Interesting question!

Quite a lot of scope here.

One factor is Stalin simply didn’t care how many Russians died stopping the Nazis.

And often forgotten is that almost all theatres of W.W.II and periods were utterly different to each other. You may as well compare France 1944 to France 1940 as Eastern and Western Fronts.

The Fulmar was rarely used (only really in the Med) against top class land based fighters, where it did not do well. Otherwise it was up against less effective opposition, which sometimes it could catch. I like the Fulmar, but only the obscenely incompetent Lordships of the Admiralty could believe it was a front line fighter. At least they were consistent in providing the FAA with appallingly unsuitable aircraft throughout W.W.II. Only the imported American types were remotely up to their jobs.

Cheers!

You have made some very valid points there which I had overlooked but my remarks about the Il 2/10 machines still stand. I don’t know how true it is but I once heard it said that a German pilot claimed the only way to bring them down in air to air combat was to ram them and even then it wasn’t guaranteed.