BEST FIGHTER EUROPEAN THEATER
Let’s go through the seven most numerous WW II European theater of operations (ETO) fighters and see how they compare as we work up to number one. I have ranked them in increasing order of the importance of their contributions (from 7 to 1).
7 LOCKHEED P-38 LIGHTNING
Lockheed’s twin-engine Lightning had the potential to be the number-one fighter. It first flew on January 27, 1939—early enough to have been deployed before Pearl Harbor. It had more horsepower than any previous fighter, and its tricycle landing gear greatly simplified pilot training. Its five centerline guns, unhampered by converging wing-gun aiming problems, made gunnery much less difficult for its pilots. Its turbo-supercharged engines gave it a great altitude advantage over enemy aircraft. It had many combat assets, and it was the first twin-engine fighter ever put into service by the USAAC. It was the first fighter designed for top-priority mass-production by Lockheed when it was already embroiled in design and manufacturing problems with other military aircraft, and it had a very large backlog of unfilled contracts. The P-38’s engines and turbo superchargers had not completed their military acceptance programs by the time it was put into service. The massive P-38 program requirements dictated that Lockheed expand its manpower and manufacturing space in Los Angeles—a city already so overloaded with top-priority military programs that the P-38’s production rate suffered. It was larger and required two engines, so it took longer to produce and required more maintenance-support hours than single-engine fighters. The number of Lightnings deployed was therefore 20 percent fewer than the P-51 and 56 percent fewer than the P-47.
The P-38 suffered many “growing pains” when it was first deployed to Europe, and its range—at that time—wasn’t sufficient for the needed bomberescort missions. Unfortunately, it was also the first fighter to encounter the unexpected and destructive compressibility regime in dives; this phenomenon caused the loss of several prototypes and early squadron aircraft; and it slowed its progress in the field. The P-47 and P-51 soon replaced them. The Lightning did, however, show its magnificent combat abilities in the African and Pacific theaters in air-defense, fighterbomber and photo recon missions.
Pilots who flew the Lightning in combat quickly became accustomed to its twin engines’ excessive thrust, and they appreciated its single-engine safety potential. When the P-38 was equipped with hydraulic-boost ailerons, it demonstrated a much greater combat advantage over enemy fighters; and when it at last had dive-recovery flaps installed, pilots no longer feared over-diving the P-38 into compressibility.
Although Maj. Richard Bong (40 kills) and many other P-38 pilots considered the Lightning a most useful combat tool in all theaters, it had too many problems and limitations to earn it a place at the top of the list.
6 MESSERSCHMITT BF 109
Between July 1937 and 1939, in the
Spanish war against Russian fighters, 29 Messerschmitt Bf l09Bs were blooded by two combat squadrons in JDG Group J/88; thus, it saw duty before WW II. More were produced—and without interruption—than of any other fighter; it was manufactured right up to the end of the war and was a most promising fighter, but 11,000 of the 33,000 built were destroyed during takeoff and landing accidents— one third of its combat potential! I was amazed when my friend and 176-kills ace the late Gen. Johannes Steinhoff told me this. It seems incredible that the primary cause of this outrageous statistic—a splayed-out wheel landing gear known to have incorrect geometry—was not rectified immediately by the powers that be. Chief aerodynamicist for the Messerschmitt Me 163 rocket fighter, Josef Hubert, who came to Grumman in 1946, told me that Willi Messerschmitt had adamantly refused to compromise the Bf 109’s performance by adding the drag-producing wing-surface bumps and fairings that would have been necessary to accommodate the wheels with the proper geometry. This would have reduced its accident rate to within expected military-fighter ranges and made it a world standard!
Steinhoff also related the story of ferrying 200 Bf
109s from Germany to France just before D-day in
June 1944. Because of poor weather, a lack of training and operational problems, only 23 made it to their destination—177 aircraft lost out of 200 sent!
As a fighter-bomber, the Bf 109F-l/B was a borderline failure. It could barely carry enough external stores to justify the risk. The best it could do was to sling a single 500-pound bomb on a centerline rack. There’s a good reason why you seldom see a picture of a 109 carrying bombs: it was an inferior fighter-bomber.
Throughout the war, the Bf 109 made hundreds of high-scoring aces, including top scorer Erich Hartmann (352 kills). It was considered to be an outstanding defensive and offensive fighter, but with a mediocre fighter-bomber capability and a high accident rate designed into it, it could never be rated as the best.
5 RUSSIAN YAK-1 AND YAK-9
In 1938, 32-year-old Alexander Yakovlev won the contract to build a line of very simple, straightforward Yak fighters that would provide more than 30,000 fighter aircraft for the USSR air forces during the war.
The Yak-1 started with wooden wings and steel-tube and fabric fuselage and tail surfaces. After being moved east from Moscow to Kamensk/Uralsk, Yakovlev’s first aircraft rolled off the lines three weeks after the arrival of the jigs and tools. This was an amazing feat! The Yak-l was powered by one 1,100hp M-l05Pa engine that took it to 311mph at sea level and 363mph at 16,000 feet. Its range, however, was limited by a fuel capacity of only 107 gallons. The Russians quickly learned their lesson, and the Yak series was continually redesigned and improved.
As its designations moved forward—and backward, (the USSR had a strange model-numbering system)—it became faster and more lethal and carried heavier bomb loads. The Yak-9M’s primary role was to support the ground forces and keep the air clear of Luftwaffe fighters and bombers. It also escorted Il-2 and Pe-2 bombers on runs over Luftwaffe airfields. It could easily out-climb the Messerschmitt 109, and later models had enough range to escort Allied B-17 shuttle bombers from Britain over Russia to Italy.
There is no question that the Yak-1, -3, -7 and -9 series of continuous fighter development contributed greatly to the Soviets’ winning their part of WW II. It was a run-of-the-mill aircraft that was designed to use the materials and labor available. All Yakovlev fighter models had many attributes in common: they could be mass-produced and continually developed to stay ahead of the enemy; and excellent stability and controllability at high angles of attack were combined with extremely pleasant handling capabilities.
The 30,000 Yak fighters produced and made available for combat were easy to maintain under conditions that would have grounded their more refined Allied contemporaries. If we had concrete combat-mission data—aircraft shot down, bomb load carried for ground support and bomber support, etc.—this aircraft would probably be a very strong contender for the top spot.
4 NORTH AMERICAN P-51 MUSTANG
The 15,686 P-51s that served in all WW II theaters have been lauded by many military historians as the greatest WW II fighters. The P-51 served the U.S. and Great Britain well, considering how quickly it was put into production and the length of time it was in service.
The Mustang’s development and Britain’s fortuitous decision to combine the Rolls-Royce Merlin with the early P-51 design it had purchased are well-known tales to which I have nothing to add. I can, however, make a few observations about the aircraft.
I evaluated the B, D and H Mustangs, and all three had great cockpit layouts and good visibility and were a delight to fly, but they also had two rather outstanding vices: poor lateral stall characteristics gave them a strong tendency to enter snap rolls and accidental spins when in a landing-condition final turn and during combat gunnery runs in the clean condition. If you pulled hard at the wrong time, it was all too willing to snap over the top of the turn into a spin. Even worse was its vulnerability to being damaged when shot at from the rear. The engine-cooling radiator was in the belly of the aft fuselage and presented an easy target; this could have been fatal to the engine’s life. (Note that the P-47, the Hellcat and all the other radial-engine-equipped aircraft didn’t suffer from this engine-stopping vulnerability; their liquid oil coolants were safely behind their engines.) This drawback caused many unlucky P-51 and P-38 pilots to have to bail out over enemy territory and spend the rest of the war in inhospitable German stalags.
The 15,686 Mustangs built consistently filled all four fighter roles on missions and in worldwide theaters. I will discuss its specific ETO service-record data later.
3 SUPERMARINE SPITFIRE/SEAFIRE TEAM
The Supermarine Spitfire had a 20-year background before it first flew on March 6, 1936. The high-speed Supermarine S-4, S-5 and S-6B seaplane racers won the 1931 Schneider Cup outright for Britain and set a world record of 406.99mph. It’s therefore understandable that from its 1936 prototype to the final postwar versions, it was always a high-spirited combat mount. Nevertheless, although the Spitfire is wonderful to fly, it wasn’t without its operational problems.
Few WW II aircraft saw as much development as the basic Spitfire design. It grew from 1,030hp to an incredible 2,375hp in the Griffon-powered versions, and its performance followed suit. The increase in horsepower was awe-inspiring: top speed increased from 362 to 439mph, maximum altitude from 32,000 to 43,000 feet and rate of climb from 2,530 to 4,600 feet per minute. But it had extremely short “legs”: its low internal fuel capacity and limited ability to carry drop tanks wouldn’t let it go very far or fight for very long. It carried less than half as much internal fuel as the Hellcat, Thunderbolt, Lightning and Mustang, and this greatly limited its radius of action.
In addition to this, the Spitfire’s major drawback was in the fighter/bomber role because it could carry only relatively light loads and lacked an external fuel tank. The late Mark V series could carry one centerline 500-pound bomb or a 170-gallon drop tank. In the 5,665 Mark IXs built, the bomb load was eventually increased to 1,000 pounds. Several later models carried six wing racks for 5-inch HVAR rockets. This limited external armament capability wasn’t further improved until after the production of the Mark XVI model at war’s end.
Pilots who evaluated the Spitfire compared its flighthandling characteristics to a highly bred, swift
Arabian steed quite unlike the American “workhorse” fighters. The Spitfire filled the short-range defensive fighter and long-range photo recon roles, but its “legs” were too short to allow it to compete with other WW II fighters in the fighter-bomber ground-attack and bomber-escort roles for “best fighter” honors.
The British Royal Navy built 1,620 Seafires before the end of WW II, but they didn’t do well in the carrier environment. According to Royal Navy Capt. Eric
Brown, the Seafires’ range was too limited for combat air patrols, and “… the Seafires’ deck-landing accident rate resulted in more operational losses than combat successes.” Brown listed the Hellcat, Zero and Wildcat at the top of his list of the best carrier fighters. The Seafire wasn’t even on the list.
2 FOCKE-WULF 190
Although the Focke-Wulf 190 was the first fighter designed by this company, it was a most fortuitous design because it had a multi-role potential. It had a stable, crosswind-compatible landing gear (unlike the Bf 109’s unstable, accident-prone gear); and its outstanding bubble-type canopy afforded great visibility long before such visibility was considered necessary in combat. It was far ahead of its German Messerschmitt Bf 109 competitor.
When it was presented in 1940, the radial engine was not in favor for Luftwaffe fighters, so Gen. Ernst Udet’s choice of the radial-engine prototype Fw l90 was a surprise to the Focke-Wulf management.
Its design and flight capabilities are best illustrated by the trip Roy Grumman, Bob Hall and Bud Gillies of Grumman management made to England in the fall of 1943 to evaluate a captured Fw 190A-4. They were so impressed by it that it inspired the development of Grumman’s F8F-1 Bearcat, which was deployed in the Pacific theater only a few days too late to participate in the Pacific war.
They found that the Fw 190A had many positive attri-butes, including flight-handling characteristics that could easily be mastered by a 200-hour pilot, an outstanding cockpit layout and a canopy that set new standards for fighter visibility. At the top of this impressive list was its structural design; this not only provided exceptional performance but, more important, was also ideally suited to mass production. The Grumman F8F-l Bearcat, which borrowed heavily from the Fw 190 concept, was 2,160 pounds lighter than the F6F-5 Hellcat and quickly became a carrier-capable version of the Fw 190A.
The Fw 190 was continually updated with larger engines and, from the very beginning, it had a good range and load-carrying capability that got better as the War continued. It had highly developed “tank buster” fighter-bomber variants with a variety of heavycaliber cannon and bomb racks. The Fw 190’s range of development programs exceeded the Bf 109’s and led to the most versatile, mass-produced fighter and fighter-bomber aircraft the Luftwaffe had in inventory. The 13,367 Fw 190 fighters and 6,634 fighter-bombers delivered gave the Luftwaffe a splendid offensive fighter and fighter-bomber. Unfortunately, when the Fw 190’s talents were really needed along the wide Russian fronts and after the D-day invasion, massive logistics foul-ups prevented them from contributing much to the final defense of Germany. It was, however, a very close second place to the winner.
1 AND THE WINNER IS ... REPUBLIC P-47 THUNDERBOLT
The 15,683 P-47s produced by three major factories accounted for the largest aircraft production in U.S. fighter-plane history. Seversky’s and Republic’s prewar production lines of the similarly designed and constructed 463 P-35 and P-43 fighters significantly assisted the rapidity of the P-47’s production-rate buildup. Republic delivered one in 1941, 532 in 1942, 4,428 in 1943, 7,065 in 1944 and 3,657 in 1945—15,683!
Compared with the Fw 190, the Thunderbolt was faster above 15,000 feet, and its massive firepower (eight .50-caliber guns) soon began to make a definite impression on the Luftwaffe. With its 445-mile range, the Thunderbolt made high-altitude fighter-escort capability available for U.S. B-17 and B-24 daylight bombing raids. At the end of 1943, there were 10 P-47 Fighter Groups, and by June 1944, 17 were stationed in Britain. Also by the end of 1943, Thunderbolt crews used any remaining fighter-escort ammunition for low-altitude strafing runs. Their successes led to the adaptation of the P-47 to its most successful role as an offensive fighter-bomber.
By the end of 1944, there were 31 USAAF P-47 Fighter Groups in combat areas. The only theater in which they did not operate was Alaska. In addition, 730 P-47Ds were sent to the RAF, and 446 P-47Ds flew in seven squadrons with the French Air Force. Other P-47Ds were sent to Russia, Brazil and Mexico for service in all WW II theaters.
The P-47D line was the largest in the Thunderbolt series, and 12,607 were built. Up to the P-47D-15-CU model, the plane was an impressive, eight .50-caliber-gun, high-altitude fighter with a belly rack for a 500-pound bomb or a 75-gallon fuel tank. The P-47D20RE series, with its “universal” wing and fuselage racks, were fitted for various combinations of up to 2,500 pounds of bombs, two 150-gallon wing tanks and one 75-gallon ventral tank. The P-47D-25-RE model introduced the bubble canopy that greatly improved a
pilot’s combat visibility. P-47D-27-RE fighters added 10 outer-wing stations for 5-inch HVAR rockets, and it was also equipped with the 2,400hp R-2800-59 water-injection engine, which greatly reduced its heavyweight-bomber-escort takeoff distance. It was also equipped with electrically operated diverecovery brakes that completely counteracted the compressibility effects that had previously resulted in very steep dives from which many Thunderbolts could not recover.
The last model produced was the longer wingspan, 467mph P-47N; it held 556 gallons of internal fuel and had external tanks that gave it a combat range of slightly more than 2,000 miles for B-29 bomber support. The only fighter role in which it did not participate was photorecon because the usual camera location
(in the aft fuselage) was filled with the massive turbo supercharger and its plumbing.
The P-47’s roomy cockpit was well suited to 200-hour war-trained pilots. All of the controls, switches and instruments were handily located; its flight stabilities were low enough for fighter tactics but sufficient for hands-off, long-range missions. Its docile normal and accelerated stall characteristics did not interfere with aerial gunnery runs, and with its soft landing-gear shock-struts, three-point landings were smooth and easy. Managing the early, manual, turbo-supercharger control was initially difficult, but a redesign resulted in such an improvement that control was soon automatic and needed very little pilot attention.
In 1943, 28 “kills” ace Capt. Bob Johnson dramatically illustrated the efficacy of the P-47’s armored pilot protection to me. When attacked by Fw l90s during a Ramrod mission to Paris, his plane sustained considerable damage. Unable to open his jammed canopy, he was slowly flying home alone over the English Channel with very little fuel when a single Fw l90 attacked him three times, firing its entire load into his P-47’s tail (it had four 20mm MG 5l/20E cannon and two 13mm, .50-caliber MG 131 machine guns).
The German pilot then appeared to give up, flew formation for a few moments, waved in awe to Bob and left. Uninjured, Bob landed his aircraft and ran out of gas just as he taxied off the runway. He was emphatic that he would never have made it home if he had been flying a P-51 Mustang with a vulnerable, liquid-cooled engine. The stories of P-47s returning to base with large tree branches jammed into the wing leading edges and pieces of vehicles exploded during ground attacks embedded in them are legendary. The P-47 withstood terrific damage and safely returned its pilot to base.
As further testament to the Thunderbolt’s ability to dish out punishment and take it, all 10 of the top European Thunderbolt aces survived the war.
From its first attacks in Europe until V-E Day, the Thunderbolt’s 423,435 sorties in ground-attack operations are claimed to have destroyed 86,000 railway coaches, 9,000 locomotives, 68,000 motor vehicles and 6,000 armored vehicles. The pilot-compatible Thunderbolt was continually developed, and many were flown in all the major WW II theaters.
Conclusion
The bottom chart shows that the P-47 Thunderbolt flew twice as many sorties, dropped 2,010 percent more bomb tonnage, destroyed 62 percent of the enemy’s aircraft in the air and 75 percent on the ground; it suffered only 58 percent of the losses (per sortie) of the P-51 Mustang runner-up. The P-47, therefore, earned its nomination as being the best fighter in the ETO.