!