P-51 Mustang, best Allied fighter or not ?

OMG u take wiki as reliable source????

 

still it point one thing: russians never ventured for any high altitude combat, they were masters of low alt. combat, so the probability of engaging an american plane protecting a bomber formation is almost null

 

To say they never did isn't true, the Red Air force's MiG3s apparently accounted for one of the first successfull interceptions of the near immune Ju86P. That said, the Red Air Force specialised in low level combats to the detriment of high altitude performance and would almost certainly be at a disadvantage against an Allied high altitude bomber offenisve.

 

Depends on what you compare with it. What is your source?
Wiki is sometimes a good place to start when searching for more reliable references.
The issues pointed out in that Wiki article are real and didn't originate there.
If you can produce better sources that demonstrate the truth of your claims e.g. that the USAAF acknowledged the incident, as you stated, then feel free to do so.

 

Pravda maybe?

http://newsfromrussia.com/science/2003/08/19/49398.html

I love Pravda, here is their piece about Kursk, July 1943

A powerful counter-offensive launched by the Soviet troops, as well as good organisation and heroism of the warriors, thwarted all of Hitler's plans. The Battle of Kursk ended with the Soviet army crushing 30 enemy divisions, including 7 tank divisions. The fascist troops lost more than 500,000 soldiers, 1,500 tanks, more than 3,700 jets, and 3,000 guns.



The ME262, the worlds first operational jet warplane was not even flying when Kursk happened, but the Russians managed to shoot down 3700 of them..Production began in 1944, more than a year later..


beshenya musor v' Russki

(crazy garbage in Russia)


:bang: :roll:

 

3,700 planes of 1,500 produced, OMG!!!!!

 

I pretty much agree with Grieg, Wiki can be a good starting point. It's also a convenient link once you have verified the content. Sometimes much better than "I have a book from the ministry of propoganda that says ..."

 

http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/kozedub/kozedub.htm

It is actualy polish site.

 

It's even worse they (Pravda) weren't talking about Me-262 jets but Focke Wulf 190A jets.....

Mistakes like those are easily made by people who don't know aviation history and/or don't read to carefully

 

Or don't translate the text correctly...

Could just be a simple case of using the budget Russian-English dictionary

 

or babelweb/systran or any other online translator (wich are even worse than a budget dictionary)

 

Can't see any relevance mentioning family...only a bit of bragging.....where is the proof??? (and even if they really are family what does it prove?).
Altough nice to have family wich made a mark in aviation history!

Can you back up that statement?
I know of a few mishaps during high speed dives but to say simply tear off wings isn't that a bit of exageration?

20,334 spitfires built and 2,556 Seafires...so how "special" were they?

 

Oct. '42 - Merlin Powered Mustang
As early as May, 1942, Ronald Harker, a Rolls Royce test pilot, first recommended mating the Mustang airframe to the Merlin engine, an idea which would transform the P-51 into a decisive weapon, capable of escorting American bombers all the way to Berlin. Harker test-flew an RAF Mustang on April 30, 1942, and noted that it was 30 MPH faster than the Spitfire Mk V and had almost double the range. Harker's memo recommending the Merlin-Mustang combination (in which he erroneously identified Edgar Schmued as a former Masserschmitt employee) got the attention of Rolls Royce management, who borrowed five RAF Mustangs to test the idea. The British flight-tested the Mustang X in October, and found that the experimental craft significantly out-performed the Allison at high altitudes, generating 200 more horsepower at 20,000 feet and almost 500 more HP at 30,000 feet. While the British research was valuable, the American Merlin Mustang program proceeded almost independently.
In the summer of 1942, Packard Motors was negotiating with Rolls Royce to license-build the Merlin engine at its Detroit plant. Learning of Rolls Royce' Merlin-Mustang plans, Major Thomas Hitchcock, the American military attache in London, and others, pushed for the development of a Mustang powered by the Packard-built Merlin. Authorized in July, 1942, North American began its Merlin Mustang development in August.
The XP-51B included these changes:

http://www.acepilots.com/planes/p51_mustang.html



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Results 1 - 10 of about 538 for mustang merlin test Ronald Harker faster. (0.08 seconds)

 

I could go beyond WIKI, but the Spitfire wings are easily researched, they are "special".. Like the U2's

The elliptical wing was chosen for superior aerodynamic attributes, but it was a complex wing to construct, and the Messerschmitt Bf 109's angular and easy-to-construct wing offered similar performance (model per model) to the Spitfire. It has been reported that the Bf 109 took one-third the man hours to construct compared to the Spitfire.

One flaw in the thin-wing design of the Spitfire manifested itself when the plane was brought up to very high speeds. When the pilot attempted to roll the plane at these speeds, the aerodynamic forces subjected upon the ailerons were enough to twist the entire wingtip in the direction opposite of the aileron deflection (much like how an aileron trim tab will deflect the aileron itself). This so-called aileron reversal resulted in the Spitfire rolling in the opposite direction of the pilot's intention.

A novel feature in the final Spitfire design was its wing washout. The trailing edge of the wing twists slightly upward along its length, from −1/2 degree at its root to +2 degrees at its tip. This causes the wing roots to stall before the tips, reducing the potentially dangerous rolling moment in the stall known as a tip stall, that may result in spin. When the root stalls, the turbulent separated slipstream, departing from the wing top side, shakes the elevator and thus the aircraft's control column in a characteristic "judder", warning the pilot that he is about to reach the limit of the aircraft's performance, while full control is retained at the wingtips and ailerons. This allowed even average pilots to hold the Spitfire in a steep turn right at the point of stall, hoping that the pursuing enemy would have to fall out of his own steep turn first or would have to follow in a more gradual turn, eventually appearing in the Spitfire's gunsight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire

 

Sorry to say this but copying wiki doesn't prove anything and saying it is special is an opinion....it wasn't even the first aircraft with an eliptical wing
Yes the spit wing was harder to built than the wing of a 109..so what they still could built more than enough of them (it would have been special as their would be some sort of shortage of them but that never happened)!?
Also this article is forgetting that the 109 wing was much smaller so ofcoarse their would be a posibility that it was easier to built with less manhours...

With similar performance (you are not telling us that a spit with a 109 wing would perform the same)??
The 109 wing was designed for the 109 and had something "special" leading edge slots, this compasated the smaller wing area (and ofcoarse the 109 was a smaller aircraft wich helped too).

 

saying it was "special" is an opinion
OK

Like Adolph Galland saying the ME109 was out dated (obsolete) was an opinion also. He is quoted as saying all production should be stopped in favor of the FW190 & 262.

Yes that was an opinion.. (By the head of Luftwaffe Fighter command). He is also quoted as praising the Spitfire quite a lot.


Do you know a lot about war birds?

Maybe you would like to start a ME 109 thread..


I really enjoy reading some of Gallands inteviews.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=n ... +interview

 

http://members.aol.com/geobat66/galland/wwii_int.htm

Galland: I had been telling Hitler for over a year, since my first flight in an Me-262, that only Focke Wulf Fw-190 fighter production should continue in conventional aircraft, to discontinue the Me-109, which was outdated, and to focus on building a massive jet-fighter force.


I am not sure the basic Spitfire design ever became outdated

 

One of the advantages of the Spitfire as a fighter was the fact that its pilots had total faith in its ability to stand up to any extreme maneuver's they put it through.
If they did push the aircraft too far it was indeed the wings which were the part that failed, but this was exceptional.

 

Over the years many 'improvements' were made to the Spit..

The wings were strengthened..
and as bigger engines were added..

It became heavier and less maneuverable,,


BTW not all had elliptical wings..some were 'clipped'

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/we ... types.html


The original wings were famously thin... the elliptical wing tips were necessary in piroettes as the strength was all in the leading (front) edge. The trailing edge tended to flutter

 

http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/mantis/FW/Bob/Best.htm

an alternative view on the wing thing