wdolson
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Dili
The advantage of P-51 over German fighters was performance at altitude. Because American bombing was at 20000kft and over. That is the major reason how war was won in the air.
Fw 190 was crap except at low level with such tiny wings, and Bf 109 was also subpar being already overweight for the tiny body, version F considered the most manageable. Speed helps but not that much when aircraft with weight increases for more power do not give good support at altitude where the air is thinner.
For Germans Ta 152 arrived too late. In crucial period of late 1943-44 they had nothing as good as Mustang or Spits, even if Spits had not enough range. They considered the Fiat G.55 the better Axis fighter by 1943 with possibility of taking bigger engines but changing it to mass production and industrial concerns and prestige meant they might as well develop a new fighter: Ta 152.
There were several factors that won the air war in Europe. The Bf-109 had the altitude performance to go head to head with the higher altitude fight, but it was lightly armed which didn't make it a great bomber killer. The FW-190 had the firepower, bit poor high altitude performance. The Daimler engines were the best high altitude engines the Germans had, but they refused to allocate any to Focke Wulf until very late in the war. They were able to do some testing with the engine mated to the FW-190 airframe, but it never saw combat.
The Germans were also hampered with 87 and 92 octane fuel while most Allied fuel was at least 100 octane.
Ultimately what won the war was the training programs used by the Allies. Both the British and Americans established training and pilot rotation programs that kept up a steady flow of trained pilots and by rotating veterans back to training commands, the vets were able to drill the green pilots in real world tactics they had actually experienced. It also meant front line pilots didn't get as worn out as Axis pilots did.
No Axis country ever established a training program that was able to produce green pilots anywhere near to par with green Allied pilots. They also tended to keep veteran pilots on the front line until they were either killed, captured, or too badly hurt to fly anymore. In late 1943 US fighter pilots noted the quality of Germans they were facing over Germany was in decline and it fell off a cliff in early 1944. The Allies were able to ramp up attrition to a point where the Germans had to fill out units with greener and greener pilots.
By late 1944 most German bomber units were converted to fighters where they were little better than the green pilots coming out of flight school. A bomber pilot has completely different skill sets from a fighter pilot and their instincts in the air that work for a bomber got a lot of them killed in a fighter. The US tried a program in the 8th AF with some B-17 pilots who reached a point where they couldn't bring themselves to command a crew anymore. Most had been through a very rough mission where men in their crew were killed or badly injured.
The USAAF started transferring these pilots to fighter units. In Zempke's book he talked about some of these bomber pilots that were assigned to the 56 FG. He said they were good technical pilots, as good as the other combat veterans, but in combat they tended to become prey rather than predator. Few of them lasted more than a few missions.
quote:
ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
Fighters did have a button to inject something into the engine that gave them a sudden boost in power, but it was very hard on the engine and very short-lived in boost. I don't recall what it was that they injected into the engine.
Water boost was common, though other things were used too.
quote:
ORIGINAL: slpatgun
Nitros oxide the same thing drag racers use. This plus turbocharger in the P-38 + P-47 and in the P-51 supercharges helped bring out the best in these fighters. Avgas sent to the Pacific was refined in the US at a higher octain , in the ETO the avgas octain was refined to a lower level. That is one of reasons the P-38 was not as successful in the ETO as the Allison engines needed the higher octain fuel .
From what I've read the fuel requirements for the Allison was the same as the Merlin. The Allison and Merlin were very similar engines and their low altitude performance was similar. What set the Merlin apart was the lightweight integrated supercharger that gave it much better high altitude performance at about the same weight. I have wondered what the P-39 would have been like with the Merlin.
What troubled the P-38 in Europe was the superchargers tended to freeze up at altitude, especially in combat settings. When Zempke transferred to a P-38 unit he ran into that in one of his first missions. The unit converted to P-51s shortly afterwards and he was taken prisoner when a war weary P-51 broke up on him when he hit some rough air. The plane broke in half at the cockpit and the entire pilot's seat broke free.
Apparently the superchargers on the P-38 could handle dry and hot, wet and hot, as well as cold and dry, but the oil tended to become thick and gel when in cold, wet air. It took Lockheed a while to figure out and fix the problem, but the P-38 had been retired from Northern Europe by the time it was.
Bill
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