best WW II fighter, The

Flight Journal, Aug 2003 by Meyer, Corky

These flight evaluations weren't merely joyrides to add hours to my logbook; they had been set up to investigate the fighters' known good and bad flight characteristics and performance capabilities during simulated gunnery runs against other fighters and during dive-bombing runs against targets. I wrote a comprehensive report on every fighter so that Grumman engineers would be able to incorporate-or steer clear of-these features in future designs.

Picking the "best" fighter, however, went way past my experiences as a test pilot. It involved the consideration of a very complex series of operational factors. On top of that, the land-based war in Europe and the island-hopping war in Japan, in which carrier-based aviation played such a vital part, would have to be considered separately.

"Best fighter" selection criteria

Constant production improvement in combat capability

Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the famous southern Civil War cavalry officer, uttered "Git thar fustest with the mostest." That combat axiom had probably been defined in many other languages for eons before he said it, but it's succinct, and it happens to be the prescription for victory-even in air combat. It's a simple matter of numbers: the more airplanes there are of a particular type, the greater will be the effect of that type, regardless of its shortcomings. For that reason, I have limited the contestants by selecting only fighters that were built in quantities of more than 10,000; during such a production run, they will have seen many improvements and will then meet Gen. Forrest's criteron of "mostest."

Four-mission capability

My principal selection criterion was that a fighter must have made a continuous contribution to the destruction of the enemy ground and air forces in four tactical roles: fighter-to-fighter, air-to-ground-troop support, bomber protection and photorecon missions. Comparing them only in the exciting, ace-making fighter-to-fighter role would omit three quarters of their capabilities, which were tactically and strategically necessary to win the War. Most of the combatant WW II air force pilots had been trained in all of these roles, and most fighters could fly all missions to some degree.

Pilot compatibility

During WW II, it was almost useless to design a superb airplane that required an experienced pilot. Experienced pilots didn't fight wars; hastily trained conscripts who eventually become experienced pilots fought them. For that reason, planes had to be comfortable enough for a 200-hour, wartime-trained pilot; they had to have docile flight characteristics, high performance, good cockpit design and outside visibility, comfort, armored/self-sealing fuel tanks and a resulting low accident rate.

Servicce record

U.S. flight records from the European theater were easy to obtain and clearly showed what each fighter type contributed. Records from the Pacific theater were more difficult to come by. For British, German and Japanese fighters, I found very little hard data on the number of sorties, tons of bombs dropped, aircraft shot down, locomotives and rail cars destroyed, and that made comparing their operations difficult.

TOP DOGS-EUROPE

Let's go through the seven most numerous WW II European theater of operations (ETO) fighters and see how they compare as we work up to number one. I have ranked them in increasing order of the importance of their contributions (from 7 to 1).

7 Lockheed P-38 Lightning

Lockheed's twin-engine Lightning had the potential to be the number-one fighter. It first flew on January 27, 1939-early enough to have been deployed before Pearl Harbor. It had more horsepower than any previous fighter, and its tricycle landing gear greatly simplified pilot training. Its five centerline guns, unhampered by converging wing-gun aiming problems, made gunnery much less difficult for its pilots. Its turbo-supercharged engines gave it a great altitude advantage over enemy aircraft. It had many combat assets, and it was the first twin-engine fighter ever put into service by the USAAC. It was the first fighter designed for top-priority mass-production by Lockheed when it was already embroiled in design and manufacturing problems with other military aircraft, and it had a very large backlog of unfilled contracts. The P-38's engines and turbo superchargers had not completed their military acceptance programs by the time it was put into service. The massive P-38 program requirements dictated that Lockheed expand its manpower and manufacturing space in Los Angeles-a city already so overloaded with top-priority military programs that the P-38's production rate suffered. It was larger and required two engines, so it took longer to produce and required more maintenance-support hours than single-engine fighters. The number of Lightnings deployed was therefore 20 percent fewer than the P-51 and 58 percent fewer than the P-47.

The P-38 suffered many "growing pains" when it was first deployed to Europe, and its range-at that time-wasn't sufficient for the needed bomber-escort missions. Unfortunately, it was also the first fighter to encounter the unexpected and destructive compressibility regime in dives; this phenomenon caused the loss of several prototypes and early squadron aircraft; and it slowed its progress in the field. The P-47 and P-51 soon replaced them. The Lightning did, however, show its magnificent combat abilities in the African and Pacific theaters in air-defense, fighter-bomber and photorecon missions.