Best World War II Aircraft?

[Aggie08]

The T38 is quite a looker too.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I wish I had my camara, at the Valdosta Airport there was an F-4 sitting there and a Shootingstar.

[MP-Willow]

T-38, my science teacher in school did his training time in them, has some greand stories of getting to low, distraced and then going to mach one and ratteling the windows. He ended up flying B-52s

C-47s, what could they not do? wheels, skies, and floats I have to agree they were vital to the war, but what about the other transports? Ju-52, was like the C-47 used for everything and did everything well, but was to slow. A shame that Junkers could not improve it more.

C-141s are pritty. Sad they are retiered

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

C-141's have not retired yet. I saw them all the time when I was in Iraq and saw one at Rammstein AFB about 2 months ago.

[syscom3]

JU52's are nowhere near the same league as the C47.

While the C46 and C54 were both better aircraft in terms of payload, it was the C47 that could land it on unimproved dirt fields that were "airfields" in name only.

In the PTO/CBI, the C47's were indispensible, often meaning the difference between the allies on the offense, or on static defense.

In the ETO, I doubt that the Normandy invasion would have gone off as planned without the C47's carrying the paratroopers.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by syscom3

In the ETO, I doubt that the Normandy invasion would have gone off as planned without the C47's carrying the paratroopers.

Or towing gliders...

[Gnomey]

Agreed.

[syscom3]

One thing Ive learned from many different threads over the past year, is the "superiority" of an individual aircraft is always fleeting. An aircraft could be superior for a few months, then get superceded by either an axis or allied design.

But one thing where the allies were always superior, and the reason the allies won the war, was LOGISTICS!!

There was a book written a few years ago "Why The Allies Won". An argument was put forth that in the German military, the best and brightest went to command the field armies, which explains why they were such deadly opponants in battle. But when it came to the mundane occupations such as field engineering and logisitics, the allies put many of their best and brightest in those slots.

If you look at the campaigns in a macro sense, the firepower of both sides was about even. For example, the Tiger tank was vastly better than the Sherman, but the allies always managed to find enough Shermans to equalize the fight. Even if we were to say the Fw190 was the best fighter, the allies always managed to have enough P38/P47/P51/Spits in the air to offset it.

What determined the outcome in these campaigns was the allies simply managed to get more supplies to the troops up front. The Germans never seemed to win the battle of logistics.

Think about how different the war would have been if the allies didnt have LST's, DUKW's and 6X6 trucks.

[Bullockracing]

The C-47 was such a successful design, it was copied by the Russians and the Japanese

[Jabberwocky]

Originally Posted by Bullockracing

The C-47 was such a successful design, it was copied by the Russians and the Japanese

I wasn't copied, the design was accquired and built under licence by both the Russians (as the Li-2 with Shevestiv radials) and the Japanese (as the Showa L2D).

[Aggie08]

Originally Posted by syscom3

One thing Ive learned from many different threads over the past year, is the "superiority" of an individual aircraft is always fleeting. An aircraft could be superior for a few months, then get superceded by either an axis or allied design.

But one thing where the allies were always superior, and the reason the allies won the war, was LOGISTICS!!

There was a book written a few years ago "Why The Allies Won". An argument was put forth that in the German military, the best and brightest went to command the field armies, which explains why they were such deadly opponants in battle. But when it came to the mundane occupations such as field engineering and logisitics, the allies put many of their best and brightest in those slots.

If you look at the campaigns in a macro sense, the firepower of both sides was about even. For example, the Tiger tank was vastly better than the Sherman, but the allies always managed to find enough Shermans to equalize the fight. Even if we were to say the Fw190 was the best fighter, the allies always managed to have enough P38/P47/P51/Spits in the air to offset it.

What determined the outcome in these campaigns was the allies simply managed to get more supplies to the troops up front. The Germans never seemed to win the battle of logistics.

Think about how different the war would have been if the allies didnt have LST's, DUKW's and 6X6 trucks.

That's a good point. It's strange to see how many logistical mistakes were made by Germany. I've never seen it put like that.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

Originally Posted by FLYBOYJ

Or towing gliders...

actually they didn't really do as much glider towing as para dropping, i can't really speak much for the american glider campain but in the RAF they prefered to use heavy and medium bombers for glider towing, partly to free up the para aircraft and partly for the extra power(remembering the horsa is considderably larger than the puny american Wacos used, it was actually a design specification of the competition that the horsa won, she had to carry double the numer of troops as a Waco CG-4A Hadrian) either way the glider campaign could've gone ahead without the Dakota, although i agree that D-Day would've been a failure without it............

[davparlr]

Originally Posted by syscom3

One thing Ive learned from many different threads over the past year, is the "superiority" of an individual aircraft is always fleeting. An aircraft could be superior for a few months, then get superceded by either an axis or allied design.

But one thing where the allies were always superior, and the reason the allies won the war, was LOGISTICS!!

There was a book written a few years ago "Why The Allies Won". An argument was put forth that in the German military, the best and brightest went to command the field armies, which explains why they were such deadly opponants in battle. But when it came to the mundane occupations such as field engineering and logisitics, the allies put many of their best and brightest in those slots.

If you look at the campaigns in a macro sense, the firepower of both sides was about even. For example, the Tiger tank was vastly better than the Sherman, but the allies always managed to find enough Shermans to equalize the fight. Even if we were to say the Fw190 was the best fighter, the allies always managed to have enough P38/P47/P51/Spits in the air to offset it.

What determined the outcome in these campaigns was the allies simply managed to get more supplies to the troops up front. The Germans never seemed to win the battle of logistics.

Think about how different the war would have been if the allies didnt have LST's, DUKW's and 6X6 trucks.

I agree totally. The overpowering weapon that won the war was the American industrial machine and allied logistics. The Axis never stood a chance once America was geared up. Even if England and the Soviet Uninon had fallen, making allies out of those who hated you was not a sound practice (like the Soviet Union). I doubt that they could have motivated the Brits, French, Russians, et.al. to generate the applied effort to offset the American war machine and they could not have done it on their own (especially watching behind their backs at their subjugated population).

[delcyros]

This indeed is a good argument.
However, with or without the military deployment of US forces against axis in europe, Germany would have lost the war either.
It was the often underrated economy of the SU (which clearly hadn´t their best minds in the logistics department) and their military potential which broke the backbone of Germanys land & air forces. From 1941-1943, the russian front binded 70-85% of Germany land & air forces (depending on months). It was not possible for the vaunted Whermacht to achieve a strategic victory over the SU (with a notable exception in late 1941, when Stalin asked the rumanian ambassador in Moscow what conditions Hitler would want for an armistice), and I would even go so far and say it was beyond possibilities. However, the composite efforts done by all allieds contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. And as Syscom pointed out, logistic advances contributed more to this than we would expect.

[Bullockracing]

Roger that Jabberwocky, not sitting at home with my library... Thanks for the correct info. What was the codename for the Japanese model?