mmmmm Avro 504 porn!

😀

TT

Of course some might prefer SE5A porn!

They already have a jet class but it just aint the same as a big recip engine blattering past at 450+… trust me !! 😉

Thought that this is only limited to L-39s – in which case I agree not quite the same supersonic fighter jets and as you say not a match even for souped up post WW2 piston engined fighters!

But the really key thing is that with our new state of the art engine the whole package would be so much smaller, lighter and more streamlined – it is a virtuous circle. The smaller modern plane would even be stressed to pull more g in the turns, as well as being faster sleeker and more nimble.

The Reno racers remind me so much of the old Indy Roadsters – great dinosaurs of twenties and thirties and technology built around their classic old Offy and Novi engines and blown away by the arrival off science with Colin Chapman and Lotus in 1963 – less power but a much smaller and sleeker package. The Reno racers are magnificent but they are dinosaurs…

I would agree Prague Technical Museum is superb. It does not have a huge number of exhibits but the quality of what it has is superb – have been there a couple of times. It includes three unique survivors on our WW1 list, some quite interesting (and extensive) aircraft models, and a superb collection of cars including a pre war Grand Prix Mercedes (from memory a W125) and a GP Bugatti (cant remember if was a T35 or T53). But the best exhibit is in this photo (taken with a 20mm lens, which emphasises how tightly packed in it all is) – that will wind you all up! You might like a beer afterwards on the terrace on top the hill overlooking the river afterwards, which is only about 100 yards away.

If you get fed up with the pick pockets in Prague and are looking for general tourist destinations České Krumlov is fabulous, and if you have the time České Budějovice (and just not for the beer!), Mariánské Lázně and Telč (although there is not a lot of the historic centre) are well worth a visit. But each to his own…

It’s certainly true you can’t compare claims apples to apples across a/c types, air arms and periods as if they all represent the same level of real damage done to the enemy, they don’t.

And it’s true the bomber gunner claims were sytematically less accurate than fighter claims, especially bombers in big formations because it was impossible to accurately deconflict duplicated claims, plus a bomber could not stick with its target to assure and see destruction. OTOH the morale effect of crediting claims was an opposing consideration. Even war time intel assumed that fighter losses to US bombers were around 25% of claims (a number hard to verify, some celebrated cases were much worse, but some of those have been misreported as worse than they were, other cases were are high as 1/3 accurate, but it’s in the apparent ballpark). But that wasn’t just true of US bombers, they just operated on a very large scale in daylight compared to other AF’s.

However I don’t agree that German day fighters were sytematically high overclaimers. In some periods they were, especially late in the war, but for much of the war LW day fighters seem to claimed more accurately than the air arms they faced. The RAF claimed more accurately late in the war, but overclaimed at a considerable rate at certain times earlier. See the discussion in Foreman “Fighter Command Diaries” for example about the ‘circuses’ over France ca. 41-42. It was known from Ultra that the credited claims were out of line with German fighter losses several to one, as German records also reflected postwar, German claims were considerably more accurate in those combats, a situation different than BoB. Likewise Mediterranean, see for example Cull et al “Air War over Yugoslavia, Crete and Greece” RAF fighter claims and those of the Italians against them were about equally and pretty highly, overstated. Against the Japanese early in the Pacific War again US and Brit claims were roughly similarly and seriously overstated while the Japanese had the upper hand; in that period the notorious Japanese overclaims were not always worse than Allied. Again, later on British (and US and other Western) fighter claiming got more accurate while Axis claiming got worse. You can’t make an (accurate) single statement that this air arm claimed more accurately always than that one, even for one type a/c.

It’s harder to evaluate individual scores; the general situation is the ace in question and a bunch of other friendlies make claims; the total recorded losses of the enemy are less than that total. Who scored what? Sympathetic analysis of the ace will often give the ace ‘first dibs’ on whatever victories the opposing records ‘make available’ but that distorts the probably real situation by assuming the ace was a more accurate claimer than his comrades. Your thesis that he tended to be less so might be true, but it’s hard to prove either way. One example is Marseille; his accuracy is feasible to see, often small combats, in eg. Shores “Fighters Over the Desert” and was pretty good. The day he claimed 17 Allied fighters, the WWII record, he seems to have downed fewer but not many fewer. In general many German super scores were amassed in periods where their claiming can be seen to have been pretty accurate overall (eg. in East). It stands to reason many of the real scores of those pilots, though still in all probably less than they were credited with, were still very high compared to Western Allied aces’ ‘real’ scores.

This is a huge topic, I don’t think it’s practical to give one list of sources. I think we’d have to focus on a particular period/theater. But again, just tallying the total claims by type doesn’t tell you much, I agree.

Joe

Thanks Joe very interesting and informative.

The more that one thinks about the more complex it gets – as even in a theatre at a particular time the accuracy of claims can vary hugely between units. If I may stick with my BoB analogy, as this has been analysed to death, it is a matter of fact that 12 Group’s ‘Big Wings’ overclaimed far more excessively (without looking it up, a factor of three times worse comes to mind) than did 11 Group as a whole, and there were variations in overclaiming from squadron to squadron. But then I think this is what you are saying…

As someone who some say has made a career out of being professionally cynical, I instinctively distrust “showman aces” who seem to regard war as an opportunity to project themselves. I am sure that if one looked in detail at the most famous aces then not all of their records would stand up to critical scrutiny. I particularly distrust Luftwaffe scores because, as has been pointed out by those far more erudite than me in the past, their promotion and medal award systems positively encouraged overclaiming.

But coming back to the main thread, I find it hard to see how the Bf 109 is not the highest scoring plane in history, even if one knocks its number of credited kills back hugely for overclaiming – all those sitting targets on the Eastern Front….

I should think that the top scoring aircraft overall through out the war ought to be the Bf-109, bearing in mind the amount of action it saw in all 6 years of the wars – especially on the Eastern front.

I faintly recall reading many years ago, that the top scoring aircraft (shooting down the largest No. of enemy aircraft) of the allies wasn’t a fighter at all, but was in fact the B-17 Flying Fortress!:confused:

This just highlights the issue of overclaiming, which was as we all know pretty endemic in WW2; however, the two examples that you quote are those where the practice has always seemed me most extreme (Luftwaffe day fighter pilots and US bomber air gunners). To get realistic figures one would need to get a handle on the extent of over-claiming by service and by front and then factor the numbers down accordingly.

I remember reading in Bungay’s excellent The Most Dangerous Enemy the account of how one of the German top aces was allowed his claim of three kills after one sortie in the BoB despite the armourers finding that his guns had never even been fired (strange however that Bungay does not identify him). One suspects that the problem that those who sought to achieve star status were the worst offenders – can anyone point me to a well researched work that compares the claims of people like Galland, Molders, Bader, Stanford-Tuck, et al with that damage that they actually did based on study of the “other side’s” records?

The trouble is one can ”approach the stall” at quite high speeds during a steeply banked turn,on the shortened course at Reno there is not much straight and level flying at near 500mph speeds.I still reckon a well mannered a/c would be required for this sort of flying,esp with the close proximity of other a/c sometimes.
The crash at High Post in sept 1944 in which Frank Furlong was killed(Spiteful NN660) during mock combat with a spit i have seen attributed variously to either jammed aileron controls or ”flicking out” of a steep turn at low level but i dont think there was a conclusive result to the investigation.

I agree absolutely with you, although there are some further questions: One is how “well mannered” the hacked around and heavily modded Reno planes are compared with the stock example anyway? Another is would a Spiteful actually be worse? Another is the relative comparison between a Spiteful and a Mustang. I don’t know the answer to any of these questions – I merely ask.

I agree that different books have different accounts of the Furlong crash, I always tend to believe primary sources over secondary sources, thus in my view should ascribe more weight to the direct quotes from Shea-Simonds over other sources, as he was there at the time (albeit that he arrived to replace Furlong) and flew the aircraft extensively. According to Shea “Suddenly Frank’s aircraft rolled on its back and flew straight into the ground” he then went on to say that this was originally blamed on pilot error as a result of pulling too much g and how the other test pilots did not accept this, and then went on to relate the story of Jeffrey Quill suffering the jammed aileron rods on the second prototype. Given that rod contols were a new innovation for Supermarine on this aircraft I believe that the jammed control rod theory is the most credible one. But as you say at this remove it is impossible to know for certain.

This story relates to my previous post on the day of the dig here is the link to those pictures, just follow the link once on the site. We are excavating a mossie tomorrow and with permission I will be posting pics of that dig. Will post a link when its done. Hoping to visit Archy Boy this weekend to help claen up the Blenheim and will add pictures of it when its been cleaned up.
ENJOY:) http://www.spitfirespares.com/

Thanks Graham! Look forward to seeing the cleaned up pics and the Mossie ones – although I suppose that interest in aircraft wreckage is a bit macabre of me really.