"Tim Streater" wrote in message
...
On 12 Jul 2020 at 21:31:29 BST, Vir Campestris
wrote:

On 11/07/2020 10:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Arguments have raged, but in general the German pilots were better and
the ME109 had a cannon. BIG help. BUT UK had radar and home turf.
ME109 faster in a dive and had fuel injection so didn't cut under
negative G. Spitty could turn tighter. ME109 a bitch on the ground.
Spitty not great. Hurricane tough and forgiving and very stable gun wise
with a thicker stiffer wing and much easier to repair. And we had lots

But the spitty had the development potential - we had to wait for the
Hawker Tempest/Mustang really for a better day fighter than a spitfire
And that (Tempest) was a ******* engine - the Napier Sabre - and so much
CO on the cockpit they ran on oxygen all flight

The Tempest was flawed, but it really had what you needed in late war
years. Speed, firepower, tough, able to fight at altitude. The late
model spitfires no longer had Merlins and were almost new aircraft

The Mustang - once it had the Merlin - was probably a better aircraft
than the Spit. Of course it wasn't around for the Battle of Britain!

The Mustang has a laminar flow wing, which gives less drag. That's the
reason why Mustangs could act as cover on the US day raids over Germany.
There's also the clever design of the radiator - it doesn't just have
less drag than the Spit or Hurri, it actually gives thrust. Not a lot,
but every little helps.

The real reason why I think the Mustang was better is this: I was
watching a TV programme with my father one day comparing the 109 and the
Spit. The 109 has a _really_ cramped cockpit, the Spit has this great
wing that would let it outturn the 109, and suddenly he said "I always
preferred the Mustang".

He had flown them all. Probably Griffin Spits though, he was post war.
Interesting that he didn't mention the Fury. I can't ask him why.

What do we have for ground attack these days? Compared to today, those
planes
were simple and cheap. It's all very well having £100M jets that can do
everything, but you can't afford very many of those, or the pilots to fly
them. I keep thinking we need to have a cheap plane for today, that we can
build lots of quickly, which could then be flown by people who can be
trained
relatively quickly.

Depends on what you are doing the ground attack for today.
In Vietnam there was a lot of use of quite simple aircraft with
lots of heavy machine guns used, but there hasnt been any
real need for much of that since then in Iraq or Afghanistan
or Syria etc.

Choppers are much more effective for that sort of thing against
personnel on the ground and for taking out armoured vehicles etc.

Can you imagine turning out 150 F35s a month + pilots?

Modern warfare isnt about large numbers of ground attack aircraft anymore.