Weapons, equipment & military technology - Axis or Allies better overall?

[Demon_Llama]

Originally Posted by Gixxer86g

Sorry,I love German fighters,but the prize goes to the US.P-51,P-47,P-38,F6F,F4-U.

I'd take a Hawker Tempest over any of them . Unless I have to take off from an aircraft carrier. I suspect a number of people would say the same thing about the Spitfire as well. That's not to say that the US didn't have fine aircraft, but I don't think they had a monopoly.

[ELLE]

Originally Posted by Gixxer86g

So?

He means that if it was not for the British engines,the American fighter was never a great aircraft.It was at british expense.

[Dibble201Bty]

Originally Posted by RichardS

I was thinking the Vampire was fairly later than the period we were talking about (45-48).

The vampire was up and flying in September 1943 and the reason for the delay in coming into production (April 1945) was because of using the other engine to bale out the XP-80 project. which culminated in the P-80 and which started being produced in August 1945.

Paul

[Dibble201Bty]

Originally Posted by ELLE

He means that if it was not for the British engines,the American fighter was never a great aircraft.It was at british expense.

One thing the US was good at was airframe design. and the ability to Knock out the Packard version of the R.R Merlin engine in huge quantities and which was not at the British expense.

And I would agree with the Demon Llama, about the tempest, but in a dogfight I would put my money on the Mk14 Spitfire to top the lot.

Paul

[Johnny_BoomBoom]

Originally Posted by AdrianE

But the P51 only became a great machine when the airframe was married to a UK engine making it the greatest example of UK-US cooperation.

Interesting that the P-51 came from a requirement by the RAF....initially wanting P-40s......only to be told "we can do something better".....by NA. The son of German immigrants then went on to design a plane for the RAF.....which finally mated with the Rolls Royce Merlin did become one of thr best fighters of WWII......amazing the results you get when you get different nationalities working together!!!

[DeltaOne]

Best overall equipment during the war??? Hmm - It really depends on the time period. Early on I would give it to the allies. It then switched to axis as Germany ramped up production of it's medium and heavy tanks. The 88mm gun was the best in the war for me. The it switched back to allies who won out over their enemies. The A-bomb was the ULTIMATE weapon!!!

[Gixxer86g]

Originally Posted by ELLE

He means that if it was not for the British engines,the American fighter was never a great aircraft.It was at british expense.

I know what he meant.What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter.

[panther3485]

Originally Posted by Gixxer86g

I know what he meant.What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter.

Precisely. It still became an outstanding fighter no matter who contributed what to its makeup, or however it all came together. Outstanding is outstanding.

It is also worth mentioning on this general theme, that the Americans built vast numbers of RR Merlin engines (Packard) and had themselves made some modifications and improvements to the engine, from which the British benefitted. I see this as one of the best examples of technical co-operation between allies.

[lodestar]

Re the air war:
I posted the following recently under a thread started entitled
"Which World War Did Germany have most chance of winning?" I hope it's useful in getting that aspect into perspective

"Air War WWII

Germany was attritioned to defeat in the air in World War Two by massive allied and Soviet aerial forces which eventually simply swamped the Luftwaffe by weight of numbers and resources.

Britain alone was out-producing the Germans in term of aircraft as early as 1940 and once the US came in with it’s massive (unassailable) production capacity, huge training and deployment program and excellent aircraft types such as the P51 and P47 the Germany’s chances of attaining air parity, yet alone superiority or supremacy was virtually zero.

Though they produced some very good (Me 262, Me 109, FW 190) and versatile (Ju 88, Me 110) aircraft they were simply never in the numbers needed. Nor could they produce trained pilots at the rate the allies could due to the crushing demands and remorseless losses the Luftwaffe endured once the Germans invaded the USSR and the allied strategic bombing campaign got into full swing.

In addition they lacked the depth and breadth of command, training, logistical and infrastructure requirements to match the allies. The war in Russia was always priority and there was no way Hitler was going to change that.

Fat Hermann was an another liability the Luftwaffe laboured under but even with a sharper hand in control, matching the allies was just beyond their capacities.

Interestingly, contrary to much ‘if only’ speculation the German decision not to build a fleet of heavy four-engined bombers to wage a strategic bombing campaign against the British Isles or Soviet industry beyond the Urals was probably a wise one.
Allied defences were formidable and would have improved as required, results were not guaranteed as is witnessed by the continuing debate about the effectiveness of the massive allied bombing campaign against German civilian morale (Terror Bombing) and industry (Pinpoint Bombing) 1942-45). Above all allied resources were simply vast, the US industrial base essentially unassailable and the Luftwafe fighting both offensively and defensively for so long and intense a period on so many fronts and sustaining such a steady level of attrition of planes and men that it was in many ways a shadow of it former self when it faced it’s ‘showdown’ with the USAAF long-range fighters in early-mid 1944.


Air War WWI
In contrast the aerial struggle in World War One was a fairly even, though see-sawing affair from start till nearly the end. On the Western Front Periods of German dominance or superiority alternated with periods when the Western Allies were in ascendancy.

There were of course no great strategic bombing campaigns in WWI, though both sides developed nascent strategic bombing practices.
The first great air war was linked directly to and was waged almost entirely over, the Western, Eastern and Italian fronts and was essentially a war of fighters, tactical bombers and reconnaissance planes.

I did discover a very interesting fact about aircraft production in both world wars while researching this piece.
Most WWII buffs are probably aware of the vast numbers of aircraft produced by the allies in the war and that their efforts far outstripped that of the Axis powers.
figures. My sources provide the following for aircraft produced 1939 - 45:
ALLIES
UK - 128,775
US - 272,000
USSR - 158,228
Total - 559,003

AXIS
Germany - 126,917 (incl occupied countries)
Italy - c.11,000
Japan - 60,422
Total - 198,339

Ratio: 2.8 to 1

So far I was okay with what I had read.
Then I compared production of the allies and central Powers in World War one”

ALLIES
France - 67,982
UK - 55,093
Italy - 20,000
US - 11,227
Total - 154302

CENTRAL POWERS
Germany - 45704
Austro- hungary 5431
Total - 51135

Ratio: 3 to 1

In short despite an much smaller contribution by the US in World War One US, the allies actually out produced the Central powers in WWI on an even bigger scale than WWII !

Why then did the Germans maintain such a strong aerial performance in WW I and achieve such good consistently results? For example the month of heaviest allied aircraft losses amazingly enough was Sept 1918 almost the war’s end!
post entitled

[panther3485]

Some interesting info there, lodestar.

As for your question, I think it is difficult to make a meaningful correlation between the two wars, as far as the use of air power goes.

[lodestar]

Originally Posted by panther3485

Some interesting info there, lodestar.

As for your question, I think it is difficult to make a meaningful correlation between the two wars, as far as the use of air power goes.

The answer is of course completely clear to the masterful and all-knowing lodestar (I never and I mean never cease to amaze myself, as I've said before: “I’m the biggest, loud-mouth, blow-hard, know-it-all in my workplace and local community and I love it!
‘How do you know all this stuff?’ is a question that is often asked of me.

Summing me up as a self-proclaimed big shot, smart-ass would not be too harsh a judgement.”

I carry myself importance about like massive banner, utterly convinced of my superiority. It has always been thus")

I partly explained the comparison in my classic post (well let's face it all of my posts are essentially classics of one sort or the other):

"Why were Western allied fighter ace scores so much higher in WW I than WW 2".


"As I said initially this ‘whole issue is off course bound up in the way WWI and WW2 ‘played out.’

In WWI the ‘Western Front’ was of course the ‘main event’ of the war so to speak. ............. it was where both sides deployed the great bulk of their air-forces for virtually the entire war.

The air activity over the Western Front was ongoing from early August 1914 to early November 1918. It began with only a few hundred aircraft on both sides in 1914 and grew to involve vast armadas of planes of several thousand by 1918.

Air combat grew in intensity, sophistication, scale and cost as the war dragged on.
With both sides committed to a ‘fight to the finish’ in the West, air forces supporting their armies also had no choice but to fight it out on a plane for plane basis if you will.

This was in the days before large-scale strategic bombing was developed, so the war over the front was characterised by fighter vs fighter and fighter vs recce/tactical bomber aircraft clashes.

In WW 2 by contrast their was no such situation as of course the Western Front had ceased to exist after late June 1940 with the fall of France.
Prior to June 1940 air activity had at any rate been very limited in the West during the ‘Phony War’ period (Sept ’39 – April ’40).

As in WWI the Germans in early WW2 had an air force inextricably linked to their army and fundamentally geared to fight at that point in close support of their armies objectives.
The period of intense air activity linked to land operations had lasted in the West for only six short weeks (10 May - 22 June).

The Battle of Britain was a totally improvised affair so far as the Luftwaffe was concerned with this ‘tactical’ air force trying to achieve a strategic objective.

Once it had failed to achieve its aim in the battle and the Hitler’s attention turned East the Germans left an skeleton air force in the West as the great bulk of the Luftwaffe went into the Soviet Union in support of the invasion of that country.

This campaign then of course became and remained ‘the main event’ for the rest of the war. It’s where the battles were fought and decided, Germany’s main armies crippled etc etc.

The air battles in the West then in the absence of the main elements of the Luftwaffe were basically, as several historians have pointed out, ‘holding actions’, firstly against the RAF’s fighter sweeps and later defending against the growing fleets of allied bombers and eventually long-range fighter escorts.

This holding campaign gradually consumed more and more of the German air-effort but it was in no way the same thing as the as the extended ‘full on’ main force vs main force clash that occurred from start to finish in WW1.
By the time a new Western Front opened in mid 1944 the German air force had been attritioned to near exhaustion over the preceding four years in the Soviet Union, the African/Mediterranean and of course by the losses defending against allied bomber fleets.
The allied advantage in the air by D-day was 20-1!

Had the western front somehow continued after June 1940 in a repeat of the titanic struggle of 14-18 with allied armies and air-forces locked in an extended toe- to-toe ‘drag-out fight, instead of the ‘non-event’ of mid 40-mid’44 the of course the allies might well have found their aces with scores much higher than which they actually achieved.

They certainly would not have had the luxury for example, of being able to pull experienced pilots ‘out of the line’ to train up novices and impart to them their experience, they simply would not have been able to have been spared from the main battle and of course would have had a far higher chance of being shot down than was actually the case.

Nuff Said
i conclude as always with a classic tagline:

“One must cross the threshold of greatness. Then and only then can one comprehend the true nature of the one called lodestar - for many the quest to cross that threshold becomes their life’s work.”
Regards lodestar