WW II plane buffs?

MG1962 said:
Is that the crankiest looking aircraft ever designed or what?
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Form follows function... most of the time.. :)
Look at all the elegant fighters with inline cooled motors.. more elegant than the radials, by far!
 
sts60 said:
I volunteered with an air show for a few years and loved the WWII birds. Our group bought a TBM-3e Avenger which had been fighting forest fires in Canada. Avengers were formidable planes, and versatile; the Navy used them as dive bombers, torpedo bombers, transports (hauling 7 men), for reconnaissance, etc. This particular one was built by GM under license to Grumman. It now belongs to the Commemorative (formerly Confederate) Air Force.

Trivia: the first air-to-air kill of a cruise missile was a radar-equipped British Avenger's shoot down of a V-1 over the Channel. And, ironically, the last Avengers in military service were flown in the '60s by the Japanese Self-Defense forces.
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When the Collings Foundation visited Fox Field here with a B-24, B-17 and B-25, a buncha us early risers got to pull the props thru on the B-17 for its flight to Mohave, early in the morning.. The crew chief bitched about our fingerprints on his finely polished props... :)
And when the Shuttle Columbia landed at Edwards after its first space flight, we were there to weigh it. NASA said..."Don't touch it!!"... Yeah, like a life-long aviation nut isn't going to touch the first spaceship to land on this planet! PLUNK! that's MY hand print right there! :)
 
Autolite said:
I read somewhere that the Wehrmacht was absolutely terrified of the Typhoon...
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Kinda clunky looking but as a kid, I really dug that huge radiator/airscoop thing under the prop.

I think the HS 129 is pretty cool....
 
Autolite said:
I read somewhere that the Wehrmacht was absolutely terrified of the Typhoon...
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There was a saying in the Wehrmacht... "If it's shiny, it's American. If it's green, it's British. If it's invisible, it's German."
 
MG1962 said:
I second that mention of IL2 Sturmovik - gives a great appreciation for some of the hardware the Soviets punched out. And just how hard surviving in WW2 air combat really was
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When I used to play it regularly, there was one really cool campaign I d/l'd which sought to display exactly what the Red Air Force had to deal with during Barbarossa. Pretty intense and it was designed that you would NOT survive the final mission.

Had great fun flying against the Condor Legion in another campaign...until I learned that fuel pumps were pretty high-tech for the mid-30's and sadly, the Rata didn't have one....
 
Interesting discussion here on aircraft effectiveness against tanks. I don't know enough to judge the arguments. As a taster
by Tony Williams on 18 Apr 2004, 07:26
From: 'Flying Guns - World War 2: Development of Aircraft Guns, Ammunition and Installations 1933-45' - details on my website
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"The evidence gathered by the OR teams indicated that very few tanks were destroyed by air attack. A British War Office analysis of 223 Panther tanks destroyed in 1944 revealed that only fourteen resulted from air attack (eleven to RPs and three to aircraft cannon). During the Mortain battle of 7-10 August, the RAF and USAAF launched sustained attacks on a German armoured column over a period of six hours, claiming 252 German tanks destroyed or damaged in nearly 500 sorties. It was subsequently discovered that there had only been a total of 177 tanks or tank destroyers deployed by the Germans and just 46 of those were lost, of which only nine could be attributed to air attack (seven to RPs and two to bombs).
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For my next trick I'll show there's no Santa Claus.
 
Watching the gun-camera footages of rockets fired at ground targets, the dispersal of the rockets is very evident. Like a shotgun effect. The hits on the ground may do some damage to the troops around a tank, but hitting -a- tank would be a lucky hit.
 
Nobody else will do it, so I'm nominating the P-39 for Prettiest Single Seater of WW 2. Yes, I know, it was an iron dog and a lead sled, at least in Anglo-American hands -- but goddammit, it was so CUTE! It almost had breasts!

The title of Most Beautiful of All Fighters goes, of course, to the Spit. Something about that ogival wing just takes your heart.

Number One in Brutal Grace goes to the P-51 -- but the Mustang is such a masculine plane that I can't quite get all mushy about it.

The Ki-61 Hien (Swallow), known to all WW 2 fans as the Tony, ought to place in there somewhere. It taught a lot of Allied pilots new values for pucker factor.
 
Aerial anti-tank pilot without equal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel

Rudel had one of the greatest lines ever. When interviewed by Col. Jeff Cooper, Cooper asked about his choice of a personal handgun for protection (Rudel was shot down several times in Russia)

Cooper: Why did you choose the 6.35 mm (.25 Colt caliber) pistol?

Rudel: Because I am not a pessimist.
 
I Ratant said:
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When the Collings Foundation visited Fox Field here with a B-24, B-17 and B-25, a buncha us early risers got to pull the props thru on the B-17 for its flight to Mohave, early in the morning.. The crew chief bitched about our fingerprints on his finely polished props... :)
And when the Shuttle Columbia landed at Edwards after its first space flight, we were there to weigh it. NASA said..."Don't touch it!!"... Yeah, like a life-long aviation nut isn't going to touch the first spaceship to land on this planet! PLUNK! that's MY hand print right there! :)
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That's the 17 I hitched a ride in - the "Nine-0-Nine."
 
BenBurch said:
Actually, I'd like to see their faces if you could attack them with a squadron of armed to the teeth A-10s.
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I suspects they wouldn't have faces all that long...........:D

A Warthog pic: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000U7U35A...e=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=B000U7U35A (go to the Revell Germany one for well armed ).


The fun for me would be doing it with what they would, temporarilly, think was one of their own.


My other option would be a Hornisse from an SF idea (essentially Wehrmacht in space) by Nitto - and Japanese model designers. I have the Hornisse version and prefer it!! (I like the idea of droptroops/fighters VERY heavilly armed) [in it to win it!!).
 
Oh, also liked the multi fuselage planes like the P-38 Lightning.

The more beefy P-61 Black Widow was cool too, not to mention the schizophrenic Twin F-82 :jaw-dropp

Again, can someone post some nice pics!
 
a_unique_person said:
Have to thank Hitler for ensuring the Me262 didn't enter the war earlier.
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Not really. The big problem was the lack of a reliable mass-produced engine—and that wasn't solved until mid-1944, by which time the Luftwaffe as a day fighter force had been all but broken. Hitler's wanting to turn it into a bomber was very much a secondary contribution to the fighter's delay.
 
MG1962 said:
I recall a thread perhaps here or on another forum, we were talking about the best looking planes - Vietnam vet popped up and answered whatever one saved your life at the time.

So I think I will go with that answer.

For sense of power I cant go past the P51 - I recall a small airshow a P51 was doing passes up the runway at 50 feet (illegal now) And your whole body shook from the sound of that piston engine thundering along
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Go to AirVenture at Oshkosh. Not quite sure what the hard deck is during the warbird demos, but it's damned low (you can do 'bout anything with a waiver).
 
For some reason, I have a fondness for the TBM Avenger. No, I don't know why...

Of course, as mentioned, the B-25 deserves more attention.

And, although I love the C-47, don't forget the C-54 (born of the DC-6).
 
Corsair 115 said:
Not really. The big problem was the lack of a reliable mass-produced engine—and that wasn't solved until mid-1944, by which time the Luftwaffe as a day fighter force had been all but broken. Hitler's wanting to turn it into a bomber was very much a secondary contribution to the fighter's delay.
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It was the same with the British Meteor. Development of the Jet Engine wasn't taken as seriously as it should have been. Production and development of existing power plants was seen as more important. If it's importance had been recognised the RAF would have had jet fighters in the sky a lot sooner.
 
steve s said:
Another nice looking plane is the Fiat G55 Centauro. It's the plane that shot down my father's B-17.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Italy---Air/Fiat-G-55-Centauro/1664003/L/

Steve S
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I was just thinking of the MC202 Folgore, on which the Centauro was based. It was to all accounts a superb dogfighter. The Italians could just never build enough of them fast enough to change the ultimate outcome of the war for them.

Italian aircraft of WWII generally get short shrift among all but aircraft buffs. Their SM79 Sparviero was one of the best medium bombers the Axis had at the beginning of the war, and the Germans considered it superior to anything they had as a torpedo bomber. To the extent that they sent German aircrews to train on it in Italy.
 
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