General Category > Military/Defense News

America’s Worst World War II Fighter Was the Star of the Soviet Air Force

(1/7) > >>

DemolitionMan:
Sebastien Roblin


The P-39 Airacobra may be the least loved American fighter plane of World War II, deemed inadequate by military planners at the outset of hostilities and written off as nearly useless by many historians. Certainly, the P-39 could not match the high-altitude performance of classic American warbirds such as the dapper and agile P-51 Mustang, nor the hard-charging, hard-hitting P-47 Thunderbolt.

And yet it was pilots of the Airacobra, not the Thunderbolt or Mustang, that achieved the highest scores of any aviators flying an American war plane during World War II. That this fact is not better known maybe because those Airacobra pilots flew with red Soviet stars on their wings.

Founded in 1935, the Bell Aircraft Corporation was known for unconventional designs such as the Airacuda bomber-destroyer which would have been at home on the cover of a science fiction magazine. In 1939, Bell approached the designs of its prototype XP-39 single-engine interceptor from a revolutionary perspective: instead of designing guns to fit the airplane, Bell designed a plane to fit around its gun — an enormous Oldsmobile T9 37-millimeter automatic cannon shooting throw the propeller hub.

This had a caliber commonly found on early World War II tank guns. It would only take a single direct hit to down an enemy airplane, and the P-39 also carried two additional .50-caliber machine guns in the nose and four .30-caliber weapons in the wings for a good measure.

https://warisboring.com/americas-worst-world-war-ii-fighter-was-the-star-of-the-soviet-air-force/

Smokin Joe:
Good article, thanks! It seems planes designed around guns do better at CAS and low level work, but the Soviets were fighting at low levels on the Eastern Front, so it worked for them!

DemolitionMan:

--- Quote from: Smokin Joe on October 11, 2017, 07:30:37 am ---Good article, thanks! It seems planes designed around guns do better at CAS and low level work, but the Soviets were fighting at low levels on the Eastern Front, so it worked for them!

--- End quote ---
It quickly changed the dynamics of air supremacy on the Eastern Front from the Luftwaffe to the P-39s. Five of the aces were from P-39 squadrons on the Eastern Front

Smokin Joe:

--- Quote from: DemolitionMan on October 11, 2017, 08:43:30 am ---It quickly changed the dynamics of air supremacy on the Eastern Front from the Luftwaffe to the P-39s. Five of the aces were from P-39 squadrons on the Eastern Front

--- End quote ---
Sometimes application is more important than attributes. It worked for the Eastern Front, because the mission was different.

DemolitionMan:

--- Quote from: Smokin Joe on October 11, 2017, 09:00:10 am ---Sometimes application is more important than attributes. It worked for the Eastern Front, because the mission was different.

--- End quote ---

At this point, Germany was losing the war. Stalingrad was the turning point and that is when the Soviet Air Force began to take mastery of the air. The Allies in the West was bombing cities in the day and night hitting factories. Many had to be hidden inside mountains.The Luftwaffe and the German Army was suffering under chronic fuel shortages, manpower. and natural resources was running low. The only hope was synthetic gasoline to fuel the machine but it was nothing like the real stuff.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page