Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Beale
The P-38 exchanged some of the agility of a single-engined fighter for greater range, the B-17 was much better armed for defence than a Lancaster but at the expense of bomb load. The USAAF in Europe did become very well equipped for its chosen method, daylight attack, just as the RAF finally acquired an unmatched capability for night bombing.
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You are right that these aircraft were technical compromises, Nick. What made them exceptional is that they had turbosuperchargers for their engines, the B-2 model on the B-17F and the B-13 on the P-38F, as far as I remember. The two-stage supercharger on the Lancaster's Merlin 22 was essentially a generation behind this technology. Partly as a result of this, the USAAF could routinely operate at high altitudes, which the bombers of other air forces could not do.
This doesn't mean that the American aircraft were perfect, far from it. Bomber Command aircraft had a variety of modern electronic equipment towards the end of the war, including H2S and Monica. The problem is that this superiority in radar and associated technology could not compensate for the absence of a performance margin, as became clear when the Germans began to home on RAF electronic signals.
Regards,
Paul