Why the USAAF gave up on the A-36 in favour of the P-47.

[Kutscha]

Nice comment in an Osprey book about Flak vs A-36s.
http://books.google.com/books?id=U2O...0Stuka&f=false

[CJE]

Originally Posted by Kutscha

The DH98 was for Spec B.18/38 (Bowyer). Spec B.1/40 was written for the DH98. The DH98 could not be ordered before a Spec had been written for it.

Well, I might say I'd rather trust Bowman than Bowyer in general, based on my personal experience.
Of course, no aircraft could be built before a spec was drawn up but as it turned out the D.H80 was not built against spec B.18/38, since the project was turned down by the AM.

[Juha]

On Pe-2
All I can say that the Finnish liaison officer ar the HQ of Luftflotte 1 reported that Germans had warned that some special Pe-2 units were very good bridge busters, they attacked out of sun during a big raids and Germans concluded that the big raid was in fact a decoy with allowed the specialist Pe-2 unit to approach unnoticed and began its dives unhindered by AA.

On the other hand when the German AA-ship Niobe, ex-Dutch armoured deck cruiser Gelderland (commissioned 1900) was sunk by VVS KBF on 16 July 44 in Kotka harbour, Pe-2s were used more like a decoys, the real killers were 4 skip-bombing A-20G Havocks/Bostons. According to Soviets the 22 Pe-2s (á 2x250kg + 2x100kg) got 2 hits on Niobe, but as I wrote Niobe was sunk by A-20Gs which got two 1000kg hits.

Pure Pe-2 attack on 12 Jul 44 on Niobe by 30Pe-2s of 12th Guards BAP KBF didn’t achieve any hits.

On Ju-88
all I can say now that it has automatic dive-bombing sight and was fairly accurate, but I recall only some Finnish claims and I have not time to validate them. IIRC LW Ju 88s sunk at least some ships from Arctic convoys, some convoys suffered rather heavy losses to LW, especially PQ-18 which lost ten merchant ships to LW attacks, but I cannot recall how many were sunk by torpedo bombers and how many by Ju 88s.

On A-36
what I read yesterday, in all books and articles there was comment that A-36 was fairly vulnerable to German AA, but the loss rate was clearly sustainable. Also according to USAAF final evaluation even with dive-brakes deployed it accelerate too fast for a proper dive-bomber but its dive properties were very good for a fighter. At least some pilots seemed to have liked it and thought that they got good results in their dive bombing attacks but at least their claims against German evacuation shipping in the Strait of Messina seemed to have been optimistic when I compared them to German info. Also A-36 seemed to have suffered higher fatality rate per flying hour than any other a/c during training in Continental USA during early part of its career.

Juha

Addition: IIRC a big RN light cruiser Trinidad, which had earlier torpedoed herself (extreme cold had put one of its torpedos run a circle and hit her instead of a German DD) and hastily patched at Murmansk, was hit on home run by a 250/500kg bomb dropped by a Ju 88 and the fire the bomb had started got out of hand and the cruiser had to be scuttled.

[Juha]

Hello
checked the reasons of the losses of the 10 merchantmen lost to air attacks from Convoy PQ18, 9 were torpedoed and one, which the crew managed to beach but which was not salvaged, was hit by both torpedo and bombs. Against some earlier convoys Ju 88 dive-bombers had been more successful. LW losses during the attacks on PQ 18 were also heavy, some 28-31 planes.

Juha

[Juha]

Checked a little more
Ju 88
wasn’t a dive bomber in same sense like Ju 87, Blackburn Skua or Douglas SBD Dauntless, A-4 was optimized for 60deg dive bombing, and it seems that earlier A-5 (in essence A-4 with earlier, less powerful engines) was optimized for 50 deg dives, which in fact means glide-bombing. In 43 Germans were modifying also A-4s for glide bombing, removing dive-brakes, calibrating automatic dive-bombing sight for shallower dive angles etc in order to use 88s as level bombers or glide-bomber which used 30 deg dives.

After dive brakes were removed Finns used 45 deg dives with their Ju 88A-4s.

Pe-2
Finns used some war-booty Pe-2s, but as fast recon planes, but they tested also its dive capabilities. Max dive angle used was 85 deg because the CSUs didn’t work properly at 90 deg dives. But one must remember that all FAF’s Pe-2s were early production types, so later version, which had different engines might not have suffered from that handicap.

Juha

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

Yes the RAF brought in faster aircraft than the Spitfire IX but that is not the same as the Mk IX no longer being a viable type in combat - it was used in large numbers up until the end and I don't recall reading of any occasions where it was outclassed and massacred by the opposition.

Appearantly it wasn't messarcred but ignored. Clostermann wrote about this (the situation in the 2nd TAF in late 1944):

The Spitfires were powerless. There was only one Wing of three Spitfire XIV Squadrons and the rest were equipped with Spitfire IXs or Spit XVIs (Spit IXs with Rolls-Royce engines built by Packard in the U.S.A.). In any case all the Spit IX Squadrons operated most of the time as fighter-bombers. The Huns, knowing the Spits quality in dogfight, carefully avoided taking them on, and the poor Spits had neither the speed nor the range to force the new German fighters to fight.

Clostermann's Big Show, page 214.

BTW he didn't mean the 262 but rather uprated piston engined fighters of the LW with MW-50 and other boosts (ie. G-14s, A-8s, A-9s, D-9s). These had some significant speed advantage (up to 40-70 km/h) over the Mark IX that was just introduced in service in numbers.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

The Huns, knowing the Spits quality in dogfight, carefully avoided taking them on …

Clostermann's Big Show, page 214. BTW he didn't mean the 262 but rather uprated piston engined fighters of the LW with MW-50 and other boosts (ie. G-14s, A-8s, A-9s, D-9s). These had some significant speed advantage (up to 40-70 km/h) over the Mark IX that was just introduced in service in numbers.

I'm quite familiar with Clostermann's book and the reliability of some of his observations. If the Germans really avoided taking on the Spitfire IX at a time when much of their fighter effort in the west was in defence of their own supply lines against fighter-bombers, doesn't that rather reinforce my point that it remained a viable combat aircraft in 1945?

[tcolvin]

Nick, it was you I believe, who evidenced the Spitfire IX/XVI to rebut my statement that 2TAF operated retired air-superiority fighters for the sake of convenience.

Surely Clostermann's statement that Spitfire IX/XVIs were powerless, because they lacked the speed necessary to enforce air superiority, revealed the truth they were well past their sell-by date as air-superiority fighters in 1945.

Their manoeuverability was such, however, that faster German fighters left them alone, but that is a different point and the reason Austers and L4s were rarely troubled either.

Hill, CO of 662 Sqn, described what happened to two FW-190 pilots who decided to 'have a go' near Nijmegen at end September 1944 with one of his Austers, flown of course by a soldier. "A 'C' Flight pilot, called Cracknell, got the warning of bandits. He came down very low for ten minutes and then, seeing three Spitfires flying above him, decided that he would continue his registration shoot. Unfortunately above the Spitfires and flying in and out of clouds were two FW-190s. They pushed their noses down and went straight at him. He saw them and dived for the ground. One of the Spitfires also saw them, dived after them and shot one down and then crashed himself. For ten minutes we then watched the FW and the Auster have a battle. Round the trees, down the side of the river, round the chimneys of the power station. The FW got in four bursts but missed each time. Eventually he decided the AA was getting too hot and cleared off. The Auster landed and had to be completely re-rigged - one wing had gone back about one inch during the attack."

Tony

[Juha]

Hello Tony
of course you and Kurfürst can have 100% trust on Closteman but if you look for ex Shores’ and Thomas’ 2nd TAF, almost all the claims of 2nd TAF during the first 10 days of July 44, didn’t bother look more, and there are many of them, were made by the Spit IX pilots.

Juha

[tcolvin]

Hi, Juha, but it's a question of timing, and we've been discussing 1945, not mid-1944.

Page 532 (Vol III) of Shores & Thomas states that 'Superfighters' (Tempests and Spitfire XIV) replaced Mustang III in 122 Wing and Spitfire IX in 125 Wing already at the end of September 1944 under impact of the Me-262. By January 1945, they state that the Tempests 'had begun to find their form against the latest FW-190D and Bf-109K'.

2TAF were therefore clear about the equipment needed for air superiority in 1945, and it wasn't the Spitfire IX/XVI which was relegated to fighter-bombing, as Clostermann stated.

Tony