What Is Your All Time Favorite WW II Airplane.

[pattern14]

Originally Posted by bmrmiller

Well looks like I may be in the minority here but,

Focke Wulf TA152H is a sweet plane, then Heinkel 219 Owl

Being the minority does not make you wrong. The Ta 152 was superior to all allied types over 30,000ft, and the the he219 was the most advanced night fighter of WW2. It was faster than the jet powered gloster Meteor, the only allied jet to actually fire a shot (the p80 achieved nothing).. Being on the wrong side means that history often gets written in the victors favour, regardless of the facts

[degreen60]

As a kid at the end of the war I spent a lot of my time drawing pictures of the F6F Hellcat. It was my farvorite plane of the war but the most thrill I got was one day a P38 flew over our house. You could buy small toy planes. Probably got 4 on a card for a nickle. The reason I am guessing a nickle when we went to town I was given a nickle to buy something with. I remember having the Hellcat and P38 but don't remember the other planes.

[dahawk]

Brother, can you loan me a dime ? LOL

Must have been a swell time. When dames were dames!

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by degreen60

As a kid at the end of the war I spent a lot of my time drawing pictures of the F6F Hellcat. It was my farvorite plane of the war but the most thrill I got was one day a P38 flew over our house. You could buy small toy planes. Probably got 4 on a card for a nickle. The reason I am guessing a nickle when we went to town I was given a nickle to buy something with. I remember having the Hellcat and P38 but don't remember the other planes.

And why? why? WHY!!!? isn't the Hellcat, the most successful plane ever produced by the United States EVER, even a small blip on the RC plane selection map?

[70sflyer]

F7F Tigercat.If you see one up close you would say the same.

[mattman0182]

Bf-109. Best fighter of the war. I mean just look at all the things it did. It survived the entire war. More were produced than any other fighter. American history is biased against it simply because we were the victors.

Also, Imagine if there had been enough HE-219's to make a difference.

[xmech2k]

Originally Posted by mattman0182

Bf-109. Best fighter of the war. I mean just look at all the things it did. It survived the entire war. More were produced than any other fighter. American history is biased against it simply because we were the victors.

Also, Imagine if there had been enough HE-219's to make a difference.

Best fighter of the war? Based on??? And what part of American history is against the 109? Is it a lie that the canopy restricted vision? That the cockpit was cramped? That it had limited range? That the narrow track landing gear killed many of it's own pilots? It had it's day where it was superior, but also like any combat plane it eventually became obsolete due to the advancements of design and technology. In it's day, it was made as good as they could, but technology keeps advancing. I'm not going on a rant here, just saying that's a big statement to call it the best fighter of the war. You don't think the FW-190 was better? Any others that came along later?

For a really good insight into WWII German fighters, pick up Adolph Galland's The First and the Last. At one point he told Hitler that only the FW-190 should be continued in production. That the 109 was outdated.

Anyways, this still doesn't take away from the fact that for a while, yes, the Bf-109 was on top of the fighter world. A beautiful plane, in the sense of power and for it's unfortunate purpose, like all these cool warplanes.

[mattman0182]

Originally Posted by xmech2k

Best fighter of the war? Based on??? And what part of American history is against the 109? Is it a lie that the canopy restricted vision? That the cockpit was cramped? That it had limited range? That the narrow track landing gear killed many of it's own pilots? It had it's day where it was superior, but also like any combat plane it eventually became obsolete due to the advancements of design and technology. In it's day, it was made as good as they could, but technology keeps advancing. I'm not going on a rant here, just saying that's a big statement to call it the best fighter of the war. You don't think the FW-190 was better? Any others that came along later?

For a really good insight into WWII German fighters, pick up Adolph Galland's The First and the Last. At one point he told Hitler that only the FW-190 should be continued in production. That the 109 was outdated.

Anyways, this still doesn't take away from the fact that for a while, yes, the Bf-109 was on top of the fighter world. A beautiful plane, in the sense of power and for it's unfortunate purpose, like all these cool warplanes.

Well, the quickest point of yours for me to counter is that he FW-190 was better. There are reasons other than Hitler as to why it never truly replaced the 109. The biggest reason being that the 190 just never really matched the 109 at higher altitudes. Also, Erich Hartmann, the leading ace of all time refused to fly any other plane during his career. To me, this is a pretty credible endorsement of the 109. He could easily have gone to the 190 and later 262 if he had wanted to.

About American history being biased. Yes, it is very biased on many things. I mean just look at the show "dogfights". Or even worse, the show "great planes". One would be led to believe the Mustang is some UFO that could do anything and had no faults. In reality, the 109-F through the 109-G2 could pretty much dogfight just as well as any allied fighter. Yes, id even give those variations the edge over the beloved P-51 and middle and lower altitudes. The G6-K14 were almost primarily interceptors, with the exception of the G10, which was the last version set up for strictly dogfighting.
Towards the end of the war, of course there were more advanced fighters than the 109. But if you look at the war as a whole, from start to end, yes the 109 was the best. This was the plane that all the other designers were gunning for. Almost all of the fighters from that point on were designed using principles borrowed from the 109. Also people seem to under appreciate the DB600 series engines found in these birds. All the 109 pilot had to do early on in the war was point his nose down and the allied plane would sputter out because it would lose its fuel supply thanks to not having fuel injection.
Also, yes the 109 had faults, mainly it's landing gear setup. But how about the allied pilots killed by the Mustang's unstable tendencies?