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samboct -> RE: WWII and Who Won It (8/10/2007 7:31:46 AM)
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Thompson-
If Pearl Harbor was served up as a staked sacrificial goat, and all Yamamoto had to do was kill it, that's very different from catching game in the wild. The conspiracy theory degrades Yamamoto's accomplishment because the idea is -well, we "allowed" the Japanese to catch us with our pants down. That's very different from acknowledging a brilliantly planned and executed strike (which I think is pretty close to what the Official History of the Navy in WWII says.)
The conspiracy theory falls flat on simple logic. What would be gained by not meeting the attack with a strong force of fighters already in the air? Same result- a "sneak attack" (Yamamoto wanted the declaration of war before the attack.) on a US Base, but we strongly repulsed it. This would be a great rallying cry too. There's no reason to "let" Japan sink the battlewagons- and furthermore, ships from the Atlantic had to be diverted to the Pacific such as the battlewagon North Carolina IIRC. Nope, the long and the short of it is that we believed our own propaganda and the peacetime military had done a terrible job of promoting officers with foresight and intelligence. Hence, Pearl Harbor was close to undefended against an aerial attack, instead being braced for "sabotage" simply because the brass hats at Pearl couldn't conceive that the Japanese would have the balls to attack them. This is also on par with the "intelligence" that the Japanese aircraft were outmoded knock offs, and that Japanese pilots with their slant eyes, all were myopic and needed glasses. This type of fantasy was criminal, as the poorly trained and prepared US pilots tangled with the Zero and were shot down in droves. In the early months of the war, the military kept calling the Zero a "secret" but the aircraft and it's capabilities had been demonstrated since 1940 in China and Chennault had prepared an accurate report of the aircraft's capabilities, as well as coming up with some useful tactics. Chennault, like Bomber Harris was treated abysmally by the brass hats- he wasn't at the signing of peace on the Missouri for example.
Sorry- much like 9/11- the often accurate intelligence assessments of the people in the field were ignored by their higher ups. It's not a conspiracy- it's just stupidity and wishful thinking.
Caitlyn- the Me 109G was a terrible airplane. Even though they'd jacked more power into it, it was wildly overloaded with the extra weight of the cannons. The Germans were building them because they needed to disperse their factories and Messerchmidt had good political pull. Also- the most popular night fighter against the RAF was the Me 110. Single seaters didn't carry radar, so most nightfighters were twins. Yes, there were some attempts such as Wilde Sau to just throw up a lot of airplanes and hope they shot something down (and on the raid on Nuremburg in 43?-44? they were quite successful- knocking down 94 RAF airplanes in a single night) but that was the exception. When the RAF moved away from moonlight nights and went to electronic aids, the single seaters were effectively useless, and had a terrible loss rate in accidents. The Me 109G was used as a daylight bomber destroyer, but faired poorly if there were escort fighters present.
Lady E- sorry, Microsoft games just aren't that accurate. The FW was indeed significantly faster than the Me, which in later years was terribly obsolescent, but the German pilots insisted (read the history of JG 26) that if they opened the throttle on an FW- it was faster than a Mustang- level flight at about 12,000 ft. At different altitudes, the speed advantages could shift, but in the main they were all pretty close so it again boiled down as to who saw whom first and got to the better position. Bear in mind that the top speeds of 400 mph plus are really up at 30,000 feet plus, and that in dogfighting, speeds were closer to 250-300 knots.
The main advantage of the Mustang was range- and the fact that it was cheap and easy to mfg. The range was a function of putting a fuel tank behind the pilot- which made the airplane tricky to fly until it burned off- didn't track well with a too rearward center of gravity. (c.g.) The Mustang cost about $55k, a Thunderbolt was $70K, and a Lightning was around $110K IIRC. The Mustang did not turn well in comparison with many other fighters, it didn't roll brilliantly (both the FW and the Thunderbolt were hard to argue with), but it did accelerate well and had good speed. A chunk of the reason was the airfoil (thin, for good performance at altitude) and exhaust ducting at the radiator scoop which gave the aircraft an effective boost of some 20 mph or so- helping both range and speed. Curtiss was annoyed because they developed the idea on the P-40Q which never went into production. By the way- the P-40 could outturn any German fighter, yet it wasn't close to the Zero.
The English claim to have some of the fastest allied fighters with the later Griffon powered Spitfires and the Tempest (which I suspect at 25k feet WAS the fastest damn Allied airplane) which the Germans treated with great respect.
Also- the Corsair was used in the ETO- the British flew the airplane off their carriers a year before the airplane was cleared for carrier usage in the US Navy- (the Brits figured out to fly a curving approach because the long nose prevented a straight on view of the landing deck. It was quite successful in combat against an FW- apparently being more maneuvrable and with comparable speed. The most maneuvrable Allied fighter was the Hellcat- which also did OK against the FW, but didn't have a speed advantage. The Hellcat was able to maneuver with the Zero on equal or better terms.
The fastest German airplane was the Me 163, but that was a deathtrap. The 262 really did have a 100 knot advantage in level flight with both fans running, but since the engines would only last about a dozen hours (or occasionally less) this was often problematic. The fastest piston airplane was the Do 335, but it wasn't very maneuvrable- although quite nasty with a heavy punch against a viermot (US 4 engine bomber.)
I did say I was an airplane nut?
Sam
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