Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "Why did US pilots love the Thunderbolt so much?" video.

  1.  @lqr824  "But it wasn't just the cost of the aircraft, you also needed 50% more fuel than the Mustang, so 50% more tanker trucks, 50% more tanker boats, etc. etc. The P-47 was on the other hand cheaper for losing probably fewer pilots and airframes in similar circumstances." Oh, God, another Greg rigmarole. Rinse and repeat... The directive from Hap Arnold to his Chief of Staff, Lt Barney Giles in October, 1943, was to find a fighter that could escort the bombers to any target in Germany in six months, even if it meant developing one from scratch. Cost was no object. Giles knew the range potential of the P-51 and there was no practical cure for the P-47's lack of range. Drop tanks could not make enough difference to matter and Republic were way too slow making changes to the design in response to the needs of the USAAF.
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  2.  @jacktattis  It doesn’t matter. I was not talking to you when I made that comment. I was talking about the original post in this thread so I was talking to the OP.
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  3. The P-47's roll rate was inferior to the P-51. Johnson was a first class pilot and a first class bullshit artist. His co-author, Martin Caidin, was of the same mind. Never let facts stand in the way of a good story. That mock dogfight - if, indeed, it ever took place - has been misinterpreted by so many people it's hard to get the story straight any more. Word on the street is that the Spit, if it existed, was a Mk V. 'Thunderbolt!' is a good read for kids. It scores pretty low on credibility but it's the only book anyone on the internet has read.
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  4.  @lucianene7741  The P-47 roll rate was inferior to the that of the Mustang.
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  5.  @petesheppard1709  That is certainly true.
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  6. You have posted this in a number of other places.
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  7.  @robertelder164  ”Very low loss rates in total, sparky. P-47 got you home.” Myth. The P-47 spent a much lower percentage of its time in hostile airspace than the P-51 because of its range. If you only stick your toe in the water you’re not going to get as wet as if you jump in. In statistics it’s known as ‘survivor bias’. Yes, it had low loss rates but they were only marginally better than the P-51 (0.73 v 1.18) for much lower time in enemy airspace. This claim that ‘the P-47 got you home’ is also largely unfounded. If you weren’t in hostile airspace, then any aircraft stood a better chance of getting home. Of course there are anecdotes but the P-51 was more likely to engage in combat than the P-47, which usually has to turn for home before the Luftwaffe attacked the bomber stream. In ground attack, the P-51 destroyed 30% more targets than the P-47 in half the number of missions. Yet according to P-47 fanbois, the P-51 couldn’t do ground attack because it was a liquid-cooled flying death trap that could be brought down by a cockeyed school kid with a slug gun. In air-to-air, the P-51 scored 60% more victories than the P-47 in half the number of missions. By every objective measure, the P-51 was the better aircraft. That’s why it was replacing the P-47 by the end of 1944. The more you look, the more obvious it is, no matter what the cool kids are saying.
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  8.  @jacktattis  I was referring to the OP. It’s a copy and paste.
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  9.  @jlandon6028  LOL!! And I suppose you gave first hand experience…?
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  10. "The P-47 arguably broke the back of the Luftwaffe in '43 and early '44.” Okay, let's look at a few things about that. First of all, the USAAF shot down 451 aircraft up to he end of 1943, with the P-47 accounting for 414 of them. Let's put that into perspective. That year the RAF shot down 3,300 German aircraft out of a total of 22,000 which the Luftwaffe lost. In other words, the P-47 accounted for about 2%. Hardly breaking the back of the Luftwaffe. Furthermore, the Luftwaffe put up a pretty fair fight up to mid-October when most of the bombing was paused while an escort solution was found. Meanwhile the Allied forces were reorganised under Eisenhower in preparation for D-Day. But before that the USAAF was being pasted by the Luftwaffe on operations like Schweinfurt and Regensburg because the P-47s had to break off before the Luftwaffe attacked. Why would they do otherwise? Not bad for a force that had already been decimated. "It should also be noted that with the introduction of the 'paddle bladed' airscrew, the climb disadvantage disappeared. Besides the water injection, the Allies also had the huge advantage of better, higher octane fuel which allowed pilots to wring the most power from their engines." That's a bit of a distraction. All well and good, of course but not if it has no effect on the fight. The fact was that until the problem of lack of range was resolved by the Mustang, the USAAF could not carry out their goal of strategic bombing. So, whatever its attributes, the P-47's limited range makes its high altitude performance and the paddle prop (which was by no means universal in the P-47 fleet) something of an irrelevance. The paddle prop wasn’t mainstream until mid-1944. The D-25 variant didn’t fly its first mission until May 1944, by which time the Mustang was scoring at a much higher rate. I’m happy to provide those figures with references. Greg is dead wrong about this.
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  11.  @apersondoingthings5689  ”A p47M ran down a ME 262, what’s your point?” What a load of rubbish. The only time a prop powered aircraft could catch a Me-262 was during landing. There’s nothing more vulnerable than going low and slow in a jet with the throttle response of the Queen Mary. And the P-47M played no role in the war in Europe. It was hideously unreliable when it arrived and its problems weren’t solved before the cessation of hostilities. At that point, the Mustang was the standard US fighter type.
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  12.  @simonpayne8252  ”The P47 was arguably the best overall land based American fighter of WW2.” By almost every measure, the P-51 was significantly better. The P-47, good as it was, wasn’t even in the same postcode as the P-51 (or the Hellcat, for that matter). The amount of myth, disinformation and outright fairy stories told about the P-47 these days has reached a level of silliness, unequaled in my experience and I’ve been reading this stuff for over half a century.
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  13.  @mwbrada  Myth.
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  14.  @cowboybob7093  ”my observation is Capt. Brown used “tactical Mach” which seems to be “top maneuvrable speed” and then there’s “scalded cat Mach,” that I always heard the P-47 excelled.” Critical Mach Number, which is always higher than Tactical Mach Number, is the point at which the relative airflow becomes sonic at some point on the airframe. If it is over the wing then the pilot will have little hope of controlling the aircraft. The P-47 used a thin section (good) with the point of maximum thickness at 30% (not so good), same as the Spitfire. The P-51 used a thicker section but with the maximum thickness at 38.9%, which dramatically alters the onset of sonic shockwaves, particularly on the upper surface and has the effect of delaying potentially disastrous loss of control. This, probably more than the laminar flow wing, was the reason the P-51 had a higher VNE than the P-47 and was more controllable in a high speed dive. The ‘scalded cat’ mode you refer to is extremely dangerous and probably not recoverable. Accordingly, P-47 pilots were told never to exceed 500 mph IAS. Most of what has been said about its ability to dive at high subsonic speeds is nonsense that’s been perpetuated by the internet.
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  15.  @mwbrada  Hitler’s supposed interference with the Me-262. It’s a myth.
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  16.  @jacktattis  "No other Airforce counted ground attack kills" Tell it like it was. No air force except the USAAF counted ground kills.
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  17.  @lqr824  "The P-47 could fly at 25,000, along with the US bombers, and German planes needed most of their engine power just to keep airborne and lost altitude if they tried to turn. The P-47 had HUGE excess power and could maintain altitude in hard turns and even climb easily. When the P-47 finally got drop tanks it had the range to escort bombers as far as they needed to go, but it did use like 50% more fuel than the Mustang, and couldn't go QUITE as far. Finally, it cost like 50% more than the Mustang and that does matter." I doubt very much that this was a factor. The P-47 invariably had the advantage of altitude and the Luftwaffe were fully committed to shooting down bombers and not fighters. The advantage of altitude means the escorts could initiate an attack on the German interceptors whenever they chose to do so. Any fighter pilot worth his salt would attack out of the sun and avoid any kind of dogfighting An 80% of victims say they never saw their attacker or never saw them until it was too late. That's just a fact. Every fighter pilot memoir from WWI on says this. But the P-47 didn't do the majority of escort work and was not particularly successful when it did. Goering knew the P-47 was range limited so he instructed his fighter controllers not to attack the bombers until the escorts had gone home. The point is that it doesn't matter what the technical advantages were. Escort work was basically a matter of securing every advantage possible before attacking. This was not possible with the P-47. Sure, the P-47 could do all those things but the Mustang could take the fight to the Germans wherever they went and to prosecute the USAAF's plan of strategic bombing, that was what ws needed. Excess power, extra guns and airframe durability are a fat lot of good if they can't be brought to bear.
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  18.  @mwbrada  "Most of the Luftwaffe's best pilots and trainers were still flying. Again, you pick and choose what you prefer." That is not accurate. The Luftwaffe, in terms of training hours and average combat experience, peopled between May, 1940 and June, 1941. After that all bets were off. Losses on the Eastern front, in the Mediterranean and the Western Desert had frittered away the skill and experience considerably. By late 1943, the Luftwaffe trainee pilot had 100-120 hours total and 10-15 hours on type. The average American pilot had 600+ total and 50-100 on type. This is easy to find. Greg doesn't back any of this up - it would be lethal to his argument if he even looked at it - but both Martin Middlebrook and Williamson Murray talk about it. The lesson is: don't take anything at face value. Greg's claim that the P-47 'faced down the cream of the Luftwaffe' or 'broke the back of the Luftwaffe' is complete nonsense.
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  19.  @jacktattis  Doolittle introduced it in late ‘43 or early ‘44.
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  20.  @richardmontana5864  The P-47’s legendary toughness must be refracted through the lens of survivor bias.
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  21.  @jacktattis  Here's something else for you to chew on. The 355th Fighter Group had the highest number of ground kills for the entire USAAF. With the P-47, they destroyed 8 for the loss of 4. With the P-51 they destroyed 493 for the loss of 85. That's a K/D of 5.5:1. The 56th FG had 320 destroyed for 50 lost, yielding 6.4:1. When the 78th FG had the P-47 it destroyed 152 and lost 51 for a K/D of 3:1. With the P-51, the 78th destroyed 190.5 and lost 32 lost, yielding a KA/D of 5.9:1. So the P-51 was statistically no more vulnerable in ground attack mode than the P-47. Pilots were more worried about flying into the ground or copping a packet from a 37mm than they were about the deadly 'stray bullet in the cooling system and it's all over.' We know this because they tell us. They weren't worried about their coolant draining away when they might meet a sudden and dramatic demise in the next couple of seconds. These figures are from my direct correspondence with author James William Marshall.
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  22.  @jacktattis  Do you have a source for that P-47 claim of 2,400 lost?
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  23.  @jacktattis  Was whom ‘doing okay’?
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  24.  @jacktattis  Link?
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  25.  @nattybumpo7156  Load of rubbish.
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  26. Myth. It was nice for pilots to believe that but this assumed vulnerability of the P-51 compared to the P-47 is actually pretty easy to disprove. The P-51 scored 30% more ground kills than the P-47 in half the number of sorties and because of its range, spent a much higher percentage of its time in enemy airspace than the P-47. A P-47 hit in the undercarriage, leaking hydraulic fluid and with an oleo strut drooping 20 degrees over Antwerp had a better change of making it home than a P-51 with the same problem over Cottbus. It’s called survivor bias and explains the relatively small difference in loss rates.
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  27. No. DON’T watch Greg’s video series on the P-47 if you want a proper understanding of the air war over Germany from early 1943 to the end of the war. Greg has read no history whatsoever and relies entirely on performance charts. He quite literally doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I know because I’ve had the debate with him and he backed down. Then he deleted my comments. Greg has apparently accepted a challenge from historian James William ‘Bill’ Marshall to debate him some time in April. This was after he actually banned Marshall from posting anything on his channel. His theories are crackpot and paranoid and easily riposted. He seems to have no idea of the actual history of USAAF operations, preferring to rely solely on test data and the idiotic notion that the USAAF senior commanders were trying their best to get everyone killed to further ‘doctrine’ (might as well call it communism…). Greg is a historian of military equipment, rather than a historian. They are related and overlapping but they are far from the same thing. He’s managed to convince a whole generation of gullible people - mostly American gamers who don’t read books - that there was a conspiracy against the Thunderbolt and it has since become one of the biggest sources of disinformation on aircraft on the internet.
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  28.  @peterbellini6102  Greg is dead wrong. In fact, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
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  29.  @peterbellini6102  Greg cannot cite historical or operational examples because he has read no history, instead spending his time devoted to banal technical and lab test information. He’s dead wrong and he’s about to be found out very badly.
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  30.  @peterbellini6102  My bona fides are no better or worse than his. What are yours? I have been a pilot, albeit not a professional and I have been reading history for over 50 years. I’m also a former academic who knows how to grade information and reference it properly. I’ve read more history than Greg has and probably you too. Greg does not understand aerodynamic performance. His use of ideal world fighters and test charts with no operational examples whatsoever, mark him out as lacking in knowledge and understanding, especially when it’s combined with conspiracy theory. In short, if you want to be told that the P-47 was the greatest fighter of WWII and it got nobbled by a bunch of communist boneheaded generals who wanted to kill everyone to prove their doctrine, then don’t listen to the nasty men who say it’s not true. Greg is your man. If you really want to understand what happened then don’t waste your time. Get off YouTube and start reading books. Because there are far better sources of information than a YouTuber with a panty bunch.
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  31.  @peterbellini6102  By the way, when you say you’d put your money on him, what are you betting?
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  32.  @peterbellini6102  Incidentally, Greg deleted my comments. I notice that is a problem for anyone who disagrees with him.
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  33. I have a great photo I took of that machine on the ground in 1991. I also spoke to the crew chief at the time who was a young woman. Never got her name. Maybe you worked with her.
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  34. All of this is BS. NO P-47 variant ever exceeded 500 mph and there is certainly no reliable source that has ever claimed it. It might have got to 470 in test conditions but even that is arguable. But you’re ignoring the most important point. The P-47 could not escort bombers to all parts of Germany like the P-51 could (and did). Without the P-51, the USAAF could not maintain air superiority and could not carry out its agenda of daylight strategic bombing. Top speed is a silly irrelevance in this matter.
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  35.  @thejohnbeck  ”Its crazy to see how many aces on P51s were shot down during anti ground work.” Really? Who? Apart from George Preddy, who was shot down by an American AA unit, I can’t think of anyone famous P-51 aces who were brought down during ground attack missions. In fact, the P-51 scored 30% more ground kills than the P-47 in half the number of missions.
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  36.  @markswalley8716  "its mostly because the p 51 was too fragile for the job whereas the P47 could take the punishment from groundfire better." That isn't true. You should check the results of the 78th FG in Europe. With the P-47 they destroyed 152 destroyed, they lost 51, giving a ratio of 3:1 Flying the P-51 they destroyed 190.5 and lost 32 for a ratio of 5.9:1 56th FG the figures are 320 destroyed for 50 lost, a ratio of 6.4:1. Figures From James William Marshall, author of 'Our Might Always - History of 355th FG', via personal correspondence. For the record, the 355th: P-47 figures are 8 destroyed for 4 lost and for the P-51, destroyed 493 and lost 86 with P-51 for 5.5:1. As you can see, the picture is far from a clear victory for the P-47 or proof that the P-51 had a glass jaw. Oh sure, everyone says the P-51 was a liquid-cooled death trap that Uncle Same bought because it was cheap so they could sacrifice brave flyboys to... oh God... The truth is rather different. In point of fact, the P-51 destroyed 4,131 on the ground vs 3,202 for the P-47 (figures from Francis Dean's 'America's Hundred Thousand').
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  37.  @spaddriver1957  "The jug would dive like a rock compared to the spitfire which floated down." And which one was dived at Mach 0.92? I'll give you a hint: the P-47 wasn't that fast.
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  38.  @spaddriver1957  "Any maneuver that induced negative G's would cause the float in the carburetor to stick in the closed position and starve the engine of fuel." Soved after the Battle f Britain by the pressure carburettor. "Argue all you want about which is the all around better fighter. But the aerodynamic facts concerning each of these two fighters cannot be changed by wishing it so." That argument cuts both ways.
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  39.  @BARelement  "The Thunderbolt outclimbed the Ta 152 H up till 10km… So out climbing in 1 3km range (10km - 13km) out of 13km of ranges isn’t much to chat about." Source?
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  40.  @AlanRoehrich9651  The P-51 was the first Allied fighter over Berlin (not counting PR types), not the P-38. That was on 6 March, 1944, Mission 250, which was the first USAAF raid on Berlin. This is described in detail in ’Target Berlin: Mission 250, March 6, 1944’, by Jeffrey Ethell and Dr Alfred Price. The P-38 could not fly to Berlin. It could get close but not all the way.
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  41.  @AlanRoehrich9651  The P-47 did not bear the brunt of the Luftwaffe. That is just Greg nonsense. I get tired of explaining this but hey… From its combat debut in April, 1943, to the end of December, the P-47 shot down 414 German aircraft out of a total of 451 claimed by the USAAF. The rest were shot down by P-38s and Eagle Squadron Spitfires. To put that into perspective, the Luftwaffe lost 22,000 aircraft that year. So <2% isn’t ‘breaking the back of the Luftwaffe’ or ‘shooting them down in droves’ or any other silly hyperbole Greg uses. When deep penetration raids resumed in Operation Argument, in February, 1944, the P-47 had its best month, getting about 250 German aircraft. The following month the P-51 overtook the P-47. In April, the P-47 shot down 82 German aircraft, compared to 329 for the P-51 and they did it with half the force size. The figures remained lop sided for the rest of the war and with the exception of 56th FG, the P-47 was handed over to the 9th AF for ground attack missions.
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  42.  @Wilett614  The P-47 could not do the job the P-51 did: long range escort, Without that, the USAAF could not prosecute is strategic bombing campaign. It was phased out at the right time. In fact, it might have stayed around too long. By mid-1943 there were already 1,350 P-51s Stateside, waiting to be deployed.
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  43. "I feel the P47 has been somewhat overlooked in WW2." Since everyone else on the internet says the same thing and since every video you find pits the P-47 and P_51 as being either much closer than they really were or defers to the Thunderbolt, I'd say you're off target. The P-47 has now become spectacularly overrated. It was by no means bad - it shot down 3,082 German aircraft in the ETO, so it was no dud but it the P-51 was just better in pretty much every regard. "Remember they were there very early and fought against Germanies best pilots flying well made airplane's." This is From 'Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles', isn't it? The Luftwaffe peaked in terms of pilot quality between May, 1940 and June, 1941. After that they were stuck in a war of attrition they could not hope to win. From its combat debut in April, 1943 to the end of that year, the P-47 shot down 414 German aircraft. But the Germans lost 22,000 that year, so <2% is bugger all. "By the time Mustangs arrived they were fighting mostly poorly trained pilots with low hours fighting in poorly built aircraft because by then there factories had been destroyed and they were building them outside in forests hidden by the trees." This had been true for a lot longer than that. See my previous comment. It had very little to do with the P-47. "The P47 may have started with 2 thousand HP but quickly kept increasing HP winding up with almost 3 thousand HP by the end of the war ! This was done with ever increasing octane, water injection and I think they were using nitrous oxide also." Distraction. Minimally relevant. "It had the record for sending more aces home alive than any other fighter of the war." Survivor bias. The P-47 is now very overrated and the P-51 dismissed. In fact, if you look deeper - I have been reading this stuff for half a century - the P-47 wasn't even in the same post code as the P-51. The USAAF could not have prosecuted its strategic bombing strategy without it.
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  44. @isher304 "yea those cute little channel incursions of 41' & 42' did sooo much damage to the Luftwaffe. Id say hurricanes, P-40s, P-39s, A-20s did more damage to the Luftwaffe in 42'-43' in Russian hands than the channel incursions did. The real fighting over Western Europe started in late 43' and was decided by Spring 44' and the P-47 was the workhorse during that time. By the time the P-51 came on (powered by a Packard Motor exclusively) the Luftwaffe was already in a death spiral. The P-47 did not get surpassed by p-51 kills to a substantial degree until Sept 44'. Packard P-51s did not out number P-47s in the 8th AF until May 44'." The claim that the P-47 broke the back of the Luftwaffe in 1943-44 is nonsense. At the end of 1943 the USAAF had claimed 451 German aircraft, with the P-51 claiming 414. The rest were shot down by P-38s and Spitfires (presumably from Eagle Squadron). That year the RAF shot down 3,300 aircraft. That's 3,300 and the British didn't count ground kills. The Germans lost a total of 22,000 so 414 represents about 2% of the total. So much for the P-47 decimating the Luftwaffe. To paraphrase Bill Marshall: Meanwhile, before December 1, 1943 there was one P-38 group which had been operational for 6 weeks. There were no P-51B operations, seven P-47 groups, the 4th, 56th 78th had been operational for eight months with the 353rd operational for four months, 352nd and 355th for three months. By the end of December there were 8 P-47 groups operational, one totally inexperienced P-51B group and one+ P-38 group. (20th began December 28). The victory credits were 78, 9 and 5 respectively for P-47, P-51 and P-38. In January those numbers were 43 and 32; In February, 233, 89.5 and 32.5 and in March 175, 251 and 25. At end of March the 354th, 3554th, 4th and 357th FG were flying P-51B. The 56th, 78th, 352nd, 353rd, 356th, 359th, 362st FG were flying P-47s. The April victory credits for the three P-38 and seven P-47 (352nd converted to Mustang) dropped precipitously with 23 and 82, while the P-51 totals for April went up 50% to 329. P-51 vs P-47 = 329 to 82. 4X the impact with 0.5X the force. P-51 vs P-38 = 329 to 23. 15X the impact with 1.4 X the force. That's 329 v 82 in April, not September. With half the number of aircraft. It remained that way for the rest of the war. There is no objectively measurable statistic where the P-47 is ahead of the P-51. At no stage of the war did the P-47 outscore the P-51 on a mission by mission basis. Furthermore, according to Wagner (quoting USAAF statistics) in Francis Dean's "America's Hundred Thousand', the P-51 scored 4,131 ground kills, compared with the P-47 at 3,202. In other words, the P-51 outscored the P-47 ground kills by 30%. And overall, it outscored the P-47 in air to air kills by 1.6:1 (3,082 compared to 4,950). In half the number of sorties..
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  45. "Many feel the P-51Mustang stole some of the credit the Thunderbolt really deserved early in the airwar when the German Luftwaffe was more of a serious threat." And they wold be totally wrong. The Luftwaffe was a shadow of its former self by the time the P-47 turned up. Apart from that, its short range meant that the Luftwaffe could chose when it attacked.
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  46.  @jimfinlaw4537  All of those 'interesting facts' about speed are basically completely irrelevant. The P-47M was never a factor in WWII. No 2,800 hp R-2800 saw service in WWII, least of all in Europe. By mid-1944, the P-47 was largely irrelevant and had been consigned wholesale to the 9th AF.
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  47.  @noele6588  Greg is wrong about just about everything. It's easy to disprove too.
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  48.  @lqr824  "The critical thing is that the air war over Germany was basically in the process of being won by the time the Mustang's came." Yeh but very little to do with the P-47.
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  49.  @jimfinlaw4537  "The 56th Fighter Group better known as Hub Zemke's Wolfpack refused to be upgraded to P-51 Mustangs and they flew their preferred Republic P-47 Thunderbolts until the war had ended in Europe" That isn't true either. If you read Zemke's comments on the P-51, you will find that the decision to be re-equipped with P-51s was changed while he was away. and his standing was in charge
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  50.  @twolak1972  "Early on the only allied fighter in europe was the P47 .In the 3 1/2 years it took to make the P51 the 47 decimated most of Germany's great aces ." Bullshit. Absolute nonsense. You can't just keep on parroting Greg's ludicrous claims with no background information. First of all, in terms of skill and experience, the Germans probably peaked between May, 1940 and June, 1941. By 1943, the average new pilot in the Luftwaffe had 100-120 hours and about 10-15 hours on type. The average new pilot in the USAAF had 600+ hours and 50-100 on type. More information on this can be found in Williamson Murray's book, "Luftwaffe: Strategy for Defeat' and Martin Middlebrook's 'The Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission'. Between April, 1943, when the P-47 made its combat debut in Europe, and December that year, it shot down a total of 414 German aircraft. That year the Luftwaffe lost 22,000 aircraft. Are you really telling me that by shooting down <2% of that total, the P-47 'broke the back of the Luftwaffe'? Really? Both the RAF and the USAAF shot down about 3,300 German fighters each. "The 51 was a good plane but not the war winner the ME262 would have been had it been taken seriously in 1939 when the prototype came out." The P-51, more than any other aircraft, enabled the USAAF to carry out its strategic bombing campaign. With the P-47, long range missions were impossible without incurring unacceptable casualties. With the P-51, there was nowhere the bombers couldn't go. The Me-262 is basically irrelevant. "But back to the 51, it was not an ideal GA aircraft due to its liquid cooled engine. 1 hit in a critical coolant line and the 51 would seize up and crash. Many stories of P47 pilots coming home with football sized holes in the fuselage and pistons pumping up and down outside a shot out cylinder with engine oil covering the side of the plane were common." Oh, FFS, when does this crap end? The P-51 destroyed 30% more ground targets than the P-47, liquid cooling or not. As for them flying with missing cylinders, find me a picture. If it was so common, why are such things so hard to come by? Yet people have told me hand on heart that it was 'no big deal' to have a couple of cylinders shot away. I use to fly and I can tell you that anyone who says this has no idea what they are talking about. After the shell impact, two things will be immediately obvious: the engine will be incredibly rough in operation and oil pressure will vanish. The next thing is that most of the oil will be lost and the engine will seize in seconds. The only thing you can do is find a field to land in. If you ant to see this, check out a channel called 'I Do Cars'. He pulls seized engines apart and virtually all of them are the result of lubrication problems. The 'liquid-cooled death trap' trope is BS of the highest order. A liquid cooled engine with a hole in the radiator can run a lot longer if it's babied than any engine can run without oil. Apart from that, GA pilots were a lot more concerned about 37mm or flying into the ground. The stats prove it and I have the stats..Apart from anything else, the P-51 destroyed 30% more ground targets than the P-47 and did so deeper in German territory than the P-47 went and in half the number of missions. It also faced heavier Flak than the P-47 as the army retreated behind the German border. Every pilot memoir you read from late in the war says the same thing: the Flak in Germany was thicker than anywhere else. I'm sorry to get stirred up about this but Every day I read another repeat of Greg's crap by people who don't ever, ever look it up for themselves. I encourage you to look further but don't take Greg at face value because you happen to prefer the P-47. And before you say it, my preference is the Mosquito, the Hellcat or the Yak. I only realised how important the P-51 was when I researched it myself.
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  51.  @lqr824  "The bombers themselves did shoot down a fair number of fighters, but what do you think was escorting the bombers?" In the early raids over France, the bombers managed to survive without sustaining unacceptable casualties. Once over Germany, the bombers had little to no protection. The P-38s were not successful as escorts, despite their range. The P-47s might have been good escorts but they didn't have the range and that is wha caused the crisis in October, 1943. That's why there was a six month layoff before 'Big Week'. The 8th needed to wait for the availability of the P-51 before it could continue with its campaign. "It had EVERYTHING to do with P-47s. They were outclassed below 20,000 feet. But above 20,000 feet, the Germans didn't have a chance against them." That's almost irrelevant. Once the P-47s turned for home at the Dutch border, the Luftwaffe attacked. Altitude performance made no difference to that. You can't shoot down Germans beyond your range. "At altitudes where 109's and 190s literally could not maintain altitude while turning, the P-47 could still pull 2G turns." That's fine as long as the Luftwaffe attacked within the P-47's range envelope. Why would they do that? This is why Goering instructed his fighter controllers to hold off until the P-47s turned for home before turning the Luftwaffe loose. You can find thins in James Holland's book on 'Big Week'. "The supreme irony of the war is that a plane that was TOTALLY built around high-altitude combat ended doing so well in ground attack." I wouldn't argue with that but that happened once the P-47 was consigned to the 9th AF, once the P-51 took over the escort role.
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  52.  @danraymond1253  The P_47 played no significant role in the war. It can be dismissed as an irrelevance. Either way, the P-47 was soundly thrashed in climb by most late model Spitfires. Against the Mk XIV, it wasn't even close.
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  53. Yeah everyone says they know someone who liked the P-47 better. Funny how nobody knows any Mustang pilots... Also funny how it's not reflected in historical record. It's like the old saying here in the post war period that there were enough pieces of the first Zero shot down over Australia to sink a battleship.
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  54.  @gar6446 Totally agree. I’m also Australian.
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