Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What's your Favorite WWII Fighter Plane

P-38 Lightning

Ask Yamamoto how effective it was

BB,
That Whicked Wabbit was at the Winston Salem Airshow last week. Pretty cool up close.

If you did not select the Corsair as your favorite plane, you had the wrong answer! I hope this helps. grins


Steve

So far, It looks like a dogfight between the Corsair and the Mustang., and perhaps the Lightning.

I always had a fondness for the F6F Hellcat. I believe it was the first fighter we had in the Pacific that could successfully dogfight with the Zero, plus it was armored to protect the pilot.

Nothing spectacular, wasn't the fastest, kind of stodgy in appearance, it was one of those things that just worked day in and day out to win the war.

The P-40 War Hawk! One tough SOB!

The F4U has to be the coolest looking aircraft to come out of American factories during WWII. And the P-51 saved the butts of a lot of B-17 pilots over Germany.

But my vote still goes for the P-38. She did an admirable job as an interceptor in the Pacific and made a pretty decent attack plane in Europe.

Hellcat folowed by the P39 Bell. It's weird, but fascinating with the pilot sitting on top of the massive gun itself which the plane was designed around. I believe the pilot had much more room to move around in the Bell, or he was more comfortable w/o sacrificing aerodynamics. The Russians used them much more effectively than America.

Favorites evolved from looks, P 51 and P40, to getting back alive, the Hellcat and the P 47, which could take punishment.

Focke Wulf 190

the p38 lightning a.k.a. the forked tailed devel

The flying box, Plywood Terror, and I believe a whole bunch of other handles.

De Havilland Mosquito
http://www.aviation-history.com/dehavilland/mosquito.html



Britain�s De Havilland Mosquito almost followed the same fate as the Messerschmitt ME 262 and wound up being one of the war�s greatest fighters and more.


Phil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F6F_Hellcat

THE most successful fighter in naval history.

For brutish, badazz american muscle and novel design - the F4U. But heck, all those mentioned are standouts with stories attached. THE great aviation era. Even cobbled-together last-minute aircraft like the B-17 (from civilian design), took on a whole new beauty. As unimaginable then as it is now, that so few survive.

Scary, I'm thinking like Les...

Focke-Wulf FW-190


And (I know it wasn't a fighter)
Junkers JU-87 Stuka


Tank Buster:


Allied would be the P-40 and the Mustang. Spitfire and Mosquito are up there too.

Aqualung

What is that Les, a 3/4 scale repro? It looks alot smaller than the real deal. I've seen the full size one at NASM Goddard in Suitland, MD and it seemed larger than the one in the pic.

Far from the best, but loved that paint job.

yes mike, thats a mini

Not a bad choice. Nice lines, way more reliable than the ME-109, and more heavily gunned. The German emphasis on anti-bomber platforms resulted in some very dangerous machines. I think that the P-38 and the German stuff were in the African theater at the same time, but I have no idea if they ever encountered each other in combat or air-to-air fighting.

When i was a kid, i used to build Model airplanes, I had every model of the Focke Wulf I could find, and also every version of the B-17. Les

Just was given my dads collection of war plane cards from the late thirtys or early fortys. He said he collected them from discarded Wings brand cigarette packs. He meticulously mounted each card in a scrap book with out harming the card in any way.
Up until a couple of years ago he could identify all of the different planes.

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