P-51 Mustang VS. F-22 Raptor

[Helldiver]

This picture of the P-51 and the F-22 in formation is interesting. It was taken at Sun & Fun in Florida last week. The cost of the P-51 was $50,000, which works out to $6.50 per pound. The Raptor works out to be $8315 per pound. They both do the same thing, Shoot the other guy down. For one Raptor at $365,000,000 bucks, you can buy 7530 P-51 Mustangs. We would be better off putting our dough into a whole fleet of Mustangs.
It all began after WWII when the Air Force split from the Army. They changed from OD to Air Force blue. They went from, "Down We Dive, Spouting Our Flames From Under" to the dainty," We Took the Blue From a Pretty Girls Eyes..."
They also went from Pursuit aircraft to Fighter aircraft. You have to chase an airplane before you can fight it. It's all gone down hill since then. Instead of a good old recip engined airplane with a propeller out front, they’ve gone to an oil burner that takes a computer to fly them and ten miles to turn ‘em around.
Lets hear it for the good old Army Air Corps. They bought their airplanes cheap.


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[MenendezDiego]

Did they ever figure out what grounded the Raptor yesterday? Heard bird strike (I saw the flock of seagulls), and I heard NWS failure...

How about those TORNADOES!!!

 

[Cag40Navy]

I hear the Typhoon is a good one.

 

[stiz]

Instead of a good old recip engined airplane with a propeller out front, they’ve gone to an oil burner that takes a computer to fly them and ten miles to turn ‘em around.

whilst i agree with all the rest .. i wouldnt be at all suprised to hear that the f22 can actually turn better than the p51 at the same speeds! .. Still the most expensive purpose built airshow plane ever made though!

 

[gradyhappyg]

You are talking in 1945 dollars though. How much are those Mustangs worth now? I bet an engine today cost what the whole bird did then.

 

[Daube]

. For one Raptor at $365,000,000 bucks, you can buy 7530 P-51 Mustangs. We would be better off putting our dough into a whole fleet of Mustangs.

Yes, but the question is: could those 7530 Mustangs shoot even one F-22 ? The answer is: no.

 

[alain95]

Nice to hear that

It seems that today USA Citizens cherish their old birds as much as UK people,
When I read "they do the same thing", globaly we can say that but there's
a bit of range difference beetween 6x 50 cal gun and a sidewinder.
Anyway I really enjoy the Mustang, may my father and grand-father got the chance
to see them participate to the liberation of our European lands, the most amazing
is in it's history genesis I would like to focus your interest on Edgard SCHMUED :

http://www.unicover.com/EF4VH8AL.htm

His exact birth place name is Hornbach Germany (and sorry not Hornback USA)
3 kilometers from the french frontier :salute:
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[airattackimages]

You are talking in 1945 dollars though. How much are those Mustangs worth now? I bet an engine today cost what the whole bird did then.

Thank you. Many Mustangs today are worth millions of dollas. Can't speak in 1945 terms vs 2009 terms.

Yes, there is a supply/demand factor in current Mustang prices, but even if there weren't we'd be talking 60+ years worth of inflation.

How much was gas in 1945? A nickel a gallon? Less?

A car? $1000 would buy you a brand new car in that era. Now you're lucky to find a comparable car as cheap as $30,000.

How about milk? We could start a comparison on how many gallons of milk you could buy in 1945 vs today.

In the end, we all realize the Raptor is the most expensive piece of military hardware in history outside of a naval vessel. But you can't compare it with the sticker price of a P-51 in 1942 and expect to get a fair comparison in price.

 

[Bomber_12th]

The Mustang was originally manufactured at a cost of roughly $50,000 in 1945, and factoring inflation into that price, it would tally in at roughly $599,000 in today's money. Following WWII, you could buy a surplus P-51D for anywhere from $720-$1200 ($8,500-$14,000 today), easily. By the late 1970's, a 'good' price on a P-51D was about what a good AT-6 costs today, anywhere from about $250,000-$350,000. And from the 90's until about 2006/2007, the prices really sky-rocketed, going past the 1 million mark, to 2.5 and even as high as 3.5 million dollars, depending on the level of restoration/quality/originality/avionics, etc. Since that time, the prices have seen quite a bit of a drop, which can surely be blamed on the economy, or it can also be a result of the airframes coming on the market, not suiting today's demand in the warbird market. For example, there is a P-51D for sale through Courtesy Aircraft Sales at this time, for an almost unbelievably low amount of 1.3 million, but the aircraft hasn't had a recent ground-up restoration, nor is it in original stock configuration, nor is it in the U.S., some of the major factors that, if changed, would drive the price up a lot.

One factor you have to consider is that, when the P-51 idea came on the table back then, the folks at NAA went straight to work on it, building the first prototype in a matter of only four months, built to accept an already proven engine, and going straight into production not too long after. That is an impossible task today - with years upon years going into the research and development stage of every new fighter, as well as the propulsion system developed for it. Two completely different eras, separated by a great many generations in aerospace development.

 

[JAllen]

Nostagia is a wonderful thing. We had 60 years to build on the success of the "fighter". Just one Raptor can attack like 16 targets simultaneously at beyond visual range. Can't say it carries that many missiles but its big enough. How does it compare with bombload of a B17? USAF has always taken a sleek mean machine and hang iron bombs all over it.

I understand your point Helldiver. Sad we can't build a simple effective weapon system like the P51. Almost did with the F16. $50K apiece, not in this world. $50M is not there either. How much airplane will $50K buy in today's GA world?

Let's get back to FSX.

 

[Alan_A]

Across the board - taking into account all military equipment - we've seen a massive shift from the WWII approach (enormous quantities of relatively cheap mass-produced machines) to to modern approach (very small quantities of extremely expensive, exotic machines). The weapons load on an F-22 probably has more killing power than a wing of Mustangs. Remember, when it comes to weaponry, same deal - instead of cheap weaponry designed to saturate an area, the F-22 carries very costly precision-guided weaponry that's much more efficient.

I'm not sure the move from mass-produced to expensive/exotic is necessarily a good thing. In some respects, yes - a modern attack puts far fewer lives at risk in the attacking force, and should in theory at least cause far less collateral damage (thanks to greater precision and greater accuracy). But on the other hand - building those tens of thousands of WWII aircraft kept a lot of relatively unskilled people employed - riveters, for example. Entry into WWII brought the U.S. out of the Great Depression and back to full employment. A modern war, even a large one, wouldn't have the same effect. There'd be work for a much smaller number of skilled, trained, educated workers, but a lot of the labor force would still be left out in the cold.

The same, of course, applies to lots of industries other than the military. So for all the advantages of modern hardware, we're left with an employment problem that amounts to a long-term problem for the society.

In all, the Mustang side has its plusses.

 

[Alan_A]

Let's get back to FSX.

Actually, a big part of what I like about the Outhouse is that we can stretch into conversations like this and keep things interesting and civil, in contrast to most other flightsim forums. So I'm happy to hang with this topic for a while.

 

[PRB]

... One factor you have to consider is that, when the P-51 idea came on the table back then, the folks at NAA went straight to work on it, building the first prototype in a matter of only four months, built to accept an already proven engine, and going straight into production not too long after. That is an impossible task today - with years upon years going into the research and development stage of every new fighter, as well as the propulsion system developed for it. Two completely different eras, separated by a great many generations in aerospace development.

I'm not convinced that it's a fact of nature that combat aircraft have to take ten years to develop. I think half the issue there is bloated government regulations, red tape, procurement rules, regulations, laws, and decades of peace time lethargy. If we were faced with another situation like that which faced Grumman and North American in WW-II, I'll bet we'd see those ten years cut down dramatically. And that contributes to the unit cost too. Heck one single B-2 costs just about the same as an entire aircraft carrier's compliment of planes. Cool plane, but dang!

 

[Helldiver]

Airattackimages - For the record, in 1946 I bought a top of a line Ford Deluxe which included a heater, a radio, a fancy dashboard, chrome grille and chome rings on white-walled tires for $740 bucks including tax. These were all considered to be accessories. A standard Ford went for $520.
Milk, was going for 17 cents a quart. My Grandfather had a milk business. $1.000 would be close to a Cadillac, selling for $1,150.
I wonder how a Raptor would do against 7530 Mustangs. Or in todays prices, 55 Mustangs. One bullet would hit the computer and that's all she wrote.

 

[PRB]

...One bullet would hit the computer and that's all she wrote.

Surprisingly, this turns out not to be the case. It's possible these multi-million dollar flying computer chips may be more "battle worthy" than the P-51s were. The computers, hydraulics, and other systems, are so spread out, and with so many redudant paths, that large pieces of these planes can get sliced off with much of the plane still working. Remember the F-15 that suffered a mid-air and lost an entire wing? It flew home. Then the FA-18 with 50% of one wing gone, 10% of the other, the top of both tails gone. It flew home too. And, don't forget, one bullet in the radiator of that P-51, and that's all she wrote...

 

[Daube]

If we consider the kind of bullets that are distributed by modern military jets, I think such a bullet can hit the Mustand more or less anywhere and that's the end.
On the other side, I don't know if a mustang would be even able to "aim" at a fast plane like a Raptor...

 

[SkippyBing]

One bullet would hit the computer and that's all she wrote.

From memory there are something like 128 CPUs in the F-22 which can all perform the same tasks. If one gets damaged, overheats etc then one of the others takes over, if enough get damaged that there's no redundancy left then you'll lose low priorities things, e.g. the radios won't work, or if you're over the airfield then nav system will stop updating.
Of course if a Mustang got in position to fire at a Raptor something's gone wrong anyway.

Of course the other issue is that the F-22's production run was cut short so the final unit cost was higher than it was planned to be. And if it had been built in the numbers the P-51 was the unit cost would be much lower still.

 

[Rezabrya]

Helldiver, if you actually believe that 53 P-51's could shoot down a single F-22, you are sadly mistaken. While the Mustang is one of the most effective and coolest plane sin history (one of my personal favorites too), The Raptor outdoes it in every single way except for price. A Mustang, or even 100 Mustangs wouldn't really stand a chance against a single Raptor.

 

[stiz]

I'm not convinced that it's a fact of nature that combat aircraft have to take ten years to develop. I think half the issue there is bloated government regulations, red tape, procurement rules, regulations, laws, and decades of peace time lethargy. If we were faced with another situation like that which faced Grumman and North American in WW-II, I'll bet we'd see those ten years cut down dramatically. And that contributes to the unit cost too.

yup thats why it takes so long nowadays. If you notice they do actually get the prototype flying pretty quickly .. then you dont see if for 5yrs as they have to work with ever changeing contracts. During the war if a plane explodes during flight killing the crew on board ... "oops! o well lets do it this way then!" (happend with the b29, plane exploded mid air killing all 12 onboard)

Nowadays that same scenario would proberbly see the plane cancelled for good, with trails for manslaughter etc going on at the same time. Also im sure theirs a let of a lot of overspending being done .. like the £400 light bulbs on the typhoon due to BAE makeing their own sockets so the bulbs could only be brought from them!

 

[JAllen]

Wasn't the Mustang even outclassed in Korean War? Limited to ground support roles? Be romantic and fantasize about the great P51 in a battle with "oil burners", it is fun to think about. You have to slow them down to ME262 speeds and give them little machine guns to even get close to just an even match. F22 or any other modern jet would not get close enough to take a bullet in the computer from a WWII prop job. From 10 miles the Raptor is deadly close and the Mustang doesn't even know it is there. Mk1 eyeballs just don't match up with radar and computers. Fighters are now built to dominate anything that flies, including the other guy's exotic jets, and never be seen doing it.