Hush-Kit Top Ten: The Ten Best Fighters of World War II
What was the best fighter of World War II? The evolution of fighters in this period was a Darwinian bloodbath that would have had Richard Dawkins slavering with excitement. Whatever we put in this list some numb-nut or another will have different ideas. Here’s our selection, the order they appear is, more or less, totally arbitrary (apart from number 1 which we firmly believe WAS the best fighter of the war). Enjoy!
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10. Steamboat Fattie: Grumman F6F ‘Hellcat’
The Hellcat was ordered as an alternative in the event of any major problems with the F4U Corsair, which was very prudent as the Corsair programme very quickly ran into very major problems indeed, and the sturdy F6F found itself the premier carrier fighter in the World’s mightiest carrier fleet. The Hellcat was big, heavy and extremely powerful, the very antithesis of its major opponent, the A6M Zero.
To fight the Zero, pilots of earlier Allied naval fighters had had to develop inventive tactics to deal with the superior Japanese aircraft. With the coming of the Hellcat, the US Navy had a fighter that was slightly faster, better armed and just manoeuvrable enough to deal with the Japanese fighter. Plus it was extremely strong and easy to fly, factors which saved many a pilot who would have been doomed in any other aircraft. The Japanese advance had been checked by the Wildcat, but it was the chunky Hellcat that allowed the US Navy to win the war in the Pacific before being replaced (in part by its old nemesis the Corsair) right at war’s end. It was exactly the right aircraft at exactly the right time.
9. ‘Dear Little Cobra’ Bell P-39 Airacobra
When the P-39 first flew it had a turbo-supercharger and was a fantastic performer at all altitudes. However the US Army Air Corps decided that no fighter would ever be required to operate at high altitude so they removed the turbo-supercharger and developed the P-39 into a low altitude fighter par excellence. Then, when it was committed to combat the same US Army Air Corps were scathing in their criticism of the P-39’s altitude performance and called it ‘especially disappointing’. A bit rich you might think seeing as they were the ones who had cacked it up in the first place.
Thus the unwanted Airacobra was sent by the thousand to the Soviet Union where it found itself in a battlefield where virtually all combat was at low level and its capabilities could be properly appreciated. It was fast (a P-39 won the first post war American air-race), it handled beautifully, it was tough, its tricycle undercarriage was perfect for rough field operations, and its firepower was nothing short of spectacular. Of the six Soviet pilots to score more than 50 kills, four flew the P-39. Its performance was superior to the German aircraft it faced (and the Soviet aircraft it complemented). The Airacobra gained more air to air kills than any other US built fighter and demonstrated the remarkable strategic wisdom of the Lend-Lease programme. Given that the Eastern Front used up 80% of the German war effort, the Kobrastochka could reasonably be considered the most important American fighter of the war in Europe.
8. Cheap and Deadly: Messerschmitt Bf 109
When studying military aircraft there is one aspect of design receives barely any attention, yet at the time is often the most important of all, namely: cost. The 109 was, arguably, the best fighter in the world from the time of its introduction until 1942(ish) despite being, according to an aircraft restoring engineer friend of mine ‘a pile of shit’ from a construction point of view. However, it was also very cheap and it was this aspect that led to it becoming the most produced fighter ever (or second most produced, depending on your criteria: see below). Even once its developmental zenith was past it represented a potent foe and was never outclassed by its opponents. The 109 scored more air-to-air kills than any other aircraft before or since and probably represents the best value for money of any fighter in history. Try saying that about the F-22.
7. The Triumph of Socialist Labour Yakovlev Yak-1 to 9
When the great Soviet ace Alexander Pokryshkin was being pressured for political reasons to convert his unit to a Soviet built aircraft rather than the Airacobra he was then flying (to great effect), one of the proffered types was the Yak-3. Pokryshkin personally detested Alexander Yakovlev and refused the offer of his latest fighter. This is unfortunate as by doing so Pokryshkin cheated himself out of flying the finest Soviet fighter of the war. The French Normandie-Niemen unit, who fought as part of the Red Army had rather a different opinion. At the end of the war they were (allegedly) offered their choice of any Allied fighter aircraft and they selected the Yak-3. Marcel Albert, their top scorer, maintained that the Yak could outclimb a Spitfire and had a higher cruising speed. The Yak-3 was one of a family of fighters that began with the Yak-1 and diversified into different lines of concurrent development. Despite their different designations there was less difference between the types than between an early and late model Messerschmitt 109 which adds weight to the suggestion that the Yak family as a whole can be considered to be the most manufactured fighter of all time as around 38000 were built in total. The Yak-3 was the lightest and smallest fighter to be used in numbers by any combatant during the war and this led to its remarkable performance on a relatively low-powered engine. Despite its daintiness the Yak-1 was on a par with contemporary Bf 109 and Fw 190 models and by war’s end was comfortably superior to both. Unburdened with the extraneous equipment deemed necessary in the West, the Yak was a very pure sort of fighting machine and probably the most pleasing aircraft from a pilot’s perspective of the war. And what other first-line 1940s fighter has had production restart for the civilian market in the 1990s or been modified into a basic trainer?
6. I could have been a contender! Fiat G.55
Just before everything went completely awry for the Italians they managed to obtain a supply of the latest DB 605 engines from Germany and built three superb fighter types. All three saw service but the best was the Fiat G.55, indeed it was so good that a team of German experts (including Adolf Galland) came to the conclusion that it was the best fighter in the Axis, possibly the world, and should be produced in vast numbers immediately for German use. Kurt Tank, designer of the Fw 190 had nothing but praise for the G.55 either and went to Turin to look at its potential for mass-production. Sadly for the Axis cold hard economic logic came into play and when it was pointed out that the, admittedly outstanding, Fiat took 15000 man hours to build against the 5000 of the still formidable Bf 109, production plans were quietly abandoned. Thus, less than 300 of the Axis’s best fighter were built and saw service only in a backwater of the conflict for a Nazi client state, whereas some 35000 109s swarmed all over Europe. However, in contrast to so many potentially terrific might-have-beens of the war, the Fiat did at least see production and served in combat, and its brilliance was demonstrated rather than merely conjectured.
5. Shatterer of Self-delusion Mitsubishi A6M Reisen ‘Zero’
Quick quiz question: What links the M16 assault rifle and the Mitsubishi Zero? That’s right: 7075 aluminium alloy. It is used for the upper and lower receivers of the M16 and it was used for most of the structure of the Zero. First produced in 1936 by Sumitomo Metals of Japan and excitingly named ‘extra super duralumin’ at the time, 7075 is an alloy of aluminium and zinc and is significantly lighter and stronger than other aluminium alloys produced until this date. That Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the A6M, had to resort to new technology at the metallurgical level demonstrates not only how challenging the Navy’s specification for their new fighter was (Nakajima didn’t even enter a tender, as they deemed it impossible) but also how cutting edge the Zero was – even at the molecular level.
At its debut the A6M was the World’s best carrier fighter. That this fact was totally ignored by the Allies, despite the aircraft being, quite openly used over China in strength, suggests that the West was all to willing to believe its propaganda on Japanese military capabilities. Propaganda that today seems, at best, laughably naive, at worst founded on an illusion fostered by dogged racism. Whatever the truth, the Zero changed all that, and with such total dominance, that it gave rise to a belief in Japanese invincibility in the minds of its opponents that would remain unchecked for the first year or two of the Pacific war. By the time American fighter design had caught up a bit, grubbily specious claims were invented to ‘explain’ the Zero’s remarkable design and performance, for example Howard Hughes claimed post-war that Mitsubishi had copied his H-1 racer, and Eugene Wilson (president of Chance-Vought) claimed they had copied Vought’s own (mediocre) V-143 fighter. It is bizarre that industrialists should resort to lying about an enemy aircraft (‘we designed it really!’) in a war already won but does demonstrate the absolute superiority that the Zero demonstrated and just how infuriating that was to the grandees of the US Military-industrial complex. Praise indeed.
4. Man Machine Interface Focke Wulf Fw 190
Quite apart from being an excellent aircraft with several radical features, the Fw 190 heralded a revolution in what today would be called ‘ergonomics’ but in 1941 was basically an unknown concept. Today the concept of HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick) is well-known and is generally considered to have been pioneered by the F-16. However the 190 sported a system that delivered the HOTAS concept some thirty years earlier. Known as the Kommandogerat, it was a remarkable device that automatically controlled fuel flow, fuel mixture, propellor pitch and ignition timing. It also activated the supercharger at the correct altitude – all the pilot had to do was move the throttle lever. His other hand was on the control column, where all the armament controls were situated, allowing his full awareness to be directed to combat. This situational awareness was further enhanced by the bubble hood (from which the view as described by a contemporary RAF report ‘is the best that has yet been seen’). When one considers that on its debut the Fw 190 was superior in every performance parameter except turn rate to its closest rival, the Spitfire V, yet also gave its pilots a tactical edge due to reduced workload, it is no wonder that its very existence sent British designers into a frenzy of activity to try and regain ascendancy. The Spitfire and other fighters later achieved parity but the Fw 190 remained a dangerous opponent, and like the F-16, saw its main role shift to a greater emphasis on the fighter bomber role. An aircraft that defined the state of the art, the Fw 190 could be the first truly modern fighter.
3. My Little Pony North American P-51 Mustang
Because everyone’s been going on about how incredibly fantastic the Mustang for years and years it tends to distract attention from what a truly remarkable aircraft it was. It is worth remembering that it shouldn’t have existed at all and came about solely because North American didn’t particularly want to build P-40s for the British. Even then, it would have remained a competent but hardly spectacular improvement on the Curtiss fighter had not some bright spark suggested fitting a Merlin engine in it (curiously this step was taken independently and near simultaneously by North American in the US and Rolls-Royce in the UK). Even then, many pilots were initially less than impressed, citing the finer flying characteristics of the Spitfire and the better manufacturing quality of the P-47. But the Mustang was at least as good a fighter as either and could fly to Berlin and back. “When I saw those Mustangs over Berlin, I knew that the war was lost” said Herman Goering and he was right. Whether or not it was the best fighter of the war, the Mustang invariably remains the standard against which other hopefuls are judged.
2. Myth-maker Supermarine Spitfire
Today if you ask people what a ‘spitfire’ is, virtually everyone (in the UK at least) will say ‘an aeroplane’. It is extremely unlikely that anyone would say ‘a person with a fierce temper’ despite the slightly tedious accuracy they would be demonstrating if they did. This is the enduring legacy of the Spitfire, it has become the definition of the word originally used to name it: its success has changed language. There is only one other aircraft I can think of that has done this and that was Concorde (which is the French spelling of that word anyway). In a similar fashion the Spitfire also changed history, not in the conventional sense that it was important within history (though of course this is also the case), but that the legend of what happened gives it the starring role when reality saw it, (at its finest hour) performing as the supporting player. But who cares? The story is better this way, the dumpy Hurricane relegated to being championed by boring aviation geeks while the eternally handsome Spitfire swans about oozing the sex appeal that any self-respecting fighter aircraft should have. Just look at it. What were they thinking? Legend has it that RJ Mitchell said of the wings “I don’t give a bugger whether it’s elliptical or not, so long as it covers the guns”, but every other fighter covered its guns pretty effectively without cladding them in a difficult-to-manufacture but aesthetically lovely shape so I suspect he was lying. Added to this is the fact that the Spitfire is the only British fighter to be in production for the duration of the war and comfortably remained as one of the top five or so fighters worldwide throughout that time. The Spitfire may also have achieved the highest speed ever attained by a piston driven aircraft, which is pretty exciting. But the Spitfire doesn’t need facts – its claim to being a contender for the best fighter of the war has nothing to do with tawdry reality and everything to do with the myth. The Spitfire has become its own legend (If I hear the word ‘legend’ used in connection with the Spitfire again, I’m docking your pocket money, Ed.)
1. The Harbinger: Messerschmitt Me 262
There was quite a lot wrong with the Me 262 when it was committed to action but most of this was due to the exigencies of the time and had nothing to do with the astounding technological advance it represented when it was unleashed on an unsuspecting world in the spring of 1944. The obvious advantage of its new powerplant was velocity. Once airborne, no other aircraft could catch the speedy Messerschmitt, not even the Allies’ jet, the Meteor, whose performance was decidedly pedestrian by comparison. But it was not solely its jet engines that made the 262 so formidable, its firepower, epitomised for bomber destruction, was particularly heavy consisting of four 30-mm cannon firing explosive rounds at an extremely high rate. The 262 was also in some senses a remarkably practical aircraft for the not-particularly-advantageous situation into which it was introduced. It could be fuelled by a much lesser quality of fuel than its piston-engined brethren so there was more chance of being able to operate it in oil-starved Germany, furthermore a surprisingly large amount of the airframe was made of wood rather than ever more scarce aluminium and steel. Scarcity of steel was the main cause of its major problem – the engines were notoriously short-lived. The Jumo 004 jet engine was not actually a bad design but steel of sufficiently high quality was no longer available for the turbines. It is also worth remembering that these engines, as well as the airframe, were built by slaves so it is hardly surprising that build quality was not that great, in fact it’s remarkable that it worked at all. But even with these niggles the 262 reigns supreme as an incredible technological last-gasp at the end of a war already lost. Its very existence heralded a new age in fighter design of which, in 1945, it was the sole example, it was as if it had popped up from the future to astound and astonish. There is evidence that it may have even broken the sound barrier. The Messerschmitt 262 was in a class of its own. Not bad for an aircraft that was supposed to be a bomber.
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Okay I know you won’t like this but I do think the hurricane was a better fighter than the P39 and of course the hurricane was the winner of the battle of Britain only later for reasons best known the British government they said the spitfire won the battle . Also the only reason the ME 109 was still be built was that every fighter and bomber built they built Hitler demanded it be a dive bomber that is why they were still building HE111s in 1945 useless aircraft
Yes, I agree with you that the Hurricanes need more recognition, especially if the best RAF ace of the Battle of Britain, the leg less Douglas Bader, flew the type.
The Spitfire took on the BF 109s while the Hurricane took out the slower bombers.If the Hurricanes went up against the ME109s, they would be toast.
Actually, the Hurricane was sturdier than the Spitfire, and because the Browning guns on the wings were closer together compared with the Spitfire, that gave the Hurricane more concentration of bullets in the “cone of fire.” The strategy of dogfighting in the Battle of Britain wasn’t really the “Spits taking on the fighters and the Hurricanes take on the bombers,” but instead, ALL pilots were to concentrate more on shooting down the bombers since they were the ones were wrecking havoc on the airfields, factories, and cities.
What is an Me-109? Is that layman-pretending-to-be-an-expert-speak for the Messerschmitt Bf 109?
No Me-109 is one of many universally accepted designations for the same aircraft, the Messerschmitt (Me) Bf 109 (109) and a nomenclature by which you will readily find it readily identified….. in Germany.
The Focke Wulf 190 is my favourite although a lot of pilots turned off the Kommandogerat, finding it intrusive. But you are right – the considerations given to the pilot were outstanding and detractors doggedly compare say the 190 A-8 with the Spitfire XIV ignoring the Dora. I am currently writing about the 190 in a novel. I researched it by flying one in warthunder.com which is the best I could do besides reading a lot of works manuals.
The Hurricane was a great aircraft but the P-39 was faster, had a better rate of climb, was better armed, better made and more manoeuvrable than the Hurricane. It also benefited from a Russian delegation visiting the Bell factory and discussing what they wanted with the designers. Sure the Hurricane had better altitude performance but, on the Eastern front at least, that was fairly of academic interest. Although he definitely wasn’t on the Eastern front, Chuck Yeager said, “I had about 500 hours in the P-39, and thought it was about the best airplane I ever flew.”
Manufacture of the He 111 ceased in September 1944 and it was not capable of dive bombing, nor was the Bf 109. Talking of which, it wasn’t just Hitler who was obsessed with dive bombing – the specification that resulted in the Avro Manchester and Handley-Page Halifax originally demanded that the aircraft be capable of dive bombing. Luckily for all concerned (on the Allied side anyway) this requirement was quickly dropped.
Well I never knew that someone in the British war office was also obsessed with dive bombing that would be interesting trying to do dive bombing in a Halifax but I guess we can all blame the Stuka for that and yes I guess the Hurricane had its day as fighter by 1941 .
I would have included the Hawker Tempest on this list.
The Curtiss P-40 WarHawk should be in the top 3 being the only plane used in frontline service from beginning to end of the war. It was the allied fighter work horse used by over 25 nations and was seen in the sky over every theater of conflict serving in military use until 1958.
And as my favorite plane of all time after I win the lottery I’m going to have Boeing build me a couple to use as a daily commuter. Good list though. Nice seeing the Airacobra up there.
Agreed the Hawker Tempest was better than any of the prop entries above even if its very best version was just too late for the war. After all it was the basis of the Sea Fury which itself was voted on this forum as equal best prop fighter of all time. In tests even the earlier versions was seen to be more capable than an FW190 and really there is no comparison between it and a P39 which was quite significantly not used in the most competitive theatres for a good reason. Also significant that its offspring were chosen in preference to the Spitfire’s offspring post war as great as the Spit was in its time.
… yes I was also thinking of the Tempest. The Mosquito was a multi-role masterpiece and better than many fighters.
The Me-262’s performance parked at the air field was not very good.
You can’t win a war if you spend 80% of the time sitting around waiting for fuel. 😉
F4U Corsair? P-38 Lightning? The Fiat G.55 made this list. Why not the F4U and the P-38? And the razorback Mustang shown is a B/C model. The D model built the Mustang’s reputation.
Hi,
The answers to your valid query are in the introduction.
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HK
I see no reasons why not to put the G.55 on this list since it was agile enough to carry a torpedo, and it could match a P-51 Mustang in a dogfight.
A decent list as far as these things go. I think you’re a bit unfair on the Allison-engined Mustangs, which were the best low-level fighter-reconnaissance aircraft of the war, bar none (P-39 included).
the Allison Mustangs were expected to be dive bombers too! Low level reconnaissance doesnt win a war !
Hitler had some nutty ideas, but at least there was the germ of truth in most of them, Churchill was far worse for strategy – apart from set Europe ablaze- and luckily Roosevelt stayed out of the plane stuff only being interested in the Navy and he pushed for the Independence carrier conversions.
They weren’t “expected” to be, they were.
Check out the A-36 Apache.
Spitfire the number 2 must be a joke but it was dubbed Myth-maker, fair enough …
The Spitfire was in constant development throughout the war and was flying with the RAF until1955. The late mark units were absolute beasts. It is an interesting excercise to compare the beloved P51D with the MkXIV Spit as both of these were introduced at roughly the same time. Other than “range”, the Spit leaves the P51 in the starting blocks. A thoroughbread fighter versus a competent escort plane.
Spitfire didn’t even win a battle, the Grumman F6F ‘Hellcat’ on the other hand has won the WAR in the PACIFIC !!!!!
You may say the F6F is better than the Spitfire, yet one of the Spitfire’s variants, the Seafire proved just as effective in the Pacific as the F6F. You also said the Spitfire never won a battle. Yeah, forget the Battle of Britain. I know only a third of RAF Fighter Command was made up of Spitfires at the time, – the rest being Hurricanes – but without each other, they couldn’t have won the battle. During the Siege of Malta, the RAF was unsuccessful in fighting the Luftwaffe until the Spitfires arrived. (Oh, and don’t forget that during the war in the air over England, the RAF had young college-age pilots with few flying hours pitted against Luftwaffe pilots who’ve had experience in the Spanish Civil War.)
Really.? Seafire as effective in the pacific as Hellcat? is this a joke? Oh yes i almost forget it was Seafire that decimated japs Zero’s at Mariana Turkey shoot.
Seafires role in the pacific was completely insignificant in comparison. As a matter of fact, barring the BoB, Spitfire role in Ww2 is highly exaggerated. But there is a general tendency in Britain, İf you are a true Brit, you must worship Spit and RR Merlin. The reality is that Me109 killed more Spitfires in Battle of Britain than it lost. Luftwaffe produced its greatest aces in Bob. Gallant, Mölders and Wick together scored 100 kills…
First off, the Seafire had a better climb rate and acceleration than F6F and Seafire pilots saw much less combat and experience. And secondly, Dowding wanted ALL RAF pilots to focus more on shooting down bombers and less on fighters.
I know this is sacrilege but I really have to question just how good a fighter the Zero was. People have been using the Zero as example number one of the “racism of the West” since WWII itself, so much so that to say something negative about the Japanese carrier plane one feels at risk of being labeled racist just for suggesting it. And it’s these “intellectual shibboleths” I just love going after.
Every great weapon needs to be well balanced: from a simple sword with consideration for pommel and blade through to the battle tank, where it’s armor for defense, gun-generated muzzle energy in attack, and speed over terrain for mobility all must be equally harmonized in order to produce a war winner.
This is where the Zero runs into trouble. Yes, it had terrific range (a low HP engine will allow for that) and unmatched climb and maneuverability (due to oversized control surfaces and super light weight design); but that light weight came by sacrificing–and by this I mean completely discounting–defense. Having to shave so much weight off an aircraft so that it can perform that well for such low HP Mitsubishi discarded any kind of armor plating to protect the pilot and critical systems, dumped the crucial self-sealing fuel tanks, whittled frame structure to a minimum and even went so far as to have many of its control surfaces made out of fabric!
In the end they had a fighter with outstanding characteristic but with a glass jaw so fragile that a single 50 caliber incendiary round could turn the plane into a ball of fire in seconds. Of course that round would have to find a fuel tank–but no problem, long rang aircraft held fuel throughout the wing and fuselage: hit the plane and you have an excellent chance of hitting one of its many tanks.
And what are the real-world implications of foregoing defensive systems altogether in a combat aircraft? No matter how good a pilot you have the potential to become, your first time out you’ll make every mistake in the book. This includes not keeping track of you adversary. And with some extremely high (though greatly disputed) percentage of fighter pilots shot down without ever seeing their attacker, when a single bullet does the trick, you’re cooked. Even the greatest pilot in the world will occasionally catch a bullet in a dogfight from some aircraft or another–friend of foe. A combat aircraft has to allow for some capacity to absorb damage. The Zero did not.
What was the result? Although I could never find a complete statistic on fighter-to-fighter combat loss prior to the second generation American fighters coming on line, the engagements I’ve read about (and there have been many, many) have rarely come out with the Japanese fighter pilots flying away with a clear victory. And this despite being chosen as amongst the one-in-a-million uber-elite of the Japanese fighting man and supposedly being better trained and more experienced at the beginning of the war than his American counterpart.
So what gives? The only characteristic that the Hellcat can claim over the Zero is a slight advantage in speed in the dive and yet the Hellcat seems to have proven at least the match of the Zero in actual air combat even when flown by lesser pilots! I have to believe, perhaps because of difficulty in measuring a plane’s “robustness”–its spar spacing, thickness gauge, design configuration–that people overlook it when the HP, weight, climb-dive, turn rate are all so easily measurable and verifiable. These later stats are also a lot sexier than getting inside the head of a man with a pocket protector.
So just how good can a plane be considered that abandons its pilot at the point of his supreme vulnerability?
Sorry, I meant Wildcat, not Hellcat there at the end.
ME262? No. The Jug, P-47 Thunderbolt, in its late-war hot-rodded one-off configurations, could fly faster, climb harder and outmaneuver the ME262, with a piston engine and four Ma Deuces with full belts. That was it’s penultimate form, in everyday guise earlier in the war, it would sweep every prop plane the Axis had from the skies, and then come back to the airfield for a load of bombs to drop on the Nazi bastards, one wing and half a prop shot off. It’s only weakness was range.
I see your point, but the Bf 109K was better than the Jug which is why it’s not on this list. This person should’ve rated this list by comparing how they would’ve fared against each other and not just how advanced they were.
Wow, great article and good replies. I was disappointed that the F4U did not make the top ten. In some of the reading I did on it I understood that it had the best kill to loss ratio of 11 to 1. Like the P47 it was a true work horse as both a fighter and bomber. Granted, it had a long nose, making it hard to fly off and land on a carrier but the Japanese hated it, calling it “whispering death”. The F4U was such a valued platform it was still being manufactured until 1952. On the other hand, while the ME262 had many innovative qualities, in came into the War too late to effect the outcome. It seems the top ten fighters should have been in service long enough to have affected the outcome
I liked one of the previous commentators point about the Zero. It had great maneuvering qualities but at an unacceptable cost, that of not keeping the pilot alive when hit. It was unfortunate that Gen. Clair Chenault’s (sp) observations of the Zero got shelved so American pilots flew into a buzz saw for awhile but a Navy Wildcat pilot figured out how to fight against the Zero and the odds began to shift after about six month into the War. Durability and fighting techniques turned the tide against the Zero and Japanese failure to pull their Aces from the fight and turn them into instructors.
Nice forum, keep up the good work!
, making it hard to fly off and land on a carrier but the Japanese hated it, calling it “whispering death”. The F4U wa
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Clarification: the F4U was in fact, the ‘Whistling Death”…the British Beaufighter was the ‘whispering death”( down to quiet Bristol Hercules sleeve-valve engines)
Like everything else in the world, everyone has their own opinion. But I would rank them on their ability to down EA WO losing as many, or more planes than you shot down.
Under that condition half of those planes were losers. I do not know about the Yak for sure, but the Zero, Spit, Fiat and 262 were all losers and do not belong in that list! I have heard rumors that they lost 28,000 out of the 30000 Yaks they built during the war.
On the other hand the P-38 does and is potentially the best plane of the bunch. ( If you had to pick one to fight in knowing what we know now, or what a few knew way back then?)
It all depends on the criteria used. Like the fact that the USN could not win a spitball fight at first, until they changed the tactics to those in use by the Germans, IE, Zoom and Boom! Any plane built to turn and burn, did just that, burn all the way to the ground.
And to think that not even the La-5/7 made this list! Ivan Kozhedub was the best Allied fighter ace of the war as well as awarded Hero of the Soviet Union three times. He shot down an Me-262 with his La-5 and two more P-51s in the Korean War. I also know of another Hero of the Soviet Union that flew the Russian aircraft also who shot down eight Stukas over Kursk – the highest number of planes shot down in a single sorty by a single pilot. But he got killed in the process.
On October 24, 1944, David McCampbell shot down nine Japanese planes in a single sortie while fighting over Leyte Gulf. He probably got two more, but they couldn’t be confirmed. He was flying in a Hellcat.
The Soviet Storm documentary series lied to me!
The record of the P38 in Europe was truly pathetic.
True.
Finding a forum where the P39 makes a 10-best list is indeed a sign of some people who think laterally, at the very least. So does the assertion of superiority vs it’s German opponents. OK, some Soviets got a bag of kills on it, flying at low level..allegedly, as reliable as Red AF claims were, I would not personally be an expert on.
But, Finnish pilots got to ace status on some forgettable hand-me-down crates as well…Ski-equipped Gladiators..Morane Saulniers…Brewster Buffalos…Fokker XXIs…the Finns in 1939/41 were kind of like the Israelis in 1948…they would buy or accept any pile of crap they could dust off, and somehow go out and do combat with it ans hold their own or better.
Point is,none of that made any of the planes on that list great planes.
Re the P39…I follow and understand the line of reasoning, re it’s importance and claimed success on Eastern Front.. . Hmmm.
The Fiat G55, well, it’s interesting, a fellow over here Guido Zucholi maintains a flyable one in his private Darwin warbirds collection, along with a CAC Boomerang , I don’t know much about it individually as ’55 is a more obscure plane than most Italian RA fighters, it’s partner the Mc 202/205 series are much better known, and have a similar genesis. The Italians grafted the German DB engines onto the Mc200 to produce the 202/205, and likewise, meanwhile, Fiat did same onto the mediocre Fiat G50 Freccia to get the G55.
Which leads me to my breeze shoot.
If the Fiat G55…why instead of the 202/205?
See, the Saetta Mc200 was a better plane than the Fiat G50 was, all day long.
If the Macchi radial-engined parent is better than the Fiat radial engined parent…might one not expect the inline engined offspring (using same engines) to be at least the equal of it’s Fiat cousin?
Re the Mc202/205. I used to have the old Squadron book for the type, and it contained a caption that some allied fighter pilots regarded them as more dangerous than Me109s-it had about same overall performance (same engines) whilst being far more aerobatic.
Of course, Italian fighter pilots were known for wild aerobatics in combat.German ones not so much, for that kind of fooling around.
Pzl p11c and p37 łoś. First fight with german’s bf 109. Polish 303 Was tej best in Batel of Great Britan. More pilot figh in 1939 septenber on pzl p11c.
Why, oh, why must the Zero be on lists like these all the time? I mean the Zero was no doubt a great fighter plane, but the Nakajima Frank was probably the best Japnese fighter plane of the war. It’s about quality, not quantity. It could outmaneuver the Mustang, Thunderbolt, Corsair, and just about all Allied fighter planes of the Pacific at high altitudes. Despite this, it came too little, too late to make a difference in the war, and experienced pilots were beginning to get scarce leaving the JAAF with ‘green kids’. Because of this, you may say it shouldn’t be on this list, but why should the Me 262? It suffered the same problems like many late Axis fighters.
Wait, why did I say “at high altitudes?” The one weaknes of the Ki-84 was its low service ceiling. But it had a good climb rate.
If you set the benchmark standard against which all other contenders are judged, then you are the best, period.
The P-51 is number one, not because of the hype, but because it actually is number one.
NAA broke the mold for piston engine aircraft when they built that plane.
The ME262 was only faster than the Meteor because of the Welland engines the British used on the F1. The British jet engines were far superior to anything the Germans had.They actually worked for a start, didn’t catch fire and didn’t need rebuilding every few hours or so. Once the Derwent engine was installed in the Meteor it became much faster than the 262. In November 1945, a Meteor broke the world speed record at 606mph. In January 1946 it went even faster.
It doesnt make any difference mate and doesnt change the fact that 262 was the first operational jet Fighter in history. Meteor was faster than 262? lol after the war was over. German axial flow Jumo004 jet engines were a whole decade ahead of anything the British had, Whittle ‘s centrifugal jets looked pretty tragic in comparison. With regard to reliability and endurance, you are obviously not familiar with the concept which is called’ wartime shortage of materials ‘while the allias enjoyed almost an unlimited access to high quality materials Germans had to improvise. Before the end of 1944, German Ball bearing production came to a standstill.1000 ME 262 never saw combat.
Their jet engines Jumo004 and the late BMW 003 presented the future Whittles engines were outdated before the end of the war.
Just for the record, the Meteor achieved full frontline squadron service 6 weeks before the 262 which was still causing problems. Your assertion that wartime shortages affected the German production is only partially true. In fact the British (at Cambridge and Manchester universities) had done very valuable research into metallurgy in the interwar period which stood them in good stead. This was the reason that British jets were not allowed to overfly German held lands because they didn’t want their secrets falling into nazi hands. They would hardly have done this if their engines were inferior. Also, in November 1945, a Derwent powered Meteor achieved a world record 606 mph. This is a full 70mph faster than the 262. It went even faster in January 1946.
The rest of what you say is also fiction. British engines like the Derwent, Goblin, Nene etc. continued to power jets right into the sixties. Many are still flying today. Tell me one German engine that did the same? You can’t because there wasn’t one.
The British did have axial flow engines during WW2. They had the Metrovick F2. However, they, unlike the Germans, realised that more research was needed and it didn’t fly until later (it was of course Griffiths who laid down the basic axial flow principles in his 1926 book).
All the above is freely available in history books and on the internet. I suggest Marcel that you take some time to read up on this subject before you peddle your Anglophobic rants. You sound just like Barracuda and Wilbur Finnegan off Youtube.
Top ten best monoplane fighters of WW2 (in no particular order):
1. P-51D
2. Spitfire Mk. XIV
3. P-47D
4. Tempest Mk. VI
5. La-5/7
6. Ta 152 (Fw 190)
7. Bf 109K
8. Ki-84
9. Ki-61
10. Fiat G.55
Meant Fw 190D.
Sorry, I meant best single-engine fighters.
It doesnt make any difference mate and doesnt change the fact that 262 was the first operational jet Fighter in history. Meteor was faster than 262? lol after the war was over. German axial flow Jumo004 jet engines were a whole decade ahead of anything the British had, Whittle ‘s centrifugal jets looked pretty tragic in comparison. With regard to reliability and endurance, you are obviously not familiar with the concept which is called’ wartime shortage of materials ‘while the allias enjoyed almost an unlimited access to high quality materials Germans had to improvise. Before the end of 1944, German Ball bearing production came to a standstill.1000 ME 262 never saw combat.
Their jet engines Jumo004 and the late BMW 003 presented the future Whittles engines were outdated before the end of the war.
Tell it to the US pilots who faced Russian MiG-15s in Korea. The MiG-15 was powered by a scaled-up Russian copy of the Rolls-Royce Nene, a Whittle-type centrifugal-flow engine designed in 1944. The British Labour government obligingly sold 40 Nene engines to an incredulous Joe Stalin in the post-WW2 years. The Nene produced 5,000 pounds of thrust, versus the 2,000 pounds of the Me-262’s Jumo 004.
FW-190, from D version were superior to the P-51 mustang in all aspects, so must stay in 2nd position.
Either, far superior to the Spitfire models produced during the War.
Most experts wouldn’t agree with you. Compare the specs. with the Spitfire mk14. Probably the best piston engined interceptor of the war.
I have to disagree about the last part about the ME-262 being designed as a bomber. Out wasn’t, that was the AR-234. The 262 was supposed to be a fighter/interceptor to shoot down all the bombers coming their way. But ‘you know who’ wanted to put bombs on them. This made them heavier to the point that other fighters could catch up to them. Thereby ruining its chances to do anything to turn the tide of war. Which ultimately worked out for us.
I would like to point out here that the Gloster Meteor technically beat the Messerschmitt Me-262 into service by at least a week (Meteor declared operational 27th July 1944, 262 wasn’t operational until August ’44).
However, there was an aerial combat whilst the first Me-262 unit was working up (on the 26th July) in which an aircraft was either damaged or destroyed, so I think it does hold the record for the first aerial victory.
On the other hand, the Me-262 was withdrawn from service by 1951, whilst the Meteor soldiered on until 1970.
On the P-39: That account of it’s development is mythical. There were numerous problems with the B-5 turbocharger and its installation in the small airframe, and NACA condemned it as poorly designed. Apart from high exterior drag, they considered that the air inlet was inadequate and the intercooler only had 1/2 to 1/4 of the required heat exchange.
Both Bell and the USAAC were eager to have it removed, the USAAC because they needed a modern fighter as soon as possible, Bell because it urgently needed to sell some aircraft. Larry Bell wrote that “a million and one” problems had been eliminated by removing the turbo. The hope that was by removing the turbo, which allowed for redesign of the troublesome cooling installation and drag-reducing clean up, the result would be a lighter aircraft with less drag, and better, 400+ mph, performance at low altitude.
The best account of the P-39/63 family that I have seen is Birch Matthews’ “COBRA!”. Highly recommend the book, but not sure that it is till in available.
No twin engines? Beaufighter, mosquito, lightning, whirlwind? Also the typhoon/tempest? And the simple, rugged,reliable warhawk. The beaus and mossies,fast agressive and long ranged. Whirlwind a flying shotgun.
No P-47? Say no more.