Quote:
Originally Posted by Graham Boak
Steve49:
tcolvin: Cherry-picking single examples is futile. We can all point to bombing attacks, by all nations, that failed to damage the targets at all. How many times did the Germans claim to have sunk the Ark Royal? If you want to go after shipping targets, particularly large warships, you need trained crews and weapons capable of doing damage. It seems that the prewar RAF faith in level bombing with their 2000lb SAP was misplaced.
The P-39 has nothing that the Typhoon didn't, except some agility and, initially, a better view. It was slower, much less power and much less firepower. In any competition the Typhoon would have won hands down (as, effectively, it did).
The only real alternatives were the Vengeance and the Bermuda. I think we've discussed those.
You may argue that the Typhoon became the RAF's main fighter-bomber by default, but I see no real alternative, other than heaping yet more duties on the long-suffering Spitfire. Which did indeed carry out much GA work, but I believe any fair comparison would show the Typhoon superior to it.
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1. So you won't play with real examples. But it's only by looking at actual events that discussions such as we are having are rescued from the phenomenon of people talking past each other and never engaging. There is no progress therefore towards understanding. The RAF got it terribly wrong in WWII. And this is not 20/20 hindsight. It was said at the time.
2. We are discussing the P-39 on another thread at, I believe, your suggestion. The P-39 had what the Typhoon never had; which was protection for the engine, the essential in any CAS aircraft. The sending of the Typhoon into a Flak environment without protection to the engine and its vitals shows that the RAF was never serious about CAS and butchered its pilots.
3. The alternatives (NB) to the Typhoon and Spitfire existed:
a) the Vengeance for dive-bombing, which is placing HE accurately onto the weapons preventing the army from advancing - mortars, machine-guns, Paks, and artillery. 2TAF delivered HE with Bombphoons which were inaccurate because they could not bomb from the vertical, and with mediums. Mediums were a by-word for inaccuracy and a joke. Dutchmen I have spoken to said it was common for all the houses around a bridge to be destroyed while the bridge stood unmarked. By the way, did you know that Horrocks (OC 30 Corps) banned all mediums because they were killing too many of his own troops? You won't find that in Shores & Thomas' book on 2 TAF.
b) armoured Hurricane IID or armoured P-39 for tank-busting and machine-gunning. Or best of all, let Hawkers build the IL-2 under licence.