Poll - Greatest Piston Engined Fighter of WWII

rommel

P51 Mustang, the best looking machine, even by today's standards.

Yep!

Bloody rappers

Corsair, who remembers Baa Baa Black Sheep

The firepower of an FW190 combined with the speed & agility of an ME109.

But it didn't happen.

+1

There's some great videos on youtube about Operation Jericho, involving 4 Mosquito squadrons, which are well worth watching

Yes thats right.

Packard V-1650Main article: Packard V-1650
As the Merlin was considered to be so important to the war effort, negotiations were soon started to establish an alternative production line outside the UK. Rolls-Royce staff visited a number of North American automobile manufacturers in order to select one to build the Merlin in the U.S. or Canada. Henry Ford rescinded an initial offer to build the engine in the U.S. in July 1940, and the Packard Motor Car Company was subsequently selected to take on the $130,000,000 Merlin order.[nb 14][72] Agreement was reached in September 1940, and the first Packard-built engine, designated V-1650-1, ran in August 1941.[73]

That probably depends on which victor wrote the particular version of history. Others may say the Soviet ace Ivan Kozhedub had the only confirmed kill of a Me 262 in proper aerial combat using his Lavochkin La-7.

My nomination: Yak-3.

The P51D was the first allied fighter to truly take air superiority over Europe. Spitties and Hurricanes did several times for short periods only, in the Spitties case mainly because it used Rolls Royce engines instead of the Packard built variant. (As an aside, the Lancasters were so successful in large part because most of them had Packard Merlins instead of Rolls Royce. Some even had those Hercules radial abominations, and no, I'm not mistaking them for the earlier Manchester bombers) Both the Merlins and the (considerably superior) Griffons suffered the same problem; a problem common to ALL British engines, before and since, for any purpose. Namely the inability to contain oil! Packard made the same Merlin engine with one important difference - it could contain its oil long enough to use up all the fuel. Neither Merlin nor Griffon engined Spitties could ever do that. Less than 30 minutes into a sortie the pilot had almost zero visibility due to copious quantities of (imp) gallons of oil washing all over the canopy, right down to the tail. This was true right to last Mk-XXXXVIII Spitties (The 48 was in fact a Seafire - a carrier based variant.)

The tide of the European war changed irrevocably when the allied heavy bombers were finally able to have fighter escorts all the way to deep into Germany. The P51D was the first allied fighter capable of this. Not only could they get there and back, they had typically 30mins+ time on target. They tried to do this with some variants of Spitties, but this was entirely unsuccessful for both the oil dumping reason and because Spitties were far less economical on fuel.

Of course, the P51D was a more modern design, so one should expect it to be better, but no-one expected it to be so much better. Would have given almost anything to see a Packard Griffon, and especially a Packard Griffon powered Spittie and Mustang. Rolls Royce designed the 2 most outstanding piston a/c engines ever (imo), but their execution was abysmal!

Any'ow, I'm always hard pressed to decide whether I like Spitties, Mustangs, Mossies, Beaufighters, BF-109 or FW-190. It seems to depend on how I felt when I woke up that day.

Finally, the old joke, "What's the difference between a RR Merlin and a bucket of oil?" was originally coined by Spittie pilots during WW2. The answer of course being that the bucket probably doesn't leak. Many of you would be aware that this old joke has since been applied to just about every British vehicle since, especially their motor bikes.

Zero? The best Mitsubishi ever made.

Focke Wulf 190. This is the greatest piston fighter of WWII for a number of reasons.

Firstly its development was hampered by a severe lack of resources as the ME 109 was seen as the only fighter Germany needed. Despite this it was developed as an effective weapon of war.

Secondly it made use of an engine that was quite simple, cheap but was otherwise useless for German military aviation

Thirdly when that engine became obsolete the FW 190 could be modified to make use of different engine that allowed the planes to fly faster and higher.

Fourthly the FW 190 was much loved by the pilots who flew it and most German aces flew this plane. It was used on all the German fronts of war and was in use right up Germany's surrender against overwhelming odds.

Fifthly it could be assembled under very difficult circumstances due to constant bombing of Germany. The bombings were unable to stop the production of these planes.

Sixthly even though it was developed before the war, it was still an effective front line fighter and was still being modified at the end of the war.

Hurricane - won the battle of Britain for England the spitfire looked nice flew hard but lacked the maneuverability of the Hurricane in a dog fight.

P51D Mustang! They had a two speed Super charger which gave them the horsepower to climb higher and faster than any other fighter in WW2. What a beautiful aircraft!

I attended a talk night with General Chuck Yaeger in Sydney some years ago. He told some amazing stories of flying in the Mustangs over Europe as well as breaking the sound barrier in the X-1. A very exciting time in aviation history.

DM