Warbird Information Exchange

Yeah me too... Sorry

I agree with Mudge the _____ on this as far as firepower and shootability (?)
The P-38 with center-line fire and manoeuvreability combined to make a great fighting platform

Bill,

It's hard to argue with the facts that K5083 has offered but I'll fly in the face of them and undoubtedly end up trailing smoke but that's part of the fun of this! If the discussion includes underwing externally mounted armaments (bomb hard points and rocket rails) along with fixed guns and cannons, I would have to say the P-47 would be my choice. It had it all with the exception of the cannon. I for one would not want to be on the receiving end of and angry P-47!

Odd that nobody has mentioned the P-63 with it's centrally mounted pea shooter and 6 .50's....formidable to say the least!

John

Aw shucks Bill, you know it was the Spitfire!

A friend of mine (Col. James Haun) flew Spitfire 5's , 9's and 14's , also P-47's P-40's and the P-51 while with the 9th A. F. headquarters staff in Europe during WW II.. He said the MK. 9 or 14 was the best of all of them. "Splendid in all details and it's elliptical wing gave it an edge over the P-51." He was talking about squeezing every ounce of performance out of an airframe.
He said the Mk. 5 when they got them were outdated, the 9's and 14's were the best blend, as later variants got more complicated, much heavier, with heavier wing loadings and lost some of their agility.

I asked Paul Poberezny,(founder of the EAA) that question and he said the P-64 was his favorite. Initially it can outclimb even a Bearcat, and that it will outturn and maneuver the P-51 or anything else.

A dear friend of mine Jim Byers flew P-38s in the 474th FG in WWII and F-51s in 18th FBW in Korea with over 250 combat missions. He also flew a number of other fighters including the P-47, Spitfire and had a flew mock dogfights with them. He said hands down the P-38L with boosted ailerons and dive brakes made it unbeatable. Speed, range, altitude, firepower, bombload, manueverability, ability to take damage and twin-engined reliabilty. He also added that ME-109s really come apart when you hit them with all 5 guns at once!!!

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Don't touch my junk!!

i'd say the f7f tigercat with 4 20mm cannons

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

For John and Tom; I don't think an F7F was in combat in WWII, was it?Also to keep the discussion manageable, I'm only evaluating guns now, not underwing bombs or rockets, but that would be an additional minor factor to add later. Also realize that I'm not an expert in all the fighters, especially the rarer Russian stuff. I never even thought about Beaufighter. I never flew anything in combat, and only have flight time in about 4 different fighters,but I have studied the field some. First I'm trying to stay with more of verifyable facts.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

That was pretty standard fighter armament by the end of the war and was carried by Typhoons, Tempests, La-7, N1K, Ki-44-III, J2M3, some Fw 190s, and even the Westland Whirlwind and Hurricane IIc. The standard Beaufighter carried that PLUS another six .303 machine guns. But I do agree that this package was necessary to qualify for a hard-hitting fighter by the end of the war -- 6 or even 8 .50s were a relatively light punch by then.

August

Ok...let's DO throw some numbers around...I'll weigh in for the Corsair party...

11.7 to 1 kill ratio

4000 lbs of bombs could be carried

6 .50 calibre guns (standard US equipment for the most part) or 4 20 mm cannons

10% less accurate than a Dauntless as a dive bomber (and the Dauntless was acknowledged as one of the Best dive bombers of the war)


Rocket equipped from mid war on

447 mph top speed (faster than P-51D) on the F4U-4 model late war

1005 mile range F4U-4

Photo recon, attack bomber, air superiority fighter, ground attack aircraft, land based, carrier based....anything here I have'nt covered?

Mark

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Mark Morris

OH! AND I forgot to add a key factor...one of the first effective Nightfighters (the F4U-2)!!

Mark

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Mark Morris

hey......... can i retract my tigercat vote & go with the p-61 black widow?? if so, i change my vote, if not, well i guess i wasted my vote....... just like i do any of the national elections!!

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

i thuoght it must have been a typo
as for the best fighter ?
the dap built mk 21 hit harder than it's uk built cousin's because it had the standard 4x20 mm cannons plus 4x50 cal machine guns instead of the 6x303 that the uk built ones had but they were both used as anti shippin an ground attack more than as fighters.
some late war single seat fighter's had bigger than 20 mm(la9 23mm,some versions of ki44 caseless 30mm, ki 45 37mm cannon).
but the best fighter's were not always the best armed the mustang ,ki100 f6f all had small calliber guns but were generaly excepted as among the best fighters of the late war.
if we just look at arnament then the ki 84 (4x20mm) n1k2 (4x20mm).
paul

My 2 cents worth....I'd have to go with the P-47 Thunderbolt as a few have already mentioned. Those 8 .50 cals combined with it's ability to take a beating and still get back home, make it the one I would prefer to fly if I were over the skies of Europe. I would also like the safety factor of having that huge radial engine "jug" in front protecting me in case of a belly landing (like Gabby Gabreski was forced to do).

John

It's a toss up for me!

P-47 & Corsair.

Some of the highest aces in the ETO...P-47's.

Corsair...built before our entry into WWII and proved it's metal thoughout, modified and adapted to every job, eventually staying in production long after other WWII piston bretherens were history.
Blue skies,
Jerry

By the way, can we please forget kill ratios. What you see quoted are not kill ratios. They are claims-to-kills ratios. The denominators are reasonably reliable but the numerators are not. Invariably they are inflated, often by a multiple of 2 or 3, depending on circumstances and who was doing the counting. They are so unreliable that kill ratios are not meaningful even relative to other kill ratios, let alone in absolute terms. Their one and only useful purpose was propaganda.

August

Oz, What the heck is a Dap built Mk 21? The only Mk 21 I know is the Spitfire, very potent with 4 20 mm. and 450 mph top speed, but I'm not sure it saw WWII combat action. Also Corsair fans I don't think they had cannon until after the war. Stuff like what they did in Korea is not too relevant to what I'm trying to evaluate at this point, however if we did consider this Spits were built into the 50's and in RAF service til the late 50's, don't know about Corsairs. Back the theme in the order I tried to suggest(some of you guys would have a hard time with the instructions in a roll of toilet paper) it looks like for armament the top might be Beaufighter and Mosi(4 each 20mm & .50) if we consider that version as a fighter. it's sort of a fighter bomber. As for P-61 is it WWII?

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK