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What is the best Fighter aircraft of the 1940-1941 Period, discuss

Tossup between Bf-109 and Spitfire.

Both of them were capable of being extended in life to last until the end of WW2; albeit with handling penalties (109)

I'm willing to bet the Spitfire. It was fast, could corner like crazy, and had a pretty good armament to boot. The 109 only beat it in climbing performance. But as a Brit veteran said "Eventually, they would have to come down and get us, because if they didn't they were failing their mission anyway."

The Messer takes that sooo clear and cut.

Stas Bush wrote:The Messer takes that sooo clear and cut.

How so? I was under the impression the 109 was only better at climbing than the Spitfire.

The Messer and the Spitfire were both top-notch for 1940, but the Bf 190E had better performance on higher altitudes. In a pure dogfight situation, I think it would be able to make the opponent follow it's course of battle, or "take initiative" due to this ability.

Now, if we're talking about being effective in a group mission with certain tasks (bomber protection, etc), the question becomes a lot harder. Many sub-par (by TTC) fighters, when used for mission-specific tasks were able to compete with the "elite", while the "elite" fighters could execute some particular tasks better than other ones.

What? No Brewster Buffaloes?

None of the above: the P-38 Lightning first flew in 1939 and was introduced into service in 1941. With the exception of not being able to handle rain-drenched fuel, it was the equal or superior of anything on the list.

CaptHawkeye wrote:I'm willing to bet the Spitfire. It was fast, could corner like crazy, and had a pretty good armament to boot. The 109 only beat it in climbing performance. But as a Brit veteran said "Eventually, they would have to come down and get us, because if they didn't they were failing their mission anyway."

8 x .303 cal MG is 'good armament'? There were He 111s which flew back to France carrying the extra load of over a thousand .303 rounds.

Whereas just a few of the 109's 30mm cannon rounds can seriously ruin one's day.

kheegster wrote: 8 x .303 cal MG is 'good armament'? There were He 111s which flew back to France carrying the extra load of over a thousand .303 rounds.

Whereas just a few of the 109's 30mm cannon rounds can seriously ruin one's day.

No Bf-109 had a 30mm cannon before the G model, introduced in early 1942, and only then as part of field modification kits to turn the aircraft into bomber destroyers. The 20mm cannon they did have actually gave fairly poor results in the Battle of Britain. The shells would explode without penetrating British aircraft, causing far less damage then they should have.

The German habit of putting two or three different calibers of guns on every aircraft also tended to make accurate aiming impossible. With two guns you could make the trajectories match at exactly one range only (it really helps if the guns are all mounted in the nose as well), with three types even this was impossible. As a result pilots generally chose between using one type of guns or the other for a given burst, reducing the effective firepower.

Anyway, in an energy fight the P-38E wins hands down.

kheegster wrote:

CaptHawkeye wrote:I'm willing to bet the Spitfire. It was fast, could corner like crazy, and had a pretty good armament to boot. The 109 only beat it in climbing performance. But as a Brit veteran said "Eventually, they would have to come down and get us, because if they didn't they were failing their mission anyway."

8 x .303 cal MG is 'good armament'? There were He 111s which flew back to France carrying the extra load of over a thousand .303 rounds.

Whereas just a few of the 109's 30mm cannon rounds can seriously ruin one's day.

Skimmer explained the 109's armament. It's not like I claimed the Spitfire's armament was capable of Base Delta Zeroes. I just said it was pretty good because 8 x .303 is a pretty decent loadout for 1940 .

I didn't include the P-38 as I rather not include heavy Fighters like it and the ME 110, the latter of which tended to fare poorly as early as the battle of the Britian.

Why is the Mitsubishi A6M2 not on that list?

Well the P-38 might have been a heavy fighter, but it could whip most everything. On the list i voted for the Supermarine Spitfire becasue of its longevity, turning radius, and range. The fact that it was an effective escort fighter for thousands of missions makes it the top fighter in my view. while some of its abilities were lacking compared to the 109, it was a much better role fighter, whcih is more valuable.

Why is the Mitsubishi A6M2 not on that list?

Good Point, but I also nearly added th Nakajima Ki-43 which was made a little later but was also similar, can someone add it to the poll.

The Ki-43 was obsolete upon design, though the JAAF did learn its lesson from the plane. All its fighters from then on emphasized performance, range, armor and hitting power rather then shitting on everything in favor of agility. The only good point about it was the 12.7mm machine guns. We might as well add in the Macchi C.200 as well.

As for the Zero, I personally think its one of the most overrated fighters ever. It gained its reputation as a result of surprise (though in fact US intelligence had received quite accurate reports on it), highly trained pilots and more often then not overwhelming numbers. As soon as it faced first class opposition it began taking heavy losses, even when faced with inferior enemy numbers.
The combination of 7.7mm machine guns and low velocity 20mm cannon was especially poor, according to Saburo Sakai many pilots didn’t use the cannon at all, because it was so hard to hit anything with them.

Its not to say it wasn’t a good aircraft, but I’ve just gotten sick of the number of times I’ve had to read how it was the fastest fighter in the world in 1941.

Pretty ironic that Japanese planning emphases quality over quantity, but the rampage of the Zero, Val and Kate packed decks of Kido Butai across the Pacific proved just how vital quantity was. The moment this qaunity was divided, Japan lost five carriers in a month.

I always thought the Ki-43 and the Zero were actually well matched, the zero had more firepower and much longer range, the Ki-43 being slightly more sturdy and having a Even better Turning Performance, but was a created years after the similar Performing Zero as you stated.

The Ki-43 was even more weakly built then the A6M, though it did have a bit of armor because of heavy Army losses vs. Soviet fighters in 1939. It flew and entered service at just about the same time as the Zero, not sure where you got the idea that it came years later. The Ki-43 mostly saw action in China and Burma, and managed to be repeatedly massacred by P-40 bushwhacks, though not quite as horrifically as the Ki-27. It would have been great if it had flown in 1937.

Thankfully for Jap Army pilots, the Ki-44 and Ki-63 had appeared by the time the Navy was even bothering to make radical changes to the A6M, and they had the excellent Ki-84 by 1944 when the Navy finally began introducing wholly new designs. Course all these planes suffered from some significant teething troubles, and from 1943 onward manufacturing quality steadily dropped off.

Well From the Wikipedia, which I didn't really Trust, the Ki-43 came out in 1941 at the earliest, but the Zeke was already out in 1937, predating the Ki-43 by Four years and the IJN never really replaced the Zeke like the JAAF replaced the Ki-43, the Raiden Inteceptor coming in rather later and being Specialized for Home Defense, though they did developed Kawanishi N1K-J which was a even match for Ki-84/Ki-100.

Unless the criteria on the list for best fighter is different than commonly understood, I've VERY puzzled why the Focke-Wulf 190 has been left off the list.

The Focket-Wulf 190 prototype flew in 1939 and it was flying in combat service by 1941.

The fighter was significantly faster than the Me 109s in service at the time, or any other true fighter for that matter, and also had a faster roll rate and outdive any British fighter the time in order to escape any fighter which did get on its tail. The FW 190 simply gave the British fighters fits initally untill better version of the Spitfire became availble. To give a relevant quote:

The introduction of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in late 1941 along the Channel front proved a shock to RAF Fighter Command, the new German fighter proving superior to the then-current Mark VB in all aspects except turning radius. Losses inflicted on Fighter Command's Spitfires were heavy, as air superiority switched to the Luftwaffe through most of 1942, until the Merlin 61-engined Mark IX version started to see service in sufficient numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire

It should be noted that some had entered service in combat units earlier, they simply were not in noticible numbers until August and September of 1941.

Many consider the FW 190 the best German fighter of the war, so simply excluding it from the list strikes me as very odd unless we're merely counting against it due to its numbers during the period and the Me 109 had a greater role for the period in general. In terms of actual capabilities it really should be the winner here.

Shouldn't only 1940 commissioned fighters compete? I thought that was the idea, regardless of what prototypes have been tested in 1939-1940, if the fighter is commissioned in 1941, basta, it's out of the equation.

well i voted for the spit, simply because it was the best plane in a poor choice of options.


1940-41 saw the spit 1, the spit 2 and the spit 5 in numbers, whilst the germans had the 109E-3 to E7??, as well as the early marks of 109F's..

then of course we see the 190A in service mid/late 41

it's not really useful to say 'Spit 1 or Me 109E, which is best' when they both had different improved variants of the same mark

yeah that was the idea, The FW-190A really made it's impact by 1942 and was still as stated during the prototype stages for most of 1941, Expressly Why it wasn't included.

that was Why the Yak-1 and Lag-3 among the contenders and the ME 109 was the E version, the Later F version was considerably superior and Faced the Yak-9 and Yak-3, but they were all only fully commissioned by 1942, or the Mark V. incarnation of the Spitfire, again all were of the 1942 vintage.

starfury wrote:I didn't include the P-38 as I rather not include heavy Fighters like it and the ME 110, the latter of which tended to fare poorly as early as the battle of the Britian.

That's because the Bf 110 was underpowered and overweight, and its engines throttled slowly (meaning poor acceleration). The Lightning was used as a racing airplane post-war because of its speed. Statistically, the P-38 was about 25% heavier, but had almost 50% more power and a top speed nearly 70 mph (107 kph) faster than the Zerstorer.

The Lightning was also the plane that killed Yamamoto, which was arguably the most important mission any of the aircraft flew, which was possible only because of its extreme range capability.

It really helps that the P-38 doesn't have a rear gunner, but the Bf 110 needed it. The things did even worse when they left the gunner at home to save weight for extra range, as was done against Britain and in the Mediterranean from time to time.