Most Overrated aircraft of WWII?

There were a number of types of rounds for the 50 cal during WWII and more now. In part because we have better explosives and better penetrators. During WWII there was ball, ap, tracer, incendiary, and tracer incendiary from one site I found. Tracer starts burning before or soon after the bullet leaves the barrel and burns out after a while leaving a smoke trail. Incendiary catches fire on impact so if there's anything flammable you get a chance of ignition no matter what the range. Tracer and even ball or ap can cause things to catch fire though.

Not sure I've seen the Betty rated all that high to begin with. I have seen speculation that even a handful of fighters could have saved Force Z.

 

i fail to see the logic of listing down planes like the stuka or the zero based on technical features, even giving it a definite time frame and that is early in the war. as one veteran here said, "you fight with whatever you have." well, the both the stuka and zero deserved the praise and fear (depending on which side you were) they got from people early in the war. saying they were bad is the same as saying the p-51H and the TA 152 were overrated because they showed up too late and too few.

 

Indeed, the Stuka could be one of the under rated of WW2.
It was a devastating weapon when first applied, and remained so as long as they had air superiority.
The tank buster looked amazing, and did pretty good...the siren was a brilliant addition for what it was.

 

Near about all attack aircraft are devastating when their side has air superiority, and they are all near-about turkeys when that superiority is lost.
It does not make the Stuka any more superior when compared to the Dauntless or Val.

 

Mmmm.
Other than the Soviet Il2, can't think of a ground attack ww2 craft that made a bigger difference in the outcome of battle.
Time did pass it by, but it was a god of war for a few years.

 

Just so long as there were no enemy fighters around.

 

The CAP took care of any biplanes or other minimal defenses Poland/France/Russia could manage.
They didn't send Stukas into battle alone unless total air- until they were desperate.
During the initial blitz- the Stuka was king of the battlefield. Germany had local air superiority for the first 2-3 years of the war (maybe).

 

August, 1940, is hardly 2-3 years of the war.

All-in-all, I'll take a Douglas Dauntless over a Stuka any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

 

Its a free country (so far).
Going to have to disagree about the importance of the Stuka vs the Dauntless.
Both played their parts. One did so before the other. Both ended up obsolete.

 

The SBD was probably the better plane as it was a second / third generation dive bomber so benefitted from experience, the Stuka was the German's first attempt at the type produced in any significant numbers. But both were devastatingly effective in practice on more than one occasion so cannot be considered overrated even if the failed to be effective in scenarios they were not designed for.

The IL2 is still my candidate, that many planes, production figures were over 35.000, will achieve something no matter how bad the plane is but a better plane would probably have achieved more, the massive kill scores of the German East front aces were probably in good part IL 2s and if it was good one doesn't understand the late war ground attack conversions of the Yak fighters, The IL 2 looks to me a better armoured Fairey Battle, but the whole concept of the single engine light bomber / attack plane was suspect, they were not significantly more accurate than fighter bombers and a lot more vulnerable.

 

The comparison between the IL2 and the Fairy Battle is interesting. The Soviet's persevered with the IL2 because their doctrine called for a ground attack aircraft. The RAF dropped the Fairy Battle and did not persevere with ground attack aircraft because their doctrine emphasized strategic bombing.

The orthodox air force view is that by the end of WW2 fighter bombers could do everything that ground attack aircraft could do. But, to a certain extend that arose because the Allies had a lot of fighter aircraft with no aerial opposition.
Yet a Spitfire, P51 or P47 was not really the ideal ground attack aircraft. The were over engineered for the business of mud moving and lacked the armour that protected the IL2 from much ground fire. The Fw190 was one of the few fighters that came in fighter and ground attack variants, trading performance for armour and ground attack attachments.

Post war aircraft design produced very definite ground attack aircraft such as the Douglas A-1 Skyraider, A 10, Su7, Mi24 Hind and Apache. These are conceptually descendants of the IL2.

 

With respect...The Douglas A-1 Skyraider is not a post-war design, it is a World War II design. The A-1 Skyraider design was first known as the XBT2D "Dauntless II" and it is hardly a conceptual descendant of the IL-2.

 

The XBT2D design was a result of a Navy requirement for a combined bomber-torpedo aircraft. The Navy saw the need for a higher ratio of fighter aircraft to strike aircraft based on lessons learned from the 1942 carrier battles. A single seat multi-role aircraft replacing the Dauntless/Helldivers and the Avengers would allow more fighters on board. Ed Heinemann and Co. submitted the XBT2D drawings in June of '44 and it flew in March of '45. No lineage to the IL-2 in the "Able Dog".

 

There is obviously no IL2 lineage in the A1 but the USN maintained an "attack plane" concept that the USAF and RAF had dropped by 1942 in favour of the fighter bomber. That was something of an necessity as a plane that could carry a large torpedo or deliver a 500Kg bomb in a dive would probably make a poor fighter. The requirements and doctrine were different, for one thing the payload and range requirements of the Skyraider were a lot higher than what the IL2, weighted down by the armour and with slightly less horsepower, could hope to achieve.

The A10 is more iffy, while it could carry a payload comparable to more conventional fighter bombers it was armoured to resist light and medium MG fire, so does have a similarity to the IL2 approach to the tactical support aircraft.

One thing that makes the IL2 suspect to me is the choice of a liquid cooled engine probably vanified a lot of the armour's effect.

 

I dunno, but the Fairy Battle was a lemon after they added the very heavy turret. Once the Germans knew about the turret, it was a lame duck relegated to night or towing duty.

 

I didn't know the Battle had a turret added to it. You sure you don't mean the Boulton Paul Defiant?

 

Hehehee...The Battle did have a single gun turret in the IT model.
But you are right. T'was the Defiant whose 4gun turret made it a lemon.
My bad.

 

The IT model was for gunnery training, not combat, and in the training instance, the Battle was not a lemon.

 

The Difiant is an interesting example. The gun turret fighter was a neat way to solve the problem of deflection shooting against bombers. German night fighters used a similar concept with their "jazz music" cannon.

It was conceived at a time when the threat to the UK was from un-escorted bombers from Germany in the era when it was feared that "the bomber will always get through." In the event the Germans were escorted from France. by necessity the Defiant was deployed in conditions which it was not designed for. The Germans had similar problems when they used their night fighters against escorted day bombers.

More here http://www.theobservationpost.com/blog/?p=278

 

i quess the question is "popular reputation that far exceeded in reality" many aircraft started out well for there day and were superseded by other aircraft latter, the zero swordfish etc

​but if one aircraft has a reputation is is not deserving of, that would be the spitfire. the battle of Briton was not won by the spitfire. the numres Mks and sub Mks of the spitfire is testament to its very evolving attempts at playing catch up.
the must numours Mk being the Mk9 was conserved as a stop gap. this emergency solution ( to the 190 ) was the most manufactured Mk of all the spitfires. it was not adaptable to other roles as the war progressed. it failed miserably in the pacific ( RAAF) the zeros chewed it up.

​given the facts it is not deserving of its glamours reputation. it contributed only 1 interesting technological development and that was the veering angle of attack from wing root to tip. some thing that only sports aviation picked up on after the war.