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Old 6th July 2015, 18:55
GuerraCivil GuerraCivil is offline
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Allied air superiority in 1944: P-47 D Razorback decided it?

Although kit manufacturers and modellers seem to prefer the "bubbletop" versions of P-47 and P-51 I have the impression that the fight of air superiority over Western Europe was decided by the earlier models of these aircraft. When the "more cool" bubbletop models of P-47/P-51 appeared at the European sky by mid/late 1944, the sky was already dominated by the Allied air forces.

According to what I have read the decisive breakthrough of Allied air superiority over Western Europe was achieved by February/March 1944 when the backbone of Luftwaffe was actually broken. By the spring 1944 Allied could control the airspace over Western Europe which in turn made it possible to launch the Allied invasion in Normandy by June 1944.

In the process of winning the airwar I think that P-47 D "Razorbacks" and early P-51 models were more important than their later versions. Numerically P-47īs were still more important and shot down more German fighters during the critical period of late 1943/early 1944 than the Mustangs? Luftwaffe was not able to recover of the losses suffered at that period, specially as most of their experienced pilots were lost in combat. Although Mustang pilots are credited with more air victories than P-47 pilots, one should take in account the decisive decline of the training and experience level of Luftwaffe fighter pilots by 1944 which was due to losses in attrition combat against P-47īs.

One could thus claim that the P-47 "Razorback" (with its drop tanks) was actually the most important single Allied fighter to decide the airwar over Western Europe?
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