Warbird Information Exchange

The Ki-43 IMHO was one of the best Japanese fighters. The P-40 amazingly was able to keep equal with it. As long as the pilot utilized the P-40's straigths. One of the key rules in the Pacific...if flying patrol and get caught from enemy above(which was often the case) the rule was to turn into the incoming oponant. I find this has to be a brave thing to do. But with the P-40's better armor and firepower it was usually the winner in head on attacks.

Robert Dehaven quote about the transaction from P-40 to P-38......"not many pilots were happy about it. They were used to the nimble P-40...you point it and it would go where you wanted to with it. The P-38 was slow and took time to change direction. The P-38 had more range and as a fighter pilot it was our job to fight where the war was.

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#6 in dicta Boelcke 'when attacked from above, always fly to meet your opponent'

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I am not sure the P-40 had superior guns to a Zero. The Zero had 2 cannon, plus 2 small machine guns. The 50 cal is a good machine gun, but are only 4 of them better than a zero? I doubt it. The Zero didn't have any or little armament.
As for tactics, if attacked by a Zero in a dive from above, turning into the attack might solve the initial pass,by limiting the time that the Zero pilot has to fire while you are in the sights. But after the initial turn, what then? turning up and into an attack will slow the P-40 down, and the last thing you want is to be in a turning or looping contest with a Zero below 200 mph. If you an spot the attacker early enough the P-40 can probably outdive the Zero.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

As for a dogfight between a P-40 and a Spit Mk V, at low altidude; I don't believe it would be even. First the Spit is lighter, maybe much lighter, really only not much heavier than a loaded T-6. With 1450 hp, the later Vs really climb well, coming off sea level faster than than most anything other than a Bearcat. So I think it would outclimb a P-40 easily. And I haven't flown a Mk V ( one can always wish) but several guys who have say it will out turn and out maneuver anything except maybe a Zero. The top speeds might be close, but I think the Spit would still have a slight edge, perhaps 20 mph. The P-40 might have an edge in initial dive, but not max critical dive speed. As for guns, 8 303s and 4 50s are about even, maybe even slight edge to the P-40 , but some Spit Vs had 20 mm cannon, and that's swings the edge that way, I think. The P-40 has good ailerons, so a good roll rate, but the by the time of the Spit V, they also were using metal ailerons and the roll rate was improved at high speeds. The turn rate of a V was always excellent.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Hi Bill,

The P-40E through N all had 6 x .50 cals. And yes the P-40 IMHO and said by others had the better firepower. The P-40 could take the 20mm hits and still keep going. As has been told so many countless times by P-40 vets.

I do like the P-40 more so then the Spitfire. I like Spitfires too. But the heart of my heros come from those that flew the P-40 in 1941 and 1942. No one told them to fly an equal or less plane then the enemy, no one said to fly out numbered, no one said to try and take off in a middle of bombing and straffing. They are my heroes and the plane they flew got critized more then it should have.

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So much of who wins in a dogfight depends more on the skill of the pilot and the element of surprise. Many aces would refuse a fight unless they had the element of surprise, that is how one lives and wins. It is not a game, it is life and death. If you can't win, dive away and escape, don' turn with a zero

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My heroes are the P39 and F4F guys in the Pacific '41-42 (Cactus), the Hurricane,Spitfire,and Gladiator boys through '42 when they were fighting on multiple fronts,and if not always prevailing at least holding the line, and last but not least, the Whitley,Wellington,Stirling,and Hampden crews during the early innings who did the best they could with what they had.

The AVG pilots were aggressive and well trained. But so were the Hurricane pilots who were sent out to defend British territory in the Far East. They fought under different training and operational regimes, and had very different results.

I see 2 main reasons for the success of the AVG pilots. The main one is the tactical brilliance of their leader, Claire Chennault. He threw the book away and made up his own. (Literally, his own.) From "Way of a Fighter":

"I taught them all I knew about the Japanese. Day after day there were lectures from my notebooks, filled during the previous four years of combat. All of the bitter experience from Nanking to Chunking was poured out in those lectures. Captured Japanese flying and staff manuals, translated into English by the Chinese, served as textbooks. From these manuals the American pilots learned more about Japanese tactics than any single Japanese pilot ever knew."*

The Brits had none of this caliber of leadership there in the Far East.

"Later there was ample opportunity for comparison. The A.V.G. and R.A.F. fought side by side over Rangoon with comparable numbers, equipment, and courage against the same odds. The R.A.F. barely broke even against the Japanese, while the Americans rolled up a 15 to 1 score. In February, 1942, the Japanese threw heavy raids against Rangoon and Port Darwin, Australia, in the same week. Over Rangoon five A.V.G. pilots in P-40's shot down 17 out of 70 enemy raiders without loss. Over Darwin, 11 out of 12 U.S. Army Forces P-40's were shot down by a similar Japanese force. A few weeks later a crack R.A.F. Spitfire squadron was rushed to Australia from Europe and lost 17 out of 27 pilots over Darwin in two raids. The Spitfire was far superior to the P-40 as a combat plane. It was simply a matter of tactics. The R.A.F. pilots were trained in methods that were excellent against German and Italian equipment but suicide against the acrobatic Japanese. The only American squadron in China that the Japanese ever liked to fight was a P-38 squadron that had fought in North Africa and refused to change its tactics against the Japanese."

The other reason the P-40 was able to do well in Burma and China is not often pointed out, but it's due to the fact that the Japanese bombers did not attack at high altitude. The "Sallys" and "Lilys" had to come down to the mid-levels if they were to carry any reasonable bomb load, 13,000 ft or so. This forced the Japanese escorting fighters to come down as well to defend them, and allowed the P-40s to climb up and make diving, slashing attacks. These battles would have been very different if they'd taken place at 25,000+ ft, as with the B-17s in Europe.

The primary fighter encounted by the Allies in 1941 Burma was the Ki-27 "Nate".
Obviously it wouldn't have been very comfortable at high altitudes. But even as the Japanese upgraded to the Ki-43,

the results were little different because these fighters, in escort, had to come down to where the P-40s could attack from above.

Dave

Dave:

It's no surprise that 11 out of 12 P-40s were shot down at Darwin on 2/19/42. They were
jumped without warning just after take off, in the process of moving up to Java. Some of the pilots were fresh out of flight school with minimal time in the P-40. They were not part of any force tasked with defending Darwin. In fact at that time Darwin had no aerial defence. Given the circumstances, and the caliber of the Japanese pilots and aircraft, the outcome could not have been much different. Had the AVG been caught in a similar manner,(jumped from above with no airspeed in a slow accelerating aircraft) they would have been torn up too.

Duane

Nathan, I wasn't sure about the guns, but in looking up the P-40 on WIK and some other sources, I see that the E had 6 .50 cal, so good firepower like the later P-51s. I am not sure how that would compare to th cannon and machine guns of a Zero. In Spits, some pilots like Bader, liked having 8 .303 cal machine guns, ( 12 on the early Hurricane!) and they got in close enough to make them deadly. 30s are realible, rarely jam, and have a high rate of fire; just not the range of a .50 or the hittiing power of the 20 mm cannon with some explosive shells. Other equally good pilots, like Johnny Johnson, really thought the cannon were an important step up, against the 109s( he did not encounter Zeros). By the Mk IIb, Spits had cannon, and the later Mkvs had the universal wing with both 2 cannon and 4 machine guns, a potent pairing.
I couldn't find when the dates when the E came out or went into service. It looks like the E was a pretty decent fighter if kept below 12,000 feet. I had good enough guns, good dive speed,and a good rate of turn. It was mailnly deficeint in climb, my source says the Spit V had more than double the rate of climb of the 2200 fpm of the P-40. Another source says the Merlin engine L model was a significant improvement.
I hope to fly a P-40 again some day. Owners seem to be very loyal to them.

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Spitfire N308WK

Hi Dave,
Interesting post, and numerous good points, as you'd expect from that source. however I disagree about the link to conclusions...

I can't agree that the lack of four years experience and tactical development is equal to 'calibre of leadership'. Experience can't be bought and can only be taught to a degree - ideally by integrating a few new personnel into locally experienced units.

It is an absolute of air combat that new crews have a savage learning curve when they first go into combat. if a 'green' unit faces a combat hardened enemy, it is always messy; without the moderating effects of experienced pilots in the flights and squadron.

Certainly many in the RAF (and RAAF) units assumed they had noting to learn and were working with an assumption of racial superiority - as Chennault found himself when the US forces would not take his experience on board until that mistake was exposed by early USAAF losses.

The Darwin raids were, as gemmer's pointed out, far from an accurate comparison. Half-formed units not even shaken down were rushed into action and suffered accordingly against IJN units. They actually recovered rapidly, after early failures. The rushing of the Spitfires (known as 'Capstans') into action was expected to be a magic panacea, as the name Spitfire is today to many enthusiasts, rather than part of a coordinated system.

This is not to offer excuses, but a comment not to draw the wrong conclusions from the facts.

On the other hand, the operational debut and early actions of P-40 equipped 75 Sqn RAAF at Port Moresby were creditable in the pinch.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._75_Squadron_RAAF

More here: http://home.st.net.au/~pdunn/75sqn.htm

Why were they successful? Multiple reasons, not all of which I'd be qualified to summarise, but included a cadre of (European) experienced pilots, fighting offensively (albeit in a defensive war) rather than trying to defend a location without an air defence system (Darwin was essentially unprotected in 1941-early '42).

And not believing in 'magic' names.

Actually a number of those Spitfires were lost due to fuel starvation - not even enemy activity, due to poor guidance and misunderstandings in the initial tasks. Naturally, this wasn't widely announced at the time.

Certainly, as in Nathan's original statement, the P-40 is under-credited with its real capability. Used to its performance advantage at medium and low level, it was certainly a good enough fighter in the early W.W.II period.

It is probably fair to say that 'in the book' figures showed no significant advantage of the P-40E over the 109F/G or Spitfire V at low level and at a disadvantage at altitude. The P-40E should be superior to the Ki 27. I wouldn't comment on the Zero or Oscar comparison. The P-40C wasn't better than the contemporary Hurricane I. In the right hands, the P-40E was able to best any average pilot in any of these other aircraft, provided they had an even (unbounced) chance. 'Good enough' IMHO.

Regards,

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There's an interesting story there. The RAF were trying to get cannon into action in the Battle of Britain, 1940, but logistics didn't allow. (A couple of cannon equipped fighters saw combat, but suffered from jams and teething issues. German bombers could - and did - survive hundreds of 303 hits and get back to base.) Bader wanted to hang onto his machine guns when the RAF was switching to a cannon m/g mix; he was being a reactionary or luddite - not for the first or last time.

The Mk.I Hurricane had 8 x .303, and for several reasons was a better gun platform than the Spitfire I & II. The Hurricane IIB - post-Battle of Britain - had 12 x .303 machine guns as did the early Canadian examples, but few saw combat with that set-up. The 12 x .303 was really a backup to the Mk.IIC with 4 x 20mm cannon, the preferred production version, once the cannon were sorted and available.

Quite. Certainly I've not read any of warbird pilot not rating the P-40.

Regards,

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James K

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Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

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The Raf Squadron mentioned was 54 Squadron and yes during the BoB a crack squadron.When it came to Auss most of the pilots were replacements far from home.Also remember the Spit was designed for a nice flat green runway.Not the goat tracks we call forward airfields up north.
trying to remember my photobucket account.Just found combat reports and trials here in Auss of the Spit vs "Hap" and "Zeke".

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Bill:

The P-40E entered service in the latter part of 1941, and was the most numerous fighter in the 24th Pursuit Group in the Philippines when the war broke out. Most experienced pilots in the pacific felt that the two main drawbacks to the P-40 were slow climb and low ceiling. Sufficient warning time to get to altitude to make an interception was paramount. The AVG had an excellent early warning system that gave them an advantage. In the Philippines, the radar was wiped out on the first day, and the warning net failed miserably prior to the attack on Clark. Ditto in Java, and early on in Darwin. In the Philippines, the pilots were well aware of the slow climb of the P-40 having
flown a number of mock interceptions against B-17s, and realized that if they didn't have time to get up to 20,000-25,0000(well over 30 minutes) they were going to be in big trouble. Later, in New Guinea, when reequipping from the Es and Ks to the P-40N, a number of pilots felt that at least from a climb rate perspective, they had an improved aircraft.

The Zero's 20mm/7.7 gun mix was a poor second to 6 .50s. The 20mm had a low velocity and
rate of fire and the 7.7s would not defeat armour. Early Japanese 20mm ammo had fusing problems that made the shell detonate on impact rather than after initial penetration. Sakai
relied heavily on the 7.7s using his piloting skill to get in close and hosing the opponent.
Conversely, some P-40 pilots removed two of their guns and ammo to reduce weight and felt that 4 guns were sufficient to deal with Japanese opposition.

Duane

JDK,

Well... I see your point. Calibre was the wrong word choice. But...

Only the AVG group had a leader who truly understood how to fight the JAF from Day 1. He'd put in the time, got the backing of the Chinese, and built the organization. His pilots never had the steep and painful learning curve that the RAF had. Some mistakes, but relatively few.

I believe that if the AVG P-40s had been led and organized by the mainstrean USAAC, they would have been clobbered as well. Chennault was a fine leader, and a truly great tactician. The group's success is largely attributable to the fact that a man of that ability was in command, totally free to act.

Dave