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mdiehl -> RE: Best fighter in WW2??? (11/28/2007 12:39:38 AM)
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OEh, that's pretty sweeping statement. I'm glad you speak for the world at large.
In this instance I'm confident that I'm doing a really good job representing the vast majority of the world. The claim that the 229 was a "great" or even "very good" airplane warrants filing with the claims of Bigfoot researchers, ET-alien-abductees, and flat earthers.
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I think it was a pretty good AC, under the circumstances.
Exactly. Under the circumstances. You can't claim its battle performance is a good "objective" standard because the circumstances in which it operated were so considerably different from other early war a.c. like the ME-109, Spit, Hurricrate, F4F, 7c ad nauseam. The Soviet Air Force of 1939 was a joke, technologically speaking. The 229 looks "good" because agains outdated Polikarpovs and the like it was, by comparison, "good." But against real first class a.c. flown by adequately trained pilots, the 229/F2A was a solid hunk o junk.
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The Finns obviously thought it was a pretty good AC also, and fought with it using correct tactics, within its limitations, and to great success.
Not exactly "objectively" the best if you have to qualify it so thoroughly.
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took care of all the shoddy US workmanship
The workmanship was characteristic of Brewster Aircraft Company, not of the US. That is why Brewster's operations were, unique among American a.c. manufacturers, nationalized and then handed over (IIRC) to GM management.
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They didn't have the luxury of whining (after getting their heinies kicked trying to dogfight with the Zero) about it being totally useless as a combat aircraft, and had to fly what they had.
Had VMF-223 at Midway been replaced by experienced Finnish volunteers, they too would have been wiped out to the last man during the battle of Midway.
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They must not have heard about this "multidimensional graph" mumbo jumbo.
Why would they? They're not the tomfools making the claim that "objectively speaking, the Brewster 229 was the best aircraft of the war!" I'm sure that if they could have made a choice, they'd have picked ME-109s, any of a number of later model Yaks, LaGGs, Republics, North Americans, Lockheeds, Vickers-Supermarines, Focke-Wulf's etc etc. Hell, even a decent mid-war Macci-Castori would probably get the nod over the 229.
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Does that mean they gotta give all those kills back?
I dunno? Is killing a Polikarpov I-15/3 "in the air" more worthy of note than ground-strafing a railroad car? IMO, probably not.
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I'd suspect the Russians thought so too...the ones flying the Lend Lease US fighters, Spitfires(?), Hurricanes, and ME-109s etc. shot down by it.
That'd be a real long list of, possibly, two or three Soviet pilots?
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Of course, some of the top Soviet aces flew P-39's by choice and begged us for more of them. Go figure.
Yep. Given the choice between a Brewster 229 and a P-39Q, the P-39Q would be the clear favorite for any sane pilot.
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They probably hadn't heard about multidimensional graphs either.
Probably not. All they'd need to do is spend a half hour in the cockpit of each and they'd know the P-39 (or almost anything else) was vastly superior to the Brewster 229. They'd have a mental template that would be a good substitute for such a graph. Of course, was one to claim to "objectively" evaluate the relative merits of the Brewster 229 and, well, pretty much anything else, one would have to look at such a graph, since most of us here couldn't get at a Brewster and all these other a.c. in order to fly them, even if all of us *could* fly and then cast ballots or something later on.
Fortunately, neither Russians nor anyone else (well, MOST anyone), is claiming that by any "objective" standard the Brewster 229 makes any reasonable list of "best" fighters of WW2. Most everyone with any knowledge of the subject can dismiss such absurd claims on receipt.
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