LUFTWAFEE 1946 (Would Have Happened if ...)

Just ran across this:
Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933-1945
Some interesting material there such as:

This site has some interesting data as well:
https://www.quora.com/In-WWII-of-th...rman-front-what-accounted-for-90-those-losses
Tends to back up Takao's point.

Along another line the Me-109 was the most common German fighter and the Germans lost the air war so how can you conclude it was the most effective fighter? Even if you look at particular periods the Me-109 might be the most effective fighter in the East especially early in the war but for instance in the BoB it's going to be one of the British fighters.

 

The again, there is the typical Luftwaffe overclaiming...
1.JmA - luftwaffe experten, claims and facts

 

More than half of all the top killers made it out. The 109 made more than, IIRC, 2,800 Aces, more than most other type combined. Why was that?

Flawed knowledge base here. Check your production figures. IIRC, there were 33~35K Me-109s, ~20K 190s Most of the German Victories in the 109 did not come early in the war. There were far too few EA to provide a "Target Rich Environment" early in the war. Just add up all the planes in all the AF arrayed against them to see what I mean. EBH did not enlist until 1942, or '3. The top four 109 pilots shot down >25% as many planes as all the Spitfires combined. If numbers were the reason, how do you figure that 20,000 Spitfires could only down <10% as many EA as 109s? If numbers were really what mattered you would expect 20/33 times 45K EA to be downed by Spitfires, but they only got a bit over 4,000. ( 20/33*45,000=27,273 EA!)
Clearly, there is something going on here that you do not understand?
Placard performance has almost nothing to do with effective performance of any fighter plane! The top speed quoted is almost never attained in combat WO first diving from on high. The cruising speed is used >90% of all time and the target is not aware of the killer until after the bullets start impacting his plane between 80-92% of the time, depending on who's figures you want to believe!
The 109 was clearly superior to most other fighter planes, even late in the war, in those attributes that really mattered. Back then everyone except for a very few visionaries knew that low wing loading was good and high wing loading was bad, but we now know this to be exactly opposite of the truth!
I ask again, how do we judge what makes a great fighter plane in WW-II?

 

The Brits had a 1.2/1 W/L record in the BoB and the their top plane was the Hawker Hurricane which downed more planes than the Spitfire.

Again, you are drawing conclusions based on fuzzy logic? I did not look up either of those sites, so do not know what their point is, but I do say that that with 20-20 hind sight, we now know that almost everyone back then was completely wrong about what was required to make a great fighter plane!
The Germans lost the war because of many things not related to the types and quantities of their fighter planes.
Again, I ask; How do we judge a great fighter plane of that era?
Also, many think that the Spitfire was a great plane, but if you look at the total numbers on both sides of the ledger, it was a looser. Over all during the entire war, more Spits were lost than victorious! ( By a large margin! )

 

But the Germans were very much more honest than most of the rest.

 

You know that the ease of use is not really important as the top 5-10% will always find a way to make it work and the rest do not amount to much regardless of how easy, or hard it is to use. IIRC, the top 1% score 40% of all kills, the next 4% gets 25%, for 65% total and the next 5% for about 10% more. The next 40 do not become Aces, but account for the last 35% of all kills.
The P-38 was the only "easy to use" fighter plane! It was the easiest to fly, aim and had the deadliest, longest ranged weapons!

 

ShooterIke, is that you?

 

The RLM thought it was not that good. They tested at least two~4-5 Me-262s with two Mk-103s replacing the four Mk-108s. They also built at least one Me-109K12 with a Mk-103M cannon! The Mk-213 was to have had a MV of 765 M/S compared to the 505 M/S of the Mk-108. They cut the weight of the shell to less than 250 Grams from 330, With ~40 grams of HE Vs over 80 in the original Mineshell and used a longer gun BBL with more powder to get it done.
So, I would say they must not have been all that happy with the Mk-108????

Air[edit]

An American C-47 aircraft burning after being shot down during operation Market Garden

• China: Total losses of the Nationalist Air Force were 2,468 aircraft (According to Chinese and Taiwanese Sources).
• Finland: Reported losses during the Winter War totaled 67, of which 42 were operational, while 536 aircraft were lost during the Continuation War, of which 209 were operational losses (137 fighters, 51 bombers and 21 other). 327 aircraft were disabled ("attrition", too old, non-combat accidents) (Overall 603).[1]
• France: From the beginning of the war until the cease-fire in 1940, 892 aircraft were lost, of which 413 were in action and 234 were on the ground. Losses included 508 fighters and 218 bombers.[1]
• Germany produced 119,907 aircraft of all types, including bomber, transport, reconnaissance, gliders, training, seaplanes and flying boats. Most of them were either destroyed, damaged, captured or sold.[2] Estimated total number of destroyed and damaged for the war totaled 76,875 aircraft, of which 40,000 were total losses and the remainder significantly damaged. By type, losses totaled 21,452 fighters, 12,037 bombers, 15,428 trainers, 10,221 twin-engine fighters, 5,548 ground attack, 6,733 reconnaissance, and 6,141 transports.[1]
• Italy: Total losses were 5,272 aircraft, of which 3,269 were lost in combat.
• Japan: Estimates vary from 35,000 to 50,000 total losses, with about 20,000 lost operationally.[3]
• Netherlands: Total losses were 81 aircraft during the May 1940 campaign.[3]
• Poland: Total losses were 398 lost, 112 flew to then neutral Romania, 286 destroyed, 1 missing and unaccounted for, including 116 fighters, 112 dive bombers, 81 reconnaissance aircraft, 36 bombers, 21 sea planes, and 9 transports. The Polish Air Force evacuated one day after the Soviet Invasion of Poland, September 18, 1939. However, some trainer aircraft kept on flying as scout planes. The last two were grounded on October 2, 1939 by the order of General Franciszek Kleeberg. The losses after the evacuation are not known (September 19-October 2, 1939).[3]
• Soviet Union: Total losses were 17,900 bombers, 23,600 ground attacker, 46,800 fighter aircraft, and 18,100 training, transport and other aircraft; an overall loss of over 106,400 aircraft; 46,100 in combat and 60,300 non-combat. Of which, 18,300 Lend-Lease aircraft were lost. Grigori F. Krivosheev states: "A high percentage of combat aircraft were lost in relation to the number available on 22 June 1941: 442% (total losses) or 216% (combat losses). In the air force over a half of losses were non-combat losses."[4]
• British Empire
  • United Kingdom: Europe 42,010 (including 30,045 fighters and 11,965 bombers)[3]
  • Australia, Pacific and South East Asia: 250[5]
• United States: Total losses were nearly 95,000, including 52,951 operational losses (38,418 in Europe and 14,533 in the Pacific).[3]

 

Wiki, well Ellis in this case, is not your friend.

USAAF airplane losses on combat missions in World War II were 22,948 from 1 January 1942 to 31 August 1945. Total losses overseas to all causes 7 December 1941 to 15 August 1945 were 41,575, of which 35,933 were to combat and accidents and 5,642 were damaged and written off. A further 6,952 were damaged and dropped from operational status. Another 13,873 aircraft were lost to accidents in CONUS from 1 December 1941 to 15 August 1945. USN and USMC aircraft losses in combat totaled 906.

 

Has anyone mentioned the accidents and write offs and deaths from the landing gear of the 109?

 

See that's the trouble you can get into just looking at kills. The Hurricanes went mainly after the bombers and the Spits after the fighters. There was little question at the time that the Spitfire was the better fighter.

Do you even know what fuzzy logic is?

If we want to be assured of being wrong we can certainly make such assertions.

And I have already suggested a number of criteria that are better than opposing planes shot down. LER for instance if you only want a single criteria.

Sources please.

 

That is very questionable. In detailed discussion of this it varies a lot by squadron and location. Just about everyone was more accurate when fighting over territory they controlled. That typically was more significant than who they were. Also bomber crews over estimated more than others. Not that they were necessarily dishonest but that there was more confusion due to multiple people shooting and reporting opposing aircraft shot down.

???? Are you serious?

Ah, I see you are only looking at one side of the equation.

That's certainly not what I've read. The P-38 did indeed have certain features that made it a great plane but I've never read that it was "easy to use".

 

Wooly thinking in disguise.

 

Calling BS on this one...
A good many of the P-38 pilots state that the P-38 was quite the opposite, and this goes doubly so for the early models. It had a "busy" cockpit, the pilot was too busy monitoring his gauges to pay attention to much else, and sometimes things got forgotten even in the best of times. Thomas McQuire forgot to drop his tanks at low level, stalled, and augered in. Robin Olds forgot to change his fuel selector switch to his main tanks, and both engines quit as he dove on a Bf-109. Neither pilot was what you would consider "average."

The P-38 was not a good aircraft for a novice or average pilot to fly, and could be a handful even for experienced ones.

Most of the 38's problems were fixed with the late-J models and later 38's, but the plane remained a handful to fly.

 

I was thinking along the lines of the type of logic developed to deal with "fuzzy data" in a consistent and logical way. He obviously wasn't thinking of it in those terms, probably ran across the term somewhere and misapplied it.

 

Thinking more about this:

First of all just what are these numbers from/for? Are they German kills from WW2 or all nations or something else? I suspect it's German data as the US data is going to be considerably different.. Are they claims or verified kills?
Even if the numbers are good there are some problems here.
For instance from what I've read German kills by a pilot or his wingman were all assigned to the lead pilot.
Then there's the example of Thatch at Midway. He and the other two planes he was with stayed alive because they were working together. Even if the other two never became aces they insured he survived.
As mentioned above I strongly suspect US data looks considerably different due to the US system of pulling pilots in general and aces in particular from the front lines and having them assist with training. I think there's a fairly credible argument that the US system was better even though the German system produced higher scoring aces.

 

Don't remember much about him but the posting does seem consistent with what I can remember.

 

Yes, clearly; I do not understand why you have to be such a dick.

 

Which US WWII fighter shot down the most enemy aircraft?.

5,944 P-51/A-36/F-6
5,229 F6F
3,785 P-38
3,662 P-47
2,155 F4U
1,944 P-40