Warbird Information Exchange

If the P51 had never existed, could we still have found a way to defend our heavies over Germany?

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"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

Yes, P-38s from the 55th FG and 20th FG were over Berlin by early March '44.

Cheers!


Syd

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Victory By Valor (Motto of the 20th Fighter Group)

Both airplanes did indeed participate in Escort missions.... operational issues got in the way. For the P-38 the engines had trouble with the cold/humid weather and until the 38L compressibility and Roll Rate were huge limits on it's effectiveness as a Fighter (not to mention visibility from the cockpit)... in short it was outclassed as a defensive fighter ( and VERY difficult to employ). The P-47's main issue was range and speed.... all that was solved by the 47N model but too late to be of any real impact on the ETO... the Wolfpack used the Jug throughout the war and achieved outstanding results. In particular it was the better strafer of ground targets. The P-51 was easy to fly and employ.... even for the average guy... that aspect makes a huge difference.

But the real issue here is not a fantasy question of whether this or that airplane could accomplish the mission better.... but the fact that Escort was NOT the mission that resulted in fewer bombers being shot down. Escort is a defensive mission and the results clearly show that we didn't start to win air superiority until Doolittle let the Fighters go on the offensive (I did my masters thesis on this subject) after doing their stint at Escort. Break up and shoot down the bogies before they become a threat to the bombers... take the fight to the enemy... don't wait for it to come to you. The P-51 excelled at that mission more than any other.... even the P-38 or F6F in the Pacific IMHO.

gunny

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Scott 'Gunny' Perdue
www.scottperdue.com

Part of the Luftwaffe's problem in the BoB, aside from the range issue, was the manner of orders handed down on just HOW escort was to be accomplished. Had the fighter wings been given free rein to seek and intercept instead of being chained closely to the bombers, things may have gone differently. The bf110 was especially vulnerable to being jumped if it was just chugging along with the bomber stream. It had better range, but being locked into "Close Escort" practically guaranteed it's failure. As a hunter, it was more in it's element, as an escort, it needed one. Very parallel development and thinking between the 110 and the P-38, both being designed as bomber interceptors with the thought of NO fighter escort.

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Chris-

Exactly right... exacerbated by the short range of the Me109 over Britain... it's hard to get out of a fight once you've gotten into one....

by the way, any progress on that project I asked you about?

gunny

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Scott 'Gunny' Perdue
www.scottperdue.com

I think if the Mustang had not been invented, we would've muddled through with the Thunderbolt, and relied more on the RAF for escort once our ground forces advanced far enough to make range a non-issue. The Lightning would still have been relegated to the Pacific. Lockheed struggled to keep up with orders throughout the war, so I doubt it would've been able to contribute more than it did in Europe. And many of its shortcomings could not be engineered away: telltale silhouette, poor visibility, and mediocre maneuverability at altitude. Those problems were not showstoppers in the Pacific, where its superior speed prevented the enemy from exploiting its weaknesses as a dogfighter...but they were enough to put on the bench in Europe.

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What is red, furry and on your six?

Fritz-

Well, I think your supposition pre-supposes the war in the ETO would have gone just like it did in history....... I don't think it would have at all. By D-Day we could impose air superiority over the invasion area... and did... without that the landings would not have been a success (it was a near thing even with air dominance) and it has been widely documented that Eisenhower would not have attempted the landing if he was not guaranteed air superiority. The air campaign of the Spring made all the difference... and the Mustang facilitated that.

The RAF never produced a long range fighter throughout the war... the Spit couldn't even match the early Jug's. As I said before Escort was unsuccessful in reducing bomber casualties.... it made the bomber guys feel good, but in the end did not do it's job.

gunny

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Scott 'Gunny' Perdue
www.scottperdue.com

You could probably argue that w/o the Merlin Mustang, the air superiority that was necessary for the invasion may have not happened until a later date. Which snowballs into all kinds of bad what ifs. Say the invasion can't happen until the fall. Would Ike want to start out the campaign going into winter? They wouldn't have had much choice. And then would the final push by the Germans not take place until Summer of '45? All of which would take resources from the PTO. With no VLR Mustang, how many months is it before the B-29s can get escorts to Japan? The P-47N was the only version that could make it Japan and back.

OR, if you go down the road that the Mustang had little effect in the PTO, does the bomb still get dropped in Aug '45 concurrent with the ETO campaign still ongoing? With additional time afforded to Hitler, does Nazi Germany concurrently develop their own atomic bomb? And then what? Or would they still lack the resources to make that happen? Perhaps the Me-262 program has time to develop and prolongs the war even more still. At that point, do the Allies begin to take massive bomber losses again?

Where does it stop?

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The A-bomb was being built primarily BECAUSE of the Germans, who were perceived as being close to developing one themselves. It is quite likely we would have dropped it on Berlin, had Germany still been in the fight in August of '45.

I bet they'd still be looking for Hitler. You could probably find people selling glow-n-the-dark mustaches on ebay.

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What is red, furry and on your six?

No doubt the P-38 had its issues. Even if it was a rough equivalent to the P-51 in terms of performance (and I'm not making that argument), it still required twice the number of engines, twice the amount of fuel, twice the amount of maintenance, and twice the cost/time/effort to produce one in order to perform the same mission. So, from a purely economic perspective, the P-51 was a better weapon.

That out of the way, isn't the poor maneuverability at altitude issue a myth that started with Martin Caidin? I don't see where relative maneuverability between types varies with altitude. If type A has a stall speed that's 1.25x that of type B, type B will be able to pull more G's and a tighter turn at any altitude, up to the airframe's G-limit. With this in mind, the P-38 had a lower stall speed than both the Mustang and Thunderbolt, and could out-turn both. That didn't vary with altitude. It (the P-38) was roll rate limited until the installation of hydraulic boost, and again, that didn't vary with altitude. So, I can't figure out why the "less maneuverable at altitude" tag has been attached to the P-38.

Comments, anyone?

The Mustang appearance on the battle sky has stopped one other long range fighter project- Fisher P-75 Eagle. I am not sure how good this plane could be in direct fight against the German fighters but this machine have range performance for the escort missions.

Cheers

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How did the P38 and P47 pilots feel about their mounts in the escort role?

A lot of German fighters got shot down by them.

Scott, Gunny, Hey I want to know, what school let you right a thesis about fighter planes? Now I didn't make it to grad school, but somehow I don't think my, INTRACASIES OF OUTSIDE LINEBACKER PLAY, was going to impress too many of the profs at U T. For those not familiar with the great American pastime, an outside linebacker is the wide guy in a 5-4 defense. Today they call them cornerbacks who are a lot faster than me and cover pass receivers. In my day a pass was kind of weenie and only for teams like the WAC.
There is now a school in California that has a major in electronic video games, not kidding.

As for the escort question, Spitfires did make some of the longer range flights of the European war, but as photo recon planes, a few had guns, most like the MK XI were unarmed. Removing the guns made room for more fuel in the wings, and also they carried a drop tank. These tanks came in various sizes from about 30 gal all the way up to 170 Imperial gal,which is a pile of fuel. These Spits were lighter, not counting the fuel, very fast, and could either outclimb or outrun at altitude most any attacker. I have one of the 45 gal slipper tanks, 60 gal U S , that Nelson Ezell made for me from scratch with a rusted original to work to copy. I is a neat item, very well designed. It weighs about 45 lbs empty, and does not require any tools or bolts or fasteners to hook up, nor does it require any fuel lines to be connected, nor any boost pump. It slides onto two hangers on the front and is held by one sliding clamp activated by a lever in the cockpit, and the fuel fitting is just a precise mating.

Spit photo recon planes went from England to Berlin and back, usually above 36,000 feet. After the war one flew across the South Atlantic.

By mid war Mk IX fighters had a tank behind the pilot, plus the ones in front, so they had 168 gal US internal. The same P-51 started with 184gal internal, I think,but then could add the aft tank plus drop tanks. Therefore the IXs were not as short range as the early defensive Spits were. They could then add the slipper tank as needed. By deleting part of the wing guns, perhaps leaving only the 20mm cannons, they could have done long range bomber escort up to a point. They would never be as effective in the Pacific as they Mustang, but they might done well enough, and certainly after D Day, they could and did do bomber escort from bases on the continent.

I spoke to an Me109 pilot years ago , can't recall his name, but he had fought against P-38 s over Europe and he had shot down several. He said the 38, and I think it was the A-20 bomber? were easy for a 109. He had a lot of respect for Spits and Mustangs, I don't recall him talking about P-47s.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

I think Maj. Gen. Bill Kepner said it best, "If it can be said that the P-38s struck the Luftwaffe in its vitals and the P-51s are giving it the coup de grace; it was the Thunderbolt that broke its back." As he was once commander of 8th Fighter Command, I believe he probably knew what he was talking about

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Volunteer Coordinator/Curator - Military Aviation Museum - Virginia Beach, VA
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The P-38 could have performed the target escort role through the Normandy campaign, albeit less effectively and more expensively. The later model P-47D-25 and newer, with hardpoints on the wing for long range tanks, would have been increasingly effective at deeper pernetrations as they started to do in summer of 1944.

Bill G's points about recce Spits going to Berlin are true but somewhat misleading. The long range escorts (51/38) made RV usually in the eastern Holland or Belgium or France and then set up in an 'essing mode' usually in 8 plane sections with their assigned bomb wings all the way to the target and for some distance on the return before Withdrawal support fighters made R/V..

The exception would be the Free Lance Support groups which would move past the bombers and sweep out in front with no restrictions of having to stay with 150-180mph lumbering bombers.

With max fuel in a Spit, it could not 'ess' for very long, or deep. Same issue with the Jugs until tanks could be carried on wing hardpoints and wing fuel cells were added - the R-2800 drank 130/150 a lot faster than Merlin 1650.

Back to the P-38. It was far less successful than the 51 in air to air credits (and had higher ratio of losses) but my theory is that it was as much to do with being far more visible and identifyable than the 51 and therefore the LW had more time to decide to fight or flee.. rather than performance issues - particularly after the dive flaps were installed.

As to the 47 breaking the back of the Luftwaffe - I would have a huge issue with that simply because the Jugs were fighting essentially two JG's - JG26 and JG2 in Holland/France and Western Germany until the end of 1943 when many east and se fighter squadrons started transferring into LuftFlotte Reich to re-enforce Germany. A LOT of experienced fighter pilots came into LF Reich from JG53, JG11, JG3, JG1, JG27 and JG5. These were the guys largely met and defeated by Mustangs from Dec 1943 through Normandy campaign - as well as the NJG Me 110, 210 and 410 Gruppes.

When you consider that the Mustang had nearly as many air credits as the P-47 AND P-38, combined, in the ETO and many more aircraft destroyed on the ground - it puts into perspective the effectiveness of the 8th AF Mustang tactical footprint over Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia while the Jug was laboring over Holland, France and western Germany.