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The P-51D with the Merlins turned the tide in the air war. The Germans leapfrogged everything with the ME-262, and 163 but in too small numbers. Variants of the FW-190 including the FW-190D were arguably the best piston fighters of WWII, but also in too small numbers. Just like the Tigers, and Panthers. Too little too late. No fuel. No men.
To say the Mustang turned the tide of the war is stretching it. The German jets were undeveloped and fell out the sky a lot. The British Meteor jet was a complete new design of plane that worked. The FW 109 was good, but soon outdone by others. No one had a plane like the Hawker Tempest. Me262 pilots feared it.
If Germany had got the atomic bomb in time they might have changed the course of the war. Maybe get a cease fire and wouldn't be occupied by the allies.
Some thing the Germans even tested an atomic bomb as well but no hard evidence is there as of yet.
I wonder if Europe today would have the muslim extremist problem it does now if WW2 ended differently.
To say the Mustang turned the tide of the war is stretching it. The German jets were undeveloped and fell out the sky a lot. The British Meteor jet was a complete new design of plane that worked. The FW 109 was good, but soon outdone by others. No one had a plane like the Hawker Tempest. Me262 pilots feared it.
The later British planes were ground attack aircraft. Not air superiority fighters. The Meteor was irrelevant. The allies already had air supremacy. The Luftwaffe fought a losing battle with little resources.
The Fourteenth is still the Forgotten Army, it seems.
You should read up on Field Marshal Slim - brilliant general, probably one of the best of WWII.
His corps retreated in good order to India during the Japanese invasion of Burma, and he was put in charge of the Fourteenth with the objective of taking Burma back. This he did.
He turned his army into probably the best jungle fighters of WWII, routed several Japanese armies in set-piece battles, managed a logistics situation that would have made lesser men throw up their hands in disgust and in the process had his staff develop the first large-scale aerial supply system.
The retreat to the Chindwin river was the largest single IJA defeat of WWII.
To say the Mustang turned the tide of the war is stretching it. The German jets were undeveloped and fell out the sky a lot. The British Meteor jet was a complete new design of plane that worked. The FW 109 was good, but soon outdone by others. No one had a plane like the Hawker Tempest. Me262 pilots feared it.
I actually said the Mustang helped turn the tide of the AIR war because of bomber support. Not THE war. Again the Tempest, and Typhoon were more ground attack aircraft.
The later British planes were ground attack aircraft. Not air superiority fighters. The Meteor was irrelevant. The allies already had air supremacy. The Luftwaffe fought a losing battle with little resources.
The Tempest was not ground attack although it could undertake that role. It had exceptional low level speed for its time. Armed reccie was a role its performed well. The Meteor was very relevant, as it was the first in the next stage of aircraft - that actually worked.
I actually said the Mustang helped turn the tide of the AIR war because of bomber support. Not THE war. Again the Tempest, and Typhoon were more ground attack aircraft.
That didn't enter squadron service until 1944. So either the response would be air supremacy and being able to maintain day and night bombing didn't occur until after D-Day or the Mustang didn't do nothing until a British engine was installed okay .
While Tempest were chasing down V-1's the German jet pilots feared for their lives as the US Army Air Forces were increasingly putting bombers near their targets even if the fastest fighter in the air was German..
Germany also had voice radios in their tanks, which the allies didn't at first. This allowed the Germans to coordinate their tank movements and even strategy much better.
Once things got rolling, Allied tanks proved much easier to mass produce, especially Russiand and American tanks. So eventually they were able to overwhelm German tanks by sheer numbers, as well as aggressiveness. German tanks tended to be manufacturing "works of art", with many intricate parts needing very skilled machining to complete.
To take a small example, the German Tiger tank's speedometer had some 160 parts, with tiny precision bearings, carefully crafted magnetic channels, etc. The Russian KV1 had no speedo at all, just a green light on the instrument panel for "forward" and a red light for "backward". Similar savings in other areas allowed the KV1 to be produced by relatively unskilled labor, and it took less than half the man-hours to produce a KV1 than a Tiger.
The P-51D with the Merlins turned the tide in the air war.
The P-51 first enabled heavy bombers to fly from England to Berlin and other distant targets with fighter escort all the way. Later P-47s with drop tanks did it too. The P-47's large engine and huge turbocharger made it one of the fastest piston engine fighters (along with the P-51), especially at altitude. With self-sealing tanks and more armor than most fighters, it was larger and heavier than most other single-engine fighters, so often it couldn't hold a turn with enemy planes. It was built for the purpose of getting in quickly, destroying the enemy quickly with eight Browning .50-caliber machine guns, and getting out quickly, often by diving out of a fight and then pulling up to zoom back in with tremendous speed.
The P-47 was also one of the first airplanes (along with the P-38) to approach the speed of sound (in a full-power dive from very high altitude), close enough that airflow over certain curved parts of the plane actually did exceed Mach 1.
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The Germans leapfrogged everything with the ME-262, and 163 but in too small numbers.
Yep. And though the ME-262 was much faster than any plane it faced, its engines were primitive. It took a lot of coaxing and throttling to make them do something complicated such as change speed. Whereas if you just shoved the throttle forward in a piston-engine fighter like the P-51 and P-47, you got 2,000 horsepower right now.
Mustang and Thunderbolt pilots developed the habit of waiting around the Me-262's airfields during a raid, and jumping the 262 as it came in to land. The 262 couldn't start speeding up before it was destroyed.
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