Imagine...

He knew that the 262 was vulnerable to attack on take off and landing so he organized Doras to fly cover for the jets. My point Jim was, read my post again, here it is


Air superiority means greater strength of aircraft in ability with experienced pilots than the enemy.

For example, 2 Me-262s with 4 Dora escorts and 4 Me-109Ks flown by experienced pilots would defeat 4 P-47s flown by average pilots. That's on the low end of significant numbers. Had the Luftwaffe done things right they would be met by 30 Me-109Ks armed with 30mm cannons. That's significant numbers.


A few points here Herroberst. First, the Germans had the numbers in early and mid 1943. They also had the veteran pilots fighting since the Spanish war. The green Jugs and veteran Spits took care of that.

The Finnegan Jug that I was talking about was in the sky at altitude not hovering over the airfields. It was the P-51s that liked to hover over the airfields waiting for them to return low on fuel. Galland got taken out after a pass at two B26s where he was run down from behind by the faster P-47 (shallow dive at altitude). The Jug pilot that shot him down has less than a year's combat experience and was flying a P-47 escorting the bombers. His name was James Finnegan with 50 FG in XIX Tactical air. Galland was out for the rest of the war and Galland wanted to know who shot him down so he traced the pilot down. They now correspond together.

To my knowledge, no ME-262 has ever destroyed a Jug in the air. In fact the only way they could is to catch them without seeing them. A Jug is far too manueverable and can recover from compressability.

See if the Jugs can't get to the airfields because they get destoyed before they cross the channel(What was it 2 or 4 Luftwaffe Aircraft interdicted the landings at Normandy? Priller?)


Jug got to the German airfield throughout the war. They were the only ones that had a chance against field level flak. As to your other point, I don't remember a Jug ever being shot down coming across the channel. I believe 2 planes did strafe a beach on D-Day but but they were both shot down.

I appreciate the lesson about the P-47 although I am curious how it would make out in a dogfight with a P-51. You don't see alot of P-47s racing these days were as you do see P-51s.

I stand by my statement, thank you for your observations and await your reply.
I don't think a P-47 would ever dogfight a Mustang. A P-47 didn't dominate by dogfighting. It was an interceptor and its role was to destroy enemy aircraft, not to dance with them. Considering the FW-190 may very well have actually been a better fighter than the Mustang, then I would guess the P-47 would win because it killed several 1000 FW-190s. I don't remember the exact number but the USAAF estimates of Jugs lost to enemy fighters was around 887 out of the 15,000+ Jugs developed. From what I am seeing in this book, none of the dogfighter faired that well with the FW-190, but the Spit was the best of them all.

As far as racing, you don't want a Jug for an air race. You need something that can turn around the pylons. That's why you see P-51s racing. They are like the Spitfire and are graceful machines than can manuever well.

A Jug is more like top fuel funny car. It could outrun any other car in a straight away. Force the race onto a drag strip and you better not be in a Formula 1 car or a NASCAR car or you are about to get left in the dirt.

If the Jug didn't want to engage he could simply fly away and there's nothing the mustang (or a spit) could do. They can't catch it in level flight, they can't even see it when it dives. It's untouchable to them so why dogfight them? That would be stupid. Put your self in a position to kill the enemy without him being able to kill you. That was the Jug's advantage as a fighter.

 

Jim, my discussion was about Luftwafe Air Superiority was hypothetical. You can't switch gears and quote me actuals when I was discussing Ifs??????????????

In Historical terms the Luftwaffe's losses at the Battle of Britain, failure to develop an operational 4 engine bomber force, and engineering confusion as to the practical direction of resources, pretty much ended the Germans chance at Air Superiority.

Compounded by the fact that they suffered from day and night raids as well as interception.

With your explanation you proved my point, the hypothetical point that the Jug as a ground attack aircraft would be reigned in if the Germans had Air Superiority. In historical terms by the time you are discussing they didn't even have Air Parity.

 

Jim, my discussion was about german Air Superiority which was a hypothetical. You can't switch gears and quote me actuals when I was discussing Ifs??????????????

In Historical terms the Germans losses at the Battle of Britain, failure to develop an operational 4 engine bomber force, and engineering confusion as to direction of resources pretty much ended their chance at Air Superiority.

Compounded by the fact that they suffered form day and night raids as well as interception.

With your explanation you proved my point, the hypothetical point that the Jug as a ground attack aircraft would be reigned in if the germans had Air superiority. In historical terms by the time you are discussing they didn't even have Air Parity.
Well maybe I am misunderstanding your hypothetical. To say that a nation with better planes and better pilots and more of both would keep the other from dominating, I certainly wouldn't disagree with that.

You see, I am not so sure the Spitfire was the best dogfighter other than with an experienced British pilot in it, there is and was no doubt to the Germans it was. Can a Mustang outperform a Spitfire if the pilots are equal? I can only conjecture having never flown either one (though, personally I wouldn't give a crap which one they gave me as long as it was mine!). On paper these planes were everybit the equal in that one dominates one area one dominates the other in another area.

But the pilot is 95% of it. That's what makes a comparison so difficult. So with all intents and purposes you simply call it a draw and begin to talk about the pilots. But what I do know is that I was reading over and over in books by the P-47 pilots how Jugs saved the lives of many young pilots from their mistakes. The Spitfire and the P-51 could not say that. You cannot overestimate survivability because surviving gives you a chance to gain experience.

I remember in Chuck Yeager's book that he was asked by a Lt Colonel when he was evaluating a Mig 15 (the North Korean defection Mig) on Okinawa why he didn't dogfight it with the Sabre chase plane as part of the evaluation. Chuck responded, the outcome of a dogfight depended more on a pilot's experience than a plane's performance. The Lt Colonel didn't believe him so he challenged him to a dogfight. So Yeager checks the Lt Colonel out in the Mig 15 and Yeager goes up in the Sabre. He waxes the crap out of the Lt Colonel staying glued to his tail. They then land and switch planes. Yeager does the same thing again with the Mig15.

When they land, the Lt Colonel said "wow, I didn't think the pilot mattered that much". Yeager responded "The pilot with the most experience is going to gonna whip your ass Colonel, no matter what you are flying. It's that simple".

There is little doubt the RAF had by and large more experience than the Americans. Not only did they start combat 2 years earlier but did not have a rotation system like the US where you got to go home when you completed 200 hours of combat time. So like Yeager said, it didn't matter much which one you fly in, its about the pilot. All things being equal, it becomes about the plane.


Interesting note whilst we are discussing Yeager. You know how the British are always throwing Hollywood in our faces (like Hollywood is some sort of pride to an American) about playing to our audience (ala U571, etc) by putting Americans in a role the British did first? Yeager talks about a British movie that came out after he had first broken the sound barrier. It was called "Breaking the Sound Barrier". He was sent to see the opening of it and it was a movie about the British first breaking the sound barrier in a Spitfire. Yeager having flown a Spitfire said that the Spitfire was a dog in a dive and never broke .75 Mach, even in a power dive. He said the pilot in the movie got into G-Lock (compressibility) at Mach 1 and somehow broke out by pushing the stick forward. He said doing that would have killed a pilot by corkscrewing him into the ground. After the movie he said "Where is Uncle Sam, we broke the sound barrier and I am the man who did it"? They got a chuckle out of it but said the audience left thinking it was a historical film and the movie was a hit.

Anyway I better cut it off our I will draw the wrath of the Kitty!