Who said the P-47 is better? High speed interceptor that was good AG yes, more suited to the high speed environment of Korea, no. The Mustang was crap compared to the MiG with a decent hit and run pilot. But the P47 is slower and bigger and not 30mm-proof regardless of stronger build.

How long did the F-80's last?

I've spent a few hours in the P-40 series since 4.12 came out and have noticed that it does need more trimming to get the most out of it (as well as addressing the performance of the M version vs the E).

However, as both stand, the Tomahawk/Warhawk series still require less constant adjustment of down elevator-down elevator-down elevator-down elevator-right rudder-right rudder-right rudder then up elevator-up elevator-left rudder, ahh, that's got it--!???!--bloody hell!--down elevator-down elevator- ad infinitum of the Mustang series.

Of course, the iconic Grumman F6F is even worse; God only knows what the Northrup Black Widow would have been treated like...

cheers

horseback

Rudder trim is because propwash torque on the tail changes with speed, engine, and prop settings. Below a certain speed you need rudder to one side and above you need rudder to the other. They joked that Hartmann walked in circles because one leg was stronger from holding rudder at high speed.
The stabilizer is offset to make 0 rudder needed at cruise speed which helps reduce heaver low speed propwash torque, if you don't have rudder trim you get to move the pedals instead. If you do have trim then complain about that. Step on the ball instead.

I disagree. Numerical superiority helps even in smaller battles. Even an 10:9 superiority means 1 pilot out of ten can engage the enemy at will. And if the LW managed to get 300 planes in the air to engage the bombers and say 100 P-51, then it looks like a huge numerical superiority for the LW, but may in fact have been 100 P-51 against 30 LW planes and this ten times.

The Luftwaffe of early 43 was good. But the decline in quality and quantity of pilots and material was rapid and by mid 44 the LW was only a shadow of its past glory. By end of 43, when P-51s came into the theater the RAF and P-47s had made quite some dents into LW.
If the LW had had plenty of good high-alt planes to counter the P-51 (109G-10, K-4) the Pony could have faired worse, but some of the enemy planes were Bf110 and derivatives and Fw190As, that at bomber altitude did not have good performance
The LWs tactics were not optimised to keep the fighter losses//Mustang kill ratio low. They tried to shoot down as many bombers as they could, and most of the time did so by throwing fighters in small portions at the bomber stream. And their intended target were the bombers.

And besides that - if the enemy manages to carry the fight to your homeland, than you are at a severe tactical disadvantage -you can not act, you react.

The Pony in Il-2 is fine (maybe except for the trim requirements). It is FAST. In a shallow climb or dive you outrun almost anything. And it keeps its speed if you don't hamfist it. At speeds where a P-40 would start losing parts it is stable like a brick. It climbs reasonably well and accelerates okay.
It has endurance a Bf-109 will never achive. It can carry a useful load of ordinance, or even more fuel. Now if I only could hit anything while flying it...

Your 100 Mustangs engaging 10 consecutive 30 plane attacks would lead to a certain amount of wastage; aircraft would be lost, some would expend too much fuel or ammo and have to RTB, and some would get separated from the main body and not be able to rejoin. By the time the 10th group of 30 LW fighters arrived, they would be facing a seriously depleted escort, even had the Mustangs managed to destroy or disperse the previous 270 fighters.

The LW had radar plots & aircraft shadowing the bombers from the North sea onwards as they headed to their targets; they systematically kept track of each bomber formation’s altitude, course and speed, where the escorts were most heavily concentrated and tried to calculate how soon they were likely to depart or be replaced for the next ‘leg’ by another group of escorts. LW interceptors were kept well-informed of all of this as they waited for takeoff orders and as they climbed to position for their attacks.

The whole point of these practices was to ensure numerical superiority at the point of attack, and as a practical matter, they were often successful. But even if they were successful, an aggressive escort positioned in the right place could break up an attack and inflict disproportionate casualties. The sky is a big place and you cannot keep track of everything. There is the glare of the sun, contrails, clouds and sheer distance to contend with. The 8th Fighter Command had some very good minds who worked very hard at coming up with new ways to vary courses and schedules to throw the Germans off the scent, but most of the time, it mainly came down to the escort being in position for the bounce and being better than the opposition.

cheers

horseback

I love this recurring meme; the poor jagdewaffe in the West being run ragged by huge numbers of Spitfires and P-47s nibbling at the fringes of European airspace and fighting desperately to stem the tide of thousands of B-17s and B-24s that were striking at Germany itself and implying that this was the case immediately after the United States entered the war.

I’m not familiar with the numbers of Spits on the Channel, but the best figures I can get for their reach is about 90 miles (145 km) past the French coast, and that was only in certain areas where France and England were fairly close. In terms of attrition, they were a minor concern to the LW; they could largely be avoided or ignored. A P-47C/D with a single belly tank (the twin wing pylons of the late D models didn’t become available until late spring of 1944) could have an effective combat range out to the edges of German airspace, and it took the USAAF about six months to develop that capability after the P-47 was introduced to operations (March, 1943).

The P-47 was introduced early spring of 1943 and it was still a developmental aircraft in many ways; mechanical and radio aborts were fairly common well into the fall of that year, and it was quickly established that the Thunderbolt was not competitive at altitudes below 20,000 ft. Additionally, of the three 8th AF fighter groups, only the 56th FG had had any previous time in the type; the more combat seasoned 4th FG had previously flown Spitfires under British control and the 78th was stripped of its P-38s and most of its pilots to supply the Torch/N. African campaign—it was mainly a shell of senior officers and newly trained pilots dropped into modern fighters right out of the gate. The 4th lost a good number of experienced pilots and leaders who were sent to other AAF units to provide combat experience and leadership (and dilute the RAF mindset they had). Basically, two of the three fighter groups in England started operations in the P-47 already resentful and shorthanded.

For most of the summer and early fall of 1943, these three groups of roughly 45 aircraft each could field a maximum effort of maybe 110-120 fighters to escort (in shifts) a fairly limited number of B-17s over (mainly) France, and they were getting their asses kicked. The Germans were destroying aircraft and killing or capturing trained aircrew about as quickly as we could build or train them & get them across the Atlantic most of that year. In the case of bombers and crews they were taking them out even faster than (less experienced) new ones could be brought in for most of 1943.

In fact, there was a great deal of discussion of at least suspending the daylight bombing effort entirely by mid-October of that year, in order to finally gather up a big enough force to overwhelm the German defenses (although without effective fighter escorts past the German border, it might have simply led to even greater losses to no benefit). During that fall and early winter of 1943, about five or six new fighter groups joined the 8th AF, but their participation in combat operations were limited by the ‘breaking in period’ required partly because production of USAAF first-line fighters had not reached the point where they could be used for advanced training, which meant that the first time the newly trained pilots actually got meaningful time in the fighter model they would be fighting in was after they had arrived in England and partly because they still had to be trained and briefed on the latest tactics and radio procedures in the theater.

That breaking in period was extended by truly atrocious weather that fall, which slowed their progress and led to several fatalities in training while the original three groups not only continued their combat operations, but ‘loaned’ key personnel to the new groups to train and evaluate them.
8th AF combat operations during the period from mid-October ’43 until mid-February of ’44 were spotty and erratic due to the weather and the ongoing debate about which direction the bombing campaign would take; Escort To Berlin, the combat diary of the 4th FG, shows just over 40 missions for the group (often squadron sized or less) during that 123 day period, making contact less than half the time, and barely breaking even in terms of victories and combat losses (add in operational casualties, and they were losing, and badly). Only the 56th FG was enjoying a measure of success at that time; the 78th and the 4th were probably still sulking over being stuck with the P-47 and all the key personnel they’d had stolen from them to stock other groups in England, Italy and the Pacific.

Meanwhile, the poor LW was busily patting itself on the back and painting victory bars and pictures of Iron Crosses on their tail fins, ignoring the fact that the Battle of the Atlantic had been lost by the U-boats and that now the steadily increasing production of the US factories and training bases could be brought to England without losing a meaningful percentage first. They thought that they had already won the Battle of Germany, and their leadership simply didn’t believe that reports of the P-51 equipped with a Merlin 60 series engine could a) have the range to escort the bombers over Germany or b) be effective even if it did. Morale at Christmas of 1943 was very good, and confidence was high. Most fighter pilots were more concerned about what Goerring might do to them than what the Americans would do.

Certainly there had been some attrition, but they were winning and doing so easily. There had been sightings of P-38s, but these were poorly flown by half-frozen, half-trained pilots in limited numbers, and the Lightning was never well thought of by the pilots of the Luftwaffe unless they were shot down or nearly got shot down by one (and some not even then, like Galland). It had good range, but it was a twin, and it was an article of faith that twins couldn’t compete with single engine fighters. The P-47 was sometimes dangerous up high, but it was short legged and useless below 6500m, where any extended fight was likely to end.

A German fighter pilot stationed in the West at the end of 1943 was well trained, well rested and confidant; he had more combat experience, proven leaders in every unit, excellent aircraft, reliable weapons, good tactical doctrine, and an extensive early warning and ground control system. He probably would have thought himself in a better position than the Tommies were over southern England in the summer of 1940. There were lots of Tommies and Americans, it was true, but they could be avoided most of the time and once the bombers got past the French border, they were alone and practically sitting ducks. More victory bars and fancier medals for the tail fin display were on the horizon, and once they finally learned that the Fatherland was not to be trifled with, they would come to terms with Germany and maybe even join in on the destruction of the Soviet Union.

That's both sides of the story; 1943 was a very good year to be a German fighter pilot, and most of them thought that there was no end in sight for their continued dominance over their own airspace. At the start of 1944, the Germans were convinced that they had everything well in hand in the West. They certainly made no efforts to increase training schedules or the number of fighter units in the West until the situation became a crises.

cheers

horseback

Since 1939, until the end of 1943, the fighter arm of the Luftwaffe had suffered about 800% losses, meaning every unit was completely wiped out and replaced 8 times. About 3 times in 1943 alone. Pilot losses were nearly half of that.

and finally,
 

Again, there is a false chronology: There were less than 200 Mustangs operational in England to be used as bomber escorts from December 1943 until mid-April, 1944, during which the zerstörer Gruppe were largely massacred, and the jagdewaffe suffered its greatest attrition over Germany; that means that the majority of experienced leaders and pilots lost were lost to Mustangs flown by mainly grass-green pilots (three of the first four Mustang groups didn’t fly a Merlin Mustang until they arrived in England less than two bad flying weather months before entering combat), however well trained. The single engine fighters were there to mop up after the zerstörer units, and if there were fighter escorts to deal with them.

They had no business fixating on bombers until after the zerstörer gruppe had been rendered hors de combat by the end of March, and some of their number were reassigned to carry heavy cannon pods and rocket tubes to break up the bomber formations. At no time during this period were the German single engine fighters outnumbered over Germany by the fighter escorts. At best, they were misdirected or just couldn't get the job done.

As I have repeatedly pointed out before, that means that either the Mustang was an exceptional fighter in nearly every way, or most of the men in their cockpits were sons of Krypton flying incognito.
Except for the trim requirements? In this game, that level of endurance, even on the biggest maps, is unnecessary to the point of parody. Speed and endurance are next to useless to a fighter that cannot be kept under control, and if you can't aim your guns accurately, it can't be called 'stable', like a brick or anything else. I would argue that the whole point of the trim requirements (and a COG more consistent with an overload fuel capacity) is to keep you from hitting anything when you fly with it.

'Nuff said.

cheers

horseback

That sort of attrition was standard for combat groups in WWII, even against inferior opposition. US fighter groups in the Pacific, like the 49th FG in New Guinea and several USMC squadrons operating in the Solomons during 1942-44 had very comparable turnover rates under much more physically demanding conditions. Combat infantry outfits in the same constant pace of operations underwent a far higher turnover.

What you ignore is that the LW was able to replace those men at those rates and still dominate; what they couldn't handle was the way the rate of loss sharply increased in the first three months of 1944, when the Mustang was first introduced in the very places where the greatest losses were inflicted.

You can continue to insist that it's just a coincidence, and that they just won some sort of numbers game, but if the numbers change like that, I must maintain that the change in fortunes was earned by the P-51 groups and lost by the FW 190 and Bf 109 outfits at a time when the Mustangs were at a numerical disadvantage.

The average Mustang pilot flew much farther under more stressful conditions for much longer just to get to where he could do his real job. If the Germans, with foreknowledge of where the bombers and escorts were likely to be, greater combat experience and superior numbers couldn't get the job done in those critical months, maybe some credit should go to the men and aircraft that were successful.

cheers

horseback

I haven't even started insisting on anything. So leave your polemics out and try to argue the points I make, not invent some on your own and then go on to debate them with yourself. :confused:

You made the claim that the Luftwaffe was "easily winning" the air war in the west until the appearance of the P-51. That's simply not true. You're of course free to insist, but you won't change facts.