There's a quote out there from... one of the high command fuckers, can't remember which one, which is to the effect of "While we are struggling for resources in every way, the British have made a beautiful wooden aircraft that can be put together in a fucking furniture factory."

IIRC there was an anecdote/quote from Sakai Saburou remarking at how tough the F4F Wildcat was

>>64343026
That was Goring ref the Mosquito, IIRC.

>>64343026
>Lecturing a group of German aircraft manufacturers, Göring said:
>"In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set – then at least I'll own something that has always worked."

I know there's a lot of Mustang fans in this place but you yanks need to admit the Spitfire absolutely mogs it in this photo.
Don't @ me.

>>64343043
From his book:
>When I was only fifty yards away, the Wildcat broke out of his loop and astonished me by flying straight and level. At this distance I would not need the cannon; I pumped 200 rounds into the Grumman’s cockpit, watching the bullets chewing up the thin metal skin and shattering the glass. I could not believe what I saw; the Wildcat continued flying almost as if nothing had happened.
>A Zero which had taken that many bullets into its vital cockpit would have been a ball of fire by now. I could not understand it. I slammed the throttle forward and closed in to the American plane, just as the enemy fighter lost speed. In a moment I was ten yards ahead of the Wildcat, trying to slow down. I hunched my shoulders, prepared for the onslaught of his guns, I was trapped.

He closed in saw the pilot was wounded, shot down the plane and thought the pilot had died when he bailed. Its mentioned in The First Team where it claims the pilot survived the encounter.

>>64342928
Horikoshi mentions not being too impressed with some interwar American and German fighters, but mentioned that he felt that they could have learned more from their construction. Also somewhat dismissive of early American fighters, noting protection, but it didn't really work with Japanese requirements. From what I understand he was impressed by late war American designs and impressed with their ability(number of engineers) to iterate and produce new designs.

Really comes off as having a lot of respect for foreign engineering even though he was proud of his designs. I have an article on him explaining how the zero wasn't a copy, he doesn't fail to mention the undercarriage being based on the Vought 143 or list a few of the firms that had production of foreign parts.

>>64342928
I remember reading about some Luftwaffe pilots commenting about not underestimating the P-47. Saying it was insanely maneuverable at high speeds.
Can't find the exact quote for it.

>What did the axis (germany and japan) think of allied fighters? Which did they consider to be the best and worst planes?

spitfire mark 7 and p47 nato named jug.


no P47 did the most over all damage and was the hardest to kill.

worst fighter.

yak 9
its lackluster engine was laughably bad.

t. BF109E axis fighter ace.

>>64344434
The Zero was an exercise in the extreme for cutting weight. Here's your thin seat bro. We cut speed holes in it to save half a kilo. What do you mean you want protection? We need that extra 0.2 kilometers of range so just dont get caught

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>>64344906
Forgot my picture

>>64344123
Sakai's autobiography is kino, right up there with Hans Rudel's "Stuka Pilot."

>>64344906
Their ruthless minmaxing is exactly why they lost most of their best Zero pilots in two years, mostly fighting against "inferior" Wildcats.

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>>64342928
Yasuhiko Kuroe 30 victory IJA ace who got to fly a captured Mustang
>I was astonished with its performance. Turn characteristics were splendid, almost the same as the Ki-84 in a horizontal turn. The radio transmitter was excellent, the armament and other miscellaneous equipment was very good, particularly when compared with their Japanese equivalents, and moreover it had a radio direction-finder. Its dash speed was inferior to that of our imported Fw 190A, but diving speed and stability during the dive were excellent. After fuel consumption tests we estimated it would be able to fly over the Japanese homeland from Iwo Jima. Some time later this came true.
When flying it against other Japanese aircraft he said “I had such confidence with this P-51 that I feared no Japanese fighters"

Yohei Hinoki
>I flew to Omasa airfield and finally got a look at the P-51. I could see the superiority of its equipment, and its shiny fuselage with the open red mouth of a dragon. I saw several red dots on the side of the cockpit, probably recording Japanese aircraft the pilot had shot down. With the radiator under the fuselage, it looked very sleek and deadly. It reminded me of the day I had first seen the P-51 in the sky above Burma on 25 November 1943. Major Kuroe, who brought the P-51 back from China, told me how easy the P-51 was to fly. Getting in, I was very impressed by the roomy seat and I did not have any trouble with my artificial leg on the rudder pedal. For me there were several new things about the aircraft. First of all there was the bulletproof glass, with a better degree of transparency than the thin Japanese glass; secondly, the seat was surrounded by a thick steel plate which I had never seen in a fighter before; there was an automatic shutter for the radiator, and an oxygen system which was new to me. Overall, it was better equipped than any Japanese airplane I had ever seen.

They were impressed that it didn't leak, Sakai liked it when he flew one

>>64342928
Lt. Hitsuji Tsuneo, H6K Mavis pilot with the 851ku considered the B-17 a "four-engine fighter", writing of his first surprise encounter:
"It wasn't a patrol plane's duty to engage in air battles, but now I had no choice. I figured that the fight must be decided quickly. The B-17 positioned itself above and to the starboard rear of our plane and followed us with ease. It must be radioing it's base about our position. One of them was bad enough. If there were two or even actual fighter planes we did not have a chance. I made a tight turn to the port and headed towards the enemy. The only chance we had was the relatively small turning radius of our slow plane compared to that of the fast B-17."

>>64343768
it's the Hispanos
if the Mustang had long pointy cannon barrels sticking out then it would look just as good

>>64344434
>Horikoshi mentions not being too impressed with some interwar American and German fighters
yeah no shit
look at the Curtiss Hawk 75 and the Arado 68
even initial model of 109A had dogshit armament
>but mentioned that he felt that they could have learned more from their construction
that was always the main beef with the Jap technical branch; they saw all this sweet tech and went ga-ga over the possibilities, as autists do, and then got basement-dweller-tier frustrated at being denied the opportunity to use them
>noting protection
on this he was probably wrong though

>>64345569
>Tu-4 nightfighter time!

>>64344934
Most people focus on stuff like fancy carrier battles at Midway/Coral Sea without realizing just how much damage the Solomons campaign did to INJ airpower and set them on a death spiral of quality and quantity

>>64345753
you mean the Solomons campaign on its own, apart from the two major carrier battles in the area? because the battles of Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz, while being somewhat indecisive by themselves, are considered pretty devastating to the Japanese pilot corps, accounting for 25% of the prewar headcount

Coral Sea was merely a confidence booster, it's true; but Midway wiped half the prewar Jap fleet carrier force in addition to killing all those aircrew. Aircrew is important but so are the ships they fly from.

>>64342928
There was a German pilot who go to fly them after the war and he was generally favorable. Can't remember the exact specifics. Know Japs liked some US designs.
>>64345569
I wonder if it was one of those recon B-17s he encountered? Those things were known to dogfight and be surprisingly maneuverable.

>>64342928
I remember hearing something on this very board about "allied fighter-bombers" earning a similar reputation amongst the Germans to the one the Tiger tank had amongst the allies

>>64345793
I was mostly thinking with regards to the japanese forces staging through Rabaul doing air combat over the Solomons in general, but the carrier stuff also factor in ofc.
It was either Lundstrom or Frank which did a good write-up on just how much attrition the IJN air arm suffered, either from direct combat, disease, increase in accidents while working from exposed and underdeveloped island bases.
It also highlighted the min-max design of japanese planes, with them being able to do a 7-hour roundtrip down from Rabaul in a Zero, but with just minor damage being certain death due to not getting home (fuel leak, engine damage, no SAR, locals will eat you etc).
This also caused attrition among the land-based parts of IJNAF that normally wouldnt be caused in a carrier battle as well, such as the 4th Air Group

>>64345112
>the seat was surrounded by a thick steel plate which I had never seen in a fighter before
>Yohei Hinoki
Isn't this the same guy who praised Ki-61 for it's armor as he caught a dozen or two dozen hits every time?
He might have flown a Ki-43 all the way to 1945 and never been introduced to more modern Japanese types.

In the Imperial Japanese Navy, F4U was not highly regarded, and the F6F was considered the more powerful fighter.

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>>64346052
>F4U was not highly regarded, and the F6F was considered the more powerful fighter.
And yet the F6F saw little post war use, the Korean war was just another field day for the F4U.

>>64346102
Well yeah the F6F was obsolete post war meanwhile the F4U was still a capable in the ground attack role?

>>64346131
My point being that while both were effective fighters in WW2, the F6F was the less effective sibling.

If the F6F was gooder than the F4U, it would've replaced it...

>>64346136
Not really. There is nothing to detract that the F6F wasn't the better fighter at the time over the F4U but as the way reality goes you can be the better fighter but be far less capable in other roles so you get what happened in reality in that the F6F gets replaced with the F8F and F9F while the F4U still has a use so it continues in service.

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>>64345793
>Midway wiped half the prewar Jap fleet carrier force in addition to killing all those aircrew
By my recollection Japanese pilot losses at Midway weren't particularly terrible. While they lost plenty of crew in the air combat, the vast majority of the crews survived the carriers being hit since they weren't in the hangers when they got hit.

Aircraft mechanics, on the other hand, suffered horribly and this was another trained human resource that Japan was poorly positioned to replenish. When America drafted Tom, Dick or Henry off the farm odds are they know the basics of engine maintenance from working on the family tractor/truck. From that base teaching them to work on an R-2800 isn't that huge of a leap. Japan lacked that widely motorized/industrialized society so your future mechanics often had to be trained from essentially zero mechanical knowledge whatsoever. Pilots ferrying planes to forward bases would arrive to find dozens of planes sitting idle on the ramp because of minor mechanical issues, because the maintenance crews even working triple shifts couldn't get to them

>>64343768
>mogs in this photo
>p51 is literally topping skeeto
Bottom bitch skeeto.

>>64345912
It was, yes. There weren't many other heavy aircraft available in the Solomon Islands theater so using those old B-17D/Es in ones and twos for maritime patrol and photo-recon of island bases/harbors was pretty effective. Seldom engaged and well armed enough to fend off anything they did meet.

>>64342928
What German pilots thought of the planes of their Japanese allies or vice versa?
They didn't have a lot of overlap to experience them.

>>64343289
kino

>>64346199
A lot of it was the burgeoning civil aviation in the interwar. So many airlines, touring planes, mail carriers, etc. and so many mechanics to train more mechanics, pilots to train more pilots, and so on.

>>64345745
>look at the Curtiss Hawk 75 and the Arado 68
The comparison for those would be with the type 96.

>During the time when the 96 was the leading Japanese fighter, we had the opportunity of running comparative tests against the Seversky P-35. We purchased ten of these for purposes of test and study, and found that the machines were heavy, unmaneuverable and did not compare with the performance of the Type 96 in virtually all major points. Actual combat against the Gloster Gladiator, the Curtiss Model P-75 and the Russian I-15 and I-16 indicated that for most purposes, we had the superior machine. However, the Navy was not deluded into believing that these tests made us the tops in fighter design; it stood to reason that no country was going to export its best aircraft. For that reason, we were encouraged to improve our design and keep step with the world.

>... the Seversky P-35's with their retractable undercarriage from the United States and the Heinkel He 112 (A7He1) fighters with their retractable undercarriage from Germany were, except for their maximum speeds inferior to performance to the A5M...

>>64344906
IIrc protection wasn't standard in fighters when it was being designed.

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>>64346199
Aircrew only came out to about 110 iirc.

The bigger problem was that they trained them for specific carriers instead of being able to transfer an air group between boats so under Japanese doctrine they had to at best retrain all those pilots, most of whom they sent to backwater posts to keep them quiet about the battle.

As you noted the bigger loss was their ground crews and mechanics which they never really recovered from.

If you haven't read it I'd highly recommend Shattered Sword by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. It goes into great detail about what went wrong with the Japanese side of Midway.

>>64343131
Goering was one of the biggest teaboos out there

>>64345112
Also whatever plane the Japanese would capture would not be using the high quality fuel the US was using at the time

>>64342928
German pilots thought the P-47 was the best allied fighter, better than Spit and Mustang. Common themes - It could tank many hits whereas smaller fighters only needed 1 or 2 20mm hits, better firepower with 8 50 cals and could disengage at will due to superior dive speed dive.

>>64350611
Wrong.
this entire "topic" is teenager plebbitard brainlet gamerstreamer Slop

>>64350611
That's complete horseshit. German pilots had a low opinion of the P-47 as it was generally an inferior dogfighter. It was feared and respected as a ground attack aircraft by ground troops.

The jug was good enough for most of the early war. But the P-51 was the best American fighter, it could beat any of the others in a dogfight and do it over Berlin.

>>64348739
>protection wasn't standard in fighters when it was being designed
the RAF and Luftwaffe began producing armoured fighters the time the A6M first entered service

>The comparison for those would be with the type 96
the A5M? I agree. The Hurricane I and Bf109A entered service the same year it did

>>64343289
>and we have the nincompoops
is that the poopensharten?

>>64350771
>>64350859

How about you read the biographies of any top Luftwaffe ace instead of coming here and talking shit you absolute ignorant fuckwits.

Günther Rall - "The P-47, which as you know shot me down, we knew right away. It had tremendous diving speed... I learned this quickly when they chased me, and I could do nothing else". Rall also acknowledged the difference in structural strength between German fighters and the "Jug": "The structural layout design of the P-47 was much stronger".

Heinz Bär - called the Thunderbolt "indestructible," highlighting its rugged and damage-resistant design.

Egon Meyer - "It was not the pilot who was the enemy. It was the plane". This quote refers to his encounters with P-47's and its ability to take immense punishment.

>>64350906
>designed
>entered service

>>64350906
>the A5M? I agree. The Hurricane I and Bf109A entered service the same year it did
And they didn't have those on hand.

>>64350859
Only with a bong engine.

>>64352021
I have all the books more than anyone on this entire fucking board
Everyone on /k/ is a gamerstreamerlarptard
go to your fucking WT forums or whatever the fuck they are to have this garbage wankfest

>>64345753
Those were IJN. Bergerud's Fire in the Sky is an excellent account of the USA and Australia grinding the IJA air arm to irrelevance from New Guinea to Rabaul.

>>64350859
Your info is Fudd tier.

>>64353903
Fuuuuuddddd

>>64353959
this board /k/ is fucking retarded
OP posts the samepic-posted-1,000,000× of 2018 warbirds at an airshow and forty replies of blahblahblahblahblahblah upchuck rehash of all the gamerstreamerlarptard WTforum slapfighting.
Go to your fucking gamerboards to have this, keep it *off of* /k/
warbirds btw are not Weapons they are museum antiques

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>>64353978
Bait or autism, call it

>>64353812
americanized and built by packard. and the engine wasn't really that special. it was the two-stage two-speed supercharger.
the early models of the merlin without it were pretty meh. just look at the P-40F/L.

>>64354015
That idiot is on every thread calling people streamers and larpers

>>64354104
>and the engine wasn't really that special
It was. One of the best power to weight ratios, incredibly reliable, used throughout the war from start to finish and the basic design extended from 1030hp (MKII/III) to 1720hp (merlin 66).

>>64354015
>>64354131
all of /k/ is fucking videogamerfaggotard0-under-40-larprstreaminggamertard FAGGOTS including (You) two.
(You) fucking *FAGGOTS*.
this board is a fucking joke, destroyed after 2013.
Go back to your fucking goddamned gamerboards Faggots.

>>64353978
I don't do any wargames. You seem knowledgeable, though.

>>64354146
I am knowledgable.
/k/ is not a place for discourse or to share knowledge.
(You) are a larptardgamerstreamertard.
My last videogame played was Pong in 1977.

spitfire is the shit. Looks so good in photos.

>>64354144
pretty much same deal with the allison. the main thing that made the merlin special was the supercharger it got later that made it excellent at high altitude.

>>64354549
Was supercharged spit better than p51 high alts? Just wondering cause p51 gets all hype.

I always find it neat that as soon as US structural requirements were relaxed to British standards, IE P51D to P51H, you saw legitimately insane flight performance for a WW2 prop. It wasn’t the only change, but lightening the P51 was easily done and probably could have been designed in from the outset.

US fighters were very hamstrung by structural, protection, and range requirements. It would have been interesting to see what the US’s fighters would have looked like had a need arisen for the shorter range, high rate of climb stuff that Britain and Germany were doing.

>>64354893
but those requirements gave us p47, cant be mad about that.

One of the fun things about American fighters in service appears to be that they were initially fitted for but not with drop tanks.
Not sure which ones, I'm going for P47 at least.
US doctrine and all that.

>>64346136
By that measure, the A-1 was superior to the F-8...

>>64354663
better how?
the thing about the P-51 was it's laminar flow wings made it very low drag so they turned it into a flying gas can to push it's range waaaay out there so it could escort bombers during the day. it could then fight to it's advantage using tactics developed to defeat german fighters.
the spit, on the other hand, was an interceptor with short legs built for speed, rate of climb, and maneuverability. it didn't need to sacrifice everything for range because the british bombed at night.
what is better here depends on what you want to do with the thing. are we dogfighting over dover or over berlin?

>>64355157
Yeah I know question was pretty badly made. But your answer was still pretty much what I was looking for. Can you give run down on those tactics against germans they used?

>>64354949
>One of the fun things about American fighters in service appears to be that they were initially fitted for but not with drop tanks.
Yeah im pretty sure the P47 had fittings as standard, with Republic even offering to develop tanks (or even had tanks available).
The whole drop tanks-stuff is really interesting.
By 1943 Kenney was doing regular fighter sweeps from Northern Australia/Port Moresby and into Wewak (800km away) using Razorbacks with locally built tanks, while in the ETO they refused to issue tanks and thus gimped the range to just being able to cross into Germany
There was talk of having to use "proper" pressurized tanks, but both fighting and flights above New Guinea mostly took place in the 20-30 000ft altitude range

>>64353940
Yeah i need to get my hands on that book at some point

In New Guinea, it was unlikely that the planes would be intercepted before Wewak, but in the case of a German airstrike escort mission, there was a possibility that they would be intercepted before the target and lose their drop tanks early.

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>>64343768
I'm British and I actually prefer the Mustang over the Spitfire
HOWEVER, the burly Hawker Typhoon will always be my favourite WW2 aircraft

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>>64355845
how about
>Typhoon but actually a good fighter

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>>64355845
Based taste, I'm an American and feel the same way
But my favorite brit prop fighter of all is the whirlwind

>>64355878
it was but just like the bearcat it came out too late to be of any effect. and jets became ta thing and basically became useless overnight.

>>64355963
>Whirlwind
aka the great great granddaddy of BRRRRTTT
unfortunately too ahead of its time

>>64355189
not entirely sure. i'm more of an engineering guy than a tactics guy. but from what i understand the spit was built to have specific characteristics (turn, dive, climb, etc) so that it outperformed everything else. the british were real picky about this stuff and turned down or relegated only to certain roles aircraft that didn't meet certain criteria.
americans were different and would instead just train pilots to use the strengths of whatever aircraft they had against enemy weaknesses. if it was better in a dive, they would boom and zoom. if it was better in a turn, they would engage in a turning fight. if it was better in a climb at altitude, use vertical maneuvers.
so yeah, it all depends on who the enemy is and at what altitude and where. as far as when P-51s were escorting the bombers, i believe they mostly flew above them so that they could dive on the enemy and maintain an energy advantage if it became a turning fight.

>>64356302
literally the opposite
>the british were real picky about this stuff
they used aircraft which the Americans turned down
>turned down or relegated only to certain roles aircraft that didn't meet certain criteria
only when they were really really really bad at it, anon
like, Boulton-Paul Defiant bad
>americans were different and would instead just train pilots to use the strengths of whatever aircraft they had against enemy weaknesses
Americans worship technology and their reaction to getting their asses seemingly kicked was to design and buy superior aircraft. they constantly bitched about not having aircraft at least 20% better in all possible specs than the enemy's.
it was the British who were more tactically flexible.

>>64355845
I see another fellow carbon monoxide enjoyer.

>>64355845
>>64355878

Does anyone have that meme of the typhoon pilot flying a typhoon and has those sayings like the coonsumer meme or walker meme. I rememeber one of them was something like "Knows German AA guns are crewed by children later in the war, strafes anyway"

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>>64356308
>Boulton-Paul Defiant

>>64356944
Sad thing about the Defiant was it's potential as a single seat fighter,. It was a modern design, aerodynamically advanced, more so than spit or hurri. During summer 1940, in response to a RAF requirement for a 20mm cannon armed fighter, they trialled removing the turret, put 4 cannons in the wings and used a Merlin XX engine. Apparently its top speed was faster than the Spitfire and had excellent handling. Now if you also consider it was quite large, with lots of room without the turret, it also could have been easily upgraded.

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>>64357572
Pic

>>64357572
>During summer 1940
the Spitfire was really ramping up production, so there was no real point bringing in this P.94

>>64358038
Cannon armed, longer range.