Has anyone seen the August 2003 edition of Flight Jourmal?
In it, Corky Meyer was asked to pick the best fighter in both the European (ETO) and Pacific (PTO) Theaters. He elected to use the following criteria:
1) Must have been built in numbers of 10,000 or more and must have seen constant production improvement in combat capability
2) Must have been capable of 4 missions: a) fighter vs. fighter, b) air-to-ground, 3) bomber protection, and 4) Photorecon.
3) Must have been friendly to pilots with 200 hours of training.
4) Service record.
Based on the above criteria, he concluded the best ETO fighter was the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, and the best PTO fighter was the Grumman Hellcat.
I must say, he defended his choices very well with clear numbers and logic. He DID state that the overall winner may well have been the Russian Yak-1 / Yak-9 series of aircraft, but that the combat records of things like sorties, victories, losses, and bomb tonnage dropped were unavailable ... so he placed it 5th, just behind the North American Mustang.
If you haven't seen the article, you might be able to find it at
http://www.flightjournal.com . Check it out.
Corky was there at the time and flew most of the planes in question. The ones he didn't fly were clearly identified.
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