Was being an allied WW2 fighter pilot the comfiest job in the history of all warfare? Lighting up targets that can't fight back and then coming back to base for ice cream must've been comfy
>>65182239>fighterDouglas A-20 was a light bomber.Low level bombing and close support sorties are probably the most dangerous aerial combat missions.>""""""fight back"""""No idea what you mean, fighter aircraft or bomber aircraft. In World War II fighter combat, aerial adversaries were dogfighting with each other.
>>65182261Same shit>>65182261>World War II fighter combat, aerial adversaries were dogfighting with each other.Not really, by allied I mean British and American pilots who had absurd kill ratios
>>65182304>same shitGuess a Honda is the same thing as a porsche
>>65182315OP is a 12-year-old who was just granted his first access to the internet by mummy and daddy (if he has one)
Being an American fighter pilot in the early stages of the war was pretty shit.>wildly outclassed by the Zero in the Pacific>planes are so slow and heavy the British can barely be fucked to use them and the ones that kinda work have fatal design flaws like locking controls during a dive>moronic daylight bombing into radar directed flak and no escort into Bf109s and FW190s flown by pilots with HUNDREDS of kills
its late war allied fighter in england for me>axis already crushed>confy officer life in england alcohol and whores>low chance of enemy encounter since axis have no planes or fuel left and they prioritized attacking bombers>cool views every mission from 10 km up over devastated europe for 2 hours then back to confiness in the officer quarters
>>65182239Closest thing to comfy would have been the FW-200 spotting convoys for the wolfpacks, since they were too high up to be effectively countered. For the allies that would be the ASW patrols in the PBY or Sunderland (the latter having amenities like a small kitchen and toilet). Though submarines weren't exactly defenceless. Its also a fine line between comfy and mind-numbingly boring.
>>65182370The mandatory kid-strafing missions would probably be unpleasant tho
>>65182353>and the ones that kinda work have fatal design flaws like locking controls during a diveI know you didn't just say the P-38 "kinda worked" as a fighter.
>>65182378Good in the Pacific, mediocre to bad over Europe.
>>65182378It didn't do well in the cold at all.
>>65182374Based, that lil fritz was stuffing himself full with eggs and bacon stolen from Poland. Millions of Jews starved while he gorged himself full with the blood of polish jews. Fuck him
>>65182374>milk and pickleslel dumb kid
>>65182374Dick Bong would have refused to fly that mission and Yeager never stopped seething that Bong had more kills, a cute 3.14 wife and good morals.
>uncomfortable, unpressurized cockpit>30% chance of dying from mechanical failure or accident>people shoot at youProbably not very comfy. Being a code breaker or something would've been comfy.
>>65182383Wrong. The earlier variants of the P-38 were the only Allied long range fighters avialable until 1944, and the P-38 was the only twin turbosupercharged fighter aircraft of the war. Like the P-47, it was so fast that the years 1941-1943 were spent in pioneer aeronautical testing of both types to investigate the phenomenon of compressibility in high speed dives. Other issues with the earlier P-38F/G/H variants at altitudes over 20,000 feet (northern Europe) were flight controls and engine carburetion/fuel mixture issues along with cockpit heating (these were common with any fighter aircraft of the 1943-44 period as such performance, altitudes of sustained flight were brand new to air combat).P-38J, particularly the -25-LO and later variants, the most-produced (more than 4,000) P-38L completely solved the high altitude cockpit heating issues, had simplified engine fuel mixture and hydraulically boosted controls; the J-25 and L Lightnings were superlative airplanes.By the time the J-25 / later versions of P-38 reached front lines in early 1944 the USAAF had already made command decision to have the easier-to-train pilots for, simpler to fly P-51B and P-47 single engine fighters w/ big external fuel tanks as the primary bomber escort aircraft. In the Pacific the P-38 remained in high demand until August 1945 when the war ended, and more than 1,200 P-38s were converted into F-4 and F-5 photo reconnaissance aircraft, the Allies most in-demand plane of this type apart from De Havilland Mosquito.
>>65182410>P-38 was the only twin turbosupercharged fighter aircraft of the war.Which resulted in engines that blew up constantly and an supercharger that would freeze open. Things which you conveniently didn't mention.
>>65182407nah there were comfy pilot jobs. My grandfather was a navigator in a Mosquito recce squadron. They would use radios and flares to guide the bomber-streams onto targets at night. Two years of flying over Germany and the Balkans and he only saw "combat" once when a German night fighter made a single pass on them and missed completely, almost never flak or AA either as they would operate in small groups so were usually undetected. In return he got to mooch around Southern Italy for a year and was one of the first to be demobilized and sent home, where he almost immediately got a well paying job with British Airways. Which was great because before the war he was a store clerk w/o a degree. Pretty /comfy/ imo.
>>65182374>armed with a pickle jarAnyone who has observed the Ukraine conflict will tell you that is legitimate anti air threat.
>>65182374Civilian deaths due to allied air attacks make up a very, very small percentage of WW2 civilian deaths. Germany and Japan killed about 50 million civilians in the Soviet Union and China. That anyone has the gall to complain...>tactical supply child eliminatedI suppose you are going to complain about this too. It's called disrupting logistics.
>>65182239This isn't even bait it's just ironic shitposting
>>65182254
>>65182410The "compressibility problem" was just the dumbfuck draftsman lead designer refusing to accept that his tail fuselage section and empennage was wrong.
>>65182416>ESLas stated clearly in post replied to but (You) were unable to comprehend or even read as a nonwhite, operation at high altitudes for long range over northern Europe in 1942-43 was uncharted territory in the history of all human civilization not to mention technology, and aviation. No other fighter aircraft was even close to being able to perform the P-38's long range mission during 1941-43, thanks to its superior advanced design and extremely high performance. Northern Europe high altitude technical issues were completely solved with the P-38 aircraft type by early 1944.>"engines that blew up constantly"Wrong. Allison V-1710 was a reliable widely used engine in many different types of aircraft and watercraft at the time, and technical problems (that had to be worked on and solved through field experience and engineering design improvements as occurs with any type of airplane, especially one as new high performance and advanced as the Lightning) with the P-38 were clearly noted in post replied to.
>>65182239Only if you ignore being squeezed into a cockpit with zero elbow room for hours at a time at freezing cold altitudes on the world's most insufficient cushion. >Lighting up targets that can't fight back Uh...no. If you were in a fighter plane you'd be trying to shoot down other fighters or bombers. >and then coming back to base for ice creamOnly if you're American. Having Ice Cream was a US flex.
>>65182494>compressibilityAlso was a problem (*****AS CLEARLY NOTED IN POST REPLIED TO*****) with the P-47 Thunderbolt, involved all flight control surfaces no matter the airframe configuration design.(You) Get killed.>>65182488checked, this thread is underage posters18 years minimum to post on this site
>Was being an allied WW2 fighter pilot the comfiest job in the history of all warfare? Lighting up targets that can't fight back and then coming back to base for ice cream must've been comfyWhat bourgeois nonsense is that? Welcome to the "eastern" front of July 1941 comrade pilot. Here, tulip picks you.
>>65182416>increased mechanical complexity results in higher attrition rates.No shit, the point is whether that tradeoff was worth it. Twin turbo supercharged engines also gave P-38s the most important advantage in aerial combat, dictating the geometry of the fight.
>>65182618>worth itAn additional reason that probably leveraged the USAAF Europe decision to switch in 1944 to single engine escort fighters, was overall cost of not just airplane itself (P-38 manufacturing unit $ was more than other single seat fighters, even though the Lightning was being used and relied on extensively for other roles such as photo recon) but also pilot training; it was a more demanding plane to learn to fly, though most capable if the trained pilots could meet the slightly higher bar (a similar but not directly analogous situation existed for the USAAF's B-26 Marauder high performance bomber that garnered a bad reputation during its intial year of operational service) of skill and multitasking for this twin-engine single seat airplane. It simply required more and further training than contemporary single seat fighters with just 1 engine, and by 1944 the Allies needed as many trained pilots into fighter plane cockpits as fast as possible. P-38 remained in high demand in the Pacific end of the war, and Lockheed/USAAF field training visits by Tony LeVier and Charles Lindbergh to the theater helped the P-38 fighter groups continue to excel in their air superiority missions there with a plane their COs and pilots already had become proficient with and trusted.
>>65182561Russia (by their own admission) didn't fight in WW2, they were too busy in some border squabble with their former allies called "The Great Patriotic War" or some such overly grandiose nonsense.Pretty impressive that the actual allied forces were able to fight a global war, and supply vast amounts of resources to a country that couldn't even deal with a tiny little brush war.
>>65182493KWAB
>>65182304>I mean British and American pilots who had absurd kill ratiosSo a minisculely tiny minority of them. If you take their kill claims as accurate, which generally means they killed like 3-5 times as many planes as their enemies lost. Somehow.
>>65182239If I had to pick a comfy yet thrilling avaition position certainly the only corrent choice is flying The Hump >biggest enemy is mother earth and mother nature>flyby shootings with a BAR >early happening of CSAR >slamming chink poonani when you land
>>65182507>Uh...no. If you were in a fighter plane you'd be trying to shoot down other fighters or bombers.Do you know the history of the P-40 at all? The gun-camera footage of P-50's and F6F and Corsairs raping Japanese ground bases and striking docked shipping, factories, and ground installations in the home islands?Jesus, why do various posters here refuse to read history, but jump into threads about it anyways?
>>65183017Cry about it.Dresden was burned because fighter pilots died, and Japs got boiled alive on Tokyo rivers and school pools because their fighters also conveniently died en masse to American planes.
>>65183436> The gun-camera footageWell there's your problem. You only see the film that's interesting to watch. Most of the A2A film is just shooting down A6Ms again and again. For that matter, how can you tell it's a P-40? Most fighter planes sucked at A2G. Strafing was risky and .50 calls do a lot less damage than 500 pound bombs. Sure, you could strap a bomb to a fighter plane but that meant you were fat and slow and easy prey for any fighter that found you. No, most ground attacking was done by dedicated bombers that could fly above AA gun range.
>>65183535>>65182507Fighters were very commonly used for ground attack missions, the ability to hose down point targets with half a dozen 50 cals was no small matter>most ground attacking was done by dedicated bombers that could fly above AA gun rangeIn common parlance 'ground attack' typically refers to strafing, low-level bombing of tactical targets and the like. High altitude bombing was doctrinally a bit different
>>65182239Go read Catch-22, nigger. When you are a pilot, EVERYBODY is trying to kill you. The people down there, the other pilots, and your commanders.
>>65182399You jews were going to eat that bacon?
>>65183535Army Air Force Statistical Digest: World War II lists about a quarter of combat sorties flown by army fighters in the pacific were bombing and strafing.
>>65182486Let's not kid ourselves.Soviets killed their own as they retook land from the Germans. They razed villages and towns all they way through western Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Poland, and Germany. If the people were complacent with German occupation, then they were killed.
>>65182374
>>65182374US, Israel, Russians, Ukraniams bomb homes, hospitals, schools, funerals, weddings and first responders all the time. Nothing has changed. I saw US WWII gun camera footage of US pilot strafing a farmer in the field who was just standing there.
>>65182338>firstThat's where you're wrong, we had a similar thread just a week ago.
>>65182374That little faggot probably liked it.>>65182486I bet the same "people" will seethe about allied firebombings of axis industry and workforce and cheer about London, Warsaw etc.>>65184200Uhh OK??
>>65182406Yeager does have him beat in the field of not dying as a test pilot.
>>65183017>If you take their kill claims as accurate, which generally means they killed like 3-5 times as many planes as their enemies lost.But enough about Germs.
>>65182429You'red thinking of fish
>>65182374>>65184200The concept of the civilian is as outdated as the concept of horseback cavalry, and should be treated with the same amount of ridicule when evoked in modern times.
>>65182745I mean, they technically didn't as Russia; they were just supplying manpower to the USSR which had a multi-national command structure, kind of like how Chechnya is technically not at war with Ukraine even though the latter has depopulated at least several villages worth of them.
>>65182239Depends when and where. Fighting in France, Britain or the med against the Luftwaffe early to mid war sure as fuck wasn't comfy
>>65183934Bodied that freak
>>65182399Those eggs and bacon were promised to you 3000 years ago right?
>>65182374Look at the absolute subhumans defending this.
>>65182304>trusting their self reported k/d ratios Lmfao I bet you believe the Vietnam 99999999999999999999999999999 self reported kills to (non civilian ofc)
>>65182239Are you retarded or something? They got fucking slaughtered.
>>65182239I'd rather be a P-61 crew. Comfy night sorties with one or two of your best buddies. Enemies can't see you, but you can find out where they are. Four big ass forward guns plus a four-barrel turret. Enemies turn tail or fly so low they kill themselves if they sense you might be in the air space. Ground crew get to paint some of the most problematic nose art in the AAC, but what the fuck is the brass gonna do about it? The plane will likely burst into flames of its own accord, but you probably farmed plenty of aura by then and now you got one more story to tell.
>>65182353This has to be bait. The Wildcat was competitive with the Zero, going 1:1 with it even when the IJN still had good pilots, and was vastly superior to anything the Fleet Air Arm had at the time, which is why they bought a bunch of them.Daylight bombing was essential to actually hitting a target, which is why it's accuracy was measured by the building rather than the city as was the case for night bombing. Going unescorted initially was retarded though.
>>65187834>67
>>65182486>lots of people steal>therefore stealing is okay
>>65187960>farmed plenty of auraZoomers need to be thrown into an active volcano
>>65189433Sorry your plane of choice was bad at aura-maxxing and gets mogged by the P-61, unc. 67.
>>65188340>AI filterFor what purpose?
>>65182239Depends. If you were British or Soviet or Japanese, not so much.
>>65190258I do like P-61s and their offspring but the volcano statement stands
>>65187904You realized they had gun cams in Vietnam right?
