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ORIGINAL: MineSweeper

What was the best fighter in World War II ?....there is no easy answer. It really depended on the mission at hand.

Long Range Escort - P-51
Ground Attack - P-47
Bomber Interceptor - ME-262
Carrier Fighter - F4U
High Altitude Interceptor - FW-190D

I would nominate the P-38L (if I had to choose just one)....it was a fantastic multi-tasker.[;)]

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Good suggestion IMO. But what about air superiority fighter...what about when you absolutely, positively had to just kill everything in the sky?

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ORIGINAL: mdiehl

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Good suggestion IMO. But what about air superiority fighter...what about when you absolutely, positively had to just kill everything in the sky?

The clear winner is the Vought F4U 'Corsair.'

For "bomber busting" I'd take an FW-190 or a Bell P63 Kingcobra.

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ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

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ORIGINAL: BrucePowers
The engines in the ME262 were only good for 25 to 50 hours of operation before a tear down and complete rebuild were required. This means each aircraft would have had to have at least 4 engines to keep it in the air. The personnel and equipment costs would have been huge.

Actually the design of the engines was a councious desicion. By 43-44, Germany was sorely lacking strategic minerals (tungsten, zinck, etc) and therefore the desicion was made to build the engines of weaker materials (steel instead of tungsten etc). That way it was possible to build lots more of them and then just switch the entire engine when it had reached the end of its operational life. So, instead of having fewer engines with lifespans of thousands of hours, they had alot of engines with short lifespan.

I dont think that was a poor design desicion.

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ORIGINAL: mdiehl

Hard to know. The P63 did have a multistage turbosupercharger, a laminar flow wing, a max level flight airspeed of around 400 mph, and a service ceiling of 43K feet. I'm guessing that with the laminar wing and that sort of airspeed and service ceiling it's upper altitude performance must have been decent. Still, I doubt that it was as good a dogfighter as the F4U, FW190, or P-51.

I like it as a bomber buster primarily because of it's 37mm.

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what I read said that it still had problems at altitude. I'd like to read up more on it though before I start claiming for a fact that it's true.

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ORIGINAL: mdiehl
...What the hornisse needed was an effective guided a2a missile.

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ORIGINAL: niceguy2005

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ORIGINAL: mdiehl
...What the hornisse needed was an effective guided a2a missile.

Haha! Exactly what I was thinking as I wrote the post above. What better interceptor than a missile. Fast, high rate of climb and lots of firepower. Range being the only problem.

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ORIGINAL: Alfred

IMHO, you are all overlooking the reasonable observation of Big B, in his initial post of 24 November, of the Macchi and Fiat planes which were clearly superior to any Bf 109 models of 1943.  The Re 2005 also falls into this period.  From 1943 onwards, the Bf 109 is really living on past glory.

Alfred

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ORIGINAL: Gen.Hoepner

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ORIGINAL: Alfred

IMHO, you are all overlooking the reasonable observation of Big B, in his initial post of 24 November, of the Macchi and Fiat planes which were clearly superior to any Bf 109 models of 1943.  The Re 2005 also falls into this period.  From 1943 onwards, the Bf 109 is really living on past glory.

Alfred

Yes, those planes of ours were really good ones! Probably not the Macchi 202, which lacked a bit too much of firepower, but the 05 serie was really a great one! Better than any 109 around (think the G-6/14 model was already out at that time)

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ORIGINAL: Alfred

IMHO, you are all overlooking the reasonable observation of Big B, in his initial post of 24 November, of the Macchi and Fiat planes which were clearly superior to any Bf 109 models of 1943.  The Re 2005 also falls into this period.  From 1943 onwards, the Bf 109 is really living on past glory.

Alfred

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ORIGINAL: Alfred

IMHO, you are all overlooking the reasonable observation of Big B, in his initial post of 24 November, of the Macchi and Fiat planes which were clearly superior to any Bf 109 models of 1943.  The Re 2005 also falls into this period.  From 1943 onwards, the Bf 109 is really living on past glory.

Alfred

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ORIGINAL: Sonny II

I haven't read the whole thread so this may already have been mentioned.

IMHO the best fighter of WW II was Joe Louis.

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ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

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ORIGINAL: Alfred

IMHO, you are all overlooking the reasonable observation of Big B, in his initial post of 24 November, of the Macchi and Fiat planes which were clearly superior to any Bf 109 models of 1943.  The Re 2005 also falls into this period.  From 1943 onwards, the Bf 109 is really living on past glory.

Alfred

What are you talking about? The 109 K10 was one of the best high altitude interceptors of the war.

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ORIGINAL: crsutton
It was indeed one of the best and one of my favorites. However, the short range and high pilot skill required to master the 109 made it obsolete in terms of a modern total war.

Best fighter means so many things and there are so many criteria quoted from the posters here. However, as I said before, any plane that did not have moderate to long range must be disqualifed. The 109 and many other fine planes listed here did not have the capability to project air power into enemy territory. You can't win a war without this ability. It is like having a football team that only plays defence. Sooner of later, you will get scored on and lose the game.

Another point that bears mentioning in this thread is that the human factor must be a consideration when picking the "best fighter". In a total war sitation such as WWII, equipment that favored the "average" user is always superior. The reason being that a long grinding war tends to produce much more average manpower talent than skilled. Death and attrition tends to use men up, leaving a greener pool of replacements. The 109 for all of it's excellence was regarded as a tough plane to master and a deadly tool in the hands of an expert pilot. However, the 190 was generally considered a much more suitable plane because it was easier to fly and thus more forgiving to the average pilot. And for every good pilot, there had to be at least ten times that number of average or below average pilots.

A "hot" plane is not necessarily the best plane. My two cents anyway.[;)]

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ORIGINAL: niceguy2005

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ORIGINAL: Kadrin

Actually, the P40 was on par with every contemporary Spitfire and 109 model, and its logical to assume that if the P40 had been continually upgraded like the Spitfires and 109's through 43 and into 44 and 45, that it would have stayed on par.

Actually the P40 while a solid AC suffered from an inferior (compared to mid and late war planes) airframe design. The aerodynamics of the frame hampered the performance. You could keep upgrading the engine but it brought seriously diminishing returns. To a lesser extent the 109 had the same problems. Aerodynamics was not a well understood science until after the war started. Many of the best aerodynamsists of the time were German.

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ORIGINAL: Big B

The P-40 WASN'T "The Best Fighter" of WWII, but it's certainly the most underrated fighter of WWII.

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Furthermore, the P-40 airframe WAS continually developed - and performance continually improved also. The last model - the P-40Q of 1944, with a bubble canopy, clipped wings, and a high altitude two-speed supercharger had a top speed of over 420mph at altitude.

It's not that the P-40 couldn't be continually developed and improved like the Spit' and Bf109, it's just that the USA had so many other fighters with even higher potential - they didn't bother to invest in continually developing the P-40...because the USAF didn't have to.

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So I give the P-40 the award for the most underrated fighter of WWII, considering it's numbers, it's valuable service, and it's place in WWII history.

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ORIGINAL: Dixie

It's a 'horses for courses' arguement for which is the best fighter. The two most obvious examples IMO are the Spitfire and P-38.

The Spitfire was a fantastic fighter in the Northern European theatre. However, they failed to have the same impact on events in the Pacific when they entered service with the RAAF over Darwin.
The P-38 was the opposite. A fantastic performance in the Pacific that was never really matched by their actions in Europe.

Neither were bad aircraft, in fact far from it, but outside of their 'primary' environment they didn't have the same impact.

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ORIGINAL: niceguy2005

It seems to me that range was a key problem for the Spit in the Pacific. Athough, I seem to recall reading that range aside the RAAF still struggled at Darwin vs the Zero. I do recall an article saying that the Spit was suffering from "frailty" issues. They had problems with battle damage and keeping enough flying. That could be a mechanical or logistics problem though.

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I wouldn't argue that. As I said, a solid AC. It performed adequately in probably more theaters of operation and was employed to do more jobs than any other fighter of the time. To me the phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" fits the P-40 admirably.

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ORIGINAL: mdiehl
It was also such a highly standardized design that massively producing it for lend lease, and for confronting the second tier axis air forces of Japan and Italy made sense right through the end of the war.

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ORIGINAL: Big B

However, below it's best performance ceiling (i.e. before the engine poops out with altitude), it was able to successfully take on any of it's contemporaries - and with the exception of super-light fighters like Zero and Oscar, it could out-turn most anything. Roll rate at any speed was good, at high speed it was exceptional, dive speed was excellent, and though climb was mediocre generally - zoom climb was very good, and below 10,000' it was actually faster than most of it's higher-flying contemporaries. Add all that to it's ruggedness and firepower, and it was a formidable opponent when used properly.