Most over rated plane of World War II?

[bearcat241]

...That’s the context of what we are talking about here. ...WWII.... Who give a R.A. about modern fighter-bomber designs. We’re talking about WWII remember – It was in all the papers. ..

That was simply a contextual statement to show contrasting doctrine Helldiver...you know it wasn't a centerpiece.

And age has nothing to do with this topic, because its about aircraft contributions in the historical big picture, not the arena of personal opinion. I do have a military background of my own to speak from, in spite of your views on my age.

Because SB (strategic bombing) was a vital, but separate animal from TB, it couldn't be ignored as the prime means of ending the war early. But you need long range fighters to make it work right and keep casualties low. That's what the Mustang provided. We might still be bombing enemy bridges and airfields today had we not majored in SB over TB...a lesson not lost on post-war military brass either, nor on Stalin himself who lusted mightily for his own version of the B-29 strategic bomber and got it quickly.

Its true that Jugs and Tiffies ruled the skies over the Western battlefields, but you should also remember that this reign was won with air superiority first. Air superiority was won by the bombers and fighters over the heart of Germany and the demolition of their aircraft factories and oil refineries. With few aircraft and limited fuel and oil, the Luftwaffe simply lost the ability to defend its ground troops from air attacks among other things.

 

[Mathias]

If you believe on German claims. One of the greatest trues of WW2 is that nazi pilots, by propaganda or inconscious mistakes, overstimated their claims 300% at least. Marseille claims to shotdown two Hurricanes with only 15 rounds in 10 minutes. At the date, the RAF have no planes near and the only planes it lost were two Tomahawk in a training accident near Cairo, more than 300 miles from the suposed combat. Despite this, the claim is, today, confirmed by most of German WW2 historians.

The Il2 did a terrific job and was one of Soviet secrets to victory. They loose less than one third of the suposed German claims.

Pepe

All serious historians today agree that, while overclaiming happend, the German scoring system was fairly accurate and that the overall number of claims stacks up to actual losses pretty closely. No wittness no score.
Don't know where you got your 300% figure but I'd say it's pretty save to say that's utter nonsense. :kiss:

 

[Rami]

The LaGG-3 was considered a flying coffin by many Russian pilots. For that matter, the He-111, Dornier Do-17 and Polikarpov I-16 were also overrated and arguably past their prime when the war started.

 

[crashaz]

Tony

All the promise of an liquid cooled engine... always had it's bugs.

Really you could put a lot of the later war Japanese fighters... all had toothing problems whether it would be adapting German technology or lack of supplies.

They all had potential... but really were deployed without being ready.

 

[Rami]

Tony

All the promise of an liquid cooled engine... always had it's bugs.

Really you could put a lot of the later war Japanese fighters... all had toothing problems whether it would be adapting German technology or lack of supplies.

They all had potential... but really were deployed without being ready.

Crashaz,

I forgot about the Tony, good call!

Here's another opinion: The Russian Yaks were also overrated. The performance was ok, but they only had enough ammo for a good sneeze. Like the Sturmoviks, they won through sheer numbers.

 

[wolfi]

I think that's all are personal opinion´s, To figure that question out would be a lot of work to research. It depends on how effective an aircraft was in its main rule and how much aircrafts of that specific type are built.

wolfi

 

[Buddha13]

Hi all,
My candidate for this honour is the ME262.Yes it had a high speed and good weapons.But at anything less than full power it was a sitting duck.
As for cost effectiveness and reliability it was a poor second to the Me 109 and FW 190.It cost more to make, took longer to make,was much less reliable and had to have a major overhaul at a rate of 4-1 against the piston fighters.
Plus it's ratio of a/c built to enamy a/c shot down is laughable.
It may have been the way to the future,But it had all the faults of new and unproved tech.

Buddha13

 

[bearcat241]

...It may have been the way to the future,But it had all the faults of new and unproved tech...

But that's what made it great...in 1945 it represented the future of aviation and the Allied combatants fell all over each other trying to secure its technology for their own. It held the answers to so many "what if" scenarios in the minds of the contemporary British, American and Soviet aero-engineers who were snagged in their own jet designs.

Historical contributions are the bottom line we're discussing....

 

[911dan]

I have many books about the Ostfront but never read any mention of Il-2 effecting the outcome of any action, at least not as far as the German soldiers who wrote about it were aware. What I did read was any Il-2 captured by Finns or Germans was promptly discarded as worthless.

 

[bearcat241]

Read a Russian account...they have a story to tell also

 

[Irwin Forrester]

what about the volksjagger-the peoples fighter-the lamination of the wings was accomplished by using a glue whose plant was bomb to oblivion by the 8th airforce. Might have been dangerous but ultimatly a paper tiger.

 

[miamieagle]

Hey Mathias whatever happen in the Battle of Britain when the Luftwaffe claim over Three thousand RAF planes shot down when less than half of that where really shot down.

Now lets be less Nationalistic and more objective when we read this post. The reality is the Luwfwaffe did made many exagarated claims like all other Airforces.On paper they had a near perfect system but when you see the Historical record on closer inspection they probably conter does claims.You have got to remember that the Lufwaffe use their Pilot records for propaganda purpose more than most. Especialy after 1942.

I found after many years that the USA did made some over claims during the war just like every other Airforce in WW2.

Now lets try to be more objective and less pationate about subjects like this one. Lets love accuracy in History more than Historical Myth!

This does not in way is meant to demean the USA or German pilots of that Era. They where still amoung the finest fighter pilots the World has ever seen.:ernae:

 

[Hern07]

Cowboy, what do you do, stay awake all night thinking of these things? Basically I agree with Jerm, the Stuka needed either control of the air or escort to even get to it's target. Both the Val and Dauntless could fight their way to and back. Second choice would be the Blenheim. It was criminal to send men up in that thing. I give the Spit high marks for it's designed mission and it had a lot of stretch in the design. It is hard to evaluate any aircraft without considering a whole range of such factors. Take the P-38 for example. Considered it by Northern Europe standards and it's a failure. Yet it did excellent work in every other theater. Apologies to my British friends, but the Blenheim really sucked. Keep your questions comming. :Banane36:

 

[peperez]

All serious historians today agree that, while overclaiming happened, the German scoring system was fairly accurate and that the overall number of claims stacks up to actual losses pretty closely. No witness no score.

Don't know where you got your 300% figure but I'd say it's pretty save to say that's utter nonsense. :kiss:

The two Marseille's Hurricanes were credited to him without witness. In 1943, Romanian pilots promoted a mutiny to use the German system instead of the one adopted by its Air Force. The best system at World War 2 were the British, and gave an overrating score of 1.5. The American one gave around 2 claims for plane. The Soviet one use only the planes that were found in their lines, but has an overrating of 2.5. Probably the worst was the Japanese one cause they didn't nominated the pilots, only the units, and this is very confusing. Each pilot kept his own non official register. In all my life of a defence journalist I only see one pilot that had all their claims confirmed by the enemy: the Vietnamese Nguyen Van Bay.

You can read his history here:

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/nguyen.html

About German pilot, even with a 300% over-scoring they have an impressive performance. If you apply this correction over Hartmann you still got 117 planes! A lot more than Bong! I think it's time to compare Soviet and German WW2 registers. At the Battle of Berlin, the commie put more than 2,500 Il2M3 against the defenders! How could they loose more than 30,000 at that time? Remember that.

Cheers

Pepe

 

[peperez]

Hi all,
My candidate for this honour is the ME262.Yes it had a high speed and good weapons.But at anything less than full power it was a sitting duck.
As for cost effectiveness and reliability it was a poor second to the Me 109 and FW 190.It cost more to make, took longer to make,was much less reliable and had to have a major overhaul at a rate of 4-1 against the piston fighters.
Plus it's ratio of a/c built to enemy a/c shot down is laughable.
It may have been the way to the future,But it had all the faults of new and unproved tech.

Buddha13

The Me262 reliability was horrible. For each 10 planes, only 3 succeed to fly to their objectives. Normally, 50% of them didn't get their engines to work at base. At flying, two would return with engine problems. The German had a metallurgical crisis with no supply of fine metals, like Chromium and Mobilenium, and their engines suffered accordingly. But my candidate is the P-40.

Pepe

 

[Tango_Romeo]

Gentlemen, if...

...I may use the term loosely, you realize, of course, that this is a tempest-in-a-f**king-teapot....do you not? :friday::faint:

 

[Rami]

This is just a friendly discussion, guys. Please keep it civil.

 

[bismarck13]

Hmmm

I would have to say the Breda Ba.88 was the most over-rated airplane of WW2. Why? Calling it an airplane is over-rating this beast by a long shot!
After a few extremely unsuccessful missions it was used as a decoy ground target by the Italians . . . .

 

[Cowboy1968]

interesting fact, the P-51 could actually turn inside the Me-262. In a straight run the Swallow couldn't be touched, but in combat like a dog fight it really wasn't that great. For climbing and for level speed you couldn't beat it. But thack climb and straight run out of it, then you have a fancy target.

Also you have to remember you are most likely going to die taking off or landing. Some of the planes actually blew up due to poor engines and poor fuel. You also didn't know if a Mustang was hanging around waiting to see you, and if one did you were dead.

Landing was low, long and slow. that whole time in a streight line.........again if a Mustang was around your dead.

Simply put in my openion the plane wasn't worth being in........to many things that could go wrong and that did go wring.

 

[peperez]

I would have to say the Breda Ba.88 was the most over-rated airplane of WW2. Why? Calling it an airplane is over-rating this beast by a long shot!
After a few extremely unsuccessful missions it was used as a decoy ground target by the Italians . . . .

Wellcome back! Did you like the CR714 package?

Cheers

Pepe