Most overated fighter

[The Basket]

I am not a fan of the 109 but it is a 1935 and earlier design so it can hardly be said that it didn't meet the requirements of a war it wasn't designed for four years later.

If it is designed as an point interceptor then you can't blame the 109 if it was limited as an escort fighter.

The 109 was designed for speed so big engine, small fuselage. Like a racing car.

You can blame the Luftwaffe for using the 109 wrongly and not replacing it with a more modern machine but the 109 in the 1930s was solid. It was a good cutting edge design.

There is over 5 years difference between the designs of the 109 and Mustang and that is a light year in design and actual combat experience. If the Mustang wasn't a better warplane than the 109 then the boys at NAA should have been fired!

Always loved the Fw 190 as a fine piece of engineering. Kurt must have sat down and built the best fighter he could. Clear canopy, heavy guns and solid rugged wide landing gear. Considered close to perfect and I ain't one to argue.

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by Marcel

Try Fokker G.I, not quite a miserable fighter. Maybe you mean which you cannot remember.

I mean that there is no particular reason to remember it, unless, of course, you happen are a Dutchman.

[Marcel]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

I mean that there is no particular reason to remember it, unless, of course, you happen are a Dutchman.

you're right. Too bad, only 23 were used by the dutch. But it was an interesting a/c though. It didn't have the disadvantage the the Bf110 had, being lack of manoeuvrability. LVA reports that it could "turn with the D.XXI', not a bad feat if you consider the D.XXI was considered very manoeuvrable itself. The LW should have made more use out of it.

[kool kitty89]

May have made a good night fighter too.

[renrich]

Good post Joe B especially your points about A6M. What a lot of this discussion really amounts to is "If you can't get to where the fight is, you don't really matter." When bi plane fighters were the vogue, in the early 30s and some of the fast twin engine monoplane bombers came out with more speed than the fighters tacticians said that the bomber needed no escorts. Then the designers came out with the Hurricane, BF and Spitfire which apparently were all meant to knock down that unescorted bomber. Long range was not a necessity for those fighters. The Japanese were really trying to create a long range escort and air superiority fighter for the distances in the Pacific and they succeeded admirably. We should have taken that example as a lesson and realised they would eventually build really good cars!

[JoeB]

Originally Posted by DerAdlerIstGelandet

I don't fit any of your description above and I think the P-51D is overated.

I didn't say better informed people didn't think the P-51 was overrated, I just said better informed people don't especially tend to overrate it themselves. I don't think you understood my point IOW, but anyway I don't see what's particularly about it either way.

'Overrated' is a product not only of the actual facts of a plane, but also how it's 'rated', but rated by whom?: everbody including people who've only ever read or watched on TV about one plane, people who seriously study the topic, or people somewhere in between, what audience? I'm saying let's consider people who are at least fairly well informed. Assuming so, I don't think those kind of people particularly overrate the P-51, themselves, as much as they tend to some other planes, like the Spitfire.

Joe

[parsifal]

Originally Posted by renrich

We should have taken that example as a lesson and realised they would eventually build really good cars!

LMAO when i reqad that richard. I take it your not a fan of the japanese "riceburners" then? Dont know what you call them in the US, but models like the Datsun 120Y and 180B are swimming to the surface for me

[Oreo]

Originally Posted by JoeB

I didn't say better informed people didn't think the P-51 was overrated, I just said better informed people don't especially tend to overrate it themselves. I don't think you understood my point IOW, but anyway I don't see what's particularly about it either way.

'Overrated' is a product not only of the actual facts of a plane, but also how it's 'rated', but rated by whom?: everbody including people who've only ever read or watched on TV about one plane, people who seriously study the topic, or people somewhere in between, what audience? I'm saying let's consider people who are at least fairly well informed. Assuming so, I don't think those kind of people particularly overrate the P-51, themselves, as much as they tend to some other planes, like the Spitfire.

Joe

Informed people (unless they are biased) do not over-rate things they are informed about. Generally, over-rating takes place by uninformed people. Since we are "all" informed people here :: we ourselves ought not to ever over-rate anything. . . . .

[The Basket]

The Mustangs problem is that it has become the Discovery channels lovechild and this has taken away the fact it is still a top line fighter with excellent range flown by aggressive pilots.

Talking about Spitfires or 109s then you have to talk about the theory in which these fighters were built for. Neither design had been shaped by modern combat and the fast speeds and G forces meant that some beleievd dogfighting was physically impossible. The Biplane was still seen to be capable and there was no need to change that view in 1935.

[renrich]

Basket, nice post and I agree. I am a fan of rice burners and own two. I meant that the early war AC the Japanese fielded, Kate and Zeke to name two could have been a message to our auto industry that Japan would be a formidable advesary if it decided to become an international player in autos.

[KrazyKraut]

Originally Posted by claidemore

Like parsifal, I think the 109 is overrated, and if fact could be considered an overall failure. It was supposed to be an air superiority fighter, (Luftwaffe was designed to support ground operations, and it needed air superiority to do that), but the 109 failed in it's air superiority role in BoB, Malta, North Africa, and eventually in Russia, over the channel (where the FW190 took it's place mid war) and in their own air space over Germany in 43/44/45. Really, all of the 109s success (strategically and tactically, I'm not talking about individual successes), were against older obsolete airforces such as Poland,the Low Counties and USSR in 1941/42. Toughest nut it cracked was France.

Great reasoning: The 109 is crap because Germany didn't win the war.

I quote JoeB: "There's seems a fairly widespread recognition that it had success in some periods/theaters of the war (or wars, WWII and Spanish Civil War), and didn't in others, for a variety of reasons." Where in any book good or bad, any television show or any movie is the Bf 109 ever represented as overall supreme or without opposition? None. In fact it's probably a bit underrated in public opinion because that opinion likes to focus on either the BoB or the year of 1944, the worst periods for the Bf 109.

How anyone can call the 109 overrated or even an overall failure is beyond me and I can only think these people must be politically motivated.

[drgondog]

Originally Posted by JoeB

Maybe most objective definition of 'overrated' is how often a given audience will misunderstand actual facts about a plane's operational history. Even if everybody has different opinions based on the same agreed facts, that's not as important as misunderstanding of fact. Which facts are misunderstood will depend on the audience, though.

I voted Spitfire with a reasonably well informed audience in mind, because there tends to be IMO the most stubborn refusal to admit to the often mediocre operational record of mid-mark Spitfires, and the relative lack of importance of the later mark Spits to the outcome of the war, even among such people. In first case there's still a strong tendency to quote Spit success in terms of Brit claims whereas in many cases in period ca. 1941-43 the results look quite different from the German side, or considering both sides' reported losses only. In the second case post 1943 the Spitfire was increasingly really successful in fighter-fighter exchange ratio but the real action v the German fighter force shifted to Germany and the Spit couldn't reach (until bases were established near the German border late in the war). The Spit's overall success in the BoB is a valid reason to consider early mark Spits successful and important fighters. Also, from a purely technical POV late mark Spits were excellent a/c compared to contemporaries. But again the rose colored (or often 'coloured' ) glasses on the plane-for-plane operational success 1941-43 and operational importance after 1943 is why it wins my overrated award.

On P-51, if someone's level of background and interest is limited to 'rah rah' individual a/c books that present *all* planes' operational records in the best possible light based on claims, and junky TV documentaries, then OK the P-51 is overrated, perhaps massively depending how junky the sources. But it's less overrated by refusal to accept its real record, among people who should know better, than the Spitfire is, IMO.

The Zero is claimed to be overrated compared to some monumental reputation...except very few people especially Americans or Europeans seem to credit it such a reputation. So I don't understand what it's supposed to be overrated compared to, in such an audience. Eventually a/c like the P-40 could meet it on equal terms in air combat...OK but the P-40 was basically a later airplane. And no other contemporary real fighter, certainly not the P-40 or F4F, could come anywhere near matching the radius of the Zero. That was a key factor in Japanese conquest (especially supported by *land based* Zeroes) of a pretty notable % of the earth's surface in just a few months; conquests it took the Allies, even with overwhelming industrial superiority, a few years to regain. Many discussions of the Zero fail to admit that at all or, 'OK long range, that's nice but...'. No, it wasn't just nice but a major influence on the early Pac War at a strategic level. The Zero is in the running for most *underrated* major fighter of WWII IMO.

I don't see the Bf109 as competing for either prize. There's seems a fairly widespread recognition that it had success in some periods/theaters of the war (or wars, WWII and Spanish Civil War), and didn't in others, for a variety of reasons. Like the Spitifre, pretty different a/c all called 'Bf109' were fielded over a long (in those days) period, but there seem to be fewer Bf109 fans who insist it was always a successful fighter across that whole period (which it wasn't) than Spit fans who claim the same (it also wasn't). Although there are people who do overrate the Bf109, as is true with *some* people for just about any fighter.

Joe

Good summary Joe... for all of it

[parsifal]

Defining whether a plane is "overrated" is more difficult than first glance would suggest. To me, whether an aircraft is overrated depends on whether the "popular myth" is so far removed from the reality. In other words, did a given aircraft do what its propoents say that it does. So the formaula to apply for "overatedness" would be a series of questions that goes something like this

1) "What is the claim made for the aircraft?"
2) "What is the truth about the aircraft?"
3) "What distance is there between the myth and the truth? The aircraft with the greates gap, is, IMO the most overrated type....

[JoeB]

Originally Posted by Oreo

Informed people (unless they are biased) do not over-rate things they are informed about. Generally, over-rating takes place by uninformed people. Since we are "all" informed people here :: we ourselves ought not to ever over-rate anything. . . . .

I said reasonably well informed, not perfectly informed. And by no means did I exclude bias, that's a very big 'unless' you're assuming there .

Joe

[parsifal]

So applying this methodolgy, I thought it might be useful to look at some of the contenders

first one off the rank is the P-51

1) "What is the claim made for the aircraft?"

Some people claim that the P-51 was responsible for the defeat of the Luftwaffe in 1944-5

2) "What is the truth about the aircraft?"

The Mustang played a big part in the destruction of the german Fighter force in 1944, however it was greatly assisted by the P-47 and P-38s, and in the tactical sphere by aircraft of the RAF, and other aircraft of the other allied airforces. Moreover, the conditions that made the Luftwaffe brittle in 1944 had been won, at cost in the preceding years by all manner of aircraft in tha allied inventory
3) "What distance is there between the myth and the truth?
The Mustang can rightly claim the lions share for defeating the the LW in 1944. However it is far fetched to suggest or imply that it did this without great assistance

I would rate the difference between the myth and the truth as moderate