Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry
Having talked to several P-47 pilots of the 9th USAAF, I have a bias for the P-47 ... You can only wonder what effect 500 P-47's would have had on the Battle of France!
|
First point: I know war is untidy and you have to respond to events, not plans but I've always wondered why the USAAF continued to mix its types up so much. Logistics (and logic!) might have suggested moving to an 8th Fighter Command purely with P-51s, 9th AF with P-47s, yet both had a mixture. Equally you might have put all the B-24s into long-range work over water (Pacific bombing, Atlantic anti-submarine patrol) and the B-17s in Europe. Equally puzzling: the P-39 and the Fw 190 which in some versions carried three different types of gun at once, a nightmare for supply and maintenance, you'd think.
Second point: France 1940 would no doubt have been different with 500 Typhoons (the British made ground-attack fighters too!) or - less of a stretch - if the Battle and Defiant had never been built in favour of more Hurricanes and if that extra production had been Hurribombers.