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Originally Posted by pandacat
1. Number. Yes on paper, western allies is numerically stronger. But it doesn't necessrily mean in every battle, P51 outnumbered opponents vastly. There were many instances where P51s were outnumbered by attacking 109 and 190s. Also, as you may be aware from your gaming experience, big battles quickly disintegrated into smaller group battles, team battles and individial battles. At this point, superior overal number means nothing. Moreover, air combat is nothing like ground wars where armies of millions clash with each other and numbers have important impact. In air, number helps but to a much less extend. Convincing? no? Let's go on to the next point.
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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.
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Originally Posted by pandacat
2. Pilot quality. By the time, USAAF entered the conflict, LW had already been a seasoned veteran for many years. They battled French, British, Poles and Russians and prevailed most of times. By the time big bomber operations started in Western E, LW had produced numerous aces. Just counted how many pilots who had 50+ kills and were still active at that point of time. Compared to LW, USAAF was a much younger force. You may say, oh americans had more fuel and they can train their pilots more thoroughly. I don't deny that. American's pilot training may be superior. But one hr of training in a peaceful world or even in a simulated environment is nothing compared to one hr of actual heated combat. Pilot learn their skills and gain experience in actual combats. Even big aces who had adequate training before going into the combat still fumbled in the cockpit the firs time they flew into actual war. It was years of war that forged aces like Eric Hartmann, not hundreds of hours training school. You may also argue that toward the end of war, attrition burned way cream of LW pilot cadre. It is somewhat valid, but all the way until the end of war, LW is still formidable force to be rekoned with. The big turkey shoot in pacific has never happened in western theater. Even at the battle of bulge, LW still put up a tuff fite for western allies. It's a testiment of the quality of LW pilots.
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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.
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Originally Posted by pandacat
3. Planes. Ok let's say for now P51 is shit compared to 109 and 190. Ok if 109 and 190 are so superior and their pilots are skilled, then why would P51 have much greater kill ratio? In ETO alone, the plane had 4950 kills vs 2500 losses (to all causes, enemy actions, operational mishaps etc). How come LW didn't pull the same performance on this plane as what they did when facing swarms of I-16s at the beginning of Russian campaign? If you have a numerical superior, but qualitatively inferior force (ie inferior equipment and less experienced personnel), you are bound to have higher loss ratio. But the fact doesn't reflect that. Look at russians. Russian beat LW in numbers especially later in the war, but they also suffered higher losses. Also, be mindful, most battles that P51 fought were fighter vs fighter fites. Not like battle of britain, there are no juicy fat bombers to chew on.
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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
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Originally Posted by pandacat
4. Tactics. German tactics were bad? Inferior? You tell me? By 1943, they had gone on war for 3+ years and they didn't know what they were doing?
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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...