FW-190

Something about a dive bomber

F-2G Super Corsair

P-47 and maybe a P-38

The F4U Corsair was one of the sexiest planes of the era (and watching Baa Baa Black Sheep as a kid didn't help lol) and the P-38 Lightning (The Fork-tailed Devil as the Luftwaffe liked to call it) was a unique and very effective plane but if I was going into combat, I'd want the best of the era and that is without a doubt the P-51 Mustang.

The F6F had a head start due to getting to carriers sooner, true. But the F4U could absorb a bit more damage, plus was faster. Plus it bested the P-51 when the met in combat lol. I’d choose the F4U myself. Carried the heaviest bomb load of a fighter, too, thanks to Lindy.

Mustang, P51

I did it at a CAF show.

Pricy, but YOLO.

Spent an afternoon with Rex Barber once. Great man, and  his wife was very sweet.

P38 is my choice also.

Hawker Hurricane Mki

P-51 without question.

FW190D Long nose arguably the best over all piston fighter of the war oddly because the BMW factory was bombed and there was a shortage of radial 801 engines

Can you really expect someone with a nick referring to a FW pilot choose anything but?

Typhoon or Thunderbolt.

Why os a tail dragged more ungainly on the ground?

What's not to love about two R2800s, eight .50 cals, bomb, and rockets

Though admittedly I'm a fan of this little hot rod

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I think the F6F had a better combat record because of when it was introduced.

One, the Japanese thought it was a F4F and never lived to tell their buddies something new was in theater.

Two, most of the good Japanese pilots were dead.

Fish in a barrel…

Isn’t the Spitfire the best handling aircraft? I’d take that over a lumbering Cadillac of the skies.

Finally the correct answer!

That would be my pic even for planes of any time, not just WWII. There has never been a cooler looking cockpit ever designed, it would feel like flying a Tie fighter. When you guys go to the air&space annex at Dulles be sure to check it out, it’s the only one that still exists.

They're properly called conventional gear as opposed to tricycle (aka "kiddie bike") gear.

Ground looping is much easier to do in a conventional geared aircraft.

Corsairs, with their long noses, were a real adventure landing on a carrier and were soon replaced.

Coventional geared aircraft could handle even the sloppiest grass fields in Europe. The nose gear on a tricycle tends to get stuck, or even break off on landing, if soft field procedures are not followed.

My dad finished P51 training right after Truman KO'd the Nips with atomic bombs. So, I'm biased. He said you could buy a surplus P51 for a few thousand bucks after the war.

Crappy video quality....but sounds ok.

My man tool with B-29 wings duct taped to it..

I think the F6F was the more rugged airframe. Pilots didn't call Grumman "the Ironworks" for nothing.

That was a temporary setback. The Brits figured out how to land them on carriers and the USN soon followed suit. Corsairs were flying from carriers during the Korean War long after the Hellcat had been retired from frontline duty.

P-38 or a Corsair...a Mosquito wouldn't be bad either.  I think I would have a little more confidence in an aircraft with a metallic structure.

I'm partial to the P51, having worked on them and flown in them. Quite the machine, and it helped change the war.

If we're talking fighter/bombers. the Hawker Typhoon. I've always loved ground attack planes.

It went through a troubled development, but by Overlord the kinks had been worked out and did its best work over France, especially at the Falaise Pocket.

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"You could smell Falaise from 6,000 feet in the cockpit. The decomposing corpses of horses and flesh—burning flesh, the carnage was terrible. Falaise was the first heyday of the Typhoon.”

"After the battle, the devastation in and around Falaise shocked all who witnessed it. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied supreme commander, recorded, 'The battlefield at Falaise was unquestionably one of the greatest killing grounds of any of the war areas. Roads, highways, and fields were so choked with destroyed equipment and with dead men and animals that passage through the area was extremely difficult. Forty-eight hours after the closing of the gap, I was conducted through it on foot, to encounter scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.'”

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-falaise-pocket-scourge-the-rafs-hawker-typhoon/

This.

The Jug was awesome as a fighter and a ground attack plane

THIS

Late war P40 is not the same as pre-war P40.  The Hawk series served until the end of the war and under 15000 feet would embarrass more famous aircraft in a turning fight.

P-38 for sure, although I wouldn't mind a P-47 or F4U.
I'm a bit partial to the P-38 though. If it weren't for the Lightning, I wouldn't be here. My grandparents met and later married while building P-38s at Lockheed in Burbank.

Once we broke the PURPLE code, it was just a matter of time.

Spitfire, mosquito, Yak 1

Quoted:

I want to add DH Mosquito.  Fly both.


https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/348/1000000447-3040855.jpg

Europe, a P-47. Pacific, a P-38 unless I was Navy, in which case Hellcat.

This^^^^^all day long.

Any would be awesome.  

Grandfather flew F6F’s off of carriers, but first he spent an entire year as a flight instructor when his entire graduating class was turned into instructors to handle the huge numbers of new pilots needing training.  By the time he hit the fleet there were hardly any Japanese planes left to shoot down.  

He flew P-47’s in the air guard later, then F-100’s and F-86’s.  

Pretty cool stuff.

Dad told me a couple of times of watching the P-38s fly overhead when he was serving in Italy.

So, in honor of him, a P-38.

Eh. The reality is I wasn’t fitting in any of them anyway

For street cred ? A p-51D. To live, a p-47D

Always wanted to go train hunting in a P-47, or chasing V-1s in a Tempest--

Do 335 fastest piston aircraft of WWII

Had a relative that flew a Spitfire in an American squadron in the Mediterranean.  Then got to come home and be a flight instructor for the rest of the war.

That sounds pretty cool.

It’s a very complicated subject.

This has been simulated in the modern flight sims, with full fidelity flight models.

In the simulation given what we know of the flight envelope of the WW2 piston fighters, the Spitfire XIV is the winner of 1 vs. 1 combat.

Once you change those numbers up, and do 2 vs. 2 or 4 vs. 4, the 109 K-4 is the king.

Most likely because you don’t need many 30mm hits to take someone out of the fight.  The sooner this is done, the sooner someone is now in a 2 vs. 1 fight.

The P-51 isn’t as great as people think it is.  It has very nasty stall characteristics.  Which the Spitfire and 109 do not, due to the differences in wing design.

The longer a fight drags on the slower aircraft get and this is where the P-51D isn’t good, the Spitfire and 109 are still excellent at lower speeds and high angles of attack.

The Spitfire XIV and 109K-4 can also beat the P-51D in:

Rate of climb
Acceleration
Straight line speed
Turn fight at any speed
Armament

Additionally the Merlin engine could not operate at redline RPMs for a very long period, before it would shit the bed in less than a minute.  

In comparison the 109K-4 could stay in the redline with MW-50 for 8-9 minutes.

There’s also the factor being able to dictate the terms of the engagement, which is something Hartman says, he wouldn’t commit to a fight unless he felt he had the advantage.

With all this said, most pilots were shot down by a guy they didn’t see, who had the drop on them.

So a dogfight that starts with a head on pass, then the best man wins, isn’t really accurate as to how most combat started.

The difference between winning and losing, will usually be the pilot, and America did this far better than anyone else and still does.

I know it’s “sexy” to analyze the technical aspects of the aircraft, but a far more insightful analysis would be to look at the pilot training of all sides at the time.

How many pilots were lost in combat, how many died in accidents and training?

An insane number of 109s were lost due to its nasty ground handling characteristics and the fact that there was a pilot with around 100 hours trying to fly an aircraft with 2,000
HP, tail dragger and narrow track landing gear.

Forget combat, that high performance of an aircraft is almost a death sentence for a pilot with that level of experience.

IIRC Bud Anderson had around 900 hours when he got to ETO.

Ask any Pilot about the skill level between those 2 experience levels.

There’s a reason a large number of general aviation accidents that kill people involve a pilot with less than 350 hours.  

The P-51 while it isn’t better than either the Spitfire or the 109 at the extremes of the flight envelope, it is a very forgiving aircraft to fly in 80-90% of the flight envelope.

Which is why it did well against the 109, given the experience level of the respective pilots and their ability to fly their own aircraft.

I got to fly in “Toulose Nuts” a TF-51D (two seat mustang trainer) in 2017

So I’ll go with that.

80 years later, still looks awesome.

StopICanOnlyGetSoHard.jpeg

The wheels dropped off shortly after take off right? How crazy is that?