P-51 Mustang, best Allied fighter or not ?

1177 Griffon engined Spitfires were built during the war; 100 Mk.XII, 957 Mk.XIV and 120 Mk.21. An additional 384 Seafire Mk.XV were built as well, but this aircraft wasn´t delivered to any squadrons before May 1945.

 

Almost any sort of "Encyclopedia" of WWII aircraft will give the numbers produced, even if it is only approximates. Whilst these types of books rarely go into great detail or depth, they are useful guides. The main wartime Griffon Spitfire was the MkXIV, I do have the figures myself but not to hand. Of the top of my head I'd say PMN1's 1,800+ is probably not far of the mark.

 

I compared the numbers in my previous post ( from "British Warplanes of World War II" ) with another source ( "The Complete Book of Fighters" by Green/Swanborough ) and found them to be the same. I left out an additional 300 Mk.XVIII though. This makes a total of 1477 aircraft. If we add the 287 Mk.22s and 54 Mk.24s we get a total of 1818 aircraft. So PMN1 is quite on the mark.

 

Re: Spitfire vs Mustang

From that link you cannot find any Spitfire with those specifications. Those are specifications of Supermarine Spiteful

 

Well, Spitfire, Spiteful, Mustang, whatever. I said it before and I'll say it again: I'll take the Corsair over any other WW2 type.

 

I'd say it was probably the Flapjack. Not sure on its designation though.

 

Re: Spitfire vs Mustang

Sorry you are correct. I miss read the link.

But from the spitfire page I found this.

Production of some 40 different variants of the Spitfire took place throughout the war and after. They served in every combat area, operating as fighters, fighter-bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and carrier-based fighters with the Royal Navy. Griffon engines replaced Merlins after a time, and the Spitfire XIX reconnaissance version became the fastest of all the wartime Spitfires with a speed of nearly 748 km/h (460 mph). The last Spitfire was built in 1947. As a fighter, at all altitudes it had proved superb, while continuous edges gained firstly by German Bf 109s and Focke Wulfs 190s and then by different versions of the Spitfire led to closely-matched battles throughout the war.

 

Re: Spitfire vs Mustang

I know that the Fw 190's performance problems above 20,000 feet were solved by the so-called "long nose 190" that came out later in the war. Were these built in sufficient numbers to be decisive, though?

 

Clearly the mustang, it is just as sexy looking as the Spitfire, it has longer endurance, and the 50 cal MG provides greater punch and penetration power. Sorry, got carried away again with the sex terminologies.

 

Yes, Mustang has longer endurance but I have to disagree about armament, I cant figure out how .50 cal MG has greater punch or penetration power than 20mm cannon?

 

It didn't. See: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/WW2guneffect.htm

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion
forum

 

I must be mistaken, I thought the spitfires carried the .303 caliber MGs, since when do they carry the 20mm cannons? Were these ground-attack variants.

 

No, they were fighters. The post-Battle of Britain variants of the Spit carried a mix of 20-mm cannon and .303 machine guns.

 

20 mm and 12.7 mm I think they were.

 

From a certain varient of the Spitfire onwards, and I don't know which, they carried two 20mm cannon and two .303 MGs instead of four or six MGs on the earlier models. I do know that on the even later versions of the plane the cannon were fitted to the outside of the wings whereas the MGs were moved to the inside; it had been the other way around before. As I said I don't know the starting models with these features; I know that the Mk.9 had cannon, and the Mk.16 had cannon fitted out-side.

From Tony's link you can see that the punch of the 20mm was about twice that of the 12.7mm machine gun, or .50cal.

 

Spitfires were fitted with four different wing classifications that showed their armament. The A-wing was the prewar model with 4 .303 Colt machine guns in each wing. The B-wing was begun just before the war and carried 2 .303 machine guns and a Hispano-Suiza 20mm Cannon in each wing. The C-wing started production in 1942 and had 2 20mm cannons in each wing. The final variant, the E-wing, had one .50 cal. machine gun and one 20mm cannon in each wing. Apparently, the production of these four types of wings overlapped in order to maximize production.

 

Good idea, too.

 

One small correction - Colt made many Browning MGs for overseas sales in the interwar period so their name became associated with the gun. However, they had nothing to do with the British .303 Brownings which were modified quite significantly over the US ones, apart from just the calibre change.

Tony Williams

 

Well, time to wipe the dust off an old thread. :smok:

I came across an evaluation made during the '90s by modern test pilots which included the Mustang, Thunderbolt, Hellcat and Corsair. The conclusion reached was that while the Mustang was "well suited to long-range escort missions, intercepting and defending against non-manoeuvring targets", it was judged to be "totally unsuited to the ACM ( air combat manoeuvring ) environment". This certainly leaves a huge crack in the myth about the Mustang.

 

I have trouble deciphering these modern fancy phrases.
Does that mean that it is a poor dogfighter?