Topic Author's Original Post - May 16, 2011 - 10:49am PT
Best 20 bucks I've spent in a while - Planes of Fame airshow at Chino.
Mitsubishi Zero - a nice little plane that didn't pack much of a punch,
didn't offer its pilot any protection, and wasn't that fast. This is the only flyable example.
When these behemoths got into the party Tojo was toast! Burnt toast!
The plane that Jimmy Doolittle used to tell Tojo "you ain't seen nuthin yet!"
B-25
P-40 Warhawks were a pre-war design that didn't do well against the Zero at first.
The Flying Tigers made them famous and did figure out how to fight the Zero.
Just don't get into a turning fight with them and you'll be fine.
The P-47 Thunderbolt and a Focke-Wolfe 190. The FW 190 was better than the
ME 109 but when the 'Bolt appeared the party was over! Way faster, way more
heavily armed, and way more armored so its pilot could fly another day even
if he was unlucky.
The ultimate purveyor of airborne whoopazz - P-51 Mustang
It brought firepower, maneuverability, speed, and serious range to the party.
Oh, yeah, and drop-dead gorgeous looks, too! (always important)
When Hermann Goering walked out of his office and saw Mustangs over Berlin
he is reputed to have said "The war is over." Pretty much, dude. Your dumbfuk
boss shouldn't have fukked with the Rooskies neither.
P-38 Lightning - used by our two top aces and the recon model in which
Antoine de St Exupery went down in the Med.
Of the P-38, Doolittle said that it was "the sweetest-flying plane in the sky". Who would argue with him?
The P-38 was credited with destroying more Japanese aircraft than any other USAAF fighter.
That other thing? F-15E Strike Eagle. They say it's pretty good.
Slight thread drift - Mig 15 and F-86. A guy who has flown both says the
Mig flies nice, like a Chevy. The F-86 flies like a Caddy and packed more punch.
More thread drift for which I fully expect to be pardoned.
The Strike Eagle 'yankin' and bankin'. Oh, yeah, and puttin' the hammer down!
A little loud? Phukkin' A Ray! Dial it up!
Got a light?
Count 'em. A whole bunch o' whoopazz! The announcer figgered 60,000 horsepower!
Think that sounded sweet? Holy bejeebus!
just read "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors"...a great book about the last major naval engagement of ww2 and the last major naval battle in history
a terribly outnumbered and outgunned american contingent of escort carriers and their destroyers takes on a huge japanese fleet...the narration is enthralling and brought me to tears more than once
Hitlers decision to use ME-262s as bombers instead of fighters when they first came off the production line was one of the biggest mistakes he made in the war. Had the ME-262 been able to go after the B-17 and B-24 bombers, who's to say how things might have turned out. Adolf Galland (luftwaffe ace) was quoted saying that had the ME-262 been used as a fighter just a year prior, it could have turned the air war around in their favor.
Not to say that these planes didn't kick ass, I love the sound of a p-47 roaring by. From the WW2 history I have studied though, it appears that just a few bad decisions by Hitler caused the war to be won by the allies, or at least made it easier to win. Good thing for the rest of the world that Hitler was stubborn about his decisions.
I had a chance to check out and go inside a B-17 and B-24 about a month ago. There was a ww2 vet there who had been a pilot in a B-17 and was part of a crew who had flown 35 missions. He had not been back into a B-17 since the end of the war. While chatting with him he started to feel dizzy and some thought he was a having a stroke. Luckily he ended up being ok, I imagine that being back in a B-17 after 65+ years and remembering the experiences and lost friends just tripped him out too much.
Most people have no idea how the Jap Zero came about.
It was designed by Howard Hughes well before WWII. He tried to sell it to the US govt, but when they refused to buy it, the plans were set aside. I am not sure right now, if he sold the design to the Japs, or if they just took them out of a public library somewhere.
It WAS a hot plane when he designed it. Easy to build out of low tech materials, and quite fast.
Poorly armored, but easy to fly.
Small has advantages too. Makes for tight cornering.
Some of the planes my dad flew in training and in the war. One in four students in his Corpus Christie NAS flight school died during training including two successive roommates. He and his buddy hated seaplanes as they typically anchored out an you had to wait for a ride in - said it took too long from landing-to-martini. Retired after years in DC10s and 747s.
This last was the Navy's experimental version of the B-17 outfitted with radar as part of 'Project Cadillac II' with MIT Lincoln Labs - the original ancestor of all modern AWACS squadrons.
The Japanese had a new monster fighter at the end of the war that only saw a few missions. I believe it was rocket propelled, had only about a 15 minute flight time, but was twice as fast as our fastest planes.
It could have been used to overtake and shoot down almost anything in the sky. No American fighter could have had more than a single shot at it, as it went by. Of course, all that speed meant it wasn't terribly manuverable. You have to slow down to make tight turns.
The Zero didn't pack punch?
It had 20mm cannons.
How much punch do you need?
Hey bookworm, did you miss Woody's thread?
My buddy Bob shot down 3 MIGs with an F-86 in the last 3 months of Korea. Killed plenty of people on the ground too.
Said the trick with MIGs was to climb. They had poor climate control and the bubble would frost up leaving them blind.
He was an afficianado of the P-51. But it had a radiator. One shot could down it.
The P-47 on the other hand was air cooled. It would take a pilot home with a bunch of cylinders shot right off.
The Jug was a worldbeater.
Yeah, those Zero's were really tiny. You can check one out that's hanging from the cieling of the San Diego Air & Space Museum in Balboa Park. That's if'n yer ever driv'n south an find yerself in Dago...
When it was introduced early in World War II, the Zero was the best carrier-based fighter in the world, combining excellent maneuverability and very long range.[1] In early combat operations, the Zero gained a legendary reputation as a "dogfighter", achieving the outstanding kill ratio of 12 to 1,[2] but by 1942 a combination of new tactics and the introduction of better equipment enabled the Allied pilots to engage the Zero on more equal terms.[3] The IJNAS also frequently used the type as a land-based fighter. By 1943, inherent design weaknesses and the increasing lack of more powerful aircraft engines meant that the Zero became less effective against newer enemy fighters that possessed greater firepower, armor, and speed, and approached the Zero's maneuverability. Although the Mitsubishi A6M was outdated by 1944, it was never totally supplanted by the newer Japanese aircraft types. During the final years of the War in the Pacific, the Zero was used in kamikaze operations.[4] In the course of the war, more Zeros were built than any other Japanese aircraft ...
... With its low-wing cantilever monoplane layout, retractable, wide-set landing gear and enclosed cockpit, the Zero was was one of the most modern aircraft in the world at the time of its introduction. It had a fairly high-lift, low-speed wing with a very low wing loading. This, combined with its light weight, resulted it a very low stalling speed of well below 60 kn (110 km/h; 69 mph). This was the main reason for its phenomenal maneuverability, allowing it to out-turn any Allied fighter of the time....
... The Zero quickly gained a fearsome reputation. Thanks to a combination of excellent maneuverability and firepower, it easily disposed of the motley collection of Allied aircraft sent against it in the Pacific in 1941. It proved a difficult opponent even for the Supermarine Spitfire. Although not as fast as the British fighter, the Mitsubishi fighter could out-turn the Spitfire with ease, could sustain a climb at a very steep angle, and could stay in the air for three times as long.[12]
The Japanese had by FAR the best trained pilots in the world at the beginning of WWII. They had the very best top candidates, and spent several years training them. A Jap pilot would kill dozens of American or British planes in the beginning. But their training was too extensive, and took too long. they couldn't keep up with attrition. American/British/allied pilots might not be as good, but there were a LOT of them.
Regarding Howard Hughes design of the Zero, Wiki only mentions the original design, the H-1 Racer, built about 1935 that "influenced" the zero's design. I have read other books that give him much more credit for the Zero ...
The H-1 Racer featured a number of design "innovations": it had retractable landing gear (as Boeing Monomail had five years before) and all rivets and joints set flush into the body of the aircraft to reduce drag. The H-1 Racer is thought to have influenced the design of a number of World War II fighters such as the Mitsubishi Zero,
they do list a story I never heard about him, that after his famous crash of his experimental fighter in Beverly Hills, he got annoyed and redesigned his hospital bed, and made his engineering staff run up a custom model for him.
However, Hughes was proud that his mind was still working. As he lay in his hospital bed, he decided that he did not like the design of the bed. He called in plant engineers to design a "tailor-made" bed, equipped with hot and cold running water, built in six sections, and operated by 30 electric motors, with push-button adjustments.
A bed with hot and cold running water ... alll-riiight ...
I have read up on this Zero, and there is controversy as to whether or not Hughes actually designed it. Some say so, some not. Some say his H-1 was bought as scrap from the junkyard by the Japanese, others say the plans were simply aquired from the Library of Congress or something where he had made the plane available for public records in a fit of pique for the US Gov't not buying it....
The late Barry Goldwater, a pilot and recipient of the Howard Hughes silver medallion award in 1985 told the attendees "well... our government was interested in the age H-1 Racer, but oooh the Japs were”. It is common knowledge in aviation history that the Japanese copied the H-1 Racer design to make their Zero fighter aircraft.
The Japanese had by FAR the best trained pilots in the world at the beginning of WWII. They had the very best top candidates, and spent several years training them. A Jap pilot would kill dozens of American or British planes in the beginning. But their training was too extensive, and took too long. they couldn't keep up with attrition. American/British/allied pilots might not be as good, but there were a LOT of them.
The 'japs' also (and still do have) had a different culture. It would be lame to compare the two. The japs, like the Nasties, were whipped up into a nationalistic fervor. They had no problem enduring insane missions at insane odds.
The only reason we did the same is because we were attacked and fighting for our lives. They were fighting for motherland glory and pride. We just wanted it over.
And we 'ended it'. Sorry, dudes. Mess with the best, die like the rest.
You have said nothing to the issue you quoted me on. They had the very best pilots, and they were better trained. The things I read indicated they were insane about only taking the very best, and spending years making them better. Weird things, like climbing to the top of a flag pole and hanging on with one hand for long times, looking at images of fighter aircraft and bombers across a room, the size of a fly, and correctly identifing them. Their pilots made ours look like amateurs for the first couple years.
They just couldn't turn them out fast enough in the end ...
And you certainly CAN compare the two. Look at the kill ratios. THOSE are/were well known.
The japs had good pilots because they had already been at war for near 2 years before Hitler invaded Poland.
They were veterans.
That sort of changed in June '42.
We killed hundreds of their best pilots in one day at Midway.
And just so that this thread is not entirely OT;
back in the '60s my mom and her friend Bill Ullman hired a helicopter and buzzed Hughes' private apartment at the Landmark. He was pissed!
Bill's dad was James Ramsey Ullman.
Weird things, like climbing to the top of a flag pole and hanging on with one hand for long times, looking at images of fighter aircraft and bombers across a room, the size of a fly, and correctly identifing them. **Their pilots made ours look like amateurs for the first couple years.
They just couldn't turn them out fast enough in the end ...**
Yeah, all that Samurai/hardcore bullshit really helped them out. The bottom line is, yes, they were cruel badasses, but we were even more willing to win at all costs. We had red-necks flying planes in insane glory.
They had the very best top candidates, and spent several years training them. A Jap pilot would kill dozens of American or British planes in the beginning.
That jibes with my understanding from my father's stories around the high death rate in our flight training programs - they were high volume affairs assembled with great speed and geared around keeping the funnel full, really pushing pilots out the other end as quickly as possible. My dad and his buddy were radio guys tapped for early British radar training and then picked up for flight training. Not bad choices as they both turned out to be exceedingly comfortable flying and both became test pilots.
In my opinion, it wasn't our superior skill that defeated the Japs and the Nazis. Because we were NOT better at war then them. Not individually. The Blitzkrieg was INCREDIBLE to the generals at the time, and the Japs were incredible soldiers.
It was our factories. They couldn't bomb our factories, and we were free to just out produce them.
Germany and Japan were TINY places. Every time they conquered a new piece of land, they would both take over the local mines and factories and begin using them to produce war materials. They spent as much effort trying to keep the foreign railroads running as building the tanks and such, because they NEEDED the materials, in the case of the Japanese, and the FACTORIES in the case of the Germans. This meant they had to put administrators and engineers all over the place in captured factories in hostile nations and then use slave labor to run those camps and factories. And of course, then they had to have trusted guards and spend needed troop resources to watch over the work camps, hold the cities the factories were in, and all that.
In America, we just would open up a new mine, a new factory, whatever and ship the production to England in massive convoys. Even with the Germans having 10 times the number of submarines of anybody else, they couldn't stop our manufacturing material 24 hours a day, way the hell over here.
The slave labor stuff was about the worst problem they ever brought on themselves. It was MISERABLE, and I don't mean the slaves, although they were certainly miserable. What was MISERABLE from the Germans and Japs point of view was the slave couldn't be counted on. They would sabotage production, work as slow as possible and f*#k stuff up bad in general...
I had a friend, whose Dad was a prisoner of War in the Netherlands, I think. They had really messed him up, with a rifle butt to his skull. He occasionally told some stories, the like I have never heard or read about.
Seems he was on a forced labor team that designed German Submarines and built them for the Germans. So they thought about what they could do to destroy the usefulness of the subs without being caught. They came up with an answer I never have heard of in the history books.
He said they undersized the rivets in the hulls by a TINY amount. Just enough that a German sub at depth would pop rivets all over the ship. If a depth charge got close, the undersized rivets would just tear away in long rips. They couldn't hold the water out under combat stress. Under ordinary testing, everything seemed just FINE.
And that was one of the reasons that the Germans lost about half their sub fleet EACH YEAR. He said they never figured out what the engineers had done, either.
Talk about your unsung heroes of the war...
And at every factory/mine and farm manned by captured labor, they were doing the same things. Destroying more V-1 and V-2's on the launching pad than the British ever shot down ... screwing with the diesel fuel to make injectors gum up. All kinds of Hogan's Heroes bullshit from within the factories.
THAT really killed the troops on the fronts as much as the bullets and cannon fire. Their nations were just too tiny. No natural resources for the Japanese at all, really. Few mines, few farms, few ranches, few forests and little of all the things we produce in America in HUGE quantities, and from WITHIN our own protected borders.
The Japanese had to get everything from the conquered lands, then ship the stuff by ship and rail back home to fuel the material needs of their war machines.
They both shipped entire factories, right down to the electric light fixtures and the bulbs in the ceilings. And they just couldn't protect or guarantee those supply lines once they got the factories going.
Much has been written about the experiences of the Allies. For some perspective from the other side of the Pacific air war check out Samurai!, a book about Saburo Sakai's experience as Japan's fourth leading ace.
Dirt Claud's comments about Hitler's decision to make the ME 262 a bomber are spot on.
Comments about the Japanese having better pilot candidates are not. Potential pilots
were exhaustively vetted physically, mentally, and psychologically. As Ron
noted the Japs' early successes were due to their extensive combat experience and
our initial inability to realize a P-40 or an F-4 Wildcat could
not turn with the Zero. When Chenault's boys figured that out they did just
fine against the Zero with the inferior Warhawk. Citizen soldiers are always
going to figure out a way to 'get the job done.'
There also seemed to be a comment alluding to the Japs' willingness to
sacrifice all. I suggest reading up on the US torpedo bombers at the
Battle of Midway. They knew they were going to die but they kept coming.
I think one or two survived.
Further comments about more extensive flight training are completely off-base (sic).
The washout rate was high because the standards were so high. Our guys had
many more hours under their belts before they saw combat than their counterparts.
Sure, we had a better supply but we didn't cut any corners in giving them the
best training conceivable. If you weren't considered fighter jock stock then
you went to bombers. The difference was often very negligible.
In June '42 a Zero crash-landed in the Aleutians and we were able to get it
flyable and wrung it out. When the fruits of that endeavor were disseminated
even a low-timer knew what to do against the Zero. By Feb '43 the first of
the Navy's new F6F Hellcats joined the fleet and it was time for the fat lady
to sing "Sayonara Zero-san!" The Hellcat "outclassed the Zero almost completely."
If you want to read about how exhaustive our flight training was I strongly recommend:
The Wild Blue : The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944–45, by Stephen Ambrose
It is mostly the story of George McGovern's flying career but as with any
Stephen Ambrose book it is a gem.
If you want to read about the making of a fighter pilot then the go-to read is: Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds
I know, fighter pilots are born, not made.
edit:
An old stud walked up to me at the air show and asked me if I wanted to buy
his book. I told him it would be an honor. He was a Jug jock. It was hard
to talk with that damn F-15 overhead! HaHaHa! Turns out his book is a novel
but it is clearly totally autobiographical even down to the skirt-chasing scenes!
It is feckin' great! It is also extremely thorough in describing his flight training.
I'm halfway through but I guess I'm not gonna complete the mission tonight. Damn.
Bolts of Thunder by James Vincent Powers
The back cover says another of his books was made into a movie in Germany!
"The American version was sold to the National Geographic Channel,
and was first aired Dec 17, 2008" Gotta check that out!
"Mr Powers served as a fighter pilot in WWII, with 47 combat missions in Europe.
He is also an engineer, and helped design the F-111 fighter plane.
He has two children and one grandson, and lives an active life in
California playing golf, bowling, tap dancing, and writing."
It takes a stud to tap dance and he looked pretty damn nimble still.
I recommend Victor Davis Hanson's account in Carnage And Culture.
I believe at one point 15 torpedo bombers sacrificed themselves drawing the fighter cover down so that the dive bombers could succeed.
Of the 15 two man crews only Ensign George Gay survived, bobbing in the water as the jap carriers slid by.
WOW. . . this is a cool thread. My dad was a USAF Pilot and a member of The Ancient and Sacred Order of Quiet Birdmen. I was raised with all this stuff. Makes me think of the Captain! (not the rock, my dad.)
Ha! The Bolts of Thunder I started reading last night has the autobiographical
hero taking his aerobatic training in a AT-6 Texan, as shown above. As he
rolled inverted (I know, redundant) the spare change in his pockets goes clanking
all over the canopy. When he went back to straight and level it then slid through
the floorboards. His instructor then said, "Unstrap your harness. I have the
airplane." He then rolled it and started juking and the coins fell back onto
the canopy upon which the protagonist was now kneeling. He greedily collected
as much as he could and then zipped his pocket shut and the instructor rolled back to level.
HaHaHa! Spare change back then was worth doing crazy shite for, eh?
edit:
The Canuckians called their AT-6's the "Harvard". I guess 'Texan' wasn't posh enough.
In case you've been lying awake at night wondering what the underside of a 'Texan' looks like:
There is a saying in flying, "Keep the shiny side up!" That doesn't apply to these beauties!
You're gonna see the shiny side all the time!
The National Air Races are the first week in September here in Reno. If you love aviation I highly reccomend you give it a day or two. You can access the pits where you see a P51 racing, and all the usual military planes from past and present.
It a really fun day of racing and planes if you enjoy that type of thing.
I love this pic, the early March Field with the future Moreno Valley being nothing but farm fields. Dig the twin-engine bi-planes. March was established 1918, most of it was built out around 1929-30 there's a very rich history there.
Half a Wing, Three Engines and a Prayer: by Brian O'Neill
Really great book about the 8th air force air war over Europe, mostly B-17, but some B-24 stuff as well.
There is a really good free documentary on Netflix too called "Memphis Belle".
I thought it was the movie that was a made in the 90s at first, but it's actually a two part documentary about the real Memphis Belle and the Air War with original war footage.
Edit:
I gotta stop by and see all the planes at march AFB. Always drive by on my way to Big Bear and Josh,but haven't had a chance to stop there.
They have a huge air show too.
You can buy MIG's relatively cheap, it's just the fuel consumption that sets you back a bit!
Yeah, plus the FAA makes you take the ejection seat out to promote personal responsibility!
According to the FAA there are 43 privately owned MIG 15s in the U.S.
I couldn't believe those goons weren't even waving!
Christmas is coming early to some happy camper!
(it is a Mig-21 shot on I-5 near Weed,CA)
I wish I'd taken the time to get the story on this Lockheed Lodestar.
Normally used for hauling brass this one was set up to do some business! (apparently in the Aleutians, no less)
I suspect Fuddy Duddy and Pacific Princess are the only true-to-the-period repros.
The others are pretty obviously air-brushed which I don't think was done BITD.
A correction to an earlier statement here: the FAA does NOT require deactivation of an ejection seat, but it's a pricey annual inspection. Look for ads stating "Hot" seat in surplus military jets. I wouldn't want to fly a MiG 21 without one. The pilot couldn't get out at all.
All that stands between most pilots and ownership of a MiG is the fuel cost at ~6.00 / gallon for 700 gallons in a MiG 21. There are several hundred Czech built L-39 Albatross fighter/trainers flying here in the U.S., and they are very popular. Flight training in one costs $1,500/hour, and 10 hours are required for qualification/logbook endorsement. An FAA checkride finishes the deal with a fighter jet.
Let us know!