Comments by "João Rita" (@jlvfr) on "The Mysterious Fargo Wasn't As Bad As We Think. And It Could Fire Its Guns (Sometimes)" video.

If I remember correctly the USSR was one of two nations (the other being Italy) that came out of the Spanish civil with the wrong lessons, in terms of future air combat: pure manouverabilty was king, and few but heavy, well aimed guns was all you needed. This is partly to blame for the light designs in service at the start of WWII.
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@robertkalinic335 not really: the I-16 will either be trying to intercept german bombers or german fighters. If bombers, it will place itself in a position that will leave it vulnerable to attacke; if fighters, the 109 can simply acelerate away and manouver at speed in whatever way it suits it.
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@robertkalinic335 like who? Finland's pilots were far superior than the soviets, specially in the early war, which allowed them to use their poor aircraft pool to maximum efect. Italy was equiped with similar planes, generation-wise, with good crews, but the air component in Russia was tiny, and what was left was pulled on in February 1943. The rest? Irrelevant.
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@robertkalinic335 on the I-18; yes it was extremely manouverable, like the Zero. But, like the Zero, the enemy quickly found the correct tactic; use speed against it. An Me-109 would just zoom in, rapid fire, and zoom away.
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@Farweasel by 1940/42 China had basically either obosolete models or nothing at all, and the performance diference between Zero and P-40 wasn't enough for proper "zoom & boom" tactics (which the US would take time to learn, anyhow); but the Zero never evolved, whereas the allies, specially the US, did.
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@robertkalinic335 I get you but, the point is: no german pilot was dumb/poorly trained enough to try to dogfight a -16.
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@Farweasel yes, just in that case it was Japan vs China.
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@robertkalinic335 the russians lucked out the Yak-1; Yakovlev was a specialist race aircraft builder, so everything they build was fast . And the Yak-1 wasn't the 1st miltary aircraft he made, the SovAF had allready been very impresside with the Yak-4 bomber. Hence the comissining of the Yak-1.
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@robertkalinic335 yes but it was a close thing. They could have easily gone for some I-16 clone.
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@robertkalinic335 the Hungarian air force was tiny and fully equiped by the germans; while Romania's AF was a little larger apart from the IAR-80 fighter (which was a par with the Me-109E) was almost fully equiped by the germans, so tactics and experience were shared. Spain had not aircraft in Russia and slovakia didn't exist, being part of german-conquered Czechoslovakia ...
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@robertkalinic335 combat experience and tactics are linked to equipment used and unified command. If you use the same equipment and fight for the same side then yes, you share experience. As for Slovakia, afaik between 1938 and 1990 it was part of Czechoslovakia, unless you're refering to a partial independence in 1938 (5 months...) or as a german client state in 1939-1945. Either way it had no independent aviation of it's own.
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@robertkalinic335 I never said "act as one organisation", but share experience and tactics. They fought on the same side and used the same equipment, what else would they do? As for Tiso and his pseudo-nation, he was just another nazi puppet, and it suited the germans to have him there to control it, rather than having to control it themselves. In terms of actual direct contribution, it was meaningless.
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@robertkalinic335 " we talked about axis members aviation." precisely. In this, and pretty much all practical purposes, WW2 "slovakia" didn't exist; it was a political fiction, fed by nazy germany.
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