Originally posted by humble
This is the type of planeset I'm always curious about as it relates to the AvA (CT) set up. By now the luftwaffe focus has gone entirely to bomber defense and the D9 and K4 are basically pure E fighters. I'd have thought the XVI vs the 8 since the 8 was primarily a pac plane...or so I thought. I thought that the IX would be the spit in the MTO...even in late 44.
109K4 is easily the best plane in the set if its flown right IMO...curious to see how this set breaks down as week progresses. Allied has alot of interesting choices but i'd bet its 80%+ spitVIII's most of the time. So your setting up a furballer vs E fighter scenario even more so then normal.
Personally will be interesting since the 205 will have much tougher sledding while the A-20 will be in a much better enviornment for furballing:D ...
Seems to me that it was Guppy who said the Spit8 was in the Med, and whoever wrote the fine Wikipedia article agrees:
"This variant served almost exclusively overseas in the Mediterranean with both the Desert Air Force and the USAAF, and in the Pacific beginning in 1943 with the Royal Australian Air Force.
In the Mediterranean Theatre in Italy, the Mk VIII fought with the United States Army Air Force. The 31st and 52nd Fighter Groups operated the fighter for some time until, in March 1944, they had their aircraft replaced by the P-51D Mustang, an inferior" aircraft according to many 31st FG members,[citation needed] which was adopted because of its long-range escort capability. Over 300 kills were claimed by the two fighter groups while flying Spitfires."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire_variants#Mk_.C2.A0VIIII freely admit I am no authority on Spitfires, so if there's some evidence that 9s or 16s were in the Med in late 1944-early 1945, we'll put them in.
In a broader sense, though, this isn't an attempt to set up a meeting between Spitfires and 109K-4s. For better or worse, these are the planes that people were flying in this part of the world during this time frame (so far as I can tell!), so that's why they're here. I imagine that anyone who picks a Spit will get bored quickly as the fights move away from him. Although I agree with you that the 109K is probably the best fighter, it's not an easy plane to learn to fly well or to shoot well, and typically the 51s and late model 38s deal with it quite competently.
- oldman (and it will be interesting to watch the 205, you're right)
