Worst fighter aircraft of WW II

Yes, it would be difficult to forget the most successful torpedo bomber of WW2.
In the Med theater alone the Swordfish is credited with sinking over 300,000 tons of Axis merchant shipping.

[ 20. March 2004, 06:35 PM: Message edited by: redcoat ]

 

The Swordfish carried on providing valuable service until the end of the war in the anti-submarine role. It was used on the Merchant Aircraft Carriers which accompanied convoys, and could land and take off on their small decks in far worse weather than the more modern, faster planes could. It was regarded with huge affection by its crews, which is always the sign of a good aircraft.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and Discussion forum

 

Yes, it would be difficult to forget the most successful torpedo bomber of WW2.
In the Med theater alone the Swordfish is credited with sinking over 300,000 tons of Axis merchant shipping. </font>[/QUOTE]Plus was instrumental in damaging the Bismark which caused it to be caught & sunk plus caused heavy damage to the Italian Fleet at Taranto and basically knocked it out of the war at an important time for the Allies.

 

On a serious Note!!

From the USA
Yeah, its hard to pass the CW-21 of those aircraft which saw action. Though many Fighters with a better reputation struggled against the Japanese Zero & Oscars

The Nth American P-64 looks a lot like the Australian CAC Boomerang, but about 40mph slower.

From the UK.

It is hard to beat the Blackburn Roc, one of many failures by the Blackburn Aircraft Company. But did it see service??

Blenheim 1F would be at the bottom of those which saw service, it wasnt even very good as a Night Fighter.

The Miles Master I had guns fitted as an "emergency fighter" during the Battle of Britain.

If you dont like the Gladiator, which was one of the best bi-plane fighters ever built, Consider the plight of the Australian pilots who were equipped with the Gauntlet. The Gladdies older brother.

The Defiant didnt have the disatrous record held in mytholgy (it wasnt that good as a day fighter either) but I couldnt see any Defiant losses where the gunner escaped!!

From Italy
The Breda Ba 88 Lince
A twin engined Fighter Bomber, clocked over 340mph before they added Guns, Armour, Fuel etc. could barely reach 200mph

From Germany
He 177A-5 fitted with 33 rocket tubes to be used as a bomber-zerstorer.


From Japan
Nakajima Ki-44 Shoki (Tojo), first flown in 1940 with an inline engine, didnt get into service until late 43,early 44. Was disliked by its pilots for its poor handling.

From Australia
The CAC Wirraway (OZ built Harvard!), actually shot down a Zeke, which made the ration only 50 to 1.

 

On the Blackburn Roc:

A total of 136 were ordered and produced between April 28, 1937 and August 1940 (s/n's L3057 - L3059 and L 3060 to L3192). FAA squadrons 801 to 806 all had some in service usually mixed with Skuas. They were used operationally through the end of 1940 and into early 1941 when the last was replaced in serivce by the Fulmar.

 

The information I have on the Roc is that it saw almost no combat.
The main( and possibly only) use of the Roc in the BOB was as airfield defense on FAA airbases, they parked them around the airfield. and used the power turrets as ground AA
The only example I have come across of a Roc in combat is one that attacked a lone He 111, the He 111 got away.

 

Well, I didn't really say they saw much combat. But, you have to admit they were probably more effective as ground based AA guns given their 196 mph top speed.....
Oh, a number saw service later on with the turret removed as squadron hacks and on other mundane tasks.
As for attacking a Henkel, no wonder it got away, it has half again the top speed!

 

From Britain: The Defiant- it's a flying deathtrap, From Japan: The Nate-Might have good against the obsolete Chinese Airforce, against the P-40s of the Flying Tigers, completely outmatched, From the USA: The Brewster Buffalo- constantly mauled by the Japanese Zeros, From the USSR: The Mig-3- Constantly plagued with mechanical defects, including a tendency to go into uncontrollable spins, From Poland: The PZL P.11- Obsolete from the start, but caused the Luftwaffe problems in 1939

 

I would only take exception to the Brewster Buffalo, we had worse Pursuit/Fighter aircraft than the Brewster Buffalo. The Boeing Peashooter springs to mind, and it remained in "limited service" well beyond its shelf life too. Open cockpit, fixed undercarriage? Come on. And what was the Curtis model that was still in service at the outbreak of the war? (P-36?) It was the Curtis model just ahead of the P-40. That wasn't a "war winner" either, even though I think they were the model to get off the ground when Pearl was attacked.

I don’t doubt that the Brewster Buffalo as finally delivered for duty was a very poor fighter, but that wasn’t a real design flaw to my mind. It was a complete corruption/alteration of the 1937 design for USN wishes that put it in that category. When first designed as opposed to finally tested/accepted in 1939 it was the first all metal, single seat, retractable gear, enclosed cockpit monoplane in USN service.

As to their "worst rating", that can only be in the context of their poor application in the USN and other nations to which they were exported with full armor and other weight increasing options added post design. When they were first flown in competition with other potential Navy fighters, no less an authority than "Pappy" Boyinton said the Brewster was a sports car, the Grumman was a truck.

F2A-1 (Brewster Model B-239): First production model with a 940 hp (700.9 kW) R-1820-34 engine, larger vertical fin, one .30-caliber (7.62 mm) machine gun in the engine cowling and three .50 caliber (12.7 mm) machine guns, one in the cowling and one in each wing. Fifty four aircraft were ordered on 11 June 1938 with deliveries beginning in June 1939; by November 1939, only five aircraft had been delivered. Forty two of these aircraft were transferred to the Finnish Air Force to assist them in their fight with the Soviet Union. (emphasis mine)

Goto:

Brewster F2A Buffalo by Jack McKillop

In what is closer to their original configuration, the Finns had excellent results using them, calling them "Pearl of the Sky" (not Buffalo) against the Soviets.

During the period of 25th of June 1941 - 21st of May 1944, when the Squadron 24 finally traded in it's Brewsters to Squadron 26 and started using Messerschmitt 109G-2's and G-6's (when Finland joined the Nazis in common cause against the Soviets), the Squadron shoot down 459 Soviet planes, while losing 15 planes in aerial combat, 4 planes in crashes, 2 in bombings. So the kill ratio was 30.6 to 1 (Brewsters to Soviet planes). Twelve pilots were killed and two were captured. Best kill ratio was achieved in 1941 when 135 Soviet planes were shot down against the loss of 2 planes and 2 pilots, so the kill ratio was 67.5 to one! (bold mine)

Of course there's issue about verifying kills. But in fact, when the Karelian Isthmus was recaptured by the Finnish Army in 1941, the Ground Forces found 42 unaccounted Soviet planes clearly shoot down by the Finnish Air Force. (judging from bullets.) The best Brewster pilots (and the best in Finnish Air Force) were Captain Hans Wind with 39 kills and Staff Sergeant Ilmari Juutilainen with 34 kills.

… The combat use in has been well explained in the book Suomen Ilmavoimien historia 1: Brewster Model 239; by K. Keskinen, K. Stenman and K. Niska:

ISBN 951-9035-16-8 or ISBN 952-5026-02-7

Goto:

Brewster Buffalo in Finnish service

Just a thought as to "worst" American fighter. We were caught with some other "dogs in the kennel", but fortunately they were removed from the front line service as soon as they could be.

 

I wouldn't fault the USN BuAer too much for the demise of the F2A in American service. The original Brewster prototype was rejected based on these points:
1) Pilot armor was below standard as set by contemporary European designs
2) Lack of self-sealing fuel tanks
3) Undercarriage unsuitable for carrier operations

The first two points were addressed, but the added weight considerably reduced the Buffalo's performance using the Wright R-1820-34 radial engine (940 hp). There was another Navy-certified power plant available which could have restored the F2A's capabilities, the Pratt & Whitney R-1830-76 double-row radial (1200 hp), but to mount this engine would have entailed a redesign of the aircraft. Brewster was already in hot water with the Navy over their very poor production statistics, so a further delay to re-engine the Buffalo was out. The Navy shouldn't be criticized for insisting on improved armor and self-sealing tanks. Remember than it was the lack of these very features that made the Zero so formidable in 1942 and a flaming coffin from 1943 onward.

The last point, the landing gear, was never fixed so the few Buffaloes acquired by the Navy were relegated to the Marine Corps as a land-based point defense fighter. The problem was the basic design of the undercarriage which was intended to provide a clean retraction without the need of gear doors. Many contemporary designers had figured out landing gear, and the standard was settling on a pair of oleostruts mounted as far outboard on the wing as possible providing a wide track. The penalty was the increased weight of the reinforced wing needed to mount the gear. The Hawker Hurricane and the Zero paid the price and got a strong undercarriage and easy ground handling as a benefit. Messerschmidt decided to mount the struts directly to the fuselage and avoid the weight penalty, consequently the Bf-109 got increased combat performance in trade for tricky (nay, downright dangerous) ground handling. Whatever the attachment the gear itself was constructed from tubular steel with an internal hydraulic shock absorber, this was standard for just about everybody after the appearance of the Polikarpov I-16 (1934). Brewster, on the other hand, was determined to be different.

The Brewster gear was essentially an aluminum box attached to the wing by a set of hinges. Attached to the far end of the box was a steel bracket for the wheel and a short tubular housing for a dry spring shock absorber. A pair of hydraulic stuts mounted to the firewall behind the oil cooler moved the gear from the retracted position to the down and locked position. The beauty of the design was light weight, a lack of a need for gear doors, and the need for only one hydraulic pump to lower or raise both wheels. It was apparently a strong enough undercarriage for the Finns, who flew their Buffaloes from some very crude airstrips indeed. But a carrier landing has been described as a controlled crash, and the US Navy wanted a carrier-borne fighter, not a land-based plane. Carrier duty quickly revealed that the F2A's unique undercarriage was too fragile for that kind of work. Any deformation of the strut or the hinge could prevent the gear from retracting, or worse, prevent the gear from locking down. Brewster worked on the problem but soon realized that the only fix was a complete redesign of the undercarriage, which in turn would require strengthening the wing; a pointless exercise really, new gear meant a new airplane altogether.

Clint takes note of Greg Boyington's fondness for the Buffalo (one wonders if he flew the original configuration or the "improved" version) and he may have been right, the F2A was a stunning performer in terms of aerobatics based on Finnish Air Force records. (The Finns flew an export version called the B-239 without the extra armor, the self-sealing tanks, and tailhook.) The B-239 was 20 mph faster than the navalized F2A and was even more nimble. In fact except for combat radius it was a good match for the Zero, both planes topping out at about 330 knots with good climb and low-speed stall characteristics. One could even say that the Buffalo was America's Zero fighter, because both planes had similar engine outputs and top speeds, and were at their best in a turning fight.

Why was the Buffalo such a loser in American hands and such a winner in Finnish service? Obviously the fixes for the problems identified by the Bureau of Aeronautics robbed the F2A of its strengths. (Except for the weak landing gear the Zero shared these weakness; had the IJN air staff insisted on pilot armor and self-sealing tanks for the A6M then that plane too would have been a "zero!") The reason for the success of the B-239 was the same reason the Zero dominated the USN in 1941 through mid '42 -- just like America's aviators Soviet pilots allowed themselves to get into low-speed turning fights with the Buffalo. Follow a B-239 into his turn in your I-16 and very shortly the Finn is going to be on your six with guns blazing. However, the officer ranks of the Red air force had been decapitated by the terror purges, and so there weren't enough competent leaders around to digest intelligence on enemy fighter performance and to work out counter-tactics that could have reduced the Finn's tremendous edge in the Winter War. (Of course the Winter War lasted barely four months, so there was little time for the Reds to adapt their tactics to the Buffalo, even if they had officers and the trainers to facilitate the needed adaptations.)

 

How about the Polikarpov I-16?

 

The Polikarpov I-16 was a highly innovative fighter in 1934 -- an all metal (except for fabric-covered control surfaces) monoplane with an enclosed canopy and retractable landing gear, that's pretty cool when the rest of the world is flying biplanes. The I-16 more than held its own in Spain against Kondor Legion Bf-109Bs and Cs. That they got slaughtered in the opening days of Barbarosa shouldn't be held against it. It was outdated by June 1941 and flown by half-trained pilots who were more scared of the NKVD than the Germans.

 

@brndirt1: Thanks for defending the Buff´s reputation. It wasn´t the plane´s fault that it was mainly flown by more or less inexperienced pilots, sometimes even with defective engines.

I think some other critizisms are very harsh too.

CW-21: It was an interceptor and could outclimb a Zero. The firepower of 2*.50 was ok too. Armour and SS-tanks were lacking -like in most planes in 1939. Pity the Dutch didn´t retrofit it.

P-64: Wasn´t it meant to be a low cost plane for customer who could not afford anything else? Ok, the Thai version was not that fast but it was armed with cannons, the machine gun armed version almost made 300mph.

Wirraway: It wasn´t a fighter. It was a trainer/liason/light bomber with one foreward firing machine gun used as a fighter out of desparation.


The Fulmar on the other hands was a bad design for a fighter but it benefited from a lack of fighter opposition in the Med and did very well there, only there.

In terms of bad timing, the CR.42 is my 'winner'. Fiat began working on it around the same time the RAF introduced(!) the Hurricane.