The P-51 was the absolute pinnacle of WWII fight aviation technology. It represented the culmination of fighter design gained through thousands of hours of combat experience by allied pilots, perfected by the industrial might of the United States and the brilliant aerospace engineers of the United Kingdom and the States.
Its Packard V-1650 12-cylinder supercharged engine was so powerful and ran so hot that it actually heated its exhaust to the point that it provided jet propulsion upon exit. The P-51 could operate up to 41,000 feet, allowing it to escort the most sophisticated bombers of the era, such as the B-52 and B-17, at optimum altitudes to avoid enemy fire. With a maximum range of about 1,600 nautical miles and a cruising speed of over 300 knots, the P-51 was the final nail in the coffin for Hitler's Luftwaffe.
All must pay homage to the King. All aviationfags must accept Him as your Spiritual Liege. The P-51 is the Father, America is the Son, and the United Kingdom the Holy Spirit. Kneel.
If you actually listenend to the vets who flew them it's clear the German me20 the jet or whatever was by far the best and scariest plane out there cuz it was so fast.
Except it is slower, flies lower and has less range
Jaxson Mitchell
>Except it is slower, flies lower and has less range
It had drop tanks years before the P-51 ffs, just because the P-51 can do heavy fighter escort shit doesn't make it better than the best heavy fighter ever made
Elijah Nelson
*Lawndarts into the ground after exceeding 800km/h in a dive*
Despite being limited in its later years one must give the germans credit for wringing out every last ounce of capability and performance from their mainstay. Truly a brilliant craft.
Eli Robinson
>limited in its later years
The k4 outperformed everything the allies had im theater
Jaxon Collins
didn't outperform them in the winning the war section
The Luftwaffe also kept sending their best up while the US pulled theirs to train more dudes and had all the planes and fuel to keep sending more and more new men and equipment into the air.
Angel Green
>only destroyed shit on the ground >best jet nope, the brits are always a day late and well over a dollar short.
Aaron Robinson
262 was a developmental dead end >using a site that doesn't explain how it got those numbers >completely ignoring that once a Zeke was out of cannon ammo (which didn't take long because 60 rounds per gun), it was much less effective And how many of those died before 1945?
At what altitude? P-80A's were hitting 536mph at 11,500ft and over 560mph at 2,700ft with a modified nose and clipped wing tips. I'd imagine that P-80 be hitting ~600mph at sea level with minimal issue
Tyler James
640 mph at 6000m
The hg3 with internal engines and 45 degree wing sweep would have been transonic
Alexander Roberts
The p80 would shred itself before it got to 600mph at sea level, not that it had the thrust anyways.
P80 wasn't a bad fighter at all, infact it could likely take a 262a1 in combat any day of the week due to it's relatively high velocity 50 cals and superior gun sights, but comparing it to later 262s, he162s, and ta183s is just cope posting.
*i am basing this on the performance reports of yp80's
Brandon Reed
So completely theoretical aircraft that where never built could reach transonic speeds Wow
Grayson Myers
>the US Airforce was superior better pilots, more machines. Not better designs.
Luke Brown
Daily reminder that most of them got their kills shooting down vatniks and also they didn't get rotated, and also most of them got killed by P-51s during big week.
Aiden Rodriguez
Completely missing the point of the Me 262 not being a developmental dead end. These performance figures were hit aswell with the shitter engines that the 262 was using, the aerodynamic characteristics could have easily held up at even higher speeds, probably not supersonic though
Luke Howard
And? Alot of them were fighting the brits aswell and shooting down vatniks meant that while best case scenario it's just Sturmoviks flying in a braindead straight line, worst case scenario is that you have to fight Lavochkins or Yakovlevs at low alt
Austin Hernandez
Me-262 also had axial flow engines, while the p-80 had centerfrugal flow engines, which were a developmental dead end.
Adam Wood
Every fucking world war 2 aviation thread I have to pull this shit out.
Performance figures for late war German aircraft were often calculated as opposed to demonstrated. This was due to, among other things, lack of fuel and the fact that any aircraft undergoing testing was likely to be bounced by a Mustang.
Indeed, these calculated figures rarely correlate with the operational and production product:
"Hans Knickrehm of I/JG 3 recalled the condition of new Me 109 G-14/AS’s received by his group in October, 1944:
The machines that were delivered were technically obsolete and of considerably lowered quality. The engines proved prone to trouble after much too short a time, because the factories had had to sharply curtail test runs for lack of fuel. The surface finish of the outer skin also left much to be desired. The sprayed-on camouflage finish was rough and uneven. The result was a further reduction in speed. We often discovered clear cases of sabotage during our acceptance checks. Cables or wires were not secured, were improperly attached, scratched or had even been visibly cut".
Add to this, the ground crews that could even out the paint, tune the engines and correct damage were often transferred to shore up the rapidly dwindling German infantry. Late war German fighters were not great and using calculated performance data as opposed to demonstrated is dishonest.
Checked 90% of those guys with over 100 kills and none got shot down during that week.
Jack Myers
Bullshit. The flight curves for the HG I were lost, and the fastest 262 variant was the C-1/C-2 which hit 590mph at 6000m and that was with rocket assistance.
Alexander Rivera
Me 262 also had swept wings, a lift producing fuselage, and an armament far in excess of anything the allies ever had.
The Jumo 004's were inferior to Allied centrifugal flow engines though, especially in thrust-to-weight and mean time between overhauls. In addition centrifugal flow engines are still used in turboshaft and turboprop designs
Joseph Thomas
Yeah, the brits sure knew how tu build engines user.
Andrew Taylor
US tested plenty of captured german shit and the figures weren't that different.
You have a point but you could find examples of high quality 109s even at the end of the war. Plenty were shit but many 109k4s and Dora's still outperformed p51s and jugs
Grayson Hughes
>50mm
Jaxson Kelly
262's swept wings were to fix the center of gravity issues it originally had with the straight wings, not for speed.
Austin Gutierrez
The armament actually kind of sucked due to the low velocity of the ammunition making hitting targets rather difficult.
Do you know any good books or sources about general late war Luftwaffe issues? I've got a few volumes of the histories of a few specific aircraft but nothing that really provides a general picture.
Christian Turner
Correct, however for centrifugal flow engines, tey have to be fatter to produce more power, whereas axial needs more compressor stages, in turn making them longer, which is more aerodynamic.
The centrifugal flow engines were at the beginning more reliable because the compressor disc was able to take the extremes of operation better, and the U.S.A had the advantage of being able to make alloys with better temperature tolerance without worries of being bombed. As a design concept, the axial flow engine is far superior.
Jeremiah Reed
640 mph was for 262 hg2 which was bombed on the runway by b17s while being prepared for its first test flight. It had many features that would have given it superior performance.
The body surface was smoothed and waxed which removed a LOT of drag, when the Brits did this to their spitfires they got another 20mph out of them, and spitfire body panels weren't nearly as bumpy as those on the 262.
It was fitted with either 10kn jumo004D's or hes01's I can't remember, either way it would have had 33 to 50 percent more thrust.
The wings were farther swept back
The fuselage was redesigned and narrowed (it was originally meant to house engines inside of it. So it was uneccesarily wide).
And the more powerful turboprop/turboshafts are axial flows as well.
Lincoln Myers
Last year of the Luftwaffe is pretty good. Especially in how it describes the ever constant search for fuel.
Also the case of the K4 That hit 450+ mph is for a 109 that used a prop that never entered serial production. Arguably the only good fighters that the germans had at the end of the war were the TA-152s, and maybe the token force of 190D11s and D13s that found their way to an operational unit before the wars end.
>bombed on the run way Doubt, but I'd be happy to read a source you provide
Connor Price
>itt: """""""""""""""experts"""""""""""""" who just rolled in from their bore blunder match
Isaac Martinez
Flight curves for the HG I were lost, the HG II never made any test flights aside from basic taxiing tests before the airframe was destroyed from bombing. That 640mph claim is estimated, not actual performance. I'm not sure it had HeS 011's, as only 19 of those were made. The 004D's were planned for variants of the Ar 234.
Benjamin Hernandez
I checked just to be sure, before I replied with an untruth. It seems that the propellor driven aircraft were not really tested for performance characteristics, such as top speed. Instead, they were flown for handling characteristics, which for the 190D in this example were lacking. The jets on the other hand got a lot of performance testing, especially seeing as they were the new hotness that everyone needed information on.
Oh my god did the Germans ever get a turbocharged aeroplane right? Look at that exposed bullshit and giant fuck off radiators. Fucking hell look at the Fw-190V-18, what the fuck.
No. They lacked the alloys to build reliable turbosuperchargers. Doesn't mean some of them looked cool as fuck though.
Landon Martin
Honestly I can't tell if OP is just retarded or this is the new bait to replace the Sherman/T-34/Tiger was the best tank of WWII.
Julian Parker
>gee America, what did you spend the 1930s doing? >"Oh you know, just building planes with extremely high performance and range through the use of turbocharging"
Interestingly, the Nazis did have a couple long range heavy bomber projects in the 1930s. They were cancelled though
Julian Reed
Yeah somebody died and Goering and Milch were all about tactical aviation. Of course, it would likely have been very similar to it's European equivalents prior to the Lancaster, under armed and armored. They'd have learned very quickly that they needed a long range escort fighter, or switched to night raids like the British. This is more likely; unlike the Americans they had nothing in the pipeline that had anything near the range to adequately escort a strategic bomber.
some units got fucked. however, most regular g14s and 10s were good as fuck. k4s varried where they were built. same with late focke wulfs where it depended which contractor built it
