Just curious about the P-51 FM

[horseback]

Originally Posted by RPS69

Your accounts were acceptable, until this last comment. Some other statements, could belong to USA propaganda. After all, they got vast amounts of obsolete ships at the end of the war, and they urgently needed a market to sell the vets and make some money.

But this last statement is at best, a poor one.

Sorry if it offends you, but I was there in '05/06, when the 4.0x series of patches came out and things got weird with the US fighters that had not seen a lot of Lend Lease service with the VVS. Every problem I cited can be found on that forum, and I am far from the only poster to make those points. It's very difficult to believe that there wasn't at least a small measure of vindictiveness involved with the treatment of late war US fighter's FMs, after so many documented conflicts with the historical record. I've been flying this sim since 2002; if you doubt me, check the Ubi forums and do a search for my posts. You will find that I registered there back in June of 2002.

Now if you think that the US government was so desperate for cash at the end of WWII that it had to 'propagandize' the P-51's reputation to sell it at 1/10th of the government cost to veterans who had often already flown it in combat or known someone who did, you really need to re-think a few things. Admittedly, a great many war planes were sold off for very low prices, but not because the US government needed the money; the aircraft were being sold for much less than their scrap value--it was thought that promoting sport aviation would result in a stronger demand for aircraft production and strengthen that industry, which was looking at a severe contraction after almost five years of all-out demand. Also, you must realize that the P-51 was still the USAAF's best fighter overall until the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was available in reasonable numbers (and even then the Mustang had vastly more range and payload); it was 'obsolete' only in the sense that it wasn't a jet, but given the limitations of the early jets, it had a great deal of military usefulness over the next six or seven years.

Finally a question: who was the only major industrial power in the world in 1945 that had not been subject to major damage to its infrastructure and had to provide modern goods and services to not only its own population, but to most of the free world (generally at a reasonable profit)? Bear in mind that we were (and still are) also a major agricultural power and produced a large portion of the world's food for most of the 1940s. The United States is not Pakistan; we are kind of big and wealthy, and have been since early in the 20th century. Unfortunately, the hallmark of governments is that even the best ones tend to be wasteful, even when they are trying to look thrifty, and the US is no exception.

cheers

horseback