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Most successful Weapon of WWII

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  • #46
    IMO it was the "mass production" techniques of US industry which permitted such things as the liberty ship and the P-51 - which was designed and started rolling of the production line 15 weeks after the contract for its development was signed that were the killer weapon of WWII. It made all the other things listed here possible in time and in numbers great enough to ensure victory for the allies.
    Last edited by Monash; 10 Apr 12,, 12:48.
    If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

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    • #47
      The quote from Thatch interested me from the first time I read it, since it was given during a debrief only two months after Midway - a battle where his Wildcats had shot down 1.5 Zeroes for every loss they took. I wonder how much it was affected by fog of war - it seems to me that in wartime there's a natural and consistent tendency to overstate the performance of enemy equipment and understate that of your own. (Saburō Sakai, for example, had some nice things to say about the F4F and a lot of criticism of the A6M in his memoirs.)

      Entertainingly, the first time I'd seen that quote (and other similar ones from other F4F pilots around the same time period) was in Burgerud's excellent Fire In The Sky - as the introduction to a section that argued they were wrong about the relative merits of both aircraft.
      "Nature abhors a moron." - H.L. Mencken

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      • #48
        Originally posted by USSWisconsin View Post
        At the beginning of the war, the Zero was faster than the F4F, its armament of 2 x20mm and 2 x 7.62mm was effective and shot down plenty of F4F's, in the hands of a typical Japanese pilot, against a typical American pilot, it was an aircraft to be reckoned with - all aircraft have strengths and weaknesses, the Zero was no different. The US was very concerned about the Zero, until they got the F6F into the field, by mid-war, the Zero had been overmatched by the USN carrier pilots, even when flying the later F4F's. Of course in good hands, planes like the the F4F could master the Zero. There is no way the Zero was a WWI aircraft.
        The US lost a number of P-40's to the Zero because at first the pilots had a hard time accepting that the Zero could out dogfight the P-40 which could turn inside both the Me109 and Spitfire. However as the Flying Tigers AVF demonstrated when the P-40 used its dive speed advantage and heavy machine guns to make slashing attacks and relied on its armor and speed to get it out of trouble the P-40 dominated both the Zero and the even lighter more agile Oscar.

        In the book Fire In The Sky: The Air War In The South Pacific, there is an account of a group of allied pilots trying to bag an Oscar being flown by a very skilled Japanese pilot. The Oscars agility was such that when combined with the pilots skill they simply could not keep him in their sights. Overall American planes even early in the war were superior to Japanese planes if properly employed. Well with the possible exception of the P-39 which while a good ground attack craft sucked as a dog fighter and could not fight at the high altitudes seen in most American air combat operations. Despite its armor, even the Oscar could easily down a P-39 if it could get above it where any fuselage hits behind the pilot were sure to disable the radiator and thus the engine.

        Strangely, the Soviet VVS loved the plane, but combat there was at a much lower level.

        The Brewster Buffalo also earned a bad rep in the Pacific but the Finns used it to slaughter the Soviets, even Soviet pilots flying the Spitfire.

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        • #49
          wrt to p-39 , the soviets especially like the center-line canon.
          do not recall exactly which one said that :
          the fw-190 radial engine could not protect the pilot against that, one hit and it was all over.
          J'ai en marre.

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          • #50
            Originally posted by 1979 View Post
            wrt to p-39 , the soviets especially like the center-line canon.
            do not recall exactly which one said that :
            the fw-190 radial engine could not protect the pilot against that, one hit and it was all over.
            I don't think any fighter could survive a hit from a 37-mm. armament.
            All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
            -Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.

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            • #51
              Originally posted by zraver View Post
              The US lost a number of P-40's to the Zero because at first the pilots had a hard time accepting that the Zero could out dogfight the P-40 which could turn inside both the Me109 and Spitfire. However as the Flying Tigers AVF demonstrated when the P-40 used its dive speed advantage and heavy machine guns to make slashing attacks and relied on its armor and speed to get it out of trouble the P-40 dominated both the Zero and the even lighter more agile Oscar.

              In the book Fire In The Sky: The Air War In The South Pacific, there is an account of a group of allied pilots trying to bag an Oscar being flown by a very skilled Japanese pilot. The Oscars agility was such that when combined with the pilots skill they simply could not keep him in their sights. Overall American planes even early in the war were superior to Japanese planes if properly employed. Well with the possible exception of the P-39 which while a good ground attack craft sucked as a dog fighter and could not fight at the high altitudes seen in most American air combat operations. Despite its armor, even the Oscar could easily down a P-39 if it could get above it where any fuselage hits behind the pilot were sure to disable the radiator and thus the engine.

              Strangely, the Soviet VVS loved the plane, but combat there was at a much lower level.

              The Brewster Buffalo also earned a bad rep in the Pacific but the Finns used it to slaughter the Soviets, even Soviet pilots flying the Spitfire.
              The P40 was a much maligned aircraft, it remained in production throughout the war, and was better than many foreign designs. If current versions were compared to their opponents, it wasn't a bad fighter at all, in the hands of an experienced pilot, it was quite effective. The Buffalo and the P39 were both downgraded before they reached production (superchargers removed for export - then pressed into domestic service), had they been produuced in their original design configurations, they might have been viewed quite differently. It is curious how the Finns did such great things with their Buffaloes, perhaps it involved better pilots? They were quite small and manueverable compared to many contemporaries.
              sigpic"If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
              If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children."

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              • #52
                Originally posted by USSWisconsin View Post
                It is curious how the Finns did such great things with their Buffaloes, perhaps it involved better pilots? They were quite small and manueverable compared to many contemporaries.
                The Finn's F2A-1 (B-239) was de-navalized and had ripped out all the junk the Navy installed like the life raft and tail hook and they had the F2A-1 version without self sealing tanks or cocpkit armor (the finns re-added an armored seat back) ad used the export version of the Wasp Cyclone that they fixed.* The result was an extremely agile fighter, very nearly an American Zero. In the lower level combat against the VVS it was very much a replay of the Pacific were excellent pilots in extremely agile planes ripped the enemy apart. The B-239's Brewster's 4x .50cal was also a better dog fighting weapon's suite the than the Zero's 20mm/7.62mm combo as well.

                Persistent tales indicate the Wright R-1820 had an oil problem the Finn's fixed by reversing the seals... Might be apocryphal but might not be....

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