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DCS: P-47D-30 Discussion


Barrett_g

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Arnold issued that order in response to the requirements of Congress, which feared that drop tanks would be 'provocative' to the Axis Powers, or worse, give Roosevelt the idea that he should intervene in Europe. One of the reasons that the P-38 had such a large internal fuel supply was to get around this law.

 

Similar to what I was about to write.

It's possible Arnold sent the instruction because congress had allowed appropriation of funds in April 1939 for 5,500 airplanes, some of which were to be bought from Curtiss. There's also that cheeky little note at the end of MA-258 saying that Curtiss could, if they wanted, provide the auxiliary tanks free of charge to the government.

 

MA-258 is only speculative evidence that Arnold or the leadership of the Air Corps was deliberately trying to stymie fighter development, or fighter escort capability. There is certainly wider context that can be used to suggest otherwise.

 

Greg's argument early in his video that WW2 aviation history "requires a higher level of research or understanding than most other topics" is simply un-supportable and seems to be little more than self-inflating hubris (my topic is the technical one that requires extra special knowledge). What's more egregious though, is that Greg seems to reduce the discussion to a technical one (and if saburo_cz is correct, making some technical blunders along the way), and he largely ignores the wider geo-political context beyond the internal issues of the Army Air Corps, something a historian would be remiss for doing.


Edited by philstyle

On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/philstylenz

Storm of War WW2 server website: https://stormofwar.net/

 

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Arnold issued that order in response to the requirements of Congress, which feared that drop tanks would be 'provocative' to the Axis Powers, or worse, give Roosevelt the idea that he should intervene in Europe. One of the reasons that the P-38 had such a large internal fuel supply was to get around this law.

 

So the U.S. could send tons and tons and tons of supplies to Europe in Liberty Ships... but Congress feared drop tanks would anger the Axis powers????

 

 

 

Your estimates only work if the P-47s are flown in a direct line, independently climbing at a very gradual rate. You couldn't do that in the spring and early summer of 1943; any flight in southeastern England was credited as combat hours at that time because the Luftwaffe was known to still occasionally drop by for a visit.

 

There is no allowance for climbing through the near omnipresent overcast (I know this is true, because I lived in East Anglia for four years) in formation, where three of the four aircraft are often adjusting their throttles to conform to their leader while keeping each other in sight, the extra fuel burned just climbing to an altitude where you are competitive with the FWs and Mes, and then orbiting in the position where the bombers you are escorting are supposed to be--and for a long while in '42-'43, the bomber groups were very sloppy (or, if you prefer, criminally negligent) about getting where they were supposed to be on time while their escorts were burning precious fuel.

 

A lot of young men died or were captured because the bomber leaders routinely gave no thought to the requirements of the fighters who would be protecting them; this ended by the winter of 1943/44, not least because a few high ranking bomber group officers literally got punched out in London by fighter pilots there on weekend passes.

 

"My estimates" that you speak of, aren't my estimates at all. The distances I mentioned (Razorbacks to the German border/Razorbacks with drop tanks to Frankfurt, Kassel, or Hanover) are from the map in Greg's video that is an actual USAAF chart showing those ranges drawn.

 

 

Mustangs used significantly less fuel doing these things, and it was considered more competitive with the enemy fighters at all altitudes.

 

I agree. The P-51 was tons more aerodynamic and the engine less thirsty. So it had greater range.

 

It may also have been considered more competitive against enemy, I'd just like to point out that the enemy the P-51 saw was vastly different than the enemy the P-47 saw.

 

By the time the P-51 come unto it's own, the enemy had already lost a lot of its most seasoned pilots due to attrition.

 

This is why I'm so adamant that the P-47 get it's credit where it's due. It was used against some of the best the Luftwaffe had to offer, and it DID (eventually) escort bombers and conduct fighter sweeps all the way to Berlin.

 

 

Here I agree, but a large part of the prejudice against the P-47 is due to the simplified history so many are taught--and in some cases, the only information you get is from the mini-history included with the assembly directions of the model airplanes a lot of us built as kids.

 

Turns out that reality is much more complex.

 

cheers

 

horseback

 

Exactly! Which is why I liked Greg's video. It explained the prejudice against the P-47 was due to "simplified history" when there are much more complexities involved!

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Liberty ships were not produced until after the United States declared war, and until the Battle of the Atlantic was won (essentially May of 1943), a lot of them were being sunk, along with their cargoes. Aircraft, even crated aircraft, take up a LOT of precious deck space, and Liberty ships weren't that big (500ft?); bigger transports or jeep type carriers were often used to transport aircraft especially once the U-boats were mostly nullified. Before that, P-47s and their replacement parts came in dribs and drabs to England.

 

IN 1939, the US was still recovering from the Depression, and Congress was not at all interested in getting sucked into a European war (a lot of politics there, so let's just leave it at that). The US did not enter the war until the second week of December 1941, and we still weren't ready. It took the better part of a year to get anything organized industrially, and with the Japanese in the Pacific, the U-boats in the Atlantic and the competing military commands all wanting everything --the same everythings-- at the same time, everywhere in the world, some important details were inevitably overlooked or delayed.

 

In any case, the thousands of drop tanks you think should have been available were never made, much less shipped to England in 1943. The Pacific war would have sucked them up regardless, since it was even more distance intensive than the ETO at that time.

 

In the spring of 1943, the P-47 was for all intents and purposes, an experimental aircraft, and still pretty buggy. The aircraft themselves were hard to get, but less hard to get than Lightnings, which all went to TORCH and North Africa. Most of the American fighter pilots in England were not very experienced or as well trained as the ones who followed them, and two of the three groups assigned to fly the Jug in combat were used to another fighter entirely--the 78th had come to Britain as a P-38 group and was stripped of all of its aircraft and most of its pilots and literally had to re-constitute in England, and the 4th was mainly composed of former Eagle Squadron RAF trained Spitfire drivers.

 

Only the 56th FG was used to and trained up on the P-47, and they had their teething problems too. Read Zemke's memoir about it; he was free-er to innovate than the 4th FG, which had the brass breathing down their necks more often, being closer to London and supposedly more experienced.

 

Zemke also mentions the troubles he had with his first support/maintenance commander, who wasn't getting the job done and was senior to Zemke, although nominally under his command. Zemke had to fire him before his group starting being effective, but it hurt him politically.

 

Now, as for your contention that the enemy the Mustangs saw was "vastly different" than the enemy the P-47 saw, I must respectfully disagree. The first three P-51 groups began operating by the end of Big Week, and only one of them (the 4th) were combat veterans in, again, a largely experimental aircraft. The Luftwaffe had had a long rest due to the exceptionally hard winter of '43-'44, and had good reason to believe that the American daylight bomber offensive was stalled if not defeated. Big Week was hard on them, but the 8th AF took some very heavy losses too.

 

Then those three Mustang groups (about 150 aircraft, less the mechanical aborts) inflicted heavy losses on the veteran fighter corps of the Luftwaffe over the next three months; this is the period that Galland identifies as the time he lost most of his veteran leaders over Germany--mostly out of the reach of the P-47s and Spitfires.

 

This is historical fact; a relatively small group of men and machines did most of the damage to the Luftwaffe fighter corps in that critical time, and most of those men were 'rookies' flying longer and further than single engine fighters had ever flown into combat before against a well equipped and trained opposition (yeah the Zero flew similar distances, but not against a prepared and comparable opponent in 1941/2). They were the ones who took out most of the 'seasoned' opposition you talk about, plus they also practically wiped out the daytime zerstorer units most dangerous to the bombers.

 

The P-38 groups were not remotely as effective and they suffered a lot more mechanical attrition. Also, they kept losing their COs, which also affected performance & morale.

 

Timing is everything in war, and the P-47 had its virtues, but like the Corsair in the Pacific (or the P-38 everywhere), it really took too long to achieve its potential.

 

Sorry about the range thingie; I don't have the time or patience to memorize the charts, but I am quite familiar with veteran pilots' descriptions of the problems they faced in southern England in 1943.

 

cheers

 

horseback

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]"Here's your new Mustangs boys--you can learn to fly 'em on the way to the target!" LTCOL Don Blakeslee, late February 1944

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PS: Thunderbolts below 20,000 ft (approx 6000m) before May of 1944 were considered 'easy meat' for an Me 109 or FW 190A; it took an exceptional pilot to be successful at low altitudes before the paddleblade props became common.

 

The Mustang was considered by pilots who had just transitioned to the P-51 from the Jug to be better than the 190 or 109 'right down to the deck'. Some of the advantage early on can be given to the Germans' caution dealing with an unfamiliar opponent, but a 'light' Mustang that burned off a big chunk of it's fuel getting to Germany is a lot quicker than the 'book' figures for one with a full combat load would suggest, and it was usually believed to be superior long after the Germans thought that they had it figured out.

 

The Thunderbolt we're getting is nearly a top of the line model, but I still will prefer to fly it above 25K against the Dora and 109K, which are later war aircraft modeled without the flaws common to the wartime production.

 

cheers

 

horseback

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]"Here's your new Mustangs boys--you can learn to fly 'em on the way to the target!" LTCOL Don Blakeslee, late February 1944

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Well, I'm glad to see that someone else thinks that the oft repeated belief that most of Germany's good pilots were gone by the time the P-51's showed up isn't true.

We're only talking a matter of months, which would make the "vastly different" claim about German pilot talent hard to buy.

And one thing that hasn't been mentioned. During 1943, the P-47 was NOT scoring heavily against the Luftwaffe.

The 78th and the 4th were not scoring well in the airplane and the 4th did not like the Jug at all. They were happy to see it go when they converted to Mustangs.

The 356th and 353rd didn't start flying missions until Otober and did not even score until late in November.

Only the 56TH seemed to be doing anything with the Thunderbolt. They scored their 100th victory in the plane early in November. But they had been flying missions since April. The numbers just don't show that the P-47 was decimating the Luftwaffe that year.

It was a tactics change early in 44 that really changed things. They got more agressive and scores began to climb. But, by then, the Mustangs were showing up.


Edited by Ercoupe
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Yes, the P-47 wasn’t downing many Luftwaffe planes in those few months, but bombers were. After all, this was a war of attrition. There were a lot of bomber losses, but they were taking some Luftwaffe planes with them.

 

Don’t forget the fuel dumps and factories the bombers were hitting.

 

Just because there weren’t a lot of P-47’s shooting down planes doesn’t mean that the German opposition wasn’t changing due to losses in bomber engagements, lower quality airframes, shortages of fuel, engine replacements, and quality of oil.

 

The Luftwaffe could be VERY different in just a few months time.

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When the 352nd fighter group were flying P-51B's, one of the complaints about the airplane was that it only had 4 guns. Pilots thought it needed six. But Kit Carson, one of the groups highest scoring aces said, "If ya can't hit them with four, you can't hit them with six."

So, if ya can't hit em with six, you aren't gonna hit em with eight!

That said, I'm looking forward to flying the big seven ton beast in DCS. I hope they do it justice, because no combat flight sim has, yet.

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P-47 = 7 tons of freedom.

P-51 = 4 tons of freedom.

———————-

The Jug is 3 tons of freedom more per plane more than the P-51.

 

There. Argument settled.

“Mosquitoes fly, but flies don’t Mosquito” :pilotfly:

- Geoffrey de Havilland.

 

... well, he could have said it!

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I won't get excited about the Jug D until I see it's own forum. :)

 

Edit - 2 minutes later, it has it's own forum. Let the excitement begin.


Edited by Steve Gee

"These are NOT 1 to 1 replicas of the real aircraft, there are countless compromises made on each of them" - Senior ED Member

 

Modules - Damn near all of them (no Christian Eagle or Yak)

System - i7-12700K, 64Gig DDR4 3200 RAM, RTX-3080, 3 32" monitors at 5760 x 1080, default settings of High (minor tweaks)

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I have to admit I was VERY disappointed when we did not get any word on 29th of May of promised P 47 and the 2.5.6 stable update mentioned a few more weeks...but I just saw 2 preview videos and all I can say is WOW...

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P47 is heavier than all other single engine fighter.

 

It wouldn't hold that title if this... thing, ever went into full production:

xodhcyjvw0n01.jpg

 

Can't wait for the jug, 1. because I like the jug, 2. because I like the mossie even more and that's next :D

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It wouldn't hold that title if this... thing, ever went into full production:

xodhcyjvw0n01.jpg

 

Can't wait for the jug, 1. because I like the jug, 2. because I like the mossie even more and that's next :D

 

Ok I will be more precise :

It's the heavier single engine fighter being mass produced during the war

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More importantly for Bozon it means that the Mosquito will be next in line.

OH YEH! :thumbup:

One step closer to the wooden wonder :pilotfly:

 

(Though I have to admit that I am waiting for the Jug, credit card in hand...)

“Mosquitoes fly, but flies don’t Mosquito” :pilotfly:

- Geoffrey de Havilland.

 

... well, he could have said it!

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