[Ruy Horta]

Franek,

On the subject of comparing Naval types and AAF types I highly recommend you take a (second?) look at:

America's Hundred Thousand

Report of Joint Fighter Conference, NAS Patuxent River, MD 16-23 Ocdt. 1944

Duel in the Sky, World war II Naval Aircraft in Combat (edit: this book is mainly an example of "subjective reasoning when comparing a/c", but a such still an interesting contribution)

The second generation USN fighters were either close, equal or superior to their AAF equivalent, a good example is the Corsair in its various guises. The latter even managed to claim MiG(s) in the Korean war.

As for Japanese technology, your assessment is very conservative, to the point of being erroneous. Sure the early generation of Japanese fighters were built to a different standard due to their principle philosophy, but the second and third generation certainly was comparable. Also Japanese radials were good, not lagging far behind the rest, perhaps even superior to german radials. It doesn't help if your 87 Octane fuel is mixed with palm oil...

But this thread is indeed getting out of focus with these different branches.

The main argument still revolves around the basic fact if the Thunderbolt could have continued the job the Mustang took over with more or less the same level of success. Personally I think it could have, and to an extend (spring 1944) it certainly did.

And yes, although performance between types various in certain areas, most of these types were fairly close in combat conditions, close enough to let the tactical situation (incl. quality of pilots and quantity of a/c engaged) decide the issue.

The only CRITICAL issue in the discussion would be the Mustang's range, here the Thunderbolt was lagging in development. Yet, it did catch up, and if the situation had called for it, would have caught up sooner.

But lets agree to keep the Thunderbolt vs Mustang discussion here and continue any branch discussion in a new thread.