Best Fighters

[midnight Target]

Cool stuff Sabre...thank you. I guess that particular urban legend has endured, because it was a Sabre pilot that was telling the story.

[Shuckins]

Thanks, Don.

Regards, Shuckins

[Soviet]

Originally posted by funkedup

As for the La-7 vs. P-51.  Somebody is forgetting that if Mustangs met Lavochkins, the Mustangs flew all the way from England to eastern Europe.  Let's see any Soviet WWII fighter achieve that feat...

Did the Lavochka need to? No remember it fought on the Eastern front where low altitude performance was preferred and Range wasn't as essential as the ETO.

Also i've heard from Several sources that It was 2 P-51s who bounced Ivan Kozhedubs (not very sure on the spelling) La-7 thinking it was a FW-190 and Ivan showed those P-51s.

Also the reason the Yak-9Ps and Lavochkins in Korea didn't do so well is they had NK pilots flying them.  I'm positive if the Russians were flying them it would have been different or at least not such a slaugther as it was.

And don't forget how the Mig-15 was able to cruise along at 50,000 feet while the Sabre couldn't really go that high.  Remember on the History channel? the black thursday thing or whatever it was where the Russian Mig-15 pilots hung around really high then dived in and slaugthered dozens of B-29s?

The Americans have had some good designs but don't underestimate the Russians they have some Really good aircraft and pilots.

[fdiron]

Heres what I saw in an interview on the History channel

The maximum speed of the F86 and Mig15 were within 5 mph of each other.  The Mig held advantages in climb rate, turn rate, and ceiling.  The F86 was not fast enough to provide escort for B29s against Mig15s.  The most important quality of an escort fighter is speed.

[Widewing]

Originally posted by fdiron
Heres what I saw in an interview on the History channel

The maximum speed of the F86 and Mig15 were within 5 mph of each other.  The Mig held advantages in climb rate, turn rate, and ceiling.  The F86 was not fast enough to provide escort for B29s against Mig15s.  The most important quality of an escort fighter is speed.

My problem with the History Channel is that most of the shows presented are riddled with error. This is because most of them are written and produced by people without any credentials as historians. Their primary goal is to make money, accuracy in their material is secondary.

Primary escort for the B-29s was the F-84. This fighter was not fast enough to cope with the MiG-15. However, the Sabre was. As Sabres became available, the F-84 was reassigned to attack missions, where it excelled.

Later, the B-29s were switched to night bombing. Here they were escorted by dedicated night fighters, such as the Lockheed F-84 and the Douglas F3D Sky Knight. You might find it interesting that no B-29 was ever lost to communist fighters while being escorted by the F3D. However, 44 communist fighters were shot down.

Losses of B-29s totalled just 22% of communist claims. Typically, anything the Soviets shot at, they claimed as destroyed.

My regards,

Widewing

[fdiron]

The Sabre was not fast enough to cope with the Mig15 while escorting B29s.  Thats what my previous post was all about.  After a very infamous raid in which quite a few B29s were shot down, the Air Force did some combat simulations stateside and concluded that the F86 did not have a sufficient speed advantage over the Mig15 in order to successfully escort the bombers.

[DblTrubl]

Just a note: The P-38, P-47, And P-51 were NOT designed from the outset to be long range bomber escorts.

The P-38 was originally intended to be a bomber interceptor. Good speed, climb, armament, high altitude performance, and a fuel duration of 1 hour at full power were design criteria.  It wasn't meant to slug it out with single engine fighters.  

The P-47 was designed as a high altitude fighter, hence the turbo. Extreme range wasn't a major design goal until the N was developed.

The Mustang was designed in response to a British request for North American to build P-40s for them. NAA thought (quite rightly) that they could build a better fighter than the P-40, and proceeded to do so in very short order. However, the Mustang I (like the P-40) was powered by a non-turbocharged Allison V-12 and therefore its high altitude performance was less than stellar.

In their initial incarnations, none of these three had the combination of range and high altitude performance needed for the escort role. This was partially due to a pre-war Air Corps doctrine that forbade the use of external stores on pursuit craft.
The reasoning for this was to avoid the added drag of external fuel tanks and to prevent ground commanders from using their pursuit ships for ground attack. BTW, this policy essentially dictated that Kelly Johnson and Lockheed use a thicker wing on the P-38 than they would have liked in order to provide internal tankage for the required fuel load. It wasn't until Jan. 1942 that the ban on external stores was lifted.

Another contributing factor was the American belief that large formations of heavy bombers would be able to adequately defend themselves on their way to and from the target. It wasn't until the Luftwaffe began destroying the bombers in appalling numbers that the Air Corps realized that  A) the bombers did in fact need escort, and  B) they had no purpose built type to fill that role. Only then were existing types adapted to fill that void in the inventory.

[funkedup]

But even without drop tanks those three aircraft still had greater range than any of the single engine types used by Germany or the USSR.

[MiloMorai]

" .... However, the Mustang I (like the P-40) was powered by a non-turbocharged Allison V-12 and therefore its high altitude performance was less than stellar. "

But the Allison did have a mechanical supercharger sometimes supplemented by a GE turbo charger. What made the Merlin was the 2 speed, 2 stage mechanical supercharger.

(not debating, just clarifying your statement)

[Shuckins]

DblTrubl,

Quite right.  Those American fighters weren't designed from the outset to be long-range escorts.  Nevertheless, when the failure of the American bombers to protect themselves against German fighter opposition became apparent, each of those American fighters were heavily modified to extend their range.  The P-51 literally became a flying fuel tank.  The weight of the extra fuel tanks made the Mustang sluggish and hard to handle in the early stages of an escort mission.  After burning off some of that fuel, however, the situation changed, and the Mustang became a swift, agile, and deadly fighter.  

An empty fuel tank no doubt didn't weigh very much.  Yet it was extra weight.  This was  a handicap, however small, that German and Japanese designs did not suffer from.

Anybody have any idea how much the empty wing and fuselage tanks weighed?


Regards, Shuckins

[Sclew]

Neg Funked- Yak 9DD was fully capable of flying as far as a mustang, but it was completely impractical and useless on the Eastern front and they pulled out the extra wing tanks and used them for the same purpose as the Yak-9D.

Without any serious attempt at a strategical air bomber niether AF had any real reason to develop LR escort fighters. That would be putting the cart before the horse


Widewing- several times I have seen you comment that the Sabre was "faster below 30,000 feet". Can you please explain why Yeager stated the Mig was faster by a slight to large margin at all altitudes? And how the Mig could climb better at all altitudes yet you think it couldn't fly faster than a sabre in lower alts?

And BTW the success of the F-51 was against the NK airforce. Hardly indicative of the capability of the planes flown.

[Hooligan]

Long range and high altitude performance come at a heavy penalty in weight.  Empty fuel tanks are still heavy because of self sealing rubber shell.  Additionally, the aircraft structure has to be enlarged and strengthened to accommodate the extra fuel tanks, turbosuperchargers (the turbosupercharger is why the P-47 is so porky) and so on.  If the P-51 had been designed as a short range fighter (like the spitfire), it would have been lightened noticeably and would have been in the weight class of a spit or 109, probably 2000 or 2500 lbs lighter with full internal fuel and ammo.

Hooligan

[Ossie]

And so often the greatest achievments are unintentional  One other trait that was common with the five frontline U.S. fighters is that none of them were really in the echelon of comparative dominance when they initially appeared on the scene. The Spitfire, Me109, Fw190 and A6M were all practicaly out-of-the-gate, world-class powerhouses. The P-47 and the F6F probably had the best initial combat versions when pitted against contemporaries, but the P-38 and F4U had teething problems, and the P-51 needed a new engine.

DblTrubl is right in that none of the five U.S. fighters were based on any single intent (The Navy and Army obviously had different needs, and the USAAC infatuation with streamlining possibly cost the P-39 a place in greatness). In part, that's what makes it  so cool to look at. Not only did they all end up with remarkably similar capabilities (when the emphasis on multi-role capabilities did become a priority among both services), but eventually all were able to operate at a high level of competitivness throughout the full range of the multi-role spectrum.

[superpug1]

Dangit John you took my saying. I came up wit da lala-7 and the peepee-51 so hahahahahahahaha



im the ruler of onion land and theres nothing you can do about it.

[udet]

you are all mistaken my friends:the tempest is the best fighter of the late war period for low altitudes, while the Ta152 is the best for high altitudes. All the mustang can do is suck and swallow.