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

Tough question. As a kid I always liked the P-51, as I'm older and thinking about my dad who was based on a carrier in the Pacific, the F4U is a cherished war bird. Oh, and I did meet Pappy Boyington at an air show, so that's another vote for the Corsair. Hmm V-12 vs. radial, the each make such sweet music.

So, I'll say for the European theater, P-51, for the Pacific theater F4U.

So many possible choices but I'll have to cast my vote for the P38.

Will always be the Supermarine Spitfire.

Doc

F4U or the Spitfire are my favorites.

Look down

Here's a site I found interesting on the effectiveness of WW2 fighter armament.

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/WW2guneffect.htm



Phil

While I like the Corsair and am happy for its eventual successes, I think the plane is somewhat overrated. It took a long time to get into production and fit for carrier use.

Even the pilots who flew them didn't like the plane's finicky mechanical nature. Tom Blackburn, a Corsair double ace (11 total kills), wrote a book about his unit, The Jolly Rogers, and had this to say about the F4U:

The Corsair appeared to be a superb fighting machine, but it was overengineered and thus hard to maintain. At the start of a typical day's ops, only about half of our full complement was safe to fly. By "secure," half of those could be expected to be "down."

The 2,800-cubic-inch engine was a monster to fire up after it had sat in subfreezing weather overnight. First, it took two strong men pulling on a prop blade to slowly accomplish the minimum revolutions needed to clear the lower cylinders of oil so the start-up could be accomplished in safety. Next, the engine had to be primed with raw gasoline. This touchy enterprise had to stop short of flooding and thus drowning the spark plugs and evade the obvious fire hazard while getting enough vaporized fuel into the cylinders to get the engine to cough to life. Some genius had equipped the Corsair with a shotgun starter in lieu of the heavy electric starter. When all was in readiness, the shotgun shell was fired. Sometimes it went bang and turned the prop through three or more revolutions. Mostly, however, it just went poof and the prop just twitched. Four abortive tries generally overheated the starter, and that resulted in a fifteen-minute stand-down for cooling. So much for geniuses.

Each of fourteen cowl flaps had its own baby hydraulic cylinder to open and close it. These tended to leak. In addition, until the maintenance crews became expert, the big radial engine tended to throw a lot of oil. The combination rapidly coated the windshield and seriously decreased the airplane's inherently limited forward visibility. We all became expert at quickly locating rain showers through which we could fly in order to wash away the oil.

The landing flaps had a protective device to prevent extension at airspeeds high enough to cause overstressing. This was a dandy feature except that the flaps could and often did retract fully and without warning during the final stages of a landing approach. Of course, this resulted in a horrendous loss of lift and a rapid sinking. The pilot, ever alert for such mishaps, had to slam on full power to evade disaster. After too many narrow escapes, we got the "flap blowup" removed, it being our decision to risk tearing off a flap as against losing lift in this terrifying, dangerous manner. To my knowledge, no one ever did tear off a flap.

The Corsair's storage battery, which was located in the cockpit, had an unhealthy habit of boiling over. In one case, a battery exploded while the airplane was in flight. We later determined that it had been excessively over- charged, but the incident gave us one more in a long line of potential life-threatening problems to bear in mind while we were trying to fly - and eventually, fight - our irasible Hogs.

Admittedly, other planes had their own problems, but the Corsair's ultimate kill ratio of 11:1 does not, in and of itself, establish the Corsair as the best fighter. When the Corsair finally got into action in early 1943, the Allied war machine was cranking out substantially more aircraft than Japan. Americans in Corsairs went into dogfights equipped with superior numbers and, more importantly, the knowledge of how to fight the Zero. That knowledge was acquired by other pilots flying other aircraft (Wildcats, Buffalos, and Warhawks). Those early pilots developed the tactics that helped Corsair pilots (and Hellcat pilots) put their superior planes to good use.

The Japanese Zero was designed as a dogfighter, but based largley on WWI tactics. Light, fast, maneuvarable, and an ability to climb were considered the most desirable traits. The tradeoff to these advantages were that there was no armor for the pilot, and no self-sealing fuel tanks to keep the plane from exploding. But, as designed, the Zero was lethal in a turning fight. Huge wings, a sufficiently powerful engine allowed made the Zero superior when yanking and banking--especially as speed bled off during the fight.

Once the U.S. pilots discovered the advantages of altitude, firepower, and armor, they neutralized the effectiveness of the Zero (as long as they stayed out of a turning fight).

The Corsair was a fine aircraft, but I just don't see it being the "best" fighter of the war. Of course the thread title here asks what is your "favorite" fighter, and I won't argue anyone's choice there. Pick whatever you want.

This one.

FW 190 was definitely the sexiest aircraft made outside an English speaking nation in WWII.

I'll be different Our side Corsair. The enemy ME262

Ditto for me.

The 2,800-cubic-inch engine was a monster to fire up after it had sat in subfreezing weather overnight.

I'm wondering how many F4U's saw sub freezing weather overnight in WWII? Almost all were Marine land based in the Pacific and then some carrier based late in the war but I can't imagine many seeing subfreezing.

The P-38 wasn't used much in Europe either because of it's cold weather habits if I recall correctly.

I've noticed in these "favorite fighter" or "favorite warbird" threads that the Japanese Zero never gets much respect.

Had it been placed into production earlier, instead of like so many other German aircraft of the time, started and halted numerous times it most assuredly would have been the best.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_335

For a propeller aircraft it was the fastest most agile of the time and could out pace easily the P-51. With a speed of only 51 mph shorter than that of the ME262




German engineers had their [bleep] together, they just didn�t have the leadership. If they had the war might have been a different story.


Phil

P51 Mustang. The "whole nine yards." Or so the legend goes.



L.W.

I know that technically this would be a medium Bomber,.....

But those B-25s that they solid nosed and bristled with .50 Cal and larger, to go after Japanese Amphib. Ops had to be THE riot to light up.

Anyone got a pic / spec sheet of one of those to post?

That failing, and fopr a pure fighter, The Lightning, sure certain.

GTC

I liked the P-47 Thunderbolt best.



"In Europe in the critical first three months of 1944, when the German aircraft industry and Berlin were heavily attacked, the P-47 shot down more German fighters than did the P-51 (570 out of 873), and shot down approximately 900 of the 1,983 claimed during the first six months of 1944.[18] In Europe, Thunderbolts flew more sorties (423,435) than P-51s, P-38s and P-40s combined."

Like 3 of them, P38, Corsair, PBY, all favorite.

Got to ask my bumbass question. Did a drive shaft go stem to stern?
I think is see the air port for a rear engine. Recken it could fly forwards and backards.

Germans were some engineering fools weren't they. (nuther words, smart fellers)

That is way cool! I loved watching Ba Ba Blacksheep when I was a kid, you met the real deal!

The Corsair was the first to pop into my mind, followed almost immediately by the P51 Mustang and the P38 Lightning. The British Spitfire had nice lines as well.