the FW190 the best fighter aircraft of WWII....
Discussion
aeropilot said:
I'm old enough to have seen Black 6 flying back in the 1990's, which was the first time a pretty much all original combat veteran Luftwaffe aircraft had flown for 40 odd years or more.
Flown at the time by Air Chief Marshal John Allison, father of James Allison technical director at Mercedes F1 and formally Ferrari. And himself a former director at Jaguar F1 and Rolls-Royce ./trivia
FourWheelDrift said:
Flown at the time by Air Chief Marshal John Allison, father of James Allison technical director at Mercedes F1 and formally Ferrari. And himself a former director at Jaguar F1 and Rolls-Royce .
/trivia
Don't you mean crashed by ACM Allison...... /trivia
More than 50% of Black 6's display were flown by Charlie Brown, with about 30% being flown by Dave Southwood.
John Allison didn't actually fly it that much, but crashed it well enough on its last ever flight.....largely as a result of having not flown it that much......but rank has its privileges.
aeropilot said:
dr_gn said:
It says it was in service for the entire war, after stating that it first appeared in 1941, so maybe not the best article to base an opinion on.
Let me guess, article written by an American.....? 
One of my favourite WW2 fighters is the P-40 Warhawk. While I wouldn't be silly enough to put it forward as the Best Fighter of the war, it's certainly a lot better than the inherently obsolete, slow, sluggish, second-rater it often gets cast as.
If you'll forgive me for plopping in a piece I've already written:
"Both in the 1940s and since the Warhawk was operationally and ‘culturally’ overshadowed by the P-38, the P-47 and the P-51, which were undoubtedly superior aircraft and were somewhat more glamorous and high-tech. The Warhawk got cast as a fighter that just happened to be in widespread service in the early years of the war and was obsolete from the moment it was introduced. Of course the Curtiss had its flaws (every fighter, every plane, every weapon of war and every machine does) but these seem to have been magnified out of all proportion to the reality.
Why was that the case? Firstly the P-40 was very obviously (and correctly) merely an updated P-36/Hawk 75. The P-36 is another badly under-appreciated fighter but it was certainly obsolete from any major combat theatre by 1940. Curtiss knew that, which is why they created the P-40. So it’s easy to cast the Warhawk as a stretch of a design which was drawn up in 1934 and barely kept pace with the rapid advances in fighter design during the decade.
Then there was the fact that the way Curtiss upgraded the P-36 into the P-40 was by fitting the Allison V12 engine. The Allison was a strong, reliable and powerful powerplant but in its early forms suffered from a lack of expertise and resources for supercharger development since the USAAC prioritised turbochargers for high-altitude work rather than optimised superchargers. Like the P-39 the P-40’s streamlined shape could not accomodate the turbo and its bulky air ducting so it was hobbled by a rather old-fashioned supercharger design. This meant that engine performance dropped off quickly above 12,000 feet and made the Warhawk essentially useless as a fighter above 15,000 feet. That gave the P-40 the (somewhat justified) reputation as a slow, heavy fighter with a useless engine.
Thirdly, the P-40 was the USA’s primary fighter (and a major part of the fighter force of many of the British and Commonwealth air forces) in the pre-1942 part of the war when the Allies were not doing well. The European western front was at a stalemate, things weren’t going well in North Africa, the Eastern Front was hanging in the balance and the Pacific Theatre had been steamrollered by the Japanese advances of late 1941/early 1942. The P-40 was, in effect, on the losing side. Obviously that was by no means the P-40’s fault but it’s not the sort of thing that great myths are made of.
But was what the reality? The P-40 is often judged against the next-generation fighters that replaced it like the P-47 and P-51, and other contemporaries like the Spitfires MkV-IX and Bf109F/G. Of course any pre-war design aircraft is going to come off badly against them. But in the context of its own time the P-40 was competitive - the P-40C had a level top speed of 345mph at 15,000ft. The Bf109E could manage 348mph at 14,560ft. The Spitfire Mk1 could do 346mph at 15,000ft. The A6M Zero was a relative sluggard at 331mph at 14,930ft while the Hurricane (designed at the same time as the original P-36) could do 327mph at 18,000ft.
The P-40 gets cast as a heavy, overweight fighter that couldn’t outturn the Graf Zeppelin, mostly because it couldn’t dogfight with the A6M Zero in the Pacific and the Ki-43 Oscar in the China-Burma-India theatre. But those Japanese fighters prioritised manoeverability over almost anything else and no other fighter (Allied, Axis or otherwise) could turn with them in a straight dogfight. The F4F Wildcat certainly couldn’t and the Wildcat doesn’t get the same stigma as the Warhawk.
But the P-40 repeatedly showed that it could fight very effectively against the Japanese fighters when used with the correct tactics. The Zero/Oscar’s famous tight-turning abilities applied only at low speeds - as the speed climbed their large control surfaces and weak structures meant that they physically couldn’t keep up. Above 200mph the P-40 could out-roll and out-turn its foe and it was blessed with punchy armament (2x .50s and 4x.30s in the ‘long nose’ versions, 6x .50s in the ‘short nose’ variants), adequate armour and a very strong structure. It could reach 500mph in a dive and maintained momentum very well in a zoom. When flown with these advantages in mind (‘boom and zoom’ dives, low yo-yo turns and in combat pairs) it could be devestatingly effective. It was also a simple, strong and rugged airframe with a similarly durable engine which coped well with operations from rough fields in inhospitable bits of the world and could withstand astounding amounts of battle damage.
It’s often said that the P-40 was obsolete by the middle of 1940, but that is with the unsaid proviso of “in the Western Europe theatre”. That’s where fighter-on-fighter combat occured at 20,000ft and more and depended on rapid climb ability to intercept. The heavy P-40 with its underdeveloped engine was never going to be competitive there. But in other theatres where combat took place at a lower altitude and in less frenetic campaigns the P-40 was superb. It tangled effectively with the Bf109 in North Africa and Russia once the correct tactics were employed. The combat record of the American Volunteer Group in Burma and China really stands for itself - a kill ratio of 40:1 against an enemy vastly superior in resources and numbers and, supposedly, equipment. The Flying Tigers totalled 297 confirmed ‘kills’ (160 in aerial combat, 137 on the ground) for the loss of four pilots in combat, two in bombing raids and nine in accidents. In terms of aircraft, of the 99 Tomahawk IIBs shipped to Burma for the AVG, 12 were destroyed or written off in combat.
The China Air Task Force which took over from the AVG were equipped with P-40Es and were still outnumbered three-to-one by the IJAAF. In nine months they recorded 149 kills, 86 probables and 16 combat losses.
In Italy the 325th Fighter Group chalked up 135 Italian and German planes (including 96 Bf-109s) for only 17 P-40 losses. In one engagement 20 P-40s of the 325th were bounced by 35 Bf-109s and for the loss of one Curtiss 21 Messerschmitts were destroyed.
P-40 pilots of the RNZAF confirmed 99 kills and 14 probables for the loss of 20 of their own.
Where it was obsolete as a fighter the P-40 proved to be a superb ground attack aircraft, operating as a fighter-bomber in North Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific and Italy.
Even before WW2 was over some people felt that the P-40 was so useless that there must have been nefarious reasons why Curtiss kept building them right through to the end of 1944. The accusation was that Curtiss was bribing or otherwise influencing purchasing committees to keep selling P-40s long after it had supposedly been rendered obsolete. The Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program looked into the isse and found nothing amiss - the P-40 found ready buyers because it was good enough for the job.
If you'll forgive me for plopping in a piece I've already written:
"Both in the 1940s and since the Warhawk was operationally and ‘culturally’ overshadowed by the P-38, the P-47 and the P-51, which were undoubtedly superior aircraft and were somewhat more glamorous and high-tech. The Warhawk got cast as a fighter that just happened to be in widespread service in the early years of the war and was obsolete from the moment it was introduced. Of course the Curtiss had its flaws (every fighter, every plane, every weapon of war and every machine does) but these seem to have been magnified out of all proportion to the reality.
Why was that the case? Firstly the P-40 was very obviously (and correctly) merely an updated P-36/Hawk 75. The P-36 is another badly under-appreciated fighter but it was certainly obsolete from any major combat theatre by 1940. Curtiss knew that, which is why they created the P-40. So it’s easy to cast the Warhawk as a stretch of a design which was drawn up in 1934 and barely kept pace with the rapid advances in fighter design during the decade.
Then there was the fact that the way Curtiss upgraded the P-36 into the P-40 was by fitting the Allison V12 engine. The Allison was a strong, reliable and powerful powerplant but in its early forms suffered from a lack of expertise and resources for supercharger development since the USAAC prioritised turbochargers for high-altitude work rather than optimised superchargers. Like the P-39 the P-40’s streamlined shape could not accomodate the turbo and its bulky air ducting so it was hobbled by a rather old-fashioned supercharger design. This meant that engine performance dropped off quickly above 12,000 feet and made the Warhawk essentially useless as a fighter above 15,000 feet. That gave the P-40 the (somewhat justified) reputation as a slow, heavy fighter with a useless engine.
Thirdly, the P-40 was the USA’s primary fighter (and a major part of the fighter force of many of the British and Commonwealth air forces) in the pre-1942 part of the war when the Allies were not doing well. The European western front was at a stalemate, things weren’t going well in North Africa, the Eastern Front was hanging in the balance and the Pacific Theatre had been steamrollered by the Japanese advances of late 1941/early 1942. The P-40 was, in effect, on the losing side. Obviously that was by no means the P-40’s fault but it’s not the sort of thing that great myths are made of.
But was what the reality? The P-40 is often judged against the next-generation fighters that replaced it like the P-47 and P-51, and other contemporaries like the Spitfires MkV-IX and Bf109F/G. Of course any pre-war design aircraft is going to come off badly against them. But in the context of its own time the P-40 was competitive - the P-40C had a level top speed of 345mph at 15,000ft. The Bf109E could manage 348mph at 14,560ft. The Spitfire Mk1 could do 346mph at 15,000ft. The A6M Zero was a relative sluggard at 331mph at 14,930ft while the Hurricane (designed at the same time as the original P-36) could do 327mph at 18,000ft.
The P-40 gets cast as a heavy, overweight fighter that couldn’t outturn the Graf Zeppelin, mostly because it couldn’t dogfight with the A6M Zero in the Pacific and the Ki-43 Oscar in the China-Burma-India theatre. But those Japanese fighters prioritised manoeverability over almost anything else and no other fighter (Allied, Axis or otherwise) could turn with them in a straight dogfight. The F4F Wildcat certainly couldn’t and the Wildcat doesn’t get the same stigma as the Warhawk.
But the P-40 repeatedly showed that it could fight very effectively against the Japanese fighters when used with the correct tactics. The Zero/Oscar’s famous tight-turning abilities applied only at low speeds - as the speed climbed their large control surfaces and weak structures meant that they physically couldn’t keep up. Above 200mph the P-40 could out-roll and out-turn its foe and it was blessed with punchy armament (2x .50s and 4x.30s in the ‘long nose’ versions, 6x .50s in the ‘short nose’ variants), adequate armour and a very strong structure. It could reach 500mph in a dive and maintained momentum very well in a zoom. When flown with these advantages in mind (‘boom and zoom’ dives, low yo-yo turns and in combat pairs) it could be devestatingly effective. It was also a simple, strong and rugged airframe with a similarly durable engine which coped well with operations from rough fields in inhospitable bits of the world and could withstand astounding amounts of battle damage.
It’s often said that the P-40 was obsolete by the middle of 1940, but that is with the unsaid proviso of “in the Western Europe theatre”. That’s where fighter-on-fighter combat occured at 20,000ft and more and depended on rapid climb ability to intercept. The heavy P-40 with its underdeveloped engine was never going to be competitive there. But in other theatres where combat took place at a lower altitude and in less frenetic campaigns the P-40 was superb. It tangled effectively with the Bf109 in North Africa and Russia once the correct tactics were employed. The combat record of the American Volunteer Group in Burma and China really stands for itself - a kill ratio of 40:1 against an enemy vastly superior in resources and numbers and, supposedly, equipment. The Flying Tigers totalled 297 confirmed ‘kills’ (160 in aerial combat, 137 on the ground) for the loss of four pilots in combat, two in bombing raids and nine in accidents. In terms of aircraft, of the 99 Tomahawk IIBs shipped to Burma for the AVG, 12 were destroyed or written off in combat.
The China Air Task Force which took over from the AVG were equipped with P-40Es and were still outnumbered three-to-one by the IJAAF. In nine months they recorded 149 kills, 86 probables and 16 combat losses.
In Italy the 325th Fighter Group chalked up 135 Italian and German planes (including 96 Bf-109s) for only 17 P-40 losses. In one engagement 20 P-40s of the 325th were bounced by 35 Bf-109s and for the loss of one Curtiss 21 Messerschmitts were destroyed.
P-40 pilots of the RNZAF confirmed 99 kills and 14 probables for the loss of 20 of their own.
Where it was obsolete as a fighter the P-40 proved to be a superb ground attack aircraft, operating as a fighter-bomber in North Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific and Italy.
Even before WW2 was over some people felt that the P-40 was so useless that there must have been nefarious reasons why Curtiss kept building them right through to the end of 1944. The accusation was that Curtiss was bribing or otherwise influencing purchasing committees to keep selling P-40s long after it had supposedly been rendered obsolete. The Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program looked into the isse and found nothing amiss - the P-40 found ready buyers because it was good enough for the job.
Indeed, the P-40 is a vastly underrated aircraft, and did an excellent job in the MTO, PTO not to mention being supplied to Russia in large quantities.
The Allison was(is) a great engine, very smooth and just lacking the high altitude punch of the RR and DB V12's, which meant it was best suited to low and medium level operations.
The Allison was(is) a great engine, very smooth and just lacking the high altitude punch of the RR and DB V12's, which meant it was best suited to low and medium level operations.
Pretty sure I read or heard somewhere (might have been a James Holland book) that the French Air Force inflicted very heavy losses on the Luftwaffe before the fall of France - many more Luftwaffe aircraft and pilots lost than French. Based on that, I don't think the P-36 was as obsolete as many seem to think - it was the mount of several aces. Obviously the Battle of Britain is more celebrated becasue it was a victory against the Luftwaffe, but I'd be interested to know how the French Air Force rated compared with the RAF. I think a Luftwaffe pilot said that when he first engaged RAF Hurricanes over France, he realised he was dealing with a different calibre of opponent. Whether this was with hindsight I don't know.
aeropilot said:
The Fw190A that is owned and operated by Paul Allen's FHC in Seattle is probably more than 75% original having been found in a northern Russian forest in a remarkably intact and preserved condition back in 1989 untouched from when it forced landed there in 1943.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/whotube-2/fw190-found-in-forest.htmlhttp://luckypuppy.net/the-only-flying-focker-wulf-...
Edited by Simpo Two on Wednesday 20th June 22:15
dr_gn said:
Pretty sure I read or heard somewhere (might have been a James Holland book) that the French Air Force inflicted very heavy losses on the Luftwaffe before the fall of France - many more Luftwaffe aircraft and pilots lost than French. Based on that, I don't think the P-36 was as obsolete as many seem to think - it was the mount of several aces.
The French had many more aircraft on paper than the Germans did, however, the FAF was in the modernisation transistion, and they had let the vast majority of its fleet become unairworthy due to poor maintenance etc., as little as 20% of its force was combat airworthy at the start of the war, so it is remarkable that they did inflict such damage on the Luftwaffe in May-June.The Luftwaffe lost about 1300 aircraft, about 220 destroyed by the Dutch, and about 800-850 by the French and the RAF combined, the rest from ground fire and accidents etc. There are no records of the exact split up of that 800-850 number between the FAF and the RAF.
The French lost about 900 aircraft, or about 70% of its strength, and the RAF lost just over a 1,000 aircraft between beginning of May and end of June.
Combined the FAF and RAF lost nearly twice the amount of aircraft as the Luftwaffe did in the same period.
Ginetta G15 Girl said:
Not really. The Sea Fury was more a Navalised development of the Tempest II.
As I understood it the cowling design on the Sea Fury was at the very least 'inspired' but the FW190. It also had a much smaller wing than the Tempest which does suggest a similar philosophy to the FW190.If the Sea Fury was a navalised Tempest, what was the Fury, the one RAF didn't want but the Iraqis bought?
Dr Jekyll said:
If the Sea Fury was a navalised Tempest, what was the Fury, the one RAF didn't want but the Iraqis bought?
The same thing without wing fold and a hook.....The Fury was the original design, i.e a lightweight updated version of the Tempest, but the jet age had already overtaken the concept, which as you say, the RAF thus had no longer any need for, but, the FAA did, as carrier ops at that time were still very much piston engine aircraft, and FAA had need for a high performance piston carrier aircraft, so Hawkers added a hook, and wing fold and it became the Sea Fury.
This is an ex-Iraqi Hawker Fury II ISS, as displayed at Old Warden a couple of weeks ago.
My photo.
Someone else's video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCK7ueNQcTE
My photo.
Someone else's video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCK7ueNQcTE
dr_gn said:
Pretty sure I read or heard somewhere (might have been a James Holland book) that the French Air Force inflicted very heavy losses on the Luftwaffe before the fall of France - many more Luftwaffe aircraft and pilots lost than French. Based on that, I don't think the P-36 was as obsolete as many seem to think - it was the mount of several aces. Obviously the Battle of Britain is more celebrated becasue it was a victory against the Luftwaffe, but I'd be interested to know how the French Air Force rated compared with the RAF. I think a Luftwaffe pilot said that when he first engaged RAF Hurricanes over France, he realised he was dealing with a different calibre of opponent. Whether this was with hindsight I don't know.
The Armee de l'Air had 172 Hawk 75s equipping two wings. On Sept. 8 1939 (the first fighter encounter on the Western Front), five Hawks encountered four Bf109s and shot down two for no cost. Similar scuffles took place during September and by the end of the month the AdA had lost six Hawks for 20 Bf109s. However the reconnaissance aircraft the Hawks escorted as their primary role suffered much heavier losses, implying that the Luftwaffe were prioritising those as targets. On Nov. 6 came the first large-scale fighter engagement - nine Hawks were intercepted by a large formation of 27 Bf109s. The AdA came away with four confirmed and four probable kills, for the loss of one Hawk the pilot of which survived.
Things went quiet until May when the German western offensive began. On the opening day one Hawk squadron (GC 1/5) claimed eight Do17s for no losses. GC 2/5's aircraft were caught in a bombing raid but managed to get airborne, shooting down two He111s for the loss of two Hawks on the ground.GC 2/4 lost six aircraft to German bombing.
The Hawks were used to provide air cover for ground forces against Luftwaffe dive bombers, having to tackle the Stukas at low altitude while also tangling with their Bf109 escorts - not a happy situation to be in. None the less in the early days of the invasion the AdA lost more Hawks to accidents on the ground than to enemy action. The AdA was ultimately defeated on the ground rather than in the air - by June the Hawk squadrons' airfields were being overrun. Some aircraft were abandoned and the survivors operated from improvised emergency airfields, some of which were evacuated and relocated twice a day in front of the German advance. This, more than aerial combat, destroyed the Hawk units' ability to fight effectively.
The top three AdA aces from the Battle of France were all Hawk 75 pilots - 16 confirmed and four probables (Edmond Marin la Meslee) and 14 confirmed and three probables (Michel Dorance and Camille Plubeau). In total the five Hawk squadrons had 230 confirmed and 81 probable kills, for the loss of 29 aircraft in the air - this was a third of the AdA's aerial victories before June 1940, even though the Hawk only made up 12 per cent of France's fighter strength. The AdA had 573 Morane-Saulnier Ms406s on strength (against 172 Hawks) and the Ms406s had 'only' 269 confirmed and 81 probables.
So the Hawk 75 was clearly capable of holding its own (at the very least) against the Bf109E. Like the P-40 it was blessed with very good high-speed handling, a quick roll rate and was generally reliable and strong. It carried less weight (and it was better distributed) than the Warhawk, with lower wing loaded and, by all accounts, much more spritely climb performance and sweeter handling. But the only way of keeping the P-36 competitive was the avenue that Curtiss took - converting it to the liquid-cooled V12. The early P-40s had barely more power than the late export-model P-36s and carried more weight, leading to poorer climb rates which led to some USAAF pilots preferring their old P-36s over the new shark-nosed P-40, even if the latter was much faster in level flight and dive. But the Allison engine had the development potential which the air-cooled radials in the P-36 did not.
In the event the Hawk 75 wasn't so much defeated by the Luftwaffe in the air but on the ground, both directly by bombing its airfields and by the sheer speed and scale of the French defeat in the battle between armies rather than air forces.
I'm fortunate enough to live about 10 mins away from Little Gransden which is home to https://www.yakuk.com
Often see something interesting flying about.
Often see something interesting flying about.
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