P47, P51, P38...the German view......

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
(Lindol later crashed and was
killed while attempting to kill the fleeing crew of an Me-110 he had just
forced down in a low-level fight. The two men were floundering across a
snow-covered field and it appeared that Lindol attempted to hit them with
his props. His plane seemed to hit the ground, then bounce back up,
soaring into a chandelle, then falling off on its nose and diving straight
into the ground.)



What a diddlying amazinhunk. I'm glad he got killed.  And to think Americans and British  tried after the war to paint the LW as killers of parachuted pilots. Not to meantion P38 sucks.

That was likely a false assumption on the part of the witness. You don't REALLY think a pilot would be so stupid as to try to kill people on the ground with his props, do you? If you had 4 .50 BMGs and a 20 MM cannon, which could hit something without endangering you, would you decide to use your props, which if damaged, could cause you to crash, to kill someone on the ground? Hell, it's likely that if you hit anyone with the props you'd wreck the props anyway. I doubt very seriously an accomplished pilot was attempting to kill people on the ground with his props. Too likely to damage your own plane, and too far to walk home.

[GRUNHERZ]

So?  I dont care how he tried to kill them, personally I find killing downed/chuted pilots unacceptable .

[hazed-]

Originally posted by Mino
Alright, now....

Why on earth did the LW call the P-38 the "Forked Tail Devil"?

By all accounts should it not have been referred to as the "Porked Tailed Panzie"?

Anyone have a plausible explanation?

it was named by the Ju52 pilots who few transport to north africa.P38s were most often the ones that shot them down , hense the name.

Oed you are quite offensive with your suggestion that i look at the info from one book and make my assesment from it.I am basing my opinion of the flaw in AH from flying ALL of the aircraft and shooting down ALL of the aircraft.

MY OPINION here is that the p38 sustains a lot more hits in AH  than other planes.Lately ive been flying the p51 and my opinion is that i can take a lot more hits in it than when i fly 190s for instance.

its simple, I read books with accounts from pilots of all sides in the war and i formulate an opinion same as you have.You obviously feel that the aircraft/model represented in AH is correct and i feel it isnt.Theres no need to start claiming im asking for change based on a single account in a single book.

but what i am asking here is for you guys to show me accounts of p38s or p51s taking excessive hits in combat or statements from pilots that would suggest they are tough planes.
If our opinion of how AH planes seem too tough or too weak dont count then id really like to know what does.

Im being honest here, Im not some LW freak who wants an easy time of it like you annoyingly suggest.I want a game where i see behaviour that is consistent with the stuff i read about.what else is there to want from these sims?

I read about average number of hits it takes to down bombers and when that doesnt pan out in the game i tend to question it.

Id really like to know whether you consider the p51 was vulnerable to ground fire and then could you explain to me why ack in AH doesnt down the p51 as easily as it does other planes.but then i guess you dont agree with that either do you? even though many of us have film of our p51s taking loads more hits.
I just get fed up with it.I really dont know why i half hope some of you will just say 'ok they do take more hits than you'd expect'
I fly them and i find it quite laughable that you all claim it doesnt happen.

One thing i have noticed is that when i shoot planes after some 3 years(?) in AH is that theres a certain expectancy when you unload lots of 20mm into an aircraft.You hit with a bunch of shots on a nik or spit or whatever and you tend to break off 'knowing' thats enough to put them down.Well all too often i break off an attack on p38s or p51s and im amazed they are still flying.This is where this questioning comes from.Not some LW pilot love.
I dont get this behaviour with the other aircraft (apart from La7s) so why is it i get it with the p38 or p51 or la7?
Is my view totally wrong? you may claim it is but i think most people know what i mean.Its almost impossible to produce figures to prove one way or the other but i know what i thinkand what i notice often whilst playing AH.

it just gets annoying when i stumble upon even more accounts that point toward a flaw in the AH modeling and post them only to be told they are roadkill by someone who wasnt in the war and so has in my eyes has less credibility than those people whos accounts i read who WERE there.

its what we read vs what we see in AH.

'The P-38 was actually quite durable, the wing spar was stainless steel.(quick point here so was the 190's) There are reports of P-38s colliding with telephone poles and other planes, with the other planes and the telephone poles coming out on the losing end. Jack Ilfrey collided with a 109, and lost about six feet of wing, while the 109 spun in out of control, due to the loss of an entire wing, Ilfrey returned to base, and landed safely. A P-38 from the same group hit a telephone pole on a strafing run, cutting the pole in half, while the P-38 lost a prop and suffered engine damage, the pilot returned to base and landed safely. While the P-38 was not without its faults, being fragile was not one of them. It was common to have P-38s land even when they were so badly bent from overstress in dives or turns that the controls were nearly jammed, and the planes had to be scrapped. Many P-38s landed with holes in their wings you could stand in, missing wing sections, holes all the way through engines you could stick your arm through, and even a couple with one tail boom shot away.'

this sort of thing i find intersting and I would like to see where this all comes from.Maybe if i read these in a book id change my mind about them.However i certainly havent seen anything like it myself.Perhaps you can give us more info than a second hand recalling of this? for all we know it could be made up or like chinese whispers all complete nonsense.
p38 cutting down telephone poles? that is something id like to see in print before i believe

having said that, if i did see it Id immediately stop questioning what i often see in AH.Or at least it would cross off the p38.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
So?  I dont care how he tried to kill them, personally I find killing downed/chuted pilots unacceptable .

The point is that it isn't likely he was trying to kill them at all! If he'd been trying to kill them, he'd have shot at them. And he wasn't shooting, therefore, it is likely he wasn't trying to kill them.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

I'll see if I can find those accounts and some pics. My old books are long gone, too many moves and too many were loaned to friends. I think I know a couple of people who may be able to locate the stuff for me. In the mean time, do a search on Jack Ilfrey, and I think you'll be able to find his account of the collision with the Me 109, and possibly the pictures of his plane and the one that hit the telephone pole. I'm sure Widewing has probably got that stuff somewhere. I think there's a site featuring the 20th and 55th Fgs, and possibly the 1st FG, there's plenty to read about Ilfrey and others.

[GRUNHERZ]

So he just hit the ground because of pilot error or mechanical fault with the P38?  Seems more likely he was so so low because he intended to strafe them.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by Glasses
Yeah Virgil even though that 'd be the case most of the Fw190s were strictly ordered to engage the buffs and not the escort fighters, the bulk of them,making them easy target . The 109 was relegated to escort the bomber destroyers mainly(single and twin engined). Not until at least the invasion front they did decide to engage the escorts as they realized,although very late when  their force was depleted, that they couldn't destroy the vast majority of the buffs,they were just being overwhelmed daily.

There were plenty of single engine fighter wings in the Western Front but only  a little bit under half of those fighters were serviceable at any one time so the assumption that the LW pilots were outnumbering their allied counterparts  in the first months when the P38 was being sent to escort the bombers is false.

How about these guys? Maybe they were there and lied about the numbers, or they can't count. I could quote Heiden, or Ilfrey, or a half dozen others who said they were outnumbered 4:1 or worse, but hey, they're just old fighter pilots, why believe them, except maybe because they were there.

Bob Johnson:
"I was on three of the early Berlin raids. I was the lead airplane on
March 6. I had only eight airplanes to protect 180 bombers."

Later he spotted fighters heading towards the heavies. At first he thought
that they were P-47's from the 56th. They turned out to be Focke Wulfs.

"We were line abreast, all eight of us and we just opened fire and went right
through some 60 or so 190s and 109s. As we turned to get on their tails, we
saw another 60 or so above and another 60 or so to their left. Probably
175 - 180 German aircraft. Eight of us."

After the fight erupted into a free for all, Johnson comments:

"I didn't have to think about the situation, it was there. I thought only of
survival, and hitting the enemy. If there are crosses, shoot at 'em."

An additional citation about the training given pilots reporting to P-38 Groups:

Max Woolley of the 364th FG says:

"I had about four or five hours of training in England before I went 'active'.
A pilot learned combat by being in combat."

On March 15th, Woolley's squadron ran into what he estimates as 120 German
fighters. The rest of the Group was about 5 miles away when his squadron C.O.
led them into the Germans. Only 12 P-38s taking on ten times as many of the
Luftwaffe. This was Woolley's first combat mission. After surviving by
out-turning several 109s who had worked onto his tail and shredding the
rudder of one 109, Woolley noted that the fight had been "a great lesson."

With as few as 40 P-38s on missions at one time (sometimes less than a dozen making the whole trip), and as many as 300 or 400 Luftwaffe planes opposing them, I'd call it outnumbered as bad as 10:1, but maybe I don't know my math. Hmm, even if you had 60 P-38s, and around 175 Luftwaffe, that's still around 3:1. Or did I not figure that right.

 By the way, I think I got these stories from Widewing, to give credit where credit is due.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
So he just hit the ground because of pilot error or mechanical fault with the P38?  Seems more likely he was so so low because he intended to strafe them.

Believe what you will. I doubt he had to be so low as to hit the ground with the plane in order to strafe them, if that was his intention. He might have been intending to shoot their plane. He may have taken damage while forcing them down. Who knows? I just doubt he flew into the ground trying to kill a couple guys he just forced down. Doesn't make sense. But then, I doubt you'd understand that.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Not to meantion P38 sucks. [/B]

P-38's killed Luftwaffe fighters, over their own
airspace at a rate of 4 to 1 in air to air combat. The P-38L achieved
a kill ratio of 6 to 1.This excludes losses not related to aerial combat.

If the P-38 was clearly
inferior, why did they kill four Luftwaffe fighters for each of their own lost
to German fighters?

The P-38 was the hot fighter in the MTO, where it did better than the P-47 and
the P-51. I'm sure there are a lot of dead German pilots who had great respect
for the Lightning.

The above borrowed from an old post by Widewing. In another time, and another place, but still relevant.

[GRUNHERZ]

"But then, I doubt you'd understand that."

Right because I dont fly allied planes or fawn over allied romance novel accounts of the war....

Why do you believe it unlikely that he was apparently trying to kill them? If so why do you even trust the source of your whole article if he thought that bit was plausible? And if you added it yourself why do you disbelive it now, or did you think nobody would make fun of the bastige killing himself in such a stupid manner? And why would he need to get that low too shoot the big plane, a much bigger target than two people. I think he was a murderous zealot and stupidly got killed.


And yes I still think the P38 sucks, although I like it a lot more than the P51.

[straffo]

GRUN it was self defense !

They were sniping him with their Luger

(I seriously need to close that WWIIOL account ...)

[Glasses]

In 1944 all German pilots opened their chutes no less than 300m off the ground,some even lower, for fear of being shot by American fighters, they warned new pilots to do that when they were engaged by Americans .   So by all accounts it was no fable and it indeed happen regularly. Of course that little dirty secret is not told in many of the romantic allied "non-fiction" books.

It is true though the P51 for example can take many hits from 4 MG151s from a distance of 100y and sometimes fly off with only a flap missing, perhaps a fuel leak it takes 2 full bursts to cause any critical damage while a P-47 with one good burst you can down it quickly(ussually  tail breaks off),same thing goes for 190s one good burst always rips the wings apart like they were tin foil(of course this is all in AH). P-38s I think are suppossed to be durable but the tail assembly was very weak to 20mm shots,not anymore though, I just aim for the pilot and make it explode.

[Glasses]

Funny Virgil 175 fighters were around how many fighters both single and twin engine the LW had in the west. There were many accounts of both allied and LW pilots seeing more than there around.

I can put many quotes from JG26 TG of the LW  when they said 60 fighters there were actually 20 or 15 fighters deployed from X unit(s) around that area. So it happend  by all accounts. I'm sure they can count but in the heat of the moment sometimes you don't have time to count accurately so you guess/estimate(ussually more than there were). Same as kills were mostly over claimed and allowed by the western allies,mainly because they  knew the true German losses,and used it as a morale boost.

[worr]

Originally posted by Captain Virgil Hilts
What happened to Tommy McGuire had absolutely nothing to do with flaps.

And exactly what is it that leads you to believe it takes more pilot effort to turn a P-38? In reality, the yoke gave the P-38 pilot an advantage, he could easily apply all of his upper body strength.  

In Ossie's defense he never said it was flaps. What he was probably referencing is the almost universal acceptance that McGuire is responsible for his own death...aka pride goes before the fall...because he ordered drop tanks left on in the fight.

There have been those historians who have tried to redeem this scenario, but I find it difficult to do even if his memory does not deserve such a tarnishment.

As for the yoke...I'm sure you've read and the pilot's you've talked to have all said it was pointless. They would have prefered a stick. The engineers put the yoke in there to over come the poor roll performance. And most of the time a pilot does not use two hands to fly in real life.

The Report of Joint Fighter Conference confirmed what pilots were saying about the 38 all over...that it was a busy cockpit...and you were switching hands all the time. I dare you to read what is writtin in that report. I'll quote one comment, however, "The yoke hides the instruments! Too complicated....Crowded....thr ottles too long and far apart for good directional control."

Worr, out

[worr]

Originally posted by Glasses
Funny Virgil 175 fighters were around how many fighters both single and twin engine the LW had in the west. There were many accounts of both allied and LW pilots seeing more than there around.

Yes, but not in 1943 when the P38 first went opperational.

The LW could unify their forces into one massive attack. The USAAF could only put so many P38s in the air.

And speaking of servicablity of LW ac in contrast to the P- 38....hehe.

"Early in 1944 Lockheed sent their ace test pilot, Tony LeVier, to Europe to get some first hand information and help cheer up the troops. Even he admitted little testing had been done at higher altitudes in cold weather. Lockheed was based in Southern California! His first flight over England in the 38 and an engine blew at 29,000 feet with no warning. LeVier was there four months and during that time the Air Corps made almost 2,000 engine changes on the P-38, which was the total number of 38s in that theater! This was demoralizing."

As for the suggestion that it was JU52 pilots giving the legendary name to the P38 they were in no position to set nomenclature for the LW. They didn't carry that much weight. In the MTO there was wide respect for the new 38 which was exeriencing wide success. The only time it was vulnearable was when it was tied to close escort at low cruise settings. A mistake that would repeat with their first sorties in the ETO.

Worr, out