The would-have-been best, if…

A good example of a supposedly “perfect” fighter that’s cited by many historians as being the greatest such WW II aircraft, is the German twin-jet-powered Messerschmitt Me 262. It was more than 100mph faster and had a more powerful fighter-to-fighter armament (four centerline, aimed 30mm cannon) than any other WW II fighter. But it had three serious combat problems that clearly keep it out of the “best” category.

From the beginning, the Me 262’s engines were problematic. They were extremely sensitive to throttle movement and could easily blow out their combustion chambers; they were also exceedingly hard to restart in flight. Even if the engines had been perfect, however, the airplane had no propeller drag that would allow speed control by changing power; all WW II fighter pilots used this feature when combat maneuvering. The Me 262 did not have the speed-control capability required for two-plane fighter combat and formation flying.

Even with these problems, however, it would have been among the best if enough had been built and put into combat to make any real contribution to the German war effort. Thanks to Hitler’s many incredibly shortsighted decisions, only 160 hurriedly flight-tested Me 262s were available for combat operations about a year before the War ended. I cannot even consider it a contender. Was the Me-262 a good fighter? Absolutely! Was it good in the ground-attack role? Probably. Did it make a major contribution? Of course not.

Another would-be contender might be the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk; 13,733 were delivered between 1940 and 1944. Although it had some well-known limitations, it was on the USAAC’s official list of “On hand overseas in all theaters” from beginning to end, but there were far fewer of them than of its three peers. Yes, many were built, but they weren’t out there doing much of the fighting.

This well-marked Me 262 was superbly restored by the Smithsonian Institution. The aircraft was ahead of its time in many ways: it had one of the first bubble canopies, a tricycle landing gear and a very thin wing, which was necessary for jet-aircraft high-speed-diving capability. The Me 262’s .87 critical Mach number was about 100mph faster than that of Allied fighters. One of its drawbacks was not being equipped with an aerodynamic brake for the airspeed control required during gunnery and formation flying. (Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Institution via author)

On July 30, 1943, while ineptly attempting aerobatics at a very low altitude in this P-40N1-CU, I almost became a stall-spin-accident statistic. The P-40 had a very high stall-spin accident rate; I didn’t pick up on that during that flight, even though I had seen several P-40 pilots spin in at Boston’s Logan Airport in 1941. (Photo courtesy of Northrop/Grumman History Center via author)

Note that the P-47 entered the war earlier than the P-51, and after 1942, it outnumbered both the P-38 and the P-51.